At first he didn't notice the light, only saw it peripherally as he moved past, then it registered: a thin line of light beneath a tall door leading to the basement.

His gloved hand turned the knob slowly.

A steep staircase descended into shadow.

He took the steps one at a time, breathing slowly.

The basement was well furnished. At the end nearest him was a bar that could easily accommodate twenty or thirty people.

He heard sounds from behind a half-open door between the bar and where he stood. He moved toward it, negotiating a pool table, sliding the night vision goggles up, knowing he had found the senator alone down here in his study while Mrs. Dutton and their teenage daughter slept somewhere upstairs.

Good, thought Bolan.

He eased up to that half-open door to look inside.

The senator was seated in an overstuffed armchair, nursing a drink, his back to Bolan. The politician's attention was riveted to a TV screen that was playing a videotape from the VCR atop the set.

Bolan detected a faint, wheezing sound, and it took him a second to realize what it was.

The senator was breathing heavily, thinking he was alone, entranced by what was on the screen.

Bolan saw it, too.

The image of young girls, no older than eight or ten, looking frightened, terrified by someone off camera. The children were parading naked before the camera as if they were in a beauty contest...

Bolan had to restrain himself from emptying Big Thunder into the man's head. Disgust, rage and bile rose in the soldier's throat, but he kept his hands empty.

The senator was so transfixed by the images on celluloid that he was not aware of the Bolan presence until he touched the Off button of the unit's remote control device, making the young girls disappear to a pinprick of light, then nothing.

The senator saw Bolan and half jumped out of his chair, almost knocking over the drink on a small table next to his chair. Bolan came around to stand before him, clamping a big hand over Dutton's face and pushing him roughly backward into the chair.

Dutton's eyes bulged fearfully as Bolan brought his hand away from the other man's mouth.

"Sound an alarm and I'll kill you right now."

The senator looked as if he didn't need to be told twice. He stared up at Bolan, face white and shaking, his hands gripping the arms of the chair.

"Wh-what do you want?"

"You've got some taste in movies, Senator. Where did you get that tape?"

Too quickly, Dutton said, "I rented it."

"Right. Most video places have tapes like that."

"A friend gave it to me."

"What's his name?"

"I don't remember."

Bolan flared with anger. He backhanded Dutton across the mouth hard enough to draw blood, pop out two of the senator's pearly capped front teeth and rock the chair, but because Bolan loomed over him, Dutton remained seated.

He had no choice.

"I should've known I wouldn't get a straight answer out of a politician the first time out," Bolan seethed. "Let's try it again, Senator. The big question. Where are the children?"

"Don't... know what you're talking... about," Dutton answered stubbornly, wiping away the blood of his split lip with his sleeve. "What kids?"

"I know all the rest of it now," Bolan told him. "I know about Wallace. He supplied the Parellis with the children. And I know the Parellis are shipping out a cargo of those children tonight. I'd be curious to know, Senator, how it feels to have your soul so dead that you can allow yourself to deal in human lives and the young like that, you goddamn monster, but right now I don't have the time. I want to know where that shipment is leaving from. You're going to tell me."

Dutton shook his head, his blood continuing to leak out onto his expensive shirtfront.

"Nothing... nothing I can tell you..."

Bolan shook his head.

"You're being loyal to the wrong people, Senator. Wallace knew about it and he's dead. So is Randy Owens."

"Wallace... dead?"

"They supplied you with some of those children from time to time, didn't they, Senator? That was part of their hold on you."

Dutton looked into Bolan's eyes and seemed to see mirrored there what Bolan saw. The senator sank deeper into the chair, exhaled a heavy sigh.

"I am a monster," he nodded wearily. "You... can't know what it's like." He seemed to begin deflating before Bolan's eyes. "The girls... I never hurt them... didn't want to hurt anybody... I'm like two men... I love my wife, my daughter, dearly... I'm sick, Bolan... that's what the Parellis are really blackmailing me with... They're less than human ... and God help me, so am I..."

"Where do they have the shipment?" Bolan asked in a soft voice.

Dutton looked up at Bolan with tears in his eyes.

"Trucking company... Skokie..." He rattled off a street address. "David Parelli owns the place."

"What time are they scheduled to leave?"

"Supposed to be... midnight."

Bolan glanced at his watch.

11:20.

Forty minutes to midnight.

"Bolan... wh-what are you going to do?" Dutton asked in a halting whisper.

"I'm here to collect your tab, Senator."

The soldier watched as the politician's hand began to move slowly toward a drawer in the small end table.

Good, thought Bolan, he's going for hardware. It'll make the fight even fairer. Because the rage that coursed through the warrior made him realize that he would have felt no remorse at choking the senator to death with bare hands right where he sat. The man was too dirty to let him live.

But no, let the scum try to save his life.

Dutton's hand was almost out of the drawer now, and Bolan saw the unmistakable shape of a small handgun.

Far enough.

The sleek Beretta filled Bolan's fist and a single discreet chug echoed in the basement's silence as a 9 mm stinger pinned the politician against the armchair.

Bolan turned to the VCR that sat on top of the TV set.

He ejected the child porn tape from the machine, then turned around to Dutton's lifeless body and dropped the foul video on the dead man's chest.

He left the room, noiselessly retracing his way out of the house, briefly recalling that he had wondered, after his first visit with Dutton at that fund-raising dinner earlier tonight, if he was not going soft when he had let the senator off the hook. But then, Bolan realized now, he had been in the process of putting the picture puzzle together.

No, the Executioner was not going soft.

He took as much satisfaction as ever in eliminating lice like Senator Mark Dutton.

He felt sorry for the senator's wife and daughter having to find the body in the morning. They were victims of the rottenness of Dutton's soul. But so were the children Bolan had to rescue before David Parelli and his mother sent them off to whatever unspeakable fate awaited this shipment of helpless human cargo. These were the victims whose welfare drove Bolan. The children.

And the puzzle of a cop named Griff, a man tormented by inner devils, who figured into this somehow.

And, of course, the woman.

Lana.

Where was she?

Griff's and Lana's whereabouts were the only puzzles left on this night of sudden death.

Bolan returned to the Camaro and gunned it away from the curb, U-turning to head west, toward the next suburb over, Skokie, and the address Dutton had given him.

It was time for the children to be saved and the Parellis to pay for their sins, past and present.

And time had almost run out for those kids being shipped from that Skokie trucking company at midnight.

Bolan wondered about a cop who could be friend or foe.

A kidnapped woman, in danger.

Missing children.

The time bomb that had been ticking beneath Chicago was about to explode with awesome fury.