With Jill.

The path was muddy in places. The muck suctioned at his boots. The ever-present stench of decayed vegetation filled his nostrils, making the air thick.

The sound of voices came to his ears.

Bolan slowed.

The voices were low pitched. The source was ahead of him, just off the trail.

He melted into the bush on the same side of the path and stood absolutely still. His alert senses had saved him from walking directly into a security perimeter. He heard two voices, conversing in Vietnamese.

Okay.

If they were lookouts, they weren't very good ones. Deep in the jungle, though, he supposed it was easy for them to get overconfident.

He moved up on them so softly that not even the night creatures were disturbed.

Within moments he was a few feet from the enemy but neither of them had any idea of his presence.

One of the VC laughed at a comment from the other one.

Bolan knew he had to take out both of them almost at the same time to prevent any outcry.

He rushed forward between the two of them. Surprise registered on one of the men's faces, but not for long as Bolan rammed the M-16's butt sideways. There was a cracking sound as skull bone shattered. One VC, dead on his feet, stumbled back, blood spurting from his nose and mouth.

The other man only had time to emit a startled grunt. He started tracking his rifle upward, but the Executioner pivoted in a lightning-fast maneuver and swung the gun stock again. The second VC, his head caved in, dropped lifelessly to the ground alongside his comrade.

Bolan left them there.

A few steps and he was back on the trail.

Where there was one set of guards, there would be another.

Bolan advanced a few meters, then left the trail. The going would be slower, but he was willing to sacrifice a little speed.

Long minutes passed as the nightscorcher made his way through dense clinging undergrowth.

A whiff of cooking came to him, intermingled with the usual smells of this jungle world.

The VC camp at Xan Lung.

Suddenly a guttural voice challenged him.

Bolan dived forward, somersaulting and coming up in a crouch. He spotted the shadowy bulk of a sentry in the darkness and triggered off a round.

The silenced assault rifle chugged.

The figure in the shadows staggered, clutching at its middle, and fell.

Bolan moved to the man's side, knife unsheathed, poised.

The VC was dead, drilled through the heart.

Bolan drew a deep breath.

He moved forward on his belly, leaving the dead sentry behind him.

Another few minutes brought him to his goal.

Bolan huddled in the thick choking growth and peered out into a clearing that was illuminated by a small fire.

There were at least fifteen Vietcong in the camp.

Some of them were drinking, some were gathered around a cooking pot suspended over the fire.

Most of the huts that made up the village of Xan Lung had been destroyed, but a few were still scattered around the clearing.

Dominating the scene was a bombed-out concrete building — the abandoned munitions dump. Parts of it had been leveled by American shelling. Sections of the roof had collapsed, but the walls still stood for the most part.

Bolan's eyes flicked from figure to figure down there, checking out everyone.

There was no sign of Jill Desmond.

She was either inside one of the huts or inside the munitions dump.

Or she was dead.

A choked scream from the munitions building gave Bolan his answer.

There were too many of the enemy for a grandstand play to be successful.

Unless it was one hell of a grandstand play.

He circled the camp, encountering no more lookouts. They had to feel secure; this was their territory.

Bolan returned to his original position at the back of the munitions dump.

There were three sentries posted behind the building. They looked none too alert, though, and they were huddled fairly close together. That would help.

The sentries laughed and talked among themselves as they passed around a liquor bottle.

Bolan hoped the noise of their voices would be enough to cover up what happened next.

Bolan raised the M-16.

He squeezed the trigger.

He did not see the bullet zip through the eye of one guard. He was already tracking to the next, firing again.

The second man kicked into a loose death sprawl. He hit the ground a split second after the first.

The third sentry actually got his mouth open to yell as he tried to bring his weapon up into firing position.

Bolan sent a slug sizzling into that open mouth. Flesh and bone erupted out the back of the head.

The three kills had taken seconds.

Bolan waited until he was sure the guards' deaths had gone unnoticed. Then he moved out as silently as a flitting moth.

He slung the M-16 over his shoulder, stepped over the bodies and took a running leap at a low wall of the building.

He went up the wall easily, lithely.

When he reached the top, he lay flat.

No sounds came from the other side.

He had to chance it.

He swung himself down through the bomb-damaged roof into the building.

It was dark and still inside.

Nothing moved.

The fire outside cast a feeble glow down through the opening where the roof had once been.

As Bolan's eyes adjusted, he saw that the floor was littered with rubble from the collapsed roof. Moving carefully, he skirted the bigger chunks and made his way toward a heavy wooden door set in one wall.

The door was not fastened, just rested against the opening in the wall.

Bolan grabbed both edges of the door and shifted it sideways, creating a space just large enough to slip through.

Before him was a narrow corridor that was a little brighter than the room Bolan stepped from.

At the end of this hallway there was another door, which was ajar. The glow from a lantern filtered into the passageway. The floor of the hall was also covered with broken chunks of the roof.

Bolan padded along a pathway through the junk, taking great care not to set off a clatter, however slight.

As he had suspected, the hallway led to a main room at the front of the building. He stopped before he reached the door and flattened himself against the wall.

"You are a very stubborn woman," a man's heavily accented voice snarled.

"And you're a murderer of women and children."

Jill Desmond's voice was cold and flat and showed not a trace of the terror she must be feeling.

Bolan could not help but smile in the gloom.

Bullheaded she might be, but Jill Desmond, journalist, had guts.

"We can make things very unpleasant for you, Miss Desmond." The accented voice continued.

Has to be the VC leader, Bolan thought.

"If you will only cooperate with us, things will go much easier for you."

"Bullshit," live-wire Desmond shot back. "You'll do what you want anyway, no matter what I say. I won't give you the satisfaction of seeing me beg."

"That is regrettable." The VC sighed. "I must therefore summon assistance in this interrogation."

Jill was cold.

Tropical country or not, she was cold. Fear made her that way.

She didn't have to be told what cooperate meant.

If she gave in, she would be smuggled north to Hanoi and made to parrot their line of garbage.

And garbage was what it was.

She knew that now.

They called themselves freedom fighters and patriots. No way. They were murderers, rapists, cold-blooded ravagers of the weak and defenseless.

Who was there to stop them?

The VC grunted his frustration. He grabbed Jill's hair, lacing his dirty fingers through her chestnut strands, and pulled cruelly, bringing a gasp of pain from her lips.

Then he gave her head a rough shove and stepped toward the door to call the torturers. The real interrogators.