"What?"

Carter couldn't seem to grasp his meaning.

"Someone's decided they can do without you. Permanently."

The lawyer's face was working toward a compromise of shock and disbelief.

"Minh?" he asked.

"You're an obstacle," Bolan said. "He doesn't have time to go around you."

Carter's slow response was interrupted by a flash of headlights across the front windows. Bolan was already moving when he heard the car outside.

"Expecting company?" he asked.

"Nobody."

Carter joined him at the window. A black crew wagon was idling in the driveway, disgorging hard-eyed occupants. Bolan tracked two of them toward the porch, and one was circling around the back.

"Friends of yours?"

Carter shook his head.

"They belong to Minh."

Bolan read the counselor's expression, and he gave the Universe a silent vote of thanks. This time, the odds were running his way, the cards of coincidence giving him an unexpected edge.

But not the victory — not yet.

That was up to Bolan.

He would have to play those cards the way they fell, and any false move, any mistake, could make it a dead man's hand.

7

The doorbell rang and Carter jumped as if he'd brushed a live electric wire.

"Time for choices," Bolan said. "You're all out of numbers."

Carter swallowed hard, eyes darting nervously from Bolan to the front door and back.

"Minh wouldn't do this," he blurted.

Bolan shrugged.

"Your decision," he said. "Go along for the ride. What have you got to lose?"

The lawyer's face showed he was already counting the losses.

"All right, dammit!" he snapped. "What should I do?"

"I'd answer the door," Bolan said.

Carter didn't seem to trust his ears any more.

"What? But you said..."

"Get them inside," Bolan told him. "And then stay out of the way."

The Beretta Belle was in his fist now, and Carter's eyes were bulging at the sight of it. Outside, anxious fingers punched the doorbell again, jarring the counselor out of his momentary shock.

"They're waiting," Bolan said.

Carter moved, crossing the room with jerky strides, disappearing into the foyer. Bolan shifted to a better vantage point and listened as the door was opened.

Muttered voices in the entry hall — Carter's tight, nervous, the others low-keyed, insistent. Bolan wondered if the guy could pull it off.

The voices were returning, Carter in the lead. He was bitching, demanding answers and getting nowhere. The hardmen were saying next to nothing.

Carter reached the living room, missing Bolan on his first hasty look around. The nonstop carping missed a beat, but he recovered quickly and spotted Bolan standing off to one side of the doorway, his weapon up and ready.

Behind the counselor, two men filled the doorway. Bolan sized up the opposition as they entered.

They were bookends, carbon copies of a thousand other savages the Executioner had known. Different faces, sure, but you couldn't hide the pedigree. They carried all the signs: a stench of death and suffering nothing could ever wash away.

"I wish you'd tell me what this... this..."

Carter couldn't tear his eyes away from Bolan. The hardmen were following his lead, turning to check it out.

What they saw was not a welcome.

It was death.

All things considered, they reacted professionally, peeling off in opposite directions, giving Bolan two targets. Each was groping after hidden hardware, competing in the most important contest of their lives.

Neither had a chance.

Bolan took the nearest gunner first, his Beretta chugging out a pencil line of flame. The 9mm parabellum sizzled in on target, punching through a tanned cheek under the right eye, expanding and reaming on, exiting with a spray of murky crimson. The impact spun him like a top and dumped him facedown on the carpet.

His partner had an autoloader out and tracking Bolan when Belle coughed a second time. The gunner lurched backward as a parabellum mangier pierced his throat, releasing a bloody torrent from his ruptured jugular. For an instant he was frozen, gagging on his own vital juices; his lips worked silently, emitting scarlet bubbles.

Bolan again stroked the trigger and again silent death closed the gap between them, exploding in the gunner's face. A keyhole opened in his forehead and the lock was turned, explosively releasing all the contents of that dark Pandora's box. Bits and pieces of the guy were outward bound before his body got the message, rebounding off the sofa on its way to touchdown.

Mitchell Carter was going through some changes of his own as he surveyed the carnage. His living room had suddenly become a dying room, and his white shag carpeting would never be the same.

"Jesus. Sweet Jesus."

Yeah.

The years of grim indoctrination couldn't dam a plea to a long-forgotten God. Not with bloody fragments of reality clinging to his walls and furniture.

"Two down," Bolan said. "What's in back?"

Carter tried to answer and finally got it on the second try.

"Swimming pool, sauna and a guest cottage."

All kinds of cover for the back-door gunner.

"I'm going for the sweep," Bolan said. "Be ready when I get back."

"Ready?"

The lawyer was trying not to understand. Bolan spelled it out for him.

"We're getting out of here. Your lease just expired."

Bolan moved toward the rear of the house and killed lights along the way. He didn't plan to make it easy with a silhouette for the tail gunner.

He paused at the door, letting' his eyes grow accustomed to the dark. His mind was ticking off the numbers, calculating odds and probable trajectories.

Bolan merged with the night, a hunter in his element. The low voice stopped him halfway across the patio.

"Far enough, counselor."

Bolan turned toward the sound, eyes probing at the mist. He picked out a moving man-shape near the pool.

The guy was right. It was plenty far enough.

The Belle found its target in a single fluid motion. Bolan squeezed off a silent round, adjusting for the fog's natural distortion.

Downrange, the plug man was stumbling through an awkward pirouette, all flailing arms and legs. He lost it on the second spin, and his jerky dance step became a headlong dive to nowhere. Bolan heard the splash as he disappeared from sight.

He was thrashing in the pool's shallows, life leaking out of him, when Bolan got there. Hard eyes glared back at him, unflinching. Bolan closed them with another parabellum, and the guy stopped thrashing. A murky slick was spreading on the surface of the water.

The warrior retraced his steps across the patio, circling the house. Going for he sweep with one touch-point remaining.

He wasn't leaving any witnesses this time.

Bolan approached the driver from his blind side, moving silently, sheltered by the fog. He passed along a juniper hedge, deliberately overshooting, doubling back to take the Caddy in the rear.

The wheelman was restless. Bolan watched him drumming his fingers on the steering wheel, bobbing his head in time to music on the radio. He stopped to light a cigarette, and Bolan used the distraction as a chance to close the gap.

From six feet away he watched the driver and listened to his music in the darkness. The guy was preoccupied, watching the house, but something — a soldier's sixth sense — alerted him to danger.

Bolan scuffed a sole across the pavement, barely audible, but loud enough. The driver twisted in his seat, eyes going wide as they found Bolan and focused on the autoloader rising in his fist.

"Aw, shit."

The guy was clawing at a shoulder holster, lunging sideways in an effort to escape the line of fire. Bolan helped him on his way with a parabellum in the ear. He ended in a twitching sprawl across the broad front seat.