Mack Bolan
Stony Man #33 Punitive Measures


PROLOGUE

Ulysses Freeman never went by his real name. In
fact, very few people knew what it was. To his
fellow Crips, and anyone else on the streets, Free-
man was "Jimmy Two Blades." He had acquired
the appellation due to his habit of carrying a
matching set of daggers with eight-inch blades.
The knives were looped through his belt and
tucked into the back pockets of his faded, ragged
blue jeans--one for his right hand, the other for
his left. The pockets were always covered, either
by a sweatshirt, a jacket or a loose-fitting T-shirt.
    This night, Jimmy Two Blades had his two
blades, but he also had something else.
    Jimmy stepped back a little deeper into the
shadows of the doorway. He could still see up and
down the street from where he stood, and he
watched the few people brave enough to walk
along the sidewalk outside Los Angeles's Mc-
Caurther Park. A hooker strutted by in high heels,
fishnet nylons and a garter belt extending beneath




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a pair of shorts so minuscule that they revealed a
generous portion of her buttocks. A derelict in
clothes too tattered to identify followed her ten
yards behind, enjoying the view and knowing it
was all he could afford.
    As Jimmy continued his silent vigil, he saw the
hooker suddenly curse, then whirl and draw a
small revolver from her purse. She yelled at the
man, the gun bobbing up and down as she spoke.
    The bum stopped in his tracks, turned and shuf-
fled out of sight in the opposite direction.
    Jimmy absentmindedly reached under his T-
shirt, his fingers falling over the rough edges of
the hard steel stuffed into the front of his belt
against the buckle. He had picked up the piece
that afternoon from Rags, another Crip. There
wasn't much to it; it was some kind of cheap sin-
gle-shot weapon that looked like somebody with
a drill press and a few other tools had stamped it
out in a basement workshop. He'd have liked to
have used the Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum pis-
tol he'd found during a burglary the week before,
but he'd had to ditch it when the cops arrived
sooner than he'd expected. He had been lying low
ever since, hiding in the attic of his friend, Bag-
worm, and wondering if the pigs had IDed him
as he sprinted away from the scene.
  Jimmy didn't think they had made him. If there

was a warrant out for him, word would be on the
streets by now. It wasn't.
    A blue-suit strolled down the sidewalk carrying
a nightstick in his left hand, his right hanging over
the holster on his hip and ready to drop over the
grips of his gun. Jimmy could tell the policeman
had experience. Like any cop who wasn't brain-
dead, the yellow light in the man's brain contin-
ually flashed while he was working the 'hood.
    Jimmy moved farther back into the doorway,
pressing his back against the wall to make sure
he wasn't seen. He waited until the cop's heavy
footsteps faded, then finally disappeared alto-
gether, before moving out where he could view
the street again.
    Jimmy drew the simple gun from his belt and
looked at it under what little light filtered into the
doorway from the poles along the street. It looked
like a plaything, something you'd see wrapped in
plastic and hanging from a rack in a toy store.
Normally he could have snapped his fingers and
had a decent gun in his hands within two hours.
But he'd been in isolation for the past week and
hadn't been able to get out and do the proper
street shopping.
    A chill of rage suddenly shot through Jimmy
Two Blades's body as that same isolation re-
minded him of why he was there. Rags had come
back that very morning and told him he'd just




seen Too Cute, Jimmy's woman, coming out of
Big Willie's upstairs apartment. They'd been kiss-
ing and hugging, and grinding their goodbyes
while Big Wi!lie's hands roamed all over her
body.
    The bitch couldn't even wait a week, Jimmy
thought as his fingers wrapped around the short
grip of the gun. She had to have a man or she
wasn't happy. His fingers tightened. He wasn't in
love with Too Cute, and he didn't even care if
she slept with the other Crips now and then. But
Big Willie wasn't a Crip. The fat bastard was a
Blood. And Jimmy Two Blades couldn't let some
fat-ass Blood go dippin' his wick in the Cfips'
private stock and expect to keep face on the
streets.
    The angry gangster stuck his wrist into the light
far enough to read his watch: 12:25. Big Willie
should be coming along any second now, on his
way to meet the man he thought was going to be
his new big-time crack connection.
    Dumb bastard. A phone call was all it had
taken.
    Footsteps sounded down the block. He jumped
back instinctively, farther into the doorway, then
leaned cautiously forward, peering around the
comer. What he saw made him smile.
    Dressed in tom blue jeans, a red-and-black-
plaid flannel shirt buttoned at the throat and a red

bandanna wrapped around his sweating forehead,
Big Willie swaggered his way along the sidewalk
like some fat cock in a barnyard. He danced as
he walked, his shoulders jerking to the rhythm of
whatever rap song it was emanating from his lips.
    Jimmy waited until Big Willie was three steps
from the doorway before stepping out of the dark-
ness onto the sidewalk, the gun held in front of
him, eye level.
  "Hey," he said softly.
    Big Willie stopped in his tracks like a spot-
lighted deer. He opened his mouth as if to speak,
but no words came out.
    "Yo' dick been goin' places it had no business
bein'?" Jimmy asked.
  Big Willie didn't answer.
    "I asked you a question!" Jimmy screamed.
"You been havin' fun with my 'ho'?"
    "You got it wrong, Jimmy Two Blades," Big
Willie said, the sweat around the red headband
now streaking down his doughy face. "You got
to understand, bro'--"
    "I ain't yo' bro', and I don't got to understand
nothin' !" Jimmy said. He took a step closer and
fired the gun point-blank into Big Willie's face,
moving back as the Blood crumpled to a heap on
the sidewalk. He dropped the weapon on top of
Big Willie, looked down, spit and kicked the
corpse twice in the fibs.




    Jimmy Two Blades had turned and started
down the street when he remembered he had for-
gotten to wipe the gun clean. He pivoted back
around, returned to where Big Willie lay and
rubbed the grips of the gun with the tail of his
shin. He had dropped the weapon again when he
heard the voice behind him.  "Police! Freeze!"
    Jimmy spun on his heel to see the same cop
who had passed on the sidewalk a half hour ear-
lier. The man in blue stood less than ten feet be-
hind him, an automatic Sig-Sauer pistol gripped
in both hands and aimed at Jimmy's chest.
    "Don't move!" the cop ordered. He took a ten-
tative step closer.
    Jimmy made his decision more on instinct than
on thought. Both of his hands shot behind his
back and came out gripping the daggers.
    The cop fired twice, both rounds striking
Jimmy squarely in the chest. The Crip coughed,
seeing blood spurt out of his mouth, then fell on
top of the man he had killed less than thirty sec-
onds earlier.
    The police officer stepped forward with the gun
still aimed at Jimmy. He looked down at the two
dead men, then a glimmer of steel on the sidewalk
next to the bodies caught his eye. He stared at the
cheap, stubby-barreled gun for a moment, then
pressed the button on his walkie-talkie. The offi-

cer spoke into the tiny microphone clipped to his
shirt collar, identifying himself to the dispatcher
and telling her what had happened.
    Then, his eyes still on the stamped-metal
weapon on the concrete, he added, "Tell whatever
detectives come out we got another one of the
Eliminators."




CHAPTER ONE

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Hidden more by illusion than concealment, Stony
Man Farm lay in the Shenandoah Valley of the
Blue Ridge Mountains. A casual passerby would
probably give it little more than a quick glance,
as from the outside it looked no different than
any other working farm. The main house was
large--three storiesmand it appeared to be owned
by a financially successful agribusinessman. But
so did the other plantations located on the spreads
surrounding it, so the house brought about no un-
due curiosity.
    The tractor barn, sheds and or other outbuild-
ings located near the residence were also typical
of modem farming, as was the landing strip at the
north end of the property.
    It wasn't until one entered the buildings that
the secrets of Stony Man Farm were revealed.
Gaining entry to the ground floor required passing

through a coded, heavily reinforced steel door.
Once inside, a visitor would have found himself
in an entryway with staircases leading both up-
ward and downward directly in front of him, a
den to his right and the Farm's security head-
quarters to the left. Moving past the stairs, he
would enter a large dining hall and, continuing
left, the kitchen, pantry, house-staff sleeping quar-
ters and a garage-shop. If he turned right rather
than left, he would--after tapping in the access
code on yet another steel door--find the enor-
mous computer room separated from an office
designated the communications room by a ceiling-
to-floor glass wall. The ground floor of the main
house at Stony Man Farm also featured a porch,
elevator, utility room, storage closets, baths and
an armory.
    The second floor of the house was taken up
primarily by the bedrooms and private baths of
the personnel who lived on-site.
    Had the imaginary visitor taken the stairs
downward from the ground floor rather than those
leading up, he would have emerged into a level
consisting primarily of offices, emergency supply
areas, a generator room, and a backup communi-
cations center and supplementary armory known
simply as the gun room.
    But the final room, the largest in the entire
house, lay on the east side of the basement level.




It was known to the few who had entered it as
the War Room, and it was there that the men and
women of Stony Man Farm, specialists in war-
fare, crime fighting and counterterrorism, planned
their missions, missions that began where the ef-
forts of militaries, police departments and other
conventional agencies were forced to leave off.

THE ATMOSPHERE in the War Room was somber.
    Hal Brognola entered and moved immediately
toward the vacant seat at the head of the long
conference table. He glanced at the men already
seated as he passed. Carl Lyons and the other two
men of Able Team sat quietly on one side, while
David McCarter and the remaining four Phoenix
Force commandos were on the other. Aaron "the
Bear" Kurtzman's wheelchair had been rolled up
to the right of where Brognola would sit, and Bar-
bara Price, mission controller, sat to his left. John
"Cowboy" Kissinger, Stony Man Farm's chief
armorer, sat next to Price.
  Only one man was missing from the meeting.
    "Have you got him on the screen yet?" Brog-
nola asked Kurtzman as he dropped into his seat.
    "Hookup's almost complete," the burly com-
puter wizard replied. He lifted the telephone re-
ceiver from its cradle in front of him, tapped a
button and spoke into a speakerphone. "Akira?"
  "I need another minute, boss man."

     Moments later the television screen on the wall
 behind Able Team lit up. The men of Able
 Team--Lyons, Hermann "Gadgets" Schwarz and
 Rosario "the Politician" Blancanales swiveled
 their chairs to face the fuzzy picture.
    The interference cleared, and the head and
shoulders of a man wearing a navy blue blazer
and open-collared white shirt looked out over the
people in the War Room. The man's hair was
dark, his cheekbones, jawline and other features
were hard, as if chiseled out of stone. His ex-
pression was just as powerful.
    "Good morning, Striker," Hal Brognola said
to the screen, using Mack Bolan's mission code
name.
"Good evening, Hal, Barbara, guys."
Murmurs of greeting came from Price and the
others present in the War Room. Bolan had been
flown to Australia the week before by Jack Gri-
maldi, the Farm's number-one pilot. He'd been
looking for a member of a Colombian drug cartel
who had escaped a DEA hard probe three months
earlier and had been spotted in Sydney. Bolan,
also known to the world as the Executioner, had
been pulled off his chase to join the mission about
to be launched from Stony Man Farm.
    "Is the room you're in secure?" Brognola
asked.
  Bolan nodded. "It's soundproof and I've




checked for bugs." He paused, then grinned and
added, "The spooks have all gone into the front
offices. Seems like a direct call from the President
of the United States can produce dramatic results
in a short period of time."
    Brognola nodded. Stony Man Farm was Amer-
ica's top-secret counterterrorist installation. Few
other than the men and women who worked out
of the site, and the President of the United States,
even knew it existed. That included the Central
Intelligence Agency, whose Sydney offices Bolan
had temporarily commandeered.
    "Let's get down to business," Brognola said.
He pulled a we!l-chewed cigar stub out of the
breast pocket of his charcoal gray suit and
jammed it between his teeth without lighting it.
"Striker, you have the gun used in the robbery
there in Sydney?"
    On-screen, Bolan held up a steel pistol with an
almost nonexistent barrel. "It's just like the oth-
ers," he said before Brognola could ask. "An-
other Eliminator."
    Brognola nodded, his mind traveling back in
time to World War II. The United States Office
of Strategic Services---the father of the current
CIA--had come up with the Liberator, a unique
idea to help resistance groups in Europe. Cheaply
made and mass-produced to the specifications of
the OSS, the single-shot pistol was packed with

ten rounds of .45ACP ammunition, a set of comic-
book instructions on its use and dropped in a
waterproof bag behind enemy lines. During a
three-month period of 1942, one million of the
Liberators had been manufactured. That came out
to be one every 7.5 seconds, and gave the Lib-
erator the honor of being the only pistol in history
that could be manufactured faster than it could be
reloaded.
    The big Fed stared at the screen. The gun in
Bolan's hand wasn't identical to the Liberator, but
anyone could tell that the WW II Resistance
weapon was where the idea had come from. It was
close enough, at least, that the press had picked
up on the similarities and dubbed the cheap pistol
the Eliminator.
    Brognola chomped down harder on his cigar.
The reason for the name was simple. These guns,
mass-manufactured just like their predecessors,
weren't being used to help innocent people being
repressed by the Nazis. These pistols were being
used by street gangs and criminals to assassinate
people.
    "Then whoever's making these things has con-
nections outside the U.S.," Brognola stated.
"Maybe worldwide."
    "It would appear that way," Bolan said. "At
least in Australia."
The soft whirring of a fax machine drew Price's





attention. She stood without comment and went
to retrieve the page coming out. "Looks like
worldwide is right. Two more Eliminators have
                    W'-t- ,,
shown Uly--Spain and Thailand. -m... A mo-
ment later she shook her head. "This says that the
gun recovered in Barcelona wasn't a single-shot.
It was a semiauto patterned after the Government
Model 1911 but appeared to be stamped out like
the Eliminators." She paused and looked up.
"And it had no serial numbers or other markings,
either."
All heads in the room turned toward Kissinger.
The armorer shrugged. "Once you're tooled up
to produce a single-shot," he said, "retooling to
make a simple, short-recoil semiauto like the Colt
design wouldn't take that much work."
    Carl "Ironman" Lyons, the ex-LAPD detec-
tive who led Able Team, leaned forward and
crossed his arms across the table. "Eliminator
Government Models?" he said to no one in par-
ticular. "Whoever is behind all this is expanding
production."
    "Yes, but the question is why?" David Mc-
Carter asked. "Does he or she or they have a
political agenda? Are they leading toward some-
thing, or is this simply a criminal enterprise?"
    Price had returned to her seat. She glanced at
her notes and said, "The single-shot Eliminators
have been found in the hands of Crips and

 Bloods," she said. "Fourteen have been traced
 back to the Ku Kiux Klan. This fax says that the
 gun in Spain was taken away from a Basque, and
 the Japanese Red Army used a single-shot in
 Thailand. I'd say that whoever is behind all this
 is selling to anybody who can pay his price."
    "There's now a political agenda here," Brog-
nola said. "The Eliminators, single-shots and
semiautos both, are being made for the oldest pur-
pose known to man."
  Lyons nodded. "Money."
  No one seemed to argue.
    "Okay," Brognola said. "Let's sum things up
and get to work. It looks like this organization is
expanding. I know that every last one of you in
this room is firmly behind the Second Amend-
ment. None of us are against honest citizens own-
ing weapons and defending themselves, but that's
not what's going on here. These guns are going
into the hands of criminals and terrorists and are
being used for assassinations rather than self-
defense."
    He turned to face Carl Lyons. "Ironman," he
said, "take your team to Brooklyn. Word has it
that one of the street gangs got stopped with a
whole trunkful of Eliminators."  "Where do I start?" he said.
    "Check in with a Sergeant Elmo Waters.
NYPD. He trained with us two years ago." He




knew that Lyons understood what he meant. In
addition to carrying out counterterrorist opera-
tions the world over, Stony Man conducted train-
ing classes for select law-enforcement and mili-
tary personnel. The candidates were brought to
the Farm blindfolded, trained and returned to their
respective assignments in the same condition they
arrived. They never knew where they had been or
who had taught them--just that they had received
instruction far superior to any other training to
which they'd ever been exposed.
    "The NYPD's a big place," Lyons said.
"Where do I find this Waters?"
    "Eighty-first Precinct," Brognola said, "hom-
icide."
    The big Fed then turned to McCarter. "Da-
vid," he said, "you guys are headed for Ireland.
The IRA has some of these weapons and they've
been using them around Belfast."
  McCarter nodded. "Who's our contact, Hal?"
  "An old friend of yours--Felix O'Prunty."
    "O'Prunty?" he said. "I haven't heard from
him since I left the SAS. He still with MI-67"
    Brognola nodded. "He's stationed in Belfast
and he's got a lead." He turned back to the
screen. "Speaking of leads, Striker," he said to
Bolan, "do you have one on that gun there in
Sydney?"
  "No, but I'll get one."

    "Then let's get down to business, guys," Brog-
nola said. "Eventually we ought to see a trail that
leads back to whoever is stamping out these
things. Anybody got anything else to say?"
  Kissinger looked up at the screen. "Striker?"
  "Yeah, Cowboy?"
    "The extra equipment you requested is already
on its way." Kissinger glanced down at his watch,
then went on. "Should arrive there in another
couple of hours. Go to the American Express of-
fice on Bridge Street and ask for a Mr. Grady."
  Bolan nodded.
    As the Stony Man Farm team stood to leave,
the fax machine hummed again.
    Price walked to the machine and picked up the
page. "Denmark, South Korea, Belize..." She
stopped reading, looked up and shook her head.
"My God, Hal, they're everywhere. Whoever is
manufacturing the Eliminators has sent them all
over the world."

Sydney, Australia

BOLAN HEARD the shots as he opened the door
and stepped out of the back room of the Sydney
CIA office complex. "What was that?" he asked
the men and women scurrying around to drop
down behind the desks of the open front-reception
area.




    "Dingoes, I'd imagine," a man said noncha-
lantly. He crawled on all fours to the front door,
threw the dead bolt in place, then crawled back
behind a gray steel desk.
    The Executioner knew the man didn't mean the
wild dogs of Australia, at least not in the usual
sense. The Dingoes could be called wild dogs all
right---the word was also the name of one of Aus-
tralia's most powerful and violent street gangs.
They ruled the night in Sydney, Melbourne, Perth
and other cities with an iron hand.
    But the Dingoes' number-one rivals, the Down
Unders, were hardly better. And recently they had
been making headway into the Dingoes' drug-
trafficking, prostitution, protection and gambling
businesses, generating violent encounters between
the two gangs.
    Bolan didn't really care if the Dingoes and
Down Unders killed each other. But with no re-
gard for human lives other than their own, they
had a way of catching innocent bystanders with
stray bullets.
    And the Executioner couldn't allow that to take
place. Not when he had a chance to stop it.
    Bolan drew his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle from
under his navy blue blazer and started toward the
door.
    "What the hell is that?" the man on the floor
asked.

 "A pistol," the Executioner answered simply.
 "Anybody coming with me?"
    Everyone but the man of the floor turned away
from him. "I don't know who you are," the CIA
agent said. "All I know is that the President
called, ordered us to let you use the satellite
hookup and told us not to eavesdrop on what you
said. Those are orders and I'll follow them. But
if you think I'm sending any of my people out
there to get blown away by a bunch of street
punks, you're crazy." He paused. "Besides," the
man said, lifting a white business card with green
letters from a holder on one of the desks, "we've
got a cover to maintain."
    Bolan glanced at the card, hearing another
round of gunshots outside the door as he read the
words Sydney Savings And Loan Company. The
CIA used the finance business as a front, even
handing out money to those who applied and
qualified.
    The Executioner moved toward the door with-
out a backward glance, threw back the lock,
swung open the door and dived onto the sidewalk.
    Muzzle-flashes and the roar of more shots came
from behind a car parked along the street directly
in front of him as he hit the pavement. With the
big .44 gripped in his right hand, he used his left
to break his fall and looked up to see a man wear-
ing a black silk jacket firing what looked like a




Colt 1911 Government Model over the hood of
the vehicle. The word Dingoes was arched over
the back of the jacket in bright crimson letters that
dripped blood. The snarling face of one of the
wild dogs appeared below the arch of letters,
more blood and foam dripping from his fangs.
    Bolan fired as soon as he'd steadied himself on
the ground, pumping two fast Magnum rounds
into the gunner's chest. The big .44-caliber hol-
lowpoint bullets drilled through to the spinal cord
of the man wearing it.
    Return fire from across the street blew over the
Executioner's head, but he was covered by the
car. He glanced down the sidewalk to see three
more Dingoes using parked vehicles for cover. All
wore the black silk jackets sporting the crazed
wild dog, and all fired across the street at men
behind other cars.
    So far, the other Dingoes hadn't differentiated
the Executioner's shots from their own. Bolan
knew that wouldn't last long and rolled to his
side, lining the front sights of the Desert Eagle on
the nearest man in a silk jacket. Another big hol-
lowpoint round burst from the Eagle's barrel, en-
tering the Dingo's rib cage before exploding the
man's heart.
    The three remaining Dingoes finally realized
that someone was behind them.
  And killing them.

    A young man next to the downed gunner was
the first to turn and see the Executioner. He tried
to bring a sawed-off Winchester 1895 lever-action
rifle into play, his lips quivering in surprise and
fear as his shaking hands gripped the gun.  His terror didn't last long.
    Bolan squeezed the trigger, and the Desert
Eagle's fourth round struck the man squarely be-
tween the eyes, just above the bridge of the nose.
The gunner's head fairly exploded.
    The Executioner rolled to his other side, seeing
movement in his peripheral vision. As he twisted
on the ground to turn the Desert Eagle, he heard
a roar as a round struck the sidewalk just ahead
of his face. Concrete chips and dust blew up from
the ground, miraculously missing his eyes as they
stung his face. Bolan dropped the sights of the
Desert Eagle on a man with a wispy blond beard
and fired again.
    The .44 Magnum bullet drilled into the gang
member's chest. Bright red blood gushed from the
massive wound. The gunner opened his mouth,
and more blood shot from his lips before he fell
to his face on the sidewalk.
    The surviving Dingo cut loose at Bolan with a
Colt Single Action Army .45 pistol. Bolan took
him out of the play with a head shot.
    The Executioner rose to his feet, staying low as
he moved up to the car directly in front of him.




The Down Unders across the street continued to
fire, not knowing yet that their rivals had been
eliminated. Dropping the Desert Eagle's near-
empty magazine, the Executioner rammed a fresh
stick up the grip of the pistol and peered over the
hood of the vehicle in front of him.
    A pair of rounds flew his way from different
directions. Bolan dropped lower behind the car,
letting the bullets strike the engine block. For a
few seconds, the gunfire died down, then several
more rounds struck the vehicle, reverberating
through the steel to shimmy the body.
    The Executioner stayed below cover. The Din-
goes had been easy to take out, catching them
from behind and by surprise. The Down Unders
across the street were another story. They
wouldn't be taken off guard--they knew they
were in a firefight with men outside the Sydney
Savings And Loan Company, and the fact that the
enemy wasn't who they thought it was made no
difference.
    Bolan considered his options as the gunfire mo-
mentarily quieted again. He could stay where he
was and try to pick off the Down Unders one at
a time. That would take a long time, and there
was always a chance that a lucky round might find
him. He could return to the CIA offices, take the
back exit he had seen and try to circle. But when
the Down Unders received no attack during the

time that would take, they might well assume that
they'd eliminated the enemy and disperse.
    Then the Executioner realized there was an-
other answer to the situation. It was risky, but it
might just work.
  He would surrender.
    Bolan rose slightly so his voice could be heard.
Then, effecting his best Australian accent, he
shouted, "Don't shoot! Everybody but me is
dead! I give up!"
    After a moment's silence, a voice from across
the street yelled, "Throw out your gun!"
    The Executioner placed the Desert Eagle on the
hood of the car in front of him and slid it forward.
The big .44 Magnum pistol dropped off the other
side and onto the street with a metallic clank as
it hit the pavement.
    "Put your hands up and stand up!" the gang
member commanded.
    Bolan did as he'd been ordered, ready to drop
back down behind the engine block if they had
played him for a sucker and more fire came his
way. For almost a minute, all he could hear were
confused and whispering voices coming from the
other side of the street.
  "You a cop?" a voice called out.
    "No," Bolan said, his hands still in the air.
"Just a guy caught in the wrong place at the
wrong time."




  "What you doin' with a gun, then?"
    "Are you guys cops?" the Executioner asked.
"What are you doing with guns?"
    "Funny," the same voice said. "Now walk
forward into the middle of the street."
    The Executioner moved around the front
bumper, his hands still in the air. He stopped on
one of the short white lane divider lines.
    Slowly, one at a time, three heads rose above
the vehicles parked on the other side of the street.
The men, all aiming weapons at him, moved cau-
tiously forward. The man in the lead was big, al-
most as tall as the Executioner. He had blond hair
and a reddish blond beard and wore a bright red
silk jacket with It's What's Down Under That
Counts emblazoned across the chest. He eyed Bo-
lan's navy blue blazer as he walked forward, and
the other two fell into line behind him.
    The Down Under leader stopped a foot from
Bolan and jammed the long slide of a Glock 17L
under the Executioner's chin. "Who the fuck are
you?" he demanded. "You sure you aren't some
pig?"
    "Look at the way he's dressed." The weasel-
faced man to the leader's right side held a Brown-
ing Hi-Power pistol in his right hand. "Of course
he's a pig."
  "Oink, oink," said the man to the leader's left.

He gripped a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun
with both fists.
    Bolan took note that only the G!ock was
pointed at him. With the 17L's barrel about to
crush his windpipe, the other two Down Unders
had gotten lazy and let their weapons dangle to
their sides. It wasn't much of an advantage, but
it was all he had.
  And it would have to be enough.
    "How about it?" the man with the reddish
beard demanded. "A pig, are you?"
    "Not exactly," Bolan said, and caught a quick
look of bewilderment in the Down Under leader's
eyes as he moved.
    Twisting to the side so that the Glock's ex-
tended barrel shot past him, the Executioner
reached up with his right hand and grabbed the
barrel. At the same time his left hand shot under
his jacket, curling under his armpit and reverse-
drawing his Beretta 9 mm 93-R pistol. A round
of fire shot through the barrel of the Glock, warm-
ing the Executioner's hand but flying harmlessly
past him. As he twisted the weapon back toward
him, Bolan brought up the Beretta and pointed it
at Weasel Face.
    The Down Under leader's trigger finger broke
with a snap inside the Glock's trigger guard a split
second before Bolan fired the Beretta. The man
opened his mouth, but the Beretta's 3-round burst




drowned out the scream. The trio of sound-
suppressed 9 mm slugs stitched Weasel Face from
sternum to throat as the Executioner ripped the
Glock out of the leader's grip.
    Still moving, Bolan twirled the subgun in his
right hand as the man with the sawed-off shotgun
tried to bring his weapon into play. Finding the
pistol grip, the Executioner's finger snaked into
the trigger guard and fired. The first burst of
rounds struck the shotgun, sending the weapon
flying from the gang member's hands and causing
the man to cry out in pain. Bolan let up on the
trigger, then pulled it again and sent a second
burst into the man's chest.
    Only the leader remained alive. The man's
mouth was still open as he clutched his broken
trigger finger with the opposite hand. Then, re-
covering from the shock and pain, he lunged at
the Executioner.
    Bolan raised the Beretta and pumped a 3-round
burst into the angry face. Silence fell over the
Sydney street as the body collapsed to the ground.
    Quickly the Executioner patted down the gang
members, taking their billfolds and coming up
with a single-shot Eliminator stuck into the boot
top of Weasel Face. He turned back to where the
Dingoes lay and heard the door of the loan com-
pany open as he bent to scoop up the Desert Eagle
from where it had fallen. He cursed under his

breath when he saw that the big .44 Magnum pis-
tol had landed on the manual safety. The piece
had broken off, and when the Executioner tried to
work the slide it was jammed.
    Shoving the broken gun back into his hip hol-
ster, Bolan moved between two cars to the first
man he had shot.
    "You ever seen anything like that before?" a
voice just inside the CIA door whispered.
    "I never even heard of anything like that be-
fore," another quiet voice answered.
    Bolan dropped to one knee next to the corpse
and picked up the pistol that had looked like a
1911 Government Model. It wasn't. It was one of
the newer stamped-out semiautos that Price had
mentioned. Like the single-shot he'd found a few
seconds earlier, and like all of the Eliminators, it
bore no serial number or any other identification
marks.
    Shoving the gun into his belt, Bolan rose and
started down the street.

Brooklyn, New York

THERE HAD obviously been another incident in-
volving the Eliminators. The men of Able Team
would normally have been able to walk right into
the Eighty-first Precinct house.





As it was, they had to elbow their way through
a horde of yelling reporters and photographers.
    A long line of blue-suited patrolmen stood at
the top of the cracked concrete steps, complete
with riot helmets and batons. They gripped their
sticks with both hands, one at either end, using
them to hold back the mass of newsmen and
-women.
    "Do you have any idea who's behind the man-
ufacture of the Eliminators?" a woman from CBS
shouted as Lyons maneuvered up the steps.
    "Is it true that the CIA suspects Castro is be-
hind all this?" demanded a man wearing a jacket
with NBC News emblazoned across the back.
    Lyons led his men to the top of the steps.
Reaching into the side pocket of his sport coat,
he produced a set of U.S. Justice Department cre-
dentials like those issued to all Stony Man Farm
operatives. They IDed him as Special Agent Ray
Ryan, and he showed them to the nearest uni-
formed officer.
    "Ryan, Justice," Lyons shouted over the tur-
moil. He hooked a thumb over his shoulder.
"Special Agents Smith and Rodriguez are with
me."
The man in the riot helmet looked briefly at the
credentials, then nodded and stepped to the side.
Lyons led the way into the ancient stone build-
ing and up to the front desk, flashing the ID case

once more. "Ryan," he said again. "This is
Smith and Rodriguez. We need to see a Sergeant
E!mo Waters."
    The desk sergeant glanced at the picture on
Lyons's card, then picked up the phone. "Yeah,
give me Waters." There was a brief pause, then
he said, "Yeah, E!mo. Feds out hem to see you."
     He hung up the phone and looked at Lyons.
 "Follow the red arrows through that door."
    The three men of Able Team walked to the
closed door. A buzzer sounded just as Lyons
reached it, and he grasped the knob and pushed it
open.
    The inner sanctum of the NYPD precinct house
looked just like every other one Lyons had ever
been in---cold, drab, dreary.
    As he followed the red arrows on the floor,
Lyons passed signs that identified the various of-
rices as Vice and Traffic Control. Finally he saw
a sign marked Homicide and turned in.
    The Able Team leader heard both Schwarz and
Blancanales halt behind him. A tall, lanky man
wearing half glasses looked up from a report he
was typing.
    Lyons recognized Elmo Waters immediately
from an advanced-rappeling section he and his
teammates had taught at Stony Man Farm. But he
could see Waters didn't remember them.
  "I'm Waters," the sergeant said in the harsh,




clipped syllables of the native Brooklynite.
"What can I do for you?"
    Lyons walked to his desk and sat in the single
chair in front of it. He didn't speak.
  "Can I help you?" Waters asked.
  Again there was no answer.
    The sergeant looked over the half glasses at
Lyons. "Have we met before?" he asked this
time. Then a sudden look of recognition passed
over his face, and he answered his own question.
"Yes, we have, haven't we?" Waters glanced
quickly around the room to see if anyone was
paying attention. All of the other people in the
room seemed absorbed in other pursuits. But just
to be sure, he said, "Let's go back in the confer-
ence room." He stood.
    Lyons, Schwarz and Blancanales followed the
sergeant through a door in the far wall and down
a short hall past the iron bars of several holding
cells. Waters stopped at a solid steel door. Large
windows had been set to either side of the door,
and through one of the windows Lyons could see
a simple wooden table painted an ugly brown.
Several chairs--the same shade of brown--stood
around the table, and the walls of the room were
covered with dirty yellow carpet.
    Soundproofing, Lyons thought as Waters un-
locked the door and ushered them into the room.

This had to be the conference room where attor-
neys spoke with their clients.
    As soon as Able Team was inside, Waters
stepped in and closed the door behind him. "I
remember you guys now. Last time I saw you I
was wearing a blacksuit."
    Waters was referring to the one-piece, close-
fitting black jumpsuits that Stony Man personnel
wore during operations, and that apprentices
trained in. The battle attire had given rise to the
nickname for the military and law-enforcement
officers who trained at the Farm: blacksuits.
    "And you were rappeling out of a helicopter,"
Lyons added.
      "That's right. You ever going to tell me who
you really are and where we were?"  "Nope."
    Waters shrugged, smiled and snorted. "Fair
enough. Just wondering." He paused, then turned
serious. "So, what can I do for you? You didn't
just come here to talk about that guy whose tou-
pee blew off as he jumped out of the chopper."
    "No, we didn't," Lyons said. "We came to
talk about the Eliminators."
    Waters nodded. "What do you want to know?"
he asked.
  "Everything," Lyons said.
    The sergeant leaned forward and whispered.
"There's a gag on this one," he said, "all the





 way down from the commissioner. We've been
 ordered to keep quiet, even to the Feds."
"We aren't really Feds," Lyons argued.
"Okay, but if this gets out, I'll be working se-
curity at a hospital or standing in the lobby of a
bank for the rest of my career." He paused, then
added, "That's if I'm lucky. If not, I'll be saying
things like, 'You want fries with that?' In other
words, you didn't get it from me. All right?"
  "All right," Lyons agreed.
    "Of course not," Blancanales told him. "We
don't even know you."
    Waters took a deep breath. "You ever heard of
the Falcons?"
    This time Schwarz answered. "Street gang here
in town. Rough bunch. Into drugs, protection,
murder for hire---the usual stuff but with more
gusto than most."
    Waters nodded. "Right. There have been two
murders in the past couple of days. We've found
single-shot Eliminators at both scenes. We're sure
it's the Falcons, and more than likely their
numero uno greaser, Eddie Caveretti. You know
what a greaser is?"
    "Gang slang for a hit man," Lyons said. "A
cleaner. So then why isn't this Caveretti in jail?"
    Waters's face turned hard. "Same tired old sad
song. We know it was Caveretti who greased
these guys, but we got no evidence. At least not

enough to get a warrant, and certainly nothing that
would stand up in court."
    "You got a file on Caveretti?" Lyons asked.
"A recent address?"
    The sergeant looked around the room as if the
carpeted walls might have ears. "Okay, look. I'il
go pull the file. But we're going to have to get it
back into the cabinet as quick as we can. There's
a copy machine just down the hall from homicide.
Take it in there, copy everything and get it back
to me. Stick your credentials out where they can
be seen, and if we're lucky no one will notice and
I won't end up sacking groceries. Okay?"
  "Fair enough," Lyons said.
    The four men stood and returned to the homi-
cide office. They stood around Waters's desk
while the sergeant moved nonchalantly to a row
of filing cabinets along the wall, dropped to one
knee and slid open a drawer.
    None of the other men and women busy at their
desks paid any attention.
    Waters stood back up, holding several files. He
nodded toward the hall again, then led the way
out. Ducking into a small office that contained
nothing but a copying machine, he set the files on
the tray, then left the room without saying a word.
    Lyons moved to the machine and looked down
at the flies. The tab on the first read Caveretti,
Alphonse. Lyons turned it upside down and set it





to the side. The next folder was that of Eddie
Caveretti, and the manila file on the bottom was
empty. The Able Team leader began feeding the
various reports and other items pertaining to
Eddie Caveretti through the machine.
    "Come here," he said to Schwarz and Blan-
canales when he came to several sets of mug shots
of the man. "Take a good look. The copy isn't
likely to come out well."
  Lyons was tight. It didn't.
    As soon as the file had been copied, the Able
Team leader stuck the pages inside the empty
manila folder and stuffed them into the back of
his slacks, coveting the file with his sport coat.
He stuck the other files under his ann, then led
his men back into the homicide office. Without a
word, Lyons dropped the folders on Waters's
desk, nodded his thanks and left the office again.
    A few minutes later, Able Team was cruising
through the streets of Brooklyn on the way to
meet a Falcon hit man named Eddie Caveretti.

CHAPTER TWO

Belfast, Northern Ireland

In the days before London ruled Ireland, Belfast
had been a fort on a ford of the River Lagan.
Known as Beal Feirste, meaning "Mouth of the
Sandy Ford," a small village had sprouted up
around the stronghold. During the seventeenth
century, Protestant immigrants from Scotland and
England arrived, and by order of the English rul-
ers the natives were driven out.
Which was when all the trouble began.
Belfast grew at a constant pace, primarily due
to the linen industry that developed. In 1791 the
United Irish Society was founded by Wolfe Tone
in an effort to unite Protestants and Catholics who
were already beginning to rebel under the crush-
ing English penal laws. By 1798 the UIS had
stirred up enough emotion to spawn a small up-
rising, one that was quickly subdued by the En-
glish overlords.





    But the outbreak of violence had begun. And
neither Ireland nor England would ever again be
the same.
    David McCarter opened his eyes in the passen-
ger seat of the Learjet and glanced to the man
behind the wheel, Charlie Mott, Stony Man
Farm's number-two pilot. Like the other men of
Phoenix Force, McCarter had slept most of the
way during the four-hour flight from Stony Man,
knowing that once the mission got under way it
might be quite some time before he could rest his
eyes again. Now, as he yawned and came awake,
he looked out through the windshield and saw that
Mott was dropping the jet through the sky toward
the Belfast airport. The busy industrial city ap-
peared below, and as they drew closer to the
ground the Phoenix Force leader could even make
out Donegall Square. Around the metropolis, par-
ticularly to the north, he could see the peaceful
hills and glens of Northern Ireland.
    Was it possible, McCarter thought as the plane
continued to drop toward the airport, that this was
one of the most violent areas on Earth, rivaling
Lebanon, Rwanda, Somalia and even Israel?
Could these tranquil green valleys and vales even
now be hiding terrorists from the Provisional Irish
Republican Army, its breakaway organization, the
Irish National Liberation Army, or the Protestant

terrorist group known as the Ulster Defence As-
sociation? It didn't seem possible.
    But McCarter knew it was more than possible.
It was an irrevocable fact.
    The wheels of the jet hit the tarmac. Moments
later, Mott taxied to a halt at the end of the ran-
way. Behind him McCarter could hear his team-
mates awakening.
    "Customs taken care of?" McCarter asked
Mott.
    The pilot turned to face him and nodded.
"President called the prime minister. Barb noti-
fied me on the radio while you guys were asleep."
He paused, then grinned. "All you got to do is
show them your passports and Justice IDs,
G-men.' '
    McCarter chuckled softly at Mott's tongue-in-
cheek slam as a very proper-looking man in a
British customs uniform came strolling across the
tarmac carrying a clipboard. McCarter grabbed his
jacket from the seat behind him, lifted the door
up and stepped down.
    "So," the uniformed man said, "you chappies
would be the Yanks we were notified would be
coming."
    McCarter glanced at the man's name tag as he
shrugged into his jacket and the other men of
Phoenix Force deplaned and began hauling out
their luggage. The tag read Captain Aliistair Hall.





"We would be, Captain Hall," he said. He
searched the pockets of the coat until he found
the Justice Department credentials and passport,
then held them up for the man to read.
    The captain made a note on his clipboard, then
turned to the other men. He made the rounds
quickly, looking at the credentials that Gary Man-
ning, T. J. Hawkins, Rafael Encizo and Calvin
James held up. "Thank you, gentlemen," he fi-
nally said. "Have a nice stay in Ireland and, of
course, be careful. If there is anything else in
which we can be of service, do not hesitate to
come calling. Now, if you will please follow me,
I will walk you through the passport stamping.
There is a gentleman waiting for you there."
    Hall turned on his heel and marched back in
the direction from which he'd come. McCarter
and the rest of Phoenix Force lifted their bags and
followed him through a glass door to a private
room, where another customs man was waiting
with a stamp. A moment later the passports had
been cleared and Hall was leading them into an-
other small room.
    McCarter recognized Felix O'Prunty immedi-
ately. The Irishman had grown more round and
more bald since the Phoenix Force leader had last
seen him, and he sported deeper lines in his fore-
head and around the mouth. But O'Prunty still
had that wry smile on his face, a face that looked

 permanently sunburned from a "wee bit too much
 of the holy water," as he himself put it.
    O'Pmnty leaped to his feet from the only chair
in the room and stuck out his hand.
    McCarter had little patience with most of the
Irish, regardless of their religion or politics. He
knew this was his own shortcoming--a gross gen-
eralization that those of the Emerald Isle were all
drunks and troublemakers, and he had consciously
worked on this prejudice over the years. Felix
O'Pmnty, regardless of the fact that he didn't
know it, had helped the Phoenix Force leader.
    When McCarter had been with the British Spe-
cial Air Service, he had worked many missions in
conjunction with MI-6 and gotten to know
O'Pmnty well. The Irishman had proved to be an
intelligent, competent and fearless operative who
might like whiskey but kept it well under control.
At least when he needed to.
    "You're looking good, Mick," McCarter said,
grinning ear to ear.
    "Like hell, Limey," O'Pmnty grunted, the
droll smile never leaving his eyes. "Put on two
stone and lost me hair since last you laid eyes on
me." He looked McCarter up and down. "But
you're looking fit. For an Englishman, anyway."
    "I try," McCarter replied. He turned to his
men, introducing James, Manning, Encizo and
Hawkins.





    O'Prunty shook hands with each man, then
said, "Shall we move out? Got a wee bit of mo-
toring ahead of us, we do." He led the way out
of the airport to a minivan parked in a no-parking
zone, opened the sliding rear door and helped
Phoenix Force throw its gear into the luggage area
at the rear. A few minutes later they had boarded
the vehicle and were driving away from the air-
port.
    "All right," O'Prunty said from behind the
wheel as they neared the northern edge of Belfast,
"here's the skinny--isn't that what you Yanks
call it, the skinny?" He glanced over his shoulder
with amusement at the men behind him.
    "Sometimes," Hawkins said. In the passenger
seat, McCarter could see that Phoenix Force's
newest, and youngest, member hadn't quite made
up his mind as to what he thought of the bold
Irishman.
    "Anyway," O'Prunty went on, "we've a gent
undercover in the IRA, don't you know. Tells me
that the Eliminator single-shot the police here in
Belfast picked up recently was used by one Bobby
McHiggins, of County Antrim."
    "Who'd he kill?" Gary Manning, the big Ca-
nadian demolitions expert, asked.
    "Bloke named Freddy Stone," O'Prunty an-
swered. "Midlevel management in the Ulster De-
fense Association. The story on the street is that

it was payback for a flaming molly tossed into a
church in Deny two years ago."
    McCarter had to work to keep the smile off his
face that O'Prunty's words almost conjured up.
He had heard the term "flaming molly" used for
Moiotov cocktails all his lifewthat wasn't what
was funny. What had caused the Phoenix Force
leader's amusement was the city to which
O'Prunty had just referred.
    The city was Londondeny on the maps, and to
most Protestants. But the Catholics and other
hard-core Gaelics refused to use the British ap-
pellation, continuing to refer to it simply as Derry,
the name the city had gone by before the English
came to town.
    "So," the Phoenix Force leader said, "where
are we headed?"
    "To find this Mr. Bobby McHiggins and talk
to him." The Irishman glanced at his watch. "If
we hurry, we can pick him up right after work."
    McCarter, Manning, Encizo, Hawkins and
James settled in for the ride, watching the beau-
tiful emerald scenery pass by on one side, and the
sea on the other, as they bounced up the drifting
slopes, then descended into the long, spacious val-
leys. Forty-five minutes later they turned off the
coast road at a sign that announced the Old Bush-
mills Distillery.
  They exited the vehicle, and O'Prunty led the




way into the back door. McCarter saw a peat fire
just to the left of the entrance. Several men and
women, of various ages and nationalities, sat
around the fire sipping whiskey from glasses. He
turned to O'Pmnty. "Mick," he said, "you sure
you didn't bring us here for a bit o' the holy wa-
ter?"
    O'Prunty grunted again. "Would that it were
so, laddie," he said. "Would that it were so." He
took them into the distillery and pulled out a roll
of bills, paying twelve pounds for admission
charges, then asking the woman at the counter
when the next tour would be.
    "Five minutes," the faceless voice behind the
window said.
    O'Pmnty turned to McCarter. "McHiggins is a
tour guide here," he said. "I have it for a fact
that he's working today."
    Five minutes later a tall, reed-thin man sporting
jet black hair appeared and announced that the
tour was beginning.
    McCarter glanced at O'Pmnty out of the comer
of his eye. The Irishman nodded.
    McHiggins gave a short speech about Sir
Thomas Phillips, who was granted the first dis-
tillery license by James I of England in 1608, then
briefly explained how Old Bushmills was triple
distilled in the fermented wash using copper-pot

stills. He then led them through the building,
pointing out various items of interest.
    Finally the tour wound down and they were led
into a room for samples. Phoenix Force took seats
around a large table with O'Pmnty and were
served shots of whiskey by a charming hostess in
ancient Gaelic dress. McHiggins made the rounds,
making sure everyone in the room was satisfied.
When he came to McCarter's table, the Phoenix
Force leader lifted his shot glass and said, "To
you, Mr. McHiggins, a fine tour guide if ever
there was one." He watched McHiggins smile as
he threw back the whiskey, then gradually the
man's face turned to one of puzzlement.
    "But...how did you know my name?" Mc-
Higgins asked.
    McCarter rose from the table and walked to
where the IRA gunman stood. Moving in close
enough that his actions couldn't be observed, he
drew the Browning Hi-Power .40-caliber pistol
from the belt beneath his jacket and shoved it into
the tour guide's belly. "We know more about you
than you'd guess, my friend. Now, if you'll come
with me and make no fuss, you might just get out
of all this alive."

