Bolan was a split second too late

He reached out to grab the young woman’s arm just as her hand closed around the doorknob. Star had already pushed open the door and started to speak when the first round exploded from inside the hostel office.

From where he stood next to the partially opened door, the Executioner couldn’t see the gunman or any of the other men in the office. But he saw the result of the shot as it struck Star in the side of the neck and threw a fistful of flesh and blood back against the wall of the hallway.

The bullet ended Star’s words in midsentence. As to her life, Bolan had no time to find out. He was too busy kicking the door fully open and drawing the Desert Eagle from under his vest.

MACK BOLAN®

The Executioner

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

#327 Serpent’s Lair

#328 Triangle of Terror

#329 Hostile Crossing

#330 Dual Action

#331 Assault Force

#332 Slaughter House

#333 Aftershock

#334 Jungle Justice

#335 Blood Vector

#336 Homeland Terror

#337 Tropic Blast

#338 Nuclear Reaction

#339 Deadly Contact

#340 Splinter Cell

The Executioner®

Splinter Cell

Don Pendleton

It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.

—Carl von Clausewitz, 1780–1831

On War

There is a time to contemplate and a time to take action. I am a man of action.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Epilogue

Prologue

The salt sea air mixed with the odor of fish grew stronger in Phil Paxton’s nostrils as he made his final walk toward the Ijsselmeer. Amsterdam was different from what he’d expected it to be. No, he thought as he stopped along the concrete railing to gaze down one of the city’s many canals, it wasn’t Amsterdam that was different.

It was his behavior within the city that had surprised him.

Phil looked at his watch. He’d be back in New York by this time the following night. He was ready to get back. Not just ready but anxious. Phil Paxton was ready to go home. He was ready to marry Janie.

Taking in a final breath of sea air, Phil turned and retraced his steps toward the hotel. But when a passing taxi slowed he suddenly found himself waving it down. He still had several hours to kill before he headed to the airport.

“Rijksmuseum,” he said as he got into the backseat.

The driver nodded, pulled away from the curb and reached forward and turned on the radio.

Phil closed his eyes and he pictured Janie as she had looked when she’d dropped him off at the airport two weeks earlier. Tears had trickled down her face, smearing her mascara and reddening her eyes. She had kissed him on the cheek rather than the mouth, then said softly, “Come back to me…if that’s what you want to do.” Then, without another word, she’d turned and walked away.

Pain seared through his heart as Phil opened his eyes again. They were passing a large park with grills set in concrete and bicycle paths. He could imagine families crowding around picnic tables, laughing, having fun, children racing about playing tag and other youthful games. He had told Janie that he had promised himself as a child that he would visit Amsterdam someday—before he got married. He had told her that he had always dreamed of visiting the Rembrandt House museum, the house where Anne Frank’s family had hidden during the Nazi occupation, the step-gabled houses, historic churches and ancient towers.

The history of the city fascinated him. But that had not been his only reason for wanting to go to Amsterdam. And even though he hadn’t told her, Janie knew it as well as he did.

The cabbie stopped at a red light, then turned right. Phil Paxton frowned. He would have sworn the Rijksmuseum was to the left. But what did he know? Maybe the cabdriver knew a shortcut. More likely, he knew a “long cut” that would increase the fare.

As the cab picked up speed, Phil closed his eyes again. Although Dutch painters and architecture had always been hobbies that bordered on passions with him, both he and Janie had known it was a very different kind of passion that had brought him to Amsterdam. Phil Paxton wanted to know for certain if he had finally settled down enough to get married. He didn’t want to marry Janie only to find himself cheating on her two weeks later. He needed to find out if he could resist temptation. And few places in the world presented temptation in the form of beautiful and available women like Amsterdam.

Phil opened his eyes and was surprised to find that they were in a section of the city he had not seen during his two weeks of furious touring. “Where are we?” he asked the driver.

The man glanced up into the rearview mirror. “Another fare to pick up,” he said. “No worry. I charge you one-half only.”

Phil shrugged. He had never liked arguing with people, especially with the additional complication of the language barrier. So he just closed his eyes again.

This time the smile that came to his face was genuine. He remembered the first night he had arrived in Amsterdam. Although he had caught a good six hours of sleep on the plane, and it had only been eight o’clock in the evening, he had convinced himself he was too tired to go looking for the fleshpots of the city. The next day he had spent several hours at the same museum toward which he was headed again now, eaten dinner at a small outdoor café, then returned to his hotel when the wine he’d drunk told him he was too woozy to get his money’s worth from any of the prostitutes who had smiled at him on the sidewalks.

The third day he had gone to the Kalverstraut—the busiest shopping area in Holland. He had surprised himself when he’d returned to the hotel later that evening, unwrapped his purchases and suddenly realized they had all been presents for Janie.

So that night he had forced himself out of the hotel even though he hadn’t wanted to go. He had made himself walk along the streets, eyeing the prostitutes who sat on display in the windows. Many were scantily clad. A few were completely nude. Without trying, he had found himself comparing each woman to Janie, and each time they came up short. Finally, he had come across a beautiful woman wearing a transparent negligee. Her long red hair fell past her shoulders and glimmered in the streetlights, and her skin was the color of milk. He had gone inside, paid the brothel owner for the entire night with her, then allowed the man to escort him to her room.

It was only after the man had shut the door on his way out, and the prostitute had let the negligee fall from her shoulders to the floor, that he had realized what had attracted him to her.

And why he could not go through with the act for which he had already paid.

The woman looked enough like Janie to be her sister.

Phil Paxton had left the room and taken a cab back to his hotel. The next day he had gone to one of Amsterdam’s more famous diamond-cutters and had a stone cut and mounted in gold, doing his best to guess at exactly what Janie would like. And for the next week and a half, art, architecture and history really had become the reason for his trip.

His eyes still closed, Phil reached into the side pocket of his sport coat and felt the small felt-covered gift box that contained both Janie’s engagement and wedding rings. In less than a day now, the engagement ring would be on her finger, and the thought made Phil’s smile widen.

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted when the driver slammed on the brakes. Phil opened his eyes to see that they were no longer on the streets but had entered a dark alleyway that stank of garbage.

Then, as if on cue, the driver turned and aimed a pistol over the seat at his passenger. “Don’t move,” he said in a completely different accent than he had used earlier. “Or I’ll kill you here and now.”

A second later, white lights from outside the vehicle flooded the interior. Phil’s door flew open and rough hands jerked him out. In a flash of vision, Phil Paxton saw rifle barrels and angry, dark-skinned faces. Then a hood was dropped over his head and tied in place around his neck with rope. Next he felt a hypodermic needle prick the skin on his upper arm.

A moment later, euphoria overcame Phil Paxton. For a moment, he knew that whatever was happening had to be just fine. Everything would work out.

The euphoria, however, was short-lived. A few seconds later, he lost consciousness.

1

Only a highly trained soldier, cop or intelligence officer would have been likely to notice the differences. Tiny differences, like the fact that his bearing was slightly more erect, that he exuded more confidence than the average man. Or that the set of his jaw was a little firmer. But it was his eyes, he knew, that would have really given him away had he not taken great pains to keep anyone from staring into them. In those eyes other warriors could see that he’d seen hell, and lived to tell about it.

On the surface, however, Mack Bolan looked little different than any of the other men flying first class from New York. He wore a well-tailored gray pin-striped suit much like bankers, gem dealers and other businessmen wore when visiting Amsterdam. His passport claimed his name was Matt Cooper instead of Mack Bolan, or the more mysterious, and descriptive, appellation by which he was also known—the Executioner.

Bolan shifted slightly in his seat. He had felt tension in the air aboard the 747 ever since boarding. He had sensed that something was wrong ever since the plane had left the runway. Who knows how he knew—he just did.

