"Charon?" Bolan asked.

"He's here," Voorhis said quickly. "I think he's going to cooperate."

"I'll want to talk to him."

"I'll take care of it." Voorhis seemed happy at the chance to leave the room.

The doctor was taping gauze dressings over the two wounds. Cautiously, Bolan tried flexing the shoulder. It was possible, but it hurt. "You will want to take it easy for some time, sir." The pain had not escaped Dr. Goldstein's notice. "I'm going to immobilize your left arm with a simple sling, to promote healing."

That would be okay, Bolan figured at least until a new mission forced him to go hard again.

"Any bullet wound is serious," the doctor said, looping the sling over Bolan's right shoulder. "You were lucky, sir. Although both the trapezius and pectoral muscles are torn to some extent, there is no organ damage or bone fracture. As a unit, your left arm is entire and operative, but the muscle trauma will decrease your control over the arm and your general mobility as well." The doctor rummaged in a cabinet, came out with a vial of pills. "This is oral Keflex. Take them until they are gone. I'll also prescribe some painkillers."

"No thanks." It had nothing to do with being stoic; Bolan could simply never afford to dull his senses with any drug.

"I see," the doctor said, in tone that indicated he did not.

Bolan slid off the examining table and got his shirt a spare one of his own over his shoulders. "Thanks, Doc."

Dr. Goldstein flashed him a brisk salute.

Voorhis was waiting outside the infirmary. He led Bolan down a long white corridor, around a corner, and to an unmarked door. Bolan could hear the faint whirr of the ventilation that aired this underground London complex.

"Drummond?" Bolan said, palming the doorknob.

"Safe in the hands of MI5," Voorhis said.

"At least safer than he'd be with his Russki pals." Bolan nodded and went into the interrogation room.

Charon was composed, almost relaxed. He listened to what Bolan had to say, and offered neither objection nor defense. He seemed to view his defeat as simply another scientific phenomenon, a curiosity of life. Of course he would cooperate, if it meant the possibility of leniency, he told Bolan. It would be illogical to do otherwise.

Outside in the corridor, Bolan found himself shaking with anger. The bloodless detachment with which both Charon and Drummond seemed to view their treachery was awesome, and at the same time sad. The man who cannot understand treason, Bolan thought, neither can he understand patriotism. And the man without patriotism, without allegiance to the country of which he himself is an important part, is a lonely man indeed. According to the technicality of law, neither man was guilty of a capital crime. According to Mack Bolan's worldview — a worldview forged in contemplation and tempered in terrorist blood — both men were as good as murderers. The mercenary sale of a military or intelligence secret in times of peace can have only one result: to push a precariously balanced world that much closer to war and holocaust.

It was a direct subversion of a carefully created and mutually acceptable system of checks and balances, a subversion that could turn tension into violence.

Bolan had learned again and again that too often the right weapon in the wrong hand added up to bloodshed.

It was the terrorists who pulled the triggers. But it was the Frederick Charons and the Sir Philip Drummonds of the world who put the guns in the jackals hands.

Bolan got out a cigarette and lit a match one-handed. He hoped the smoke would clear the sour taste from his mouth.

Voorhis appeared at the corner of the hallway. "Communication from Washington, Colonel. Follow me, please." The room into which Voorhis led him contained a wooden desk with a chair and nothing else. In the exact center of the desk was a telephone.

Voorhis nodded in its direction and went out, shutting the door behind him.

Bolan picked up the handset. For several seconds there was a hash of electronic squeals and bursts of static, indicating that a scrambler was interfacing with the line. Then a deep familiar voice said, "Striker."

"Go ahead, Hal."

The satellite-transmitted voice of head fed Harold Brognola was thin and tinny, but the anxiety in its tone came through five-by. "What happened?"

"You've already checked that out, Hal," Bolan said patiently.

"Sure. An accident, they said."

"That's what it was. It happens that way in real life sometimes, Hal, no matter how clean you lay it out. I'll be all right. Give it time."

"Sure, Striker," Brognola said quickly. "With Frederick Donald Charon and Sir Philip Drummond neutralized, you're on R and R as of right now." Brognola paused, and the static rose up to fill the silence. But the message in Brognola's tone was as clear as if he had gone on talking. Mack Bolan had not lived this long by betting his life on other men, unless he felt he knew them damned well. But he had bet his life on Hal Brognola more than once, because that man he knew like his own brother. Right now, that knowledge told the wounded warrior what Brognola had not: Time had just run out. R and R was bullshit.

"Something has broken, hasn't it, Hal?"

"What about Charon?" Brognola asked, evading the question.

"He's agreed to talk. The computer boys are debriefing him right now. Aaron should have everything he needs to tap into the DonCo mainframe. The station here will send via scrambled telex within the hour."

"Aaron is standing by," Brognola said. "And he ought to be able to find enough bloody fingerprints in Charon's data banks to put the guy on ice for a long time. That's one leak plugged." Brognola sighed. "And two more are probably springing open as we're talking."

"We'll plug them as we find them, Hal," Bolan replied evenly. This man who had pledged his being to the good fight had long ago accepted the basic facts of life. Sure, the terrorist campaigns comprised a war of containment, a constant battle to beat down the brush fires of armed aggression whenever and wherever they flared. But it was spontaneous combustion, and it would go on forever, or until men no longer tried to dominate other men through intimidation, repression, terror. It was war everlasting, war that might never be won.

But Bolan knew it was worth the fight.

"Something else has broken, Hal," Bolan repeated. "I want to know what it is." Static crackled again, long enough to allow Bolan to get a cigarette lit.

This hesitation was characteristic of the Justice Department Fed. Hal Brognola was no by-the-book bureaucrat by any means, but a lifetime in government service molds a man, for sure, and he had never been entirely comfortable with Mack Bolan's free-lance status. As early as the Miami blitz against the Cosa Nostra, Brognola had extended a clandestine olive branch, what amounted to an official hunting license with the condition that the Executioner answer to, and take orders from, Justice. Bolan had refused. He wanted no sanction; in fact, he plainly acknowledged that by every rule of society he was an outlaw. The cop in Hal Brognola knew this as well.

But the patriot in him knew that Bolan was getting results. The Mafia was falling over like so many ducks in a carnival shooting gallery, and the nation Brognola was sworn to protect was growing stronger daily for the Executioner's efforts.

In the end, Brognola and Bolan struck a compromise. The new war against terrorism was too broad, too awesome, and too great a threat to the future of this globe. No one man could take it on alone, but if one man existed who could spearhead the campaign, that man was Mack Bolan. When the complete backing of the Sensitive Operations Group of the Department of Justice were offered, Bolan accepted.

With conditions.

The Stony Man Farm command complex, nestled in the shadow of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, was Bolan's domain. The Stony Man team — April Rose, Aaron Kurtzman, Able Team, Phoenix Force, and all the rest of them — were his people, personally hand-picked, answerable to no one but him. Bolan would operate as he always had.