"For weeks now," Toro continued, "this pendejo has recruited gunmen. Omega 7 hides them, but they have a special mission. I believed it was Raoul, but now I see that there is more."

"What mission?" Bolan prodded.

"Key Biscayne."

Something turned over sluggishly in Bolan's gut, but he held himself in check, waiting for Toro to continue.

When the Cuban spoke again his voice was emotionless as he began to spell it out.

"One truck filled with explosives, to blow the causeway, si? Three, four others with the marielistas, weapons. All in position early while the people are asleep."

And Toro did not have to say any more. Mack Bolan had the picture clearly in his mind, and any way he looked at it, it came out as a bloodbath in the streets.

"When do they move?"

"Tomorrow. Dawn."

The warrior felt a headache start to throb behind his eyes and raised one hand briefly to massage his temples, clearing his mind for what lay ahead.

"We've got a lot to do," he said simply.

Toro turned to face him, his features lost in shadow inside the sedan's darkened interior. His deep voice seemed to emerge from a bottomless pit.

"My men are working on Raoul," he said. "I'll have him soon, I think."

Bolan nodded curtly.

"Okay. He's yours. I have some stops to make. We'd better synchronize."

"Agreed."

They spent the next quarter hour laying plans for the approaching battle. It was completely dark by the time they went their different ways. A darkness of the soul as much as anything.

It captured Bolan's killing mood precisely, as he pushed the rental car through Stygian blackness, following the coastline, with the wild, untameable Atlantic on his right-hand side.

In his heart the warrior knew that the only way to drive the darkness back was with a purifying flame, bright and fiercely hot enough to send the cannibals scuttling back underground where they belonged.

He had the fire inside him now, and he was primed to let it out, to strike a spark that might consume Miami in the end, before it burned away to ashes.

The Executioner was carrying his torch into the darkness.

The raid on Key Biscayne made ghoulish sense to Bolan. As a master tactician himself, he could appreciate the plotters' strategic perception. It was a tight plan, well-conceived, immensely practical despite its loony overtones.

Like something from a madman's nightmares, right. But this nightmare was coming true tomorrow in broad daylight.

The fact that it was clearly suicidal for the troops involved meant nothing. The planners would be counting on high casualties, and every man they lost before the final curtain would be one less talking mouth to help police backtrack along the bloody trail of conspiracy. Whatever happened to the shock troops once they were engaged, there would be time enough for them to wreak bloody havoc in the streets before the last of them could be eradicated by a counterforce.

Time enough to orchestrate a massacre, damned right, and throw Miami's affluent society into a screaming panic.

Hell, it was almost perfect.

Bolan did not spare more than a passing thought to motives in the plot. In the end, it mattered little whether Raoul Ornelas was an opportunist seeking ransom for himself, a dedicated rightist striking back somehow at Castro and America, or a turncoat working hand in glove with Cuban agents. Whichever way it cut — a hostage situation or a random massacre — the end result, inevitably, had to be a bloodbath.

Ornelas was committing criminals and addicts, all the human dregs that he could muster, as his front-line troops. There was no way on earth that he could hope to rein them in once they had scented blood. Ornelas had to know that much, and from that grisly certainty, Mack Bolan knew a massacre was what Jose 99 had planned from the beginning.

The DGI and its controllers in the KGB would profit doubly from the holocaust. The chaos, killing, violence — the goals of global terrorism — all of these were ends in themselves, but there were greater potentials there.

Supposing that Ornelas was exposed, revealed in court and through the press as the mastermind of the plot, it would, if handled carefully, reflect upon the anti-Castro movement rather than upon the Communists who hatched the plot. The end result, disgrace for any Cuban exiles who were militant or even vocal in their opposition to the current Havana regime, would bring oppressive crackdowns at the state and federal level, doubling security for Castro at no expense to the Cuban government itself. Castro's chief enemies in the United States would be surveyed, perhaps incarcerated... and years would pass before the anti-Castro movement won back any small degree of visible respectability.

Mack Bolan, at the moment, had no interest in the politics involved. His mind was on the countless lives that would be lost unless he found a way to short-circuit the plan in its initial stages.

Geography and economics helped the terrorists select their target. Key Biscayne's sixty-three hundred affluent residents lived on an island barely four square miles in area. A former U.S. President maintained his winter White House there, but nowadays the majority of tourists headed straight for Bill Baggs Cape Florida State Park, to see the historic lighthouse. And they came in whopping numbers, right.

Key Biscayne connected to the mainland by a single causeway — and its demolition as described by Toro would destroy it, or at least render it impassable for hours, even days. With that route cut, relief would have to come by water or by air... and either way, relief troops would be landing in the face of hostile guns once terrorists controlled the island.

Bolan knew that if the terrorists gained a beachhead on Biscayne, there would be no stopping them before they had a chance to wreak their vengeance on a sleepy populace.

If possible, Bolan and the troops that Toro might be able to recruit had to stop the juggernaut before it started bearing down upon its target.

So far, the Executioner was hampered by a lack of battlefield intel. He did not know the number of his enemies, their firepower or their precise location. Every piece of information that he lacked made it more likely that the small defensive force would fail.

But the very things that made Biscayne a tempting target also worked in Bolan's favor. Using trucks for transport, the invaders were restricted to a single avenue of entry to the island: over Rickenbacker Causeway to Virginia Key, then over Bear Cut Causeway to the killing ground itself on Key Biscayne. With that in mind, Mack Bolan could map out the different approaches to the causeway, narrow down the hostiles' route to half a dozen possibilities.

And then what?

By himself or with Grimaldi flying cover, even with the guns that Toro might be able to recruit, he could not cover all of the approaches with sufficient force to turn an armed brigade around. The roadblock must be inconspicuous enough to slip past the notice of police, yet strong enough to stop the killer convoy cold, without allowing even one of them to reach the target zone.

Clearly, Bolan needed reinforcements in a hurry.

The sudden inspiration struck him, and it was simplicity itself.

Suddenly he knew exactly what he had to do and where to find the reinforcements that he needed. It would require audacity and nerve — two qualities the Executioner possessed in abundance — but if Bolan could pull it off he might be able to bring down two vultures with a single shot.

All he had to do was change identities again in mid-stride, without losing his momentum. Just a simple probe inside the enemy encampment, right.

That, and then get out again intact, with time to spare before he had to meet the final strike on Key Biscayne.