The soldier leaned back against his seat and glanced to the man at his side, next to the window. The danger that filled the air was not coming from John “Brick” Paxton. Paxton had boarded the flight with the Executioner as his confederate rather than an adversary. Granted, accompanying Bolan had not been the former Army Ranger’s idea; Paxton had made plans to rescue his younger brother, Phil, on his own. Just prior to boarding an earlier flight to the Netherlands, he’d been detained by representatives of Stony Man Farm, America’s top-secret counterterrorist organization. The Farm’s operatives had whisked Paxton away to a secluded safehouse while a secret meeting took place at the White House.

Bolan had been present at that meeting.

“There’s no way to stop Brick Paxton from going after his brother short of throwing him in jail,” the President told Hal Brognola, Stony Man Farm’s director, as well as a high-ranking official at the Justice Department. “And I’m going to look like hell in the press if I jail a guy who’s won two Silver Stars and is currently up for the Medal of Honor for his actions in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

The Executioner watched as the Man nodded his way before concluding with, “So the best thing we can do is let him go after his brother. But I want Bolan with him.”

Brognola nodded his agreement. “And I’d suggest sending them immediately, Mr. President,” he said. “All of our intelligence at the moment indicates that the terrorists picked Phil Paxton at random, just because he was American. But sooner or later, they’re going to find out just what a prize they’ve stumbled on to.”

None of the three men had thought it necessary to further identify that “prize.” They were all fully aware that Brick Paxton’s younger brother was one of America’s top nuclear engineers.

And a man who could build nukes for America could be forced to build them for America’s enemies, as well.

The Executioner glanced out of the corner of his eye, studying Brick Paxton’s face while he continued to review the past few hours in his mind. The Army Ranger’s eyes were closed, but it was impossible to tell if he was asleep or not. He’d been against going with Bolan from the moment the idea had been presented to him, and had only agreed when it had finally become clear that the President would find a jail cell for him somewhere if he didn’t.

Bolan turned back to the seat in front of him. The chain of command still wasn’t fully clear in Paxton’s mind. That might become a problem sooner or later. But the problem on the Executioner’s mind at the moment came from somewhere else on the 747.

Dinner had been served aboard the plane a half hour earlier, and the remnants were still on the first-class passengers’ trays. Lifting his plastic beverage glass, Bolan drained the contents, then he took the plastic fork and spoon from the table in front of him with his other hand and dropped them into the inside pocket of his jacket.

The ice at the bottom of his drink rattled as Bolan set the glass back down in the circular depression on the tray.

The flight attendant came quickly to his side. “Another Seven-Up, sir?” she asked with a suggestive smile. Her name tag read Margie.

Bolan’s return smile was noncommittal. “No, thanks,” he said. “I’m fine.”

“And your friend?” Margie added.

Brick Paxton’s eyes opened at the cue. “Sure. One more can’t hurt.”

Bolan sat quietly as Margie turned and disappeared into the galley between first class and the pilot’s cabin. He had studied Brick Paxton’s U.S. Army personnel file the day before and, among other things, learned that Paxton had a penchant for the bourbon. But nothing in the file suggested that he couldn’t control his drinking, or ever drank to excess.

The flight attendant returned with another miniature bottle and a fresh glass of ice water. Placing them in front of Paxton, she removed the dinner trays in front of both men and disappeared into the galley once more.

Approximately fifteen minutes later, the man sitting directly across the aisle from Bolan unbuckled his seat belt and stood up. He had the dark skin and sharp features of a Middle Easterner. He reached up and opened the overhead storage compartment, then pulled down a black attaché case before closing the compartment.

Bolan had pinpointed the source of the tension that filled the air of the 747’s first-class cabin. He watched the man out of the corner of his eye. It was not his race—the Executioner had worked with many men of Arabic origin in the past and knew that, as held true with any people, the good Arabs far outnumbered the bad. Nor was it the dark-skinned man’s manner of dress that now caught Bolan’s attention. It was not even the look in the man’s eyes as he glanced quickly at Bolan before sitting down again, the attaché case on his lap.

Still, Bolan suddenly knew.

Bolan glanced over his shoulder. The curtain between first class and coach was drawn, but through the opening he could see that three other men—all looking to be of Middle Eastern origin like the man across from him—stood in the aisle. They had also opened the overhead storage compartments, and the Executioner watched as each pulled down a black attaché case identical to the one now in the lap of the man across from him.

Bolan felt his abdominal muscles tighten in anticipation. Four men. Four identical black attaché cases.

It was far too much to be coincidence.

The Executioner glanced to Paxton. The former Ranger had just unscrewed the lid from his plastic shot bottle. But he had noted the man across from them, too, and while he couldn’t see into the rear of the plane from his window seat, he’d caught the expression on Bolan’s face.

“How many more?” Paxton whispered as he screwed the cap back onto his bottle of Wild Turkey and dropped it into the front pocket of his navy blue blazer.

“Three,” the Executioner murmured. “All in coach. Same cases.”

Brick Paxton nodded. He flipped his tray back up and out of the way into the seat in front of him, then began untying his right shoe.

The Executioner didn’t have to ask what he was doing.

Bolan reached inside his jacket and felt his fingertips touch the tops of the plastic fork and spoon he had placed there earlier. He would have preferred to have his usual weapons—the Beretta 93-R and .44 Magnum Desert Eagle—but that had not been possible. Knowing that the enemy he would face once he reached Amsterdam closely watched incoming private flights, he and Paxton had chosen to fly commercial and were, therefore, unarmed.

At least conventionally unarmed. A man like the Executioner was never completely without weapons.

Leaving the plastic fork where it was, Bolan withdrew the spoon. Glancing casually across the aisle to make sure the man with the attaché case wasn’t watching, he saw that sweat had broken out on the man’s forehead. Dropping his hands beneath the table still in front of him, the Executioner twisted the head of the spoon until it broke off at a sharp angle. Discarding the rounded dipper end, he replaced the now sharp piece of plastic in his jacket.

By now Paxton had removed his right sock. Retrieving the Wild Turkey bottle from his blazer pocket, he dropped it into the sock and tied a knot just above the small container.

Bolan folded his tray back up and pulled one of the in-flight magazines from the holder in front of him. Starting at the binding, he began rolling the periodical into the tightest tube he could fashion. Every few seconds, he used his peripheral vision to check on the man across the aisle. But the man with the attaché case was paying him no attention. He was far too engrossed in his own thoughts, and what he was about to do.

When the Executioner had finished rolling the magazine up, it was almost as hard as a length of wood. Pulling a pair of rubber bands from his pocket, he twisted them around the ends of the homemade bludgeon to keep the pages in place, then hid the club in the other inside pocket of his jacket, across from the fork and broken spoon.

Paxton’s makeshift sap was finished, too, and the Army Ranger glanced across the aisle before slapping the sock-covered bottle into the palm of his opposite hand. Satisfied, he tied his shoe back onto his bare foot.

“We don’t know what’s in the attaché cases yet,” Bolan whispered. “Maybe guns. Maybe a bomb. Maybe both.” He let out a breath. “Our only chance is to get the jump on them.”

“And if they turn out to be just four Arabic businessmen who happen to have the same kind of briefcases?” Paxton asked.

“We’ll apologize,” Bolan said. “And offer to pay the hospital bill for them.”

Paxton chuckled, low and deep. “That’s not going to be the case, though, is it,” he said in a tone of voice that made his words a statement rather than a question.

“No,” the Executioner said. He unbuckled his seat belt. “I’m heading to the coach cabin. You concentrate on the man here in first class.”

Paxton’s eyebrows lowered. “You’re gonna take out three of them?” he said. “No, I’ll go with you. We’ll get those three, then—”

“We don’t have time to argue,” Bolan ordered. “If we’re both in the back, and this clown across from us has a bomb, he’s only a few steps from the pilot. And he’ll get plenty of warning if there’s a scuffle behind him.”

Paxton saw the logic in the Executioner’s plan. He nodded.

Bolan stood up. The man with the attaché case had glanced at his watch twice before Bolan could even turn down the aisle away from the cabin.

Whatever the four men were planning was about to go down. Soon.

