"I am unarmed," Rudi pleaded. "You would not shoot an unarmed man."

"You've been watching the wrong movies, guy," Bolan said, and fired into the giant's face a 12-gauge boxcar with death as the freight. Ragged chunks of flesh bloodied the inside of the windshield. Fringe pellets shattered the window of the passenger's door.

"God!" Babette shouted and the van swerved before she got it under control.

Bolan swung around to face the back of the van.

Mako hovered over Tanya, the 9mm Firebird pointed at her chest.

The terrorist toughguy lay sprawled on the floor, his eyes wide open, his neck floppily distorted from being broken by an expert.

Clifford Barnes-Fenwick gripped the dead man's Uzi with a stranglehold as if uncertain who to turn it on.

Udo Ganz remained seated where he'd been, staring blankly through the hole in the floor as the road rushed like rapids beneath the speeding van.

"All right, listen to me," Bolan said. "I'm going to tell you what to do and you're going to do it without question or argument. In about thirty seconds, Babette will stop the van. That will force the van behind us to stop too. I'll stall them long enough for you to tear the hell out of here. They will not be able to follow you."

"You against twelve of them?" Babette protested.

"I'll have her," he replied, nodding at Tanya.

"You fool," Tanya snarled. "We could have made you wealthy. A wealthy idiot."

"The only thing you were going to make me is deceased."

"Why can't we just shoot it out,", the Welshm an boomed. "We could shoot out their tires and keep going. We have guns too."

"Because they have more guns," Bolan said simply. He did not want to tell them that their safe escape was only a mirror corollary to his main mission, which was the total destruction of the Zwilling Horde. No, the Executioner didn't want to escape. "Now stop the van."

Babette hesitated, began pumping the brakes until the van slowed down. When the speedometer showed less than twenty kilometers an hour, she eased it off the road onto the icy shoulder.

Thomas's van followed suit, slowing and pulling off the road and parking twenty yards behind them.

Bolan could see their exhaust pumping into the chilly air.

"Cut the motor," he told Babette.

She turned the motor off but left the key in the ignition. "Udo, you'll have to drive. I'm too nervous. Udo!"

"Of course," he said and climbed forward to the driver's seat. "Okay, they've cut their engine," said Bolan. "Now, I'm going outside to talk. When you think you're ready to go, go! Start her up and drive like hell."

"I'm as handy with a gun as I am with my hands," Mako said quietly.

Bolan was touched by the slender man's subtle offer. He had proven himself a lion of a man already, but his skills would be better used helping the others escape. "I'll bet there's not a whole lot you aren't good at, guy. But this one's a solo."

Mako nodded understanding and gave a look of such sincerity that it expressed more friendship than a dozen speeches.

"Let's go, Sweet Pea," Bolan said, grabbed Tanya under the arm and hoisted her to her feet. "Toss me those clips."

Udo threw Bolan two clips for the H and K. Bolan slipped one into place over the nuzzle and looked back to the man. "You keep the Uzi, you may need it if I don't stop them." He slid open the VW side door and stepped out, pulling Tanya behind him. He looked back into the van at the brave band of athletes and smiled. "Good luck," he said, then slid the door closed with an echoing thud.

He dug the barrel of the H and K into the back of Tanya's skull while guiding her forward with his left hand. "Just stay cool, Commander," he whispered. "You wouldn't like what a couple rounds from this baby would do to your pretty little head."

"The only thing I don't like is your head," she hissed. "Maybe, but right now your head is mine. I have it." He took a careful step, used the corner of the van for cover. "Come on out, Morganslicht," Bolan called. "New deal."

"That's an American phrase, FDR'S New Deal?" Thomas was crazed with uncertainty.

"Yeah, this is going to be just like that."

The side door of the other van slid open and four armed hardguys jumped out, leveled their guns at Bolan. Then the front doors opened, Thomas and Hermann stepped out either side, and remained standing behind the metal doors.

"What happened, Tanya?" Thomas asked.

There was a slight taunting in his voice, like he was pleased to see his sister screw up.

Bolan pressed the gun harder against her skull. "I'll do the talking for now."

"What do you want?" Thomas called.

"A bigger cut for one thing. And a permanent position in your organization. I think Rudi's position might be open." What was taking Udo so long? Now was the time to pull out, while half of them were out of the van. The motor coughed once, caught, and the van lurched forward, squealing against the ice as it shot into the narrow road. Thomas leaped back to his seat to give chase.

"Forget them," Tanya ordered her brother.

"We will have another time. Now we must just regroup and replan." Thomas watched as the van roared down the road, glancing anxiously back and forth between his sister and the disappearing van.

Finally he climbed back out. "I am sorry, Tanya," he said, "but we are too close for that now." He pulled his Luger from his shoulder holster and fired three slugs into his sister's chest.

Bolan shoved her forward at Thomas's first movement, fired a full automatic burst into both tires of the van before diving over the embankment, tucking the H and K close to his chest as he rolled ten feet down the other side into the underbrush and the thick dark forest. "Get him!" Thomas screamed. Ten armed men jumped over the embankment, sliding after the American.

Bolan dodged out from behind a pine tree and caught two of the hardguys as they hit the bottom of the embankment. He sprayed a hailstorm of bullets across their groins, cutting them almost in half at the legs. They collapsed in heaps, their guts steaming as they were exposed to the cold air.

It was time to run, to weave back and forth behind trees, to lure them deeper into the forest. The deeper he went, the thicker the woods and the darker the atmosphere. He became the nightfighter once more, man of stealth and silence and cunning. The terrorists were spreading out farther and farther from one another, making Bolan's strategy inevitable.

He caught their point man all alone from behind, and using his garrote, choked the man until eyes and tongue bulged out of his head. The second man he surprised by silently leaping out from behind a tree, thrusting his stiletto into the startled man's stomach, twisting it until he found the spine. He quietened the dying victim with a suffocating grasp around the face.

Bolan headed deeper into the woods, deeper into the hellground, full tilt. The forest whipping by him stank of moist undergrowth. It was good here for the Executioner.

In some dark spot real soon, he would show the light. The light of the truth that to kill a terrorist is not vengeance or cruelty, it is just common sense.

The public truth.

For, of course, it is the public who is most exposed. He sprinted ahead, cradling the case less G-II in a relaxed midriff sweep.

Its plastic-molded housing was a bizarre even glorious feature among these trees, its loud modern streamlining a brave stab at circumstances already too far gone.

As Bolan soft soled it from pockets of dark places to even gloomier spaces in the steaming woods, the gun was soundless. Every tick and rattle of its engineering was completely baffled by the casing, itself almost weightless in the superb balance of Bolan's flying grip. Gun and man their noise lessness allowed the man the nice advantage of surprise. He heard clues to the positions of his pursuers. Glaring clues, for they were playing a different game. They were snapping a twig or two, calling out, cursing once or twice. Very precise for Bolan. And he was already a football field ahead of them, ready for a stadium performance, listening in as tight as he could get it reaching with the ear as far as a human can and them some to score a victory. That was Bolan's game. He knew the game was on, the minute he saw the hut. Right there in his path. Now victory was inevitable.