The grenade dropped into the pile-up and the HE pummeled the clear zone and scattered smoking bodies in every direction. One of the victims was afire with flames leaping up his back; he rose to hands and knees then pitched forward without a sound.

Bolan sent him a .44 mercy round just to make sure, then resumed the assault plan.

He hit the windows at both levels with a combination of smoke and HE, methodically working his way around the big house while people in there stampeded and screamed for assistance from hired guns who had apparently lost all taste for the wages of war. Guys were running all over the grounds and yelling, yet the direct challenges to the tall man in executioner black were scattered and brief. The big, rolling booms of the automag seldom competed with the more devastating thunder of high explosives that continually puffed and rocked and swayed that hellhouse.

The artificial smoke had become an unnecessary factor by the time Bolan's chestpack gaped empty and limp.

The shattered building was shooting flames and billowing honest smoke from every opening — and there were numerous new ones. Guys were leaping from second-story windows and lying about, groaning, everywhere.

Bolan shed the useless pack and invaded the pandemonium, moving swiftly and surely to the only area that could possibly produce the results he sought from this strike.

He found it where he thought he would — in the sub-basement — he was chilled by the knowledge that he had stood less than two paces from truth on his last trip into here.

Yeah, Toby, the joint held secrets.

The hidden door creaked open to his expert touch, and he found himself in a small lounge area — not much larger than an ordinary bathroom. A tattered chair shared the space with a small table upon which rested a double hotplate and a stained coffee pot, an open box of Baby Ruth candy bars, and a six-pack of Dr. Pepper.

Bolan had actually looked into there the night before, found it empty, and went on.

It was not empty now.

A fat ghoul was standing stiffly against the far wall, staring at the visiting apparition with a resigned snarl.

Yeah, Bolan thought, small damned underworld!

It was the turkey doctor whom Bolan had encountered so briefly, yet so traumatically, on that back door of hell in central Jersey. He knew the guy only as "Sal," and even that was too much knowledge for Mack Bolan to stomach.

He removed the gas mask and told the fat man, "Two Crazy Sals under one roof is too much for my belly."

"There was but one crazy Sal," the guy said haughtily. "I am not programmed by ridiculous emotions."

The smell of Auschwitz and Buchenwald hung heavy in the air between them. Bolan had to fight his trigger finger to keep it cool.

"Spring the door," he commanded icily. "And stand aside."

"Forgive me for not understanding that instruction," said the spirit of scientific savagery.

Bolan helped along the understanding. He shot Fat Sal at the arch of heavy thighs with a 240-grain chunk of nonsurgical steel. The guy screamed and grabbed and fell forward onto his knees, clutching hands instantly dyed red, eyes wild with understanding now.

"How's the perspective from down there, Sal?" Bolan asked soberly. "That's just tab one, spelled Bruno." He kicked the guy out of his path, and the turkey doctor fell onto his side, legs still doubled, and lay there grunting.

Bolan found the springset on his own and opened the trick door, steeled himself, then stepped into the Dark Ages.

A chamber of horrors, yeah. Complete with candelabra and sacrificial altar. Low ceiling, dank cement walls, the smell of mold and mildew surpassed only by that other odor — that turkey smell that chased Bolan's dreams down blood river and haunted his wakeful strolls across hell's back acres.

It was a long, narrow room — dominated by the raised surgical table at the center. A series of eight-by-ten glossy photos lined the wall on one side, telling the graphic story of the shredding of a sentient being in grisly, step-by-step detail, each one carefully dated to preserve he continuity of the crime, each one a picture of the same pitiful wreck who now lay upon that dreadful table with the candelabraum at her head.

Crazy Sal sentenced her to fifty days in the chamber.

Fifty enternities was more like it.

A medical device for intravenous feeding stood at the side, connected to the "patient" by a length of clear tubing. It could be used for blood transfusions, as well.

A small table at the other side held hypodermic syringes and vials of liquid.

Oh, how Fat Sal had struggled to keep this one alive and aware. And, God in heaven, what an awareness.

She had no feet and no hands.

One eye socket was empty and ghastly in the candleglow.

The other eye was intact but had no lid with which to shutter reality — a reality helped along by an arrangement of mirrors placed for unavoidable viewing.

She also had no breasts.

Where genital labia had been was now a smooth skin graft with a miniature artificial penis to facilitate urination.

A crude "badge" had been carved into her abdomen, glowing redly with raised scar tissue that had been encouraged rather than inhibited.

Yeah! Step by step and day by grisly day the dismemberment of a once beautiful woman had gone relentlessly forward.

Bolan's guts creaked with this firsthand realization, shaking his faith in the worth of the whole human experience.

And — yes, Toby — she was alive ... breathing with shallow little grunts, defenseless cyclops of an eye roving the face in a mute plea from the bowels of hell itself.

He stood beside her in frozen immobility and groaned, "Canuck, baby — okay, okay."

She tried to speak, but then he saw that she had no tongue and also no teeth — but no speech was really necessary to convey the message from that pleading eye.

He whispered, "Okay. God rest you, Georgette."

The automag roared and the reverberations of that blast sent him reeling out of there.

The lunatic from Hades was still curled into a knot on the floor. He'd managed to get his pants down and was attempting to stanch the flow of blood with his bare hands.

Bolan stepped over him without a second glance and went on to the larger chamber and through to the main basement. He shrugged off the backpack and carefully removed the contents, shaped the plastics and emplaced the timers, then methodically set the explosives for maximum demolition.

He took a last look around, murmured woodenly, "Rest in peace" — and got out of there.

He was onto the grounds and in clearing atmosphere when the charges detonated. The ground beneath him quivered, and the whole flaming wreck collapsed in on itself, like a giant sand castle gone dry and all its props kicked out.

Bolan was free of excess baggage, now — of the mule-pack variety — but loaded even heavier with burdens of the soul.

Two guys ran upon him in the confused jumble of darkness and promptly wished they hadn't. The automag bellowed massive anger from beneath a face carved in granite death — and the man strode on, oblivious to the shouts and screams and tumult behind him.

He walked unseeing past a crouching Toby Ranger at the edge of nowhere. She trotted along beside him, casting anxious glances into that frozen face but saying nothing, asking nothing.

Finally he halted and dropped to his knees, head falling forward to rest upon the heaving chest, the snout of the .44 pressed into the earth.

She knelt beside him, anxiety now overriding temerity, and she cried, "Are you hurt?"

"No," he whispered. "Not where it shows, Toby."

"My God, but you zonked them. I never saw such a ... Mack — what about — what about ... ?"