The flight attendant seemed to appear from nowhere as Bolan stepped through the door from first class to coach. “Oh, sir,” Margie said, bumping into him. “I’m sorry.”

“No problem,” said the Executioner, and started to step around her.

“Sir, where are you going?”

“Restroom,” Bolan said, again trying to step to the side in the narrow aisle.

“But there’s a much better one in first class,” Margie said.

“It’s taken,” Bolan said. Beyond the flight attendant, he saw sweat and tension on the faces of the other three men who had pulled the attaché cases down from the overhead compartments. As the nervous man in first class had done, they all glanced at their wristwatches.

Then three hands moved to the latches on the cases.

Bolan shoved Margie to the side and sprinted down the aisle. Whatever was about to happen was no longer about to happen soon.

It was happening now.

THE THREE Arabs all looked up at the big man running toward them, and Bolan was reminded that the almost supernatural sense of danger was never limited to the good guys. Criminals, terrorists and other miscreants developed it just like good soldiers, cops and other warriors.

A glint of fire suddenly appeared in the eyes of the three men. They stood up as they opened their cases.

Bolan continued to run down the aisle past the curious faces of the other passengers. He still didn’t know what was in the black attaché cases. But it was a good bet that it would be either guns, bombs or both. Neither did he know how the terrorists had gotten the cases past security and on board the plane.

But that hardly mattered now. The reality of the situation was that they had gotten the cases onto the plane, and he would have to deal with that reality as it stood. If guns were their only weapons, he stood a good chance of saving the hundreds of people on board the 747. But if there were four bombs on the plane, not even the Executioner would be able to get to them all before at least one was detonated.

Bolan didn’t break stride as he drew the broken plastic spoon from his pocket and drove the sharp point into the dark-skinned throat above the SIG-Sauer pistol his adversary had pulled from the attaché case. A chortling sound issued forth with the blood that shot out of the man’s jugular vein, staining his white shirt and beige suit. The Executioner reached out, grabbing for the SIG-Sauer.

He was a split second too late.

Waving his arms wildly in the throes of death, the would-be gunman released the SIG. It flew out over the passengers and fell somewhere behind Bolan.

The black attaché case dropped to the deck of the plane, open. Two shirts and a pair of slacks flew out from between the sides. But no bomb.

The terrorist in the beige suit fell to the floor on top of the mess.

Bolan leaped over the still-convulsing body and continued down the aisle, jerking the tightly wrapped magazine from inside his jacket as he ran. By now, the second man—wearing a light blue suit and darker blue necktie—had pulled a Glock from his attaché case. His hand shook nervously as he tried to steady his aim on the Executioner.

Bolan ducked low, praying that like most nervous men, the would-be hijacker would shoot high. Not just high enough to miss him, but high enough to miss all of the seated passengers as well.

His prayer was answered.

The Glock exploded with an almost deafening roar in the tight confines of the cabin. More screams threatened to burst the Executioner’s eardrums. But Bolan could tell by the angle of the barrel that the shot had gone to the ceiling and exited the plane. The hole it made was far too small to affect the cabin pressure. But too many of the passengers had seen movies where such tiny openings sucked everyone out into the sky, and more panicky screams added to the chaos around Bolan.

Bolan didn’t give the man with the Glock a second chance. With a sudden leap, he reached the terrorist and swung the rolled magazine like a short billy club. The hardened pages caught the man in the Adam’s apple and crushed his larynx. Bolan followed through with a left hook, connecting with the man’s temple with the force of a jackhammer.

The Glock fell to the seat behind the terrorist. The man’s lifeless body began to fall backward on top of it.

Bolan reached out, grabbing the second terrorist by the shoulders and throwing him to the other side of the aisle, out of the way. But when he looked down to the seat for the Glock, it was gone.

But the Executioner had no time to waste. Rather than go searching for the Glock, the Executioner continued down the aisle until the final terrorist in coach class shouted in heavily accented English, “Halt! Stop now, or I will blow up the plane!”

Still a good twenty feet from the man, Bolan could see the arrogant smile on his face. He wore a black suit with light pin-stripes. He had opened his attaché case and turned it to face the Executioner.

Bolan stared into the open case. This man had no pistol for him to worry about.

What he did have, however, was a bomb.

The Executioner stood motionless as the terrorist had ordered. “What is it you want?”

“First,” the man with the bomb said sarcastically, “is for all of these swine to…shut up!” He shouted the last two words at the top of his lungs. And they had the desired effect. The last of the screaming, moaning and crying turned to an eerie silence as the passengers quieted, frozen in fear.

“All right,” Bolan said, standing upright in the center of the aisle. “You got your first wish. Now what?” He stared into the open attaché case, trying to make out the details of the bomb under the shadows created by the lid. He couldn’t be sure but it looked as if the case contained a substantial amount of plastic explosive—probably Semtex. The shiny, polished steel of what had to be a detonator flashed at him. The item most easy to see and recognize was a common digital kitchen timer.

There didn’t look to be anything high-tech about the explosive device. It was simple. Very simple.

But still lethal.

Satisfied that Bolan had seen what was in the case, the terrorist in the black suit now closed it partway but kept his left hand inside.

The Executioner gauged the distance between him and the terrorist. If he had judged the design of the bomb correctly during the second or so he’d been allowed to view it, it should be easy enough to defuse. If he could get to it before the man in the black suit set it off.

But that wasn’t likely. The same simplicity that made it easy to neutralize also made it easy and fast to detonate. The timer was electronic, and made no ticking sound. So it was impossible to determine if it had been set or not. But that made little difference, either. All it would take to override the timing device would be to touch two wires together, and Bolan could see by the way the terrorist’s hand was positioned that he held one of those wires inside the half-closed case even now.

The man with the bomb had not replied to Bolan’s question, so the Executioner repeated it. “What do you want now?” he said in a louder voice.

“I want you to sit down,” said the dark-featured man.

“This has got to be a give-and-take negotiation,” Bolan said, speaking for all of the passengers. “What do we get in return?” Bolan asked, playing for time.

He continued to stare the terrorist in the eye. If he was to have any chance at all of reaching the attaché case before the bomb went off, he needed the terrorist in the black suit to be distracted in as many ways as possible.

He was about to speak again—simply to buy more time—when he felt a light tapping on his left hip. Slowly glancing down to his side, the Executioner saw a little girl who could have been no more than eight years old. She wore a frilly pink-and-white dress, white anklets rolled down and black buckled shoes. Her sandy-blond hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail.

On the little girl’s face, Bolan saw terror. In her left hand was a Barbie doll with hair that matched her own.

But in her right hand was the barrel of the Glock.

Whoever had come into possession of the pistol after it had been thrown over the seats had determined that Bolan was on their side. The gun had been passed clandestinely to the passenger nearest Bolan, and that had been the little blond girl.

Bolan felt the hard plastic Glock in his fist as the little girl released the barrel.

“You saw what happened to the other men back here in coach,” the Executioner said to the terrorist. “But don’t you wonder about the man you had in first class?”

Bolan wondered, too. But it appeared that Paxton had taken care of the terrorist who had first given himself away to the Executioner. At least there had been no shots fired from the front of the craft. And no explosions.

As soon as the words had left the Executioner’s mouth, the man with the bomb glanced past him toward first class.

Bolan knew it was the best distraction he could pull off.

He brought the Glock out from behind the seat and snapped it up, pointing the barrel as if it were his finger and depressing the trigger at the same time. He saw the red hole appear in the forehead of the terrorist. At almost the same time the back of the man’s head blew out.

The screams, cries and moans returned as Bolan sprinted forward. The attaché case had fallen to the middle of the aisle, and now he dropped to one knee to look inside. His heart fell to his stomach when he saw that what had looked like a simple device from a distance was actually somewhat more complex.

At least a dozen wires—all in different colors—from the Semtex through the detonator to the timer. Most would be dummies that would have no effect at all if cut. But one would be an instant detonator that would override the timer and set off the plastic explosive immediately.

