The chief knew he'd never make it in one piece. The American would cut him in two.

"Get back down here!" Bolan ordered gruffly. "Now!" He handed the gun to Danny. "Watch that trickster." Then he turned to a box in the back and opened the lid, pulling out what he'd claimed to the customs officer was a metal detector.

Danny knew now that he hadn't lied exactly — he just hadn't told the whole truth.

The device was a metal detector of sorts: a highly efficient, compact unit for sweeping mines. Bolan tested the ground alongside the Hog before stepping down. He was waiting in front of the Jeep when the crafty nomad finally got back to them. "One more false move and she's going to pull the trigger, you understand?"

The man nodded vigorously.

"Now I'm going ahead to sweep a way clear for the Jeep."

Another jerk of his head.

"I'll call out where they are... and you, my friend," said Bolan, handing him a wooden stake, "are going to dig them up."

The bedu's throat bobbed with a terrified swallow.

Bolan moved methodically upward, listening through the lightweight headset and watching the gauge as he swung the detector in a smooth short arc.

Twelve paces out and he stopped, pointing to the ground a few inches from his left boot. "Okay, do it!"

The man, trying to stop his hands from shaking, prodded gingerly at the soil.

"Don't try anything stupid," Bolan snarled as he continued to walk up the slope, sweeping a pattern wide enough to take the Hog through safely.

Danny's brow and upper lip were beaded with perspiration and it wasn't just from the early-morning sun that was beginning to arc behind them. She held her breath each time Mack paused, his feet remaining stock-still, as he marked the location of the next mine.

It took nearly fifty minutes to clear a way to the spot where the big block cut the passage to half. Bolan eyed the boulder, the slope beneath and all the other details as he contemplated turning things to his advantage. Prodding the man in the back, they retraced their footsteps to the Hog.

"Okay, Danny, cross your fingers and hope we did it right." Keeping his eye fixed on the critical path, Bolan gunned the motor and the Jeep shot up the slope. He got out of the vehicle, indicating the double-crossing native should do the same. Then he turned to Danny and said, "Take the Hog almost to the top, but stay below the skyline. Then cover it with the net and wait for me there."

"What are you going to do?"

Bolan picked up the silenced Uzi and pointed at the prisoner. "He's going to put all those mines back in the sand again, but in different places."

Danica Jones was not a smoker, not anymore. She'd quit a long time ago. But right at this moment she would gladly have lit up a cigarette. The unexpected violence of last night and the strain of the past hour had left her with the shakes inside. But I asked for it, Danny reminded herself, I wanted it this way... being close to death is the cost of feeling so fully alive.

It was another half hour before Bolan reappeared. He marched up the hill alone. For a minute she thought he might have let that wily bastard go, even though she knew in her heart what must have happened back there. "He should have kept his word to us," was all the explanation Bolan offered her. "He swore on his honor."

Together they walked to the top of the slope, crouching low as they slipped over the ridge. They had a panoramic view of Khurabi's Forbidden Zone stretched out below them.

The actual distance down the far side of the Jebel Kharg was greater than what they'd climbed up to get here, but the slope descended less steeply.

Camels, traders and their miserable human cargo of slaves had, over so many years, beaten a track that was easy to follow. It cut across the hillside diagonally, disappearing through a forest of sandstone boulders, then dipped through a ravine leading all the way down to the desert floor beyond.

Sand, millions of tons of it blown from the Empty Quarter, washed up here like rolling waves upon ancient shores of the Jebel Kharg. Bolan said nothing as he searched the terrain sector by sector. Far away to their right, sunlight twinkled briefly on the windshield of a car or truck using Khurabi's only interior highway; but even through his powerful binoculars it was nothing more than a momentary flash. The road, which Grimaldi had picked as the only feasible landing site, squeezed past the terminal shoulder of the jebel and the oil fields ranged along the frontier. It was a natural bottleneck that would be watched right and day.

Bolan knew he was right to have chosen the more difficult track into this inaccessible region, despite the problems they had run into on the way.

He scanned left slowly, looking for any movement or sign of the patrols that Hassan was bound to have dispatched. The desert lay absolutely still, waiting to be hammered by the full force of the midday sun.

Finally, slightly to the left of their present position, he focused on a small irregularity poking up amid the distant dunes. "Take a look over there," he told Danny, handing her the field glasses.

"Hagadan? Is that the fortress?"

"It's in the right spot. How far off would you say that is?"

"Oh, twenty miles at least." Bolan dusted himself off. "Let's get going. We've got a lot of ground to cover."

Only when she turned back, squinting into the harsh glare, did Danny fully appreciate the wisdom of Bolan's wilderness route to Hagadan. From this angle the sun would be rising behind them all morning. Prying eyes would not choose to look directly along their line of approach.

Bolan stripped off the camouflage covering and left Danny to repack it. He rearranged the gear in the back of the Hog, opening the long wooden crate and lifting out the M-60.

Chandler had engineered a special mount for the machine gun. It took Bolan only a few moments to slot the support column into its base. Danny wondered what that nosy customs officer would have said... there was no disguising their intentions now: they were going off to war.

They were halfway down the far side of the jebel when Bolan started talking. "I won't kill a man merely because of what he believes in. Even if I think he's misguided, perverse or just plain mad, that's his affair." The suddenness with which Bolan launched into these reflections of his past life certainly surprised Danica Jones. But she remained silent. "But when a person, an organization or even a country starts to cause havoc in the name of those beliefs — when they torture anyone who doesn't happen to agree with them, maim the children, murder the innocent — that's when they become the enemies of decency, order and humanity. And that's when they become my enemies, too."

Danny listened carefully. He did not seem to be offering her any excuses or simply trying to justify what had happened in the past few hours; rather she sensed that he needed to paint an overall picture for her. He was letting her know more precisely what she was involved in. And why he tried to help others despite the incredible risks to his own life.

"I will defend myself, those I care for and the values of freedom — I'll defend them to the death!" This was not a hollow boast but a plain statement of fact. "I took no pleasure in killing those guys back there. I admire the bedu. But that man and his sons were double-crossing thieves who intended to murder us. Like I said — he called the play and made it 'them or us.'" He paused to navigate between two jagged outcrops. "I didn't come here to Khurabi because I hate Islam and think it should be put down. I don't. There are many things worthy of deep and abiding respect in the Muslim world. The Koran sets out a harsh code not one that I could easily live by — but if a man wishes to follow it in peace, okay, then I wish him luck..." Bolan's eyes had a distant look. Was he scanning for trouble ahead of them? Or was he remembering another time, another place, another battle? "Some of the bravest men I ever had the privilege of fighting alongside were Tarik Khan and his mujahedeen in the mountains of Afghanistan. No, I won't go on a mission, knowing that men will probably die, just because they worship Allah."