A door banged open and Bolan swung the Auto-Mag around to find his next target. Another soldier — apparently the last — and he held a trump card of his own.

The guy was clutching Amy Culp in front of him like a living shield, one arm circling her chest while the other aimed a .45 at Bolan. The lady's arms seemed secured somehow behind her back.

The "elder" was grinning at him, a wild demented expression on his florid face.

"It's over, Slick," he said. "Drop the piece and — aaiiyee!"

Bolan took a heartbeat to determine what happened. With her hands behind her, Amy Culp had found her captor's groin, talons digging deep into tender flesh. At the same instant, she stomped on his instep, twisting hard and wrenching clear of his grasp, going down on both knees.

The "elder" wailed, clutching his wounded genitals, the .45 autoloader wavering off target. Bolan sighted on the screaming lips and squeezed off a single round at thirty feet.

There was simply no way to miss, and 240 grains of death punched through the soldier's open maw at 1,500 feet per second. Above the chin, his skull disintegrated. The headless body toppled over backward.

Amy Culp was struggling to rise when Bolan reached her. He helped her up, slicing her bonds with a razor-edged stiletto taken from the pocket of his skinsuit. He noted the cut and swollen lips, discoloration on her cheeks, but there was no time to bandage cuts and bruises.

"Are there any more?" he asked her.

She looked around, counting the dead and finally shook her head in a weak negative.

"That's everyone, I think," she said. "You got them all."

Bolan nodded grimly.

"We're getting out of here," he told her. "Come with me."

He took her by the arm and led her from the killing ground, along the narrow corridor. Passing by the wall-mounted telephone he paused, snaring the receiver.

"I need to make a call," he said.

Bolan dialed the cutout number for Able Team, waited through the rings until he heard the familiar voice of Gadgets Schwarz.

"Able One."

"This is Stony Man," Bolan told his friend.

The Able warrior's voice brightened instantly.

"Hey, buddy... where away?"

"On the move," Bolan answered curtly. "I've picked up a passenger I need to unload."

"Uh, that's affirmative, Stony Man. Where and when?"

Bolan thought it over, seeking a spot on his way.

"Let's keep it public," he instructed. "Palace of the Fine Arts in half an hour."

"Roger that." There was something else though, Bolan could read it in his friend's tone. "Listen, Stony Man, there's a wild card in the game you ought to know about."

"Explain, Able."

"It's her father," Schwarz told him. "He's flying in to meet your person. Like tonight."

Bolan felt an icy chill creep into his gut.

"Understood," he said. "I'm signing off. We'll be looking for you, Able."

"On my way."

Bolan severed the connection, moving toward the exit with the girl in tow, his mind racing into confrontation with the latest twist.

The father, right. Make that the senator. Coming for an unscheduled meeting with Minh.

The timing was significant, even crucial. "Like tonight," Schwarz said. That spelled trouble for the Executioner.

It meant Amy's father wasn't counting on a regular appointment. He was moving for a showdown, arriving at the worst possible time. He might even be in the city now, preparing to barge in at Minh's estate.

At the hardsite, where thirty-odd guns were braced and ready to repel invaders.

The situation was potentially disastrous, explosive, and it was Bolan who had lit the fuse. Now, it was his task to channel the explosion, to direct its destructive force at the selected target, away from innocent bystanders.

And, incidentally, he would also try to survive the night.

15

Nguyen Van Minh sat alone in his private office mulling over reports from his soldiers in the field. He had been advised of Amy Culp's recapture and the bloody firefight in Haight-Ashbury — a grim debacle. On balance, he could not rate the early-morning action as a success.

Minh still didn't know exactly what was happening in the field, but he reached some conclusions even so. First of all, he doubted the KGB's involvement in his recent trouble despite the evidence supplied by Mitchell Carter.

He knew the Russians well — better than he cared to, in fact. In his experience, their agents rarely worked alone, and never with the sort of clockwork efficiency displayed by his anonymous opponent. KGB agents were plodding, predictable and for the most part unimaginative.

But if not the Soviets, then who?

Minh resisted crediting the Americans. It was prejudice, admittedly, but a bias founded on experience. If the Americans had fought with such imagination and tenacity in Vietnam, they would not have been so easily repelled.

Minh frowned as he wrestled with the problem, concentration carving furrows in his face. Except for his garb, he resembled an Asian warlord.

He was convinced his adversary was one man, although the questions of sponsorship and motive remained glaringly unanswered. Minh reviewed the chain of startling events and found nothing in the time span or circumstances to back his belief that the assailant was one man.

The enemy would have to be an extraordinary man, certainly, a consummate warrior, but nothing was impossible. Minh knew very few such men — two or three in a lifetime — and he could accept the existence of such a warrior.

What he could not accept was the availability of such a man to the KGB in America. An import, perhaps...

His frown deepened, and he shook his head. No, it was not the Soviet style — or the American. That left him face to face with an unknown variable — a highly uncomfortable feeling for a man in his position. Accustomed to controlling and manipulating his environment, Minh didn't like to feel the reins slipping through his fingers.

He left the question open, dismissing it as fruitless, an endless mental exercise. For the moment, he was opting for discretion as the better part of valor — clearing out, as the Americans would say — until he had the situation well in hand.

Minh hoped it would be possible for him to return. In spite of himself and his commitment to the cause of liberation, he had come to enjoy the adulation of his followers and the luxury and status he enjoyed around San Francisco. It would be pleasant, he privately admitted, to maintain the pose a bit longer. But if that was impossible...

His mission in America was very nearly finished. The weapon was armed, machinery set in motion. The decadent Americans would witness his handiwork for years to come. Given time, he could accomplish more, but for the moment, he was satisfied.

Minh was reminded of an advertisement he had seen on a television commercial — something about delayed-action medicine that worked with "tiny time pills" — and he smiled at the analogy. His disciples were like that: timed explosives, waiting to detonate on cue. They, were like a bacillus, growing, multiplying in the body of his unsuspecting enemy.

Except, someone did suspect. No, correction, someone knew, and was making every effort to disrupt his operation. So far his enemy had only scratched the surface but conditioned instinct told him the worst was still to come.

It was time to leave — at least for a while.

Minh had been in touch with the captain of his yacht at the marina, giving him departure instructions. The crew would stop at his warehouse to retrieve the girl and his surviving troops, then pick up his entourage at the private dock, maintained as part of his estate. From there, the yacht would take him away — north or south, it didn't matter — as long as he was clear before authorities began asking questions and making pests of themselves.