None of which would have been a problem if the timer wasn’t set. Bolan could simply fold the attaché case back up, take it to his seat and turn it over to Dutch authorities when they landed in Amsterdam.

But all hope of such a simple end to the problem flew from the Executioner’s thoughts as he looked at the timer. It had been set.

And the bomb was going to explode in 43 seconds.

THE EXECUTIONER REACHED down and lifted the kitchen timer in his hand, taking a long shot and simply pushing the start-stop button. As he’d suspected, it changed nothing. It had obviously been disconnected somewhere inside because the seconds continued ticking away.

By now, many of the passengers had recovered from shock. Questions assaulted him from all sides. Several of the passengers had unbuckled their seat belts and were starting to rise, curious to see what was inside the attaché case and what the Executioner was doing.

“Sit down! Everybody!” Bolan called out in a loud, authoritative voice that caused the men and women to drop immediately back down into their seats. As he turned back toward the front of the plane, he saw both Paxton and Margie running down the aisle to meet him. Paxton had another SIG-Sauer jammed into his belt, which could only mean that he’d successfully neutralized the first terrorist they’d spotted in first class.

Margie looked puzzled. But Paxton took it all in immediately. “How long have we got?” he asked.

The Executioner glanced back down to the timer. “Thirty-eight seconds,” he said. Turning his eyes quickly to Margie, he said, “Tell the captain to unlock the master lock to the main door in first class.” Margie started to turn.

“And tell him to slow speed to the bare minimum,” the Executioner added.

The woman nodded as she ran back in the direction from which she’d come.

“You’re going to try to throw that thing out the door?” Paxton asked incredulously.

“That’s the plan.”

“You open that door at this speed and altitude and you’ll get sucked out of the plane,” Paxton warned.

“That’s why I told her to have the pilot slow down,” Bolan said.

Paxton and Bolan sprinted back through the coach cabin into first class.

Bolan addressed the six men who were still seated there, their eyes wide in fear. “Quick! I need you to take off your belts and give them to me.”

Immediately, the men unbuckled themselves and began sliding their belts out of their pants. While they were so engaged, the Executioner turned back to Margie. “Get on the phone and tell the captain to drop the oxygen masks. It’ll give the passengers something to do,” he explained.

When the Executioner had gathered all six of the belts, he tossed three of them to Paxton. The Ranger had figured out what he had planned and he buckled one strip of leather through his own belt, then began linking the others together. Bolan did the same with the three belts in his hands, hoping the buckles and any other weak spots in the leather would hold.

The Executioner linked his last belt to that of Paxton’s, then turned to the cabin door. He had just enough length in the makeshift retention straps to reach the handle. Swiftly twisting it, he heard the whir of a million bees’ wings as he slid the door open. At the same time, he felt himself suddenly pulled forward. His own belt, attached to the leather chain, threatened to cut him in two the waist. He swallowed hard, trying to equalize the pressure in his ears as the atmosphere suddenly changed. Glancing downward, he saw that he had eight seconds left on the timer. He swallowed hard again. Even if the bomb didn’t explode, it felt as if his eardrums would.

Taking a final look down at the timer, the Executioner saw only the number 4. Before it could turn to 3, he leaned forward, assisted by the vacuum, and pushed the attaché case through the opening.

A second later, a barely audible popping sound issued forth through the galelike wind outside the doorway. The sound was so small—so seemingly insignificant in the distance—that it was almost an anticlimax to the near destruction and deaths it had almost caused. Bolan closed the door.

The threat was over. For now, at least.

But as the Executioner walked back and dropped into his seat, he knew that while his actions had saved the lives of the several hundred people on the plane, he had been unsuccessful in at least one way.

He and Paxton had flown commercial to keep a low profile upon entering the Netherlands. There was no chance of that now. By the time they touched down in Amsterdam the pilot would have radioed all that had happened aboard the 747 to the tower. There would be long interviews with police, which took time away from the mission. But worse than that, the airport would be a carnival of newsmen and-women shouting questions and popping flash in their faces.

Bolan and Brick Paxton would not go unnoticed, they’d be celebrities. Their pictures would be on the front page of every newspaper in Europe and quite possibly the rest of the world.

The Executioner leaned back against his seat, shut his eyes and frowned. Then, slowly, the corners of his mouth began to turn upward as a plan took shape in his mind.

A LIGHT SNOW HAD BEGUN falling over the city of Marken by the time Abdul Hassan slid his heavy overcoat over his navy blue blazer, placed the woven tweed fedora on his head and wrapped his muffler around his neck. He descended the back stairs of his hotel to avoid having to speak to the desk clerk but, as luck would have it, the hotel manager was sweeping the stairwell near the rear door when he reached the ground floor.

The manager looked up in surprise when he heard Hassan’s footsteps coming down the last flight of stairs. But he smiled. “It is not that cold outside,” he said in Dutch as he dumped the contents of his dustpan into the large rubber trash can he had rolled into the stairwell along with the broom. “You will soon be sweating.”

Hassan forced a laugh. He didn’t like surprises like this, didn’t like being noticed at all when he was in Marken. Which was why, while he lived only a few short miles away in Amsterdam, he always came to town the night before he was to meet his contact. And why he never stayed at the same hotel. But such coincidences were sometimes unavoidable, and he had his cover story ready, as always.

“You seem to forget,” Hassan replied in Dutch, “that I come from a country where 120-degree temperatures are not unusual. To me, it is freezing out there.”

The two exchanged another short, polite round of laughter. As Hassan reached for the door, the manager’s eyebrows lowered in either concern or curiosity—Hassan wasn’t sure which. But he expressed concern.

“You should use the front door,” the man said. “Marken is not a violent town like Amsterdam. Still, there is crime, and the alleys are not safe.”

Hassan shrugged. “I suppose you are right,” he said. “But I am only out for a short walk. And it is only a few steps down the alley from the door to the street. I will be all right.”

Now it was the manager’s turn to shrug. “Suit yourself,” he said. “But I will watch you from the door until you reach the sidewalk.”

“Thank you,” Hassan said and opened the door.

The manager had been correct—it was not cold enough outside for the way Abdul Hassan had dressed. He guessed the temperature to be only slightly below freezing, and the wind was light. Still, it chilled his face and hands as he stepped outside. His footsteps echoed hollowly along the bricks of the narrow alleyway, and he could see the light from the open door to the hotel reflecting off the walls to both his sides. It illuminated his path, and for that he was grateful.

He glanced behind him and saw that, as promised, the hotel manager was still watching him.

He walked casually along the pavement. He would take a roundabout route through the downtown area of Marken, doing his best to appear to be nothing more than his cover story claimed he was—an exporter of Holland’s wooden shoes to the Middle East. He was in town on business and bored in his hotel room.

The real reason for his walk, however, was to look for a tail. He had begun his relationship with the Central Intelligence Agency nearly three years before, which was a long time for such a relationship. He was only human, and he knew he had made many mistakes in the past that could have given him away to the more fundamentalist Muslims who had infiltrated Amsterdam and the rest of the Netherlands. What was even more frightening was the fact that he knew he had to have made countless other mistakes of which he was not even aware.

Perhaps it was time to get out. On the other hand, he wasn’t sure he could do that. He felt a tremendous responsibility to stop the terrorism his misguided fellow Arabs perpetrated. It gave everyone with the sharp features and dark skin of the Middle East a bad name, and made men and women suspicious of everyone who fit the profile.

Hassan didn’t even glance into the shoe-shop window as he passed. If someone was following him, he didn’t want the man remembering him as having any interest in the shoe shop at all. Tomorrow, he would leave through the same door to the alley by which he’d exited the hotel tonight, then follow a labyrinth of other alleys to another back door into the shoe shop.

There, he knew, he was to meet two new men.

The snow began to lighten as Abdul Hassan walked on, stopping occasionally to window-shop at businesses that had nothing to do with his work, and glancing casually behind him. He did the same at street corners as he waited for traffic lights to change, and turned randomly right and left whenever the mood struck him, or when he thought he’d seen a familiar figure behind him more than once. Each time, the men or women who had caught his attention eventually disappeared. Which meant that he was left wondering if he had simply imagined them following him, or if they might have turned the surveillance over to another agent.

