Bolan dropped on the punk like a house, pinning this cannibal backward across the desk, swatting the Ingram at the kid's gun wrist. The big warrior heard a snap and the pistol and skin mag skidded off the desk to the floor.

Bolan applied pressure, pinning the orderly to the desk top. The Executioner pressed the silencermuzzled snout of the MAC-10 against the punk's chest.

"The prisoner they just brought in," he growled in icy Russian. "The American. Lansdale. Where is he?"

Beads of sweat popped across the soldier's face.

"D-downstairs. Third room on the left! Don't..."

"You should've stayed home, kid." Bolan triggered a burst from the Ingram. The soldier bucked, his feet off the ground, then collapsed to the floor when Bolan released the dead throat. The would-be cannibal's tunic smoldered from the contact shot.

Bolan exited the orderly room thirty seconds after he went in. He started toward the stairway leading to the basement level when combat senses alerted him in time to eyeball a two-man guard unit strolling in through the building's entrance on its appointed rounds, or to gab with their comrades in the orderly room. They found their Executioner, who triggered a silenced burst, and the sentries tumbled backward out of the doorway across the walk, life oozing from them, and Bolan knew he had whittled down his time.

He took the stairway to the basement level four steps at a time. He slapped another clip into the Ingram.

The Bolan Effect, yeah.

Hitting hard.

7

Lansdale's tongue made contact with the pill wedged against the roof of his mouth.

He loosened it from where it had been specially sealed back in the States. He closed his eyes against the piercing light and what he had got himself into. What a cruddy way to die, he thought.

Colonel Uttkin's face loomed above him, blocking the light. "Perhaps you think you can, how do you say, ah, yes, hold out on us, Mr. Lansdale," the GRU pig purred silkily with a smile that wasn't quite sane. "I can assure you that the longer you force us to continue with this unpleasantness, the more you endanger others. Such as Katrina Mozzhechkov."

Lansdale stopped working the suicide pill loose and tried like hell to register no reaction at all, but he could see the GRU sadist pick up on the tightening he felt.

Uttkin cackled.

"I see the lady's name draws a response. It seems Miss Mozzhechkov was Captain Zhegolov's typist, as you must surely know, and it also seems the unfortunate woman needed a friend. The dear captain told us what he suspected between you and her, before he died. It was that or losing, or principal part of himself. The same thing awaits you, Mr. Lansdale, unless of course you wish to spare yourself. A quick death, so merciful..."

The KGB man, Lyalin, snorted.

"You enjoy this too much. Have your men get on with this foul business. We must learn what he knows and what he has already passed to his people."

Uttkin stepped back from leaning across the table, his face flushed, florid.

"But of course, comrade. I only wanted our silent friend here to realize that if he talks, Miss Mozzhechkov will be spared any of this. We do not have her yet but we shall by morning." Uttkin licked fleshy lips. He addressed Lansdale. "Now then, will you cooperate?"

At least they don't have her, Lansdale thought. If he could only find some way to warn her. Katrina would arrive at her job tomorrow not knowing they were on to her.

Again Lyalin snorted.

"The prisoner seems unimpressed with your threats, Colonel."

Uttkin bristled.

"Very well. He has willed this upon himself." The sadist turned to the two soldiers. "Strip him. Then use your knives. Begin."

The door to the torture chamber exploded inward with shattering force under a powerful kick.

A human grim reaper stalked into that room spewing death from a blazing Ingram MAC-10 that riddled one of the raydoviki with a tight stitch, pulping the guy's heart. His chewed-up body made a splattered mess across the wall, where he stuck for a moment as if pinned, already dead, then his remains slid to the floor.

Lansdale craned his head around on the table.

He recognized Bolan instantly.

He spit out the suicide pill.

The three other Russians in the room fell away from the table. Lansdale started trying to free his wrists and ankles from the leather bindings but found himself immobile, helpless to do anything but watch his own fate unfold.

Uttkin reared away from Lansdale's right side, clawing for his side arm. Boris Lyalin was trying desperately to maneuver away from the tracking Ingram to the other side of Lansdale, at the same time unleathering a Walther PPK.

The uniformed soldier reacted quickest because he had only to swing his shoulder-strapped AK toward the human fire storm in black whose Ingram kept spitting flame, stitching this soldier.

Lyalin had his Walther PPK out, tracking a bead on the Executioner. Uttkin, responses dulled by the anticipation of torture, barely had his pistol cleared from his belt holster. Bolan bent his knees and moved sideways at the same instant Lyalin triggered a round that slammed into the door frame where Bolan had been a moment before. The Executioner triggered another silenced blast and the KGB officer hurtled backward into hell.

Uttkin, eyes still glazed, tugged his pistol up.

Lansdale sensed the Executioner whirling to respond, but the shackled CIA man could not stay uninvolved a moment longer. He gave the table beneath him a powerful heave to the right, riding the leverage with all his weight, and the table toppled over sideways into Uttkin, knocking the GRU man down with it. The Russian colonel's pistol flew out of his fingers to land a few feet from the naked corpse of the man Uttkin had tortured. Uttkin cursed in Russian and pushed off the weight of the man-laden table, got free and tried to get to his pistol but only made it halfway before Bolan opened fire.

The GRU officer skidded onto his face as if tripped, the back of his head blown in by the burst from the Ingram. The Executioner crossed rapidly to crouch beside the overturned table. He untied the straps that bound Lansdale to the rack. "Thanks, buddy," Bolan grunted as he released the last clasp. Lansdale scrambled to his feet, rubbing his wrists.

"No, my thanks to you, big dude. Sounds like we've got company." The doorway filled with three raydoviki tumbling into the room in response to Boris Lyalin's pistol shot.

Bolan swung the Ingram to take them out, but Lansdale had maneuvered himself into the line of fire so Bolan stepped aside while the Company man erupted into a series of rapid-fire martial arts punches and kicks, taking out two of the soldiers, breaking necks with a couple of stiff-handed blows.

The CIA agent spun with a leg stiffened out in a backward blow, the heel caving in the other soldier's forehead, adding another dead man to the "interrogation room." Bolan tossed his M-16 across the short distance to Lansdale. "Here, this'll be easier." Lansdale caught the rifle.

"Maybe, but not half as much fun. You got any particular plan in mind, pard?"

Bolan hustled them out of the doorway.

"A truck upstairs." They hit the basement hallway and the bottom of the stairway leading up, and they ran into four more Soviet regulars racing toward them. The Executioner took out the two on the right, the Ingram stuttering its silenced dirge, killing men who tumbled to the corridor, posed in death like some weird sculpture.

Lansdale tugged off a burst from the M-16 and a soldier on the left caught the hail of hammering projectiles that twisted and staggered him, life forces bursting red everywhere until the dancing dead tripped and toppled down the steps.