The hut was made of round pebbly rock. It was covered with a dense disguise of vine, thriving greenery, and sported a quaint but decaying Bavarian roof. Two windows, one on either side, one low entrance holes in the wall gaping square sockets. Perfect. And better yet, this helpful litle edifice blessed with that true and dramatic magic that we know as timeliness was further blessed by its position, now perfect after many years, a little woodman's storage hut lying neglected all these years in wait. In wait, slap bang in the middle of the advancing line of shooting clowns.

Hot brother, little architecture! Bolan tapped the top of the small doorway as he ducked into the hut. Its floor was thick with undergrowth.

Light from the windows on either side came through in a band between waist and head height. It was dank in the hut, but great. The ideal spot for the extraterrestrial action that Bolan had in mind.

The action that isn't there when you look at it.... The action that plays somewhere else. The kind of action that calls up the barrel of the Heckler and Koch assault weapon like an eagle on the wing, breathtaking in the easy way it rose, its only real weight aside from the magazine being its scope, which now beaded in on its first visible target.

Light as light waves, true as fate. Bolan shot the scum soldier who was in his sights at last. Swiveling around instantly in the cramped hideout, arriving at a proper aim within the crack of the first shot, Bolan fired another short round out of the opposite window. His second visible target fell. Bolan swung back to check the accuracy of his first shot. Empty woods showed where the target had been. But visible in the nearer view was a punk trooper taking aim, an anonymous shootist of the Zwilling Horde, a being with no love for life and therefore of no worth, a man prepared to waste his lousy existence on a dumb move. A really dumb last move.

The terrorist fired east across the distance that he guessed would end with the rifle that was doing the killing.

But the position was entirely wrong for that. The Executioner could have told him such data for a dime... if he had wanted a dime from the punk. And anyway, the guy never asked. Instead he fired that shot across the bows of the advancing Zwilling Horde, or damn near what remained of it, and he killed his brother soldier forty feet to the left of him. The shot scored a random neck hit. The throat of the soldier, who shrieked with shock through shattered vocal cords the sound of terror rebounding pulsed out blood in red waterfalls. He was dead by the time his body had fallen to its knees. His head flopped expressionless on his shoulder, the gaping throat-hole soon a silent scream, a mockery of communication in an army too sick from the start to deserve any right to speak. Bolan watched the action discreetly from the edge of the window, his own silence a mark of strategic superiority. The dead soldier had a companion next in line, a terrorist now exposed from the thick cover of trees, who was in panic. His reaction to the death at his side was to start shooting. He aimed his bulky automatic over the falling head, spewing in terror the gun's tumbling issue in all directions.

One of those directions included a motionless target, the terrorist who had fired that last killing shot, now frozen in his tracks from some profound horror at his own act, even as hot lead screamed about him. Three shredders immediately found his flesh and did their work. The bullets ripped apart the back of his combat clothing as they exited like hurtling meat grinders.

Bolan dived out through the doorway of his sanctuary, firing the H and K in its max-round mode to take out the remaining terrorist on the left wing and then, spinning round to repeat history, to hit the remaining guy far on the right wing. The two opposing punks each showed puffs of pink mist as their backs exploded from the intercepted lead. Six dead. Two killed by shots from their own side. A major encounter, yeah, made easy only by the bloody skills of an anguished man — by the Executioner unleashed. It had looked fast and furious. But in the deep inner Valhalla of his mind, where the numbers rose and fell, it had been a perilously slow killing for Mack Bolan. The plan had been spontaneous, dependent on the luck of the land and how it lay, and he was damn glad to get that witless help from the rattled killers who wiped each other out. Thanks guys.

Thanks little hut.

He began circling back to the road, to the crippled van. He ran fast again, fleet as a high wind, silent as a breeze, almost invisible in his khaki army garb.

He had to get away from the graveyard of these woods. Bursting sprays of blood had defiled the natural order here. Bolan needed the road, needed direction for his continuing tormented last mile.

He was halfway there when he heard a sudden exchange of automatic gunfire. So Thomas's and Hermann's wait at the van was proving eventful. Excellent. What could be happening there?

Hunched over his H and K, he ran silently through the German woods. Another chatter of gunfire and Bolan speeded up, ignoring the branches that lashed his eyes and the tangled underbrush that grabbed at his feet. Within minutes he was close enough to see who was shooting. Babette Pavlovski. Hermann and Thomas had her pinned down at the top of the embankment, just over the lip of the ridge. She was laid out flat against the incline, her feet dug into the snow to keep her from sliding down. At the rate her was spitting whizzers at the van, she'd be out of bullets before too long. Bolan swung around behind her and slipped up the embankment, flopping into the snow next to her.

"What the hell are you doing here?" he demanded. She fired another burst toward the van before answering.

"I made them let me out about a half mile down the road. A quick jog and here I am."

"I told you to stay together and keep going." A line of bullets from Thomas's gun thudded into the ground a foot in front of them, kicking a powder of snow into their faces.

"I do what is right, not what I'm told."

Bolan liked this woman. Now he studied the situation with a quiet detachment. Hermann was standing behind the van, peeking out occasionally to fire at them.

Thomas was squatting behind the passenger's seat, popping up to fire through the open window, using the open door as a shield. "Okay, this time do exactly as I tell you. And I mean exactly, do you understand?" Bolan smiled.

"Yes," she answered.

"I want you to keep firing at them, but only in three-round bursts, and only at ten-second intervals." Now he was as serious as death.

"What are you going to do?" she asked.

"Whatever it takes," he said, and slid back down the embankment.

He had to hurry. He had to kill them. There had been enough of them and it was over now. He gave a good one-eighth of a mile berth before rising up the embankment again, far behind the van. He crept closer, waiting for the good shot. Hermann stopped moving, long enough to change clips, and Bolan dropped to one knee and brought him into his crosshairs. Hermann fumbled with the new clip becajuse of his bandaged hand. Less than a second later he was dead, his face resculpted where three bullets had chiseled away his jaw and cheek.

"Hermann!" Thomas screamed from inside as Bolan covered the rest of the distance between him and the van. Thomas kept firing from the van, increasing the tempo now, his gun blazing blindly in Babette's direction. Nisely she did not panic, stuck to the three round, ten-second firing pattern. Behind the van, Bolan was stripping the shirt from Hermann's back, shredding it into long strips and shoving them down into the gas tank. He allowed just enough hanging out to give him a running headstart. When he heard Babette's next three-round blast, he ignited the cloth and high-stepped it away. Then Bolan gripped the H and K in both hands and fired a burst into the side of the van. Thomas swung around to face this new onslaught, his eyes wide with terror and despair. He lifted his Uzi to take aim at Bolan when a sound from hell ripped through his ears.