Yes, Abdul Hassan nodded to himself as he finally turned back toward his hotel. Paranoia was definitely beginning to get the better of him.

But by the time he was within two blocks of his hotel, his mistrust had all but evaporated. He had seen no one on the way back that he had seen before, and he felt a sudden relaxation come over him. Either no one was interested in him, or they were so good at what they did that he would never spot them. If the latter was the case, there was nothing he could do about it. They would eventually kill him, and that would be that. Strangely, this realization brought on a certain calmness. He had done everything he could do.

Hassan slowed his pace, actually enjoying the walk now that he had given up his own counter-surveillance and warmed up. He stuffed his hands deeper into his coat pockets and felt the hilt of the pesh kabz dagger. The T-shaped blade was always reassuring to him. Even though it was of Persian and Northern India origin and he was not, he had chosen it because its original role had been to penetrate chain mail.

He assumed it would work just as well in penetrating the thick clothing worn against the Netherlands cold. He always carried the dagger unsheathed, letting the heavy wool of his coat and the other layers of clothing beneath the garment protect him from both the point and edges.

Hassan wrapped his fingers around the grip of the dagger as he walked on. There were two reasons he had left Syria for the Netherlands. The first was to escape the influence of the fundamentalist Muslims who insisted on restricting behavior to that more befitting the twelfth century than the twenty-first. The second reason was the heat. What he sometimes questioned, however, was why he had allowed himself to be recruited by Jim Campbell, who had been the CIA chief of station in Amsterdam when he’d first arrived. What was even more puzzling was why he’d stayed on after Campbell had been transferred and he’d been turned over to the ambitious man’s lackluster replacement, Felix Young.

Hassan thought of the man who had taken Campbell’s place. He rarely left his office, wherever that was—Hassan had to assume it was at the American Embassy after the fashion of all intelligence services the world over. The bottom line was that Hassan had done more work, accomplished far more, during the six months he’d worked for Campbell than in the two and a half years since his recruiter had been replaced.

The light turned and Abdul Hassan walked on. He could see the sign above his hotel ahead. Soon he would be inside and warm. He would get a good night’s rest, then meet with two new men from some other agency to which the CIA was turning him over. He hoped they would be more ambitious than Young, and that he would actually do some good in changing the way the world looked at Islam and Arabs at this point in history. As his heels clicked against the concrete, he thought of his own feelings of religion. He was hardly a man without sin, and he had always been especially susceptible to one sin in particular. His was a major sin for which he not only felt guilty but for which he might fall victim to death just as fast as he would if the terrorist faction in the Netherlands ever found out he was an informant for the Americans.

This thought not only sent guilt coursing through Hassan’s veins, but also it brought fear. And it was right in the middle of this fear that an arm suddenly reached out from a darkened doorway fifty feet from his hotel and jerked him off the sidewalk into the darkness.

Hassan smelled the strong odor of curry on his assailant’s breath. “Die, you bastard!” he heard a gruff voice say in Arabic.

A split second after that, something pushed hard against the side of his coat. Then it felt as if a pin or needle had pricked the bare skin beneath his garments.

Instinctively, Hassan drew the dagger from his coat pocket in a reverse grip. He could feel something still tangled in his overcoat as he reached up and wrapped his left arm around the back of his attacker’s neck. The Persian dagger rose high over his head, then came down with all of the force he could muster from his arm and shoulder, penetrating the other man’s clothing, skin, and burying itself deep within his heart.

Fear, anger and adrenaline now mixed in Abdul Hassan’s soul as he withdrew the dagger. He brought it up into the air once more, then thrust it down again as close to the same spot as he could. The man who had tried to kill him went limp in his arms, then slumped to the ground inside the doorway.

Hassan knelt, grabbed a sleeve of the man’s coat and used it to wipe the splattered blood from his face. His heart still beating like a kettle drum inside his chest, Hassan stood back up. He knew his coat would be soaked in blood so he would use the same side entrance to the hotel, secure in the fact that since the manager had already swept there it would be vacant now. He peered out from the doorway, looking quickly up and down the sidewalk.

There was no one else in sight.

Pulling a small penlight from the inside breast pocket of his overcoat, Hassan shone the tiny beam onto the dead features of the man he had just killed. The man’s eyes were open, staring lifelessly back at him.

But Hassan didn’t recognize the face. So he had no idea whether the attempted murder had come from his association with the CIA or from his private sin.

Using the penlight now to check himself, in addition to the blood Hassan saw that the hilt of a broad-bladed dagger still extended from his coat just beyond where he had felt the pinprick. He pulled out the knife and saw only the tiniest drop of blood on the tip. The wide, leaf-shaped blade had been a poor choice for assassination through heavy clothing.

It was not the kind of weapon a professional killer would choose on a cold night when men wore heavy layers of clothing. Which led him to believe the would-be assassin was an amateur, and that, in turn, answered his earlier question.

His relationship with the Americans was still secure. This attack was directly related to his personal sin rather than his work for them.

The man lying dead in the doorway had come to kill him for reasons personal rather than political.

2

“They told me you speak Dutch and Arabic,” Bolan said to Paxton as he grabbed the man’s elbow and pointed him toward the passenger terminal’s freight reception area in the distance. They had excited the plane through a hatch that led to the cargo hold, where they donned the overalls that baggage handlers wore.

“More Dutch than Arabic,” the Army Ranger said. “I’m not exactly what you’d call fluent in either. But I can hear enough Dutch right now to know that everybody—cops, reporters and airport officials—are all looking for us. The passengers are keeping their word and covering for us, saying we’re getting off last.”

“That should give us some time, then,” the Executioner said. “Come on.”

They quickly reached the freight area, where they passed several other men dressed in similar coveralls. The men didn’t give them a second look. Ducking into a stairwell to the side of the large room, Bolan led Paxton up the steps to the next landing and peered through a window in the door. What he saw looked more like a freight expedition area than what he wanted, so he said, “Let’s try one more level.”

The two men jogged up the next flight of steps, taking them two at a time.

This time, the Executioner looked through the window and saw what appeared to be a boarding room. Quickly stripping off their coveralls, he and Paxton dropped them in the stairwell and stepped out onto the carpet.

The excitement created by the attempted hijacking hadn’t seemed to reach this level of the terminal yet, and Bolan led the way past a duty-free shop and several ticket desks to a sign that read Passport Control in a variety of languages. He waited as an elderly couple got their passports stamped, then stepped up to the desk and pulled his own small blue book from inside his coat.

The uniformed man behind the counter glanced at the picture in the American passport, then Bolan’s face, and asked in English, “Business or pleasure, Mr. Cooper?”

“Primarily business,” Bolan answered. Then he smiled. “But I’ve never been to Amsterdam without having a good time, either.”

The uniformed official chuckled under his breath, stamped the passport and handed it back. “Have fun,” he said.

Bolan waited to the side as Brick Paxton handed the same man the passport Stony Man Farm had come up with for him. He was traveling under the name John Henry McBride, who was a general building contractor. The Executioner had learned that Paxton had worked construction during the summers when he’d been in high school, and had more than a passing knowledge of the business. So that was to be both men’s cover from now on. If anyone asked, they were in the Netherlands to check into both commercial and residential construction for the Brown Realty Holdings Company, out of Chicago, Illinois.

As soon as “McBride’s” passport had been stamped they were waved quickly through customs. They didn’t look like drug smugglers, but it wouldn’t have mattered much if they had in a country where most drugs were legal. The nonchalance shown by the Dutch customs officers reminded the Executioner of an old saying among drug abusers: “Taking your own dope to Amsterdam is like taking your wife to Paris.”

An elevator took them back down to the ground level, and they stepped out through the revolving doors of the terminal. Two minutes later Bolan had flagged down a cab. The cabbie took one look at the two men and immediately sized them up as Americans. “No luggage?” he asked in a thick Dutch accent.

