"Ah, a bribe."

"An offering. One hand washing the other. Charges dropped, record cleared."

"And you want what?"

"Just information."

"About Damon Blue."

"Yes. And his relationship with Dodge Reed."

Carrew shook his head. "I don't know anything. He was my cellmate for a couple days. Kept to himself."

"That's all?" he said, stepping around to face Carrew, those brown eyes burning under the white hair. "That's all you intend to tell me?"

"That's all," Carrew said.

The man looked at his watch, sighed again. "I believe you, Mr. Carrew. And it's getting too late to keep trying."

There was something in the man's voice that startled Carrew. The rich Southern accent was gone, the tone flat, the speech precise. He was picking at the thread on his sleeve button again when Carrew saw the button pop off and thread emerge from the sleeve into a foot-long wire with a button on the other end.

Suddenly the tall man was behind him, the metal strand looped around his neck.

The handicapped black tried to get his hand up to protect his throat, but the tall man was too fast. The wire pinned the tip of Carrew's middle finger against his own throat as the garrote bit deep into the nail. He could feel his pulse thrashing wildly in his neck. He dropped his free hand to grope for the shank hidden in his chair. But the pressure of the tightening wire kept him off balance.

He felt the wire sawing through his finger, slicing into the sides of his neck. Finally, in a burst of strength from the tall man, the thin wire severed the tip of the finger, freeing Carrew's hand, but allowing the wire to sink into his throat. He grabbed at the wire, fingernails clawing to get at it. He stretched his hands back, clamped them around the tall man's wrists, trying to break the grip. He couldn't. His own strength was ebbing. He could feel the warm blood dripping down his throat as if he'd dribbled on himself while drinking coffee. His hands fell to his sides helpless. Long bony fingers grasped his chin and the back of his head and he knew what was coming next even as he felt the sudden pressure of hands pushing and pulling in opposite directions, heard his vertebrae cracking as his neck broke and he slumped into his wheelchair and into death.

Zavlin unwound the wire from Carrew's neck, stuffed it into his pocket. He'd found out all he could here. He figured his forged papers would be good for an hour before suspicions might arise.

The hour was almost up. It had been a risk, but he had to make sure about this Damon Blue, be certain no one had learned anything from Dodge Reed. The black man, Carrew, knew something, but it would have taken too long to force him to talk. He was too tough. Better to kill him, make sure he didn't tell anyone else whatever he found out.

Zavlin checked his watch again. He had almost ruined everything by his misuse of the black jargon. He was a master at accents, languages, dialects. But there were a few he still had trouble with, especially the black street talk. It changed too quickly, always adding new words, altering the meanings of existing ones.

He popped the contact lens out of his right eye. The tinted lens had changed the color from blue to brown, but he didn't like keeping it in too long. It irritated his eye. He blinked rapidly and put it back in. Then he left the room, telling the ancient secretary and the guard outside the door that he wanted to get some documents from his car and would return. They weren't to disturb the prisoner, but if he attempted to make a phone call, they were to monitor it. The old crone seemed to get some pleasure from that possibility.

Ten minutes later, Zavlin was driving through Atlanta to meet the three KGB assassins he'd sent for. By now they should already be in position. The prison van carrying Dodge Reed was only a few minutes behind him. Just as he'd planned.

"So what's the plan, Mack?" Shawnee piloted her ancient Celica up the Northeast Expressway to Buford Boulevard, edging just past the speed limit, but not enough to alert any cops.

"The plan," Bolan said sternly, "is to do what I say, when I say. Understood?"

Shawnee swung her head around, the long dark hair whipping off her shoulders like striking snakes. Her eyes glowered. "No, damn it, not understood at all. You may be the famous Mack Bolan, but this is still my squad. The Savannah Swingsaw follows my orders. You want to discuss the details of the plan, fine. We're with you. You want to play leader, then we pass."

"These men are dangerous," Bolan persisted.

"Hey, Mack," Shawnee said with a sigh. "You may have kicked ass in every state of the union, but we've kicked some ass of our own. We know dangerous."

The Executioner decided she was right. They knew danger. But not the kind that came with men like Zavlin.

He had no rules, no mercy. And he was trained in ways to kill that rivaled even the ancient cult of ninjas.

"Well?" she said, glancing from the road to his face with her piercing eyes. "What's it going to be?"

He looked over his shoulder to Lynn and Rita in the back seat. He knew their guns were hidden on the floor under a blanket, but the women were perched on the edge of the seat ready to grab them at a second's notice. They returned his gaze with unblinking stares. Good, he thought. He could see they were a united front. That was important. It was just what he was trying to determine by his rough prodding and insults. See how much of a team they really were, how much leadership Shawnee had. The way all three of them were glaring at him now, he knew they could be counted on to stick together when things started to get bloody.

And they would.

"Okay," he said, spreading the map of Atlanta and surrounding areas on his lap. "You wanted to know the plan. Listen carefully."

They listened, their faces growing paler as he explained.

15

Zavlin removed his sunglasses, wincing from the harsh sunlight. His one brown eye and his one blue eye squinted immediately. He shaded them with one hand while using the other to unsnap the leather case around his neck and bring the binoculars up to his sensitive eyes.

Yes! There they were. His three KGB assistants were in perfect position. They crouched in the thick dogwood and pink azaleas, waiting for the van, their high-powered rifles clutched in experienced hands.

They were very good. Zavlin permitted himself a tiny premature smile of victory. He carried the folding beach chair that he'd bought at the discount drugstore on the way here to just the right spot under a shady tree and sat down with a contented sigh. Might as well relax. What would happen next was as inevitable as snow in Moscow.

He peered through the binoculars again, adjusting the central focusing drive. His men were dressed in casual clothing: golf shirts, Bermuda shorts, dark socks, loafers. Just what a tourist might be wearing who got lost in the area.

Once they'd disposed of the guns, the only thing that might betray them were the identical calluses on the inside crooks of their trigger fingers. Thick pads from pulling triggers of hundreds of guns.

Built up from years of irritating the skin, like oysters creating pearls from the nuisance of a single grain of sand. To each of those men, that callus was as valuable as a pearl.

He reached inside his shirt to fondle the goldplated ornament hanging from the gold chain around his neck. The object puzzled the few who had seen it, guessing that perhaps it was some sort of shark's tooth, or the claw from a giant leopard.

It was a finger. The skeletal fragment of a finger.

Supposedly the finger bone of the legendary American, Jim Bowie. Not just any finger, but his trigger finger, sliced off at the Alamo by one of Santa Anna's men. Not out of hate, but in tribute to his heroism. The bony digit had been passed down through generations of this same Mexican military family until hard times had forced them to sell it to a private broker. Zavlin ran his fingertips along the gold plating he'd added. There was no way to authenticate this as Jim Bowie's, it could be any finger. He didn't care. He wanted it to be Bowie's, so it was. Certainly he'd paid enough money to the broker, who would know the dire consequences of cheating Zavlin, for it to be real.