The Caribbean

COLONEL HAROLD J. MADDOX, retired from the
U.S. Army, swiveled in his padded desk chair to




look out the window of his office. To one side he
could see the harbor. On the other the gentle Ca-
ribbean waves lapped up onto the sandy beach to
tempt him to take the rest of the day off. Catching
a little sun might help to ease the arthritis in his
hands and back.
    As quickly as the idea had come to his mind,
it flickered away. No, Maddox thought. No time.
At least not right now. There'd be plenty of time
for that later.
    Swiveling back to his desk, Maddox tapped the
button on his intercom and spoke into the speaker.
"G!adwyn, my boys arrived yet?"
     "They have just arrived, Colonel," Maddox's
 secretary replied. "Shall I send them in?"
     "That's affirmative." Maddox tapped the but-
 ton again and killed the intercom.
     The three men came in single file. The first to
 enter was Randolph Staggs, a former Green Beret
 sergeant who had served under Maddox during
 the colonel's assignment with Army Special
 Forces. Staggs had a thing about his name, and
 all of his personal weapons shouted it out. The
 nickel-plated Colt Gold Cup .45 in the high-rise
 holster on his belt carried a set of stag grips, as
 did the big S&W Model 629 that he wore under
 his arm in a Bianchi shoulder rig. Opposite the
 .44 Magnum pistol, Maddox saw Staggs's cus-

tom-made fighting knife hanging under the man's
other arm. It, too, had a stag handle.
    Maddox repressed a smile'at the childishness
of it all. In a way it was like men who seemed to
need their initials monogrammed onto everything
they owned. What kind of insecurity did it rep-
resent, he wondered, having to continually scream
your name to the world?
    Staggs dropped into one of the three chairs fac-
ing Maddox's desk.
    Wesley Donaids came next. The big Briton had
close-cropped hair and a short, carefully mani-
cured beard that was just beginning to show traces
of white and gray. He had been a fine soldier in
Her Majesty's army but had washed out of SAS
training when he proved short on endurance dur-
ing long-distance runs. A shame, Maddox thought
as Donaids took the middle chair; the man was
one hell of a fighter both with and without weap-
ons.
    The last man through the door was the one
Maddox had always found to be the most mys-
terious, and therefore the most interesting. Wil-
liam "Shawnee" Morrison was an American In-
dian who had been a paratrooper in the U.S.
Army's Eighty-second Airborne Division. As he
dropped into the final chair, Maddox glanced at
the medicine bag tied around his neck by a leather
thong. He knew that many Indians carded their


medicine--usually good-luck charms of one kind
or another--in such bags, and wondered exactly
what articles Morfison's might contain.
    Maddox pushed the curiosity from his mind. He
had business to attend to. "Gentlemen," he said,
"how good of you to come."
    The polite chuckles from Staggs and Donaids
told him they knew damn good and well that it
would have been their asses if they hadn't come
when he called. These three men were his best,
but he had close to a hundred other mercenar-
ies-all former soldiers--working the security de-
tail on his private island. And any of them would
take care of Staggs, Donaids or Morrison in a
heartbeat if it meant getting their jobs.
    As always, Morrison kept silent, his face dead-
pan, and Maddox wondered just what was actu-
ally going on behind that blank expression.
     "We have some things to discuss," Maddox
 said, "and I have assignments for all of you." He
 stood up behind his desk. "But it's time for a
 surprise inspection of the grounds. Let's walk
 while we talk, shall we?" He walked around the
 desk as the other men stood up and led the way
 out of the office.
     The dazzling Caribbean sunshine hit Maddox
 in the face as he stepped out of Gladwyn's office
 onto the sidewalk. It made him smile as he looked
 out over the sky blue water into the fading hod-

zon. As he turned toward the large metal Quonset
hut that housed his farm-implement--manufac-
turing business, Maddox was a satisfied man. Out
of the comer of his eye he could see the jet boats
and other craft docked in the small harbor, and
straight ahead, on the other side of the island, lay
the landing strip. By sea and air he could get any-
thing he needed from Georgetown or Kingston,
and he had the privacy he had always wanted.
    Maddox led the way up the walk to the hut,
listening to the sounds of metal being hammered
and other noises as he walked. He had dreamed
of owning his own island since he was a child,
the son of a poor gunsmith who barely made ends
meet with his craft. He had joined the Army right
after high school, completing college and entering
OCS as soon as possible to qualify for a com-
mission. His nickname, "Mad Dog," had been
bestowed in Normandy, when as a young captain
he had led his men fearlessly onto the beach him-
self, then fought with a fury he hadn't known re-
sided inside him. He had fought again as a colonel
in Korea, during such famous battles as Pork
Chop Hill.
    Then, when the Korean War ended, Maddox
had rechanneled the energy he had learned to call
up for battle into business. Wise investments on
the side had meant his portfolio had grown slowly
as he completed his twenty years in uniform, then




his wealth had multiplied by leaps and bounds
when retirement meant he could devote himself
full-time to it. Real-estate swindles, junk bonds
and a piece of the infamous savings-and-loan
scandal had made Maddox rich enough to see his
dream of buying an island come true. He had been
smart enough to avoid detection on every shady
deal, sometimes escaping by the skin of his teeth,
but leaving no criminal record in his wake.
    Maddox grinned, acknowledging a driving-
while-impaired charge in Walla Walla, Washing-
ton, the night his third wife left him. Not a bad
trade-off for the money that had allowed him to
start his own business of manufacturing farm
equipment for export to the, U.S. and other
nations. It was even making a little money. Maybe
not as much money as the other business they
covered did, but enough to make things look le-
gitimate.
    Maddox entered the hut, where he spoke briefly
with the foreman. The man, a Cuban exile who
had escaped Castro's regime less than a year ear-
lier, had been one of the Cuban dictator's fore-
most mechanical engineers. Juan was more than
just competent--he was good enough that Mad-
dox paid him well and gave him free rein, ignor-
ing all but the most vital aspects of Mad Dog
Farm Implements Company.
  Along with teaching his son the gunsmithing

 trade, Harold Maddox Sr. had instilled in Maddox
 the belief that the greatest profits came when a
 man worked in an area in which he was both fa-
 miliar and interested. Well, Juan was interested
 and familiar with the farm-machinery trade. That
 was good. It left Maddox free to concentrate on
 the other production that took place on Mad Dog
 Island, production in which he was interested and
 familiar.
    Satisfied that things in the hut were running
smoothly, with no more than the usual petty head-
aches, Maddox turned and exited the building the
same way he had come in. Staggs, Donaids and
Morrison followed, and they started along another
sidewalk that led to the other side of the island.
    "You said you wanted to speak to us?" Staggs
said in a questioning tone of voice.
    "Yes. I have assignments for each of you--a
special detail for someone. But the particulars can
wait." He smiled to himself, knowing they all un-
derstood what he meant by "special detail," and
that they would all be hoping to have it given to
them, since "special details" always carded with
them a large cash bonus.
    The Quonset hut on the other side of the island
was larger than the one that housed the farm im-
plements. Maddox opened the door and again ush-
ered his men inside. He followed, and as it always




did, what he saw as he stepped inside the building
made him swell with pride.
    Against one wall of the huge hut, men were
busy stamping out the simple parts for the weap-
ons the press had begun calling the Eliminators.
On the other side, the same was being done with
the simple copies of the Colt Government Model.
Against a third wall, workers were setting up ma-
chinery in preparation for another manufacturing
project. Dust and the sound of metal cutting metal
filled the air, and Maddox pulled a pair of goggles
and a hard hat off the rack on the wall and slipped
them on.
    The retired colonel led the other men around
the room, briefly inspecting each laborer's work
without speaking. As soon as he was satisfied that
the individual's operation was progressing well,
he moved on to the next station. He spent a little
extra time with a middle-aged black man who was
drilling holes for the screws that would finally
bind the Eliminator parts together. He asked a few
simple questions and got a few logical answers.
    When the inspection had been completed, Mad-
dox hung his hat and goggles back on the rack,
waited for Staggs, Donaids and Morrison to do
the same, then led them outside again. He fol-
lowed the same sidewalk another hundred yards
to where a construction crew was raising the steel
sides of yet another Quonset hut, this the biggest

 of all three. He spoke briefly to the foreman of
 the crew, then turned and began walking toward
 the workers' barracks on the other side of his of-
 lice building.
    Maddox let Staggs open the door for him this
time, then took the steps to the second floor of
open bunks. Like the military, each bunk had a
foot locker in front of it for the extra clothing and
personal items of the man occupying the bed. The
foot lockers were secured with simple combina-
tion padlocks.
    The colonel walked halfway down the long
row, stopping at one of the OD boxes. Pulling a
list from his pocket, he knelt and flipped the lock
over to read the serial number, then consulted the
list. A moment later he was twirling the dial of
the lock, and a second after that he flipped open
the lid.
    Maddox dug through the pile of clothes and
other items until he came to what appeared to be
a wooden puzzle. A steel ball bearing had been
taped to the side, and the surface of the puzzle
contained a maze of tiny walls through which the
ball could be guided when tilted in different di-
rections. Rising to his feet, Maddox chuckled at
the puzzled expressions on the faces of Staggs and
Donaids, and took note of the ever present dead-
pan on the face of Morrison.
    Pushing on the side of the box with his thumbs,
Maddox slid out the false bottom. He reached in-
side and pulled out a small laminated card. The




words Bureau Of Alcohol, Tobacco And Firearms
were printed across the top. At the bottom, the
name Robert M. Denard had been signed on a
line, under which were the words Special Agent.
    Maddox held up the card for the others to see.
Staggs's and Donalds's eyes grew wider. Morri-
son's face remained impassive.
    "I found this last night during a routine in-
spection when the men were in the mess hall."
Maddox looked at each of the three men in turn,
then made his decision. "Morrison, please be so
kind as to take our friend Bob with the phony
accent on a little cruise this evening. The sharks
are hungry. Make sure you're far enough away
that nothing floats back to the island."
Morrison's nod was barely perceptible.
Maddox returned the card to the puzzle, stuck
it back at the bottom of the foot locker and re-
locked the box.
    "Staggs," he said, "I still need to speak to you
and Donaids. But let's return to the office, shall
we .9"
    Without another word Maddox led the way
back down the steps of the barracks.

Sydney, Australia

BOL^N HAD CHECKED five of the addresses listed
on the Dingoes' driver's licenses and other ID be-
fore he found their headquarters.

    Pulling the rented Jeep Sierra Wrangler to the
curb, Bolan stared at the house. Just off Port Jack-
son on the bay, he could see the Pacific to the
northeast from where he sat, the Tasman sea to
the southeast. The house itself looked to have
once been grand but now as much of its red tile
roof lay on the grass around the dwelling as did
on top. The outer walls were in dire need of a
coat of paint, and several windows had been bro-
ken out and replaced with either cardboard or ply-
wood. Others stood bare and open.
    Two vehicles--a one-ton crew cab and a Chevy
Suburban--sat in the driveway. Lights were on in
the house. Periodically a shadow moved across
the illuminated kitchen, opening the refrigerator
and pulling out a can Bolan assumed to be beer.
Then the shadow would disappear once more into
another part of the house.
    As he reconned the site, the Executioner saw a
bright red Lumina APV pull into the driveway.
Two men---both wearing the distinctive Dingo
jackets--got out of the cab and opened a rear
door. Huffing and puffing, they unloaded a large
crate and began to carry it up the crumbling con-
crete steps to the porch.
    The Executioner reached into the back of the
Jeep, unzipped a soft-sided leather bag and pulled
out a device known as the Action Ear Sport. Un-
folding it from its flat packing configuration, he




slipped the earpieces over his head and adjusted
the collar-level tension band. Pointing the wind-
resistant stereo microphones toward the front
door, he settled back to listen as the door
opened.
    "Took you bloody long enough, maties," the
man who opened the door said as he stepped back
to Let the gang members carrying the crate in-
side.
    "Don't be fuckin' us about, Sammy boy," a
huffing voice complained. "We're here now,
aren't we?"
    More idle chatter met the Executioner's ears as
the door closed. He tilted the microphones
slightly, angling them at a broken window to the
side of the door. He heard the sounds of the crate
being pried open, then a few chuckles from the
unseen men around the room.
    "All right?' a new voice said. "We'll be kil-
lin' a few of the Down Unders now."
    "Fuckin' aye," someone else added. "Won't
be needing the stupid single-shots now."
    "Don't bad-mouth the single-shots, Ricky. It
was them let us enlarge our operation so we could
buy these."
    There were several more comments, and the
Executioner estimated by the number of previ-
ously unheard voices that there had to be at least

six men in the house. Then the distinctive sound
of steel sliding along steel---the sound of a gun
bolt of some kind being drawn back and allowed
to fall forward--met his ears.
    "Let's get these loaded and go kick some
Down Under ass."
    The comment was followed by laughter and
words of agreement around the room.
    Bolan unwrapped the listening device from his
head and dropped it back into the bag behind him.
Drawing the Desert Eagle from his hip holster, he
twisted and set it on top of the earpieces. He had
inspected it earlier and seen that he wouldn't be
able to fix it with the tools he had available, which
meant he would have to rely solely on the Beretta
93-R for the time being.
  He could do far worse in a weapon.
    Quietly opening the Wrangler's door, Bolan
dropped to the ground and drew the Beretta from
shoulder leather. He thumbed the selector to
3-round burst as he hurried across the street to the
porch. He wanted to get inside and do his business
before the new weapons--whatever they were--
were loaded.
    The Executioner took the steps in one jump,
lowered his shoulder and drove it through the
splintering wooden door.
    The door burst from its frame, and Bolan
stepped in the living room of the ran-down house.




Six men sat around the open crate, in the process
of loading bullets into long, single-stack maga-
zines. Beer cans and wine bottles littered the floor,
and the strong odor of marijuana hung thick in
the air.
    A blond-haired man with a long knife scar run-
ning down his cheek was the first to recover from
the shock of the Executioner's entrance.  He was also the first to die.
    Bolan turned the Beretta on him as the man
tried to draw one of the Eliminator Government
Models from his belt. A sound-suppressed
3-round burst shot from the 93-R, taking the man
in the face at close range. Bone, flesh and blood
exploded into the air as the man's face all but
disintegrated.
    The big American swung the Beretta toward a
man with a dark black goatee. The Dingo had
already drawn what looked like a stainless-steel
Rossi .44 Special and was trying to line up the
sights on the Executioner.
    Bolan tapped the trigger again, this time catch-
ing the Dingo in the chest and throat. The gang-
ster fell onto his side, just as dead as his friend if
not quite as disfigured.
    A short burst of fire whizzed past the Execu-
tioner, who dived to the floor as he heard the me-
tallic sound of a striker hitting an empty chamber.
He looked up to see a red-haired Dingo aiming

what looked like an old U.S. M-3 "grease gun"
at him, a puzzled look on the young man's face.
    Bolan wasn't as bewildered--what had hap-
pened was clear to him. The man had gotten the
weapon's magazine only partially loaded when
the Executioner burst through the door. He had
mn out of ammo.
And now, his slowness would mean death.
Another trio of 9 mm hollowpoint rounds
stitched the perplexed Dingo from belly to ster-
num. He fell next to his comrades as the Execu-
tioner shifted the hot-barreled Beretta slightly to
the side. A fat gang member, his jacket stretched
at the snaps where it was too small for his belly,
tried to jam the magazine he'd been loading into
his own grease gun.
    Bolan cut him down, and he crashed to the floor
in a heap.
    Only two men remained when the Executioner
swung the 93-R toward a Dingo sporting a black
eye patch over his acne-scarred face. He dropped
the grease gun in his hands and clawed frantically
for the Eliminator Government Model in his belt.
His efforts were fruitless. Bolan cut him down
like the rest.
    Suddenly the Beretta locked open, empty. From
both instinct and habit, the Executioner's right
hand let the weapon fall.
 The surviving gunner saw the empty hip holster




and smiled. He rammed the magazine he'd been
loading into the grease gun and prepared to take
aim.
  He never got the chance.
    Without so much as a pause, the Executioner
unleathered the Applegate-Fairbaim fighting knife
in the Kydex holster inside his slacks. The blade
came out clutched in a saber grip, and Bolan
dived forward over the wooden crate to sink the
hard steel into his adversary's chest.
    For a brief second the man was frozen. His eyes
widened and his lips fell open.
    Bolan hit the floor, rolled to his feet and ripped
a fresh magazine from the leather caddie under
his right arm. Dropping the empty box from the
Beretta, he jammed the new clip home and hit the
slide release. A 360-degree spin showed no threat
coming out of the other rooms of the house, but
he moved through the crumbling shack to make
sure. The rest of the house was empty, save for
more empty alcohol containers, fast-food boxes
and wrappers, and other debris.
    The Executioner hurried back into the living
room. Lifting one of the weapons still in the crate,
he unwrapped the oil paper encircling it. At first
glance, it did look like one of the World
War II-era M-3 submachine guns. Commonly re-
ferred to as grease guns due to their cylindrical
shape and narrow protruding barrel, they had been

an adequate, if not remarkable, U.S. service arm
all the way up until 1960. Some were still in use
at National Guard armories and other installations
around the country.
    As he studied the weapon closer, Bolan began
to see the differences. The folding stock was
slightly different, and the barrel was shorter than
the standard eight inches. Like the M-3--and the
Eliminator single-shots and Government Models,
for that matter--the majority of the weapon had
been made with stampings and pressings with
only a few machining operations required in its
assembly. As he expected, he found no serial
number or other indication of who had manufac-
tured the weapon.
    As Bolan dropped the weapon back into the
crate, a small dark spot of ink near the bottom of
the rough wood caught his eye. He leaned over,
studying it closely, and frowned. It was either a
Japanese, Chinese or Korean character. He neither
spoke nor read any of the languages.
    Pulling a pen and notepad from his pocket, he
copied the character as best he could, then walked
swiftly to the telephone on a table against the wall
and dialed the police. He gave the address, told
the voice on the other end that there had been a
shooting and illegal weapons were at the site, and
that the front door would be open so they could




look inside for "probable cause." He hung up
when the voice asked for his name.
    The Executioner left the house, descended the
steps and started toward the Jeep. There was a
weird World War II connection here some-
where--all of the unmarked guns were patterned
after weapons of that era. He didn't know what
the connection was, but he intended to find out.

CHAPTER THREE

Brooklyn, New York

Jed's Old-Time Diner featured an atmosphere and
decor from the fifties. Thin metal Coca-Cola signs
and antique bottles from all over the world, as
well as other Coke memorabilia, covered the
walls. The booths and tables were artificially
scarred to look old, and the number-one menu
item was the Happy Days Double-Burger Basket
with a choice of french fries or onion rings.
    Waters had suggested that Able Team try the
diner if Caveretti wasn't at the home address
listed in his file. He wasn't--in fact the house the
Falcon hit man had listed had been tom down.
Lyons, Schwarz and Blancanales had changed out
of their sport coats and slacks during the drive to
the diner. They now wore soiled khaki work pants
and shirts with name tags on the upper right chest,
heavy work boots and plastic hard hats. Lyons
wore a faded blue denim three-quarter-length coat




over his weapons. His teammates had chosen light
poplin jackets with the name of the factory just
down the street lettered on the back.
    They didn't look much like the Falcons at the
booth in the comer, all of whom wore flashy
green jackets with a bird swooping out of the sky
on the back. But neither did the men of Able
Team look out of place in Jed's Old-Time Diner.
There were other hard hats scattered throughout
the booths and tables, other name tags sewn onto
work shirts.
    Lyons sat facing the Falcons, watching them
surreptitiously. Several of the men--all looking to
be in their early twenties--had come and gone
while he and the other members of Able Team ate
dinner. But none of them had been Eddie Caver-
ertl.
    Gadgets Schwarz took a bite of his burger,
swallowed it, then looked up at Lyons. "How
long are we going to wait here for him?" he
asked.
    "Till he comes," Lyons said with a shrug.
"We don't have any other leads."
    Biancahales pulled the straw from his milk
shake out of his mouth. "What if he doesn't come
in tonight?"
    Lyons frowned. His teammates were being sub-
tle, but they had a point. They couldn't afford to
waste too much time here in Jed's, particularly

when there were only four of the Falcons here
now. Waters had told them that the NYPD gang
intelligence squad estimated the Falcons' mem-
bership at close to fifty, not counting the girls
known as "debs." That meant that forty-six of
the gangsters were off doing other things.
  Caveretti might not show up at all.
    "We'll give it another hour," Lyons said. "If
he hasn't shown up by then, we grab the next kid
in a green jacket who leaves the place. We'll see
if he knows where the illustrious Mr. Caveretti
might be."
    The men of Able Team finished their hamburg-
ers and ordered coffee.
    The hour was almost up when a tall, muscular
man walked in. Unlike the other Falcons, he car-
ried his bright green jacket rather than wore it. A
black T-shirt stretched across his bulging pectoral
muscles, and mammoth biceps and triceps threat-
ened to rip the rolled-up sleeves. Blue jeans and
black engineer boots with buckles completed his
"tough guy" costume as he swaggered into Jed's
and walked to the booth in the comer.
    All of the seats were taken as Eddie Caveretti
stopped at the table. One of the smaller Falcons
immediately stood and gave Caveretti his place.
    Lyons watched the smaller man stand ner-
vously at the end of the table. Caveretti obviously




commanded respect within the ranks of the Fal-
cons.
    The gang members leaned over the table, talk-
ing in hushed tones as Lyons continued to watch.
Fifteen minutes later the Able Team leader saw a
slight movement underneath their table.
    One of the other men was handing something
to Caveretti.
    The muscle boy pulled up the leg of his jeans
and stuck whatever it was in his boot. The group
seemed to relax. They leaned back in their seats
and began talking in louder voices, though still
too low for Lyons to make out their words. Five
minutes later Caveretti stood to leave.
    Lyons, Schwarz and Blancanales rose to their
feet. The big ex-LAPD detective took the check,
dropped it on the counter next to the cash register
with some money, then led the way out of the
diner to the parking lot.
    Able Team hurried to the Chevy van they had
rented. Schwarz jumped behind the wheel while
Blancanales slid open the side door and stepped
up into the vehicle. He left the door open. Lyons
stayed outside the van, talking to Schwarz through
the open window as if he might be saying good-
bye before leaving in another car.
    Caveretti appeared a moment later and strutted
toward a midnight blue 1965 Corvette converti-
ble. Lyons gave him time to get to the sports car

and reach into his pocket for the key, then walked
swiftly up to him. "Can I speak to you for a min-
ute?" he asked politely.
    The Falcon turned to look at Lyons, a sneer on
his face. "You know who I am?" he asked.
    "Yeah," Lyons said as he reached under the
denim jacket and produced his .357 Magnum Colt
Python. "Dead meat, if you don't walk over and
get into that van." He nodded toward the Chevy.
    Caveretti didn't scare easily. The sneer turned
to a scowl, and he said, "You have fucked up
royally, my friend." He stayed where he was.
  "Walk," Lyons ordered.
  "Fuck you."
    Lyons saw what Caveretti was about to do in
the young man's eyes. As the Falcon cleaner
reached for the Python, the Able Team leader
jerked it back and rapped the barrel against the
muscle man's head.
    Caveretti slumped to the ground as Schwarz
brought the van to a halt next to Lyons. "Some
people just have to do things the hard way," he
commented.
    Lyons holstered his revolver, grabbed the man
at his feet under the arms and lifted him into the
van. He glanced around the parking lot as the van
drove away.
 No one had seen a thing.




The Caribbean

COLONEL MADDOX LED Staggs and Donaids back
into the office building. Gladwyn had left for the
day, returning to the little one-room shack Mad-
dox had ordered built for her as the only woman
on the island. He thought of her now, probably
undressing and preparing to take her late-
afternoon bath. He would visit her later, as her
job description detailed far more than just typing.
    Maddox took a seat behind his desk and
reached for the large burr elm box on the edge of
his desk. The Zino Davidoff humidor had arrived
only yesterday, but already he was noticing the
effect it had on his cigars. He opened the lid, sur-
veyed the top rows of midsize Cuban panatelas,
then pulled out the lift-up tray and reached for
one of the larger "Churchills" in the lower com-
partment.
    Staggs and Donaids dropped back into the
chairs in front of the desk, waiting patiently as the
colonel struck a wooden match and rolled the ci-
gar around the flame. When the fire had burned
too close to his fingers, he dropped it into the
marble ashtray and struck another. After the third
match, he looked at the end of the cigar, grunted
in satisfaction and stuck it between his teeth.
"You've been reading the American newspa-
pers?" he asked Staggs and Donaids.

    Staggs grinned as he nodded. "You're getting
famous. They've started calling your guns the
Eliminators."
    Donalds chuckled politely next to him. "Yes,
and one of the London tabloids has even started
calling you--the mysterious force behind the
guns--the Eliminator."
    "I suppose so," Maddox agreed, taking in a
mouthful of smoke and letting it roll over his
tongue. "In any case, it's damn good for business.
Orders have gone up five hundred percent since
the papers picked it up."
    He leaned back against the desk chair, then
changed the subject. "Gentlemen, I am faced with
a dilemma."
    Both Staggs and Donaids waited as he puffed
again on the cigar.
    "While the publicity increases sales," Maddox
went on, "I must constantly weigh it against the
pressure it will be putting on law-enforcement of-
ficials to track down the source. As you just saw,
we already had a BATF man in our midst. That
means somebody suspected us, and that scares
me."
    Staggs leaned forward in his chair, frowning.
"I don't see how that guy could have picked up
the trail. The workers don't have access to a
phone, and we screened all their mail. The only





people who've been off the island have been you,
me, Donaids here and Morrison."
    "Yes," Maddox said, his eyes growing cold.
"That is true. And that is exactly what worries
me." He shifted his glance to Donaids. "Wes, I
am sorry to have to ask you this. But I would like
you to step outside. One of you, either you or
Staggs, is guilty of treason. I want to speak with
both of you individually."
    Donalds's face drained of color. "But, Colonel,
surely you don't think--"
    Maddox held up a hand. "Wes, please. I will
speak with you after I have talked with Randy."
    Donalds rose unsteadily to his feet. He glanced
at Staggs, then left the room.
    Staggs leaned even farther forward. "I hate to
sound like a broken record of Donalds, but surely
you don't think I'd snitch you off?."
    Maddox shook his head. "Of course not." He
glanced toward the door where Donalds had left.
"It's the limey."
    Staggs sat back and crossed his left cowboy
boot over his right knee. "Are you sure, Colo-
nel?" he asked. "I just can't believe it."
    "Well, Randy," Maddox said, taking another
puff of the cigar, "I did a little checking. Donaids
got his undergraduate degree at Harvard before
returning to the U.K. to study at Oxford. Did you
know that?"

    Staggs squinted his eyes in concentration.
"Yes, sir, I guess so. I mean, I think he's men-
tioned it."
    Maddox took the cigar from his mouth and
nodded. "And do you know who else was there
at the same time?"
  Staggs shrugged his shoulders.
  "Robert Denard."
      "The BATF guy?" Staggs said, his tone in-
credulous. "The guy out in the shop right now?"
  "That's correct."
    Now it was Staggs who glanced at the door.
"Harvard's a big place, Colonel. It could be a
coincidence."
    Maddox stuck the cigar back between his teeth
and smiled as the smoke rose to his face. "Do
you know who was a fraternity brother of Don-
aids's?" he asked.
  "Denard?" Staggs questioned.
    "Very good," Maddox said in the tone of
voice used to congratulate a child who had finally
learned to recite the alphabet. "And do you know
who Donalds's roommate at the frat house was
his sophomore year?"
    Staggs just stared at him. "I can't believe it.
Are you sure there's a connection?"
    Maddox was a man of discipline and usually
one hundred percent in control of his emotions.
But now, in a rare display of anger and frustra-





tion, he slammed the cigar into the ashtray. "Are
you stupid?" he demanded, his face turning to a
mask of fury. "What are you, Staggs, some idiot
savant who can kill well but can't even tie his
own shoes? You think all this is happenstance?"
    Staggs dropped his gaze to the floor without
answering.
    Maddox composed himself and reached for his
cigar. It had broken almost in two, and he opened
his desk drawer, produced a knife and cut it the
rest of the way. Sticking the stub into his mouth,
he said, "All right, Randy. I suppose you know
what to do."
Staggs raised his eyes and stood. He nodded.
"Do it tonight," Maddox said. "Make sure the
workers don't see it, and be certain the body can't
be found."
    Staggs walked out of the room, and Donaids
walked in.
  "Take a seat, Wes," Maddox said.
  The Briton obeyed.
    "Did you know Robert Denard?" the colonel
asked bluntly.
    "The man whose BATF ID you found?" Don-
alds asked. "Of course. He came to work here a
few months after we opened shop."
  "No, I mean before he came to work here."
  For the second time in ten minutes, Maddox

watched the blood drain from Donalds's face.
"Of course not. How would I?"
    Maddox chuckled. "Oh, I don't know, Wes. I
guess I just figured that if you woke up in the
same room as a man for your entire sophomore
year of college, sooner or later one of you would
introduce yourselves to the other."
    Donalds's eyes took on the look of a cornered
rat's. "Colonel, I had no idea he was coming
here. I didn't even know he'd become a BATF
agent. He transferred somewhere our junior year
and I haven't spoken to him since." He paused.
"I swear to God in heaven, Colonel."
    "Really?" Maddox clasped both hands behind
his head. "You wouldn't be lying to me now,
would you, Wes?"  "No, sir."
      "You wouldn't just be telling me that now to
try to save your life?"  "No, sir."
    "You mean if you actually were in cahoots
with Denard, you wouldn't tell me you weren't
so I wouldn't kill you?"
      "Well, sir...I suppose if I was I would. But
I'm not. I swear to you, Colonel."  "But if you were, you would?"
    "Well, probably... I mean, what man wouldn't
try to save his own bloody skin?"
 Maddox felt the anger rise in his chest again.





Disloyalty was the one thing he had never toler-
ated and never would. He thought about Staggs,
waiting outside even now to take Donalds some-
where and kill him. No, he thought as the frenzy
inspired by the cowardly traitor continued to grow
in his heart and soul, he would do it himself.
    "Wes, if you tell me that this is just a coinci-
dence, I will try to believe you," Maddox said.
He opened the drawer that had held the knife and
rummaged around until he felt the Smith & Wes-
son Model 645 under a stack of papers. Drawing
it from the drawer, he lifted the weapon and
aimed it at Donalds's head. "But even though I
may believe you," he said as the Briton looked
at him in horror, "I can't afford to take chances
at this stage of the game."
    The roar of the .45-caliber cartridge exploding
racked the walls of the small office.
    The door opened and Staggs came sprinting in,
his big .44 Magnum revolver clenched in both
hands. "What the--" he said, then stopped just
behind Donalds's corpse. He looked down at the
man still seated in the chair, then up to Maddox.
    "I changed my mind and decided to do it my-
self," Maddox said. He lowered the hammer on
the .45 and returned it to his desk. "Get rid of
the body as soon as it gets dark, Randy." He
glanced at the floor and walls. "And clean up this

mess. You'll get the same special-detail bonus as
if you'd killed him yourself."

Stony Man Farm

AARON KURTZMAN WHEELED his chair a little
closer to the computer monitor in front of him and
set the brake. He punched a button to clear the
screen. Picking up his coffee mug, he took a swig
of the room-temperature brew and went to work.
    With the finesse of a concert pianist, Kurtz-
man's skilled fingers flew across the keyboard,
programming the computers at Stony Man Farm
for what lay ahead. He code-named the mission
Operation Eliminator and began accessing several
programs of his own design, among them a prob-
ability program that would kick out "most like-
lies" as soon as he began to feed it information.
    The program set up, and the intel on hand so
far entered, Kurtzman sat back as he waited for
his magic machines to digest all of the informa-
tion. While he waited, he turned to one side and
looked down the ramp at the other members of
his cybernetics team.
    Akira Tokaido's head bobbed in time to what-
ever music was being fed into his ears by his por-
table CD player. He typed away at his own com-
puter terminal with almost the same finesse as
Kurtzman. The big man shook his head, smiling





as he remembered his own father not understand-
ing why he kept his transistor radio pressed
against one ear when he was Tokaido's age.
    People didn't ever really change, Kurtzman
thought--only technology. What went around
came around. He realized saddenly that he was
now walking in his father's shoes where Akira
was concerned. There was a difference, though.
    Kurtzman might not like the alternative music
the young man listened to, but the pandemonium
didn't seem to have an adverse effect on To-
kaido's production; in fact the young computer
genius seemed to do better work when he had the
headset plastered to his head. So, unlike his own
father, Kurtzman wouldn't complain or condemn
Tokaido' s music.
    Which, he realized as he turned his attention to
the second member of his computer team, was the
bottom line at Stony Man Farm. If "it" worked,
you used it. If whatever "it" was didn't work,
you cast it out like spoiled hamburger and found
something that did.
    Results, not the method by which they had been
obtained, were what mattered at the Farm.
    Kurtzman studied the ebullient redhead next to
Tokaido, Carmen Delahunt. An old-line FBI com-
puter whiz, Delahunt was hardly the stereotypical
nerd one imagined spending her life in front of a
hard drive. She was a divorced mother of three,

and her youngest was still in college, attending
classes and making the dean's honor roll each se-
mester at Maryland State. She was waiting pa-
tiently for hard copies pertaining to her current
project.
    Kurtzman looked at the final member of his
team, Huntington Wethers. The tall, well-built
black man exuded a dignified aura even when he
sat and typed. Graying around the temples of his
short-cut hair, "Hunt" had been a professor of
cybernetics at Berkeley before Kurtzman had dis-
covered his talents. Bored to death with the life
of a college instructor, Wethers was easily con-
vinced that his destiny lay at Stony Man Farm,
saving the world every once in a while, rather
than trying to put logical ideas into young heads
that had chosen Berkeley because it was a place
where liberals could hang out with their weird
ideas and ignore reality.
    He turned back to his computer screen as the
hard drive beeped and told him the programming
for the mission was complete. It wasn't yet time
to pull the other members of his team off what
they were currently working on and order them to
focus on various aspects of Operation Eliminator,
but he had a gut feeling that the time was coming.
Soon.
    The computer wizard of Stony Man Farm
turned his attention back to the screen, secure in




the knowledge that the people he had working for
him were the best in the world at what they did.
    Kurtzman sat back in his wheelchair, glowering
slightly as he let his brain go to work before he
began to attack the keyboard. He knew that any
investigation that utilized cybernetics was worth-
less without human brain power as a catalyst.
His magic machines weren't really magic. They
couldn't "think" on their own, as the uninformed
sometimes believed. The thinking had to initially
be performed by people skilled in their use, peo-
ple with the knowledge of exactly what a com-
puter could do and what it couldn't.
    Pulling open a drawer beneath the console in
front of him, Kurtzman removed a yellow legal
pad and a ballpoint pen. He felt a wry smile creep
across his face as he pulled off the pen's cap and
began to write. This technology--paper and
penmhad been around for a while. And it was
still not only efficient but vital.
    Kurtzman looked at the blank yellow page be-
fore him, then scribbled several circles at the top
to get the ink flowing in the pen. Operation Elim-
inator, like all Stony Man Farm operations, was
going to be a worldwide undertaking. But like any
investigation, whether it be earth-threatening or
the mere nighttime vandalism of a soda machine
by some teenager looking for pocket change, the

basics where the same. They were also the same
as those used in journalism.
    "Who? What? Where? When? How?" Kurtz-
man wrote on the page, skipping several lines be-
tween each word.
    The computer whiz stared at the "Who" at the
top of the page. That was the ultimate goal----de-
termining who, and then stopping whoever was
behind the mass production of weapons that
seemed to be showing up all over the world. Re-
alizing he had just answered the next question, he
skipped down to "What" and wrote in "Cheaply
made yet effective firearms." Glancing briefly at
the "Where?," Kurtzman went on. When he
learned who, he would learn where, or vice versa.
After the word "When," the computer man wrote
"Current: First Eliminator discovered six weeks
ago." And in the space following "How," Kurtz-
man entered, "Cheap pressing and stamping util-
izing simple patterns of World War II-era wealY-
onry. Distributed underground--probably through
an intricate network of front men and/or front
companies."
    He set the pen down on top of the legal pad
and looked up at the screen. He had the what,
when and how. What they needed now was the
who and where.
    Without further hesitation, Kurtzman began
typing once more.




CHAPTER FOUR

Brooklyn, New York

The hotel six blocks from Jed's Old-Time Diner
was perfect. Maybe not perfect for sleeping--the
racket from the other rooms would have wakened
the dead. And the room assigned by the desk man-
ager to Able Team certainly wasn't perfect from
a hygienic standpoint--the rats, cockroaches, cen-
tipedes and other creatures that had previously oc-
cupied the place had left trails of spittle and feces
that would make anyone trying to lead a reason-
ably clean life-style feel like taking a shower as
soon as he stepped inside.
    But the shower would have done little good. It
was even more squalid than the rest of the room.
    Lyons led the way into the shabby room with
a still-unconscious Eddie Caveretti draped over
his shoulder. The Falcon hit man had awakened
once during the ride to the hotel, and Gadgets
Schwarz had returned him to the Land of Nod

with a short but well-placed left jab. Now Lyons
dropped him down into a seated position in one
of the splintering chairs that circled an equally
decayed table, and pulled a length of cord from
the pocket of his jacket. A moment later Caverertl
was tied hand and foot.
    The movement had to have brought him awake
because no sooner had the Able Team leader
cinched the last knot than the Falcon opened his
eyes. For a moment they appeared not to focus.
Then, as they cleared, an expression much differ-
ent than the insolent look Lyons had seen on Ca-
veretti's face in the parking lot covered the man's
face.
    But clinging to the quickly draining courage
was a last stab at false bravado. "You bastards
are gonna pay for this shit," Caveretti said, his
voice suddenly cracking into a falsetto. He
sounded more like a pubescent teenage boy than
a killer, and the shriek mocked all semblance of
the tough-guy effect he'd been trying to achieve.
    "We want you to do something for us," Lyons
said. "Capisce ?"
    Caveretti's head shot up suddenly, and the Able
Team leader realized that the Italian word he had
chosen rather arbitrarily had produced an unfor-
seen impact on the Falcon.
    The Falcon hit man studied him closely. Then,
in a voice completely devoid of both the true




bravery he had exhibited in the diner's parking lot
and the forced courage he had tried just a moment
before, he whispered, "Are you guys, I mean you
gentlemen, Family?"
    Schwarz glowered at him, then leaned in until
his face was less than an inch from the Falcon's.
"You expect us to tell some half-assed little street
punk like you about Family business?" he said.
He dug under his jacket and came out with a
Benchmade ATS-34 folding knife and snapped it
open with the thumb hole. "This clown ain't
gonna be any good to us, Ironman," he said.
"What do you say I just stick him now and get
him out of our way?"
    "No! Wait!" Caveretti shouted, staring at the
partially serrated blade. "You haven't even told
me what you want yet! How do you know I won't
help you?"
Lyons and Schwarz continued to stare.
"Look, I'll help you. What's this all about?"
The Mafia angle was having great effect on the
young man, and Lyons decided to play it for all
it was worth. "You know what it's about," he
growled, hoping that Caveretti would take the bait
and divulge enough new information to help him
keep going.
    "Look," the Falcon said, "if it's about the
smack on Gates and Throop Streets--"
  Lyons leaned in and slapped the man across the

face. "You want to quit playing games with us?
You want to get straight before my friend here
carves you up like Grandma's Christmas goose.
You know that's what it's about."
    "Okay, look," Caveretti said. "The Falcons
that were dealing there the other night, they got
mixed up. They knew that was your territory.
They just made a mistake. They were doing this
deal with this dude, right? He parked on Gates,
just a block outside our turf. He forgot his billfold
so they followed him to get it. They didn't mean
no disrespect, sir. We won't never--"
    Lyons slapped him across the face again, then
turned to Schwarz. "Go ahead and cut his
throat," he said. He glanced around the room.
"They'll never even notice the blood in the rest
of this filth. Then we'll drag his ass out to the van
and toss him out somewhere in Bed-Stuy--let all
his friends see what happens if they get over into
Family territory."
    "Gladly." Schwarz stepped in with the knife
and pressed it against Caveretti's throat.
    "No!" Caveretti pleaded. "You said there was
something you wanted me to do! I'll do it!"
    Lyons frowned as if trying to think. He let the
Falcon stew in his own terror for a minute, then
said, "I want to know about the gun you used the
other night."
  "What gun?" Caveretti said. Then, in an at-




tempt to regain some of his lost respect, he said,
"I cool a lot of punks. I use a lot of guns."
  Lyons slapped him hard.
    "Do I need to repeat the question?" Lyons
asked.
  "You mean the Eliminator?" he asked.
    "Give the man the Big Brain Award," Blan-
canales said. "Where'd it come from?"
    "I got it from Bobby. Bobby the Deuce--you
know him, don't you?"
    "No, you'll have to forgive us if we don't keep
up with all of you big-time gangsters," Schwarz
said sarcastically. "But we'll try harder from now
on."
    "Where is this Bobby the Deuce?" Lyons
asked.
  Caveretti shrugged. "Right now? I don't
knOW.' '
  "But you know where he lives?"
    Caveretti hesitated, and Schwarz moved in with
the knife without having to be told.
"Yeah, er, yes sirs, I know where he lives."
"Then take us to him." Lyons nodded to
Schwarz as his friend used his knife to cut the
cord binding the Falcon to the chair. "Do a good
job and don't screw us around, and you might not
end up floating in the bay in the morning."

