He could wait.

Suddenly a blinding flash lit up the area where the man had fallen. Scoping in on the dying glow, Bolan saw a hole torn in the heavy wire fence. Loose earth darkened the snow on both sides. The guy had used a grenade to tear an escape route through the wire.

In the distance, Bolan heard the dull whumping of the rotor blades of a chopper. It grew steadily louder. Probably a routine patrol, but the Executioner knew he had to move fast.

"Come on, damn it," Bolan whispered, urging the guy to move. If he didn't get the man before the chopper patrol got there, he might not get him at all. The big guy couldn't afford to be captured on restricted property. He couldn't afford to be captured at all. And he couldn't shoot at the patrol. They were just men doing their jobs. Bolan was simply giving them some help they didn't know they needed, but he didn't have time to explain that to them.

The chopper was coming closer. It was flying low, following the fence. Twin searchlights speared out, dancing along the security perimeter. His guy would likely stay put until the chopper passed, unless the patrol spotted the hole in the fence and came down to check it out. And they were getting closer.

Boring into the scope, Bolan counted. If the guy didn't move by the count of ten, he'd have to risk it.

Eight.

Nine.

Ten.

Bolan fired a shot into the muddy hole at the base of the ruptured fence. He was up and running, zigzagging to keep the guy off-balance. The footing was treacherous, and Bolan had played right into the guy's hands. The first burst from his SMG had sprayed wildly, the second narrowly missed. He knew the guy was expecting him to dive. But the hell with that.

Bolan knew his target would be through the fence and gone before he stopped sliding. The Executioner dropped to one knee and sighted on the hole just as the guy began to struggle up the muddy bank toward the safety beyond the fence.

The guy skidded as he tried to get up the slippery bank. If he fell and landed on the pack, the explosives would likely blow. The guy would be gone, sure, but Bolan would be locked in.

Tight. The chopper would call for backup, and the place would crawl with security. Bolan aimed high, a head shot. It was risky, but he had no choice. He waited until the man reached the fence and then he squeezed the trigger. The guy lost his head as the big Weatherby's boom rolled into the night. The chopper was only five hundred yards away now. Bolan knew they couldn't have heard the shot, but there was no way they'd miss the busted fence.

Or the large body plugging the hole.

Bending low, and sprinting, Mack Bolan reached the fence. The chopper was hovering, both searchlights focused on the same spot. They had seen something.

Or someone. Bolan didn't know. It bought him some time, and that was all that mattered. The chopper's engine roared, and it started to climb. The searchlights went out just as he stepped through the fence.

He paused long enough to kick some snow over the headless corpse and loose earth. Grabbing some scorched wire torn loose by the blast, he pulled the two ends of the fence together. It wasn't great, but it just might give him extra time.

The chopper was hovering about three hundred yards up the fence. As he ran into the trees outside the plant, he heard the engine roar. The searchlights snapped back on. A burst of automatic weapon fire turned them right off again.

Permanently. The engine sputtered, roared and died altogether. Spinning wildly, the chopper plunged behind the trees. Whoever it was the chopper had flushed obviously didn't want to be caught.

Any more than Mack Bolan did.

The darkness ruptured, and tongues of orange flame climbed above the trees. It was too late to help the soldiers in the chopper. But not too late to nail the ones who were responsible.

Bolan jogged through the snow, unzipping his whites as he ran. The Weatherby was nearly empty, and he didn't have time to reload. Pulling his .44 AutoMag free, he ran toward the flames.

Some of the trees were already burning, and heavy smoke from the chopper fuel billowed into the sky. Through the glare that filled the cockpit, he could make out the bodies. Then the swirling smoke closed in, and the chopper was obscured for good. A hundred yards from the holocaust, Bolan saw a small white 4xbled, just off the service road that ran along the outside of the fence. Two men, armed with SMG's, were rushing toward it, and toward Mack Bolan. Toward certain death.

The men had nearly reached the 4xbled. They were laughing. Laughing as if the burning wreck of the chopper was nothing more than a holiday bonfire.

Bolan reached the rear of the 4xbled just as his quarry reached the front. He stepped quickly to the right, his AutoMag locked in both hands. As the passenger door opened, Bolan fired once, blasting bits of bone and brain right through the mud-streaked window glass. The driver didn't have time to react. Bolan squeezed gently, almost tenderly, and Big Thunder bucked once. And again.

Then Mack Bolan was gone, as suddenly as he had come. There was still too much work to be done.

The office was tastefully appointed. And anonymous. Hal Brognola didn't much care for its lavishness and was obviously ill at case in the borrowed surroundings. Brognola chewed on his cigar as he paced before the large picture window.

Outside, the snow was getting heavier, and Bolan was already two hours late.

Idaho was a state the Fed rarely visited.

If he had his way, he wouldn't be coming back.

Sure, the mountain view was gorgeous. But he was used to buildings, pavement, the sound of traffic. It was so damn quiet here that he could hear his heart beat.

Brognola knew the man they called the Executioner better than anyone else. They weren't exactly friends, but then Mack Bolan probably didn't have any friends. Hell, the man didn't even have a family except for his younger brother, Johnny. Friends were a luxury for a man in Bolan's line of work. His years in Vietnam and his subsequent intelligence work had created a network of sources, allies, snitches and comrades. But not friends. Brognola knew he was the closest thing to a friend Bolan would ever have.

At times it bothered him that he never socialized with Mack. But Brognola knew that the Executioner could not afford to let down his guard at any time.

Too many people wanted his ass. Badly.

Brognola sat down and propped his feet up on the oak desk in front of him. He reached forward and put the cigar down in the massive glass ashtray before returning the chair to an upright position. He started poring over the sheaves of papers in a dozen file folders stacked in one corner of the desk.

Each one bore a small brightly colored label on its raised tab, and each was stamped SECRET in the no-bullshit kind of lettering preferred by guys who were deadly serious about their line of work. Without exception, the colored label bore the name of an American nuclear installation. The folders were on loan from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and only one other person knew they were in Brognola's hands. That man had refused to part with the papers at first. He relented only when Brognola had sworn to return the documents within forty-eight hours. Uncopied. And unaltered.

And Brognola didn't blame the guy, once he got a look at the files. Not a bit. More megatonnage was sitting right there in those folders than had been dropped on Hiroshima. And Nagasaki. The intel was that explosive.

Critical, actually. And right now Brognola could barely contain his anxiety, waiting for Bolan to report back on a related piece of intelligence the Fed had received that morning. Each folder laid out, in painful detail, recent nuclear accidents. What was clear, and what the files proved beyond reasonable doubt, was that the "events," as they were tidily called by the NRC, were no accidents. None of them. This morning's information concerned an incident that had not yet happened, and if Bolan got there in time, would never happen.