From a window up in the refinery Bolan gazed on the scene of destruction.

The Tiger hardsite lay in ruins, the air swirling with smoke. By the light of dawn he could see groups of Montagnards going through the rubble.

In the residential section only the guest villa was left standing; everything else had burned or been blown up.

It was a picture of desolation, but desolation with a menace, for somewhere amid those ruins, Bolan's enemy was hiding.

From the directors, Bolan had learned that Liu had left the conference shortly before the battle broke out. It was the last day of the annual meeting, and they were working late. But Liu's servants said their master never showed up, which would indicate he was en route when the fighting started. What happened to him after that, no one knew. None of the soldiers questioned had seen him. All the other directors had stayed put, scared, unarmed, and pathetically easily taken.

To Bolan there could be only one explanation for Liu's disappearance: he must have decided on the spot that the battle was lost. He would have had good reasons, not the least of which was that when the fighting began the enemy was already inside the camp. And having decided all was lost, what would an opium warlord do, lead his troops in a death-defying stand?

Hardly.

He would escape or hide.

Bolan was sure Liu did not escape. The camp had been surrounded from the start by his Montagnards, no helicopter took off, and no secret tunnels running under the perimeter had been discovered.

But he would find Liu. It was his mission.

He realized it was of no consequence where fate might lead a man. If there was evil there, it must be resisted, struggled against, fought to the end.

A place, any place, is only godforsaken if men do nothing — if they do not stand up for what is right. Wherever a man finds himself, all that counts is that he fight for the civilized values he believes in.

To profess principles but not be prepared to back them up is to be without principles.

What matter where you die, what matter if you die — when all that matters is that you fought for the right.

But there are occasions when, as every soldier knows, inaction itself is one's fate. Today Mack Bolan knew better, in his dangerous and deceit-filled new world, the value of discretion, the valor of keeping his distance, of not jumping in before the true root of the atrocity had a chance to reveal itself. As The Executioner, and as Colonel John Phoenix, his heavy fate had become apparent: he must forever hit at the root, the core, of evil itself — go to the very heart of darkness itself, and react sanely to what he found there.

To be sane in a hideously distorted world, shock tilted, ringing with terror, was sanity indeed.

He would face the challenge once again, in his latest return to the ancient hellgrounds of Southeast Asia.

He knew that he was about to confront a revelation of his fate that would challenge his very sanity.

And his response would be inevitable: hit at the heart of the horror, strike the pumping source, even if the writhing heads of the Hydra commit atrocities all around, ignore them at last! Strike only at the heart, dig up the root, hit the final perpetrator.

Mack Samuel Bolan was an old-fashioned warrior, dedicated to his nation and his duty. He took his soldiering seriously. He had no other choice. So to go for the psychic heart every time required tireless energy and a unique skill.

It was in Vietnam that the warrior first honed his skills and found his mission.

As the leader of a deadly penetration team, he ranged at will across the DMZ, teaching Savage Man that any hope of sanctuary in Bolan's kind of everlasting war was a contradiction in terms.

There was only so much that one man could do in Nam, but Bolan did it better and more often. He supremely left his mark upon the enemy and on the land.

In the process, he earned a label that would stick. Sergeant Bolan had become The Executioner, a legendary figure from the Mekong Delta to Hanoi.

There was another side of him, however, and another side to the legend. Even as his marksmanship and cunning built a lethal reputation, other stories circulated through the jungle that told of a different warrior. This warrior risked his life to carry wounded soldiers and civilians through the lines. He liberated captives, often jeopardized his mission to remain behind with stricken comrades.

Among the villagers, the Executioner became known as Sergeant Mercy.

It required a large and special man to carry both names well, and Bolan was equal to the task. He saw no contradiction in his roles; if anything, they were a natural combination, opposite sides of a single coin. Killing the enemy and caring for the innocent were not distinct and separate tasks for Bolan — they were part and parcel of his duty.

An old-fashioned warrior. Having recognized his duty, launched himself upon the long crusade, there could be no turning back.

If his road had developed a new direction, his enemy adopting new and ever more loathsome disguises on the way, Bolan never deviated from his course.

Against the Cong or mafiosi or the Hydra, it was the same crusade.

War everlasting.

And his enemy was the same single enemy, unchanging.

His enemy was the heart of the Hydra, wherein resides pure evil.

In his Asian jungles he had cut a bloody swath through the arteries of that enemy, the ranks of Savage Man, mobs of cannibals who lived for the Hydra. And when his war had shifted to another front, application of the Bolan Effect to an urban combat zone had hugely stunned the Mafia, decimating family after family. Schooled in guerilla warfare, equipped with all the latest lethal hardware, Bolan astounded experts by pulling off a victory against syndicate forces that vastly, absurdly outnumbered him. In his wake, the mighty Mafia was shaken and dispirited, an easy mark for Hal Brognola and his federales.

As for Bolan's other global war, the John Phoenix campaign of justice by fire, there was only one word for it: blitzkrieg — lightning war. Mobility and firepower were the methods.

Now Bolan faced dramatic new focus as his life term of Executioner brought him closer and closer to the single hellheart of Savage Man.

Perilous territory, full of horror. At first he would be forced to be a helpless witness to it.

And then he would strike at the heart.

Meanwhile there was no rest, no surcease. All around flowed more arteries of the enemy; on this day Mack Bolan's enemies were legion. But he had slaughtered thousands since the birthing of his war, and although a dozen more rose to take the place of every fallen savage, he had stood his ground and with grim determination fought against the tide. There was no question that he would prevail.

He had a tactic as powerful as any weapon. This weapon was one of perception and timing, not caliber or trajectory.

Once he had been an outlaw. Now, for a time at least, he was sanctioned in his work. The secret weapon was that Bolan was not a fixed object.

He did not sit like a landmark in one spot, waiting for the natural forces to find him and wear him down.

He would never become a testament to entropy, to the destructive power.

As a new day dawned, Bolan understood profoundly how much he was not like these tropical lands of the Far East, worn and worked on beyond recognition by time and war.

At the window in the refinery, Mack Bolan looked out and meditated on the gray mist rolling off the low surrounding hills, down toward the thicker trees of the flatlands.

Like the mist, he would prevail by adapting his form. He would roll over any obstacle in his path.