Mack Bolan crouched behind a palm tree at the edge of an open field forty-five minutes north of Miami.

Clad in a snug black-quit, face and hands covered by combat camouflage cosmetics, the big man blended into the shadows. He held a sleek Beretta 93-R, the barrel fitted with a custom silencer, and a .44 Desert Eagle rode at his hip. Black military webbing held spare magazines and a wicked Ka-bar knife for close work. Fragmentation and thermite grenades completed the warrior's weaponry for the upcoming hit. NVD goggles covered his eyes, giving the field a spooky illusion of daylight.

Bolan was here to meet Delmar "Big Deal" Jones, one of the main distributors in the area.

Jones ran roughshod over the street-level dealers and the shooting galleries of the roach-infested slums.

He dealt whatever made money, everything from crack to smack. Anything a buyer could swallow, snort or shoot, Del's boys would be happy to provide. Del was becoming a very rich man.

A Justice Department informant had whispered that the dealer would be restocking tonight, receiving a shipment from a factory located somewhere in the Bahamas.

Bolan's aim was to make sure that the chemical death never hit the streets. Delmar Jones was about to discover that he wasn't such a big deal after all.

This wouldn't be the first time he'd met Jones. Ten days ago the dealer had been in a courtroom, facing charges that ran the gamut from conspiracy to commit murder to possession of an unlicensed firearm.

Bolan had been there at the invitation of Dale Givens, an acquaintance in the district attorney's office who was sympathetic to the warrior's objectives but skeptical of his methods.

"Come down for the trial. You'll enjoy it. Jones is going to go so far down that he'll be lucky to see the sunshine on alternate leap years." The prosecutor had been confident, obviously holding an ace.

The courtroom ritual was very impressive. The judge, a hardjawed man in his fifties, retained an air of solid competence. His mouth was pursed in a sour expression, the product of years of trying to separate the half-truths from the outright lies, of dealing with an unending string of lowlifes and their sometimes equally criminal counselors.

The orderly progression of events, the American flag, the symbols of law and justice all gave Bolan pause. He wondered yet again about the lonely course he had chosen for himself. His enemies accused him of subverting the system he was trying to protect, saying that he was no better than the men he destroyed. They said that if more people did as he did and played the roles of judge, jury and executioner, the fragile fabric of society would collapse into a horror of vengeance and retribution.

Maybe they were right.

Occasionally Bolan worried that he might be on the wrong track; perhaps he should let the law take care of things in its own sweet time. Did his means justify the end?

He didn't have all the answers, but in the final analysis he did know this: he destroyed so that others might live. The people who had faced his judgment had lost any right to live long ago. Bolan was only carrying out the sentence they had written on their own foreheads with the blood of their victims.

The courtroom scene had had one disturbing detail: Delmar Jones hadn't acted like a man who expected to go to prison.

Jones was in his late twenties, and had an arrogant attitude that seeped from his pores. He hadn't bothered to dress to impress. Clothed from head to toes in flamboyant white, Jones dripped heavy gold, with multiple chains at his throat and wrists. A single large ruby shone in his left earlobe. He looked every inch the wealthy thug he was.

He paid no attention to the prosecutor's righteous denunciation of the many crimes he had committed, the sorrow he had sown, the lives he had ruined.

Instead, Jones studied a racing form, doodled on a pad, turned around in his chair to ogle and smile at a couple of beauties among the spectators.

The reason for his confidence became apparent when the prosecution's star witness took the stand, a former lieutenant in Jones's ring. The D.A. expected that the man's testimony would put Jones away for life.

It didn't go down that way.

When on the stand, the pusher changed his story. In a voice almost too low to be heard, he denied everything. He claimed that the confession and the carefully transcribed testimony were lies of his own fabrication, made out of envy for his boss. Delmar Jones was an honest and good patriotic citizen who gave to charity and wouldn't hurt a fly.

A few sarcastic comments in reply from Jones's high-powered attorney and it was all over. The judge, looking as though he had swallowed a quart of lemon juice, had no option. Jones was a free man. His former lieutenant went to jail for perjury.

Before he left, Jones had a few parting words for Givens. "Don't look so surprised, dude. There's no lawyer yet been born who can keep Delmar Jones down. Hey, you want a real job? I can afford you. Why, I've got so many girlfriends that I spend more than your little salary on condoms. Come on, baby." Jones departed with a roar of laughter, his attorney in tow.

Bolan hit the streets to start digging.

Later, Bolan had a word with Givens over Jones's acquittal.

"I don't know what happened, Mack." The attorney had been angry and puzzled, his voice weary with the fatigue of endless sixteen-hour days spent in preparing a case that had vanished in minutes. "He was in a safehouse. He was watched every minute. No one could have gotten to him."

"Somebody obviously did. Anytime more than two people know something, it's only a matter of time before a man as rich and nasty as Jones finds out. The old carrot and stick. Offer some underpd cop fifty grand to carry a message and threaten to tear off his children's heads if he doesn't. How many people can resist that kind of pressure?"

Givens didn't bother to answer. Bolan was right, and there was nothing he could do to change the facts.

He pressed his fists into red-rimmed eyes, rubbing them to try to remove the sting. "My father-in-law has been asking me to join his civil law practice in Maryland. Easy money. Good clients. Short hours. I've said no. Until now."

Bolan didn't say anything. He couldn't give anyone else the motivation to fight when it looked as if it was against his own best interests. It had to come from inside, or all the coaxing and rationalising in the world wasn't worth a damn.

Shell shock didn't only happen in shooting wars. The trenches of downtown Miami had their casualties, too.

Bolan just rested a hand on Givens's shoulder, a salute from one soldier to another, and left.

He had business to take care of.

The business deal would go down any minute now, but Jones wasn't going to like the price the Executioner would make him pay.

A line of three cars was kicking up dust, traveling slowly down the dirt road that ended in the open field where Bolan crouched. The first and last vehicles were inconspicuous American sedans.

The middle car was the Porsche 911 that Jones favored.

Three gunners got out of each sedan to establish a defense perimeter. Jones hadn't lived this long by taking chances. The guards spread out, four making a slow examination of the area around the cars, shining flashlights into the pockets of tangled underbrush. The other two men walked the length of the field, checking for any newly erected posts or wire. The authorities had been using drastic measures of late to try to discourage the dealers from using vacant fields as landing strips. This one was still clean.

Bolan tensed as one of the gunners approached his hiding place, thirty yards from Jones's car. He recognised the silhouette of an Ingram Model 10, a short-barreled machine pistol that could spray 1100 rounds a minute like water from a hose.