"Thanks," Bolan said dryly.

Edwards went out, tagged by Briggs.

Based on what Toby had told him, Bolan had come into this on-the-edge soft penetration armed with a few knowns. Known: Edwards had a breakfast meeting with four bad-egg agents from the Red side of the fence. Known: Edwards's guard contingent at this softsite was four or five very tough men. Known: a computer terminal, phone-linked to the mainframe at Wheelus and manned by a technician, was located in one of the second-story rooms. Known: communication with Wheelus was maintained by land-line and two-way radio both.

From the knowns had come the assumptions.

Assumption: Edwards was hardly going to invite Bolan to join the breakfast meeting. Assumption: Bolan would be guarded, and guarded well.

From all of that, Bolan had fashioned his plan.

The framework went by the numbers, but the fleshing out allowed for the likely necessity of playing by the ear at some point.

The difficulty came from the mission's dual goals ( neutralize Edwards, and wipe out his Wheelus base. To accomplish both, without one site tipping off the other as soon as the play began, was where the numbers got sticky.

Bolan would almost have to be in two places at once.

That was impossible. But many times in the past when he had faced the impossible, Bolan had simply substituted the improbable.

"Let's go, Bryant," Boyd, the carrot top, said. He stood, picked up Bolan's Beretta, and stuck it in the front of his belt.

"Where we going?"

"Just follow me."

Two doors down the hall, Boyd unlocked a door and let Bolan precede him and Whiston in.

The Old World elegance of the villa ended at the threshold. The room was windowless, painted all white. Louvered fluorescent light fixtures were set into the ceiling; in opposite corners video cameras behind wire-mesh cages swept the entire room. The only furniture was a plain wooden table and four straight-backed wooden chairs. The door they came through was nearly a foot thick and whispered precisely shut; Bolan assumed it, and the rest of the room, was soundproof.

It was a multipurpose room, and none of its purpose had much to do with the gentility radiated by the rest of the house. This space was built for imprisonment, interrogation, isolation, and torture, if it came to that. Whiston took one of the chairs, set it next to the door, and folded his long frame to straddle it backward. Boyd gestured Bolan toward one of the others.

"I'm not so sure I like the way this is going," Bolan said. He put on a cocky grin and let a wash of fear show through it. "I guess I'll be running along."

"What is this, amateur hour?" Boyd said.

Whiston snorted.

Bolan lit a cigarette with a Zippo lighter.

"So," he said through a cloud of smoke. "You boys like your work?"

"Nosmoking."

"Is that so?" Bolan said, still cocky.

"Look," Boyd said reasonably. "The ventilation in here is lousy."

"So let's go someplace else."

Boyd leaned across the table, both palms flat on it. "Listen, Bryant."

Bolan held his right arm straight out from the side, let the butt drop to the white floor, all the while staring defiantly into Boyd's gaze.

"That's it, smart guy..."

"Okay, okay," Bolan said quickly. He bent under the table after the butt. He swept up the leg of the twill slacks with his left hand, and the little C.O.P. .357 Magnum leaped from the ankle holster into his good right.

Boyd was sharp enough to catch the import of the motion and realize he was in a vulnerable position in the same instant. Instead of jumping back, he put his weight into the table, tried to topple it on Bolan. Bolan ducked under it, hit the redheaded hardman in the knees.

Boyd took a step back, blocking out Whiston, but did not go down. The muzzle of his Colt .45 cleared leather.

Bolan shot him in the chest at a range of three feet.

The explosion of the heavy-caliber round in the soundproof room was loud enough to be painful but not as painful as the slug. Boyd bucked into the air, spun half around to show a ragged exit wound in the middle of his backbone, nearly crashed into Whiston.

Straddling the chair had not been a good idea. The second hardman learned that a moment too late and took the lesson to eternity with him. He was trying to draw, stand, and avoid Boyd's body all at once, and he had finished none of the motions when the C.O.P. boomed again and most of his chin and jaw caved into his face as he flew off the chair, all arms and long legs.

Bolan got to his feet, not without pain. As he had rolled, a wrenching bolt had tormented his left shoulder and chest. He could feel wetness seeping into the fresh compress he had applied when he dressed in the Bryant camouflage. With much more punishment he would not be able to control the arm at all.

He retrieved the silenced Beretta from Boyd's belt, wiping flecks of blood off its butt on the dead man's blouse. The 92So went back where it belonged. From Boyd's trouser pocket he took the key to the white room. As he straightened, someone knocked on the door.

Bolan palmed the little .357 inside his jacket pocket, then eased open the door a crack. A young Arab in some kind of servant uniform was holding a tray with three cups, a coffeepot, and a covered dish. "He say bring up breakfast." His accent was thick, and his tone seemed sullen, as if he resented the job or any other.

But neither his attitude nor the fact he was Arab made him a terrorist. He could have been just what he looked like: a servant who'd had a fight with his wife that morning before coming to work.

Bolan was not about to harm the guy on suspicion ( but he couldn't let him run loose either.

Bolan opened the door wide enough to slip through.

"In there," he told the guy. The Arab scowled and went past him into the white room. The door sighed shut in time to cut off the crash of the tray hitting the floor, and the guy's strangled gasp of fear and surprise. Bolan locked the door, pocketed the key, and moved on down the hall. There were other keys on Boyd's ring, but Bolan did not waste time trying them. The Beretta whispered, and wood cracked. Holding the silenced gun up and ready, Bolan put the flat of his foot against the door at the far end of the hall from Edwards's office.

The room was a bedroom, a guest room from the unoccupied looks of it. Bolan waited a moment, every sense alert, then crossed past a door opening into a bathroom, and on to a glass-and-lattice door.

This one was unlocked. Bolan stepped out onto a balcony facing off the rear corner of the building.

Below him, the back of the villa's grounds continued the Old World European theme. There was a circular formal garden, cut into fourths by paths that led to a gazebo at its center. The gazebo was surrounded by a shallow moat that served as a fish pond; delicately arched foot-bridges connected it with the paths.

To maintain this landscaping, to pipe in the desalinated water-precious as wine in this country needed for irrigation would be fabulously expensive. It was yet another emblem of Edwards's success at his chosen profession. The profession of betrayal.

Now, the bill for all his lovely things was going to come due. Bolan quick scanned the grounds, but there was no one out yet at this early hour. Above, at the corner of the house, was a junction box where electric and telephone wires, mostly hidden along their path by the upper branches of strategically planted trees, came into the villa.

From his inside pocket Bolan took a foil-wrapped rectangle the size and shape of a pack of cigarettes. Inside was a block of plastique explosive into which a mechanical spring-wound clock mechanism had been pre-embedded. He made it up on top of the balcony railing, holding the electric conduit for balance, keeping his left arm as close to his injured side as possible. But when he tried to reach up to place the plastique in position, even though he used his right arm, the wound screamed white-hot pain in protest. His mobility was deteriorating rapidly. The right was supposed to be unaffected, but perhaps the muscle tear had worsened under all the activity. The arm was extended only three-quarters of full, but that seemed to be its limit.