Northern Ireland

ROUGHLY TWO MILES NORTH of the Old Bushmills
Distillery, just east of Portrush and situated on
one of the steep cliffs along Ireland's northern
coast, stood what remained of Dunluce Castle. In
past centuries it had been a grand place that
served both as a fortified dwelling and an obser-
vatory point for marauding Vikings who came to
the island to murder and plunder. One of the leg-
ends claimed the name meant "mermaid's fort."
There was a strong possibility that this was true,
as a deep cave penetrated the rock on which the
castle had been built.
    Now Dunluce Castle lay in shambles. The roof
had fallen, and most of the walls were gone.
Much of the gray stone that had once protected
Dunluce's occupants had fallen over the cliff and
could be seen in the breakers that pounded the
shore far below. Serving only as an unguided
tourist attraction, the castle could be explored be-
tween April and September from-I0:00 a.m. to
7:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and from
2:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on Sundays. During the
rest of the year, the official closing time was
4:00 p.m. and all day Monday.
    These hours meant little to the men of Phoenix
Force.
    Darkness had fallen over the northern coast
when Felix O'Prunty guided the minivan off the
highway and onto a dirt road. The road led to




Dunluce's deserted ruins, where the MI-6 man
killed the engine and stomped the emergency
brake.
    "We're here, lads," O'Prunty said as he
opened his door and got out.
    McCarter got out of the passenger side as Cal-
vin James slid the side door open and leaped to
the ground. The black Phoenix Force warrior
turned, reached behind his neck and drew a mod-
ified COMTECH Crossada knife from beneath his
jean jacket. Phoenix Force's resident blade expert
had been so impressed by the Crossada Bolan had
carded recently that he had appealed to Cowboy
Kissinger to procure one for him. Wanting a more
easily concealed carry, however, James had asked
Kissinger to grind the twelve-inch blade down to
ten inches, take another half inch off the grip and
design an across-the-back scabbard. The fighting
knife was still huge, deadly and wicked looking,
but it now completely disappeared from view un-
der even a lightweight cover garment.
    Gary Manning, the team's barrel-chested Ca-
nadian explosives expert, pushed Bobby Mc-
Higgins out in front of him. The IRA gunner hit
the ground on his face.
    James leaned over, grabbed the back of the
man's scraggly hair and jerked him to his feet.
Twisting the hair, he twirled the man to face away

from him and pressed the knife's spear point into
McHiggins's back.
    O'Pmnty led the way over the broken rocks
into what remained of the castle. James pushed
his charge forward with the huge knife, with
McCarter, Manning, Encizo and Hawkins right
behind. O'Prunty moved in and out of what re-
mained of the walls, finally stopping in the far
northeast comer of the rains and turning. "This'd
be a fine spot to conduct our little interview with
this bastard, I suppose."
    James looked out through what remained of the
wall in front of him to see the edge of the cliff
less than ten feet away. Below, he could hear the
mighty waves buffeting the bottom of the preci-
pice. A soft wind blew in from the Atlantic, whis-
tling through the collapsed stones and giving the
rains a ghostly aura.
    Still holding McHiggins's hair, James lifted a
foot and placed it against the back of the IRA
man's knee. Jerking McHiggins's head back as he
kicked forward, he dropped the gaunt man to the
ground.
    McHiggins hit on his back, groaned softly and
looked up at the stars.
    "Sit up," David McCarter ordered, stepping
forward.
 McHiggins did as he'd been told.
 The Briton squatted next to the IRA man,




grabbed his throat and twisted his head to face
him. With the other hand, he hooked a thumb to-
ward James. "This man is going to ask you a few
questions. You're going to answer them. You're
going to answer them truthfully and quickly, the
first time he asks them." He paused to give
McHiggins a moment to think about it. "If you
don't, well, it's really better that you don't bloody
well know what he'll do to you if you don't."
    James looked down at the man on the ground.
McHiggins was a terrorist, nothing more, nothing
less. James could sympathize with the IRA's de-
sire for independence from England; after all, that
was how his own country had originated. But he
couldn't remember ever reading about America's
Founding Fathers arbitrarily blowing up babies
and other innocents in order to establish the
United States of America. So while he might em-
pathize with McHiggins's political agenda, he had
no patience whatsoever with the means the IRA
was using to achieve it.
    McHiggins looked up at James, his face ex-
pressionless. James held up the knife, letting the
moonlight reflect off the blade. The carbon-steel
blade wasn't as shiny as stainless steel would
have been, but somehow the soft gray glow under
the stars looked even more deadly.
  The gulp that went down Bobby McHiggins's

throat looked like a python swallowing a small
dog. He looked back down at the ground.
    James studied the man for a moment, trying to
get a read on what would work best with him. His
position as Phoenix Force's unofficial chief inter-
rogator had grown out of the efficiency with
knives that he had learned growing up on the
mean streets of Chicago's South Side, then per-
fected as a U.S. Navy SEAL. Many men had a
fear of cold steel that far surpassed that of bullets.
Their assumption, however erroneous it was,
seemed to be that death from gunshot came quick
and painlessly while the blade was always slow
and torturous.
    The Phoenix Force Warrior knew that this
could be, but didn't have to be, the case.
    James knew that some people held a basic fear
of black people. It was a learned prejudice that he
knew came from viewing all black men as being
capable of great violence. Such bigots conven-
iently forgot the names of men like George Wash-
ington Carver, Martin Luther King and Colin
Powell, preferring to concentrate on the stereotyp-
ical street gangsters, drug dealers and pimps they
saw in movies.
    He didn't like that image of his race, and his
whole life had been spent trying to destroy it. But
since it was there, at least for the time being, he




intended to use it to his advantage whenever pos-
sible.
    And right now the Phoenix Force warrior could
see in Bobby McHiggins's eyes that it was pos-
sible. With a wild war whoop James stepped in
and stuck the point of the Crossada knife under
his victim's chin. The IRA man jerked back con-
vulsively but McCarter had moved behind him
and stopped him with a foot. Pulling up lightly
on the knife, James lifted McHiggins's face so
that their eyes met once more. The razor-honed
edge of the blade barely penetrated the skin be-
neath the terrorist's chin. A light trickle of blood
began to drip onto the steel.
    "You killed a man the other night," James
growled. "You used a single-shot pistol with no
markings. They're being called Eliminators by the
newspapers."
  McHiggins stared up at him but didn't speak.
    "The man you killed was named Freddy Stone.
Am I right?" James asked.
  McHiggins remained silent.
    "Oh, Bobby, Bobby, Bobby," James said,
letting the words come out wearily between
clenched teeth. "Do we have to do things the hard
way?"
  Once again his question was met with silence.
    James stepped back and withdrew the knife
from beneath McHiggins's chin. He looked over

the top of the seated man's head at McCarter, and
nodded.
    The Briton shoved forward with the foot he al-
ready had in McHiggins's back. The IRA man's
head snapped forward, his long black hair shoot-
ing over his scalp and flying up.
    James took a half step in and brought the knife
around through the air in an arc. The heavy steel
blade made a whooshing sound as it sliced
through the air. By the time it came to a halt just
above and beyond James's left shoulder, the top
of McHiggins's hair had hit the ground.
    James looked into the shocked eyes, then up to
the top of the IRA man's head. Long strands still
fell over McHiggins's ears, but the top-center area
looked as if it had been shaved with an electric
barber's clipper.
    "I think that hairstyle is you, Bobby,"
O'Pmnty said. "My guess is you'll start a new
rage all over London."
    Out of the comer of his eye, James saw Man-
ning nod. "I like the look," he said. "Just right
for the shape of your face. Who was the
Stooge--not Moe or Curly, the other one?"
    "Larry," Hawkins said in his southern drawl.
"Yeah, he does look a lot like Larry."
    James held a hand up to show that he wanted
silence once more. "I'll repeat the question. Was




it Freddy Stone you killed the other night with the
Eliminator?"
    This time he got a fast answer. "Aye," Mc-
Higgins said, nodding vigorously. "But it was be-
cause Stone--"
    "I don't care why you did it," James inter-
rapted. "I'm more concerned with how." He
paused. "Where'd you get the Eliminator,
Bobby?"
    McHiggins opened his mouth to speak, then
thought better of it. His jaw clamped tight for a
moment, then he said, "I can't tell you. Can't rat
out me own mates!"
    James stepped in again and raised the knife
above his head. Slicing down at a slight angle, he
severed the strands of hair that hung over Mc-
Higgins's left ear.
    The Ira gunner screamed, and James saw an-
other trickle of blood appear where he had nicked
the man's ear.
    "Hey," Encizo said, "I remember that style
from a few years ago. Kids all over were letting
one side of their hair grow real long and shaving
the other. Remember that, T.J.?"
    Before Hawkins could reply, James held up his
hand again. "Okay, second question, second time.
Where did the Eliminator come from?"
    "They'll kill me if I tell you!" McHiggins
sobbed.

    James brought the knife down again, and all of
the hair on the right side of IRA man's head fell
to the ground with the rest.
"Now he looks like Curly," Manning said.
McHiggins was openly crying now. "I got it
from Damon O'Keefe. He's the one who gets all
our weapons."
    "That's much better, Bobby," James said.
"Now, just one more thing and you can go."
    McHiggins looked up, his eyes filled with sur-
prise, his face a mask of new hope.
    "I want you to take us to meet this Damon
O'Keefe," James said.
    "My God!" McHiggins cried. "They'd kill me
sure!"
  "And I'll slit your throat if you don't."

Stony Man Farm

AT THE BOTTOM of the ramp that led to Aaron
Kurtzman's computer terminal, Tokaido, Dela-
hunt and Wethers went about their various tasks.
At the top, Kurtzman typed furiously, as well. He
had been joined by John Kissinger, who had
rolled another chair up the ramp and now sat next
to the computer wizard. A leather briefcase lay
open at his feet.
    Two pistols rested in Kissinger's lap, a Colt
Government Model 1911 .45, and one of the





Eliminator semiautos. "One of the main differ-
ences, Bear," Kissinger said as Kurtzman stopped
typing and allowed his machine to digest the in-
formation he had just fed it, "is the steel itself.
Look at this." He handed over the Colt.
    Kissinger continued to talk as Kurtzman took
the pistol. "Like most quality firearms, unless
they're stainless steel, this Colt is made out of
chrome-moly 4140 carbon steel." He waited as
the computer man examined the weapon, then
lifted the other semiauto from his thigh. "Now,
look at this piece of crap. You can see the obvious
difference on the surface----the components have
been stamped out instead of machined. But there's
more. Feel the slide. It's zinc. The other pieces
are made out of sheet steel. Now..."
    The armorer took the Colt back, disassembled
it as easily and quickly as most men opened a beer
can, then did the same to the unmarked model.
He handed Kurtzman the slides from both weap-
ons. "Have a feel."
    Kurtzman frowned as he hefted the Colt in his
fight hand, the Eliminator in his left. "The Elim-
inator's slide feels twice as heavy," he com-
mented.
    "Well, not quite twice. But it's appreciably
heavier. It has to be. The Eliminator has no
lockup--it's a straight blowback design." He
watched Kurtzman's brain work behind his eye-

brows. The man in the wheelchair wasn't a fire-
arms expert, but he had one hell of an analytic
mind. He understood immediately what Kissinger
was talking about.
    "Straight blowbacks are usually used on
smaller calibers, aren't they, such as .22s, .380s
and the like?"  "Right."
    "So something in a big caliber like the .45
would blow the slide fight off if it wasn't this
heavy?"
    Kissinger smiled. "Right again, O Great Cy-
bernetic Sahib."
    The whimsical title brought a smile to Kurtz-
man's face. "I assume that's one of the reasons
these are faster and cheaper to produce," he said,
looking down at the Eliminator. "But I'd also
have to deduct that they wouldn't be as accurate
or controllable or reliable."
    "Right on all counts. But these Eliminators
aren't all that inaccurate, uncontrollable or unre-
liable," he added. "It'll still get the job done.
Take a 230-grain full-metal-jacket hardball slug
in the heart, or brain stem, from this rattle-trap
Eliminator and you'll be just as dead as if it came
from a Colt."
    "So, from my point of view," Kurtzman said,
thinking ahead several steps as he handed both
slides back to Kissinger, "I need a breakdown on




the makeup of these particular steel composites.
If I get that, I may be able to trace the specific
batch the steel in these guns came from."
    "What do you mean 'if'?" Kissinger grinned
as he pulled a sheaf of papers from his briefcase.
"You got." He handed them to Kurtzman. "This
breaks down, into the most-simple components,
each example of the Eliminator single-shots and
semiautos I've gotten in to examine. Looks to me
like they're all made out of steel from the same
place." He paused. "The compounds differ a triv-
ial amount from one another, but that's to be ex-
pected. My hunch is our buddy the Eliminator is
buying his steel from just one source."
    "Any guesses on who that might be?" Kurtz-
man asked, his gaze glued to the pages in his lap.
    Kissinger shrugged. "This stuff is simple to
make. It's produced all over the world. It could
be Pittsburgh or Tokyo or Barcelona or Moscow.
But we're starting to get out of my field now. I
know steel from the point of view of an armorer,
Bear. I know how to build guns, make them shoot
and fix them when they've quit shooting. I know
how to make knives and swords and what the best
steels are that go into them. And I was able to
mn the tests on these steel compounds." He
looked down at the pages still in Kurtzman's lap,
then back up to meet the computer wizard's eyes.
"But for what you're trying to do now, my friend,

you need a metallurgist." He paused again. "And
last time I checked the roster around here, we
didn't have one on staff. Happen to know a good
one?' '
    "Not off the top of my head," Kurtzman said,
turning toward the phone. "But I do know a guy
who knows at least one of everything."
  Kissenger nodded. "Leo," he said.
    A moment later Kissinger had Leo Turrin on
the intercom line. He punched the speakerphone
button so Kissinger could listen, and said, "Leo,
we've got a problem."
    Tunin listened as Kurtzman explained the sit-
uation. In addition to being Stony Man Farm's
undercover specialist, Tunin was a Washington
lobbyist, and had contacts in every comer and
crevice on the planet.
    "Glenn Barrister's the guy you need," Turrin
said. "Ever heard of him?"
    Kurtzman glanced at Kissinger, who shrugged.
"Uh-uh," Kurtzman said.
    "Ph.D. and full professor at the University of
Pittsburgh," Tumn said. "He's been in research
for thirty years and knows more about the busi-
ness than anybody alive."
    The words had no more than left Turrin's
mouth than one of the other lights along the row
at the bottom of Kurtzman's phone lit up. "Hold
on a second, Leo," the computer man said. "I've


got another call coming in." He punched Tun'in
onto Hold and tapped the button above the flash-
ing red light. "Kurtzman."
    "I've got Striker on the line," Barbara Price
said into his ear. "Want me to patch him
through?"
  ' ' Sure.' '
    A moment later Mack Bolan said, "Hello,
Bear."
  "What can I do for you, big guy?"
    "I've got some new intel. Our buddy the Elim-
inator is stepping up operations and getting into
the big leagues." He had begun to explain about
the new Eliminator M-3 grease guns and the
strange Oriental character on the wooden crate
when Kurtzman stopped him.
    "Hang on a second, Striker. I've got Leo on
the other line. It might be helpful if he hears all
this." He tapped more buttons and connected both
Bolan and Turrin to the speakerphone. Turning to
his side, he caught Akira Tokaido's attention and
waved the young Japanese to the top of the wheel-
chair ramp.
    The Executioner started over with the new in-
tel. He finished by describing as best he could the
Japanese, Chinese or Korean character he'd found
on the crate.
  "You recognize it?" Kurtzman asked Tokaido.
  Tokaido shook his head. "No, Striker," he

F LJI ~I I I V E IVIC/~OLIK I-O

said. "I'm sorry. From your description it sounds
like Japanese kanji, but many other symbols in
the three languages are similar. Do you have a fax
machine available?"
"Grimaldi has a portable on board the plane."
"Good," Tokaido said. "Please fax me your
drawing as soon as possible. In the meantime my
guess--perhaps an educated guess but a guess
nonetheless--is that it's Japanese."
    "That's educated enough for me to head to-
ward Tokyo," Bolan said.
    "Okay, gentlemen," Kurtzman said. "Let's
sum the situation up so far. We've got guns that
appear to have been made from steel that came
from the same place." He glanced toward Kissin-
ger.
  "Right."
    "And we've got an Oriental letter that we're
guessing is Japanese."
    This time it was Tokaido who spoke. "Affir-
mative, boss man."
    "So Striker is going to get Grimaldi into the
air, head toward Japan and fax us his drawing on
the way."
  "You got it, Bear," Bolan said.
    "As soon as I get the fax, I'll enter it, and all
the information about the specific steel, into the
program, then start tapping into the computer files
of the biggest Tokyo steel manufacturers. If the




character turns out to be Korean or Chinese, we'll
alter the plan accordingly. And Striker, of course,
will head toward whichever country is relevant."
Kurtzman paused to take a breath. "Leo, I'll need
you to arrange for a team of blacksuits to grab
this Barrister fellow and bring him here. Can you
handle that?"
  "The man's as good as blindfolded now."
    Kurtzman ran a hand through his hair. "Any
questions, guys?" he asked.
  "No," Bolan said. "Let's move."

CHAPTER FIVE

Brooklyn, New York

Rosario Blancanales leaned on the cane in his left
hand, limping up the four flights of stairs to where
Eddie Caveretti had told the men of Able Team
"Bobby" lived. Lyons and Schwarz had stayed
with Caveretti in the car, sending Blancanales to
recon the building alone. There was a good
chance violence would erupt, and they wanted to
know everything there was to know about the
place in order to minimize the chances that in-
nocents in other apartments suddenly found bul-
lets flying through their already crumbling walls.
    When he reached the fourth floor, the Able
Team warrior limped down the hall. He could tell
which apartment the Falcons were in long before
he saw the number 411 on the door. Loud rock
music blasted into the hallway, shaking the walls
with the heavy beat of bass. He stopped halfway




I LII ~1111yL. I?1L.I'~OI. JI~L.,.]

to the apartment, ducking quickly into the open
door to the common bathroom.
    Blancanales locked the door behind him and
walked swiftly to the mirror over the sink. He had
messed up his slightly over-the-ear hair and wore
a ragged brown cardigan sweater over a white
ribbed undershirt. In one of the sweater's front
pockets a half-full pouch of chewing tobacco
threatened to fall out each time he took a step.
Soiled khaki work pants and rope-soled slip-on
sneakers completed his "old man" outfit.
    Satisfied with his appearance, Blancanales left
the bathroom and walked along the creaking
wooden hall floor to apartment 411. He took a
deep breath, then knocked.
The knock went unnoticed under the music.
Blancanales knocked again, louder this time. A
moment later the door swung open. The music
blew out of the apartment along with a substantial
dose of marijuana smoke. The Able Team warrior
found himself facing a man in his early twenties
who wore a green T-shirt with the now familiar
swooping bird on the chest.
    "Yeah?" he said. "What do you want, old
man?" The cigarette dangling from the comer of
his mouth moved up and down with the words.
    Biancanales let a nervous smile creep across his
face. "Can you tell me which apartment the
Choate family is in?" he said in a slightly trem-

bling voice. He had seen the name on a second-
floor mailbox on the way up.
    The punk with the cigarette grinned evilly. Like
all predators, whether two-legged or four, he
could smell fear. And he dearly loved to take ad-
vantage of anyone weaker than himself. "No, I
don't know any fuckin' Choate family," he said
around the cigarette. "Who are you? Their
great-grandpa?" Behind him several voices
laughed above the blasting music.
    As they talked, Blancanales had been studying
the area behind the young man in his peripheral
vision: a living room, looked like a kitchen area
just to the side, one bedroom--he could see the
piles of dirty clothes on the bare striped mattress
beyond where another Falcon reclined on a
threadbare couch. The apartment was in the cor-
ner of the building, meaning wild shots or over-
penetrating bullets to two of the four sides would
probably be stopped by the brownstone on the
outer walls. But that still left the two other direc-
tions-walls that looked like a slow-pitched soft-
ball would drill through them, let alone 9 mm
bullets traveling at 1400-plus feet per second.
    Two more members of the street gang joined
the man with the cigarette. "What the hell's this
old fart want, Deuce?" a short, powerfully built
man asked.




FUIX# I IVI:: MIzASURt-5

"Wants some Choates. Ain't that some kind a
baby pig or somethin'?"
    A taller man, looking to be close to thirty, and
far cleaner than the other two, stepped in on
Bobby the Deuce's other side. "That's a shoat,
you stupid asshole," he said. "You ain't never
been on a farm and seen a pig?"
    "Ain't too many pig farms where I grew up.
As for pigs, I ain't never met one. But I've woke
up with a bunch of 'em."
    The Falcons all laughed as if it were the first
time they'd heard the joke.
    "Okay," Bobby the Deuce said, turning his at-
tention back to Blancanales. "Choate, shoat,
don't make no difference. We ain't got none of
either, you old peckerhead."
    Blancanales had seen what he'd come to see.
He had the layout of the apartment and could tell
there were at least six Falcons inside. He hadn't
seen any weapons. But he knew they'd be there.
"Thank you," he said. "Sorry to have bothered
you." He had turned to limp away when he sud-
denly felt his feet fly out from under him.
    The Able Team warfior's first instinct was to
catch his balance. And his hand almost shot to-
ward the Beretta 92 stuffed into the back of his
pants beneath the sweater. But Rosario Blancana-
les had worked undercover in role camouflage far
too long to make rookie mistakes like that. He

I"UI~I I IV!:: MI-A.SUKI'-,~

I UY

let himself fall to the floor like a man thirty years
his senior might do. The cane flew from his hand
and went skipping along the dirty wooden floor.
He landed facedown amid a loud chorus of laugh-
ter behind him. He rolled over to his side, gri-
macing as if in great pain, and looked up into the
face of the man who had tripped him.
    The cigarette was bobbing up and down again,
smoke curling from the end up over his face, as
Bobby the Deuce cackled uncontrollably at his
own joke.
    Rising slowly to his hands and knees, Blancan-
ales crawled toward where his cane had come to
rest against the wall. He had reached out to pick
up it up when a foot flew into his vision and
kicked the stick away again. More laughter fol-
lowed as the Deuce repeated the performance two
more times before finally allowing the "old man"
to grasp the staff and pull himself to his feet.
    "Get the fuck out of here, you old fart," Bobby
said.
    Then to his friends he added, "Come on. I need
some more weed."
    Blancanales limped slowly toward the stairs,
keeping it up even after he'd heard the door to
apartment 411 slam shut. To anyone watching, he
appeared to be just another old man who'd been
humiliated by street punks and was impotent to
do anything about it.




  Unless you saw his face.
    Blancanales smiled as he started down the
stairs. "Bobby the Deuce," he said, chuckling
lowly, "you and your friends are about to get a
big surprise."

In the Air above Sydney, Australia

JACK GRIMALDI HAD barely gotten the PacAero
Learstar--a high-speed, long-range, custom-
equipped executive version of the Lockheed
Model 18-56 Lodestar--off the runway by the
time Bolan had set up the portable fax machine
and plugged it into the control panel. Pulling the
scrap of paper from his pocket, he pressed it onto
the screen, then lowered the cover.
    A moment later the fax was on its way to
America.
    The Learstar picked up speed as it burst into
the clouds, then rose above the billowy ivory va-
pors. Grimaldi whistled softly, stopping now and
then to make radio contact with the air-traffic con-
trollers.
    Bolan glanced at his old friend, the ghost of a
smile tugging at his lips. The two men had fought
the good fight together more times over the years
than he could remember. Grimaldi had been an
ace fighter pilot in Vietnam, then after the war,
during a weak and financially strapped moment,

he'd become a pilot for the Mob. Bolan had met
him during that time, recognized the basic good
in the man and gotten Grimaidi out of the mess
he'd gotten himself into.
    From then on loyal beyond what most men
would consider good reason to the Executioner,
Grimaldi was now a permanent fixture at Stony
Man Farm. He flew for all of the teams but was
always there for Bolan first.
    Bolan reached behind him and pulled the box
he had picked up at the Sydney American Express
office into the front seat. Setting it in his lap, he
used the Applegate-Fairbaim fighting knife to
slice open the tape. Inside he found the items he'd
requested from Cowboy Kissinger.
    The Glock 21 was in its original plastic box. It
had been fitted with an Aro-Tek Model 2010 laser
sight. The state-of-the-art sighting system utilized
a red-orange dot that was projected onto its target
and showed up as a one-quarter-inch spot at fif-
teen yards. Nevertheless the 2010 had an optimum
range of five hundred yards at night, and ten yards
in sunlight. More important than that, perhaps, it
utilized a red "splash" light around the dot; when
aimed and activated at the upper chest of a man,
it would illuminate his face and enable the shooter
to identify his target without the need for a flash-
light.
  The Executioner dug farther through the box




until he found the custom-made holster. The
leather had been specially cut to fit around the
tiny nipple on the front of the Giock's trigger
guard that housed the laser bulb. Extra magazines
and an ample supply of .45-caliber ammunition in
both 230-grain Hydra-Shok hollowpoint and ar-
mor-piercing rounds were also in the box.
    Bolan hadn't specified the solid, pointed Ap
rounds. But knowing the Desert Eagle was tem-
porarily out of commission, and that he might
need the impressive penetration the .44 Magnum
bullet had provided, Kissinger had included them.
    The Executioner dug deeper and came across a
black-and-blue box displaying a sword embedded
in stone, reminiscent of the legend of King Ar-
thur. Gerber Legendary Blades read the end of the
box, and beneath that was Applegate Combat
Folder. He opened the box and pulled out the
knife and a nylon sheath with a holsterlike thumb-
break retainer. Stripping the protective plastic
cover from the knife itself, he examined the
weapon.
    Like the full-size Applegate-Fairbairn fighter
he now carried, the liner-locking folder possessed
a handle frame and spring made of an aircraft-
grade titanium alloy. The scales, complete with
the traditional Applegate longitudinal grip
grooves, were of black linen Micarta. Bolan
pressed his thumb against the large checkered

thumb stud and flicked the blade open with his
tingemail. On one side of the blade were the en-
graved signatures of Rex Applegate and W. E.
Fairbairn. On the other were the words First Pro-
duction Run.
    Bolan nodded his approval. He had wanted this
smaller and foldable fighting knife to use in plain-
clothes. The new knife had only recently come on
the market, and Bolan knew the weapon would
be in high demand. Kissinger had done his job
well in procuring it.
    Glancing at his wristwatch, Bolan realized the
fax had had more than enough time to reach Stony
Man Farm. He leaned forward, lifted the cellular
telephone from its clip on the control panel and
punched in one of Barbara Price's numbers. To
guard against curious ears that might try to tap
into Stony Man conversations, the phone was pro-
grammed to automatically bounce the connection
to numbers on four different continents before it
finally reached the Blue Ridge Mountains.
    "Akira's looking at the fax now," the mission
controller told Bolan. 'Tll connect you."
    Bolan heard a series of clicks, then Aaron
Kurtzman's familiar voice said, "Bad news,
Striker."
  "What is it?"
    "Let me put you on speakerphone so Akira can
tell you himself."




    The Executioner heard another click, then
Akira Tokaido said, "Actually there's both good
news and bad news. Here's the skinny. The char-
acter is definitely Japanese kanji. The bad news
is it means 'box' or 'crate'. It simply reinforced
the obvious. It's a container."
    Bolan let his breath out in disappointment, then
forced his brain into a more positive mode.
"Okay," he said. "It would have been useful if
it had been a name or address, but the reality of
the situation is it's not. What's happened here is
that the company that makes the crates made up
a special order--for a client that didn't want that
company's name, or anything else, on the crate
that might eventually be traced back to him. But
somehow one of the characters in their stamping
or logo accidentally got on the wood. Maybe
whoever was in charge didn't get it off the regular
assembly line fast enough and didn't notice it.
Maybe he did see it but thought since it said only
'box' it wouldn't matter. There are a million ex-
planations as to how the thing got on the crate.
But that's not what's important. What is, is
whether we can make use of it." He waited a
moment, then said, "So. Can we?"
    "There may be hope, however slight, Striker,"
Tokaido replied. "We do know that it is Japanese
kanji, so you're at least heading to the fight coun-
try. I'll enter the character into my files, tap into

the computer records of Japan's major box and
crate companies and begin looking at their labels
and other logos. Who knows? We might get a
match."
    "Okay, I'm heading on to Tokyo. Bear, see
what you can come up with on the steel angle.
Akira, go ahead with what you just suggested. It's
as good as any other lead we've got fight now.
I'll get back to you as soon as we touch down
and see if either of you has come up with some-
thing." He tapped the button, ending the call and
replaced the cellular phone in the clip.
    Bolan leaned back, closing his eyes for a few
moments. Gfimaldi continued to whistle, the soft
music and the hum of the jet engines almost put-
ting the Executioner to sleep. When they hit an
air pocket and dropped sharply, he opened his
eyes again. "Jack, once we touch down, I don't
know where I'll be going or how long I'll be."
    Grimaldi stopped whistling. "So what else is
new?" he said. "Same song, verse 547."
    'TII take this cellular with me." Bolan un-
clipped the phone again and dropped it into a
pocket. "You still have another one in the back?"
    Grimaldi nodded as he began dropping the air-
craft through the clouds again. "In one of the
lockers."
    "Okay. Keep the phone with you. I'll call you
if and when we need to take off again. And stay




close enough to the airport that you can have this
bird warmed up and ready to go by the time I get
here."
  "You got it," Grimaldi agreed.
    Bolan glanced over his shoulder toward the rear
of the plane. "By the way," he said. "Do we
have any yen on board?" Along with weapons,
extra clothing and other equipment, Stony Man's
air fleet tried always to carry a reasonable amount
of currency for the major nations of the world.
  "Try locker number 6."
    The jet dropped back through the clouds. Far
below, Bolan could see the blue waters of the Sea
of Japan. Beyond on the horizon, and slightly to
the west of their flight path, were the tops of the
undersea mountains known as the islands of Kyu-
shu and Shikoku. Dead ahead lay Honshu, with
Tokyo approximately halfway up the east coast of
Japan's largest island.
    Also ahead, the Executioner hoped, lay the an-
swer to where the steel that made up the Elimi-
nators, and the crates in which they were packed,
came from.

Northern Ireland

BOBBY MCHIGGINS SEEMED unable to take his
eyes off Calvin James, T. J. Hawkins observed
during the drive from Dunluce Castle into Lon-

donderry. Except, of course, when James hap-
pened to glance the IRA man's way. Each time
that happened, McHiggins would quickly avert
his own gaze, usually looking straight down at the
floor of the minivan.
    Hawkins chuckled under his breath. James had
put on quite a performance.
    Hawkins settled in against the seat as the min-
ivan moved through the night. As usual O'Pmnty
was behind the wheel with McCarter riding shot-
gun. In the middle seat, McHiggins was squashed
between Manning's powerful shoulders and the
impetus of his terror, Calvin James. Hawkins and
Rafael Encizo occupied the vehicle's rear seat.
    Hawkins watched through the windows as
O'Pmnty guided the minivan into the city, turning
onto a winding lane that took them through the
nighttime traffic and past the lighted windows of
the Georgian and Victorian buildings in the main
business and shopping district of the town. Leav-
ing the original walled area, they crossed Crag-
avon Bridge, where modem Londonderry had
grown up along the River Foyle to be ten times
as large as the old city.
    They were headed, Hawkins knew, to the home
of Damon O'Keefe.
    "Tell me when to turn," O'Pmnty said behind
the steering wheel.




McHiggins nodded. Two miles later he said,
"Here. To the right."
    O'Prunty made the turn and drove slowly up a
steep hillside into an older residential section of
Victorian houses. Thatched roofs covered some of
the homes, which were all crowded tightly to-
gether. McHiggins guided them through several
more tums, then finally past a small frame dwell-
ing painted a soft shade of green. The paint was
fresh, the yard immaculate. Hawkins was mildly
surprised at the up-keep--it wasn't the run-down
warren he'd have expected an IRA weapons pro-
curer to live in. Two vehicles were parked in the
driveway: a plain Ford hatchback and a small,
50 cc Yamaha motorbike.
    O'Pmnty drove two more blocks, then pulled
over to the curb in front of a small neighborhood
park.
    O'Prunty shifted the minivan into Park and
killed the engine. "That's it, then, is it?" he said.
    "Aye," McHiggins answered in a wavering
voice that proved he hadn't yet recovered from
Calvin James's wild interrogation. "O'Keefe
lives there with his mom."
    "What?" O'Pmnty said as he stomped the
parking brake. "You said nothing about his
mom!"
  "I didn't think to tell you," McHiggins said

shakily. "Didn't know it was important." He
glanced at James.
"Not important!" O'Prunty shouted in disgust.
"It does throw a little different light on
things," McCarter said from the passenger seat.
He turned in his seat and rested one arm over the
back. "Could you tell who was home when we
went by?" he asked.
    McHiggins coughed nervously. "By the car
and motorbike, I'd say they both were," he said.
"Damon rides the Yamaha, although he'll drive
his mom's car on occasion. Though I can't be
sure.' '
    McCarter turned back to the front and took a
deep breath. McHiggins started to speak again,
and the Phoenix Force leader cut him off. "Shut
up," the Briton said. "I need a minute to think."
    Hawkins waited patiently along with O'Prunty,
McHiggins and the rest of Phoenix Force as the
seconds turned to minutes. Finally McCarter
turned to face the rear of the van again. "T.J.,"
he said, "we've got to get her out of the house
somehow. Do you still have that silly-looking
book bag in your gear?"
    Hawkins laughed. What the Phoenix Force
leader was referring to wasn't really a book
bag--it was a backpack in which he sometimes
carried odds and ends to keep them from getting




lost at the bottom of his larger duffelbag. "Got
it."
    McCarter nodded. "Okay. Get it out and get
into some jeans and a T-shirt and anything else
you've got that'll make you look like the typical
American college kid who cut classes this semes-
ter and is thumbing his way across Europe on
Daddy's money. You're the youngest. You've got
the best chance of pulling it off."
    Hawkins opened the duffel in the storage area
just behind him and began to rummage through
his personal gear. Two minutes later he was
dressed in baggy blue jeans, a T-shirt bearing the
emblem of Munich's famous beer hall, the Hoff-
brau Haus, and worn running shoes. He piled sev-
eral other shirts and items into the backpack to
fill it out, slipped his Beretta 92 beneath the
T-shirt and looked up for further orders.
    "Blimey!" O'Prunty said in a loud, mirthful
voice. "You're perfect I've seen a million of
you polluting the roads and overflowing the hos-
tels. All ye need is a Swiss Army knife!"
    Hawkins laughed, pulled one from his duffel
bag and slid the pouch onto his belt.
O'Prunty grinned, shaking his head in disbelief.
McCarter handed a map over the seat to James,
who passed it back to Hawkins.
    Hawkins glanced down and saw it was a map
of Ireland.

    "We're going to wait awhile," McCarter said.
"Let them get good and tired around the TV.
Then I want you to go up to the front porch and
knock. If O'Keefe's mother answers, point at the
map and start asking directions. As soon as you
hear us kick the back door, grab her, pull her out-
side and take her to the ground. Stay on top of
her until one of us comes out and gives you the
all-clear. I want to make sure this woman doesn't
get hurt, and I don't want O'Keefe dead, either.
We need him alive."
    "Gotcha," Hawkins said. "And what if
O'Keefe answers the door himself?."
    "Grab him the same way. Do your best not to
kill him." Even in the semidarkness, Hawkins
could see McCarter frowning in concentration.
    The men of Phoenix Force settled in to wait.
Most of them closed their eyes, and a few minutes
later Hawkins heard the sound of snoring as they
took advantage of the short downtime to get some
rest. He tried to sleep himself but found he was
too wound up waiting to play the part McCarter
had assigned him.
    Finally McCarter said, "All right, everybody
up."
  Eyes began to open around the minivan.
    "Walk slowly, T.J.," the Phoenix Force leader
said. "Give us time to get set up in back."
  Hawkins nodded as he slipped the backpack




straps over his shoulders. "Affirmative. Anything
else?"
    McCarter shook his head. James slid the door
open, and Hawkins stepped out into the night.
    As he'd been ordered, the Phoenix Force war-
rior walked slowly back along the street, looking
at the map in his hands in case any curious eyes
might be on him. He heard the rest of the team
get out and close the doors, then saw them jog
past and cut around the block to the narrow alley
that ran behind the houses with Manning holding
McHiggins by the arm. When he was certain that
they'd had time to reach the rear of O'Keefe's
home, he picked up his pace and mounted the
steps to the porch.
    Hawkins shifted the open map to his left hand,
readjusted the Beretta between his belt buckle and
navel, then reached up and rapped on the freshly
painted wooden door frame.
    A moment later the door opened. Hawkins
looked up from the map and tried to keep hidden
the surprise that suddenly tightened his chest. The
person standing just inside the door wasn't Da-
mon O'Keefe or his mother. It was a burly red-
haired Irishman with tattoos covering muscular
forearms. Behind him, stretched out on the
couches and slumping in chairs, were at least ten
other men who might as well have had Irish Re-
publican Army signs hanging around their necks.

    And each and every one of them had a pistol
on his belt or a rifle or submachine gun within
reach.

Brooklyn, New York

THE TIME for action had come.
    Carl Lyons exited the Chevy van, slid the side
door open and climbed into the back where
Schwarz and Blancanales had already opened the
equipment lockers and were suiting up for the bat-
tle about to take place. Quickly doffing his sport
coat, shirt, slacks and street shoes, he slid into the
blacksuit handed to him by Schwarz.
    Out of the comer of his eye, he saw Eddie Ca-
veretti staring in amazement. "Who in hell are
you guys?" the Falcon hit man asked. "You
don't look like Family anymore."
    "We're not," Schwarz said. "We're worse."
Then, in his best Rambo voice, he added, "We're
your worst nightmare."
    Lyons wrapped the black nylon equipment belt
around his waist and slid the .357 Magnum Colt
Python into the holster on his hip. Transferring
four speedloaders into the caddie just in front of
the revolver, he slid his arms into the black leather
shoulder rig and cinched the keepers to the gun
belt on both sides. Lyons's Colt Gold Cup pistol,
complete with sound suppressor, went into the




holster under his left arm. Two extra 10-round
magazines filled with .45 Hydra-Shok bullets
were snapped in the carrier under his right. Hang-
ing under the mags was a sheathed Applegate-
Fairbairn Mini-Smatchet boot knife.
    The Able Team leader pulled a long trench coat
from a hanger inside one of the lockers and
shrugged into it. His Atchisson 12 automatic as-
sault shotgun came down off the rack, and he
looped the sling around his neck, then slid it under
the tail of the long coat. It would bulge, and any-
one looking closely would know he was carrying
something. But it would take only a few seconds
to get from the van to the tenement house.
    Besides, he wasn't going undercover. The men
of Able Team were going to war.
    Schwarz looked up as he tied the laces at the
tops of his black nylon combat boots. Like Blan-
canales, he wore a blacksuit, a Beretta 92 and a
shoulder rig that held a 50-round Calico M-950 A
machine pistol on a sling under his right arm. The
same rig carded an extra 100-round cylindrical
dram mag on the left. Able Team's electronics
man nodded toward Caveretti. "What do you
want to do with Eddie boy, Ironman?" he asked.
"We can't leave him here."
  "No," Lyons agreed. "We'll take him with
US."
  "No!" Caveretti shouted. "Shit, no! They see

me with you, I'll never be able to walk the streets
again!"
    "Hey," Blancanales said as he pulled a box of
shotgun shells off a locker shelf and tossed them
to Lyons, "look on the bright side. You probably
won't even live through the night."
  Caveretti's lips clamped shut.
    Lyons caught the box and looked down at the
label, which read 12-Gauge, #8 Birdshot. It cer-
tainly wasn't what he'd usually stoke the Archis-
son with for combat, but this was a special situ-
ation. Blancanales had explained about the thin
walls on two sides of Bobby the Deuce's apart-
ment, and the fact that stray rounds or overpene-
trations focused on the other two directions might
fly through the windows and onto the streets. So
the men had replaced their usual high-speed 9 mm
rounds with subsonic frangible bullets. Lyons had
mild .38 Specials in his .357, and replacing his
double-aught buckshot with the dove and pigeon
loads was the final step. No, he thought again, the
#8 birdshot was hardly his favorite load. But at
the close quarters at which they'd be working, the
miniature BBs would be deadly if shots were
properly placed.
    The Able Team leader racked the buckshot out
of the Atchisson and inserted the lighter shells.
That was what it was all about after all, he knew.
Shot placement. You could argue 9 mm versus




.45 all day long if you wanted. A .22 Long Rifle
round in the heart or head stem still beat a .44
Magnum bullet in the toe.
"Ready?" Lyons asked the rest of the team.
Schwarz and B!ancanales both nodded.
"Hey wait...listen..." Caveretti pleaded.
Schwarz threw open the sliding door, and Ly-
ons grabbed the Falcon by the arm and threw him
out. Caveretti landed on his belly and sucked air.
    "Keep your mouth shut, Eddie," Lyons or-
dered. "You're a street punk who kills innocent
people for a living." He dropped to the pavement,
reached down and jerked the man back to his feet.
"You're a hit man. Not a very good one, maybe,
and not nearly as tough as you think you are, but
a murderer nonetheless. If you live through this,
we'll let you go. If you don't--" the Able Team
leader shoved Caveretti down the street in front
of him "--you deserve anything you get."
    Taking up a swift pace, the three men in trench
coats and the one in the bright green Falcon jacket
walked down the street toward the front door of
the brownstone. They mounted the crumbling
concrete steps, entered the hall and made their
way up the stairs to the fourth floor. The deaf-
ening rock music Biancanales had warned them
of still blasted into the hall, and the sweet aroma
of marijuana smoke filled the air.

Three trench coats fell to the moldy carpet as
they approached apartment 411.
    "Kick it?" Schwarz asked in a normal voice
as they stopped just outside the door. Considering
the pandemonium that came from Bobby the
Deuce's, there was no need to whisper.
    Lyons shook his head. "I've got a better idea."
Pulling the Atchisson from around his neck, he
grabbed Caveretti by the back of the collar of his
Falcon jacket and slammed the hit man into the
door with all his strength.
    Caveretti's nose made first contact. Blood
spurted onto the wood as the lock snapped and
the door swung open. The human battering ram
screamed as he was propelled into Bobby the
Deuee's living room and fell to the floor.
    Lyons and Schwarz went next, followed by
B!ancanales. The Able Team leader moved im-
mediately to the left, covering that haft of the bat-
tle area, while Schwarz took the right. Blancana-
les would work the back, covering their rear and
giving both men backup and support.
    For a brief second, the mouths of all eight men
lounging around the filthy living room fell open.
Then a man in a ragged blue chair drew a Brown-
ing pistol from his belt, leaned forward and aimed
at Lyons.
    As he heard the Browning's hammer cock
back, Lyons pulled the Atchisson's trigger. A load




of birdshot struck the Falcon squarely in the chest
from a distance of less than five feet. With no
time to spread into a pattern, the tiny grains of
lead, many of the gases generated by the explo-
sion and even the wadding from the shell entered
the man's chest almost as one unit.
    A gaping black hole appeared as the gangster
was thrown back against the chair.
    The sounds of subsonic 9 mm gunfire met the
Able Team leader's ears as Schwarz and Blan-
canales opened up with their Calicos. In his pe-
ripheral vision, Lyons saw three men on the other
side of the room go down, jerking against the au-
tomatic fire like marionettes on the strings of a
mad puppeteer. He swung the shotgun toward a
man with a long knife scar on the side of his face,
who was bringing a sawed-off double-barreled
shotgun into play.
    Lyons seriously doubted that the double-barrel
was filled with the low-penetrating birdshot. If the
man got off a round, it would likely go through
the wall behind the, Able Team leader and all the
way into one of the apartments on the other side
of the hall.
He couldn't afford to let that happen.
Stroking the Atchisson's trigger once more, Ly-
ons felt the mild recoil of the light load. Dozens
of tiny holes appeared on the shotgunner's face
around and over the knife scar. The Falcon's head

snapped back as if pulled by the long dirty-blond
hair that hung from the back of his head. His face
turned red from the blood seeping out of the many
minuscule holes.
    Lyons took two steps forward, lowered his
weapon and pulled the trigger again. At the closer
range, the Atchisson's next round hit the man in
the chest with almost as much force as the load
that had taken out the Falcon on the chair. He
dropped to the floor as the Able Team leader saw
a short man who looked like a power-lifter. The
man had no gun, and he had more guts than sense.
Instead of taking cover, he sprinted across the
room with a butcher knife in his hand.
    The former LAPD detective let him get close
enough for the birdshot to do maximum damage,
then cut loose with two rounds. The first hit the
muscle boy just above the heart, mining a pectoral
that had to have taken years to build. The second
load caught him squarely between the eyes,
blowing off the top half his face and the greasy
hair atop his head.
    The Calicos continued to chatter on the other
side of the room. A few rounds from various Fal-
con weapons exploded, and Lyons silently prayed
that none of them had struck Schwarz or Blan-
canales or exited the walls to harm innocents in
the other apartments.
  The Able Team leader turned the Atchisson to-




ward the final man in his sector, a tall man who
appeared to be a little older than the others. The
man had produced one of the Eliminator .45 autos
and was turning it toward Lyons.
    The former LAPD cop took him out with one
fast round to the chest, another to the face. He
went down as the chatter from the Calicos ended,
and suddenly the apartment fell silent.
    Lyons turned toward Blancanales. "Which one
was Bobby the Deuce?" he asked.
    Biancahales walked to a corpse wearing a
blood-splattered white T-shirt. A burning cigarette
had fallen from Bobby the Deuce's mouth and lay
smoldering on the carpet next to his head. He
stepped on it as he said, "This outstanding citizen
here.' '
    Lyons shook his head. "We won't be getting
any information out of him. Okay, Gadgets, get
across the hall and see if anybody in the other
apartments took a hit. You should be able to see
the entry rounds in the outside walls if there are
any. You find a hole, knock. You get no answer,
kick it in and see if anyone needs medical atten-
tion."
    Schwarz nodded and disappeared through the
front door.
    "Where's Eddie?" Lyons asked, then an-
swered his own question by looking down at the
floor where Caveretti had first fallen. The Falcon

hit man hadn't moved since, and he never would
again.
    The back of Caveretti's bright green Falcon
jacket was now bright red. He had either taken a
wild round from one of his brother Falcons, or
they had intentionally put a bullet into him for
bringing in the heat.
    "There goes our only snitch," Blancanales
said.
    Lyons nodded. "Yeah, but I think we already
had everything he knew about the Eliminators."
He looped the Atchisson back around his neck
and looked down at the ground. The front room
of the apartment was in total chaos. Broken fur-
niture, glass from lamps, stuffing from the chairs
and papers of every kind littered the squalid car-
pet. "Okay, Pol," Lyons said, "we're running on
borrowed time. Somebody's bound to have called
the cops. Start sifting through this mess for any-
thing that looks like it might be a lead. I'll start
in the back."
    Lyons moved through the kitchen into the bed-
room. Starting on the left side of the room, the
former detective systematically searched every
nook and cranny in the disheveled cubicle. He
found nothing of interest until he came to the
closet.
    Opening the door, he looked down to see three
wooden crates. Bobby the Deuce had made no




attempt to hide the two boxes of single-shot pis-
tols or the third crate of .45 imitations. Lyons was
about to call Blancanales when he heard the
phone in the living room ring.
    The Able leader reached the front room just as
Blancanales picked up the receiver. "Yeah?" Pol
said.
    There was a brief pause, then he said, "He
can't talk," adopting a strong Brooklyn accent.
After another pause, Biancanales said, "Why?
'Cause the Deuce is fuckin' dead, man, that's
why. Stupid fuck ODed." Silence fell over the
apartment once more as the Able Team com-
mando listened to whatever was being said at the
other end of the line.
    "Yeah, I got 'em. You want 'em, you gotta
deal with me...yeah, yeah...okay. See you
there."
    He hung up and turned to Lyons. "Biker gang
called the Road Kills. Ever heard of them?"
  Lyons nodded. "Small club, but up-and-
coming. Vicious."
    "Anyway, it sounds like they were supposed to
buy Eliminators from the Falcons. Guy I talked
to called himself Turtle. He's willing to deal with
me. Think they might know anything that would
help us?"
    Lyons shrugged. "I doubt it. Sounds like it's
Bobby the Deuce who had the Eliminator con-

nection, and the throttle jockeys are just custom-
ers." He paused, then shrugged again. "But we
might as well give it a try--unless we want to
hunt up the rest of the Falcons. And I doubt they
know any more than we do." He glanced at
Bobby the Deuce lying dead on the floor. "We've
hit a dead end here."
    Blancanales stooped, found a clean green Fal-
con jacket next to one of the chairs and picked it
up. "Think we can get Cowboy to send us some
of the sample guns that're been coming in so we
can do the deal?"
    Lyons shook his head. "We won't need to."
He led Blancanales into the bedroom to the closet.
    As they started to lift the crates, Schwarz came
back in from the hall.
  "Any problems?" Lyons asked.
    Schwarz lowered his gaze to the floor. "One
casualty."
    Lyons felt as if he'd just swallowed a ten-
pound rock. It was the nightmare that all of the
men operating out of Stony Man Farm constantly
lived with--that they would someday be respon-
sible for the death of an innocent citizen who hap-
pened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
He and Blancanales followed their teammate out
through the living room and into the apartment
directly across the hall.
  Schwarz pointed to a corpse in the middle of




the living-room floor, then suddenly his "face of
shame" relaxed into a grin. The man had been
shooting up with what looked to be heroin when
death had claimed him. His arm was still tied off
with a bandanna. A dirty spoon, a syringe and
other drug paraphernalia littered the carpet next
to him. The stray bullet had taken him in the left
temple.
    And he still wore a bright green jacket with a
swooping falcon on the back.
    "The Lord do work in mysterious ways," Pol
intoned.
    Lyons gave Schwarz a stem look, then led the
way back across the hall. "You're a barrel of
laughs today, Gadgets," he said humorlessly.
"But if you think you can stop rehearsing your
comedy routine for a little while, I'd like to get
the crates out of the closet and down to the van
before the cops show up."
    Footsteps sounded on the steps in the hallway.
Schwarz stuck his head outside for a second, then
pulled it back in. "Looks like we're a little late
for that."
    Lyons blew air through his clenched teeth.
"Pol, this kind of situation is your specialty," he
said. "Handle it." He turned to Gadgets. "Help
me load the weapons."
    Blancanales was pulling his Justice ID out of
one of the slit pockets of his blacksuit when

