Not worrying about the noise anymore, he landed with a thud on the top landing, then half stepped and half slid down the two flights of iron stairs.

Not bothering with the ladder, he dropped into the garden and leapt back over the wall into the alley.

He reached the street in a half-dozen strides, skidded onto the pavement and raced to the corner.

Shielding himself, he called out and saw Carlos turn to look toward him. He waved a hand, and Carlos brought his gun around but didn't fire. Cautiously Bolan stepped into the street. He heard Marisa whisper something, and Carlos muttered an answer before standing.

Bolan waved him to the corner and he saw Carlos tug Marisa to her feet as he rushed past and down to the back alley. Bolan waited just long enough to see Carlos wheel around the corner, Marisa right behind him. He dashed to the rear of Harding's building and leapt the fence. Carlos helped Marisa over, then took her hand again and joined Bolan on the stairs.

Bolan fired a short burst through the door, then ripped it open and pushed it aside for Carlos and Marisa. He followed them inside, leaving the door ajar. Taking the lead, he barged into the stairwell and down to the still brightly lit cellar.

In the small of rice, he pulled the map from his pocket and spread it on the desk.

"Look at this," he said.

Carlos braced himself with a hand on either side of the map and leaned forward to get a closer look.

Bolan stabbed a finger at one of the circles.

"Where is this? What's there, what sort of building?"

"The train station, Senor Belasko."

"And here?"

"I'm not sure. Some stores, a concert hall, a museum."

"Here?"

"The Supreme Court is on one side of the square, the south side. On the north, some government buildings, city government, mostly..."

"Take this to Captain Roman Collazo, the Military Police building. Give it to him and tell him there could be a bomb at every one of those circles. I'm not sure which buildings, and I don't even know for sure whether they've been planted already or not. I only know that Harding has plans for those locations, and Cordero's probably been to half of them maybe the ones that have an 'It' on them. Tell him I'll be in touch."

"What about Senora Colgan?"

"She's coming with me. I need her help."

"Where are you going, senor?"

"Underground, Carlos. I have a feeling Mr. Harding is expecting me..."

24

"Marisa, you don't have to do this if you don't want to." Bolan watched her face closely, but she betrayed no hesitation.

"Of course not, but I want to."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes... I... I know what you thought of my husband, Mr. Belasko, but I still think he was right. He stood for something. I have to see that Harding pays for that. For Thomas. If you can make that happen."

Bolan nodded gravely. "All right, then, let's go. You know the tunnels. Where do you think Harding would be? Where would he feel the most secure?"

"I can only guess."

"That's all we've got, Marisa. And we don't have time to guess wrong."

She nodded. "I'm ready." Bolan waited while she took a deep breath.

She placed a hand on his forearm for a moment, and he moved toward the door. He stopped at the mouth of the tunnel and made sure his flashlight was working. He clicked it on and trained it into the darkness. The beam was steady and, unlike the smaller torch, its light was clear and white.

"You'd better not use that."

She was right, so he clicked the light off, tucked it into his pocket and stepped through the opening. Marisa squeezed past him to take the lead.

In the darkness he could hear her fingers brushing the wall, and her steps were measured and slow, as if she were counting paces. It was so unlike his first passage through the underground, the breakneck pace even more incredible now that she moved so deliberately.

In a hoarse whisper she said, "I'm sorry to be so slow, but I'm not as familiar with this tunnel as I am with some of the others. I don't quite know where we'll end up, but if Harding came this way, we'll find him. There are just so many tunnels, just so many places he could be." Her whisper died away, its echo drifting back from far down the tunnel like the shame of soft paper in small hands. Bolan felt blind in the darkness, but they couldn't run the risk of a light. It was up to Marisa, and they both knew it.

"Just do what you can," Bolan said softly. He didn't have high hopes for their success but didn't want to discourage her.

Every step seemed to take a century as they groped through the tunnel. Neither of them spoke, and Bolan found himself wondering about Marisa. In some way he couldn't quite explain, she seemed different, more like an automaton than the fiercely independent woman she had been before her husband's death. She had changed, as if part of her strength had come from him.

She seemed narrowed somehow, focused in a way he had seen before, had even sensed in himself on occasion. He recognized that part of Marisa had reduced the population of the planet to two people alone: herself and Charles Harding. To Bolan, it was a misplaced devotion to Thomas Colgan. But to Marisa, and he couldn't argue with her feelings, it was retribution mandated by a law she neither controlled nor understood. She was running on pure courage, with one thought in her mind: make the bastard pay.

Bolan sensed something of that same fierce concentration in himself. He had seen the handiwork of the man and thought Charles Harding had a price to pay, exacted in the only currency that mattered. For Bolan, as for Marisa, an eye required an eye, a tooth demanded a tooth.

Cordero, of course, was part of the mix, but Bolan considered him secondary, an implement more than a man, something that Harding would use and throw away. It was the age of disposables, in everything from paper plates to hypodermics. Why should an instrument of terror be any different?

Take Harding down, and Cordero would wither, an unpicked fruit in an abandoned garden.

Take Harding down, Bolan thought the only way to go. But first, he reminded himself, you had to find him.

"Wait a minute," Marisa whispered, her voice almost reverent, as if she were in the nave of some gloomy cathedral instead of a catacomb under a city on the brink of annihilation. "It should be here." She let go of Bolan's arm, and he heard her feet shuffle on the damp stone underfoot, the faint splash of her shoe in the shallow stream coursing through the tunnel. "It has to be here."

"What are you looking for?"

"There is supposed to be an outlet here, on the right. Let me go a little farther."

Her feet scraped on the stone again, scattering little splashing sounds as she moved. Her palm slapped against the damp stone, its sound swallowed after a single dull echo.

"Where is it?" She sounded almost petulant, as though someone had found something she had hidden and thought secure. The palm slapped harder against the stone. Her voice tightened and rose in pitch, just a notch, but Bolan caught it.

Don't lose it now, Marisa not now, he thought.

"Maybe the light..."

"No! I don't need light. It's here or it isn't." Bolan pulled the flashlight out of his pocket.

Muffling the switch, he clicked it on and trained it on the wall. And it stared him in the face. She was right, there should have been an opening. There was, in fact a new section of wall, the mortar still bright, the surface of the stone almost free of lichens.

"Forget about it. We'll have to find some other way." She shook her head angrily.

"What do we do now?" Bolan asked.

"We have to go out of our way, that's all."

Bolan clicked the light off again. "Lead the way," he said.