Bolan shook his head. “We shipped it ahead of us.”

The cabbie wore a plaid driving cap with a short bill as he got back inside behind the wheel. “Where to?” he asked.

“The American Embassy,” the Executioner said.

The driver glanced up into the rearview mirror, the fact that he was impressed evident in his eyes. Without another word, he threw the cab into Drive and took off at breakneck speed, dodging in, out and around other vehicles with the daring for which certain cabdrivers are known the world over.

Forty-five minutes later they came to a screeching halt beneath an American flag mounted atop a pole sticking up out of a thick concrete wall. It waved in the breeze as if welcoming them as they got out.

Two U.S. Marine Corpsmen stood guard at the gate. Bolan and Paxton showed the men their passports. One of the Marines checked the list on the clipboard in the guard cubicle just inside the walls, then opened the gate and waved them in. The other Marine escorted them up a set of steps and into the building. He knocked loudly on a first-floor door at the rear of the embassy and waited for it to be opened.

When the door was answered, a short, overweight man chewing on one of the earpieces of a pair of reading glasses stood just inside the office.

“Mr. Cooper and Mr. McBride,” the Marine said. Then, with a stiff salute, he pivoted away from them and marched back down the hall.

“Come in. My name is Felix Young,” the short man said with one of the least enthusiastic tones of voice Bolan had ever heard. He was dressed in brown slacks below a pale blue sweater vest, with white shirt sleeves rolled up past his elbows. The knot of his necktie had been pulled down almost to the end of the V in the vest, and his general appearance was one of slovenliness. The office was in a similar state, with stacks of paper cluttering his desk, several tables and the tops of a half-dozen filing cabinets. Ashtrays scattered throughout the room overflowed with cigarette butts, and the stale smell of smoke hung in the air like the fog of a London morning.

Bolan’s eyes fell to a stack of luggage in the corner of the office. The suitcases and other bags were the only items in the office not covered in a thin coat of gray ash—which meant they couldn’t have been in the room very long. They likely contained Bolan’s and Paxton’s clothing and other gear, including their weapons, all of which had been flown over from America in diplomatic pouches.

Felix Young dropped into his seat behind the desk. Bolan and Paxton both looked around, but the chairs in front of the desk were as cluttered with paperwork as the rest of the furniture so they remained standing.

“I don’t know exactly who you are,” Young said in a tone that had only slightly more character and inflection in it than had his self-introduction. “And I don’t know exactly why you’re here.” He opened the top middle drawer of his desk, retrieved a crumpled package of unfiltered cigarettes. When he’d lit a cigarette, he went on. “And I’m not sure I want to know.” He drew in a lungful of smoke and looked up at the ceiling with complete uninterest.

Bolan was quickly tiring of the listless bureaucrat. The man was CIA—that much he knew because Hal Brognola had told him. As to any further information about Felix Young, the Executioner could only guess that he was nearing retirement, had lost all enthusiasm for his work and would be happy as long as the two men standing in front of his desk didn’t create any extra work for him.

Young more or less voiced those thoughts himself by saying, “Keep in mind that whatever you do here, we’re going to get blamed for it.” He looked down from the ceiling but met Bolan’s eyes for only a second before turning his gaze to a wall. “CIA, CIA, CIA,” he breathed out with another chestful of smoke. “The whole world blames everything that happens on the CIA.”

Paxton was losing patience with the man, too. “I don’t see how they could blame too much on you,” he said.

Young merely pointed toward the luggage. “All of your stuff is in the corner there,” he said. “So just take it.”

Paxton moved toward the bags but Bolan stayed in place. “I believe you have something else for us,” he said.

Young frowned. It was obvious his mind had already moved from Bolan and Paxton to something else. “Oh,” he finally said. “Yeah.” Opening the same drawer where he’d found the cigarettes, he pulled out a crumpled scrap of paper and spread it out on the desk. Pushing it down with both hands in an attempt to flatten it, he finally lifted the paper again and handed it across the desk to Bolan. “Here. Try not to burn the guy, okay?”

Bolan stuffed the rumpled page into his pocket. He couldn’t see how burning the informant Young was turning over to him would have much effect on the listless CIA man one way or another. It could get the snitch killed, of course. But it didn’t appear that the man behind the desk planned on using him any more than he had to. Or doing anything else that required any effort, either.

Without further words, Bolan joined Paxton and the two men lifted the various bags from the corner of the office and left. The Executioner felt both disgust and relief as they walked back down the hall. The disgust came from seeing a man like Young who had lost all enthusiasm for his work and now did nothing but punch the time clock while he waited for retirement. But the fact that the CIA officer didn’t appear to have any plans of interfering with what he and Paxton were about to do was a relief.

THERE HAD BEEN no euphoria left in him by the time Phil Paxton awakened.

Only terror.

Phil looked around the semilit room as he came to his senses and wondered if he might not still be asleep. Was this a dream? He closed his eyes once more, hoping it was. But the reality of the situation, and the memory of what had happened, came flooding back to his mind and forced his eyelids open again.

The undisputed realization that the room he was in was a cell hit him between the eyes like a two-by-four. The walls were made of jagged stone, and overhead he saw rough-hewn wooden beams. It looked like something out of a horror movie, a place where Frankenstein’s monster might live, or where Dracula might keep his coffin to sleep in during the daylight. Maybe where the Wolfman would chain himself up during full moons in the hope that the chains might prevent him from ripping people apart with his long teeth and fangs.

The thought of chains led Phil Paxton to look down at the steel handcuffs encircling his wrists. The chain between the two cuffs was attached to another chain that ran around his waist. That restraint, in turn, was secured by a large sturdy padlock.

Phil Paxton’s back and legs felt as if they were in ice packs. Looking down, he saw that he was seated on the smoother stone of the floor. A painful twist of his cold and stiff neck told him his back rested against the wall, and condensation glistening off the stones had soaked through his shirt. For some reason, that sudden knowledge—that his shirt was wet and likely to remain that way—caused him to shiver more than any other of the morbid details that were just now registering with him.

As Phil continued to shake with both cold and fear, his mind began to race. Where the hell was he? He had been kidnapped, he remembered, as the events that had taken place before he lost consciousness suddenly flooded back into his memory. The taxi. The alley. The lights from outside and suddenly being jerked out of the vehicle. The hood coming down over his head and then the needle in his arm, which brought on elation and then oblivion.

But who had kidnapped him? And what did they want?

In the back of his sluggish brain an alarming possibility began to take shape. Phil repressed the thought as long as he could, concentrating again on his surroundings. A thick wooden door that looked centuries old—and added to the Saturday-afternoon horror-film atmosphere—stood a few feet away, to his left. A small window had been cut in the upper part of the door. The opening was too small for a man to even get his head through, but for some reason the builders had still seen fit to equip it with tiny iron bars. The bars were red with rust and looked as if they had been in place for centuries. Through this small window came what little light illuminated the cell. And with that light came the minute amount of hope that was still in Phil Paxton’s soul.

The chained man stared at the door. In the silence that surrounded him, he could hear his own breathing. But now and then, as if far in the distance, he caught the sounds of a few words being passed back and forth between different voices. How many voices, and how many men, he couldn’t tell. But it sounded as if they were just outside his cell, whispering. Phil almost laughed out loud in his near hysteria. Why would they bother to whisper? Were they afraid he might overhear something they didn’t want him to hear? Maybe some magic formula with which he could break free of his bonds and escape? The whispering didn’t make sense—particularly since it was in a language he didn’t understand.

But a language that suddenly, either by instinct or having heard it spoken somewhere before, he knew was Arabic.

Now the possibility he had so far suppressed bulled its way to the front of his brain with the force of a freight train. Again, he felt as if a large board or baseball bat had struck him between the eyes. The men who had snatched him out of the cab were Arabs, and the accent to which the cabdriver had changed when he’d threatened to shoot him had been Middle Eastern, too. He had been kidnapped by Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. Exactly which faction they represented, he didn’t know.