Lyons led Schwarz into the bedroom. They found
a dolly in the closet next to the crates and loaded
them, one on top of the other, into the rack. Both
men reached into pockets of their blacksuits, pro-
duced their own Department of Justice credentials
and clipped them to their chests before wheeling
the crates out.
    Blancanales was talking to four blue-suited
NYPD officers when they hit the living room.
With his own ID on the upper left breast of his
blacksuit, he looked like he could be a member
of any SWAT team, local or federal, in the coun-
try.
    "Yeah," a young officer said, "now I remem-
ber seeing you guys. With Sergeant Waters,
right?"
    Blancanales glanced at Lyons. He had no
choice but to agree. "Yeah. Waters," he said.
    "What's in the crates?" a middle-aged ser-
geant with a beer belly asked as Lyons and
Schwarz stopped in front of the door.
    "Evidence," Lyons said. "Sorry, we aren't at
liberty to divulge what it is just yet."
    The sergeant scowled with the jealous anger
many local cops had for Feds, but it didn't make
any difference.
    "Look, guys," Blancanales said, "this is an
ongoing investigation. We've got to get to the
next stop before word leaks out about what hap-




pened here." He robbed his chin as if in deep
thought. "How about we stop by your office later
today and give you our reports?"
    The middle-aged sergeant nodded, but he didn't
like it. "Okay. We'll seal off the scene and call
in the lab techs. We can contact you through Wa-
ters if we need to?"
    Biancahales glanced at Lyons again before he
said, "Sure."
    Lyons made a mental note to call Hal Brognola.
After he, Schwarz and Blancanales left in a few
moments, the four officers standing in front of
them now weren't likely to ever see the men of
Able Team again. Elmo Waters would be taking
the heat over it unless Brognola, through his po-
sition at the Justice Department, intervened.
    Which he would. Waters was a Stony Man
blacksuit graduate, and the Farm looked after their
own.
    "Coming through," Lyons said, then pushed
the dolly across the threshold as the cops moved
away from the door. The elevator was broken, so
he and Pol lifted the dolly into the air and carted
it down the four flights of steps. They loaded the
crates into the back of the van and got in.
    "I didn't get a chance to ask you," Lyons said
as he pulled the van away from the curb. "You
find anything of interest in the living room?"
  "Yeah." Blancanales grinned as he pulled out

a slip of paper from a pocket and held it where
Lyons could see it.
    As he turned a comer, the Able Team leader
looked down to see the stub from a welfare check.
    "These things were all over the place," Blan-
canales said. "All the Falcons were on the dole."
He grinned as he settled back into the passengers'
seat. "Never let it be said that the men of Able
Team don't do their fair share for welfare re-
fo[-n,-i.~




CHAPTER SIX

Toky~ Japan

Although the Executioner looked at most things a
little differently than the rest of the world, his first
impression of Tokyo was always similar to any
other human being's. A city swarming with peo-
ple and automobiles traveling bumper to bumper
at maniacal speeds, it was a concrete jungle that
seemed to extend forever.
    Dressed in a conservative blue pin-striped busi-
ness suit that hid the Beretta under his arm, the
laser-equipped Glock on his fight hip where the
Desert Eagle usually rode, and the Applegate
Combat Folder in the horizontal sheath on his
belt, Mack Bolan stood more than a head taller
than anyone else in Shinoku Station as he made
his way through the pushing and shoving horde
toward the open doors of the subway train.
    As luck would have it, Grimaldi had touched
down just in time for Bolan to get caught up in

the breakneck morning scramble from the suburbs
to the offices. Like the rest of the men and women
chatting in Japanese and other languages, he
moved with the flow of the crowd, being pro-
pelled sometimes right, sometimes left, as the hu-
man tidal wave gradually swelled toward the sub-
way train.
    Bolan got through the doors, found a tiny cor-
ner to squeeze into and reached overhead to grab
a strap as the throng continued to jam into the car.
When the train finally looked like a college fra-
temity's attempt to set the record for the number
of people in a phone booth, the doors closed while
the unfortunates who hadn't boarded pounded the
windows and howled curses.
    Bolan shook his head. Anyone who still re-
garded the Japanese as terminally formal and po-
lite had never been to Shinoku, he mused as the
train took off.
    The Executioner swayed with the rhythm of the
train as it moved along the tracks. He had called
Stony Man Farm again before leaving Tokyo's
Narita International Airport and learned that
Kurtzman was still searching for the manufacturer
of the steel used in the Eliminators. Tokaido,
however, had matched the kanji character to the
logo used on the boxes of the Takahata Box, Crate
and Container Company. With a clear-cut desti-
nation now, Bolan had used a taxi to get him from




the airport to the station, a little over an hour from
Narita.
    The train finally came to a stop, and Bolan let
himself be pushed through the doors to the plat-
form. The situation at Ueno Station, the city's
third-largest and located just northeast of the
Imperial Palace, was hardly less crowded. The
boarding spot for all trains headed for northern
Japan, and the disembarkment point for the cul-
tural and natural attraction center of Ueno Park,
it looked like a human ant-farm gone wild. Out-
side the station, men wearing thousand-dollar
suits and carrying computers that sold for five
times that much behaved like common street ruf-
fians in their battles to outmaneuver each other
for taxis.
    The last cab was pulling away when the Exe-
cutioner exited the station. The only transport left
was one of Tokyo's famous luxury haiya--or
"hire"--cars, and he slipped into the back seat.
The driver, dressed immaculately in a Western
chauffeur's suit and cap, took off as soon as Bolan
gave him the address.
    The industrial area of Koto Ward sat southeast
of Asakusa near the Sumida River. They crossed
the Komagata Bridge, then passed the Kiyosumi
Garden before finally coming abreast of a huge
manufacturing building. The sign atop the struc-

ture was in both kanji and English. It read
Takahata.
    The driver drove on, stopping two blocks far-
ther down at the address the Executioner had
given him. The haiya car drivers were known to
be not only more careful and polite than Japanese
cabbies, but they also kept immaculate records of
their fares. If any violence broke out at the crate
manufacturer's, Bolan didn't want the police trac-
ing him back to the scene. He paid the driver and
got out, finding himself in front of a textile fac-
tory.
    Bolan waited until the car was lost in heavy
traffic again before turning and heading back in
the direction from which they'd just come. He
walked briskly, imitating the fast, on-the-way-to-
do-important-business pace of everyone else in
Tokyo. He slowed slightly as he reached the front
of the box company, eyeballing the strengths and
weaknesses of the building and mentally noting
soft targets of entry, as well as potential escape
routes. The offices looked to be in the front of the
building, and the actual manufacturing plant in the
Fear.

    Bolan mounted the steps, then entered the front
door and found himself in a reception area. Barely
visible above a sea of computer terminals, adding
machines, electric typewriters and other office




equipment, a petite Japanese woman with jet
black hair sat behind a semicircular desk.
    Bolan walked up to a break in the electronic
forest and smiled. "O-hayo gozaimasu," he said.
"English?"
    The woman smiled, exhibiting a perfect row of
white teeth. "Only what I learned at Brown," she
said, giggling, "but I think you'll be able to un-
derstand me. And good morning to you. May I
help you?"
    The Executioner reached into the handkerchief
pocket of his suit coat and pulled out a business
card he had found in the stack kept aboard the
Stony Man Learjet. He handed it to the woman
and said, "Morris Hart, Matthews Import and Ex-
port, Los Angeles and Tokyo."
    The woman barely glanced at the card. "Yes,
Mr. Hart. And how can I be of service?"
    "We're looking for a new container com-
pany," the Executioner said. "I'd like to speak to
someone about setting up an account."
    The woman's expression hardened ever so
slightly. "Do you have an appointment, Mr.
Hart?"
    "No. I'm sorry. The fact is, I'm in Tokyo on
other business and just happened to pass by here
in a cab yesterday. Had a little spare time today
and thought I'd check things out. You know, do

a little extra for the company. Go the extra mile
and get a few feathers in my cap, so to speak."
    "Yes, I understand." The woman turned to her
side, partially hidden behind a computer monitor,
and Bolan heard a click.
    "Ohara-san," her voice said, then she spoke
rapidly in Japanese. After several verbal ex-
changes, she pushed the button again and turned
back to Bolan.
    "I am sorry," she said, "but the man to whom
you should speak will be busy until tomorrow. Is
it possible you could--?"
    The woman was interrupted by a slender Orien-
tal man who entered the reception area from a side
door. In an agitated condition, he immediately
calmed when he saw Bolan. "Excuse me," he
said, bowing slightly as he stepped up next to the
Executioner. "I do not mean to interrupt. But we
are encountering a minor emergency in the label-
ing section. Would you mind if I spoke with
Yoshiko? It will only take a moment."
    "Of course not." Bolan smiled like any other
pleasant business rep trying to con his way into a
meeting without an appointment.
    The slender man was dressed in chocolate
brown slacks and a white shirt with an open col-
lar. His sleeves had been rolled up to a point just
below the elbow. He leaned forward, placed both
hands on the edge of the circular desk in front of




the receptionist and spoke in a hushed tone. As
he did, the sleeve on his left arm rode up slightly
higher.
    Again Bolan couldn't understand the words.
But the quick glance the woman called Yoshiko
shot his way before shaking her head made him
certain the man had just asked if the foreigner
spoke Japanese.
    The two conversed for a few moments, then
Yoshiko nodded, pressed the intercom button
again and spoke while the man hurried back out
the way he'd come. A moment later the woman
turned back to the Executioner. "Please forgive
our rudeness," she said. "As I was about to say,
is it possible that you could return at three to-
morrow afternoon?"
    "Certainly," Bolan said. "And thank you very
much." He turned, walked out of the building and
down the steps.
    The salesman smile faded from Bolan's face as
he turned and started along the sidewalk once
more. He wouldn't return the next day; he would
return that night. The time for con jobs was over,
and it was time for an after-hours soft probe of
the Takahata Box, Crate and Container Company.
    He no longer doubted he was at the right place.
He might have seen only the lower half of the
tattoo on the forearm beneath the rolled-up sleeve,
but that had been enough.

  He had seen the tattoo many times before.
    It was the mark of the Yakuza, the Japanese
Mafia.

The Caribbean

COLONEL HAROLD MADDOX could remember an
old expression his first-grade teacher used to use:
"When you're angry, the poison flows all through
your body."
    Right now, Maddox knew, if he bit anyone
they'd die faster than if they'd been struck by a
cobra.
    He turned away from the stack of newspapers
on his desk and looked out the window. In the
early-morning sun just beginning to rise over the
Caribbean, two dozen men were wheeling crates
across the ramp from the dock to one of his cargo
ships. The crates contained the last shipment of
his single-shot pistols. He had phased them out to
provide tooling and manpower for the more elab-
orate weapons--the .45 clone and the new sub-
machine grease guns. The ship would stop to
off-load in Miami, New Orleans and finally
Houston before it made its way back to Mad Dog
Island to take on more freight.
    The order was the biggest he'd received yet. It
had come in through his front man in the U.S. the




week before, during the height of the newspaper
publicity the Eliminator had been getting.
    The former Army colonel turned back to the
newspapers. New stories filled the front pages.
Opinions on issues other than the Eliminator and
his guns had invaded the editorial columns. The
only story relating to him in any of the rags on
his desk was the brief account of some damn fool
who had committed suicide with one of the sin-
gle-shots.
    Maddox pulled a cigar from the humidor and
took his time lighting it. Perhaps Andy Warhol's
prediction had been right, he thought. Considering
the capabilities of the new information age, every-
one would be famous, but only for fifteen
minutes.
    The phone buzzer next to the papers sounded.
Maddox lifted the receiver to his ear and listened.
"Yes, Gladwyn," he said a second later, "send
him in."
    The door opened and Randolph Staggs walked
into the office. "Good morning, Colonel."
    "Good morning." Maddox waved at the chairs
in front of his desk. "Have any trouble last
night?"
    Staggs took a seat and shook his head. "I
waited until after the men were all in the barracks.
The tide was still going out?' He chuckled and
glanced at his watch. "Right about now, anything

the sharks didn't get of Donaids ought to be wash-
ing up on shore in Panama or Costa Rica."
    "Very good." Reaching into the humidor
again, he said, "Cigar?" He had never offered
any of his expensive Cubans to his men before,
and he saw the look of surprise register on
Staggs's face.
    "Why...sure, Colonel. Thanks." Staggs leaned
forward and accepted the long Churchill cigar and
a lighter.
    Maddox tried not to smile when Staggs !it the
cigar exactly the way he would have predicted.
Rather than light it slowly and evenly like any
man who appreciated fine tobacco, Staggs bit off
the end, stuck it in his mouth and held the flame
directly against the end. As the cigar began to
bum, he would get runners going down the sides
that would rain the evenness of the smoke.
    When Staggs was puffing away like the smoke
stack on a freight train, Maddox said, "Have you
seen Morrison since we met here yesterday after-
noon?"
    Staggs shook his head. "No, but there's noth-
ing unusual about that. When he's not working,
he just disappears into the trees. I know he's good
at what he does, but I got to tell you, Colonel,
that man's strange with a capital S."
    Maddox laughed. "You understate, my dear
boy. You could capitalize all of the letters of that




word, and it would still not come close to doing
justice to our Native American friend."
    "Well, anyway," Staggs said, letting smoke
curl from the comer of his mouth, "he gives me
the creeps."
    Eerily, almost as if Shawnee Morrison had
heard them talking about him, the phone buzzed
again. Maddox gave the go-ahead to Gladwyn,
and a moment later the man walked in and took
a seat next to Staggs. Morrison wore his blue
jeans tucked into high-topped moccasins con-
stmcted of thick black leather. The medicine bag
hung around his neck under the collar of a faded
work shin. No weapons were visible.
    But Maddox knew they were hidden all over
his body.
    As usual Morrison seemed to feel no compul-
sion to speak.
    "I take it all went well with you, too?" Mad-
dox said.
    Morrison nodded. "Denard's body will not be
found."
      "Good. I'm afraid I have some rather bad
news," he said. "Our friend Donaids is dead."
  Morrison's expression didn't change.
  Sometimes Maddox found the Indian's detach-
  ment intriguing, other times, like now, it became
  annoying. "You don't seem surprised."

      Morrison shook his head. "I knew you had
killed him."  "What?"
    "I knew you had killed him," Morrison re-
peated. "Then Staggs dragged him to the south
side of the island and let him go out with the
tide."
    "You saw that?" Maddox asked angrily. If
Staggs had been careless enough that Morrison
had witnessed his actions, some of the workers
might have seen it, as well. The last thing he
needed right now was some half-assed peasant
uprising ....
    "No," Morrison said, "I saw blood in the sand
and tracks."
    He turned to Staggs and said, "You wrapped
your arms under Donalds's chest from the back,
then you walked backward, dragging him into the
sea."
    Maddox looked to Staggs, who shrugged, then
nodded.
    Turning back to Morrison, Maddox took a puff
on his cigar and said, "How do you know it was
me who killed him? And how do you know it was
Staggs who dumped him in the ocean?"
    "He wasn't killed on the beach. Not enough
blood."
  "That doesn't answer my question."
  "And I recognized the imprints of Staggs's




boots. I know how Donalds was carried because
his heels dug into the sand while Staggs dragged
him. They made furrows all the way to the wa-
ter."
    "That still doesn't tell me why you think 1
killed him and not Staggs."
    Morrison shrugged slightly, his first movement
since sitting down. "Why would Staggs kill him
somewhere else, knowing he would have to trans-
port the body all that way?" he asked. "He could
have easily persuaded Donaids to go down to the
beach on some pretense, killed him there and
saved himself a lot of trouble. And he wouldn't
have risked one of the men seeing him with the
body." He stopped talking for a moment, then
added, "Which means you did it. Probably in a
moment of anger. If you hadn't lost your temper,
you'd have had Staggs do it."
    "Hot damn," Staggs said, shaking his head in
genuine amazement. "Colonel, we got us a reg-
ular Sherlock Holmes here."
    Maddox lifted his humidor and held it out to-
ward Morrison. "Take two," he offered.
    Morrison took four and stuffed them into the
pocket of his work shirt.
    Maddox set the humidor back on his desk.
"Donaids was working with Denard."
    Morrison looked him impassively in the eye.
"No, he wasn't."

    The colonel returned the stare. Out of anyone
else, it would have appeared to be insolence. But
Maddox knew it was just Morrison's way.
"Okay, tell me why you think that."
    "Because before I killed him, I asked Denard
if anyone else on the island was working with
him. He said no."
    Staggs snickered. "And you don't think he
could have lied to you?" he asked.
    Morrison turned to face the man. "No," he
said. "I don't. I'm known to be very persuasive
when I question a man."
    "Go ahead," Maddox prompted. "Finish the
story."
    "Denard told me that by coincidence Donaids
had been his college roommate. He had recog-
nized the man immediately but didn't think Don-
alds remembered him. He thought it better, under
the circumstances, to leave it that way."
    "And you're sure he was telling the truth?"
Maddox asked.
    The man's indifferent face suddenly stretched
into an enormous, toothy, almost profane smile.
His eyes glowed like fiery embers of charcoal as
he leaned forward. "Colonel," Morrison said,
"by that time, there wasn't enough left of the man
to lie."
 Then, even faster than it had appeared, the


smile was gone and the apathetic expression fell
over Morrison's face once more.
    The sudden passion, after all the months of
watching the man deadpan his way through events
so gruesome most men would have vomited, sent
a sudden chill down Maddox's back. He looked
at Staggs out of the comer of his eye and saw that
Morrison had produced the same result in him.
    Suddenly Maddox realized for the first time just
what an elaborate and efficient killing machine he
had on his hands.
    And at the same time, he realized what Ran-
dolph Staggs had meant when he'd said that Wil-
liam "Shawnee" Morrison gave him the creeps.

New York City

CARL LYONS HAD DEALT with outlaw bikers ever
since his first day as a rookie Los Angeles pa-
trolman. The radio had advised of a disturbance
at a residence in south L.A., and he and his part-
ner had quieted the ruckus between a Satan's
Saint and the man's slovenly, needle-tracked wife
without violence.
    But Lyons had left the scene with a definite
distaste for the dirty, long-haired man dressed in
foul-smelling leather and denim. And it was a first
impression that had stayed with him, and been
reinforced, ever since.

    Night had fallen by the time Able Team pulled
into the parking lot of Miss Carriage's Public
Tavern just off Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. At
least two dozen Harley-Davidsons were lined up
in front of the door, with more in the parking area
to the side of the brick building.
    Lyons, behind the wheel of the van, shook his
head. One thing you had to give the biker rogues
of America, he thought--they were patriotic.
There wasn't a Japanese motorcycle or a machine
from any other country parked on the premises.
    The Able Team leader looked up at the flashing
sign atop the one-story frame structure. It showed
a cartoon mouse dressed in biker regalia seated at
a table. One moment the mouse would be sitting
there in front of a frothing mug of beer. Then the
sign would go dark, and when it reappeared the
rodent's head would be tipped back with the mug
to its lips. Then the minidrama would begin all
over again.
    "Cute," Blancanales said from the shotgun
seat. "Very cute."
    "Not to mention classy," Schwarz said behind
him.
    Lyons tumed in his seat so he could see both
men. Like himself, they wore blue jeans and Fal-
con jackets they had taken from Bobby the
Deuce's apartment. Their weapons were hidden
beneath the green nylon.




    "It occurs to me," Schwarz said, "that we
could have trouble in this little hellhole."
    "The idea had crossed my mind," Lyons told
him.
"We taking the Calicos?" Blancanales asked.
Lyons pondered the idea for a moment. The
submachine pistols were far too large to be hidden
beneath the waist-length Falcon jackets. Maybe
the Falcons themselves would abandon their col-
ors in a situation like this in order to carry heavy
artillery, but Lyons's gut level feeling was that
Able Team needed the props to be convincing.
He, Blancanales and Schwarz were all older than
the average Falcon, and none of them had had
time to get filthy enough to look the part. Maybe
there was a way to compromise.
    "Gadgets," the Able Team leader said, "slip
into your subgun and throw one of the trench
coats over the top. Make sure the green jacket can
still be seen underneath. You'll be our backup.
Pol and I will have to make do with side arms."
    Schwarz slid his arms into the nylon harness
and then the sleeves of his black trenchcoat. He
left the longer coat unbuttoned, with the green
lapels of the jacket below on display in the gap.
    Lyons, Schwarz and Blancanales exited the van
and started toward the front door of the bar.
"Nothing like walking right into the mouth of the
lion to wake you up," Blancanales said.

"Beats a double espresso any day," Schwarz
agreed.
    Lyons jerked open the door and led the way
inside. He stopped five feet inside the tavern and
surveyed the interior of Miss Carriage's as his
eyes grew accustomed to the lighting.
    The repugnant stench of cigarette and mari-
juana smoke, mixed with stale beer and body
odor, filled the Able Team leader's sinuses. Just
to his right was a series of pinball machines and
video games, complete with the sounds of buzz-
ers, bells and the explosions of planets blowing
up on-screen. A long wooden bar started ten feet
in front of him, running almost the entire length
of the room. It stopped twenty feet from the back
wall, where several green-felted tables stood. Tat-
tooed men in Road Kill colors with loud voices
moved about the tables drinking beer as they shot
pool.
    One man, a fat-faced character with a scraggly
beard, sat by himself in a comer. Lyons eyed him
briefly, guessing him to be a mental case. His ex-
pression kept changing from one of delight to one
of pain. Occasionally he closed his eyes and
grunted.
    Biker gangs had been known to occasionally
adopt retarded or mentally ill people, treating
them much like mascots, and Lyons wondered if
this might be the case here.




    Lyons led his teammates up to the bar and or-
dered three beers. They had just arrived when a
clean-shaved biker stood up from one of the tables
and walked forward. He had the massive shoul-
ders and chest of an Olympic weight lifter, which
threatened to rip his cutoff jean jacket down the
back. But unlike most serious muscle men, a long
thin neck led from the muscle up to an undersized
head. He stopped two feet in front of Lyons and
smiled, displaying a row of teeth that should have
been used in all grade-school hygiene classes as
an example of what happens to those who don't
brush.
  "You must be Turtle," Lyons said.
The man frowned. "How'd you know?"
Lyons looked at the head, neck and shoulders
again. He got the definite feeling that Turtle might
just have the ability to pull his head down and
make it disappear somewhere inside the overde-
veloped trapezius muscles. "Lucky guess," the
Able Team leader said.
    "What happened to the Deuce?" the biker
asked.
    "My man here told you this afternoon," Lyons
said. "OD."
    Turtle nodded. "Too bad. We don't care too
much for you street-walkers, but the Deuce had
some damn fine connections."
  "Yeah, well, we can eulogize him for a while

if you want," Lyons said. "Maybe get a minister
in here or somebody to sing 'Amazing Grace.'
But I'd just as soon get our business done and go
out and 'street-walk' some more. You see, we
don't think too much of you bastards, either."
      A wicked smile came over Turtle's face. "You
got the guns, tough guy?"  "I got the guns."
  "Good. We'll take them."
    "You got the money?" Lyons had no idea
what price Turtle and Bobby the Deuce had
agreed upon, or how many of the guns in the van
were supposed to go to the Road Kills. But it
didn't matter. He didn't plan to let the deal get
that far.
As it turned out, Turtle had the same idea.
Two hulking bikers suddenly appeared at
Turtle's sides. Both men were well over six feet
tall, and each had to weigh more than three hun-
dred pounds. Their smiles were almost as evil as
Turtle' s.
    "I asked you if you had the money," Lyons
repeated.
    The taller of the two bearded hulks leaned for-
ward slightly and smiled. Breath from hell hit the
men of Able Team in the face as he said, "No,
we don't have the fuckin' money. But we don't
need any, neither."
 Turtle turned partially, giving Lyons a view be-




hind him again for a moment. The Road Kill
leader pursed his lips and whistled. All of the bik-
ers at the tables stood and began to close in on
the bar.
    Turtle showed Lyons his cavity-ridden teeth
and rotting gums again. "Before we kill you and
take your guns," he said, "you want to know
why?"
    Lyons glanced at his watch. "We've got an-
other stop to make tonight so make it brief."
    "Like I said," Turtle went on. "Bobby the
Deuce was a good connection. But I know for a
fact that none of the other Falcons had any idea
where the Eliminators were coming from. So with
Bobby dead, the connection dies, too." An Elim-
inator .45 semiauto suddenly appeared in his
hand. "We, on the other hand, do have another
Eliminator connection. Not as convenient as the
Deuce, maybe, but one where we can score when
we need to. And with Bobby dead, that leaves no
reason in hell why we shouldn't just rip you off
of this last load of bang-bangs and go do business
with our other friend."
    Turtle reached out and jammed the gun into
Lyon's forehead.
    The big ex-cop didn't hesitate. With a light-
ninglike movement, he reached up and snatched
the weapon out of the man's hand. Turtle's face

turned to one of total astonishment, and for a mo-
ment no one moved.
  Then other guns began to come out.
    Lyons spun the Eliminator in his hand and
pumped two rounds into Turtle's belly. He had
already turned the stamped-out .45 to the biker on
the right before the Road Kill leader hit the
ground. Another duo of .45s blasted from the
Eliminator's barrel, both entering just under the
giant's chin and traveling up into his brain.
    Next to him, Lyons sensed movement and
knew Schwarz and Blancanales were drawing
their weapons. Screams filled the room as the
biker mamas ran for the doors. The Able Team
let them go.
    Lyons swung the Eliminator to where Turtle
had stood only a second before, shooting the last
three rounds in the cheap gun into the other giant
hiker's chest.
    Beside him, he heard the sound of Blancana-
les's Beretta 92 and the full-auto staccato of
Schwarz's Calico. The explosions of other weap-
ons around the room threatened to deafen him as
two bullets whizzed past at belt level and drilled
through the wooden bar to his rear.
    Lyons heard a scream behind him and knew
that the bartender had been hit.
    The Able Team leader had drawn the Colt Py-
thon with his left hand as he pulled the Elimina-




tor's trigger the final time. He wasted no time
switching hands as the .45 fell from the fingers
of his right. Shooting !eft-handed, he double-
actioned two 125-grain semijacketed hollowpoint
rounds toward a Road Kill biker wearing a black
eye patch and gold earring. The man-stopper
rounds found their target, and the quasipirate
slumped to the floor.
    A one-armed biker four steps from Lyons
turned a stainless-steel S&W Model 66 his way.
The man got off one round that sped past the Able
Team leader's ear and into the mirror over the bar
before Lyons double-tapped him with Magnum
bullets. The first .357 round shot into the biker's
throat, severing the carotid artery and sending a
spray of crimson jetting forth. The second round
fell lower, penetrating a heart already emptying
of blood.
    Out of the comer of his eye, Lyons watched
two men drop to Blancanales's Beretta, then saw
four more hit the floor after Schwarz had sprayed
them with a figure eight of 9 nun rounds.
    The Able Team leader turned his attention to a
biker in his late teens. The man's face was a com-
bination of ripe acne and the scars of pimples
come and gone. He aimed what looked like a
Charter Arms Bulldog .44 Special at the bar.
    Lyons drew the sound-suppressed Government
Model pistol from shoulder leather as he double-

actioned the Python dry. The last two .357 Mag-
num rounds both hit the X-ring in the pimple-
faced biker's chest, throwing him backward to the
floor. By the time a tall thin Road Kill biker with
long, blond, Vikinglike hair had turned the
Browning Hi-Power in his hand Lyons's way, the
Able Team leader had thumbed the manual safety
down on the Colt and had the sights on his ster-
num.
    The sound-suppressed pistol coughed, almost
seeming silent compared to the Magnum roar of
Lyons's Python. The round hit the bull's-eye, and
the Viking went limp, dropping his Browning and
slithering to the floor like a dying viper.
    Lyons turned, seeing Blancanales drop a man
firing a Star semiauto. Schwarz cut loose with an-
other burst from his Calico, and two more bikers'
lives came to an abrupt halt. The Able Team
leader swung his Government Model back and
forth across the room, searching for targets, but
none remained.
    As the roar in Lyons's ears began to die down,
he heard Schwarz's voice. "Lady luck isn't smil-
ing on us these days, Ironman. Again we've got
nobody who can talk."
    Lyons's gaze moved back to the retarded man
at the comer table. The man had remained de-
tached throughout the firefight and hadn't made a
move toward Able Team. It wasn't likely that he




even knew his own name, let alone anything
about the Eliminators.
    Then, suddenly, the man let out a scream, fol-
lowed by a low guttural groan. His face relaxed,
his shoulders slumped and he closed his eyes.
    Lyons started toward him, the Government
Model leading the way. He was three feet from
the man's table when the guy looked up.
    His gaze moved over the bodies littering the
floor, and he shook his head in disbelief. "Who
the hell are you? What's going on?"
    Before Lyons could comment, a pair of
denim-clad buttocks appeared at the side of the
table. Next came the red-splotched skin of a bare
back wearing a short orange tube top. Finally a
face wearing far too much makeup looked up at
Carl Lyons.
    The woman crawled the rest of the way out
from beneath the table and ran a hand across her
chin as she rose to her feet.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Londonderry, Northern Ireland

Gary Manning watched T. J. Hawkins get out of
the minivan dressed like an American college stu-
dent and walk toward Damon O'Keefe's house as
the rest of Phoenix Force got out and moved to
the rear of the vehicle.
    Manning opened the swing-out door and
reached in, handing a Heckler & Koch MP-5 sub-
gun to Felix O'Pmnty and the other members of
the team. He started to take one of the German
submachine guns for himself, thought a moment,
then decided on the Winchester Model 1200 riot
gun instead. He dug through an equipment box
until he came to a nylon belt with shell loops. The
loops were filled with 12-gauge rounds that would
be devastating at the close fighting range they
were about to encounter. The big Canadian looped
the belt over his head.
  A moment later Phoenix Force and O'Prunty




were jogging toward the intersecting street at the
side of the block that would lead to the alley be-
hind the O'Keefes' house. Manning's eyes fell on
the MI-6 man as they ran. The Irish operative was
a good man, but Manning could see that the com-
bination of whiskey, inactivity and age were be-
ginning to take their toll. O'Pmnty was huffing
and puffing furiously after the first half block
while the men from Stony Man Farm were not
yet even into their stride.
    Hawkins disappeared as they made the turn,
and Manning fell in behind McCarter. They en-
tered the alley, and a dog began to bark. The
Briton motioned for an immediate halt and turned
to Manning. "Gary, go ahead and take care of
that."
    Manning handed McCarter the riot gun and
hurried forward, seeing a small hairless form jerk-
ing spasmodically just behind the chain-link fence
in the backyard next to the O'Keefes' house. He
ran forward, vaulted the fence and reached into
his pocket at the same time.
    The Chihuahua was too startled to move as the
big Canadian reached down and grabbed him un-
der the belly, sweeping him off his feet. The
shock didn't last long, however, and the dog sud-
denly howled in fear.
  Manning plunged the syringe through the short

fur covering the dog's body. A second later the
yapping little dog was sleeping soundly.
    The big Canadian laid the dog gently on the
ground, then climbed back over the fence and
joined the others at the mouth of the alley again.
They gave it another thirty seconds to make sure
no one would come out of the houses to check on
the Chihuahua, then moved on to the rear of Da-
mon O'Keefe's house. Manning followed Mc-
Carter to the back door with James, Encizo and
O'Prunty right behind.
    What they found they hadn't counted on. A
glassed-in porch had been built along the entire
width of the rear of the dwelling. Through the
glass they could see potted and hanging plants, an
iron patio table and chairs and the door leading
into the house. The storm door to the porch was
propped open with a brick, but the screen door in
front of it was closed. McCarter tried the latch,
which was locked. It would be easy enough to
penetrate but there was no way they'd be able to
hear Hawkins knock on the front door from in-
side.
    McCarter stopped them again. "Cal," he whis-
pered, "stay outside and motion to us when you
hear T.J. knock and the door opens."
    James nodded as McCarter turned back to the
porch door. He unclipped his Spyderco Military




Model knife from his belt and sliced through the
screen, reached through and opened the door.
    A moment later McCarter, Manning and Encizo
stood at the rear door of the house, watching
James. The seconds clicked away, then James
held up his hand and punched it forward in the
air, indicating that Hawkins had knocked. A few
more seconds went by, then the black Phoenix
Force warrior reached forward in front of his belt,
grasped the knob of an imaginary door and jerked
it open.
    McCarter kicked. Wood splintered and steel
screeched against steel as the lower hinge broke
and the door swung awkwardly open on the top
joint. Manning waited during the split second it
took his teammate to follow his kick, then, shot-
gun at the ready, he followed the Phoenix Force
leader into the house. Behind him he could hear
Encizo.
    The Phoenix Force warriors found themselves
in a hall leading toward the front of the house. At
the end they could see the kitchen and, through
the tiny patch of visibility created by a slightly
offset door, the commotion that was just begin-
ning in the living room.
    Two doors were set in the wall off the hallway
before the kitchen, one on the right, the other on
the left. Ahead of Manning, McCarter went left,

ducking into what the big Canadian assumed was
a rear bedroom.
    Manning took the right door, speeding into the
room low and racking the pump gun's slide at the
same time. He found an empty bed, dresser and
chest of drawers. Spotting the walls were news-
paper clippings, which he assumed related to IRA
activities.
    McCarter's voice boomed from the bedroom
across the hall as Manning exited the room again.
But the Briton's voice didn't sound like he'd been
hurt, and Manning didn't have time fight now to
find out what it was all about.
    By the time he reached the kitchen, Encizo was
already there. Manning stepped off the hall carpet
onto the white tile just in time to see an IRA ter-
rorist bolt through the door from the living room,
a British Webley revolver clutched in his right
hand.
  But he never got a chance to use it.
    Encizo stitched him groin to throat with a
full-auto spray of 9 mm rounds. Bullets blasted
through the wall between the kitchen and living
room just above Manning's head. Holes appeared
in the wallboard, and white dust filled the air. The
big Canadian ducked lower, coming up alongside
Encizo. They moved cautiously on to the door-
way, seeing men rushing back and forth through
the opening, some with weapons already in hand,




others making mad dashes toward guns scattered
across the living room.
    Manning knelt next to the doorway and risked
one eye around the comer. He saw Hawkins blast-
ing away in the door leading to the front porch
and wondered what had gone wrong. Hawkins,
who might have been Phoenix Force's newest
member, had nonetheless proved his fighting abil-
ity and judgment dozens of times since coming to
Stony Man Farm. He wouldn't have disobeyed
McCarter's orders without a good reason.
    Manning picked out a man wearing a black
T-shirt. The sleeves had been rolled up, and a
package of cigarettes was gripped in the cuff. The
IRA terrorist had just reached an AK-47 leaning
against the wall by the television set. Manning
pumped a round of double-aught 12-gauge buck-
shot into his back, taking him down.
    Encizo opened up with a series of 3-round
bursts from his H&K. Manning pumped the slide
of the Winchester, the sound drowned out by the
louder roar of gunfire. Encizo stood on the other
side of the door, and as Manning prepped the scat-
tergun for a second shot, he saw the little Cuban
take out a shooter with a flopping handlebar mus-
tache.
    The 12-gauge ready again, Manning swung the
front bead sight toward an IRA gunner with long
wavy hair. But before he could pull the trigger,

Hawkins dropped the man with a double-tap from
his Beretta.
    Manning heard glass crash at the side of the
room and swung the shotgun in that direction. He
came close to shooting Calvin James, who had
evidently circled the house on the outside and
now jabbed the barrel of his MP-5 through the
window. James opened up on full-auto, making
an IRA terrorist wearing a Dallas Cowboys foot-
ball jersey jerk in a dance of death.
    Next to the cavorting football fan, another of
Damon O'Keefe's cohorts was firing an old In-
gram MAC-10 submachine gun. Manning aimed
the Winchester his way and pulled the trigger.
    The double-aught buck struck the man in the
neck, nearly decapitating him. Both his carotid ar-
tery and jugular vein took the hit and he had al-
most bled out before he hit the ground.
    Manning racked the slide, fired, racked the
slide again and fired again. The first round struck
the shoulder of a man wearing a tweed hat with
the brim turned down. The force of the buckshot
spun him in a full circle, bringing him back to
face the big Canadian as Manning pulled the trig-
ger the second time. This blast caught the IRA
terrorist squarely in the chest, and he fell over the
wavy-haired man Hawkins had downed only sec-
onds earlier.
 For a brief second Manning thought of Mc-




Carter. The Phoenix Force leader hadn't appeared
from the rear bedroom, and the big Canadian
wondered just what it was that had delayed him.
Then a stray round from someone struck the tele-
vision screen and the box exploded, sending
sparks and smoke into the air.
    Next to Manning, Encizo continued to fire the
H&K. Rounds continued to fly through the broken
glass of the side window as James pumped more
bullets into the enemy gunners.
    A short wiry man dressed in khaki pants and a
cutoff sweatshirt turned toward the door to the
kitchen. He got off one wild round from his .357
Colt Trooper, then Manning took him down with
another blast from the 12-gauge.
    A terrorist firing an Uzi opened up from the
comer to Manning's right, and the big Canadian
heard a grant across the room. He saw Hawkins
go down, and anger filled his soul.
    Twisting awkwardly through the door, Man-
ning pumped the shotgun. The IRA man saw what
was coming and raised his arms instinctively to
protect himself. Manning squeezed the trigger,
and the small balls of lead struck the Uzi, flat-
tened, glanced off and spread out around the gun-
ners body. Racking the slide, he sent another blast
of buckshot into the man's face.
    Hawkins was on his feet again by the time
Manning turned back to him. The left calf of his

blue jeans had been tom away, and blood ran
down his leg onto his hiking boot. The wound had
done little but knock the young warrior off his
feet, however. He moved as if nothing had hap-
pened.
    Manning pulled back around the comer into the
kitchen, speed-loading a shell from the belt carrier
around his neck directly into the chamber of the
Winchester. He slammed the slide forward to load
the gun, then looked up briefly to check his sur-
roundings. Gunfire still sounded on the other side
of the wall, but it was dwindling. In the doorway
he saw the empty brass flying from Encizo's
Heckler & Koch. Satisfied that the Cuban warrior
had things covered for the time being, he loaded
the rest of the shotgun's magazine, then peered
around the comer again.
    He needn't have bothered. The last IRA man
fell to a double-tap from Hawkins's Beretta as his
eyes swept the living room.
    Manning didn't wait around to congratulate
himself or the others. He rose to his feet and
headed back down the hallway to the bedroom
where McCarter had disappeared. As he neared
the door, he heard a screeching string of what
could only have been curses in a language he had
never before encountered.
  Sprinting up to the door, the big Canadian




aimed the shotgun into the room. What he saw
made him stifle a laugh.
    McCarter was on all fours on the four-poster,
a small, wriggling form beneath him. McCarter
had the woman pinned to the bed with his body.
His hands held hers, outstretched above her head.
Manning looked down. Another of the Webley
revolvers lay on the floor next to the bed, evi-
dently having been knocked from Mrs. O'Keefe's
hands or nightstand during the struggle.
    Manning lost the battle to keep the grin off his
face. "Need any help, 0 fearless leader?" he
asked.
    McCarter turned to face him as another string
of profanities escaped the woman's lips. "It
wouldn't hurt," he said. "This one's a regular
wildcat." He paused, then his own smile crept
across his face. "By the way, the language is
Gaelic. I don't know what it means, but I'm sure
our ears would burn from now until eternity."

Tokyo, Japan

THE OVERSIZE soft-side briefcase slung over his
shoulder on a leather strap, Bolan walked casually
down the sidewalk toward the Takahata Box,
Crate and Container Company. Although it was
getting late, people came and went and traffic was
still moderately heavy. Still dressed in the busi-

ness suit he had worn that afternoon when he re-
conned the offices, he caught a glimpse of his
reflection in a window as he passed.
    He looked bulkier than he had that afternoon,
as if he'd have gained twenty pounds or so in the
few hours since. But no one would notice, and
even if they did, they'd just take him to be another
overweight American businessman on his way
back to the hotel for the evening.
    The Executioner passed the Takahata building
looking straight ahead. But in his peripheral vi-
sion, he studied the front office area. The lights
were out for the night, and that part of the man-
ufacturing company appeared to be vacant.
    Strolling across the street and on another block,
he passed a cleaner's, bakery and finally a phar-
macy on the corner. He turned on the side street
running along the pharmacy's side and continued
at a leisurely pace until he reached the alley be-
hind the buildings.
  At which point he disappeared.
    Bolan moved faster now, walking briskly down
the litter-scattered brick walkway to the opposite
corner. He stopped briefly, looking both ways to
make sure there were no curious eyes, then
crossed the street and ducked into the alley behind
the Takahata building.
    Heading directly to the shadows behind a large
trash container, the Executioner opened the brief-




case and withdrew the Beretta 93-R, the Glock 21
with the Aro-Tek laser sight and the holsters and
rigs for the weapons. He would be returning to
the fixed-blade Applegate-Fairbairn knife for
combat dress, and it came out next, followed by
his black nylon combat boots. Last he withdrew
a leather pouch with a belt clip attached to one
side, then set his gear and the empty briefcase on
the ground and unknotted his tie. His coat, shoes,
shirt and slacks came off in that order and went
into the briefcase.
    The Executioner glanced down the alley, reaf-
firming that he was alone, then he slipped the Ber-
etta's shoulder rig over his blacksuit. The gun belt
with the Glock went around his waist. It also held
a small laser flashlight, extra magazines for the
.45 and various other pieces of equipment in ny-
lon and leather carriers. The fighting knife was
suspended from the Beretia's shoulder harness un-
der his right arm. He clipped the leather pouch to
his side in between the other equipment.
    Bolan stuffed the briefcase inside the trash bin
and moved along the rear of the building.
Through the windows he could see men working
the machines that made the various shipping re-
ceptacles the Takahata Company manufactured.
As he watched through the glass from the alley's
shadows, he saw a man in green work clothes
operating a machine that stamped out cardboard

boxes. He moved silently on along the outer brick
wall, seeing another man operating a saw and cut-
ting wooden crates.
    Across the room the Executioner could see sev-
eral men around a conveyer belt that was moving
the completed crates toward a stamping machine.
The boxes moved into an area beneath a large
sealer, paused long enough for the steel plate to
descend onto their lids, then moved on with the
company's markings imprinted.
    Bolan couldn't see the imprint being left on the
wood from where he stood. But he knew what at
least one of the characters looked like. And it
meant "box."
    Stealing on through the shadows, the Execu-
tioner came to the corner of the building. The
plant section of the structure was too heavily pop-
ulated to risk entry to the building that way.
Somehow he had to penetrate the office area
where no one was likely to be. That was the part
of the company in which he was interested, any-
way.
    Dropping to all fours, Bolan used a short hedge
that ran along the sidewalk to conceal himself
from passersby on the street. He reached the front
corner and looked out to the sidewalk.
    People still walked along the pathway. He'd be
seen if he tried to go in the front.
Turning back in the direction he'd just come




from, the Executioner retraced his steps to the last
window outside the office area. He knew there
would be an alarm--he was in Japan after all, the
electronics capital of the world. It would be a
sophisticated device, as well, and it would be
hidden. Not being trustworthy themselves, the
Yakuza would be sensitive to the fact that others
might break in on them.
    Bolan glanced at the window as he rose to a
squatting position. He felt certain he could deac-
tivate the alarm, but finding it would be the prob-
lem. That would take time. In fact it might take
all night, and he didn't have a whole night to
spare.
    Glancing up the wall, the Executioner saw
more windows on the second story and the top,
third level. To save expenses, many people didn't
wire the upper floors. Had the Yakuza? He didn't
know, but he was about to find out.
    Unzipping the leather pouch he had added to
his belt, the Executioner produced an electric drill
gun and several large bolts. He had returned to
their jet at the airport immediately after reconning
the box company and found the drill in one of the
lockers at the rear of the plane. Now he inserted
one of the bolts into the drill's magazine and
twisted it into place.
    Reaching overhead, Bolan pressed the sharp tip
of the bolt against the bricks and pulled the trig-

ger. The hand-held machine buzzed for a half sec-
ond, and the threaded end of the bolt drilled into
the brick. The rest--approximately two and a half
inches---extended from the wall.
    Bolan repeated the procedure two feet to one
side of the first bolt, then returned the drill gun
to his pouch. In the alley behind the manufactur-
ing division, he searched through the trash bins
until he came across what he needed. One of the
wooden crates had been defective and dumped
into the trash.
    The Executioner hauled the crate to the side of
the building and stood it on end. His eyes
searched the ground until he found a chunk of
concrete roughly the size of his fist. He dropped
it into a pocket of his black suit, then, using the
bolts already drilled into the building to pull him-
self up, he stood briefly on the crate, then stepped
up onto the bolts.
    Working quickly, Bolan drilled another pair of
footholds into the brick. They were less than six
inches from the bottom of the second-floor win-
dow, and he used them to pull himself up, then
reached out and grasped the concrete sill. A mo-
ment later he had dragged himself up the brick
and stood on the sill itself.
    The Executioner considered going in the sec-
ond-floor opening, then discarded the idea. It
might be wired into the alarm system. But the




:iZ

third floor was even less likely to be wired, so he
repeated the process with the drill gun up to the
next level.
    Balancing now on the concrete just below the
glass, the Executioner peered inside. He saw a
dark office area that had been converted into a
break room. Couches and chairs lined the walls,
and a coffee machine and teapot sat on a table in
the corner.
    Opening one of the small leather pouches, the
Executioner pulled out a roll of tape. Quickly he
ran stripes across the window both horizontally
and vertically. Returning the tape to his pocket,
he drew the Beretta and used the butt to tap the
glass.
    The window broke with only a few telltale
shards of glass falling the three stories to the
ground.
    Bolan reached in, unlocked the window and
opened it. A moment later he closed it behind
him. He couldn't hear an alarm, which meant
nothing. The system could easily be silent, clan-
destinely alerting either the police, the Yakuza or
both.
    The Executioner peeled the tape away from the
glass and scattered the shards across the floor. He
stuffed the sticky strips into his pocket, then
dropped the chunk of concrete on the floor several
feet in from the wall. With any luck, whoever

discovered the broken window in the morning
would assume some kid or street punk had simply
thrown the concrete through the window.
    Bolan moved quietly across the carpet to the
door. The hall was dark, the only illumination be-
ing what light filtered in from the office windows.
Somewhere he could hear the hum of a computer
that hadn't been turned off. The clicking of a
clock from one of the offices echoed hollowly
along the corridor. Behind him, through the walls,
he could feel the vibrations of the machines in the
manufacturing division and hear their muffled
roars.
    Moving silently along the hall, Bolan came to
the stairs. He suspected what he was looking for
would be on the ground floor, but he checked the
offices along the way just in case. Each of the
small cubicles held a desk, various pieces of other
furniture and a computer. He was looking for a
computer, all right, but he suspected that none of
these was the right one.
    Bolan moved on. The second floor proved just
as unlikely to contain what he was looking for,
so the Executioner descended the steps to the
ground. He made his way down another dark hall,
past offices and storerooms, until he reached a
large room with several desks and computers--a
secretarial pool.




