The warrior had observed a change in Amy as they drove. She had lost the hunted look, but there was caution in her manner, and he caught her looking suspiciously at him. At their destination, she reluctantly followed him inside and up the dingy stairs, wary of betrayal.

Bolan couldn't fault the lady for her caution. It was overdue, but she was learning.

The hard way, yeah.

And now that she was building up the wall, he would have to find a way to get inside.

The lady turned to find him watching her. Her eyes shifted, glancing toward the single bed, and she forced a little smile.

"Okay, I'm ready."

She was opening her denim shirt, slowly and with resignation. Bolan's voice stopped her at the second button.

"Forget it, Amy."

There was confusion on her face, but she bluffed it out.

"Hey, it's all right," she told him. "I don't expect a free ride."

Bolan shook his head.

"You've paid enough already. Have a seat."

Amy perched herself on a corner of the bed, hands clasped between her knees, looking every bit a little girl as Bolan stood before her. A very frightened little girl, stranded in a woman's body.

It took a moment for the woman-child to find her voice.

"What is it that you want?"

"What do you want?" Bolan countered.

Amy laughed, a bitter sound.

"The only thing I want is out," she told him.

"You've got it," he replied.

"Just like that."

There was no disguising the skepticism in her tone.

Bolan nodded.

"Take it home, Amy."

"Home?" The voice was different, faraway. "That's funny. I used to think the church was home."

She looked up at Bolan, searching his face. He let her run with it.

"You know, I heard Minh the first time at UCLA. It seemed like... I don't know, like he had all the answers. When he left, I went with him."

She put on a little deprecating smile and shrugged.

"School was going nowhere. Anyway, I wanted Minh to notice me. It wasn't hard."

The smile disappeared. She wasn't watching Bolan anymore.

"I was his favorite," she said. "One of them, anyway. He liked me well enough to set me up for certain visitors — the ones Mitch Carter brought around. I got to see and hear things..."

Her voice trailed away into nothing, and Bolan finished for her.

"You saw too much. Minh couldn't afford to let you go."

"He still can't," Amy told him. "Listen, Minh's got an army. He calls them 'elders,' but they're different. Hard. You met some of them tonight."

"How many are there?" Bolan asked.

The lady bit her lip, thoughtful.

"It's hard to say," she answered. "They come and go. I guess thirty... maybe more.''

An army, right.

If her estimate was accurate, Bolan had reduced their number by a third already.

If the estimate was wrong...

But it didn't matter, either way. The warrior had a job to do. He was committed.

"I'm going out for a while," he told her. "You're safe here. Keep the door locked, stay off the telephone." Bolan checked his watch. "I'll be back for you by sunrise."

"What, uh, what if you're not?"

There was a tremor in her voice.

Bolan handed her a card. The number on it would connect her with a telephone cutout arranged by Able Team. Any effort at a trace would terminate the linkup automatically.

"If I'm not here by six o'clock."' he told her, "call that number. They'll be expecting you. Ask for a pickup at the Phoenix nest."

"Phoenix," she repeated. "Like the bird?"

"Close enough."

Bolan let himself out and locked the door. As he hit the stairs, he was already thinking beyond the girl.

Amy was secure if she kept her head and followed his instructions. Whatever happened, she was taken care of.

The Executioner had problems of his own.

Like an army, twenty men or more, armed and ready to defend the Devotees.

"Elders," right. Read "gunners," and you have the makings of a potent hard force at Minh's estate.

Something Amy said was nagging at him. Bolan dredged it up.

They come and go.

But where?

The implications were obvious. Reinforcements. A second force of "elders" Minh could summon up at need. There was no way to estimate their number from the data he possessed.

It was a blind spot, the kind that could get a careless warrior killed.

Mack Bolan was a careful warrior, all the way.

He had been known to push the odds, defy them on occasion, but he never acted out of ignorance. He survived this long by application of a simple formula in dealing with his enemies, the savages.

Identification.

Isolation.

Annihilation.

Simple, sure. Except every step was fraught with peril. Any false move was tantamount to suicide.

The Executioner was many things, but never suicidal. He had come to terms with death, but he didn't search for it.

Bolan needed information, a new handle on his war. With any luck at all, he would get it when he kept his next appointment.

With a mole.

From childhood, Nguyen Van Minh existed in a state of war.

Born on the eve of global conflict, his first memories revolved around the Japanese invasion of his native Indochina. Minh lost a brother in that war, but the greater price of freedom was a restoration of the hated French colonial regime in 1945. Ho Chi Minh, leader of the underground resistance, turned his own Vietminh guerillas on the French without breaking stride, waging a relentless "war of the flea" against the imperial giant.

Minh was thirteen when the French army was beaten at Dien Bien Phu. He was already looking toward the priestly career that devout Buddhist parents selected for him. As a youth in Saigon, he was preoccupied with learning the ritual paths to Nirvana, but he was not entirely ignorant of politics. He noted: the Geneva conference and its call for partition of Vietnam, with reunion under nationwide elections in 1945; betrayal of the conference accords by the southern government of Ngo Dinh Diem and his puppet, Emperor Bao Dai; the steady drift of Ho Chi Minh's northern clique into an orthodox Soviet orbit.

A leader of the nation's Catholic minority, Diem persecuted Buddhists — and anyone else objecting to his venal, nepotistic rule. In 1957, the countryside rose in revolt, and Diem retaliated by escalating tactics of oppression. Firing squads worked overtime, and guillotines mounted on the back of military trucks made the rounds of rural villages, killing real and suspected rebels.

In 1958, Minh's family was caught in a sweep of Binh Hoah province and each member was slain "attempting to escape." At graveside, Minh renounced the priesthood in favor of a personal quest for revenge. He traveled north, across the DMZ, seeking those who possessed the necessary skill and knowledge. He returned in 1960, with others, to organize a fledgling National Liberation Front — the Vietcong.

During his absence, American advisers replaced the French, shoring up Diem's regime with money, medicine, munitions. To Minh, they were all the same — running dogs of Western imperialism, feeding like leeches on the lifeblood of his people.

He swore a private oath to destroy them all.

On his twenty-first birthday, Minh killed his first American.

Standing in the darkness, filled with the righteous anger of his race, he tossed two grenades through the window of a Saigon nightclub and watched the place erupt in flames. Seven people died, but it was the American — a Special Forces captain, he read later — Minh remembered. It was a birthday present to himself.

There were other killings, Americans and Vietnamese alike, every one an enemy of his people. With time, Minh came to appreciate violence for its own sake, an end in itself. He tenaciously pursued his enemies, and found them everywhere.