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Bolan paused and looked back at the pilot. Time was running out, but Grimaldi's concern was real.

"This one is on the heartbeat, buddy. I've got to find Eve and I've got to put this thing of Jericho's out of business." He thought briefly of Hohlstrom, and of the supreme sacrifice the Mossad agent had made. "For the living, and for the dead. You just give me that forty minutes. If I'm not out by then, I won't be coming out."

Grimaldi grunted. "I'll be there," he promised.

Mack Bolan gave the pilot a raised fist salute that Grimaldi returned.

The Executioner turned and put that place behind him, moving at a fast trot into the night.

Toward Eve.

Toward a confrontation with his own fate.

18

The figure in torn, cordite-smelling camou fatigues sprinted across the undulating desert terrain. He was one with the night around him. The added weight of weapons and armament strapped across his body did not slow him.

The big .44 AutoMag mini-howitzer and the 9mm Beretta Belle were back where they belonged, leathered on his right hip and in a quick-draw underarm shoulder holster respectively. Bolan was outfitted much as he had been less than two days ago when this mission had begun for him in the waters of Exuma Cay in the Bahamas. Explosives courtesy of both Kennedy and Grimaldi rode securely on his left hip. Knives, garrotes and other instruments of silent death were secured at various points.

Vague, indeterminate sounds, a sense of activity, carried to him across the wide open spaces from the vicinity of the base, more than a mile away, as he made his approach.

Except for this impression of activity, there was silence. Cold shadows hugged the lunarlike landscape. There was no sign of life out here beyond the Aujila oasis and the base situated there.

There was only Bolan.

Alone with his thoughts.

Mack Bolan preferred a combat posture as the quiet infiltrator. Bolan the penetration specialist was in his natural element.

He covered the distance without incident.

Bolan's breathing was steady as he jogged that hilly distance. He was pacing himself for the firefight that lay ahead. His strength would be far from sapped at the end of this run.

He did not try to block his thoughts from touching on the woman he hoped to locate and rescue in that military compound.

In most ways Eve Aguilar was what this mission was all about, symbolically as well as literally.

Thinking about it pushed him on, harder and faster.

He thought about a rustic bungalow on Douglas Lake in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, some two hundred miles from Nashville.

That was the last time Mack Bolan had been with Big Eve. He remembered it now with vivid, aching clarity.

At the time, Bolan had just completed shaking up the Nashville operation of Nick Copa as part of the Executioner's war against the Mafia.

At the windup of that Music City action, Hal Brognola had approached Bolan with an incredible offer: Presidential pardon, full amnesty for past illegalities, a new identity and a chair on the National Security Council... ifMack Bolan would redirect his capabilities toward a newly defined cause.

Bolan and Evita Aguilar had already made arrangements for a rendezvous back then, a plan for some R & R together at the close of Bolan's Tennessee Smash, since both he and Eve were between missions.

The secluded cabin, which had been theirs for a day and a night, had commanded a view of a breathtaking pine valley. This was Davy Crockett country. Old Andy Jackson, too. Hero country, yeah. The backbone of the American spirit, set amid some of the most spectacular natural beauty east of the Mississippi.

For much too short a time, it had seemed as if that paradise had belonged to two soldiers named Mack Bolan and Eve Aguilar.

They had pleasured themselves with each other sexually, sure, and with each other's intellect. But every bit as important was the sense of shared space that they had experienced, even while allowing each other their separate, personal thoughts during their brief time together.

Eve obviously had things on her mind as much as Bolan did. They had planned on spending more than a scant twenty-four hours together. But now Brognola was waiting for Bolan's response, and the plans had to be alerted.

During those twenty-four hours in their Smoky Mountain paradise, Bolan and Eve had separated for some five hours.

Bolan hiked to a secluded cove for some solitary roaming and thinking. When he returned to their cabin near dusk, he had found Eve sitting on a rock formation overlooking the lake.

She was dressed in light blue sweater and slacks, her midnight-black hair ruffled by the pine-scented breeze. She looked stunning.

I walked up to her and though I could tell she heard me approach, she did not turn from gazing out over the expanse of water that was silver with the reflection of the setting sun.

' 'It's beautiful,'' I said.

She nodded gently.

"Si. Very beautiful."

At the last word, a tear leaked from the lady's eye and fell down her cheek.

I sat on the rock beside her. She leaned into me and my arm went around her. To this day I can still feel the natural warmth of her.

I told her, quietly and gently, "Sometimes it's tougher pulling back and getting way from what we do, than it is to live the lives we are committed to..."

She nodded, straightened and brushed away the tear. But she did not leave my side.

"I am sorry, my dear. Sometimes I feel things too much."

"That's what these times are for, Eve— meditating, trying to make some sense out of it all."

"If that can bring the mind to a better place, yes," she said. "You a re very good for me, my warrior. "

"We're good for each other," I grinned at her "I'm going inside to build a fire."

She arose with me. We walked back to the rental cabin, along a winding trail that climbed from the water, strolling hand-in-hand like first lovers.

It had been that pure.

"Most people can never reach out and touch what is here like you can," she said. "But you have these matters that have been troubling your mind?" Her golden Latin countenance beamed with all the sexuality and good humor of her race: ' I see that my big norteamericano is no longer plagued by thoughtful silence. Have your own troubles resolved themselves?"

That was Eve, yeah.

Always caring.

"I'm going to accept a deal that's been offered," I told her. Then we went into the cabin and made love.

An evening to remember, yeah.

A woman Bolan could never forget.

He had decided that accepting Hal Brognola's offer was not a shifting of priorities, merely a broadening of the Executioner's scope.

Mack Bolan became John Phoenix and the Executioner's new world war against fanaticism was born.

Since that time, and the formation of the Stony Man Farm operation, the missions handed over by Hal Brognola had come hot and heavy. There had thus far been sixteen assignments for Colonel Phoenix and company, including the fledgling Phoenix Force.

But yeah, Mack Bolan still remembered that last time with Eve Aguilar, with clarity and yearning.

April Rose had then entered Bolan's life and Bolan never did have the opportunity to discuss April with Eve.

Evita dropped out of sight following the Smoky Mountain rendezvous, probably into the work for her government that had eventually taken, her into Leonard Jericho's unholy operation.

At the time, Bolan had not been overly concerned. It was her job. Each of them had many times dropped out of sight from the world for months on end.