'i,,

    This was where the sales records would be
kept.
    Bolan chose one of the computers randomly
and turned it on. As he listened to the machine
warm up, he flipped on the fax machine and
printer next to it. Taking the cellular phone from
his blacksuit, he tapped in Kurtzman's number at
Stony Man Farm.
    The computer man answered on the second
ring. "Kurtzman."
    "It's me," Bolan said. "I'm going to need
Akira."
  "Hold on."
    A moment later Akira Tokaido's familiar voice
said, "Hello, Striker."
    "You got your fax warmed up and ready?"
Bolan asked.
  "Sure do. What have you got?"
    'Tm inside the offices of Takahata Box, Crate
and Container. I've got a computer warming up
to check their files. Just one problem I can think
of."
  "And that would be...?" Tokaido said.
  "I don't read Japanese."
  "But what is the fax for?"
    "I figured I'd copy down the file lists as best
I could and send them to you. Let you interpret
them and tell me where to start."
  "That would take far too long, and we might

still miss the pertinent data. Let Bear establish a
link into their hard drive, then simply send all of
their files to us. We'll copy them and do the
searching ourselves."  "Good plan."
    The young man guided the Executioner through
the process of linking the hard drive into Stony
Man's computer network, and a few minutes later
the files of the box company were crossing the
Pacific on their way to the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Bolan waited.
    Finally Tokaido came back on the line. "The
transfer and copy is complete," he said.
    "And they won't be able to tell here that any-
thing has happened?" Bolan asked.
    "Not when Bear gets finished," Tokaido as-
sured him.
    Bolan hung up, taking a brief moment to go
over his escape plan as he shut down the ma-
chines around him. He needed to return to the
third floor and exit through the same window he
had come in. He would pull the bolts as he went
down the wall by reversing the drill gun, carry
the box back to the trash bin, change back into
his clothes and be gone.
    It all sounded easy as he went over it in his
head.
    But the Yakuza gunmen who suddenly burst
through the door changed those plans.




The Caribbean

AN UNUSUALLY COOL night breeze blew through
the unscreened window into the shack. Some-
where in the distance a bird called to its mate, and
closer to the tiny one-room building, a choir of
crickets began to sing.
    Colonel Harold J. Maddox came awake with a
start. Still half asleep, he nevertheless knew im-
mediately where he was. He rose quietly to a sit-
ting position on the bed, looking at the woman
next to him. She lay on her side, faced away from
him, snoring softly. Moonlight filtered through
the window, illuminating her round bare buttocks
and showing the goose bumps on the white flesh
brought on by the breeze. He reached across the
bed, stroking her flesh until the bumps disap-
peared, then pulled the covers up over her.
    Maddox stood and glanced down at the lumi-
nous hands of his wristwatch on the nightstand. It
was almost 0200; he had to have dozed for a cou-
ple of hours. Reaching for his T-shirt on the chair
next to the nightstand, he slipped it over his head
and looked back to the woman in the bed.
    He was glad he had brought Gladwyn to the
island from Jamaica. She was not only a loyal and
efficient secretary, but she was also a damn good
lay. And there was nothing like getting your rocks
off on a regular basis to keep your head clear. Did

he love her? No, of course not, Maddox thought
as he stepped into his camou fatigue pants. But
he sure liked the hell out of her.
    It was a damn shame he'd probably have to kill
her someday.
    Maddox sat down gently on the edge of the bed
and began to strap on his leather sandals. Glad-
wyn knew too much, and when he was finished
making a killing with the Eliminators, he planned
to spread his money around the banks in the Cay-
man Islands and live a life of legitimate ease. And
Gladwyn, quite simply, didn't fit into that plan.
    The former U.S. Army colonel sat motionless
for a moment, thinking of the word he had just
spoken in his mind. "Legitimate," he whispered
out loud, and the sound brought a smile to his
face. After all these years, would he even know
how to go legit? The son of gunsmith, he had
grown up around firearms. His first paying job
had been slipping into his father's workshop after
hours and making zip guns, which he sold to his
friends. During his thirty years with the Army, he
had found plenty of time to carry ordnance out
the back doors of armories and had built up quite
a fortune through other schemes. Always he had
escaped detection, and his record was clean.
    Buckling his sandals, Maddox stood, slipped
his watch over his wrist, then lifted the Smith &
Wesson 645 pistol from the nightstand and




Z;ill

shoved it into his belt beneath the T-shirt. Careful
not to awaken Gladwyn, he opened the thin ply-
wood door of the shack and started across the
grounds toward his office. The breeze bit into him
now, raising goose bumps on his own arms and
shoulders. He thought back on his father, realizing
that the man had instilled far more than just the
art of making guns into him. Harold Maddox Sr.
had constantly harped that the greatest business
profits always came from the domains with which
the worker was both familiar and interested. That
philosophy might not have worked for the father,
but it had been invaluable to his son, and after
the real estate and other investments, it was finally
guns to which Harold Madclox had returned.
    Maddox walked on toward his office. As a U.S.
Army small-arms expert, he had always been im-
pressed with the simplicity of the quickly mass-
produced World War II weapons. When it had
come time to retire from service, he had decided
to go for what he thought of as his big and final
sting before he also retired from business. It was
then that he had realized this same philosophy of
fast manufacture could be used to construct sim-
ilar firearms cheaply.
    The island was quiet as Maddox neared the
small office building, the workers asleep in their
barracks. He encountered two guards on the way,

both alert and challenging him as he neared.
Good. The men were doing their jobs.
    Inserting his key into the door, Maddox hurried
through Gladwyn's office, switched on the light
in his own and dropped into the chair behind his
desk. He took time to light one of the huge Chur-
chill cigars from the humidor, then opened his
desk drawer and found a pen and several sheets
of clean white paper. His first instinct was to slip
into a pair of gloves to avoid leaving prints on
the paper, but that wasn't his goal. Leaving at
least one print was imperative to the sense of
drama he wanted to create for the media to ex-
pound upon, and he reminded himself his prints
weren't on file. Just before retirement he had con-
veniently slipped into both the actual files in the
Pentagon and computer records of his military
prints and destroyed them. The only place his fin-
gerprints had been recorded since were in Walla
Walla when he'd been arrested on the impaired-
driving charge.
    Maddox grinned as he entered the date at the
top of the page. Police fingerprint searches in real
life weren't like they were on television and in
the movies. Electronic-age Sherlock Holmeses
didn't simply enter a print into the computer and
sit back while the machine kicked out a name. In
reality, additional leads were necessary to narrow
the search, and a technician might spend years




looking for an isolated print. But even in the un-
likely event that that happened, he was covered.
Since misdemeanor arrests weren't recorded by
the National Crime Information Center, there was
no way anyone would ever locate the isolated set
of records in Walla Walla.
    It would be like looking for the proverbial nee-
dle in a haystack--when you didn't even know a
haystack existed.
    Confident that he was safe, Maddox began to
write.

To whom it may concern:
It has come to my attention that you no
longer feel I am fit for headlines in your
newspaper. This deeply saddens me. In re-
taliation, after a three-day grace period be-
ginning at the time I mail this letter, I shall
have to kill one journalist a day for every
day I do not appear on the front page. You
may feel free to reprint this communiqu6 if
you like, and make copies for any police
agency who is interested. They will not catch
me as I am far and above their intelligence.
    But let's have some fun with them, shall
we? Directly after my signature you will find
a thumbprint.
    I intend to step up production and increase
both the volume and types of weapons I

manufacture. Only when the oppressed of the
world are armed will they be able to rise up
and overthrow the tyrannical regimes of the
United States government and its puppet
states the world over.
All power to the people!
Catch me if you can.
                      Sincerely,
                  the Eliminator

    Maddox sat back in his chair and laughed out
loud. Then, the smile still on his face, he leaned
forward and pressed his thumbprint onto the page
beneath the words the Eliminator.




CHAPTER EIGHT

In the Air above Louisiana

"So," Carl Lyons said from the copilot's seat of
the Learjet 60. "I take it McCarter and company
are busting heads in Ireland?"
    Next to him, behind the controls of the plane
streaking through the sky, Charlie Mort shrugged.
"Don't ask me, Ironman. My orders were to drop
them off and head back home in case you guys
needed a lift. You know me--I just run a taxi
service."
    Lyons nodded and glanced behind him to
where Schwarz and Blancanales sat with their two
new passengers: the Road Kill biker Lyons had
originally thought was a mental case, and the
woman who had been hiding under his table dur-
ing the firefight. The overly made-up woman sat
quietly, staring into space with a blank expres-
sion.

    The biker's name, they had learned, was Tap
Dancer. His girlfriend was called Dime.
    "Tell us where we're going again, Tap Dan-
cer," the Able Team leader demanded.
  "I done told you three times already."
    "So do it again," Schwarz urged. "We all en-
joy seeing how your story changes each time."
    "It don't change," Tap Dancer argued. "I just
tell it different."
    "Then let me see if I can paraphrase it for you
into words we, who actually passed second grade,
can understand," Schwarz said. "Besides the Fal-
cons, the only other gun connection the Road
Kills had were the skinheads in New Orleans?"
    "Yep," Tap Dancer said. "Guy used to be a
Road Kill. Moved down to the Big Easy about a
year ago and hooked up with the 'heads. He's a
bouncer in a place on Bourbon Street."
  "What this guy's name?" Lyons asked.
  "Guy."
    "Yeah," Blancanales said, nodding, exhibiting
the patience one usually reserved for a child learn-
ing to tie his own shoes. "What is the guy's
name?' '
  "Guy. His name is Guy."
    "Is that his real name or one of the cute little
labels you bikers came up with?"
  "Hell, I dunno," Tap Dancer said. "I just




know we say 'Guy,' and he'll look up at us. And
he can get guns through the 'heads."
    "And you know where to find him?" Schwarz
asked.
  "Sure."
  Mott cleared his throat.
  Lyons turned to look at the pilot.
    "I hate to interrupt this highly enlightening and
intellectual conversation," Mott said, "but you
might want to get your new buddy's straitjacket
ready. We'll be touching down in roughly ten
minutes." He sniffed through his nose and
frowned. "And not a moment too soon if you ask
me. I'm going to have to disinfect the cabin and
run one of those air-freshener things through the
air-conditioning system to get this stench out."
    Neither Tap Dancer nor Dime seemed to notice
the insult.
    A few minutes later they had acquired clear-
ance to land at Moisant International Airport in
Kennet. Five minutes later the wheels hit the tar-
mac, and Mott rolled the Learjet to a halt.
    Lyons turned his attention back to Tap Dancer
and Dime. "I'm not going to cuff you," he said,
"because I don't want to draw attention." He
smiled in a way that Barbara Price had once told
him looked like a cross between the Marquis de
Sade and a hungry wolf, and added, "but if either
of you tries to rabbit on us, or pulls anything else,

I'm going to put a 125-grain, semijacketed Fed-
eral .357 Magnum slug right between your ears.
Do I make myself clear?"
    Both Dime and Tap Dancer nodded, fear on
their faces.
    The men of Able Team bade Mott goodbye and
left him to do the paperwork. They stepped down
out of the Learjet with their prisoners, Lyons lead-
ing the way into the terminal, then out the front
to a line of cabs. They crowded into one of the
yellow vehicles, and the Able Team leader told
the cabbie to take them to the French Quarter.
    Reggae music blasted from the radio as the
driver started the engine and pulled away from the
curb. Lyons got a dirty look when he reached for-
ward to the dash and turned it off.
    A half hour later they had covered the seven-
teen miles to world-famous Bourbon Street. The
mixed aromas of garlic, strong roasted coffee
beans and the musty age of the buildings filtered
through the closed windows of the cab even be-
fore the driver pulled up to the curb and stopped.
Lyons handed him a fisfful of small bills and got
out.
    The Able Team leader gathered the rest of the
party on the sidewalk as the cab picked up another
fare and pulled away. "What's the name of the
club where Guy works?" he asked Tap Dancer.
  "Uh, Guys and, uh, Guys and, uh, something."




    "Guys 'n' Dolls," Gadgets said, pointing
across the street.
  "The place belong to him?" Lyons asked.
  '~Nah, he just works here."
    Lyons glanced down the street as they reached
the opposite curb. He had been in the French
Quarter of New Orleans many times, but he'd
never gotten over feeling that he'd just walked
onto the Hollywood movie set of some historical
film. Iron rails, many two and a half centuries old,
framed the overhanging galleries and balconies up
and down the street. Many of the sidewalks were
in dire need of repair, and made walking difficult
for the people who used them.
    Schwarz opened the door and stepped back,
ushering the rest of them into the darkness. Lyons
nodded for him to go ahead, then followed. He
took a breath of the clammy air mixed with the
smells of alcoholic beverages and cigarette and
cigar smoke, then glanced up at the stage. A strip-
per, down to her G-string, was gyrating sugges-
tively to the brassy jazz blasting from a sound
system. Men were seated in the chairs around the
stage and runway, their eyes popping out as they
stuffed dollar bills into the woman's abbreviated
underwear.
    Blancanales found a table large enough to seat
them all and led the way to the chairs that circled
it. They sat, and a moment later a young blond

woman wearing little more than the dancer came
to take their orders.
"I want a Hurricane!" Dime shouted with glee.
Lyons tried to make himself comfortable as he
waited for the beer he'd ordered, watching the
dancer enough to keep from looking out of place
but averting his eyes now and then to search the
room for Guy. Seeing no sign of anyone even
close to having a shaved head, he turned to Tap
Dancer seated at his side. "Where is he?"
    "Search me," the biker replied as the waitress
returned to place a beer in front of him. "I'm
pretty sure this was the place."
    Lyons restrained the impulse to grab the man
by his shinfront. His first impression of Tap Dan-
cer at the biker bar had been that the man was an
imbecile. Then, when he spoke somewhat coher-
ently, he had changed his mind. But now, after
getting to know the man, Lyons was no longer so
sure that the loony looks on his face hadn't been
insanity after all. The man was obviously a little
touched.
    The Able Team leader grabbed the waitress's
arm gently as she set a beer in front of him.
"Honey, is there a guy named Guy who works
here?" he asked.
    The blonde smiled. "Sure. He's the bouncer.
Want to talk to him? I can get him."
 As it turned out, she didn't need to.




    A scream suddenly came from the stage, and
Lyons looked up to see one of the men up front
trying to tug off the dancer's G-string. A split
second later a bald-headed man wearing an olive
drab tank top appeared from out of nowhere.
Reaching up with both heavily muscled arms, the
man jerked the guy's hand away, slipped him into
an arm lock, and applied pressure.
    Another scream, this time from the grabber,
broke the silence that had fallen over the club. A
second later a loud snap sounded as the man's
elbow broke.
    The guy was crying as the bald-headed bouncer
escorted him out the front door and yelled,
"Don't come back!"
    "That's him!" Tap Dancer said excitedly.
"That's Guy!"
  "Call him over," Lyons said.
    Tap Dancer waited until the bouncer was walk-
ing past them, then said, "Hey, Guy! It's me, Tap
Dancer!"
    The burly bald-headed man stopped and
squinted through lashless, piglike eyes.
    "You remember me, don't you?" Tap Dancer
asked, some of the excitement and confidence
seeping from his voice.
    "I remember her," Guy said, turning his gaze
toward Dime. "Damn, honey, you're good."
  Dime beamed at the compliment.

 Tap Dancer began to sulk.
    "Why don't you introduce me to your friends
and then tell me what you're doing this far from
Bed-Stuy," Guy suggested as he dropped into the
last vacant seat at the table.
    "Well, uh..." Tap Dancer said, obviously try-
ing to remember what Lyons had told him to say.
"This is, uh, Ironman. These other guys are his
buddies. You remember the Falcons?"
  "Sure," Guy said.
  "Well, they're, uh, Falcons."
    Guy squinted harder. He wasn't as dumb as
Tap Dancer--that was clear. "A little old to be
Falcons, aren't you?" he asked.
    "Yeah," Lyons agreed, "we are. Tap Dancer's
forte never was brainpower. What he meant to say
was that we used to be Falcons. We've moved on
in the world--kind of like you."
    This made more sense to the man in the tank
top. "So," he said, talking to Lyons now and ig-
noting Tap Dancer, "you guys in town to have a
little fun? Want me to set you up with some
pussy? I'll get you the best beef prices in town."
    "Maybe later," Lyons said. "Right now we're
here on business." He paused. "Family busi-
ness."
  Guy leaned in. "I see. What can I do for you?"
    Lyons glanced around for curious ears, then
dropped his voice to a whisper. "We need fire-




power. Enough to take out a half-dozen boys
who've made our employer in the Big Apple a
very unhappy man."
    Guy was suspicious. "How come you didn't
bring your own hardware with you?" he asked.
    Lyons made a steeple out of his fingers and
rested them on the table in front of him. "This
was a hurry-up job, and we had to fly down com-
mercial. Tap Dancer assured me he had connec-
tions who could supply the pieces."
      Guy looked back to the biker. "You hookin'
up with these guys, are you, Taps?"  "I'm, uh, tryin', Guy. Sure."
    Guy turned back to Lyons. "Okay, I can help
you out. But if you plan to use the guns I get you
around here, they're going to cost double. You
know, shitting in your own backyard and all that?
It could bring on some extra heat."
    Lyons nodded. "I understand," he said. "No
problem--we've got the bread."
"So, what did you have in mind?" Guy asked.
"Something with firepower," Lyons said.
"And stuff that can't be traced. We're going to
drop the things right after it goes down. We don't
want to be hauling shooters around with us after-
ward."
    Guy smiled and stood. "I got just what you
need. I'll make a couple of calls and have them
for you by tonight."

  "Here?" Lyons asked.
    "Not only no, but hell no," Guy said. "This
place is my straight gig. Legitimate. I book out
of here but I always do the serious stuff some-
place else."
  "Where, then?"
    Guy squinted his pig eyes in thought again,
then finally said, "You know where Shorty's Sail
Rentals is on Pontchartrain Beach?"
"No, but we can find it easy enough."
"Okay, show up there around nine tonight. If
I'm not there yet, I'm on my way. Or I'll leave
word with Shorty where to meet me."
    Lyons nodded. "Fair enough. You're sure the
equipment you'll be bringing doesn't have a paper
trail somewhere?" he asked again to make sure.
"Like I said, we're going to dump them just as
soon as we're done."
    Guy waved a hand in front of his face to dis-
miss the idea. "Paper trail?" He laughed. "Paper
trail? Hell, to have a paper trail there would have
to have been some paper on these things, right?
Well, there never has been--not when they were
manufactured and nothing since." He paused,
then leaned in closer. "You've read the papers?"
    Lyons nodded. He knew what Guy's last com-
ment had meant.
  The Eliminators.




Northern Ireland

"Alq, y^ m.oon? BASTARDS!" Brigette O'Keefe
screamed, changing from Gaelic to English as
soon as McCarter dropped her hands and stood up
to move away from the bed. "You've killed him!
You've killed my only child!" With a quickness
that belied her age, the small, frail woman
sprinted past Manning and out into the hall.
    McCarter and Manning followed her into the
living room. The Phoenix Force leader's first sight
was of McHiggins, curled in a fetal position on
the floor. Blood still dripped from the IRA man's
mouth but his eyes stared blindly in death. He had
caught a round from one of the other IRA men
during the firelight, whether by accident or be-
cause they realized he had brought the intruders
to the house, the Phoenix Force leader would
never know. But McCarter felt his heart sink at
the realization that their only link to the IRA was
dead.
    The former SAS man's heart sank still farther
as Brigette O'Keefe knelt next to her son and cra-
dled his head. "You've killed my boy!"
    Hawkins knelt next to her. "We're sorry,
ma'am," he said in his Southern drawl. "We
wouldn't have done it if there'd been any other
way.' ~

Hawkins got a hard slap across his face for the
words.
    Brigette O'Keefe looked up at McCarter, her
face reflecting the hatred in her soul. "May you
rot in hell for all eternity!" she cried. "May you
smolder and burn and may the devil cut out your
hearts and feed them to his demons!"
    McCarter didn't know what to say. One of the
few constants in life was a mother's love. Re-
gardless of how malevolent a woman's son turned
out to be, his mother still loved him. It was no
different with Mrs. O'Keefe, and the Phoenix
Force leader wished there had been another way
to handle the situation---or at least that the woman
hadn't been home to see what had happened.
    But Brigette O'Keefe wasn't finished. She spit
forth another tirade in Gaelic, then returned to
English once more. "You bloody Brits!" she
screeched as she hugged Damon's head to her
breast. "You take over everything, and you kill
anyone who doesn't fall in line! Well, you'll be
gettin' your just deserves some day!" She paused
long enough to take a deep breath, then blurted
out, "And one of you'll be gettin' it in the morn-
ing!"
    A silence fell over the room as they waited for
her to go on. But Brigette O'Keefe realized the
mistake she'd made, and her lips clamped tightly
together.




    "How?" O'Pmnty asked quietly. "How will
they be gettin' their just deserves in the morn-
ing?"
    "And you!" the woman screamed. "You're
worse than the rest! An Irishman by birth, are
you? Well, you be no Irishman at heart. A bloody
traitor to your own kind, that's what you are!
Workin' for the bloody enemy as you do!"
    "What did you mean about tomorrow morn-
ing?" McCarter asked.
    Daggers of fire shot from Brigette O'Keefe's
eyes to the former British SAS commando. 'T!I
say no more about it," she said, then hugged her
son's body closer and began to weep.
    McCarter stared at the woman for a moment.
Something was about to go down. She knew what
it was, but she wasn't about to talk. He glanced
quickly to Calvin James, then averted his eyes.
No, he couldn't ask James to interrogate her like
he had McHiggins. The good guys of the world
had to draw a line somewhere or they'd be no
better than the scum they went after. And scaring
the wits out of a little old lady didn't fall under
what McCarter believed appropriate behavior, es-
pecially right after they'd killed her son.
    Besides, the Phoenix Force leader thought, still
watching James out of the comer of his eye, he
doubted his teammate would do it even under di-

rect order. Calvin James was a highly moral man,
as were all of the members of Phoenix Force.
    It was what separated them from the animals
they hunted.
    "Gary," McCarter said quietly, "look after
Mrs. O'Keefe. The rest of you stay here with
them. Felix, I'd like to see you for a few minutes
in the other room." He turned on his heel and led
the MI-6 operative back into the bedroom.
    As soon as they were out of view, O'Prunty
pulled a pocket flask out of his coat, unscrewed
the cap and held the flask to his lips for several
seconds. His eyes watered slightly, but they also
glowed with the adrenaline still coursing through
his veins. He extended the metal container to
McCarter. "Hell of a little donnybrook, eh,
mate?" he said. "Want a taste?"
    McCarter smiled but refused the drink. "You
get the same take on what Mrs. O'Keefe just said
that I did?"
    Screwing the cap back onto the flask, he stuck
it back inside his coat. "Somethin' big goin'
down. But I'm damned if I know what, and I sus-
pect it would take bamboo shoots under the old
lass's tingemails to get it out of her. Think there's
any chance of sweet-talking her?"
    McCarter let out a sardonic chuckle. "After we
just blew away her son and all his friends? Not a
chance in bloody hell."


    "We didn't take out all of his friends,"
O'Pmnty said. "There's plenty more of those
Molotov-cocktail-hurling bastards where these
came from. And it's no doubt they who are up to
whatever devilment the old missus was talking
about."
    McCarter nodded. "But we're at a dead end,
Felix. O'Keefe and McHiggins are dead. There's
no one left to make talk, and you're right--I've
got no intention of hurting the old lady." He blew
air through his clenched teeth. "I suppose the
only thing to do is for you to get on the horn to
London. See if your boys have any intel we might
match up to what she said. It's a long shot, but
we've got nothing else."
    O'Prunty nodded, then moved to the telephone
on the nightstand next to the bed. He lifted the
receiver, got an operator, gave her a credit-card
number, then had her ring the MI-6 offices on the
other side of the Irish Sea.
    A few seconds later he said, "O'Prunty here.
Code number 614375635. Connect me to intelli-
gence." There was a pause during which he
looked at his watch. "Yes, Ian, I know it's late.
Maybe no one has put you on to the fact yet, but
we don't keep bankers' hours in this business. So
get someone out of bed if you have to and tell
them to call me back at this number. Now!" He
read the O'Keefe's telephone number off the

phone, then slammed the receiver back into the
cradle.
    Turning to McCarter, he said, "Bloody lazy
civil servants," and shook his head.
    McCarter smiled at the fact that O'Pmnty him-
self was a civil servant, then a screech of rage
came from the living room. The Phoenix Force
leader turned instinctively on his heels and hur-
ried out of the bedroom and down the hall. He
saw Gary Manning, who could bench-press more
than any other two men of Phoenix Force com-
bined, fighting for his life as he struggled to con-
trol, without injuring, Brigette O'Keefe.
    The old woman's temper had flared again, and
she had bounded to her feet. She was striking
Manning across his broad chest with her bony
fists.
    Encizo, Hawkins and James stood in a ring
around the combatants, offering no help and try-
ing not to laugh. Manning caught a glimpse of
McCarter and turned to him as he finally got Mrs.
O'Keefe's arms pinned to her sides. The barrel-
chested Canadian's face begged to be relieved of
the assignment McCarter had given him.
    The Briton ignored his expression and started
back toward the bedroom. The phone started had
just started to ring when he reached the door.
    "Yes?" O'Prunty said into the instrument.
"Yes, hello, Niles. It's O'Pmnty." He recited the




code number again, then quickly explained what
had just occurred at the O'Keefe residence. He
went on to reveal that Mrs. O'Keefe had acciden-
tally spouted off about someone getting their
"just deserves" in the morning. "What we're
needing," he stated, "is for you to cross-reference
all current IRA intelligence to see if we can add
it to this and make some sense out of it." He
paused, then said, "All fight, I'!1 wait."
    Holding the phone away from his mouth and
covering the mouthpiece with his hand, he looked
at McCarter. "He's checking now."
    The seconds ticked away in the quiet house, the
only sound being the soft sniffles that came down
the hall as Brigette O'Keefe continued to mourn
her son. Finally O'Prunty said, "Yes Niles, of
course I'm still here. Did you think I might have
gone for a pint at the local pub?"
    He listened a moment, then turned to McCarter.
"There's rumor of something brewing with the
IRA," he said, "but they've got little else. None
of our informants seems to know exactly what it
is."
    McCarter scratched his head. "The old woman
said one of them would be getting what he de-
served," he said. "One. That sounds like an as-
sassination rather than a bomb or machine gun-
ning or something that might result in multiple

casualties. Emphasize that and see what your man
says."
    O'Prunty relayed the information and waited
for an answer. Finally he said, "It doesn't change
anything, David, but it doesn't contradict any-
thing, either."
    McCarter frowned in thought. "I assume MI-6
keeps an up-to-date itinerary of the prime minister
and other government dignitaries?" he asked.
    "Of course," O'Prunty said. He relayed
McCarter's words into the phone, then the two
men waited again. Suddenly O'Pmnty's normally
red face went white. "You're sure?" he asked.
"Okay, Niles. Thanks. I'll keep in touch."
    The blood had only slightly returned to the
MI-6 man's face when he turned to McCarter.
"It's one of the royals," he said, "who will be
speaking to a group called Parents of Disabled
Children at 0800."
    "Where?" McCarter demanded, already start-
ing to move back toward the living room to round
up the others.
    "Back at the distillery," O'Prunty said. "If we
leave now, we can just about make it."

Tokyo, Japan

BOLAN DROPPED behind the desk where he'd been
working as the first full-auto burst from a 9 mm




Japanese Shin Chuo Kogyo submachine gun flew
over his head like a supersonic swarm of angry
bees. Plastic burst as the rounds struck the com-
puter, and smoke and flames shot from both the
monitor and hard drive. A piece of the keyboard
rolled back over the edge of the desk, falling onto
the Executioner's arm as he hit the floor.
    He drew the Glock 21 and adjusted his grip on
the weapon, making sure the web of his hand fit
securely against the activating button on the
Glock's back-strap as more bursts from the Jap-
anese submachine guns struck the desk.
    But the heavy oak construction stopped the
penetrating parabellum rounds. The gunfire
stopped, and as the Executioner's ears cleared
from the blasts he could hear the shuffling of feet
as his adversaries moved to circle the desk.
    Bolan took advantage of the lull to lean around
the side of the desk, spotting a Yakuza gunner
dressed in a conservative gray European suit. The
Japanese gangster aimed a subgun at the center of
the desk. Before the man's eyes could shift to the
Executioner's position, Bolan pointed the Glock
his way, tightened his grip to activate the laser
and saw it fall on the man's tie a foot below his
chin.
    The Executioner squeezed the trigger, and the
gun jumped in his hand. The necktie seemed to

cave in, and a moment later the Yakuza hardman
lay dead on the floor.
    Shifting his aim to a gunman three feet to the
right, Bolan swung the laser's red dot to the center
of the man's V-neck sweater. The Executioner's
second .45 hollowpoint round drilled through the
fuzzy wool and sent the Yakuza mobster to meet
his Maker.
    A volley of rounds from an unseen machine
gun sent Bolan ducking back behind the safety of
the desk. He waited while hundreds of rounds
peppered his cover, wondering how many it
would take before even the sturdy hardwood be-
gan to give way. He couldn't stay where he was
forever--that was clear. And diving out into the
open to seek new cover was an engraved and em-
bossed invitation to meet the Grim Reaper. But
his only course of action from where he now knelt
was to continue to lean around the comers or over
the top of the desk. And it wouldn't take much
more of that before he found a 9 mm bullet streak-
ing his way.
    A creak sounded in the desk over the blasts of
the rounds, and Bolan looked up to see the
pointed nose of a 9 mm hardball bullet staring
him in the face. The round had found a trail
blazed by former bullets and almost made its way
through the wood into his face.




The desk was weakening; time was running
out.
    Glancing to his right, the Executioner saw an-
other desk similar to the one behind which he
crouched. It would eventually weaken, too, but it
might buy enough time for him to reduce the
number of Yakuza assailants. With a deep breath
he dived from hiding into the open.
    A gangster swung his weapon toward the Ex-
ecutioner as Bolan flew through the air. Jerking
the Glock into target acquisition, Bolan tapped the
trigger as soon as the red dot fell on the man. The
round struck the gunman in the shoulder, spinning
him in a full 360-degree pirouette as the subgun
fell from his fingers. He was facing the Execu-
tioner again, a shocked look on his face, when
Bolan's shoulder struck the carpet.
    The Executioner's second round entered the
Yakuza's face just below the nose and wound up-
ward into his brain, taking a good deal of that
organ with it as it blasted out the back of his head.
    Bolan got his bearings behind the new desk.
Glancing right and left, he could see none of the
Yakuza men. He looked over his shoulder. Re-
flections in the glass windows on the outside wall
of the building revealed three assailants crouching
behind other desks and easy chairs. Bolan picked
the closest one--a man kneeling behind a desk
and firing a .32 caliber Nambu Type 57B pistol

 at the Executioner's position. The man's entire
 fight side was visible in the glass.
    Keeping his vital parts safe behind the desk,
Bolan extended only his wrist and the hand hold-
ing the Glock around the comer. He estimated the
angle of fire and got as close to target acquisition
as possible before squeezing the pistol grip to ac-
tivate the laser. The red dot suddenly appeared,
not on the Yakuza gunner but on the desk directly
in front of him. Watching the man's reflection in
the window, Bolan adjusted his aim until the red
dot fell on the side of the gunner's face like some
giant glowing blemish.
    The men of the Yakuza had seen the red dot
already, and there was a split second of recogni-
tion in the gunner's eyes as the light struck his
face and he realized what was about to happen.
    Bolan pulled the trigger, and the side of the
gunman's head exploded. He pulled his hand back
a split second before a 3-round burst struck the
side of the desk where his hand had been. He
looked back at the window and saw the angry face
of another Yakuza gangster run his subgun dry
and reach for a fresh magazine.
The Executioner didn't give him time to reload.
His back against the desk, Bolan continued to
watch the man fumble with the magazine as he
twirled the G!ock in his hand. Holding the semi-
auto pistol backward now, his middle finger fell




over the laser's activation button as his thumb
found the trigger. The Executioner raised the
weapon over the desk, watched in the window
until the red dot had centered on the Yakuza gun-
ner's chest and squeezed.
    With the strange grip, the Glock bucked unfa-
miliarly in Bolan's hand. The re, coil from the
man-killing round sent the weapon up and to the
left, but it mattered little.
    The hollowpoint round streaked straight down
the path of the laser beam to the red dot and
struck the gangster squarely in the chest. A soft,
muffled groan escaped the hardman's lips as he
slithered to the floor.
    The magnitude of the gunfire had died down
considerably as Bolan decimated the enemy force.
Now it was almost nonexistent save for what
sounded like a !one man firing occasional volleys.
In the window reflection Bolan could still see a
Yakuza gangster hiding just to the side of a desk
near the front of the room. He was armed with
what looked like a Nambu Model 60.38 pistol.
    But he wasn't responsible for the periodic
shooting. The bullets still striking the desk bore
the distinctive sounds of the .Japanese subguns.
Besides, he was too petrified to pull the trigger
anymore, the gun frozen in his hand.
    Bolan crawled quietly to the other end of the
desk, keeping the paralyzed man in sight in the

window as he moved. This desk, like the one that
he had hidden behind initially, was finally begin-
ning to splinter as he hooked the (}lock around
the comer. Centering the laser beam on a spot just
below his target's arm, he began to squeeze the
Glock's trigger.
    The man holding the revolver looked down and
saw the red dot on his side. His mouth dropped
open in terror as he looked up and saw Bolan's
own reflection inthe window. But his fear lasted
less than a second.
    The .45-caliher round from the Executioner's
(}lock 21 saw to that.
    The autofire from somewhere else in the office
suddenly quieted. Bolan heard the distinctive
sound of a magazine dropping from a Shin Chuo
subgun. A split second later metal scraped against
metal as a fresh box mag found purchase. The
Executioner's last remaining adversary now had a
new load of thirty rounds of 9 mm parabellum
ammo at his immediate disposal.
    His eyes still glued to the windows behind him,
Bolan took advantage of the opportunity to drop
the partially spent Olock magazine and insert a
full one up the plastic grips. He pocketed the half-
full clip as he continued to scan the glass.
    There was no sign of the remaining Yakuza
man's position.
Bolan waited patiently, his back to the desk and




the Glock still in the reverse, thumb-on-the-
trigger grip. Seconds turned to minutes as the
deadly game of cat-and-mouse continued. Finally
the Executioner heard the soft sounds of move-
ment on the carpet, sounding as if they were di-
rectly behind him.
    Frowning, Bolan stared into the window im-
mediately in front of him. He could see nothing.
Then the reality of what was happening struck
him like a lightning bolt between the eyes.
    The final Yakuza man had figured out that the
Executioner was using the window reflections in
conjunction with a laser sight. He had dropped
below the glass and was crawling toward the desk.
    Slowly, silently, Bolan twisted around and re-
turned the Glock to a proper grip. Now facing the
desk, he inched his way into the chair well, be-
neath the surface. The front board on the other
side of the well appeared to be plywood rather
than oak, and he moved closer, pressing his ear
against the flat surface.
    Ever so softly, the Executioner heard breathing
on the other side of the desk.
    Moving back slightly, Bolan aimed the laser's
red dot at the center of the plywood board and
pulled the trigger. Holding the weapon steady, he
emptied ten of the G!ock's fourteen rounds into
the composite wood, scattering them at different
angles.

  He heard a scream.
    Crawling backward out of the chair well, the
Executioner rose over the desk with the Glock
aimed toward the floor. He needn't have bothered.
    Below, bleeding profusely onto the expensive
carpet, lay the final Yakuza gunman. It was im-
possible to tell how many of the Executioner's
blindly fired rounds had found their target.
But whatever the number, it had been enough.
Somewhere in the distance, Bolan heard the
wail of police sirens. He hadn't had time since the
Yakuza hardmen burst through the door to won-
der how they had discovered his presence. But
now he realized that the third-floor windows had
been wired for security. He had tripped that wire
when he'd broken the glass, sending one silent
alarm to a central security station somewhere
within the Takahata building, and another to the
police.
    The Executioner wasted no time. He couldn't
leave by the ground floor--the only exit he knew
was the front and he might run straight into the
men in blue on his way out. Exiting through the
same door he had entered earlier, he sprinted up
the steps to the window he had broken. Lowering
himself onto the highest set of climb bolts, he
retraced his way down the side of the building,
then jumped to the ground between the building
and hedge when he reached the second floor.




    Bolan hit the sidewalk in "parachute" mode,
rolling down onto his legs, then his side and pop-
ping back to his feet. He saw the flashing red-
and-blue lights of several cars as they pulled to a
halt in front of the building. Ducking low, he
rounded the comer back into the alley behind the
manufacturing area.
    Sprinting through the darkness past the trash
receptacles and other debris, the Executioner ran
toward the trash bin where he had hidden his
briefcase. He might need to change back into civ-
vies to facilitate his escape.
    He had reached the trash bin when the first car,
lights flashing and siren screaming, turned into the
alley.
    Bolan ripped open the bin's lid, reached in and
grabbed the handles of the briefcase. Drawing the
Glock, he activated the laser and centered the dot
on the right front tire of the vehicle racing his
way. A squeeze of the trigger brought on a blast
of gases and a streak of muzzle-flash from the
barrel of the .45.
    The Japanese squad car skidded, then fishtailed
into the side of the building.
    Bolan could already hear the doors opening.
Excited voices screamed in Japanese as he turned
toward the other mouth of the alley.
    As he did, two more patrol units turned the cor-
ner to cut off that avenue of escape.

    The Executioner lifted the Glock again, aiming
for a front tire of the lead vehicle. This car skid-
ded, as well, coming to a halt in the center of the
alley. The police vehicle behind it crashed into
the rear bumper.
    Bolan glanced quickly to the opposite side of
the alley. The stone edifice of some other building
ran the length of the alley. The only means of
escape possibly still open was back through the
Takahata building itself.
    As more car doors slammed shut and voices
again barked orders in a flurry of words he
couldn't understand, the Executioner dropped the
red dot on the lock to the nearest door leading
into the manufacturing division of the box com-
pany and fired.
    A second later he had entered the production
area and was sprinting past the startled crate mak-
ers.




CHAPTER NINE

New Orleans, Louisiana

Carl Lyons watched the people around small
campfires in the sand as he led Schwarz, Blan-
canales, Tap Dancer and Dime down the beach.
Men, women and children laughed and chattered
as they roasted hot dogs and marshmallows on
straightened clothes hangers over the open flames.
Here and there a young couple could be seen kiss-
ing as they reclined on blankets. A few of the
couples had progressed past the kissing stage.
    In addition to the families and couples, mus-
cular men in swimsuits and bikini-clad women
who looked like they'd just stepped out of the
centerfolds of Playboy and Penthouse walked up
and down the beach in the twilight falling over
Lake Pontchartrain. Not wanting to draw undue
attention, Able Team and their newly found in-
formants had stopped at a shopping mall on the
way to the lake and outfitted themselves with

beach wear. Schwarz had also bought a cheap,
soft-sided nylon briefcase, which he hoped his
contact would think was stuffed with money.
    Trudging through the sand, Lyons led his team
on toward the sea of masts that extended out of
the water in front of the sign announcing Shorty's
Sail Rentals. The only downside to their clothing
was the fact that weapons were nearly impossible
to conceal. But in this case, it didn't matter. Guy
was bound to shake them down, and they'd told
him they couldn't bring their guns along since the
trip from New York had been a hurry-up affair
on a commercial airline. Besides, if they already
had guns, why would they be wanting to buy
them from the skinheads?
    Dinghys, catamarans, trimarans, motor crafts,
sailboards, paddleboats and other small vessels
had been chained to the dock around the shack
that served as Shorty's office. Lyons let his hand
fail briefly to the crotch of his swimsuit to make
sure the Spyderco Military Model folding knife
was still clipped to his jockstrap, out of sight be-
neath the trunks. Constructed of crucible CPM
440V steel and coated with Blak-Ti to prevent
corrosion, the Military knife was one of the stur-
diest folding fighter knives on the market. It could
cut tin cans all day, and the serrated edge would
still shave the hair off a man's arm.
 The Able Team leader stopped at the counter




:,.i~

of the open window at Shorty's. A man wearing
a brown warm-up jacket, with thinning gray hair
and permanently suntanned skin, stood facing him
just inside the booth. His eyes were down, en-
grossed in the photo of a bikini-clad woman on
the page of a surfing magazine that lay open on
the counter in front of him. On racks behind the
man were rows of candy bars, crackers, potato
chips and other snacks, and next to the food was
a board holding dozens of keys.
  "You Shorty?" Lyons asked.
    The man took his time looking up from the
magazine. "Who wants to know?" he asked.
    "Me," Lyons said. "My friends and I were
supposed to meet somebody here. If we didn't see
him, we were to ask for you."
    "I'm Shorty, then," the man said, dropping his
eyes back to the picture of the girl in the bikini.
    Lyons watched a young blonde wearing a thong
walk past the shack and smile at him, wondering
how Shorty could be so absorbed in a picture
when there was so much of the real thing visible
all around him. "You seen Guy tonight?" he
asked, turning his attention back to the man in the
window.
  "Nope."
    Lyons waited for more of an answer. When he
didn't get one, he said, "Did he call?"
  "Yep."

The Able Team leader was losing patience with
Shorty. Fast. "What did he say?"
"Not much," Shorty said, and turned the page.
Lyons reached forward, grabbing the front of
the man's jacket with a fist. He lifted Shorty onto
his tiptoes, then said, "Friend, I don't like playing
games, and I don't like your attitude. Is Guy com-
ing here, or are we supposed to meet him some-
place else?"
    Shorty got the point. "Guy told me to give you
one of the boats," he said. "Take it out. He'll
find you." Lyons let him back down, and he
cleared his throat. "And don't turn the lights on.
Guy doesn't like to take chances when he does
business."
    "Then give me a key," the Able Team leader
said, letting go of the man's jacket.
    Shorty reached behind him and pulled 'a key
off the rack. "Number 6," he said. "Trimman
docked on the other side. It'll seat six, but be care-
ful. The sail's a little low, and it'll bust a hole
clean through your head if you don't duck when
you come about."
    Lyons nodded and took the key. As he started
to leave, Blancanales stepped up to the window.
    "You just met our public-relations man," he
said. "He got the job because of his patience and
sweet disposition. Be glad you didn't have to deal
with one of us."




