Brognola had addressed him as Striker, and Bolan immediately knew something foul was in the wind.

At the mention of his code name, his fresh four-inch wound earned in Algeria smarted as if in alert.

Information had come directly from the Defense Intelligence Agency, but not nearly as specific as Stony Man Farm would have liked except for the timetable. Specifically, it was a now-or-never operation. April and Hal had shown him photographs and filled him in on the few details they knew. Too damn few, and Bolan had complained about it at the time.

But in this business, damn few was sometimes all you got.

So it had to be enough. And this time it was.

Certainly enough to send him packing, still chewing his porterhouse steak as Jack Grimaldi joined him to jet them both to Frankfurt. To stop a "business" meeting that must never take place.

Not if Mack Bolan could help it.

Bolan looked at the two anxious MP'S assigned to him and grimaced. Corporal Philo Tandy was a baby-faced hulk from Tennessee who towered over Bolan like a cement wall. He had told Colonel Phoenix that he still dreamed of parlaying a Creek Bend High School MVP football trophy into an NFL half-back career, after he had paid his dues to Uncle Sam.

Not dumb, Bolan knew, just a mite inexperienced in the ways of the world outside Creek Bend, Tennessee. Not so his partner. Corporal Isaac Cleveland was a skinny, soft-spoken black man from Miami who had taken the trouble to learn German while stationed overseas and was now studying Russian. He was apparently not the kind of man to waste an opportunity: if he stayed in the army, Bolan realized, he would probably end up a general. And considering the mess that Bolan had been sent over to straighten out, the army could use a few more officers like Isaac Cleveland.

Okay, maybe they were not the toughest or most experienced MP'S in the world, but they were the best General Wilson could come up with on such short notice. The general had huffed about security clearances for almost twenty minutes before Bolan had stopped him with a few choice words of his own.

It didn't matter to Bolan anyway. Tandy and Cleveland would do. They would have to.

"Listen close," Bolan snapped briskly, his voice all business. "This is a simple arrest. You've both done that before, right?"

"Yes, sir I", Corporal Tandy barked.

"I will go up the fire escape and block off the window. They cannot get out that way. Then you two go in the front door and arrest them. And keep your guns, aimed and ready. These guys play for keeps." Bolan checked his watch. "I want you through the door at 01.23. That's five minutes from now. Got it?"

Corporal Cleveland checked his watch. "Got it, sir".

"Okay, get moving. Remember, I want them alive. If possible."

"Yes, sir!" Corporal Tandy said.

Corporal Cleveland's eyes flickered with doubt. "Might be difficult, Colonel. What you told us about them... his..."

"If possible, Corporal," Bolan repeated. "If possible".

The two soldiers moved off into the darkness at a trot, dodging the puddles this time. They disappeared around the corner.

Bolan did not hesitate. He ascended the feeble old fire escape, its shaky vibrations rattling up his spine with each step. At the third-floor platform he squatted close to the wall. He pressed his face against the gritty brick. With fingertips spidering along the rough wall, the night warrior silently eased himself to the edge of the dirty hotel window, just far enough for him to see what was going on inside. He did not like what he saw.

Three men in U.S. Army uniforms were sitting around a cheap folding card table. The one with the sergeant's chevrons was the highranker of the three; he was tipped back on his metal folding chair so that it balanced on its two wobbly back legs. The guy's big gut bubbled over his belt in a slab of lard, and a couple of bags of flab sagged down his cheeks into jowls. He was tossing playing cards one at a time across the room into his army cap. Bolan mentally searched the file of photographs stored in his mind since the mission briefing. He soon had the handle to match the face.

"Sergeant Edsel Grendal, pure one hundred percent USDA trash, weight exceeded only by greed," was Brognola's acrid assessment. The other two "soldiers" were at least twenty years younger than Grendal's midforties. One was tall and gangly-looking, even sitting down. A PFC.

He had straight red hair with a stubborn cowlick sticking straight up at the back of his head.

Occasionally he gave it an absent pat, more out of habit than any real expectation it would lay down.

He also had a nasty rash encircling his neck as, if his skin were still too sensitive for shaving. He was shifting a good deal in his chair, blinking with nervousness.

The third man was a corporal, though he looked to be a year or so younger than the redheaded boy, unless you looked closely at the mouth: it was thin and bloodless, twisted into the kind of smug grin seen on a sadistic child setting fire to the neighbor's cat. The guy was slumped forward in his chair, staring at the paper napkin as he methodically shredded it into neat little piles on the table. The hard cruel mouth set in a weak, pasty face made the effect utterly demonic.

In the center of the table were seven or eight .45 M1911AI handguns heaped together; also about two dozen clips of ammo. The young corporal dropped a few flakes of shredded napkin onto the pile of guns and snickered. "Look, Sarge, it's snowing in Germany." Sergeant Grendal saw what the corporal was doing and sighed. Suddenly his meaty hand lashed out across the table and slapped the corporal's cheek in a hard-knuckled backhand.

"What the hell to..." the corporal cried, covering his cheek with both hands. "What'd you do that for, Sarge?" he whined.

Grendal leaned back into his chair again and tossed another card across the room. Ten of hearts.

It dropped neatly into his cap. "You're fuckin' with the merchandise, boy. This ain't no little deal like you're used to makin' with your grunt buddies. This is big business with big bucks, and I don't want no shit-kicking punk like you treating it lightly. Get my meaning, boy?" The corporal stayed sullen, still pressing his hands against a swollen cheek. Two small drops of blood trickled out of a nostril. He smeared them away with the back of his hand.

"I didn't mean nothing."

The sergeant's voice was taunting. "You never do, Billy boy. So just try to sit still and be good like Gary here. Right, Gary?"

The redheaded PFC smiled weakly. "R-right, Sarge," he stammered. Bolan felt rage throb thickly into his brain.

These "soldiers," especially the bloated Sergeant Grendal, they were prepared to deal in the death and terror of innocent victims for nothing more than a handful of paper dollars. Bolan cursed such people even more than the actual terrorists themselves, because cynical bastards of this ilk did not even have a phony political slogan to hide behind. Except "me first". And before his eyes here, they were wearing the uniform of the United States Army. Mack Bolan was aware that to some soldiers the uniform was just an outfit you had to wear, nothing more. But to the Executioner and a few damn good men he knew, the uniform meant a million things more. Symbolic, in a word. It meant you stood for something good and right and you were ready to show the world you'd do anything to protect certain important and selfevident values.

To Bolan it should always be that you could take one look at such a uniform and know that the man or woman in it had a code of honor and justice that would not ever be compromised. And the big guy had seen too many of his buddies spill their guts into the stinking swamps of Indo-China in defense of their uniform, and what it stood for to let scum like this dishonor it. That was going to cost them.