"Come in, Sergeant. Welcome back. Come in and report."

With hands on hips that shapeless fatigues could not disguise, the woman persisted in questioning Bolan.

"A successful mission, Sergeant?"

A live wire, thought Bolan.

Feline fury flashed in her eyes.

"That's classified, lady. Excuse me."

"How many babies did you kill? How many women and old men?"

The words slashed at him like an invisible bayonet, but he kept his face emotionless and his mouth shut.

"I, uh, see you've met Miss Desmond," Colonel Crawford said dryly.

"We haven't been formally introduced," grunted Bolan.

The woman stuck her hand out. "I'm not afraid of a little blood, Sergeant. Jill Desmond. I'm a..."

"Journalist," Bolan finished for her.

His fingers closed over her hand. The gesture was brief, cool.

"Miss Desmond's here for a close-up of the war," the colonel said. "I've told her what they told her in Saigon. Our operations in this area are highly sensitive."

"I'll bet they are," snapped Jill Desmond. "That's why I'm here. I've had enough brass to get this far, Colonel. What makes you think I'll stop now? This is where the real dirty work goes on, out here in the boonies. And I'm not going back until I've seen it for myself, so I can tell the people back home what it's really like. They deserve to know."

"I'm not denying that, Miss Desmond..." the Colonel began.

"You're not trying to cover up the crimes of men like Sergeant Bolan here, are you?" She glanced at Bolan. "There's a reason they call you the Executioner, isn't there, Sergeant?"

Bolan studied the woman's face. She seemed intelligent, but you sure couldn't tell it by the accusations, the lack of understanding, the naivete.

"I'm going to find out the truth about this war." Jill Desmond bristled. "Not the whitewashed official version you people are peddling." She swung around to face the colonel again. "Then I'm going to tell everyone who'll listen just what a barbaric, immoral thing this war really is."

She flicked one more morally outraged glance at Bolan, then stalked out of the Quonset.

"If we were barbaric murderers," Crawford grunted as he and Bolan stepped into his inner office, "I wonder what makes her think she'd be safe?"

"She doesn't know the jungle yet," agreed Bolan. "But she cares. She's all right."

"Yeah, but she makes it harder for us to do our job," the colonel reminded him. "Speaking of which, have a seat and report."

Bone weary, Bolan settled into a chair across the desk from the colonel, who nodded as Bolan related the kills in the village and the firefight in the jungle afterward.

"Good work, son," he said when Bolan finished. The corners of the CO's mouth drew back in a grimace. "You must be damn tired."

"I could use some sleep," said Bolan, shrugging.

"Wish I didn't have to tell you this after a mission like that, but there's no ducking a bad job, I always say."

Bolan waited, trying to ignore a foreboding in his gut.

"Sir?"

"I can't send Jill Desmond back to Saigon, much as I'd like to," Crawford growled. "I've got orders from the top to cooperate with her."

"She must have a lot of pull back home."

"Enough. Anyway, she's here for as long as she wants to stay. And while she's here, I've got to have somebody I can trust keep an eye on her."

Bolan's mouth tightened.

A baby-sitter.

The colonel wanted him to baby-sit the live-wire journalist who had a mad-on for anything military.

"I, uh, could think of better choices for the job than me, sir."

The CO chuckled.

"I'll bet you can, but I can't. The lady doesn't seem to like you, Sergeant, and I don't blame you for not liking her, but if anybody can keep her alive while she's out here, it's you."

"Is that an order, sir?"

"It's an order."

Bolan stood.

"Then I guess I'd better catch up with her and get her locked up somewhere for the night."

"Just don't let her know that she's locked up." Lieutenant Colonel Crawford chuckled. "She was mad enough when I told her I was going to assign someone to keep an eye on her while she's here."

Bolan's mouth quirked.

It might have been a smile. He saluted and started to turn when Crawford stopped him.

"Sergeant, you might tell her what the Viet civilians call you. Sergeant Mercy fits you just as well as the Executioner."

"She wouldn't understand," Bolan said simply.

He reached for the doorknob. It was jerked open before he could grasp it.

"Well, what is it, Corporal?" the colonel barked at the orderly who barreled into the room. "You'd better have a damned good reason for not knocking!"

"It's Miss Desmond, sir," the corporal said, shakily. "The reporter."

"I know who she is. What about her?"

Bolan had that foreboding in his gut again.

"She's taken a jeep, sir. No one expected her to try something like that. It was parked behind the motor pool. They worked on it today. Uh, gave it a tune-up and everything. C Company was supposed to pick it up first thing in the morning."

Crawford slammed his fist on the desk top.

"Damn. What do you mean she stole a jeep?"

The corporal cowered. "She was gone before anybody knew it. She headed west."

"West? Toward Three Click Fork?"

The corporal nodded again.

Bolan sighed as he thought of Three Click Fork, three kilometers from the camp where an old supply road branched north and south.

Where the heaviest concentration of VC activity in the area was reported to be building up.

That was the intel from all the recon patrols.

A bad place for an unarmed, just-off-the-plane reporter who also happened to be a woman.

A terrible place.

"Sergeant?"

Bolan glanced at the colonel and nodded.

"On my way, sir."

Bolan stalked out into the jungle night.

So Jill Desmond wanted to know what war was really all about.

The Executioner hoped she wouldn't find out. The hard way.

Soldiers.

They were all alike, Jill Desmond thought as she piloted the bucking jeep along the road leading away from Cam Lo base camp.

They were like juvenile college boys in a fraternity with their secret handshakes and rituals.

They didn't want to let anybody in on what really happened, least of all an uppity woman who had "no right" to be there.

Well, Lieutenant Colonel Crawford and his bloodthirsty Sergeant Bolan were wrong if they thought they could keep the truth from her.

She was young, yes, but she was also damn good at her job.

She was more than willing to wade through any kind of shit to get the story she was after.

The camp was one kilometer behind her.

The twin beams of the jeep's headlights cut through the curtain of night, revealing the deeply rutted road.

She jerked the wheel savagely and geared down as the vehicle bounced over the crater-pocked roadway. With each depression in the half-paved track the jeep threatened to head into the jungle.

This wasn't any worse than the road she had driven over in the hills of Kentucky when she interviewed the leader of that cult. He had been a little scary with those burning eyes, that long beard, the shotgun in gnarled hands.

Then there had been the Black Panther she had ventured into Watts to find. She had gone to places where a white woman had no business. She had asked the questions nobody asked, and she had survived.

She had flourished.

Guts.

That was all it took. If you had guts, you could go anywhere, do anything.

There were no sounds of war in the jungle night as she drove through its velvet blackness.

She would find the people who lived in this area. She would ask questions. The truth would be told.

The people back home were starting to wake up to what the truth about Vietnam really was. The human suffering. Napalm. The fat cats.