A confused expression came over Shorty's
face, then he went back to his magazine.
    They walked away and found the trimaran
docked along the shore on the other side of the
shack. A padlock secured the chain looped
through a steel ring on the dock. After Lyons un-
locked it and pocketed the key, they boarded the
small craft and shoved it out into the lake.
    "The man wasn't kidding when he said to
watch your head," B!ancanales commented as
they raised the trimaran's lone sail. "One mistake
and you could have your teeth smashed out by
this baby."
    The men of Able Team and their two Road Kill
informants had to fold themselves at the waist as
they came about and the sail whipped over their
heads in the evening breeze. Lyons manned the
line, tacking through the head wind out into the
dark waters. Slowly the campfires along the beach
changed from brightly glowing flames to mere
pinpoints of light. The quarter moon overhead
provided the only illumination on the lake.
    When they were approximately five hundred
yards from shore, Lyons trimmed the sail, tossed
the small anchor over the side and let the trimaran
bob slowly with the waves.
    "What now?" Biancahales asked. "Throw in
a few lines and hope for bass?"
Lyons ignored the comment, letting his eyes

roam through the darkness and across the waves.
He saw nothing. But somewhere in the distance
he heard the soft purr of an outboard motor. As
he and the others waited silently, the hum grew
louder. A few minutes later the dark shadow of a
twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser appeared on the ho-
rizon. As it neared, Able Team saw the boat's
light flash on, then quickly off again.
    Twenty yards from the trimaran, the cruiser cut
its engine and turned broadside, gliding through
the gentle waves until it came abreast of the
smaller craft. The dark shadows of several men
could be seen on deck, but none of the faces was
recognizable.
    "Ahoy." Lyons recognized the voice as Guy's.
"Come aboard."
    A ladder was dropped over the side of the
cruiser, and Lyons watched as a dark set of hands
secured the rubber-coated hooks at the top over
the rail. He reached out, grabbed one of the steps
and pulled himself up. Schwarz followed, then
Blancanales shoved Tap Dancer and Dime up the
ladder before bringing up the rear.
    A kerosene lamp stood next to the ladder that
led down into the cabin. Lyons counted six men
on deck--all of them with cleanly shaved
heads--and wondered how many more might be
below. All of the skinheads wore side arms on
Sam Browne police-style belts wrapped around




their swim trunks, and three of them, including
Guy, gripped full-auto Eliminator grease guns.
    Guy stepped forward out of the bunch. Gone
was the friendly disposition he had displayed at
the club earlier that day. It had been replaced with
a stern, businesslike attitude that bordered on the
surly. "You bring the money with you?" he
asked Lyons.
    "Sure," the Able Team leader said, hooking a
thumb toward the briefcase in Schwarz's hand.
"You got the guns?"
    "You're lookin' at 'em," Guy said. He held
out the grease gun for Lyons's inspection.
    Lyons dropped the magazine from the weapon,
noting it was empty. He worked the bolt. The
chamber was empty, as well.  Guy cleared his throat.
    When Lyons looked up, he was staring into the
big bore at the end of one of the Eliminator Gov-
ernment Models. The two men who still held
grease guns had swung them around to cover the
rest of Able Team, Tap Dancer and Dime. The
other three had drawn their pistols.
    "Now, these guns are loaded," Guy said, grin-
ning like a cat holding the gun on a mouse. "But
in case you have any doubts..." He twisted sud-
denly, popping three rounds into the lake next to
the hull. The bullets made tiny plops in the water
as they hit.

    Guy turned back to Lyons. "You see, sport,"
he said, still smiling, "I got to thinking after you
left. Tap Dancer never was the brightest son of a
bitch in the world, and his woman here's even
dumber than he is. And you guys, well, you just
flat don't look like Falcons or Road Kills or Mafia
like you tried to tell me you were. Fact is, you
look more like cops." He paused, drew in a long,
dramatic breath, then said, "But even if you are
who you claim to be, it doesn't matter. Nobody's
gonna know what happened to you but a few hun-
gry fish."
    Lyons remained calm. He had known what was
happening was a possibility and had prepared for
it. "So what you're telling me, Guy, is you're
going to rip us off, kill us and dump us into the
lake?"
    Guy rubbed the back of his free hand across his
forehead. With a look of mock amazement cov-
eting his face, he said, "Whew! Nothin' slips past
you, does it, sport?"
    "Very little," Lyons agreed. "But you've
made one mistake."
    "Oh, really?" Guy said, smirking. "And what
might that be?"
    Now it was Lyons's turn to smile. "I lied to
you about the money."
    Schwarz opened the briefcase, pulled out the
newspaper and let it flutter in the breeze onto the




deck. The sides of the nylon bag hung limply
from his fingers.
    A look of pure rage fell over Guy's face. He
stepped forward and shoved the Eliminator .45
into Lyons's nose. "Then you better know how
to take us to it," he said in a low, threatening
tone of voice.
    Lyons wasted no time. He knew it was now or
never. He swept the gun away from his face with
his left hand. At the same time his right dug the
knife from inside his swimsuit. Inserting his
thumb into the opening hole on the blade, he
flicked the Military Model open as a .45 round
blasted from the Eliminator past his neck.
    The Able Team leader watched Schwarz and
Blancanales draw their own knives as he sliced
the ragged edge across the tendons in Guy's wrist.
The serrated blade fairly "rended" rather than
cut, and the pistol fell out of the skinhead's life-
less fingers and clattered onto the deck of the
cabin cruiser.
    As he drew the knife back over his head, Lyons
caught a glimpse of Blancanales driving his own
weapon through the thin T-shirt coveting the
chest of one of the other bald men, ripping the
grease gun from the man's fists a moment before
the guy fell to the deck.
    The Able Team leader brought his knife around
in a lightning-fast hammer-hand blow. The hard

pommel end of the folding knife struck Guy in
the temple, causing him to slump forward into
Lyons's arms. As he caught the unconscious man,
Lyons saw Schwarz slice the throat of another
skinhead. Blood gushed from the gash like a bro-
ken fire hydrant.
    Twisting Guy to face the others, Lyons
wrapped his left wrist around the skinhead's
throat and grabbed the opposite ear. Crossing his
tight hand over the choke-hold, he worked the tip
of his knife under the restraining arm and dug the
serrated blade lightly into Guy's throat.
    He didn't want the man dead, just under con-
trol. At least for now.
    "All right, freeze!" The Able Team leader
shouted at the top of his lungs, "or I'll turn this
good o1' boy into a bald-headed pork chop!"
    The remaining skinheads froze in place.
Schwarz had already pried the Eliminator pistol
from the dying fingers of the man with the slashed
throat, and Blancanales swept his grease gun in a
menacing circle.
  The skinheads dropped their guns.
  "Frisk them," Lyons ordered.
    Schwarz and Blancanales patted the men down
and came up with two knives and a hideout .25.
They threw these weapons, along with the ones
they hadn't commandeered for their own use, over
the rails into the water.




Guy had begun to come around. "What... huh?
What's, uh, happening?"
    "The tables turned while you were napping,"
Blancanales said. "You can't expect to keep up
with all the little minidramas that go on if you're
going to sleep all the time."
    Guy got his bearings and felt the serrated edge
of Lyons' knife against his throat. "What are you
gonna do with us?"
    "That depends on what you do for us," the
Able Team leader told him. "But first we're all
going to sit down on the deck and have a nice
friendly little chat."

Northern Ireland

THE TRIP BACK to the distillery took roughly half
the time it had taken to get from the whiskey-
manufacturing site to Londonderry. McCarter, a
longtime race-car driver and auto-rally contestant,
took the wheel of the minivan, coaxing the maxi-
mum amount of speed from the sluggish vehicle,
which had been designed more for comfort and
transport than swiftness.
    The men of Phoenix Force and Felix O'Prunty
arrived at the distillery at 0735 hours. Already a
crowd of parents and disabled children was head-
ing from the parking area toward the rows of
wooden folding chairs that had been set up near

the bank of St. Columb's Rill. A stage, complete
with podium, bunting and more chairs, stood in
front of where the audience was gathering.
    McCarter pulled the van to a halt in the last
open parking space at the rear of the lot. Behind
him, in the rearview mirror, he saw the cars that
had followed the minivan off the highway as they
pulled over and parked on the side of the road.
He turned, resting an arm over the back of his
seat.
    The men of Phoenix Force had changed into
turtleneck sweaters, casual slacks, tweed jackets
and leather or tweed driving caps and hats. Indi-
vidually they now looked as if they'd fit right in
walking along the streets of Belfast or sitting at
the corner table of one of the local pubs. But as
a group, they still looked like what they were--
hard men bent on a mission. McCarter's biggest
fear was that they'd draw the attention of the
roya!'s executive security team from Scotland
Yard and be mistaken for IRA terrorists them-
selves.
    "We're going to split up," the Phoenix Force
leader said as more vehicles pulled in along the
road behind the minivan. "We'll leave separately.
Anybody think to pick up one of the maps of the
grounds when we were here before?"
 Encizo reached inside his sport coat and pulled




out a folded page, opening it before handing it
over.
    O'Prunty handed McCarter a ballpoint pen, and
McCarter quickly divided the site into sectors.
"Rafe," he said, "take the area around the chairs.
Cal, move into the main building and check it out.
T.J., I want you over by the Pagoda Towers, and
Gary, try to position yourself somewhere behind
where the speaker will be. That'll take a little
thought and creativity to keep the boys from the
Yard from spotting you."
    He took time for a breath, then added, "In fact
I think you ought to go with him, Felix. You've
got the credentials to keep a scene from taking
place if there's trouble."
    O'Prunty nodded his agreement. "Haven't
worked with the Yard chaps for some time," he
said. "But last time I did, I knew several who
were assigned to the royal-security detail. If we're
lucky, there might even be one of them along."
    The sarcasm in his voice didn't escape the men
of Phoenix Force.
    "I'll be the rover," McCarter said, finishing up
the assignments. "Get your radios clipped to your
belt and the earpieces fitted. If anything looks sus-
picious, get on the air with it."
    His teammates nodded. Hawkins opened a hard
plastic case and passed out the walkie-talkies and
earpieces. Battery operated and connected by re-

mote, there was no exterior wiring between the
belt-clipped main unit and hearing piece to give
them away. The earpieces looked like ordinary
hearing aids, and anyone curious would have to
look closely to even spot them in the first place.
To speak they would have to unclip the belt unit
and hold it to their lips, but that should be a
one-time operation if one of the warriors spotted
a threat, and by then it wouldn't matter.
  Events would be unfolding.
    Hawkins left the vehicle first, checking to make
sure his tweed jacket covered the weapons hidden
beneath. Encizo gave him a sixty-second head
start toward the towers, then got out and headed
toward the chairs that were already almost filled.
McCarter saw him slip into the last empty seat at
the back where he could view the entire audience,
as well as the rostrum.
    Manning and O'Pmnty got out next, walking
casually toward a grove of trees on the other side
of the stage. That left only James and McCarter.
    "Cal," the Phoenix Force leader said as his
teammate started to open the door, "I don't have
to tell you that you're going to stand out a little
more than the rest of us in this horde of redheaded
light-skinned sons of the Blarney stone. Be care-
ful."
    James grinned. "What's wrong, David?" he
said. "You never heard of the Black Irish?"




  McCarter chuckled. "Get out of here."
    The Briton watched James cross the grounds
and enter the distillery building. He took a mo-
ment to stare through the windshield, surveying
the general area. As rover, with no particular zone
with which to be personally responsible, he would
be free to follow his instincts as to where trouble
might brew. But right now he saw nothing sus-
picious among the crowd or anywhere else in the
area.
    McCarter exited the minivan, strolling casually
toward the folding chairs. He made his way to the
far northern edge of the property, letting his eyes
roam over the horizon. Seeing nothing out of the
ordinary, he turned back toward the distillery it-
self and scanned the grounds around him. Secure
in the belief that no land mines, trip wires, or
other traps had been set in the area, he entered
the building itself with the strong but not unpleas-
ant odor of peat fires in his nostrils once more.
    Only a skeleton crew was on duty, the rest of
the employees having left to await the royal's ar-
rival, which would take place any minute now.
All tours had been canceled until after her ad-
dress, but a scant few tourists roamed the distill-
ery on their own. McCarter found James in the
room where the Old Bushmills Millennium Malt
was maturing in bourbon barrels. The rest of the
room was deserted.

  James was staring down at one of the barrels.
  "Find something?" McCarter asked.
    James took a moment before answering.
"Maybe."
    McCarter followed James's line of sight to the
barrel. The seal on the lid read Distilled 1975,
Millennium Irish Whiskey.
"You see what I see?" James asked.
McCarter shifted his gaze from the seal to the
rest of the barrel, but he saw nothing to make it
stand out from the other whiskey containers. He
shook his head.
    James leaned in and pointed to a spot on the
left-hand side where the lid convened with the
barrel's trunk. The edge of the lid was slightly
ajar, with perhaps one-thirtieth of an inch extend-
ing up over the lip. McCarter leaned closer and
saw that the tiny ring was wet. The odor of the
peat fires from outside left his nostrils and was
replaced by the smell of finely aging whiskey.
    "When was the last time they opened these
things to sample them?" he asked James.
    "September, last year. I remember reading it in
the brochure."
    "Let's get the top off and have a look,"
McCarter suggested. "I'll watch the door." He
moved to the entryway and positioned himself so
he could see both James and the hallway.
 James drew the modified Crossada fighting




knife from the back-rig beneath his tweed coat,
and jammed it between the lid and barrel. Slowly
he began to pry upward. When the gap was large
enough, he shifted the knife to another spot and
pried some more. He had almost gotten the lid
completely off when he said, "Oh-oh."
    McCarter took a quick glance up and down the
hall, then hurried to James's side. He needed no
explanation as to why the Phoenix Force warrior
had stopped.
    The edge of a bright red electrical wire could
be seen just under the lid.
    "It's a trip wire," James announced. "Lift the
lid, and whatever little surprise O'Keefe's buddies
planted in here will go up."
    McCarter stared at the whiskey barrel. Some-
thing didn't jive. Old Bushmills was a Northern
Ireland landmark, a symbol of all the IRA held
dear. It was metaphorical of the days before the
English had conquered the Emerald Isle, and it
didn't make sense for the Irish to blow it up.
    Besides, if it was the royal they were after, the
odds of the blast getting all the way out to the
podium were negligible unless they had planted
enough explosives inside the barrel to take out the
entire grounds. And if they'd done that, they'd
also kill the Irish men and women who had come
to hear the speech, many of whom would be IRA
themselves, or at least sympathizers.

They'd also be killing children, disabled chil-
dren at that. And that simply wasn't their style.
    McCarter had no love for the IRA, but he had
to admit that this sort of behavior didn't fit the
profile of their usual attacks. They might indis-
criminately blow up people in London, but not
here where their friends and relatives lived. Most
of all, however, a bomb inside the building
seemed to go against what Mrs. O'Keefe had let
slip about one person getting "just deserves" this
morning.
    McCarter contemplated the discrepancies as he
pulled the walkie-talkie from his belt. First things
first, he thought. "Phoenix One, Phoenix Four,"
he said into the microphone. "Come in, Gary."
    A moment later Manning's voice entered
McCarter's earpiece. "Four here," the big Ca-
nadian explosives expert said. "Shoot."
    "We've just found something that falls into
your area of expertise," McCarter said. "I need
you inside, in the Millennium Malt room. Now.
I'm sending Cal to take your place. Tell O'Prunty
to stay put."
    "Affirmative, One," Manning replied. "I'm on
my way."
    James nodded that he had understood his orders
and left the room. A minute later Gary Manning
walked in.
 McCarter pointed to the half-opened lid but




said nothing. He didn't have to. Manning took it
in and summed it up with one glance.
    "My guess would be Semtex," he said more
to himself than McCarter as he pulled a multi-
purpose tool from his pocket. He opened the knife
blade from the tool and gently inserted it between
the lid and barrel. "You got a flashlight handy,
David?"
    McCafret pulled a miniflashlight out of his
pants pocket, stepped forward and shone its beam
into the gap around Manning's blade. The big Ca-
nadian bent down and looked inside.
    "Still can't see what it's made of," he said,
standing up. "But it doesn't look like there's any
backup wire to blow if I snip the trip."
    "Doesn't look like there is doesn't sound like
a certainty to me."
    Manning chuckled, then shrugged. "There are
no certainties in life, fearless leader," he said.
"Especially in our line of work, and particularly
when it comes to explosives. You have to play
the odds and even your hunches sometimes."
Without further hesitation, he used the multipur-
pose tool's wire cutter to sever the red wire.
    McCarter felt a moment of relief when the
room didn't blow up around him. He watched
Manning lift the lid the rest of the way off.
"Whew!" the Canadian said, looking down into

the barrel. "Talk about booze that'll take the top
of your head off."
    The Briton shone the flashlight into the barrel.
Just below the surface of the whiskey, attached to
the side of the barrel with wood screws, he could
see the bomb. "Semtex?" he asked.
    Manning shook his head. "I was wrong. It's
C-4." He chuckled. "Hey, one out of two ain't
bad. Be glad I wasn't wrong about a backup trip
wire."
    McCarter was. "How hard is it going to be to
defuse?"
    "Piece of cake," Manning said. "I'll have it
out of here and the barrel put back together before
you can say 'boom.'" He had stuck the wire cut-
ter into the whiskey when they heard the voice
behind them.
    "What in bloody hell do you two think you're
doing?"
    McCarter and Manning turned to see a man
wearing a charcoal gray suit staring angrily in
their direction.
    "We're taking a bit of the bite out of your
brew," McCarter said. He pointed to the barrel.
"Come have a look."
    The man in the suit walked forward, looked
down into the whiskey and turned a ghostly pale.




"Is that what I think it is?" he asked in a trem-
bling voice.
    "That depends on what you think it is," Man-
ning replied as he went to work, wrist deep in
single-malt whiskey. "But if you think it's a
bomb, then yes, it's what you think it is."
    The man's pale complexion went even whiter.
"My name is Galway," he said. 'Tin the man-
aging director of the distillery. May I ask who you
gentlemen might be?"
    "We might be anyone," McCarter said as
Manning continued to work. "But who we are is
a specially trained team of counterterrorists cur-
rently working with MI-6." He paused. "Any
more 'might's or 'maybe's?"  "No," Galway said.
    "Then I suggest you go back to your office and
leave us to our work. Otherwise this four-
hundred-year-old company just might not get to
finish aging its Millennium Malt. And keep this
under your hat, won't you, old chap? I doubt that
public knowledge of this incident would help sell
whiskey."
    Galway took another quick look at the bomb,
then said, "I believe I'll go listen to the oration."
He turned on his heel and was gone.
    "Bingo," Manning said a moment later. He
pulled the dripping bomb up out of the barrel and

showed it to McCarter. "Safe out of the wa-
ter---or should I say whiskey."
    The sound of whirling helicopter rotors flop-
ping somewhere in the air nearby met the ears of
the men from Stony Man Farm. "Not a moment
too soon," McCarter said. "Sounds as if the royal
is arriving."
    "Well, it is safe to speak now," Manning
stated. He set the bomb on top of the neighboring
barrel and replaced the lid. Picking up the bomb
again, he said, 'Til take this with us and--" The
Canadian stopped himself in midsentence.
    McCarter had raised his radio to call the rest of
the men in. He stopped. "What's wrong?"
    Manning's gaze was locked on the bomb. "I
was wrong again," he said. "This isn't C-4." He
squinted at the pliable claylike substance.
  "Then what is it?" McCarter asked.
    "I don't know," Manning said, shaking his
head. "But it's not C--4, and it's not Semtex. In
fact it's not even an explosive material." He tore
his eyes away from the bomb and looked over to
McCarter. "This thing's a dummy, David. It was
put here with the lid left ajar to waste the time of
anyone looking for such things."
    McCarter started to speak but was stopped by
Hawkins's excited voice in his ear. "Phoenix Five
to One. I'm over at the Pagoda Towers and I can




see heads in both of them." There was a long
pause during which radio static replaced his voice.
When he came back on he added, "At least one
of them's got a rifle. Looks like a scoped 8 mm
Mauser from here."

CHAPTER TEN

Toky~ Japan

With the briefcase containing his civilian clothes
slung over his shoulder, the Executioner raced
past the surprised crate makers and assorted ma-
chinery like a tailback who had broken through
the line and hit open field. He was halfway to the
inner door--a door he hoped led out of the Tak-
ahata manufacturing shop and back into the office
area--when one of the men, dressed in white cov-
erails and a matching work cap, overcame the
shock of seeing a heavily armed man in black
enter the workroom and decided to be a hero.
    Jumping Out from behind a drill press, the box
maker assumed a classic martial-arts stance and
let out a blood-curdling k/aL Again like a football
player, Bolan's right hand shot out in a stiff-arm.
His open palm struck the martial artist squarely
on the chin and sent him staggering back to per-




form a backward jackknife over the base of the
drill press.
    Without breaking his pace, the Executioner
lowered a shoulder and hit the door. The frame
splintered and sent the door flying from its hinges.
Bolan ran down the hall, listening to the screams
of sirens on all sides of the building. If the police
hadn't already entered the doors, he knew it
would only be seconds before they did.
    The Executioner came to a door at the end of
the hall and paused to look through the dia-
mond-shaped window near the top, seeing another
hallway that looked deserted. He glanced over his
shoulder to make sure none of the other produc-
tion workers had decided to play superstar and
give pursuit. None had.
    Silently Bolan opened the door and entered the
adjacent hall. He sensed more than heard the pres-
ence of other men somewhere close. Ducking into
the first office he came to, he opened the door a
crack and peered back into the hallway.
    Soft footsteps sounded on the tile floor. A mo-
ment later a uniformed Japanese police officer ap-
peared. The man shuffled awkwardly down the
hall, trying to maintain a Weaver shooting stance
and keep his department-issue 9 mm Glock 17
ready in a two-handed grip. The stance wasn't
compatible with movement, nor was he able to

keep the barrel of the Glock from bobbing up and
down with each step.
    Bolan waited as the Japanese officer neared the
door. Killing cops had never fit into the Execu-
tioner's creed, and he didn't plan to start changing
doctrines now. The man in black had always be-
lieved that he and the men in blue were on the
same side in the war against crime and unjustified
aggression. If necessary, he would bluff, frighten
and even inflict minor injury upon any of the cops
who stood in the way of his escape. But he would
kill none of them.
    If it came down to him or them, the Execu-
tioner had decided long ago he would take a bullet
himself before he sent some honorable law-
enforcement official to an early grave.
    He let the man get a foot from the door before
he made his move. Timing his actions so the
bouncing Glock would be pointed down, away
from vital areas of his body, he swung the door
open, reached out and grabbed the barrel of the
weapon.
    Bolan tugged the pistol toward him, twisting
the barrel so it pointed out and away from his
side. The jerk brought the officer's head snapping
forward, and the Executioner sent a hard right
cross into the man's face. Blood spurted from the
cop's nostrils as he released his grip on the Glock
and fell to the floor.




    The Executioner dragged the body into the of-
fice and shut the door. Searching the unconscious
man's gun belt, he found a collapsible steel baton
and a small pepper-spray dispenser. He snapped
his wrist, bringing the club to its full length, then
aimed the pepper canister away from himself and
gave it a test squirt. With the baton in his right
hand, the small canister in his left, he exited the
room before the spray could affect him in the con-
fined area.
    Moving silently down the hallway in his
rubber-cleated nylon combat boots, Bolan reached
the comer of the hall and stopped. Just out of
sight, on the other side of the wall, he heard
voices whispering in Japanese. He dropped to one
knee and slowly edged one eye around the barrier.
    Two more officers, their Glocks hanging limply
from their arms and aimed at the ground, stood
quietly arguing over some aspect of the building
search.
    The Executioner didn't figure he'd get a better
chance.
    Rising to his feet again, he stepped around the
comer and sent a second-long spray of pepper gas
into the face of the nearest man. A scream erupted
from the officer's mouth, and he dropped to his
knees as the other cop, a step or so behind him,
started to raise his Glock.
  Bolan stepped in quickly, rapping the baton on

the wrist behind the pistol. The blow jarred the
weapon from the man's hand and he, too, let out
a scream of pain. But it was nothing compared to
the continued shrieks of the man with a face full
of cayenne-pepper resin.
    The Executioner hurried on, knowing that the
howls of pain from the temporarily incapacitated
men would bring more of the Japanese cops to
the scene. It was his hope that they all would hear
the noise and come to investigate, creating a win-
dow of escape in the perimeter defense he was
sure had been set up by now.
    Bolan cut down two more halls, encountering
no more resistance and gradually making his way
through the unfamiliar labyrinth toward what he
hoped would be the front of the building. When
he finally came to a familiar hallway, he knew he
was close and stopped long enough to open his
briefcase and pull on his slacks and jacket over
the blacksuit. A moment later he stepped into the
same secretarial pool from which he had trans-
ferred the Takahata files to Stony Man Farm.
    The large room was dark, as he had left it. Un-
less he missed his guess, the front reception area
where he had been that afternoon lay just on the
other side of the far wall. Making his way quietly
across the carpet, he cracked the door and peered
through the opening.
  The reception area stood where he'd suspected




it would be. An overhead light had been left on,
and he saw it was less than twenty feet to the front
door. Through the glass he could see the whirling
lights of two squad cars but no officers could be
seen in or around the vehicles. In civvies now,
once safely through the lobby and onto the side-
walk, he could sprint to the more heavily popu-
lated area a block away and stand a decent chance
of getting lost in the crowds on the sidewalk.
    The only problem was that three Japanese cops,
Giocks up and ready, stood covering the lobby.
    Bolan decided on what appeared to be the only
tactic available. It was a long shot, but he didn't
have time to sit down and figure out a plan to
shorten the odds. Soon the other officers searching
the building would begin to double back and
come up on him from the rear.
    Then they'd have him trapped, and all chance
of escape would be erased.
    Drawing the Glock 21 from his hip holster, the
Executioner aimed it at the floor to test the laser.
The dot glowed brightly on the tile in the semi-
dark room. Then, grasping the doorknob with his
left hand, he suddenly threw the door open and
stepped into the lobby.
  All three cops turned toward him.
    Bolan dropped the red-orange dot on the face
of the nearest man and yelled, "Koko de ii desu.t"
using up most of the conversational Japanese he

knew in one sentence. It might have been his
words that caused the men to obey and freeze, but
the Executioner suspected that the laser dot in the
center of the officer's forehead had something to
do with it, as well.
    Bolan kept the laser on the man as he motioned
for the other two to drop their weapons. They rec-
ognized the red dot and what it meant, and didn't
hesitate. The man in Bolan's sights, however, had
been forced to close his eyes against the intense
illumination from the five milliwatt beam. "Tell
him to drop his gun, too," the Executioner barked
at the others in English.
    One of them understood. He spoke a few words
in Japanese, and a moment later the G!ock in the
hand of the blind man fell to the ground.
    The Executioner moved in swiftly, keeping the
laser dot centered on the officer's forehead. He
twirled the cop away from him, wrapped his left
arm around the man's throat, then shoved the gun
up under his chin. The laser was still activated by
his grip on the backstrap, and the red light
splashed off the cop's skin to create an eerie
red-orange glow around his face.
    Bolan motioned for the other two men to get
on the floor. They complied, falling to their faces
and spreading their arms and legs. With the third
cop in tow, the Executioner moved sideways to-




ward the front door, keeping the men on the floor
in his field of vision.
    When he reached the door, Bolan pulled his
arm away from his hostage's throat long enough
to push open the door, then returned to the choke
hold. Using the same crablike sidestep, he de-
scended the concrete stairs to the cars parked
along the curb.
    As they had appeared to be from inside the
building, neither of the vehicles with the flashing
red lights was occupied. The officers had left the
engines running and the doors open as they piled
out to converge on the Takahata building. Bolan
dragged his hostage to the nearest car, shoved him
in and pushed him across the seat to the passenger
side before slipping behind the wheel and killing
the bar lights on top of the roof.
    The Executioner transferred the Glock to his
left hand and centered the laser dot on the man's
chest. With his right hand, he threw the transmis-
sion into Drive and pulled away from the curb.
    Two blocks later, when he was sure none of the
other Japanese officers had seen his escape and
followed, he pulled over to the side of the street.
"Get out," the Executioner ordered.
    The Japanese cop evidently didn't speak En-
glish. He stared at Bolan with a mixture of anxiety
and puzzlement covering his face.
  Bolan reached for the handle of his own door

and mimed opened it, then stabbed a finger at the
cop's chest before hooking a thumb past him to
the sidewalk. "You," he said. "Out." At the
same time he relaxed his grip on the Glock, and
the laser dot disappeared.
    The uniformed man got the message. Slowly,
probably wondering if he was about to be shot,
he unlatched the door. A moment later he stood
on the sidewalk staring back at Bolan in disbelief
at his good luck.
    The Executioner watched the Japanese cop in
the rearview mirror as he drove away. The man
shrunk to a tiny dot of blue, then disappeared al-
together in the distance.




CHAPTER ELEVEN

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Dr. Glenn Barrister leaned back from the desk in
his study and took off his glasses. He rubbed his
eyes, both from fatigue and irritation. Bill paying
was such a boring chore. He glanced over the
itemized power bill, then started to write the
check. Gradually the pile of envelopes on his desk
began to grow smaller. He was just about to open
the envelope of the last bill when the doorbell
suddenly rang.
    The research specialist jerked in his chair,
glancing up at the clock. It was nearly 11:30 p.m.
Who could it be? He lived alone and had few
close friends. Those he saw socially he met away
from his house, and he never had drop-by com-
pany, particularly at this hour.
    The doorbell chimed again, and fear shot
through him. Slowly he opened the bottom drawer
of his desk and pulled out the aged revolver that

had been passed down through his family. He
stared at it, trying to remember if it was loaded.
    The ring from the front doorbell was now ac-
companied by a loud pounding. Barrister jumped
from his seat, then walked toward the hall, his
legs feeling leaden. He passed through the dark-
ened living room with the gun dangling at his
side, then realized he shouldn't let it be seen and
hid it behind his back.
    "Who is it?" Barrister asked when he reached
the door, surprised that his voice didn't crack
from the terror coursing through his body.
    "Dr. Barrister, we need to talk to you," a calm,
even friendly voice said on the other side of the
wood.
    "Who are you?" Barrister asked. The voice
sounded friendly, but wouldn't a criminal who
wanted to trick you make sure to sound unthrea-
tening? He suspected they would, but the world
of thieves and killers was something totally out-
side his frame of reference. Barrister had grown
up in a nice upper-middle-class family, then gone
straight through three universities to gain his
bachelor's degree, then master's and finally a
Ph.D. He had landed a teaching assignment im-
mediately, and even he knew he had never been
exposed much to life off campus.
  Particularly the ways of criminals.
  "Dr. Barrister," the friendly voice said again,




 "please open the door. It's imperative that we
 speak with you."
    Barrister's mind continued to race, fixing on
details of the man's words and trying to ration-
alize himself into a more tranquil state. The voice
had used the word imperative, which Barrister
didn't think would be in the vocabulary of many
crack-smoking robbers. The man on the other side
of the door had also used correct grammar, saying
speak rather than talk as the metallurgist sus-
pected a street criminal would have done.
    Barrister took a deep breath. He was overre-
acting, he was sure. It was probably the police.
And besides, if anything went awry, he had his
grandfather's gun behind his back. "Are you the
police?" he asked.
    "Federal agents, Dr. Barrister. U.S. Depart-
ment of Justice. Please open the door."
    Barrister felt a wave of comfort rush through
him as he unbolted the door, then twisted the
knob. He felt even better when he saw the four
men standing on his front porch under the light.
The one closest to the door wore a conservative
gray suit like the metallurgist imagined an FBI
agent would wear, and the other three were ob-
viously some sort of special police officers. They
were dressed in tight black jumpsuits, black caps
and strange gun belts were attached to holsters
strapped around their lower thighs.

    If Barrister had been a Hollywood casting di-
rector, he wouldn't have been able to do a better
job of finding men to portray federal agents, and
he breathed a sigh of relief.
    Remembering the gun behind his back, Barris-
ter realized suddenly that greeting police officers
with a gun--regardless of whether they were local
or federal--might get one shot. He stuck the re-
volver in the back of his slacks as he opened the
storm door.
    The man in the gray suit, evidently the one who
had spoken to him, smiled. "May we come in,
Doctor?" he asked.
    "Certainly, officers," Barrister said as he
stepped back and held the door open. It occurred
to him that he had seen no badges or shoulder
patches on the men in the tight black jumpsuits
and that he should have asked that the man in gray
present some credentials.
    The thought brought on another short burst of
fear. But why? he asked himself. The way they
looked, what else could they be but police offi-
cers?
    Barrister made sure the gun in the back of his
belt was hidden from the men as they entered the
house. Still facing them, he shut the door behind
him. "What can I do for you gentlemen?" he
asked.
  "Dr. Barrister, we have need of your special-


 ties," the dark-complected man in the gray suit
 said. "We'd like you to come with us."
     Barrister looked instinctively at his watch. "At
 this hour?"
    "I'm afraid so. We have an emergency situa-
tion on our hands."
    The word credentials entered the metallurgist's
mind again. He wasn't going anywhere with any-
one unless he knew for certain who they were.
"I'd like to see some identification."
    The leader smiled and reached into the inside
pocket of his jacket.
    A moment later Barrister held in his hand an
identification card that identified the man as Spe-
cial Agent Leo Turrin, U.S. Department of Jus-
tice.
    "Can you tell me what this is all about?" Bar-
rister asked, handing the card back.
  "Not yet, I'm afraid," Turrin replied.
    Now certain that the men in his living room
were all police officers, Barrister found new cour-
age and bristled slightly at Turrin's refusal. "I
believe I am still living in the United States of
America," he said, "not Nazi Germany, where
men dressed in black entered your home at odd
hours and hauled you away without any expla-
nation." He paused to take a breath, then puffed
his chest out in defiance. "I'm sorry, gentlemen.
I'll be happy to help. Why don't you call me at

my office in the science building tomorrow morn-
ing?"
    The man named Tun'in lowered his gaze to the
floor and shook his head sadly. "I really am sorry
to have to treat you like this Dr. Barrister, but
you're going to come with us tonight. One way
or the other, you're coming with us."
    The fortitude Barrister had felt for an instant
evaporated even faster. These men might look like
federal agents, but they weren't acting like them.
Could Turrin's credentials be counterfeit? It
dawned on Barrister that he had never seen a gen-
uine Justice Department badge or identification
card and wouldn't know a fake from the real
thing. And the men in blackw he looked at them
closer now--no, he had been right the first time.
They had no badges or patches.
    "I'd like to see identification from all of you
men, then I'm going to make some phone calls to
verify who you say you are," the metallurgist
said.
    Again the man calling himself Turrin shook his
head. "I'm sorry, Doctor, we simply don't have
the time for all that."
    "This is outrageous!" Barrister shouted, sur-
prised at how loud his voice was. "I have no in-
tentions of--"
    Tun'in took a step toward the metallurgist, and
before he knew what he'd done, Barrister had




jerked the revolver from the back of his slacks.
He aimed it at the man in gray, who was less than
an arm's length away from him now. The man
stopped in his tracks.
    "Dr. Barrister," Tun'in said, "please put that
thing away."
    "I will not!" Barrister shouted. "And if you
take one more step, I will shoot."
    Turrin smiled. "Dr. Barrister, the gun is point-
ing directly at me, and I can see into the cylinder.
You're not going to shoot me or anybody else
with it in the condition it's in. The gun isn't
loaded, Doctor."
    Barrister felt a surge of foolishness move
through his body to accompany the terror in his
heart. Without thinking, he turned the gun toward
his face to look for himself.
    The man in gray took the step the metallurgist
had ordered him not to take and reached out, seiz-
ing the revolver from Barrister's hand.
    Later Barrister would remember that the move-
ment was done smoothly, and not even particu-
larly fast.
    Tun'in opened the gun and dumped the car-
tridges onto the floor. He tossed the revolver over
his shoulder to one of the men in the jumpsuits,
who caught it and placed it carefully on the lamp
table next to the couch.
  The man in gray looked Barrister in the eyes.

"Now, Doctor," he said, "is there anything
you'd like to pack before we go? We could be
gone for several days."

Stony Man Farm

AARON KURTZMAN TURNED and looked down the
ramp at Akira Tokaido. The young Japanese
hadn't quit typing, nor had his head quit bobbing,
since the computer files of the Takahata Box,
Crate and Container Company had come across
the wires to Stony Man Farm.
    Kurtzman had wheeled down the ramp as soon
as they'd arrived and taken a quick look for him-
selK As he'd known they would be, the files were
all written in kanji, meaning he hadn't a clue as
to what he was seeing on-screen. So he'd wheeled
back up to his own work and left Tokaido to his.
Kurtzman liked to supervise his people at arm's
length once an assignment had been given out.
Breathing over somebody's shoulder produced
negative returns, splitting that person's attention
between the computer and his or her supervisor.
Split attention, he didn't need.
    And besides, all of the members of his cyber-
netics team were self-starters, and once they'd be-
gun a task they were like dogs holding on to a
bone. They didn't give up until the job was com-




plete. Tokaido, Wethers and Delahunt weren't just
experts; they were the top of the crop.
    If they hadn't been, they'd never have been re-
cruited to Stony Man Farm.
    Kurtzman's phone rang, and he turned back to
his console. Lifting the receiver to his ear, he au-
tomatically turned toward the glass wall that di-
vided the computer room from Barbara Price's
mission-control area. He saw Price looking back
at him through the glass, and in his ear heard her
voice say, "Bear, you've got visitors." She
glanced toward the door to the computer room as
she hung up and reached for a button on her desk.
    Stony Man Farm's computer wizard followed
Price's gaze to the door as he heard the electronic
lock buzz. Just on the other side of the glass stood
Leo Tun-in, three blacksuits and a small man
wearing dark blue casual slacks and a short-
sleeved white shirt with the collar unbuttoned.
The man looked frightened as Turrin pushed the
door open and ushered him through before falling
into step behind him. The blacksuits brought up
the rear.
    Turrin took the arm of the small man and es-
corted him gently up the wheelchair ramp to
Kurtzman's bank of computers. The man looked
not only frightened but confused.
  "Aaron," Turrin said as the party reached the

top, "I'd like you to meet Dr. Glenn Barrister.
Doctor, this is our cybernetics expert."
    "Pleased to meet you, Dr. Barrister," Kurtz-
man said, extending a hand.
    Barrister shook it with a weak grip as his eyes
circled the room in amazement. "Do I call
you...Aaron?" he asked.  Kurtzman nodded.
    Barrister released his hand and pulled his eyes
back into his head. "Quite a setup you gentlemen
have here. But I've got to tell you, I'm a little
perplexed. I'm starting to relax because it's evi-
dent that you work for the government in some
capacity."
    Kurtzman chuckled. "I'm not sure that's a very
good reason to relax."
    Turrin and the blacksuits laughed quietly, and
the joke even brought a feeble grin to Barrister's
face. "Yes, quite true," he said. "But at least you
aren't the Mafia hit men I imagined when these
men with the guns and jumpsuits blindfolded me
and put me on the airplane. By the way, can you
tell me where I am?"
    Kurtzman shook his head. "I'm sorry, Doctor,
I can't tell you where you are or who we are. But
I can tell you that we're a top-secret installation
of the United States government and we're the
good guys."
  "How can I be sure of that?" Barrister asked.




    "I think that you'll be certain when you find
out what we wanted you here for," Kurtzman
said. "Leo, could you wheel one of the chairs up
the ramp for the doctor?"
    Turrin turned to descend the ramp, but one of
the blacksuits had already gone down to get the
chair. As he pushed it up the ramp, Barrister
spoke again. "Then I suppose when all this--
whatever it is--is over, I'll be free to go?"
    Kurtzman's head bobbed again. "Most assur-
edly."
    "But I also assume that I'll be expected to keep
it all to myself?."
    This time Kurtzman shrugged. "That would be
nice, Doctor. But even if you get windy, it's been
our experience that no one will believe you. You
might as well tell your associates that you were
taken aboard an alien aircraft and subjected to a
humiliating medical examination by little green
men with oblong heads."
    "Yes," Barrister said, "I see your point. But I
do have one problem."
  "And that would be...?"
    'Tm expected to teach two classes tomorrow
and meet several colleagues in the laboratory. My
absence will be noted and unexcused."
    "That's already been taken care of," Kurtzman
replied. "There'll be a letter waiting at the science
building from the President. It will explain that

you've been called away for an emergency as-
signment."
    Barrister frowned. "The university president?"
he asked. "Dr. Campbell and I have never seen
eye to eye. I doubt he would--"
    "I didn't mean the university president, Dr.
Barrister."
    Barrister's eyes opened as wide, and Kurtzman
could see that the enormity of the Stony Man op-
eration had finally sunk in.
    The blacksuit pushed the chair next to Kurtz-
man and the computer genius said, "So, Doctor,
shall we get busy?"
    Barrister nodded, finally relaxed and comforted
by the knowledge that he wasn't going to be
killed or made part of some criminal scam. "Yes,
why don't we?" he said, dropping into the chair.
"But I do have one last problem."  Kurtzman waited.
    "Why don't you call me Glenn?" Barrister
said with a smile that was now genuine rather
than nervously affected. "If you continue to call
me Dr. Barrister, I'll feel compelled to call you
Dr. Bear, and that borders on the ludicrous."




CHAPTER TWELVE

The Caribbean

Colonel Harold J. Maddox was always amazed at
how easily, and for how little, members of the
underworld would sell out their partners. Forget
the code of omert& Forget loyalty or "honor
among thieves." That was all archaic bullshit if
it had ever been the norm. Be they mafiosi, bikers
or street gangs, ten or twenty thousand dollars
dropped here and there could do wonders when it
came to getting the inside scoop on how his weap-
ons were being used. To date, however, he hadn't
learned anything of importance from his spies,
and he had even begun to wonder if the expense
was necessary.
This morning he no longer doubted that it was.
"Damn, sir," the voice in New York said into
Maddox's ear. "I couldn't fuckin' believe it. Here
they came, asking to do a deal and all of a sudden

they open up with these Star Wars guns and kill
everybody in the place."
    Maddox glanced at the row of lights on his
phone, double-checking to make sure the trace-
jamming device was in operation so neither the
caller nor any other curious parties could track the
connection. And the biker on the other end had
no idea to whom he was talking. He was safe.
"What did the guns look like, Bongo?" Maddox
said patiently. He found the stupidity of the Road
Kill biker repugnant, and couldn't wait to get the
necessary information from him and get off the
line.
    "Big, long, pistollike sons of bitches," Bongo
said. "They had these round-ass things on top that
looked like black plastic logs or something. I
think that was the magazine."
    "Calicos," Maddox said. "Probably the Model
950. A fine machine pistol. But tell me again,
Bongo, how did you keep from getting killed
yourself?."
    "Luck, sir, pure, dumb, fuckin' luck. I'd gone
in the men's room to take a piss when all the
shooting started."
"Then how do you know what happened?"
"I cracked the door at first. Then I saw what
was happening and closed it fast. Sat down on the
shitter and prayed like hell that God wouldn't let




them come check the bathroom when they were
finished."
      "Well," Maddox said, "I'm sure you've al-
ways been one of the Lord's favorite creations."
  The biker didn't catch the sarcasm.
    "Who do you think these men with the Calicos
might have been?" Maddox asked.
    "I dunno," Bongo said. "Cops of some kind.
Undercover cops. Hell, who knows? Maybe
Feds."
    "And you say that two other Road Kills sur-
vived?"
    "Yeah," Bongo said. "Guy named Tap Dancer
and his bitch."
  "Tell me about Tap Dancer."
    "Not much to tell. He's not real bright but no
eggplant, either."
    "These men--the ones who raided Miss Car-
dage's," Maddox said. "They took Tap Dancer
and his girlfriend with them?"  "Yeah. Don't know why."
    "Bongo, I suspect they're planning to have Tap
Dancer lead them to other customers of mine.
Where would Tap Dancer take them?"  "I dunno."
    "Think hard. There's another five thousand in
it for you if you can put me on their trail."
    "Tap Dancer had been real tight with a Road
Kill named Guy," the biker said immediately.