Phil Paxton’s shoulders shivered even harder now, as if he were doing the jitterbug or some other strange dance. The Netherlands, he knew, was awash with Middle Eastern terrorists these days. They had murdered Dutch officials, set off suicide bombs in government buildings and other sites, and kidnapped tourists to hold for ransom.

And Americans, as always, were their number-one choice for kidnapping.

Phil leaned forward in an attempt to stop shaking. He knew from news reports that even when the ransoms were paid, most of the victims—and always the Americans—were still murdered. Some had even been shown being beheaded by huge swords on the Internet.

Now the chill spread from Phil’s back and shoulders through the rest of his body. He felt as if the blood in his veins and arteries had suddenly frozen to ice from the top of his head to the bottoms of his feet.

But even being American, he realized, was not his biggest liability. He was a very special kind of American—different from the men and women from the U.S. who had been the victims of terrorist kidnappings before him. They had been taken at random without regard for their professions. They had been simple people—businessmen, housewives, low-to mid-level government employees, men and women with no particular talents or expertise that could benefit the terrorists.

Phil Paxton didn’t fall into that category, and he knew it. But did his captors? Did they know what he did for a living? Had he been snatched up indiscriminately, simply as a target of opportunity like the others, or had he been kidnapped on purpose for the expertise he could provide? And even if the men who had imprisoned him didn’t now know who he was and what he did for a living, would they find out? And when they did, could they force him through torture to do their bidding?

A collage of horrifying images suddenly filled his brain. Phil saw pictures of Janie wearing her engagement ring, then himself being beheaded while millions of people watched on the Internet, then Janie wearing black and attending his funeral. He saw his brother, Brick—wearing camouflage clothing, his face blackened with nonreflective makeup—firing a rifle and mowing down the men who held him prisoner. Then he saw himself in a rude, makeshift laboratory, working on a crude device on a table while heavily bearded men wearing the long flowing headdresses known as kaffiyehs stood to his side, aiming guns at his head.

For a moment, Phil thought he would scream. Then he felt his brows furrow into a frown as he did his best to break through the freezing terror and bring himself back into the rational realm that was his room. If he was to survive the situation in which he now found himself, that survival could only come by getting a grip on himself. He would have to control—even ignore—the fear and these fear-induced images.

Phil forced himself to close his eyes and concentrate on his breathing. He rolled his eyeballs back in his head, then tightened his abdominal muscles. It was an ancient warrior trick he had learned from Brick. While it didn’t drive all of the fear from his soul, it relaxed him enough to begin thinking logically again.

Phil Paxton couldn’t reach the back pocket of the jeans he was wearing where he kept his leather passport case. But by rolling onto his hip, he was able to determine that it was gone. That was to be expected. The terrorists—from whatever Islamic fundamentalist group they were from—would naturally have taken it. And in addition to his passport, they would find the other items he had transferred from the billfold he usually carried when he was at home.

But had his U.S. government ID been in his passport case? He couldn’t remember now if he had brought it along. Which meant he had no way of knowing whether the men who had kidnapped him knew he was one of America’s top nuclear scientists. And that he was more than capable of building either nuclear bombs or putting together “dirty bombs” if they didn’t have all of the components necessary to produce a real nuke.

The shivering returned to his shoulders, and Phil rolled his eyes back and concentrated on his breathing again. He supposed he would find out what his kidnappers knew, and didn’t know, before long. But he wondered now who else knew he had been taken captive. Did Brick know? If he did, nothing here on God’s green planet would keep his Army Ranger brother from coming after him.

For a moment Phil Paxton allowed himself to slip into a comforting fantasy of Brick Paxton blasting away with a machine gun before kicking in the door to his cell. Brick then shot off the padlock that secured the chain around his waist—Phil didn’t know exactly how he did that without killing him in the process, but this was a fantasy after all, and he could take it any place he wanted.

He was jerked out of the daydream, however, when the door suddenly opened for real.

The brighter light that entered the cell almost blinded Phil Paxton. But he was able to make out the forms of two men in traditional Islamic robes and headgear dragging another unconscious man into the room. Rifles were slung over the men’s shoulders. Phil couldn’t remember what such rifles were called but he knew they were Russian. Brick would know. And Brick would know how to use one. For a moment, every fiber in Phil Paxton’s body wanted to see Brick standing in front of him with just such a rifle, filling these bastards in the robes full of bullet holes.

Phil watched helplessly as the man being dragged was thrown facedown on the floor, then rolled up into a sitting position next to him. Phil kept his eyes almost closed, praying that his abductors wouldn’t notice he was awake as another set of handcuffs and another waist chain were applied to the new hostage. Then the men in the white robes left without speaking and the door creaked closed again. A second later, Phil head the sound of a lock sliding into place.

Phil turned to look at the man next to him. He was young—maybe midtwenties—and had obviously been drugged just like Phil had. Perhaps when he awakened, he would have some bit of information to add to what Phil Paxton already knew. Something that might help them escape.

Until then, Phil would be alone with the two most terrifying nightmare possibilities he could dream up. The second-to-worst possibility was that he would be killed.

The worst was that he’d first be forced into responsibility for the deaths of hundreds, thousands or perhaps even hundred of thousands of innocent men, women and children.

CABS LINED THE STREET outside the American Embassy in Amsterdam. Bolan and Paxton took the one nearest the curb as they walked back out through the gate and nodded goodbye to the two U.S. Marines against the wall. The two men saluted, then stood back at attention without a word.

Their driver huffed and puffed as he helped them lift their luggage into the trunk of the vehicle, looking up at Bolan in wonderment at the weight of some of the bags. Bolan smiled at the man but offered no explanation.

Behind the wheel, with his two customers seated in the back, the driver said, “Where to?” in almost unaccented English.

“The Hotel Amstel,” Bolan told him.

The driver didn’t bat an eye at the name of one of the top hotels in the world. He was obviously used to taking visiting American dignitaries from the embassy to the Amstel, and he turned the key and started the ignition.

Bolan sat back against the seat as they pulled away from the curb. Amsterdam was one of the most colorful cities in the world, and he watched through the window as they passed seventeenth-century seven-gabled houses, historic churches and elaborate stone towers. The site was actually an inland port that boasted fifty canals and more than six hundred spectacular bridges. Two of the more renowned sites were the Rembrandt House, where the famous painter had lived from 1639 to 1658, and the home where Anne Frank and her family had hidden behind a secret passageway during the Nazi occupation.

It was early winter and despite himself the Executioner allowed images of tulips, for which Holland was famous, slip into his mind. Along the streets and sidewalks, he imagined baskets of flowers hanging from the eves of houses, office complexes and other buildings.

He sat back against the seat, pondering this cosmopolitan city. Amsterdam was no better or worse than any other midsized city. Hidden behind the freshly scrubbed and smiling faces he saw as the cab raced down the streets was the same dirty underbelly found in all large centers of population. Behind the clean streets were the back alleys filled with drugs, prostitution, murder and mayhem.

And, of course, terrorism.

THE CABDRIVER PULLED UP in front of the Amstel Hotel, and Bolan and Paxton both got out of the backseat before the cabdriver or bellman had a chance to open their doors.

The cabdriver opened the trunk, and then an almost humorous competition ensued between the two men to see who could pull out the most bags in the shortest period of time. By the time it was over, a second bellman had come down a concrete ramp with a rolling luggage rack, and all three began piling Bolan’s and Paxton’s bags onto the glistening stainless-steel bars.

The Executioner paid the driver, adding a tip sufficient enough to bring a smile back to the man’s face. Then he and Paxton followed the blond bellman up the steps to the Amstel’s front doors. Bolan didn’t like letting their luggage out of his own control, but he could see no way around it at this point. Besides, he reminded himself, each suitcase that contained “sensitive” items was secured by a sturdy padlock. There was no reason for the cabdriver, the blond bellman or the other uniformed man who had brought the cart down the ramp to suspect their luggage contained anything more lethal than adding machines and laptops.

