The thunder of approaching footfalls grew louder as they came into the HQ building overhead. A pause as the bodies in the CQ room were discovered. Seconds later, bootsteps came clattering down the stairwell.

The killing machine stepped out through the doorway, leaving the torture chamber behind, into the narrow passage.

Three soldiers charged around the dogleg at the bottom of the stairs.

The killing machine was waiting.

The Thompson stuttered in fury. Hammering bullets, on a sizzling firetrack of flame and smoke, blew away three rebels into piles of dead matter.

The killing machine moved on. Back up the stairs.

He reached for the small triggering device in his pocket.

As he emerged from the stairwell into the main hallway of the HQ building, he activated the detonator.

The night shuddered with sound and fury. A rapid series of explosions thudded from the direction of the armament and equipment stored on the tarmac across the parade field. A simultaneous blast from the armory blew out one wall into the hallway and shuddered the building to its foundation.

The HQ corridor, filled with billowing smoke and dust, now boasted four Libyan rebel troopers who had heard the gunfire from downstairs and were advancing two abreast toward the stairwell. The killing machine stepped out to meet them.

The guards had been ready for something, but the explosions from the armory room and outside still rumbled in their eardrums. The guards had glanced off in the direction of the noise. But they did not miss seeing the figure in combat black. They only missed the chance to do anything about it.

The killing machine hit the deck. The tommy-gun blazed.

All four rebels died from a stitching figure-eight hail of steel-jacketed shredders that pulped the men into oblivion. It came from a being of cold eyes and hot aim. The enemy had no hope in hell.

The Executioner was up and moving out along the hallway in the same direction as he had entered, emerging moments later from the back door of the building, into the night.

The Executioner jogged a bee-line away from the admin building, toward the private residence that stood across five floodlit yards to the southwest.

A klaxon siren continued to blare.

Fires raged out of control from across the parade field where he had placed explosives amid the Soviet war machinery.

That equipment was now an inferno of golden tongues licking at the dark heavens.

The commotion of running men and shouting filled the night.

Most of the Libyan troops were breaking formation around the two Huey helicopters on the parade field and were rushing toward the fire.

A cluster of Leonard Jericho's mercs maintained guard around Doyle's chopper carrying the Strain-7, their Galils and Largo Star machine guns held ready as the mercs warily scanned the night around them.

The killing machine continued its course to the rear environs of the Moorish white stone structure.

He gained the back wall of the house and moved to a door. It was unlocked. He stepped inside. A short hallway. He heard voices and a shuffle of activity beyond a closed swing door in front of him. The killing machine pushed on through.

The big .44 AutoMag came unleathered as he covered the distance through an archway into what had been the dining room by original design.

It was now a command post in the process of hurriedly breaking camp.

The Executioner recognized Leonard Jericho. Two men were with Jericho. Doyle was toting a Largo-Star. The third man had a slick, simonized American lawyer look about him. The lawyer and Jericho carried briefcases and all three were on their feet; they had been in the process of moving toward an entranceway at the front of the house.

All sensed the Executioner's presence and spun as one to confront him.

"I... I'm not armed!" screamed the lawyer.

"That's your problem," said the machine.

The AutoMag roared. The slickster died.

The giant handgun tracked next to Doyle. The number two merc's slate eyes registered panic as they realized he was about to die. He yanked the hi-power up from its holster. That was all. Doyle caught two rounds from Big Thunder. He died on his feet.

The body was still thumping to the floor when the last man, Leonard Jericho, raised his arms.

The renegade moneyman was in disarray. His eyes were rabid. The upraised hands trembled, as if trying to wave off his tab with eternity.

"No! Stop! I can buy you! Name your price!"

The killing machine in a single fluid movement holstered the AutoMag and swung the Thompson around into play by its shoulder strap.

"That's what the other Jericho said. The one I killed in the Bahamas."

This Lenny Jericho brightened. His breathing came faster.

"Carlyle. Yeah, I knew him. Hey, guy — wait! What makes you think I'm the real Jericho?"

"You'll do for now," grunted the Executioner.

The Thompson bucked.

And this particular Leonard Jericho was spun around by a flaming stream of millimeters that chewed his body into bits amid a curdling death cry. The steel-jacketed projectiles ate away at Jericho's death-jigging body, sections at a time, though the guy's final jig lasted less than ten seconds to pile his corpse into the corner.

This kill was for Eve.

Maybe machines could feel, sometimes.

Mack Bolan swung away from the execution. He quit the dining room, moving into the front entranceway, punching off every light switch that he passed, plunging the house of death into blackness.

When he reached the front door, he stationed himself against the inside wall.

He reached over and unlatched the door, drawing it inward several inches; enough to allow him a view of the panorama of parade ground and the raging fire beyond.

The two Bell Huey copters still sat side by side in the center of the parade field, thirty yards from him.

The Executioner centered his attention on the chopper carrying the cargo of Strain-7. Colonel Shahkhia still had not arrived. Jericho still had his security on tight.

Seven mercs stood guard near the aircraft that carried the living virus, their rifles held at port arms.

The killing machine quit the doorway of that house in a full frontal assault, Thompson yammering.

He must commandeer the helicopter.

He must lift the cargo of Strain-7 up and out, away to safety.

No matter what the odds.

The killing machine kept right on killing.

He blitzed five men between the house and the Huey. Two mercs were stitched in a tight pattern of blood before they even saw their executioner. Another came running and the Thompson sent him back-flopping across the paradise field with his head lifted away. Two mercs tried running for cover. They could not outrun the Thompson.

The Executioner reached the chopper as the pilot tried to slam home the door and aim his .45 at Bolan at the same time. He accomplished neither. The Thompson erupted one more time and the pilot was ripped nearly in half by the hail of slugs. He dropped onto the ground beside the Huey.

Bolan leaped into the aircraft, slammed shut the side door on its runners and bolted to the controls.

He could see some Libyan troops across the parade field, by the burning equipment, who understood that a hijacking was taking place and were shouting out an alarm.

He gunned the engine and listened to the rising high-pitched scream of the revving transmission and the blades activating overhead. His fist tightened around the collective pitch-control lever to his left and he powered the big bird into a lift-off.

The commotion outside the Huey was lost below him.

He just might make it.

The pilot of the Soviet-furnished Libyan army helicopter, transporting Colonel Ahmad Shahkhia and two of his generals, controlled the aircraft into a hover position one half mile from the scene of battle raging below them to the north. The bodies of General Pornov and one of his aides were stretched out in the rear of the aircraft, with their throats slit from ear to ear.