"Guy moved down to New Orleans. Word has it
he's in with the 'heads."
    "You mean drug abusers, as in acid-head?"
Maddox said.
    "No, no, man. Skinheads. You know, the guys
who shave their heads and hate--"
    "Yes, I know what skinheads are," Maddox
said. "Do you have an address or phone number
on this Guy?"
    "No, but I might be able to get one. I do re-
member somebody saying he was a bouncer at a
club on Bourbon Street. Guys 'n' Dolls is the
name of it. You know, like the movie? Funny,
ain't it?"
  "What's that?" Maddox asked.
    "Well, this guy's name is Guy and he works
at Guys 'n' Dolls. Sort of--" Bongo paused,
searching for the right word "-- ironic. Yeah,
that's it, it's ironic."
    "Yes, Bongo," Maddox said patiently, "it's
very ironic. See if you can get Guy's home ad-
dress and phone number. Then call me back. Im-
mediately."
    "Er, the five grand you was talkin' about,
sir..."
      "There'll be a check in the mail as soon as I
hear from you again."  "Yeah...okay."
 Maddox hung up, relieved to be rid of the im-




becile. But he had no more than dropped the re-
ceiver into the cradle than the same line rang
again.
    The former Army colonel raised the phone to
his ear once more. "Yes?" he said.
    "It is Hiroshi," the voice said in fairly good
English.
    Maddox let out a minor sigh of relief. At least
the Yakuza man was more intelligent than Bongo.
"Yes, Hiroshi. What can I do for you?"
    "Someone broke into the Takahata offices last
night. There was evidence he had been in the
room where our files are left on the computer."
    Maddox thought a moment, frowning. "Did he
get into the files that connect our transactions?"
he asked.
    "We do not know," Hiroshi replied. "Possi-
bly. The computers were badly damaged when we
arrived."
  "The man got away?"
    "Yes. There was a running battle with the po-
lice who answered the alarm. But he escaped."
    "How easily could he have discovered that we
had done business if he did access the files?"
Maddox asked.
    "Not easily," Hiroshi said. "But with time, it
could be done. Some records must be kept."
    Maddox grew silent for a moment. The crates
he had purchased from Takahata had always gone

to a front company he owned in Jamaica, Island
Produce Distributors. If this mysterious burglar
was hunting the source of the Eliminators, and
had learned of the transactions between the pro-
duce distribution company and Takahata, he'd
head to Kingston.
    "All right, Hiroshi," Maddox finally said.
"Thank you."
    "There will be a bonus for this information, I
assume?" the Yakuza man said.
    Maddox sighed. Everyone had their hand out
these days. "Five thousand," he said. "I'11 wire
it to you tonight."
"Thank you," Hiroshi said, and hung up.
Maddox replaced the receiver and sat back in
his chair, turning to look out the window at the
bright morning sun reflecting off the soft waves.
Problems were beginning to arise. The Road Kills
had been slaughtered and the Takahata offices
broken into. Had only one of these two occur-
rences happened, he might have written it off as
coincidence. But not both.
    Someone--some agency, actually--was on the
trail of the Eliminators.
    Well, Maddox thought, turning to face his desk
once more, when you faced a problem, you dealt
with it. Whether it was a military dilemma, a busi-
ness problem or some snooping bunch of U.S.
government bureaucrats sticking their noses




where they didn't belong, you found a way to
solve your problem.
    And he knew exactly how to solve this one.
When you were being hunted, you eliminated the
hunter.
    Maddox lifted the telephone and tapped a pager
number into the instrument. There was no need to
enter his own number for a return call--there was
no one else on the island with a phone. As soon
as he heard the beep that signaled his page had
been received, he hung up and tapped another
number. When it beeped, he returned the receiver
to the cradle once more.
    Morrison arrived first. Maddox pointed to the
chairs in front of his desk as he drew a big Chur-
chill cigar from the humidor and began the light-
ing ritual. The man sat, as usual, without a word.
    Staggs came in two minutes later. Maddox fin-
ished lighting the cigar as the man dropped into
the vacant chair.
    Taking two puffs from the cigar, Maddox
turned the tip to his eyes to make sure the cigar
was burning evenly. Then, resting it in the marble
ashtray, he looked up at his two top men.
    "A minor obstacle is trying to block our path,
gentlemen, and I'd like you two to take care of
it."
    Morrison remained silent, but Staggs said,
"What is it, Colonel?"

    Quickly Maddox gave them a summary of the
information he had just received during the two
phone calls.
    "So, exactly what is it you'd like us to do,
sir?" Staggs asked, leaning forward in his chair.
    "Take as many of the guards as you think
you'll need," Maddox said, picking up his cigar
again and sticking it into his mouth. "Find the
men responsible for these acts and try to learn
who it is sponsoring them. Then eliminate the
problem for me, won't you?"
"Sure, Colonel. Where you want me to head?"
"New Orleans."
Staggs thought a moment, then said, "Sounds
like there's three of these guys. I'll pick up the
trail, then find a good place to snipe their asses."
    "Fine," Maddox said. "However you like. Just
kill them." He turned his eyes to Morrison.
"Shawnee, that leaves you with Jamaica. Do you
need any backup?"
    Maddox had rarely seen the Indian smile and
never heard him laugh. That ended now, as Mor-
rison suddenly let out a cackle that told Maddox
his question sounded as absurd to the mysterious
Native American as some of those Bongo had
asked during the earlier phone call.
    The cackle ended abruptly, then Morrison
crossed one leg over the other and let his black
moccasin dangle in the air. "You said it was only




one man who broke into the Takahata building?"
he asked Maddox.
  The colonel nodded.
    "And it will be only one man who heads for
the fruit company in Jamaica?"
  "That's my educated guess."
    "Then I'll need no one else," Morrison said in
a low, almost inaudible voice. "I'll find him, tor-
ture the truth from him and kill him myself."

In the Air above Alabama

CARL LYONS LOOKED down through the sky as
Charlie Mott slowed the Learjet. Below, he could
see the twisting waters of the Tallapoosa River.
Farther north was a heavily wooded area, with a
clearing standing almost dead center. In the clear-
ing he could see a tiny flicker of flame.
    That had to be the Ku Klux Klan site of which
Guy had informed them, and Lyons was ninety-
nine percent sure that man hadn't lied. Guy had
felt the serrated edge of Lyons's knife pressed
into the flesh beneath his chin, and there had been
no question in the thug's mind that even the hint
of a lie would bring about a very bloody death.
    "So," Mott said, "want a couple more flyovers
to get your bearings, or you ready?"
    "I've seen enough," Lyons replied. "Just give
us time to slip into our chutes."

    "I'll circle wide, then. Dress warmly, boys. We
don't want you catching the sniffles, now, do
we?"
    Lyons moved to the back of the plane where
Schwarz and Blancanales were already slipping
into the straps of their parachutes. He found his
own where he had left it on the floor, and lifted
it to his back over the small equipment backpack
he already bore. The big ex-cop also toted the
50-round Calico 950 and an extra 100-round
cylindrical magazine. On his belt was his Colt
Python, and stuck into the back of his pants, se-
cured in a custom-made thumb-break inside-the-
waistband strap holster, was the Colt .45 auto-
matic with the sound suppressor.
    The Able Team leader's mind traced back over
the steps that had led them to this Ku Klux Klan
meeting just north of Montgomery, Alabama. Guy
had been hesitant to say where the Eliminators
had come from, but a little extra pressure of the
knife on his throat--just enough to start a thin
trickle of blood dripping down his chest--had
persuaded him.
    The skinhead had spoken at first slowly, then
faster as Lyons increased the pressure. Lyons
could feel that the blade had dug under the skin,
and had to be less than a centimeter from the
man's carotid artery.
 More importantly, Guy could feel it.




    Lyons slipped the chute straps over his arms
and secured the belt at his waist. Guy might or
might not know it, but his words had saved both
his own life and those of his men. Instead of turn-
ing their bodies into fish chum, Able Team had
left them tied and bound in the alley behind New
Orleans's police headquarters. They had also left
some of the Eliminators and a note saying Merry
Christmas and signed A friend.
    A short, anonymous phone call to the desk ser-
geant had alerted the New Orleans men in blue as
to what lay out back waiting for them.
    "You guys ready?" Lyons asked as Mott
banked the plane toward the clearing.
  Both Schwarz and Blancanales nodded.
    "I'll try to get her over into the wind," Mott
said. "Give you plenty of time to get to the
ground before you reach the woods." He adjusted
something on the instrument panel, then added,
"Wait until I give the word, then all of you get
out as fast as you can. You should land within a
hundred yards of the trees."
    The seconds of another minute ticked by as
Mott forced the Learjet into the heavy head wind.
Then he said, "Okay, gents, get ready."
  Lyons opened the aircraft's door.
  "Jump!" Mott yelled.
    Lyons dived first, and was whipped behind the
plane as soon as he hit the wind. For a moment

it felt as if he would move laterally forever, with-
out falling, but a few seconds later he began to
descend. He looked up as he free-fell, seeing
Schwarz shoot out of the doorway. A second and
a half later, Blancanales followed.
    He looked down through the night, counting off
the seconds before finally pulling the rip cord.
The chute spilled out, caught the air and shot him
suddenly upward again. When the opposing
forces of wind and gravity had neutralized, he be-
gan to descend once more.
    The former L.A. detective glanced over his
head to see that the two other chutes had deployed
successfully, then grasped the static lines and
glided down to the ground.
    Schwarz landed a few seconds later, ten yards
to the Able Team leader's left. Blancanales came
to the ground a second after that, landing twenty
yards closer to the trees. All three men hauled in
their canopies and weighted them down with
rocks.
    Lyons reached over his shoulder, unzipping his
backpack and ripping out a white sheet and a
pointed white hood. He threw the sheet over his
shoulders and stuck his head through a hole cut
in the center, then dropped it down to cover his
weapons. The hood went over his head, and he
stared through the eyeholes as he walked toward
Blancanales.




    Schwarz, now dressed identically as a Klans-
man, fell in next to him.
    Blancanales had already slipped into his sheet
and was putting the hood on as they approached.
    "We go through the trees just like we belong
here," Lyons said. "We'll just hang around and
listen to their propaganda speeches while we get
a make on who the leaders are."
'TII try not to puke," Biancahales said.
"Good idea," Lyons countered. "Guy told us
they always have a party after the meeting, drink
beer and watch the cross bum out. As soon as
they're drunk enough, I want both of you to zero
in on a leader and get him off to the side for a
little talk. Any questions?"
    When he saw there was none, Lyons led the
way into the trees. In their Klan sheets there was
no reason for stealth, so they found a path and
began to follow it. A few minutes later the fire
appeared. When they stepped into the clearing,
they saw the burning cross.
    Perhaps a hundred men, all dressed in sheets
and hoods, stood around the cross, which was just
behind a short platform. Here and there Lyons
could see pistol belts strapped over the sheets.
Other men carried rifles or submachine guns in
the crooks of their arms or slung over their shoul-
ders.
  Many of the weapons were Eliminators.

    As Able Team took up spots at the rear edge
of the crowd, they looked up to the podium on
the stage and saw a tall hooded man screaming
his hateful doctrine:
    "We all remember the yellow menace!" he
shouted at the top of his lungs with the fervor of
a tent revivalist. "But I'm here to tell you, what
we got now is a multicolored menace! We got a
black menace sweeping this nation, robbing and
killing our boys and raping our daughters! We got
a red menace claiming we stole their land, land
they was stealing back and forth from each other
before we even got here."
    His words were met with a round of applause.
When it quieted, the speaker went on. "I just paid
my income taxes for last year like the rest of
you--at least most of the rest of you." The line brought a few chuckles.
    "Four figures it was!" the speaker screamed.
"And four times what I paid the year before!"
    Murmurs of acknowledgment could be heard
throughout the crowd.
    "Well, let me tell you something, my white
brothers!" the man behind the podium cried out.
"I didn't make no four times as much money last
year as I did the year before! And I'm damn sick
and tired of paying taxes so some drug dealer,
who's making a million dollars every year selling




tax-free crack cocaine on a ghetto street comer
can collect his welfare check, too!"
    The applause the speaker now got made the last
round seem insignificant.
    The racist behind the podium finished his
speech, and another hooded man, shorter but with
massively broad shoulders beneath his sheet,
stepped up to take his place. This speaker's main
complaint was illegal immigrants who were tak-
ing U.S. citizens' jobs away from them, and he
ranted and raved for a good fifteen minutes before
relinquishing the rostrum to a short fat man in a
sheet and hood.
    The speeches went on for another hour and a
half, then the men began to tire of their own rhet-
oric. Tables with cold cuts, bread, cheese and
other food, and ice chests full of beer were set
up. The party began.
    Some of the men, finding it difficult to eat and
drink through the mouth holes of their hoods, and
evidently not afraid to let their identities be
known, pulled the white cloth masks from their
faces and dropped them on the ground.
    Able Team moved in with the crowd, standing
in line and waiting as it moved toward the table.
They left their own hoods on, knowing that it was
possible that their unfamiliar faces might stir up
a commotion. As the line moved forward, they
listened to boasts, brags, threats and predictions

of the evils that would befall the nation if the
races mixed even further than they already had.
    When they reached the buffet that had been
spread out across the table, Lyons made a turkey-
and-cheese sandwich as he moved along the line.
Tossing a few potato chips on the plate next to it,
he grabbed a beer from one of the ice chests, then
moved on to follow his teammates toward a group
of men sitting beneath the spreading boughs of a
tall elm at the edge of the clearing.
    Lyons dropped to a squatting position, resting
his paper plate on one knee. Drinking his beer was
difficult through the hood, eating even harder. But
he managed.
    The Able Team leader had learned many things
about criminal groups during his years as an L.A.
cop and then a Stony Man operative. One of them
was that it didn't matter if they were Mafia, street
criminals, terrorist groups or bigots, they were all
based on the leader-follower mentality. The over-
all organization always had a man--and some-
times a woman--at the top who was smart and
filled with charisma. But even when they broke
into subgroups, someone took over the role of
minicommandant.
    The dozen or so men beneath the tree were no
different. The listener-followers sat eating and
drinking, occasionally grunting their agreement




with the nonstop sermon prattling from the mouth
of the talker-leader.
    As the night wore on, fifth, quart and pint bot-
tles of bourbon were broken out to be mixed with
soft drinks, or swigged straight from the bottle to
augment the beer. As the men got drunker, they
got louder and braver but finally the alcohol began
to have the reverse effect.
    One by one or two by two, they began stag-
gering off toward the pickups and other four-
wheel-drive vehicles parked on the other side of
the clearing.
    Blancanales elbowed Lyons in the ribs. "Some
Alabama highway patrolman could fill a month's
quota of DUIs tonight if he was parked on the
highway into town," he whispered.
    Lyons nodded. "If he's not a member of this
master race himself," he answered. "Okay, Pol.
As soon as he leaves, I want you to follow the
tall guy who spoke first. Tell Gadgets to zero in
on Mr. Potato Salad here."
    Blancanales turned to his other side and whis-
pered to Schwarz.
    Lyons watched the tall man--still hooded--fi-
nally end his oration and start toward them, weav-
ing slightly from drink. He passed the group un-
der the elm, nodded good-night and disappeared
into the trees.
  A moment later Blancanales followed.

    The small-time potentate in Able Team's group
finished his potato salad, stood and donned his
hood once more. He bid several of the men good-
night by name, smiled at Lyons and started down
one of the paths away from the clearing.
Ten seconds later Schwarz was on his heels.
Besides Lyons, only two men remained under
the elm now, both passed out from their overdoses
of alcohol. Lyons continued to sip his beer as he
watched the man with the mammoth shoulders
still talking to a group of eager extremists seated
cross-legged by the tables. The man had removed
his hood to display short-cropped, curly auburn
hair and a tree-trunk neck to go with his shoul-
ders.
    As the assembly began to break up, Lyons
watched the man with the big shoulders put his
hood back on and start toward a path to the side
of the clearing. Two other men, both wearing pis-
tol belts, followed.
    The Able Team leader let out a breath of dis-
gust. Schwarz and Blancanales had gotten off
easy--their targets had both left alone. But the
thick-set man either had bodyguards or the three
had come to the meeting in the same vehicle.
    Which meant Lyons would have to neutralize
them first.
    The Able Team leader rose to his feet, then
walked along the line of trees toward the path. He




feigned a slight imbalance as he walked, making
it look like he had imbibed more than his share
like the rest of the Klansmen.
    The last of the duo behind the muscle man was
still visible along the path as Lyons left the clear-
ing. The former LAPD detective accelerated his
pace, quickly--but not obviously--catching up to
the man in the sheet. When he was two steps be-
hind the Klansman, he looked past to see the
broad-shouldered speaker and the other man
round a bend in the trees. He stepped on a twig,
and the man in the sheet turned.
    "Hey, Bubba," he slurred drunkenly, "one
hell of a party, huh?"
    "Yep," Lyons said. He fell in stride with the
other man, reached under his sheet and produced
the Colt Python.
    A split second later the revolver came down on
the Klansman's head.
    Lyons jerked an Eliminator Government Model
out of the Klansman's holster and tossed it out of
sight into the trees. He replaced the Python be-
neath his sheet and hurried on, rounding the bend
in the trees himself to spot the other two men ten
yards ahead. They heard him behind them and
glanced over their shoulders.
    The Able Team leader waited for them to turn
away again before the Colt jumped back into his
hand. He gripped it by the barrel, then sprinted

forward and brought the grip frame down on the
hood of the man next to the speaker.
    The broad-shouldered man turned in time to see
his friend bite the dust. "What do--?" he started
to say.
    "Shut up," Lyons ordered, twirling the Python.
He knelt and drew a Smith & Wesson .44 Mag-
num revolver from the holster of the man on the
ground, then stood up and shoved both revolvers
into the mouth hole of the other man's hood.
"Drag your buddy into the trees."  "But--"
    '*Now." The sound of two revolver hammers
clicking back to a cocked position echoed through
the woods.
    Lyons pulled the revolvers out of the hood and
stepped back as the broad-shouldered man
stooped and grasped his companion by the wrists,
dragging him off the path behind a row of bushes.
The Able Team leader stepped forward again as
the Klansman dropped his friend's arms. With his
free hand he reached up and jerked the hood from
the other man's head, then patted him down for
other weapons. Finding nothing, he said, "Okay,
Curly, I want to know where you got the Elimi-
nators.' '
    None of the cockiness and bravado the Klans-
man had exhibited while speaking was detectable
now. His face had turned the color of fresh milk,




and his lower lip trembled as he spoke. "I...I
don't know..." he managed to get out. "I don't
procure the arms."
"Then who does?" Lyons demanded.
He never got the answer to his question.
Before the broad-shouldered Klansman could
respond, a burst of automatic rifle fire broke the
stillness of the night.
    It was answered with a long stream of fire from
a 9 mm Calico subgun.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Northern Ireland

David McCarter and Gary Manning sprinted out
of the Millennium Malt room and across the
lobby. They slowed as they reached the peat fire
just inside the back door, then cautiously stepped
outside. Somewhere on the other side of the cen-
turies-old building they could hear the helicopter
blades whirling in the air.
    McCarter led the way to the comer of the build-
ing just as the chopper set down fifty yards from
the stage. He raised the walkie-talkie to his lips
and thumbed the button on the side. "Phoenix
One, Phoenix Five," he whispered into the
hand-held instrument. "You copy, T.J.?"
  "That's affirmative."
    "What's the situation at the towers?" Mc-
Carter asked. In the distance, he watched two men
in conservative business suits step down from the
chopper.




    "Oh, nothing much. Just a couple a good o1'
boys setting up to shoot someone."
    McCarter paused, then said. "Affirmative.
Manning and I are on our way." He released the
button for a second, cleared his throat and said,
"Felix, are you still by the trees?"
  "Affirmative."
    "You're the one with the credentials the
royal's bodyguards will pay attention to. Start to-
ward the chopper and see if you can keep them
off the stage."
    "On my way," O'Prunty replied, "but I'm a
fair piece off. It'll be tight."
    "Do your best," McCarter said. Static filled
the airwaves for a moment. As soon as it had
cleared, he thumbed the mike again. "Phoenix
One to Two and Three. Come in, Two and
Three."
  "Three here," James said quickly.
  He was followed by Encizo. "Two."
    "Cal," McCarter said, "move into the crowd.
The bomb inside the distillery was a hoax.
They've got backup snipers in the towers. If
they've gone to that much trouble, they may have
scattered men in with the people over there. Be
ready."
    "Affirmative," both Phoenix Force warriors
said into their radios.
 The royal was still on board the chopper when

McCarter nodded at Manning, then led him along
the rear wall of the distillery toward the other cor-
ner of the building, facing the Pagoda Towers.
Even though they were out of sight of the crowd,
they kept their weapons holstered and hidden be-
neath their tweed jackets.
    Now was no time to take the chance of panick-
ing people.
    The two Phoenix Force commandos were al-
most to the comer before they drew their guns.
As luck would have it, a jogging late-comer sud-
denly appeared from the trees, hurrying toward
where the speaker would be. He saw the pistols
and opened his mouth to scream.
    McCarter turned his Browning Hi-Power to-
ward the man and said, "Make one sound and
it'll be your last, bloke."
    The man froze in place, his arms shooting into
the air as if he expected to be robbed.
    Manning didn't have to be told what to do. The
Canadian knew they didn't have time to explain
the situation to the man or even bind and gag him.
He was probably just an innocent party.
    But probably wasn't good enough. There was
always the chance that he was one of the IRA
terrorists.
    Phoenix Force's explosives expert reached the
!ate-comer in three fast steps and brought down
his Beretta 92 on the crown of the man's balding




head. "Sorry, old chap," he said in a phony Brit-
ish accent as the man hit the ground. "Life's a
bitch, isn't it?"
    McCarter moved on to the comer of the dis-
tillery, dropped to one knee and peered around the
stone. Barely visible in the twin towers were the
tops of two heads, one in each tower. The heads
moved up and down slightly, indicating that the
snipers were probably making last-minute adjust-
ments to their equipment.
    The Phoenix Force leader pulled back. He had
seen what he needed to see, and every additional
second he looked was a second he risked being
spotted. He raised the walkie-talkie to his lips
again. "One to Five," he whispered. "Your lo-
cation, T.J.?"
    "I'm behind the shed just to your left. I can
see you."
    McCarter turned toward the shed and saw a
hand move briefly into the open, wave, then dis-
appear again. He keyed his mike. "There are two
of them, T.J.," he said. "One in each tower."
  "Affirmative," Hawkins said.
  "Can they see you?" McCarter asked.
    "Don't think so. At least they aren't showing
any signs that they have yet."
  "Affirmative, Five. Stand by."
    The Phoenix Force leader stole another peek at
the towers, wishing for a moment that he had a

long gun and a scope. Well, he told himself, wish-
ing wouldn't make it magically materialize. There
had been no way to hide rifles in this crowd, and
as always, he and the other men from Stony Man
Farm would have to make do with what they did
have.
    On the other side of the building, the brass band
positioned in front of the stage suddenly struck up
a rousing rendition of "Rule Britannia." Many in
the crowd began to cheer.
    There was also a good deal of hissing and de-
rision.
    McCarter couldn't see anyone, but he knew that
the royal had to be just now stepping down out
of the chopper.
    Raising the radio to his mouth yet again,
McCarter said, "Phoenix One to MI-6. Come in,
Felix."
    The Irishman was desperately out of breath,
and McCarter could hear his pounding feet, the
applause of the crowd and the music over the air-
waves as O'Prunty keyed his own unit. "MI~6 to
One," he said, panting. "I'm trying to get to her,
lad, but I shan't be makin' it in time." He took
a deep, painful gulp of air. "Too far away."
    McCarter turned to Manning, who now stood
directly behind him, his back to the stone of the
distillery. "Gary," he said, "this is going to be
thin. The snipers will have to rise up to take their




shots, and we've got to pick them off then. We'll
have a couple of seconds. Maybe five. No more."
He keyed his mike again. "Phoenix Five, Man-
ning and I will take out the subjects as soon as
they rise. Repeat. We shoot the moment they
show their heads." He paused. "You still have
visual?"
    "Affirmative. I'll let you know as soon as their
heads peek over the rail."
    The Phoenix Force leader nodded. He pulled
the slide slightly back on the Hi-Power and saw
the gleam of the brass casing in the chamber.
Then, tuming to Manning, he said, "Just as soon
as T.J. gives us the word, I'll lean around the
corner. You stand over me. Take the tower on the
right. I'il get the left." He took a deep, nerve-
easing breath. "And remember the famous words
of Wyatt Earp about gunfights."  Manning frowned.
"Take your time... in a hurry," McCarter said.
Manning smiled and nodded. Then his face
changed to an expression of concentration and an-
ticipation.
    McCarter, still on one knee, set the walkie-
talkie on the ground between him and Manning,
and edged as close to the corner of the building
as he dared. He thumbed down the Browning's
manual safety and rested his index finger on the
side of the trigger guard. Then he waited.

    From the other side of the building came the
sound of a man's voice over the speaker system.
McCarter tuned the words out of his ears, riveting
his attention to the task ahead. The man droned
on, his voice heard but his words uncompre-
hended by the Phoenix Force leader.
    After several minutes, the man's voice stopped
and loud applause came over the sound system.
As it began to die down, the voice of the royal
said, "Good morning, ladies and gentlemen."
    Polite applause--punctuated by a catcall or
two---greeted the opening words.
    Hawkins's voice sounded over the noise from
the walkie-talkie on the ground. "Phoenix Five to
One. I'm seeing movement."
 McCarter didn't answer. He waited.
    "Right tower," Hawkins said. "Head just
popped up, took a look, then down again.
Wait...okay... left tower, same thing. They're get-
ting ready to make their move."
    The Briton took another deep breath. He and
Manning would get one chance, and one chance
only. They had to shoot simultaneously to avoid
alerting the snipers, and if either of the Phoenix
Force warriors missed his target, the man would
drop down behind the stone again. Then there'd
be hell to pay trying to get the sniper out of the
tower.
 The royal went into the speech. Again Mc-




Carter listened to the voice but ignored the words.
Perhaps thirty seconds later, Hawkins said,
"Right tower, head up. He's raising his rifle."
    McCarter prepared to lean around the comer
and fire. Behind and above him, he could sense
Gary Manning doing the same thing. The Phoenix
Force leader took a deep breath, let half of it out
and held it.
    "Left tower up," Hawkins said quickly. "Rifle
up. Go for it, guys."
    McCarter and Manning leaned around the cor-
ner, looked up at the snipers in the Pagoda Towers
and fired.

Kingston, Jamaica

JAMAICA HAD ONLY RATED one paragraph in
Fielding's The World's Most Dangerous Places
guidebook, but it deserved a volume of its own.
Dangerous Places advised the visitor to exercise
prudence, not walk around at night and use only
licensed taxis or hotel-recommended transporta-
tion. Special care, the guidebook stressed, should
be taken in the isolated villas and small establish-
ments in the northem-coast tourist areas.
    That warning wasn't even the tip of the iceberg,
the Executioner knew as he strolled along the
sidewalk separating the wharf from the stores,
shops and saloons of Kingston. It said nothing

about the organized crime that openly sold drags,
weapons and prostitutes of both sexes and all
ages. It didn't mention that the tourist who vio-
lated the warnings stood roughly a fifty-fifty
chance of waking up in some alley with his throat
cut, or floating back to shore in whatever pieces
the sharks had missed.
    But other guidebooks said even less. They
stressed the beaches, scuba diving, golf and tennis
clubs, and the scenic beauty of the Blue Moun-
tains that rose keenly up from Kingston.
    The Blue Mountains had long ago become only
dark, shadowy mounds in the night as Bolan
strolled on along the sidewalk. Loud reggae music
blasted from every open doorway. Men, women
and children crowded the walkway. The odors of
fish, alcoholic beverages, human sweat and curry
assaulted the sinuses.
    The Executioner passed a Rastafarian boutique
featuring posters and framed photos of reggae
bands, ganja-smoking paraphernalia and religious
fetishes in the window. He continued on past an
outdoor squash court where men played the game
under bright overhead lights. Reaching into his
pocket, he pulled out the slip of paper Grimaldi
had handed him just before he'd deplaned.
    "Keating and Gryphon Streets," it read. "Cor-
ner."
Bolan moved through the bright lights, finally




leaving the nightlife area and venturing into a
commercial zone. The pedestrian traffic fell off
somewhat but the streets were hardly deserted.
The Executioner followed his memory of the
Kingston city map he had studied during the
flight, turning down a dark, narrow street and
away from the population. He followed Keating,
then made a sharp turn and found himself looking
at a street sign that announced Gryphon.
    Island Produce Distributors stood on the corner
where the slip of paper said it would be. Delivery
trucks were parked in a lot next to an open-air,
bazaarlike market. A small office area that ap-
peared to have once been a service station stood
directly behind the marketplace.
    Bolan saw native women dressed in baggy pas-
tel shorts and blouses, their hair in cutlers, filling
paper sacks with fruit and vegetables. Several
men worked the cash registers, giving out advice
and ringing up sales.
    The Executioner walked past the market, noting
a separate, corrugated-steel storage building just
to the rear of the office. Set on a concrete slab, it
was a large structure, windowless and without
doors save the entrance facing the market. The
lone opening was secured with a heavy padlock.
    The Executioner studied the lock as he passed,
wondering idly just which fruit or vegetable it
might be that warranted such tight security.

    Circling the block, Bolan passed the open mar-
ket once more, noting that the men selling the
various items glanced now and then at the tin
building. He moved under the roof that shielded
the fresh fruits and vegetables from both sun and
rain, and made a show of inspecting some small
red potatoes. What he was really looking for--
and what he sawmwas a sign in the office win-
dow that advised the public the market would
close for the day in less than thirty minutes.
  He could wait.
    Circling the block once more, the Executioner
cut down an unlit alley in an effort to get a better
look at the rear of the tin building. He heard a
dog bark, a cat hiss, then the dog yelped in pain.
Ahead Bolan saw the shiny silver reflection of a
freshly painted fifty-five-gallon drum pressed into
service as a trash can. As he neared the can, the
shadow of a large rat scurried from the other side
of the alley and behind the drum. The rat returned
from hiding immediately, disappearing into the
shadows from whence he'd come.
    The yellow caution light in Bolan's head---the
light that he lived with constantly---changed to
orange. He wasn't sure why. He just knew he
sensed danger somewhere in the alley.
    Bolan walked on, his only light the slight il-
lumination of the Caribbean moon that filtered
down into the narrow path of the alley. He was




abreast of the trash can when he saw a flash in
his peripheral vision. He turned.
    At first the long curved blade that swept toward
him looked like part of the silver garbage can that
had broken off and taken on a life of its own; he
could see nothing else. His arm rose instinctively,
his fingers and thumb separating to form a Y that
snagged the wrist just beyond the hand wielding
the blade. He felt the soft cotton of a long-sleeved
T-shirt beneath his fingers and tried to catch hold
of the wrist. But the hand holding the knife was
too fast. Before he could grip down, it was gone
again.
    Bolan caught a quick glimpse of white around
the dark brown eyes filled with the predator's lust
for the kill as his attacker moved back into the
shadows and out of reach. The Executioner
reached for the G!ock 21 on his hip. But before
he could draw, the blade appeared again, this time
launching straight forward in a thrust. Whoever it
was employing the blade was dressed completely
in black, and in the dim light, the weapon still
almost appeared to move of its own accord.
    Bolan stepped to one side, letting the knife pass
by, and helping it do so with the palm of one
hand. Again he tried to clamp his fingers on the
wrist behind the knife. Again the blade was gone
as fast as it had come.
  The Executioner took a step backward, hoping

to gain time to draw a weapon, as well as lure his
opponent away from the shadows and into what
little light there was in the center of the alley. He
achieved only the latter, but he caught another
quick look at his assailant as the knife slashed
through the air in a back slash.
    Besides the long-sleeved black T-shirt and thin
black leather gloves, the man wore black jeans
and dark moccasins. His face had been streaked
with black night-camo makeup, and his long black
hair was tied behind him in twin braids.
    Backpedaling away from the slash, Bolan
stepped out of the way of a downward cut that
threatened to halve his skull. Now he got a
glimpse of the silhouette of the knife itself--an
AI Mar Warrior, one of the most wicked-looking
fighting blades ever produced. The primary cut-
ting edge was factory sharpened to that of a ra-
zor's, as was an inch or so on the back. The rest
of the recurved edge of the blade was made up of
a series of huge, gaping sawteeth that grinned
at the Executioner like some diabolic jack-o'-
lantern.
    Bolan tried for the Beretta this time but a re-
verse thrust forced him to move and block. Again
and again the knife sliced the air. Again and again
Bolan dodged, ducked, slapped and partied, al-
ways trying to grab the wrist that brandished the
blade, always failing. He made a quick move for




the Applegate-Fairbairn folding knife but the dark
shadow saw it coming and shot the A1 Mar for-
ward in a short jab to the face.
    The Executioner was forced to abandon his
own weapon to keep from taking the ragged
curved blade hilt-deep in the brain.
    This man with the knife--the Executioner had
now caught glimpses of high cheekbones and a
large Roman nose under the camo makeup--
wasn't just an expert with his blade. He was also
one of the quickest combatants the Executioner
had ever faced.
    Bolan ducked under a shadowy thrust that
missed his scalp by a quarter of an inch. His foot
shot out, catching his assailant in the shin. He
heard a spontaneous but muffled grunt, and the
shadowy form backed away.
    The Executioner threw his light jacket back
away from his hip and ripped the Glock 21 from
the Helweg speed rig. The web of his hand au-
tomatically hit the laser-activation button, and the
md dot appeared on the ground in front of him as
the Glock's muzzle cleared leather. Bolan walked
the dot upward as he continued to raise the
weapon from the draw.
    But when it hit chest level, the specterlike form
was gone.
Bolan used the red splash light of the laser as

a flashlight, searching the alley. He checked be-
hind the trash can.
    It was no use. His attacker had vanished like a
wisp of smoke in a strong wind.
    The Executioner kept the GIock in hand until
he reached the end of the alley. Who had the man
been? A mugger? The streets of Kingston were
full of them, and many weren't only skilled but
experienced at their work.
    But not like this man. The man in the black
jeans, moccasins and T-shirt was a professional.
The blade dexterity he had demonstrated went be-
yond that of a mere street mugger. Oh, he knew
the street tricks, all right. But during the course
of the encounter the Executioner had fended off
techniques that he recognized from the American
military style of knife-fighting, the Japanese art of
tanto-jitsu, and Filipino kali. And the man in
black had picked the perfect blade for his peculiar
mixture of forms---the Al Mar Warrior could be
used well in all three.
    Bolan waited at the edge of the alley until he
heard the market close on the other side. Then,
giving it five more minutes, he crept through the
shadows to the front of the corrugated-steel build-
ing.
    The Executioner didn't know for sure what
he'd find inside the storage building, but he sus-
pected it would be Eliminators. And he had every




confidence that they'd be stored in unmarked
wooden crates manufactured in Japan at the Tak-
ahata Box, Crate and Container Company.
    Glancing up and down the street to make sure
it was now deserted, Bolan rounded the corner
and slid along the corrugated steel to the oversize
padlock bolting the door. The lock itself was the
size of his fist, and it was new, showing no signs
of rust or deterioration.
    Bolan reached into the side pocket of his jacket
for the leather case that contained his picks, then
cursed softly under his breath. They had fallen out
somewhere in the alley sometime during the fight
with the man in black.
    But the Executioner could search for them later
if there was time, and if not, Grimaldi would have
a backup set on the Learjet.
    For now, the game was beginning to draw to a
close. He could feel it, touch it, taste and smell
it. It made no difference if the men at Island Pro-
duce returned the next morning to find that the
storage building had been entered.
    Under the circumstances, the sound-suppressed
Beretta 93-R would be the only key he needed.
    Slowly the Executioner drew the weapon from
the shoulder harness beneath his jacket. He held
it close to his body as he looked up and down the
street one last time to make certain no curious
pedestrians were watching. Satisfied that the

streets were deserted, he turned back to the pad-
lock and pressed the muzzle against the steel.

Alabama

LYONS LOOKED at the Klansman who stood before
him. His wild eyes and gaping mouth told the
Able Team leader that the man was as surprised
by the gunfire as he was himself.
    Another rapid-fire burst from a Calico sent Ly-
ons into action. Raising the Klansman's .44 Mag-
num revolver over his head, he brought it down
onto the man's scalp and watched the bigot col-
lapse to the ground.
    The big ex-cop turned, sprinting back along the
path toward the clearing. The man he had just
struck might regain consciousness before he re-
turned to ask questions, but if that happened, so
be it. The gunfire meant that either Schwarz's or
Blancanales's cover had been blown, and helping
them rated higher priority.
    AK-47 rounds, fired semiauto, continued to
pepper the air as Lyons ran. The distinctive 9 mm
submachine gun sounded again, then a second
Calico joined the battle. Every few seconds the
sound of a 12-gauge shotgun exploded above the
roars of the other weapons.
    That answered the Able Team leader's question
as to which one of his men needed help.




  They both did.
    The blasts of gunfire grew louder as Lyons
drew closer to the clearing. He slowed his pace
as he neared the edge of the trees, then came to
a complete halt behind the trunk of a thick elm.
Dropping to his knees, he squinted into the open
area of woods.
    Only a fool rushed into battle without first stop-
ping to see what awaited him, and Carl Lyons was
far from being a fool. Peering around the sturdy
tree trunk, he would take time to evaluate the sit-
uation before he blitzed blindly from cover and
chanced taking a volley of 7.62 mm rounds him-
self. He'd be little good to Schwarz or Bianca-
nales dead.
    The only problem was, the clearing was de-
serted.
    But the gunfire continued. From his new van-
tage point, Lyons could tell that the rounds were
being fired on the other side of the open area, not
far but far enough inside the trees on the other
side that the shooters were all hidden from view.
    Rising to his feet, the Able Team leader back-
tracked along the path, then began to make his
way through the woods, circling the clearing. He
stayed close enough to watch the free tract, keep-
ing one eye on it, the other ahead of him in case
he encountered any straggling Klansmen. Moving
as quickly as he could without making unneces-

sary noise, he skirted the clearing, gradually get-
ting closer to the ongoing firefight.
    Finally nearing another small clearing perhaps
two hundred feet from the main Klan meeting
area, Lyons saw Schwarz and Blancanales pinned
down inside a cluster of boulders. The stones
were too small to provide real cover, and his men
had been forced to the ground, contorting into
strange-looking poses to take advantage of what
little protection was available.
    Taking fire from three sides, neither man could
return the salvos, except for an occasional blind
eruption around the edges of the rocks. What
made things even worse was the positioning of
those rocks--many rounds that struck one boulder
ricocheted to strike others, rebounding back and
forth within the stone fortress before their mo-
mentum was spent.
    Sooner or later Lyons knew those bouncing
rounds would find their marks.
    The Able Team leader's first instinct was to
charge forward to the aid of his teammates. But
that would do no good--there wasn't enough ref-
uge for two men, let alone three. No, he could
better serve his men by staying away from the
stone death trap and operating independently.
    Lyons watched pebbles and white dust blow up
into the air as a new burst of AK-47 rounds struck
the rocks in front of Schwarz and Blancanales. He




moved swiftly to his right, sidestepping tree
trunks and thom bushes and keeping his gaze fo-
cused ahead of him. He had gone less than twenty
feet when he spotted a white sheet gripping one
of the Russian rifles as it bucked in recoil.
    Lyons drew the sound suppressed 1911 Gov-
ernment Model pistol and came to a halt next to
one of the trees. Using the trunk as support, he
lined the sights up on the sheet and fired.
    The .45 coughed, its noise muffled by the sup-
pressor. The man in the sheet toppled to the
ground.
    The Able Team leader moved on, ducking low-
hanging limbs and stepping around other obsta-
cles. A flicker of white showed ahead, and he
checked his pace, studying it. It moved slightly,
then the gleam of a rifle barrel glistened for a
moment under the moonlight.
    Lyons pulled the trigger of the .45 again. An-
other cough, another dead Klansman.
    The next few feet revealed a trio of men, two
bearing what looked like M-14s. Lyons squinted
at themmthere was something not quite right
about the rifles. But he had no time to worry about
that now.
    The third Klansman fired a 1ong-barreled, semi-
auto, civilian-version Uzi. But someone had con-
verted the weapon to full-auto, and Lyons

watched the man pull back the trigger once and
get a volley of five rounds to ignite.
    The big ex-LAPD detective moved deeper into
the forest as the onslaught at the rocks continued.
He prayed silently that neither Schwarz nor Blan-
canales would take a direct round or ricochet be-
fore he could eliminate the shooters surrounding
them.
    Moving even with the three Klansmen, Lyons
approached them from the rear. Again he steadied
his muffled weapon along the side of a tree, the
act bringing back memories of police firing ranges
where wooden posts simulated the comers of
buildings and other actual cover to aid training.
Hooking out the thumb of his supporting hand, he
pressed it against the bark, making sure the
weapon itself was clear of the trunk and had
plenty of room to allow the slide to cycle. Then,
with a deep breath, he lined up the white three-
dot sights on the back of the Klansman with the
Uzi and squeezed the trigger.
    The .45 hollowpoint round struck the gunman
dead center in the back. His shoulder blades
folded back as if trying to touch each other, bow-
ing his chest outward. His head and neck shot
forward, and Lyons saw blood and tissue shoot
out from the front of the man.
    All in all, Lyons thought as he swung his
weapon toward one of the men with the M-14s,


the man looked like a diver who had just sprung
off the high board. But the Able Team leader
wasted no time admiring his work, immediately
pumping two more quiet rounds into the back of
the Klansman to the fallen man's immediate right.
This gunner fell as quickly as the first, but by that
time the third man in white had figured out that
a rear attack was taking place.
    The Klansman whirled, aiming his M-14 into
the trees.
    Lyons wasn't concealed, but the trees and low
light meant the Klansman had to take an extra
second to locate his target before firing.
    And an extra second was more time than the
Able Team leader needed.
    Lyons's .45 expelled another duo of hoUow-
point rounds, the first catching the white-clad gun-
ner low in the left side. The man screamed as the
force of the big slug spun him 180 degrees, back
to face the rocks where Schwarz and Blancanales
had taken refuge. The second bullet caught him
in the nape and sent him flying forward into the
trunk of a tree. He rebounded backward like a
character in some slapstick skit, and fell on top
of the man who had toted the Uzi.
    The Able Team leader jumped back behind the
tree, dropped the magazine containing one last
round and started to reach for one of the fresh
loads in the carrier under his right arm. As he did,

he saw a flicker of white directly in front of him,
then another rifle barrel being brought up into
play.
    With no time to reload, the former LAPD de-
tective raised the Colt and fired. The round still
in the chamber shot through a narrow passageway
between several elms and a tall fern, clipping the
leaves off the greenery before finding a home
somewhere beneath the white sheet. The Colt's
slide locked open empty.
    Lyons drew the Python from his hip and let it
hang at the ready with his left index finger in the
trigger guard. He again reached for a new maga-
zine. A rustling in the short grass caused him to
flip up the revolver, his fingers closing around the
robber Pachmayer grips. Then a squirrel darted
out of the grass and ran up a tree.
    A hard smile covered his face as Lyons let the
Python dangle again, blindly sliding a new mag-
azine up the butt of the .45. A moment later he
thumbed the slide release and jacked the top
round into the chamber.
    He had now worked his way halfway around
the semicircle where the Klansmen were still fir-
ing into the rocks. Moving quietly again, Lyons
left the tree and continued on, making his way
toward the source of the remaining gunfire. He
heard the shotgun detonate again with a loud




boom, then a voice--it sounded like Schwarz--
grunted behind the rocks.
    Lyons felt the fires of hatred charge through his
soul. Had Gadgets been hit? He didn't know. But
he had known all along it was just a matter of
time before the Klansmen got a lucky shot.
  And time was running out.
    Lyons quickened his pace, sacrificing silence
for speed now as he cut between the trees. He had
to get the surviving Klansmen.
    The four white-clad men had taken sanctuary
behind several large boulders and a dead tree that
had fallen to the ground. They continued to fire,
reloading their weapons when necessary.
    With no good cover to use himself as he came
to another break in the trees, Lyons dropped into
a prone position. He might as well make himself
as small a target as possible, he thought. He hol-
stered the .45 under his arm. The time for silence
was over. No shots could be heard coming from
past the place where the Klansmen had barricaded
themselves, and he rolled to his side, lifting his
own sheet and swinging the Calico out on its
sling.
    Holding the rear grip with his right hand, the
foregrip with his left, the Able Team leader
dropped the safety next to the trigger guard to the
full-auto mode. He aimed first at the nearest man,

a Klansman who had stopped to reload the Rus-
sian rifle in his hands.
    A burst of 9 mm Winchester Silver Tip bullets
exploded from the Calico, the first two rounds hit-
ting the AK-47 and sending it spinning from the
Klansman's grip. Four more rounds stitched the
man up the ribs, the final shiny silver bullet drill-
ing into the side of the man's face.
    The Able Team leader didn't wait to watch the
results of his burst, instead raising the Calico's
barrel slightly higher toward the Klansman with
the shotgun. The man pulled the trigger a second
before Lyons did, and another 12-gauge blast was
drilled toward Schwarz and Blancanales.
    Pulling back the trigger, Lyons sent another
short burst into the man. The rounds crushed the
sheet into the man's side, and tiny dots of crimson
suddenly stained the white linen. The spots were
already larger and were growing into blobs before
the gunner hit the ground.
    Lyons swung up his weapon again, the Calico
leaping in recoil as his ensuing assault punched
into the next man in line. The entire cluster of six
9 mm rounds fell inside a group the size of the
Able Team !eader's fist, and yet another sheet-
clad bigot tumbled to the ground.
    The final Klansman turned to face Lyons as the
sights atop of the hexagonal magazine fell on his
chest. The big ex-cop looked at the terror in a




 wrinkled, unhooded face, and wondered how
 much terror the man had implanted in the hearts
 of members of other races over the years.
    Too much. Far too much for what Lyons was
about to do to make up for it. But it was all he
could do, and even though it wouldn't even the
score, it would stop it from getting higher.
    Lyons held the trigger back and let a full ten
rounds penetrate the sheet.
    The explosions died down, and for a moment
the forest fell silent. Then a voice from behind the
boulders inside the clearing said, "Well, Ironman,
is that you or the Lone Ranger?"
    There was a brief pause, then Blancanales con-
tinued. "I know it's not the cavalry riding in to
save our butts. I didn't hear any bugles."
    Lyons had no time to reply to the wisecrack.
He felt something rip through his arm a micro-
second before he heard its sound. His flesh felt
on fire as a second rifle round echoed through the
woods, missing him, but providing direction iden-
tification.
    Before he even realized what he'd done, the
Able Team leader swung the Calico toward the
noise and fired.
    Schwarz and Blancanales, frustrated for too
long in their inability to shoot back, turned and
joined the fray. All three Able Team warriors
watched a man wearing three-color tiger-stripe

cammies drop the scoped M-I 6 A-2 in his hands
and jerk in a dance of death as several dozen
9 mm rounds from the Calicos fiddled his body.
    Caution screamed in Lyons's ear, and he called
out "Cease fire!" As the explosions died down,
he walked forward, knowing already it was too
late. Whoever it was who now lay soaking in his
own blood, he wasn't a Klansman. At least Carl
Lyons didn't think the man was, considering how
he was dressed.
    He stopped over the body. The top of the man' s
camouflage BDU blouse had been left unbut-
toned, and beneath it Lyons saw a matching cam-
ouflage T-shirt. The man wore a shoulder holster
bearing a Smith & Wesson Model 629.44 Mag-
num pistol, a Colt Gold Cup .45 on his belt and
a custom made boot knife.
    All three weapons bore stag handles, and the
Able Team leader wondered if that had some sig-
nificance.




CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Stony Man Farm

Kurtzman turned in his chair to face Dr. Glenn
Barrister as the metallurgist walked up the ramp
toward the bank of computers. Behind Barrister
came John "Cowboy" Kissinger and a large man
in blacksuit.
    A temporary laboratory had been set up in one
of the outer buildings as soon as Barrister had
finished writing out the list of equipment and sup-
plies he needed to isolate the steel in the Elimi-
nators. Stony Man Farm airplanes, as well as land
vehicles, had been departing for hours ever since,
returning with the assorted equipment until the
laboratory was complete.
    Now, Kurtzman realized, the experiments
themselves had to have ended. And at the same
time the smile on Barrister's face suggested that
they had been successful. "Roll up a chair,
Glenn," the computer expert suggested.

    The blacksuit following him--a DEA agent
trainee who had been assigned as the metallur-
gist's personal guide during his stay--had already
thought of it. He lifted a chair and carried it,
rather than rolling it, after Dr. Barrister.
    Kissinger moved in to stand next to the doctor
as Barrister sat down. Kurtzman cleared the
screen in front of him, switched disks and pressed
several keys to link his computer to Akira To-
kaido's. He glanced at the young man and nod-
ded.
  Tokaido nodded back.
    "So, Glenn," the Stony Man Farm cybernetics
expert said, "what have we got?"
    Barrister opened a manila file and produced a
bundle of pages. Placing them in his lap, he
looked down and began to read off the data he
had collected from his experiments with the var-
ious Eliminators in Stony Man Farm's possession.
Kurtzman listened, typing the doctor's words at
the same time. His flying fingers stopped momen-
tarily as Barrister coughed and the tone of his
voice changed.
    "The first thing I did," Barrister said, "was to
rework the tests Mr. Kissinger had performed.
This is standard procedure when one takes over
anyone else's experimentation. Please do not take
any offense."




Kissinger shook his head. "None taken. But
how'd I do?"
    Barrister smiled. "Not bad. Not bad at all, par-
ticularly for someone working somewhat outside
of his field. A general understanding of metal-
lurgy is part of gunsmithing, I'm sure. But this
was far more complex than what most armorers
would have been able to understand, Cowboy."
    Kissinger chuckled. "I think what you're trying
to do is politely tell me I made some mistakes."
    "Yes, but not many and not serious. At least
not enough to keep our conclusions from being
the same. You should actually be quite proud of
yourself. We all have our individual fields of ex-
pertise." He glanced at the pistol on Kissinger's
hip. "Don't ask me to fix that thing if it breaks.
I wouldn't know where to start."
    "Then we've been working along the right
lines?" Kurtzman asked. "The steel going into
the Eliminators is all coming from the same
place?"
    "Oh, yes." Barrister nodded. "By all means.
In fact the vast majority of it even comes from
the same batch, so to speak. The odds, I would
say, are a hundred thousand to one that the steel
was all smelted in the same furnace. But I'm at a
loss as to how you're going to locate that furnace
with all the different plants around the world."
  Kurtzman held up a hand, tapped the keys on

his keyboard and sucked the Takahata Company
files across the room from the hard drive in To-
kaido's computer. Barrister squinted at the screen
as Tokaido walked up the ramp.
    Kurtzman introduced the two men. The com-
puter man smiled as the gray-headed Barrister,
wearing khaki slacks, brown wing-tip shoes and
another of his short-sleeved white shirts, open at
the collar, looked Tokaido up and down. Barris-
ter's eyes paused first at the silver studded cutoff
jean jacket, then at the tall black motorcycle boots
that covered the young Japanese toe to knee.
    Tokaido noticed the once-over and grinned.
"Please relax, Dr. Barrister. I don't cook and eat
small children, and am more efficient than I may
appear to you."
  Barrister chuckled and said, "Okay."
    All heads now turned back to the screen as
Kurtzman pulled up a roster of companies for
which the Takahata Company made shipping
crates. He typed in "steel manufacturers," hit the
Return button and the vast majority of the list dis-
appeared. Four company names remained, and he
turned back to Barrister. "Want to make any
guesses as to which one we should try first?"
    Barrister shook his head in wonder. "I would
ask you how you did that, Bear," he said, "but I
get the feeling it's fairly complex and would take
away valuable time from our project."




    Kurtzman nodded. "A derailed explanation
would. And I'd be glad to run it down after all
this is over if you're still interested. For now
could you live with this? I've developed my own
program that cuts out all of the 'unlikelies' with
a few typed words and the single press of a but-
ton."
    Barrister nodded, squinting again at the screen.
He silently read the names of the four steel com-
panies. "Cowboy, didn't you say something about
thinking this Eliminator person was located some-
where in the Caribbean? From other evidence, or
something?"
    Kissinger nodded. "We have a man checking
out another lead in Jamaica right now."
    "Then why don't we try the closest company
to Jamaica?" Barrister said.
    "That would have been my suggestion,"
Kurtzman replied, his fingers already moving over
the keyboard. He moved the cursor on the screen
down the four names to the bottom, then high-
lighted the words "Belcher, Belcher and Eby
Steel, Birmingham, Alabama." A moment later
he had linked into the files of the company.
    Barrister leaned forward as Kurtzman divided
the screen, the left side now exhibiting the results
of the metallurgist's tests on the Eliminators, the
right showing the formulas, processes and com-
ponents that went into the company's steel. Kurtz-

man wheeled himself back and let Barrister scoot
his chair even closer where he could work the
cursor himself.
    The screen's left half remained stationary as the
right began to scroll upward. Barrister stopped pe-
riodically, studying the different formulas and
comparing them to his own findings, then moved
on.
    Ten minutes later the metallurgist had ex-
hausted the Belcher, Belcher and Eby Steel Com-
pany's files. "Well," he said, "that was a bust."
  "Nothing?" Kurtzman asked.
    "Oh, there are a lot of similarities," Barrister
replied. "That's why I stopped and looked closer
at several of the formulas. But that's to be ex-
pected. I mean, we're talking steel here and after
all, the basics are going to be the same." He
paused, took a deep breath, then added, "But I'd
have to say that in my professional estimation, the
steel that went into the Eliminators didn't come
from here.' '
    Kurtzman shrugged, feeling a mild disappoint-
ment.
"So what do we do now?" Barrister asked.
The computer expert cleared the screen and
pulled up the other three company names again.
"Keep trying," he said.




Northern Ireland

MCCARTER PULLED the trigger and saw the
.40-caliber S&W hollowpoint round find its target
in the sniper's left temple. A millisecond later, he
heard Gary Manning's Beretta 92 explode just
above his head.
    Even before he saw the results of the shot, he
knew they had a problem. The sniper in the tower
to the right had flinched instinctively at Mc-
Carter's shot, and that flinch meant he'd moved.
    Manning's 9 mm round caught the man in the
side of the neck as he tried to duck. Before
McCarter could swing his Browning that way, or
Manning could squeeze off a follow-up shot, the
head had disappeared below the stone barrier at
the top of the tower.
    The Briton bit off a curse. He had started to
reach behind him for the walkie-talkie when the
second sniper's head suddenly reappeared.
    The sniper had traded his rifle for a Sterling
submachine gun, and both McCarter and Manning
had no sooner ducked behind the comer than a
long burst of gunfire erupted, striking the stone
wall.
    On the other side of the distillery, the Phoenix
Force leader heard what sounded like a riot break
out. Screams and the sounds of running feet met
his ears. MeCarter found the walkie-talkie and
keyed the mike. "What's happening over there,
Felix?" he asked.

    The MI-6 operative sounded even more out of
breath than before. "To put it bluntly, mate," he
said, "everyone's going ape-shit. The Yard boys
are hustling the royal back to the chopper. The
crowd doesn't know what's going on. They're
running every which way."
    The Phoenix Force leader tried to speak, but
another volley from the wounded sniper drowned
out his words. When the explosions died down,
he said, "Felix, get to the Scotland Yard team and
explain what's happening. Give them a descrip-
tion of all of usma damn good description. I don't
want them shooting at the wrong people."
    "Affirmative, David," O'Pmnty said. "What' s
the situation there?"
    "One of the snipers is wounded. The other's
down for the count." As he spoke, he saw Haw-
kins dart out from behind the shed where he'd
been hiding and join him and Manning against the
distillery wall. "We're going to have to try to get
the man out of the tower without his shooting
anyone else."
    "And exactly how do you plan to do that?"
O'Prunty asked.
    "Felix, I haven't the foggiest idea right now.
But get the crowd away from the scene and out
of rifle range, then come join us."
    He paused a moment, thinking, then said,
"James, you and Encizo listening?"




  "Affirmative," they both replied.
    "Circle the tower," McCarter commanded.
"Spread out and let's at least get into position
where we can catch this man in a cross fire if the
chance presents itselfi"
    James and Encizo responded in the affirmative,
and then the airwaves went dead.
    McCarter turned to Manning, but the big Ca-
nadian spoke first.
  "Sorry, David. I missed."
    "You didn't miss," McCarter said. "And it
couldn't be helped. The man jerked at my shot,
and there was nothing we could have done to stop
it. At least he's wounded." The Phoenix Force
leader's eyebrows furrowed in thought. "What
we need to know is how bad."
    McCarter leaned around the comer again, pre-
senting himself as a target. A moment later he saw
the top of a head come up over the edge of the
stone. Not enough to shoot at. The chances of
success were maybe one in a hundred.
    Then the sniper's Sten came over the edge, and
another burst of fire drove McCarter back around
the comer. But in the split second during which
the IRA man's head and shoulders were visible,
the Phoenix Force leader saw that he was bleeding
profusely from the neck.
    Risking another look, McCarter saw Encizo
and James rushing from cover to cover on the

other side of the tower. He had perhaps ten sec-
onds before the IRA man, and the Sten, appeared
again to drive him back behind the building. As
the latest round of blasts died down in his ears,
he heard the sound of running feet behind him
and turned to see several men coming to join
them.
    A tall slender man with an aristocratic nose
passed by Manning and Hawkins and stopped just
behind the Phoenix Force leader. "I'm Captain
Wise of the Yard," he said. "You'd be McCarter,
I presume?"
  "That I would be."
    The man's eyes flickered at the British accent.
"A fellow countryman, I see. Would you care to
divulge under just whose authorization you are
currently operating?"
    "I don't think this is quite the time for a pro-
longed discussion of details," McCarter said,
mildly irritated. "What did O'Prunty tell you?"
    "Just that he'd been assigned to work with you
and the Yanks," Wise said.
    "I'm not a Yank," Manning protested. "I'm a
Canuck."
  "Yes, so I see."
    "Any ideas you want to share with us as to
how we're going to get this guy out of his
tower?" McCarter said.
  "Well, I don't know really."




    "Good," McCarter said. "Then you won't
mind me trying things my way." Before Wise
could answer again, McCarter turned away. An
idea had suddenly occurred to him.
    During the entire mission, Phoenix Force had
been developing informants with small pieces of
the puzzle they were trying to put together, then
losing them to enemy fire before they could be of
much real value. Now there was a chance--how-
ever slim---of taking the sniper in the Pagoda
Tower alive. And he wouldn't be some entry level
flunky like McHiggins. To be given an assign-
ment this important, he had to not only possess
the skill to pull it off but also be a high-ranking
member of the IRA.
    Which meant he might very well know some-
thing about how the Irish terrorists procured their
arms. And that meant, at least in part, the Elimi-
nators.
"So, what are you planning?" Wise asked.
McCarter didn't answer. Instead, he leaned
around the comer of the building. "You!" he
shouted. "In the tower! Can you hear me?"
    His words were answered by another burst of
autofire.
    But McCarter was smiling as he jerked back
around the comer again, a split second before the
9 mm rounds hit the stone. He had caught another
quick glance of the sniper from the shoulders up.

Now not just his neck but the entire top half of
the man's body was soaked in blood.
    The Phoenix Force leader didn't know exactly
what damage Manning's round had done, but he
suspected it had nicked an artery. In any case, the
details didn't matter. The bottom line was that the
man was bleeding to death. If he stayed up in the
tower much longer without medical attention,
he'd die.
    And that might be used to Phoenix Force's ad-
vantage.
    McCarter let the onslaught against the wall die
down, then leaned around the comer again.
"You're bleeding to death, mate," he shouted.
"You know it, and I know it. I've seen you three
times now, and each time you look worse." He
paused, fully prepared to duck back behind cover
when another burst of fire came over the stone.
  But it didn't.
    McCarter went on. "Okay, here's the situation.
We can wait you out until hell freezes over.
You're going to run out of ammo eventually--we
aren't. But even before that, you're going to mn
out of blood."
    For the first time the IRA man spoke. "Fuck
off. It's a mere scrape I've got!"
    The lack of strength in his voice betrayed his
true condition.
  "Look," McCarter said, "we both know better




than that, don't we? I know you believe in your
cause and don't want to give up. But how much
bloody good are you going to do the IRA when
you're dead?"
    The voice that answered now was even weaker
than before. "You'll arrest me if I come out!"
the sniper shouted.
    "Of course we will," McCarter said. There
was little sense in lying to the man; he'd never
buy it. "You can't expect to try to kill a royal
and not be arrested, can you? Look, mate, under-
stand this. There are no other options but prison
or death. There is no escape. You're completely
surrounded.' '
    He waited for a reply. When none came, he
went on. "We haven't much time to play these
games if we're going to save your life, mate.
There's bound to be a doctor somewhere in the
crowd on the other side of the building. I can call
for him." He paused again, then said, "If there's
not a doctor, any of my men are capable of stop-
ping the blood flow while we get you to one."
    A long silence fell over the yard, and McCarter
knew the man was weakening emotionally, as
well as physically. After thirty seconds or so, he
called out, "So how about it? Life, or death. It's
your decision. Take my advice. Cut your losses
and come out now."
  Another silence fell over the grounds. Then, fi-

nally, in a voice barely audible, the sniper said,
"All right. I'll be comin' down."
    "Throw your weapons over the side first,"
McCarter ordered. "First the rifle, then the Sten,
and any pistols or other hideout weapons you're
carrying."
    The man did as ordered. First the rifle came
sliding over the side of the tower to fall into the
grass below, then the machine gun fell. They were
followed by an Eliminator single-shot and a small
boot knife.
    "I'm comin' down," the steadily weakening
voice called out again. "Don't be shootin'."
    Soon the man appeared at the foot of the steps
leading up to the a tower. McCarter studied him
head to foot. As he leaned against the stone at the
bottom of the stairs, his eyes blinked wildly, and
he was soaked from head to toe now in his own
blood.
    The Phoenix Force leader wondered if they
could keep him alive long enough to probe for
information. The IRA sniper toppled forward to
the grass.

Kingston, Jamaica

THE EXECUTIONER SWUNG out the metal door to
the Island Produce storage shed, stepped inside
and closed it behind him. He pulled the flashlight




from his pocket and thumbed the switch to acti-
vate the laser light.
    What he found hardly surprised him. Stacked
along the walls and in the center of the building
was crate after crate, wooden containers that
looked identical to the ones he'd first seen in Aus-
tralia, then later being manufactured at the Tak-
ahata factory in Tokyo.
    He gripped the flashlight in his left hand as he
moved forward to the nearest stack, drawing the
Applegate-Fairbaim folding knife from the hori-
zontal sheath on his belt. Flipping the blade open
with his thumb, he dug it under the lid of one of
the crates and pried upward. Working his way
around the top, he dug out the industrial staples
until the lid came off.
    What he found inside was no more of a shock
than the crates themselves. Wrapped in oil paper
and still covered with packing grease were two
dozen Eliminator Model 191 ls.
    Bolan dropped the lid back on the box and
moved to another stack. These crates were of a
different shape, and when he'd pried the lid off
the one on top he found Eliminator grease guns.
That was no surprise, either. But what was inside
the longer wooden boxes stacked in the comer?
    The boxes were roughly the shape and size of
a cheap pine coffin, and Bolan frowned as he
stepped up to the crates. The lids on these had

been sealed with nails, and it took longer to work
off the top. Holding the flashlight in his teeth, he
finally uncovered the contents and shook his head.
    The Eliminator, whoever he was, was branch-
ing out and upgrading production. What Bolan
saw before him now were cheaply stamped and
pressed reproductions of the U.S. M-14.
    The Executioner lifted the rifle on the top, strip-
ping away the paper. He examined it with the
flashlight, noting that like the original M-14 man-
ufactured by Harrington and Richardson Arms, it
was capable of either full- or semiauto fire. The
wood stock had been replaced with inexpensive
plastic, and it looked like each box contained a
dozen of the dries. Bolan counted forty of the
boxes.
    That meant 480 7.62 mm caliber weapons
heading somewhere into the hands of animal man.
And this was only one storage site. The Elimi-
nator might well have dozens or hundreds se-
creted around the world.
    Bolan closed the lid, moving on to another
stack. Inside these crates he found Eliminator ver-
sions of the M-14 A-1 squad rifle, complete with
folding forward hand grip and a compensator fit-
ted over the flash suppressor. Another collection
of crates against the far wall yielded M-21s, the
sniper version of the M-14. These weapons had
even been fitted with variable-power scopes.




    Bolan closed the final box and stepped back.
He had seen all he needed to see, and it was time
to contact Kurtzman with the new information
and see if the computer wizard could add it to the
intel he already had and make something of it.
    Only one thing stood in Bolan's way--the men
who suddenly burst into the storage building.
    Bolan whirled as the sound of the metal door
swinging open met his ears. The Applegate-
Fairbairn knife still in his hand, he thrust it for-
ward into the chest of a black man armed with an
Eliminator .45 semiauto. Withdrawing the double-
edged knife as the second man entered, Bolan saw
the Eliminator grease gun in his fists.
    The Executioner ducked under the volley of
rounds that flew over his head, threatening to
deafen him. At the same time he angled the flash-
light's powerful laser beam into his attacker's
eyes. Taking a fast shuffle-step forward, Bolan
performed the same "heart surgery" he had a mo-
ment before on the first attacker, then killed the
flashlight beam and dived behind a stack of crates
as the third man came through the door.
    Bolan crawled deeper behind the boxes as he
heard the man's feet stop on the concrete floor.
He had caught a quick glimpse of the assailant
before switching off the flashlight: a tall, over-
weight Jamaican with a full black beard carried
another of the Eliminator grease guns.

    Now, as he drew the sound-suppressed Beretta
93-R and flipped the selector to semiauto, the Ex-
ecutioner listened. He could hear the man's la-
bored breathing. Then the sounds of more men
entering the shed--it sounded like two--met his
ears. That meant three more attackers who would
spread out to search the building.
    Which they did. Bolan listened to them part
ways. The nearest man came down the row of
boxes toward him. It was too dark to see, but the
Executioner could hear him tiptoeing down the
aisle between the stacks of crates.
    Bolan started to thumb the button on the flash-
light, then stopped. The bright light would illu-
minate his target, but it would also act like a
tracer round, pointing back to him. He would get
the man he could hear; of that he had no doubt.
But one, or even both, of the others might well
be in place to shoot back at the flashlight before
the Executioner could pinpoint their position.
    The big American thought of the Glock on his
hip. The laser would illuminate his mark and pro-
vide a much smaller target for the other men than
the flashlight. But it would roar like an angry bull
to give him away through sound. As it stood, he
needed the 93-R's near silence. But he also
needed the Glock for target acquisition.
  What he really needed was the laser on the




quiet Beretta instead of the Glock, which he
didn't have.
    An idea suddenly hit the Executioner. Drawing
the Glock, he shifted it to his left hand and
gripped the Beretta with his right. Then, raising
both pistols side by side toward the sound of shuf-
fling feet, he pressed the laser-activation button
with the web of his left hand.
    The red dot immediately fell on the belt buckle
of a man wearing a baggy African dashiki tucked
into his frayed blue jeans. The splash light around
the dot lit the rest of the man, groin to chest. Lift-
ing both pistols slightly, the Executioner let the
dot center on the man's chest as the splash light
revealed a startled face above the dashiki. A split
second later, Bolan squeezed the trigger of the
Beretta, and the 9 mm weapon coughed quietly.
    Bolan let up on the laser button immediately,
rolling to his side as return fire came at him from
one of the grease guns on the other side of the
dark shed. But the man had fired at the spot where
he'd seen the tiny red dot on the trigger guard a
moment before, and the Executioner was no
longer there.
    Silently Bolan rose to his feet and moved for-
ward. Two steps in front of him he came to where
the man in the dashiki had fallen and felt the at-
tacker's head against his shoe. He stepped over

the man and moved back toward the center of the
building.
    Heavy breathing alerted him once more, and
the Executioner knew it would be the big man
with the beard. Turning toward the source of the
sound, he raised his brace of pistols again.
    The laser-equipped Glock provided the light
and sighting system. The sound-suppressed Ber-
etta next to it provided the bullet.
    The fat man toppled forward to his face on the
concrete, a pair of 9 mm hollowpoint rounds cen-
tered between his eyes.
    Bolan stepped to the side as another swarm of
angry .45-caliber rounds flew past him from the
final man with the grease gun. He ducked behind
another stack of crates, listening to the man try to
move quietly across the room. The steps grew
slightly louder, meaning he was headed forward.
The Executioner waited.
    A moment later a nervous voice called out,
"Listen, man, we don't want to kill each other.
Let's just call it quits, what say?"
    "No, thank you," Bolan said as he raised both
guns again. The splash light exposed a man wear-
ing a blue T-shirt. The red dot stopped in the mid-
dle, and the Beretta coughed.
    Bolan jammed the Glock back into his holster
and pulled the flashlight from his pocket. Holding




the flashlight over his shoulder, he shone the
beam on the fallen man and walked forward.
    He was halfway there when an explosion went
off behind shattering the flashlight in his hand.
    The Executioner dropped to the floor as two
more rounds sailed over his head. He rolled to his
side, jackknifing back to face the door of the tin
building. Cutting loose with the Beretta, he sent
a 3-round burst at the shadow in the doorway.
    But by the time the bullets reached the door,
the dark figure was gone.
    Bolan leaped to his feet and sprinted toward the
door, the Beretta leading the way. He kicked the
door open, holding the pistol in front of him and
looking down the barrel.
    A half block away the Executioner saw the dark
figure racing away into the night. As the shadow
sprinted under a streetlight, he saw the black
T-shirt, jeans and a ponytail bobbing in the man's
wake.
    Before he could fire, the shadow had disap-
peared once more into the night.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Stony Man Farm

Harold Brognola, director of the Sensitive Oper-
ations Group, heard the whine of the engines and
hurried to the window.
    Outside he saw the first of the Learjets landing.
A yellow Hummer, looking like an Army jeep on
steroids, raced across the grounds from the vehi-
cle storage barn.
    Brognola watched Charlie Mott land the air-
craft down on the tarmac. The plane taxied along
as the Hummer stopped at the end of the runway
and waited. Brognola, who doubled as a high-
ranking official in the U.S. Department of Justice,
had arrived himself only moments earlier from
Washington, D.C.
    Phoenix Force was here ahead of schedule,
which was fine with the Justice man. As Sherlock
Holmes would have said, the "game was afoot."
Things were coming to a head. It was time for




the warriors of Stony Man Farm to do what they
did best.
  Go to war.
    The groan of more jet engines sounded in the
sky above the main House as David McCarter,
Calvin James, Rafael Encizo, Gary Manning and
T. J. Hawkins left the Learjet and boarded the
Hummer. Brognola looked up to see another jet
circling the Farm. Although he couldn't hear the
words, he knew that Price had been on the radio
ordering the craft to wait while another plane
landed.
    A split second later his knowledge was con-
firreed as a plane appeared out of nowhere and
taxied to a halt at the end of the runway. That
meant that Able Team was now home, too.
    Another Hummer picked up Lyons, Schwarz
and Blancanales as Brognola turned away from
the window. He saw no need to stay and watch
the third plane, still circling, land. He had
watched it happen hundreds, if not thousands, of
times before. He knew what plane it would be--
the Learjet 60--and knew that Jack Grimaldi
would be bringing in Mack Bolan, the Execu-
tioner, the very heart of Stony Man Farm.
    Brognola left the bedroom he used when he
was at the Farm and hurried down the hall to the
stairs. Descending to the first floor, he made a
slight jog around the corner and tapped in the ac-

cess code to the computer room. Hurrying up the
ramp to where Kurtzman and Dr. Glenn Barrister
sat, he said, "Let's go, gentlemen," then turned
to face the glass dividing wall that separated
Kurtzman's area from the communications room.
    On the other side of the glass, Barbara Price
had wheeled her chair around to face him. Brog-
nola waved her toward them as he followed
Kurtzman and Barrister down the ramp and
headed for the elevator door in the corner of the
room.
    Kurtzman reached up from his wheelchair and
tapped the Down button on the wall. Price had
joined them by the time the car reached the first
floor, and the door rolled open.
    "You switch the phones, Barb?" Brognola
asked.
    "Of course. But I don't know why I bothered.
Everyone who might call in is already here. Un-
less the President himself decides to phone."
    Brognola nodded as the car descended to the
basement.
    By the time the door opened again, the men of
Phoenix Force were already seated around the
long conference table in the War Room. Brognola
pointed Barrister to a chair between his and the
spot Kurtzman would wheel to, and along with
Price they hurried to their seats. The door buzzed,
and Lyons, Schwarz and Blancanales walked in.




The Stony Man Farm director sat down and the
lock sounded again. A moment later Bolan took
his seat at the other end of the table.
    "I'll begin with a quick summary, then we'll
get down to the nitty-gritty," Brognola stated,
taking a partially chewed cigar from his mouth
and dropping it on the table in front of him. "The
pieces have finally come together." He paused to
draw in a deep breath, then went on. "Dr. Bar-
rister here--I'm sorry we don't have time for in-
troductions--with Aaron's help, has positively
traced the steel in the Eliminators to the Goodman
and Fine Steel Company in Pittsburgh. Isn't that
fight, Doctor?"
    Barrister's wide eyes showed awe at both the
new part of the Stony Man main house he was
now viewing and the whirlwind events that were
taking place. "Well," he said slowly, "nothing is
ever positive. There's perhaps a one in one hun-
dred thousand chance that the steel came from
somewhere else."
    "One in a hundred thousand is good enough
for me," Carl Lyons said.
    Brognola noticed for the first time that the Able
Team leader's arm was bandaged. But whatever
wound he'd suffered couldn't be bad. Lyons had
said nothing about it when he'd called in a few
hours earlier to report what he and his teammates
had learned at the Klan meeting.

"Tell the others what happened after the battle
with the Klansmen," Brognola said.
    "Guy dressed in cammies instead of sheets
shows up fight at the end, like he's not really part
of the Klan, and takes his shots." He lifted his
arm. "We took him out, then I walk over and find
that every weapon he carries has stag handles on
them. I found out why when I lifted his billfold.
The man's name was Staggs, Randolph Staggs."
    Brognola nodded and took up the story from
there. "With the info Ironman gathered from Ran-
dolph Staggs's ID, Carmen learned he was an ex-
Green Beret cowboy who'd pretty much disap-
peared the past few years. But his military records
showed he'd served under a man we'll be dis-
cussing in a few minutes." The Justice man
turned to David McCarter. "Not many men get
to save a member of the royal family," he said.
"And I understand the sniper only said one word
before he died--'Pen.'"
    McCarter nodded. "I think he wanted to write
something down. He had lost too much blood and
was too weak to talk. I suppose he was so delir-
ious the fact that if he couldn't talk he wasn't
likely to able to write didn't occur to him."
    "I've got another explanation but we'll wait a
moment for that, too." Brognola looked down the
table to the big man at the end. "Striker tracked
a shipment of Eliminators to Jamaica through the




crates manufactured in Tokyo. They were stored
in a building belonging to the Island Produce Dis-
tributors. He found some surprising new devel-
opments...and was attacked twice during his
search. Want to tell everyone about it?"
    "There's not a lot to tell," he said. "Three of
the men who tried to kill me inside the building
were obviously local talent. The fourth took me
on in an alley before I even got there, then
showed up again at the end of the fight inside.
He's a pro." He gave a brief description of the
man, then said, "If any of you come across
him--watch yourselves. He's as good as anybody
I've encountered in a long time."
    "How about what you found in the crates?"
Brognola prompted.
    "The Eliminator is expanding his business,"
the Executioner replied. "Besides the weapons
we've come across so far, I found close to five
hundred M-14 clones, some M-21s, and some
other variations of the basic M-1 Garand."
    A few of the men around the table drew in
breaths. Single-shots could kill. Semiautos could
kill even better, and the grease guns the Elimi-
nator had started to manufacture would spray .45s
as well as a Thompson subgun. But the M-14s
could do serious, long-range damage. The Elimi-
nator was getting serious. He was increasing the

items in his underground catalog, and there was
no guarantee he'd stop with the new dries.
    Gadgets Schwarz voiced everyone's concerns.
"What's next? BARs? M-16s? Uzis?"
    "Maybe explosives," Manning said. "Gre-
nades, the like."
    "Hell," Hawkins said. "It isn't that hard to
build nukes if you can get the right stuff."
    "And he's proved he can get the right stuff,"
Brognola said. "At least for firearms. But let's get
back to the matter at hand." He waited until the
last few comments died down, then said, "Hunt
Wethers hacked into the Goodman and Fine Com-
pany's records and IDed the chief of their sales
department. He's clean, but his second-in-
command proved curious."
  "Criminal record?" Encizo asked.
    "No," Brognola said, "but he's a U.S. Special
Forces grunt, too, and he served in the same unit
as Randolph Staggs."
"Ah," Blancanales said. "The plot thickens."
"Yes, and it gets even thicker," Brognola told
the men around the table. "Akira ran down the
owner of Island Produce and it goes through sev-
eral other dummy corporations. But eventually it
leads back to one major stock holder. The man's
name is Harold James Maddox."
  Hawkins's ears perked up. The former Army




Delta Force soldier frowned. "Mad Dog Mad-
dox?" he asked.
    Brognola nodded. "For those of you who're
been out of regular service a little longer than
T.J.," he said, "Mad Dog Maddox is a recently
retired U.S. Army colonel who owns an offshore
farm-implement manufacturing company in the
Caribbean--Mad Dog Farm Implements. It's lo-
cated on a small private island he's named Mad
Dog Island."
    "Sounds like this guy has as many self-identity
problems as Randolph Staggs," Blancanales of-
fered.
    McCarter suddenly leaned forward and spoke
up. "Pen," he said. "The IRA sniper didn't mean
he wanted to write. He was saying 'Penn'--with
two n's. Trying to say 'Pennsylvania,' as in Good-
man and Fine in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania!"
  Brognola nodded his agreement.
    "Is Maddox's farm-equipment gig on the
level?" James asked.
    "It appears to be," Brognola replied. "But
we've checked the sales records, and they're far
too meager to warrant the size of operation the
man's got going."
    Kurtzman reworded Brognola's statement.
"It's obviously a cover for the guns."
    Brognola nodded. "The President sent some
USAF planes over earlier this morning to do a

little recon for us." He opened a file lying on the
table and pulled out several dozen aerial photos.
"From these," he said, holding them up, "we've
put together what we feel is a fairly accurate map
of the grounds." Reaching for a stack of pages
that had been beneath the photos in the file, he
passed the maps around the room. "We estimate
that Maddox has at least a hundred armed guards
on the island, not to mention the workers who
may or may not be part of all this."
    The warriors of Stony Man Farm each took a
copy of the map. When the stack had circled the
table, Brognola stuffed the extras back in the file.
"Unless there's something else someone wants to
say, we go airborne immediately. And when
we're done, I don't want anything left of Mad
Dog Island but a grease spot."
    Kurtzman started to speak, but Dr. Glenn Bar-
rister got his words out first. Up until now, Bar-
rister had remained quiet, knowing his part in the
operation was over and that he was out of his field
of expertise. But now the humanitarianism in the
man forced him to speak. "Excuse me," he said
in a hushed voice.
All heads around the table turned toward him.
"I've listened to everything everyone has said,
and I agree the preponderance of evidence points
to this man, Maddox. But is anything positive? I
mean, the salesman at the steel company serving




in the Army with the man with the stag-handled
guns? And both of them having served under
Maddox? I know I told you it was practically im-
possible that the steel came from anywhere but
Goodman and Fine, but what if the one-in-a-
hundred long shot comes through?" He stopped
talking, looked down at the table, and said, "If
it's all just coincidence, you'll be killing innocent
men."
    Dr. Barrister was a fine man, and an expert in
his field. He had been of great assistance to the
Stony Man crew, and Hal Brognola admired his
concern. "I'm glad you brought that up, Doctor,"
he said. "Because there's something I forgot to
mention." He looked at Kurtzman.
    "Thought you'd never ask," the computer
expert said. He reached forward to a control panel
on the table in front of him and tapped a button.
A white screen came rolling down out of the ceil-
ing against the wall. Another button lit it with
light. Kurtzman stopped as Brognola spoke.
    "You were all aware, I know, of the Elirnina-
tor's letter to the newspapers that he signed with
a thumbprint. He threatened to begin killing jour-
nalists if he didn't start making the front pages
again." Brognola stuck the chewed cigar back in
his teeth and spoke around it. "We've assumed
that was to stimulate sales, and we have no reason
to change that assumption at this point. But one

thing has changed--my opinion of the Eliminator.
He's smart, all right, but not as smart as he thinks.
He thought a small misdemeanor arrest for drunk
driving in Walla Walla, Washington, wouldn't be
entered into the FBI's National Crime Information
Center files. He was right about that. What he
wasn't up-to-date on was the new AFIS computer
fingerprint system." He pulled the cigar from his
mouth and nodded to Kurtzman, who tapped an-
other button and two fingerprints appeared side by
side on the screen, the whirls, loops, arches and
other specifics enlarged a hundred times.
    "The print on the left is the one from the Walla
Walla PD files," Brognola said. "The one on the
right is the one that appeared on the Eliminator's
letter. By patiently linking into all the different
AFIS systems currently operating in the U.S., the
Bear was able to match them up." He looked
down at Dr. Barrister. "Want to guess who they
both belong to?"
    Barrister's face was a mask of relief. "Colonel
Harold J. Maddox, U.S. Army," the doctor said.
"Retired."
    The man from Justice nodded. "And we're
about to shut down his operation."

In the Air above Mad Dog Island

T~E FIRST NINE MEN tO jump from the troop-
transport plane were Mack Bolan and the warriors




of Phoenix Force and Able Team. Then came
forty handpicked blacksuits, all armed with M-16
A-2s, smoke and fragmentation grenades, and side
arms of their choice.
    Bolan glanced overhead as he free-fell through
the first part of the HALO--High Altitude Low
Opening---dive. Carl Lyons was second, right be-
hind him, with David McCarter running a close
third. The rest of the men of both teams were
scattered just above their leaders, with the black-
suits tiny dots against the blue afternoon sky.
    Bolan looked down, surveying Mad Dog Is-
land. As it grew closer, the various buildings be-
gan to take shape, looking like the aerial photos
he and the other men had studied during the flight
from Stony Man Farm to the Caribbean. Tiny
forms--looking like ants from this distance--
moved about the premises.
    But he knew those tiny ants carried a sting--a
sting in the form of Eliminator-made weapons.
The Executioner breathed a sigh of relief as he
watched. The geography below matched the map
folded and stuffed into one of the pockets of his
own blacksuit. Aerial surveillance could be tricky
sometimes, and tiny details were sometimes
missed. But if anything had been this time, he
couldn't see it yet, and he hoped that if it had, it
wouldn't be important.

    He glanced at his altimeter, then jerked the
chute's rip cord. The eggshell blue canopy shot
out above him, blending into the nearly identically
hued sky. He looked up again, seeing the other
blue chutes blossom.
    A hard smile crossed his face as he readied the
Heckler & Koch MP-5 slung over his shoulder.
The men of Stony Man Farm would have a few
more seconds of invisibility.
    Then the guards of Mad Dog Island would look
up, and the action would begin.
    The Executioner used those last few seconds to
go over the plan of attack again. The blacksuits
had been assigned the manufacturing areas and
workmen's barracks, and would proceed imme-
diately that way upon landing. Their job was to
determine which of the men were the enemy and
which were merely workers, ignorant of the true
purpose of Mad Dog Island. They would then
eliminate the bad guys and do their best to se-
quester the good--separate the wheat from the
chaff, so to speak.
    Phoenix Force had drawn a circuitous route
around the perimeter of the tiny speck of land,
their responsibility to eliminate Maddox's outer
guard. Gary Manning, equipped with enough C-4
and other explosive gear to blow the island com-
pletely off the map if he so chose, would make




sure no one escaped on the cargo ships in the
harbor.
    Able Team would proceed first to the tiny
shack that had yet to be identified. Then they
would join Bolan as he cut a swath toward what
appeared in the aerial photos to be Maddox's of-
fice building. The Executioner planned to con-
front the renegade colonel himself and, with any
luck, the man with the AI Mar Warrior knife who
had attacked him both in the alley, then again in
the storage building of the Island Produce Dis-
tributors.
    Bolan looked down again. The tiny specks he
had seen before moving around the island now
appeared as men--armed men, Maddox's guards.
As he continued to descend, the Executioner saw
one of the men look up, and knew that his few
seconds' grace period was now over.
    The man below raised what Bolan recognized
as an Eliminator M-14 to his shoulder and pointed
it skyward.
    The Executioner opened the ceremonies with a
burst from his MP-5, taking the man out of the
play.
    The chatter of the MP-5 caused guards all over
the island to look up.
    Bolan let his submachine gun fall to the end of
its sling, drew the Applegate-Fairbaim fixed blade
from the Kydex sheath on his belt and raised it

over his head as his feet hit the ground ten feet
from the first casualty. He sliced through the lines,
and a moment later the canopy was sailing off in
the Caribbean wind.
    The Executioner resheathed his blade and slid
the folding stock out of the MP-5. He slammed it
against his shoulder as more of the guards awak-
ened to the fact that an army of men was coming
in from the sky, and cut loose with a long stream
of autofire.
    Four men fell, but the others began to shoot
skyward.
    Still in the air, the other men from Stony Man
Farm opened up with return fire, and more of
Maddox's henchmen fell to the ground. Bolan
took out a guard wearing OD green with a quick
3-round burst, then swung his weapon toward a
man in blue jeans and a BDU blouse as McCarter
and Lyons touched down. The Sterling subgun in
the Phoenix Force leader's hands began to jump
with recoil, as did the Calico 950 carried by the
head of Able Team.
    The shrill sound of an overhead alarm suddenly
erupted. Looking overhead, Bolan saw metal
speakers mounted on poles around the island, a
good example of the details aerial photos missed.
    As the deafening noise continued, and the rest
of Able Team, Phoenix Force and the blacksuits
continued to land across the island, Bolan saw




more men clad in OD green emerging from the
various buildings. Bullets whipped past his head
from the rear, and he turned to see a bearded
black man firing one of the Eliminator grease
guns.
    Bolan swung the MP-5 a full 180 degrees and
shot from the hip, feeling the subgun climb
slightly as the 9 mm rounds blasted from the bar-
rel and into the guard's belly and chest. He felt a
presence next to him and saw Lyons in his pe-
ripheral vision. The ex-cop had switched the usual
50-round hexagonal drum magazine on top of his
Calico for one of the 100-shot variety. And the
way Lyons was using up ammo, it looked like
he'd need every single round.
    The Executioner finished off his own 30-round
magazine on two men charging him with Elimi-
nator M-14s, dropped it from the receiver and
jammed a fresh stick into the weapon. Half of the
fresh magazine went to a trio of guards who sud-
denly jumped from behind the shack where Able
Team was headed. Four more green-clad gunners
emptied the H&K once again, and Bolan found
himself jerking yet another magazine from his
carder.
    Lyons had left the Executioner's side to lead
Able Team toward the shack, and Bolan watched
the Stony Man commandos fire their Calicos as

they went. Five more of Maddox's guards bit the
dust.
    In the comer of his eye, Bolan saw Phoenix
Force sprinting down the beach, leaving yet more
of the enemy bleeding in their wake. Across the
island, the blacksuits had divided into two teams
with roughly half headed toward the barracks
while the other men raced toward the manufac-
turing buildings.
    Bolan dropped two more men in green with
short, 3-round bursts as Carl Lyons kicked in the
door to the shack. Able Team hurried inside, with
Schwarz sticking his head back out a second later.
"No one but an unarmed woman," he yelled.
The Executioner fired another stream of rounds
into two men with grease guns. "Tell her to keep
her head down and come on!" he yelled back.
    The Executioner swung the MP-5 toward a
quartet of guards who had dropped to the ground
fifty feet away. They all fired Eliminator M-14
copies, and Bolan felt the air pressure as the
rounds whizzed past his ears. Flipping the
MP-5's selector to semiauto, he started on the
right, putting a lone round into the spine of
the first man in the prone position. A second later
he'd taken out the two in the middle, and another
second after that the last man lay dead with a
severed spinal cord and bleeding heart.
 Firing broke out on the other side of the island,




and Bolan recognized the roars of the blacksuits'
M-16s. A momentary lull in the battle nearby
gave him pause, and he turned his eyes toward
Maddox's office.
    "Let's go!" the Executioner called out as Able
Team fell in behind him. He sprinted to the side-
walk, then followed it toward the office building.
Six men appeared from behind various cover as
he and the other Stony Man warriors ran past,
firing their weapons at the moving targets.
Those six men died quickly, if not painlessly.
The MP-5 now empty again, the Executioner
dropped it and drew the Glock .45 with the
Aro-Tek laser sight. The siren overhead continued
to wail. From the direction of the harbor came the
roar of Gary Manning's first explosion.
    Bolan eyed the office as he neared, seeing no
guards outside the building. A second before he
reached the front door, he lowered his right shoul-
der.
    The door flew off its hinges as if struck by the
winds of a Caribbean hurricane.
    The Executioner burst into a deserted reception
area, the laser's red dot looking like an angry fire-
fly as it made a lightning-fast sweep of the room.
He raced on to a closed door in the opposite wall
and lowered his shoulder once again.
    Bursting into the room, the Executioner saw a
man in khakis standing behind the desk. A huge

cigar was in Colonel Harold J. Maddox's teeth,
and he gripped an S&W 645 pistol in both hands
and aimed it toward the Executioner.
    Bolan hit the ground, rolling into the desk and
sliding it backward into Maddox. The pistol fell
from the colonel's hands and toppled to the floor
next to the Executioner.
    The Executioner was reaching for the pistol
when he saw the flicker of stainless steel descend-
ing. The sight brought a quick memory of the
dark Jamaican alley, and he abandoned his quest
for the colonel's S&W, rolling to one side a split
second before the AI Mar Warrior knife whizzed
past him and embedded itself in the wood floor.
    Bolan rolled again, moving away as the at-
tacker he remembered from Jamaica pried the
knife out of the floor. But the man--a Native
American--no longer wore his black T-shirt or
jeans. He was dressed in a checkered Western
shirt, faded denims, and wore a medicine bag
around his neck.
    The only things the same were the black moc-
casins on his feet.
    Lyons burst into the office, followed by
Schwarz and Blancanales. Able Team saw the
knife wielder and raised their Calicos. A quick
burst ended the threat to the Executioner.
    Silence descended, making the sudden cackle
from behind the desk sound even more eerie. All




heads turned toward Maddox. The man had risen
to his feet.
"Okay, let us in on it," Blancanales said.
Maddox leaned forward, resting both hands on
the desk in front of him. "I don't know who
you guys are," he said, "maybe FBI, maybe
ATF...heil, you might even be Company." He
shook his head, still smiling. "But it makes no
difference. We aren't in the United States. You've
got no jurisdiction here, and when I'm through
suing your asses I'll be richer than I'd have been
making the Eliminators."
    The men of Phoenix Force had arrived just in
time to overhear Maddox's arrogant comment.
"Oh, we've got all the jurisdiction we need,"
T. J. Hawkins said.
    "Really?" Maddox asked. "Okay, let me see
some badges."
    Rosario Blancanales of Able Team looked
across the room at Rafael Encizo. Both men were
of latino decent, and both men saw the opening.
    "You want to say it Rare," Blancanales asked,
"or you want me to?"
    "As much as I'd like to," he said, "it's more
up your alley."
    "Good," Blancanales said. "I've waited a long
time to work this one in somewhere." He turned
back to Maddox and cleared his throat. Then, in
a perfect Mexican-bandit accent straight out the

Humphrey Bogart film Treasure of the Sierra
Madre, he said, "Badges? We don't need no
stinkin' badges!"
    Slowly Maddox's smile began to fade as he ob-
viously realized that B!ancanales's statement was
meant to be taken literally.
    These intruders didn't have any badges, and
they didn't intend to read him the Miranda warn-
ing or pay attention to any other distorted consti-
tutional rights the operatives of police agencies
would have been forced to observe.
      "So you're the one they call the Eliminator,"
David McCarter said, stepping forward.
  Maddox nodded.
    "Well, Eliminator," McCarter stated, "meet
the Executioner." He hooked a thumb toward Bo-
lan.
    In one last, desperate play, Maddox scrambled
to open the top drawer of his desk, hoping to beat
the odds and retrieve the single-shot Eliminator
sequestered there.
    Bolan raised the Glock and let the red dot cen-
ter on Maddox's chest.
    The explosion sounded louder than all the oth-
ers still going off around Mad Dog Island.