The "drunkard" still held the skeleton handle that protruded from his target's coat, then he twisted it.

A burning sensation exploded in Hussein's throat. His heart was on fire.

Their faces were close enough to feel each other's breath. The last thing Hussein saw as a crimson supernova flared against black oblivion was the eyes of his executioner. They were icy blue.

Diamond hard.

And totally unforgiving.

Lawrence Wetherby had served in the American intelligence community on four continents, and Rio Santos was by far the best posting.

Leisurely lunches in open-air cafe's had something to do with it. Wetherby appreciated fine food and the passing parade of lush South American pulchritude. He topped up the wineglasses even while he kept a surreptitious eye on the raven-haired beauty being seated in the corner of the cafe.

"Before we discuss the business at hand, we must toast your recent promotion," suggested Marc Goldenberg.

The new station head accepted the Israeli agent's congratulations with a gracious nod.

The two men were about to discuss the fate of the elderly gentleman who sat toying with a veal cutlet at the far end of the restaurant; and sitting there, surrounded by a fragrant backdrop of vivid tropical foliage, Gunther Boehm looked like nothing more than a kindly grandfather. Both Wetherby and Goldenberg knew better. They had to decide what action to take should the authorities refuse the latest request for extradition. Wetherby resisted the impulse to turn for another glance at the man who would soon be at the center of an international controversy, whatever happened.

Goldenberg could keep his eye on Boehm and his young bodyguard.

"It's difficult to believe that that old man was such a monster," remarked the American, draining his second glass of chilled white wine. The Israeli said nothing. He had tracked down other war criminals. None of them had horns and a tail; but with his thin white hair growing wispy over his loose collar and those soft pink jowls, Boehm looked the least harmful of them all.

Goldenberg wondered how a man like that slept at night. As a brilliant young doctor, Boehm had practiced surgery in Buchenwald. His specialty was pain. He had diligently sought ways to relieve the agony of German soldiers wounded on the Russian front. The camps had provided him with an endless supply of guinea pigs for his hideous experiments in stress, cold and tolerance of the nervous system. After the collapse of Hitler's perverted dream, the Israeli knew, Gunther Boehm had escaped via the socalled Vatican pipeline. His expertise had been soon put to work by the secret police of half a dozen South American countries. He was not at all concerned by this new application for his extradition.

Boehm had made many powerful friends and considered himself beyond the reach of any investigators.

The waiter rolled the dessert trolley toward Boehm's table.

Goldenberg saw the color drain from his companion's cheeks. Wetherby's hand gripped the edge of their table, the knuckles white with tension. The Israeli agent had to reach across and hold his forearm. "I... I know him." Wetherby's terrified eyes indicated the tall, broad-shouldered waiter. The words were uttered in a barely audible whisper. "That's Phoenix. John Phoenix! I'll never forget him. What the hell does he think he's..."

"Sit down!" ordered Goldenberg. "Let's not draw any unwelcome attention."

Wetherby was right: he could never forget that man... on restless nights that chilling gaze still haunted his uneasy sleep. Mack Bolan; a.k.a. The Executioner; a.k.a. Colonel John Phoenix — and heaven only knows how many other names — had been the target of a worldwide dragnet, Operation Bad Apple. Wetherby had tried to bring him in from the cold outside Milan. The renegade American had stolen Wetherby's Fiat and left the agent stranded, shoeless, miles from the autostrada.

Wetherby had neither forgotten nor forgiven Phoenix for that. Now what the hell was he doing here in Rio Santos?

The German's bodyguard barely glanced at the waiter. He focused his attention on the covered dish instead.

"Compliments of the house," murmured the waiter as he lifted the cover. The serving plate was bare except for a silenced Terminator — polished steel lying on silver.

The wide-eyed gunman was pawing inside his jacket but not nearly fast enough to match the Executioner, who deftly scooped up the PPS 44. The Silvertip hollowpoint tore through the bodyguard's lapel, shattered his wrist into fragments and then tumbled around to scramble his heart and lungs into red pulp.

Boehm sat slack-jawed at this confrontation with his implacable nemesis. The silencer was only inches from his open mouth when the Executioner squeezed the trigger. The doctor's head snapped back, then he slumped forward lifeless in his seat.

Bolan vaulted the low wall and plunged into the protective greenery before the nearest diner started to scream.

"Come on!" Goldenberg almost had to drag the mesmerized Wetherby away from the grisly scene.

"Let's get out of here before the militia arrive."

"I knew it," stuttered Wetherby. "I always knew it. That man's a born killer..."

Mack Bolan was not a born killer. In fact, he was far from being a soulless, cold-blooded murder machine.

First and foremost, Bolan was a soldier.

The Army had trained him. They had worked him hard, honing his natural skill as a sharpshooter and teaching him every trick in the book for deep penetration recon survival. It was the young recruit's own determination that had given him the cutting edge. His country had set him a task-sniper specialist and he had taken that responsibility seriously.

Mack Bolan did his duty.

And he did it well.

He had shot the enemy neither in cold blood, nor in the heat of anger. He had killed them in the execution of his duty as a soldier. Sergeant Mack Bolan had carried out his orders with consummate skill, efficiency and dedication.

There was blood on his hands. Much of it. And Bolan did not brag about it. But then this dark-haired, serious young man was never given to boasting. He left that to others.

He was not ashamed of what he had done.

He was not proud of it, either.

It simply was.

And Bolan lived with it.

There was another side to his character. His closest associates saw it often enough: it was his regard for women and deep compassion for all the children. They had a nickname for Bolan back in Nam. Sergeant Mercy they had called him.

Like his kill record, this name, too, was earned.

The hard way. By living it.

To kill... and to care. Two sides of the same extraordinary man. Two edges of the lethal blade named Executioner. He would put his own life on the line to save a youngster just as readily as he would terminate the life of a terrorist, a mafioso, a homicidal fanatic, a war criminal or the Cong.

His targets were soldiers, too, of one stripe or another. They chose to serve in the ranks of organized crime or the international conspiracy of indiscriminate terror, which in their lust for power willingly shed the blood of innocents.

Bolan did not sit in judgment of the enemy. He was not their jury. They condemned themselves by their own actions. The Executioner simply meted out the sentence they deserved.

Mack Bolan stood up for all the countless victims who could no longer speak out for themselves.

He answered back with bullets or blades or bare hands. He did what was necessary to blow away the scum.

He did what impotent governments, armies and law enforcement agencies could not, or would not, do themselves — the dirty work they had trained him to perform.