Once inside the lobby, the blond bellman escorted them past a grand staircase and into the Amstel Mirror Room lounge. The walls were, as the name of the room suggested, covered in reflective glass, and men and women in tuxedos, white ties and tails, and the most elegant of evening dresses were using the mirrors to their fullest, showing off their finery.

“I gotta tell ya,” Brick Paxton whispered out of the side of his mouth, “this beats the hell out of being covered in talcum-powder sand all day and taking a bath with baby wipes in Iraq.”

Bolan just nodded as the bellman ushered them to the front check-in desk, then stepped back and bowed. “Mr. Cooper and Mr. McBride,” he said, “Pietre is already taking your luggage to your suite.” His smile widened as he stood motionless in that practiced way that bellmen at finer hotels all over the world developed. It was Bolan’s cue for another tip, so he reached into his pocket once more.

Again, the man who had helped them seemed thoroughly satisfied.

An older concierge in a tasteful black suit appeared at their side. “If you would, sirs,” he said with a sweeping gesture. “I will show you to your suite.” Without waiting for an answer, he strode off, leading them toward a bank of elevators at the end of a short hall.

Bolan smiled behind the man’s back. Top hotel officials had their moves down as well as any good counterterrorist team, he reminded himself. Just as many of them as possible got in on every act so everyone could receive a tip.

A few minutes later they were on the fourteenth floor and heading down the thick carpeted hall. The door to suite 14307 was already open, and the man the blond bellman had called Pietre was just finishing unloading their bags.

The concierge opened the curtains and let in the lights of the city. It was a beautiful view, and had the Executioner been in Amsterdam for pleasure rather than to locate and rescue a nuclear scientist being held by terrorists, he was certain he would have appreciated it. As it was, he simply reached into his pocket, pulled out enough money for two more tips and said goodbye to the concierge and the bellman with the luggage rack.

As soon as the two men had gone, Bolan and Paxton carried the suitcases containing their clothing into separate bedrooms, then met back in the living room and took seats on facing wooden love seats. The Executioner glanced around quickly. The way they had come in was also the only way out. He didn’t like that. But there was little he could do about it. The fact that the suite itself was as elegantly furnished as the Amstel’s downstairs areas made little impression on him one way or another. He had slept in beds built for kings. And he had slept without a blanket or pillow in the same sands of Iraq Paxton had mentioned earlier. He couldn’t have cared less about luxury.

He was here to do a job, to save a man’s life. The life of a man more than capable of building a nuclear bomb.

By doing so, Bolan would save the lives of countless others.

The Executioner leaned down and pulled his equipment bags to the front of the love seat. After opening all of the padlocks on his luggage, Bolan unzipped the innocuous-looking suitcase nearest to him and pulled out a custom-made Kydex and ballistic nylon shoulder holster. Inside the Kydex was his Beretta 93-R, the long sound suppressor already threaded onto the 9 mm barrel. The pistol came out of the holster with a clicking sound, and the Executioner pointed it toward the carpet as he pulled the slide back far enough to see the gleaming brass cartridge casing already chambered. Letting the slide fall back forward, he pressed the ejection button on the side of the weapon and pulled out the magazine. It, too, was filled with RBCD Performance Plus ammunition. The special subsonic rounds stayed just under the sound barrier, assisting the sound suppressor in keeping each 9 mm bullet as quiet as possible. And the bullets themselves, round nosed rather than hollowpoints, were total fragmentation rounds that penetrated solid material like a machinist’s drill but exploded as soon as they hit anything water based.

Like a human body.

Satisfied that the pistol had not been tampered with since he’d handed it over to Brognola to secrete in the diplomatic pouch, Bolan reholstered the weapon and slid his arms into the shoulder rig. Next he checked the two spare 9 mm magazines in the Kydex carrier under his right arm. They, too, were filled.

Finally Bolan turned his attention to the Kydex sheath mounted under the magazine carrier. Extending just below the spare 9 mm boxes was a Ka-bar fighting knife.

Bolan drew the knife from its sheath. Slowly he rolled up the sleeve of his white shirt and shaved a short section of hair off his arm. The weapon was razor-sharp, and ready.

Across from Bolan, the Army Ranger pulled out a shoulder rig not dissimilar to Bolan’s own. Constructed of the same hard plastic Kydex and black ballistic nylon, the only differences were that the shoulder system was equipped with two holsters rather than one. And in those holsters, Bolan saw a matched pair of black-parkerized Colt Commander .45s.

As Paxton began his own weapons check, Bolan turned back to the suitcase at his feet. The next item to appear in his hands had become something of a trademark for the Executioner. The .44 magnum Desert Eagle was a huge pistol that had been developed more for hunting and long-range silhouette shooting than combat. And, indeed, it would have proved to be a poor choice as a fighting pistol to most men. But Bolan was not most men, and he had the hand size required to manipulate the safety and other features of the big gun, and the strength to handle the massive recoil the way most men would handle a .22.

Again, he checked both the chamber and magazine in the Desert Eagle. Then the pair of extra magazines. Satisfied, he stood and slid the holster through his belt, letting it come to rest on his right hip. He clipped the magazine carrier on his opposite side, just behind where the Beretta’s sound suppressor hung. He watched Paxton slide into his double .45 rig, then reach down into his bag and pull out a short dagger. The blade was invisible inside a brown Kydex sheath, but the handle had been made from some strange material that was an off-white—almost yellow—color with darker brown slots running from pommel to hilt.

Bolan slipped back into his coat, covering his guns and knife.

“Your knife handle,” Bolan said, his eyes on the strange-looking blade now clipped to Paxton’s belt on the side. “The grip. Cactus?”

The Army Ranger nodded. He drew the knife in a reverse grip and extended it cactus-end first.

“The light cactus keeps the weight down,” Paxton said. “Besides that, it has another special meaning to me.”

Bolan looked up from the dagger, curious.

“It was a birthday gift from Phil. He had it made for me from some guy in Texas.”

Bolan nodded his understanding as he examined the double-edged weapon, noting the deep Damascus whorl patterns on both sides. The blade was approximately four inches long, and the whole thing couldn’t have weighed more than a few ounces. He handed it back.

“What have we got as far as bigger stuff goes?” Paxton asked as he, too, now stood to put his jacket back on.

Bolan took a step away from the love seat and lifted a larger, heavier bag. Carrying it to the coffee table in the middle of the living room, he set it on top and unzipped it. Reaching inside, he pulled out a long, odd-looking pistol with a huge tubular drum magazine attached to the top.

“A Calico?” Paxton said, recognizing the weapon immediately.

Bolan nodded. “Two of them. One 50-round drum for each, and a 100-round backup.”

“Good weapons,” Paxton said. “But how are we supposed to carry them?”

The Executioner dug deeper into the bag and came out with another set of ballistic nylon straps.

“Ah,” Paxton said, nodding. “DeSantis rigs?”

The Executioner nodded again. “You’ve used this setup before?”

“Once,” Paxton came back. “You mount the 50-rounder on the gun. The 100-round drum balances it out on your other side. Both are secured to the straps with Velcro but the gun itself hangs on your strong side instead of in a cross-draw position. You can fire with it still on the strap.”

“You’ve got the picture,” said the Executioner. “And these rigs will fit right over the other shoulder holsters if we need them to. The only problem is we’ll need longer and heavier coats to conceal them. So for now, we’ll repack them and stick them under the bed.”

Paxton nodded his understanding. “Okay,” he said. “What’s on the paper that bureaucratic burnout Young gave you?” he asked.

Bolan reached into his pocket and pulled out the crumpled scrap of paper. “The name of a snitch,” he said. “And how to contact him.”

“He can lead us to my brother?” Paxton said, his voice suddenly tight.

“Maybe,” Bolan said. “Although I’ve never found things to work out quite that easily.”

“But he can get us started?”

“He can get us started,” Bolan agreed.

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