"Striker, this is Stony Man on channel bravo. Do you read?"

For the past seven minutes Hal Brognola had been droning on with that single phrase into the transceiver of the radio set.

April Rose stood behind Hal, trying to ward off the chills that she knew had nothing to do with the temperature in Stony Man Farm's command room.

Hal grunted a curse and tossed the transceiver onto the counter with an angry clatter.

"Damn. We're not getting through at all. He's either deactivated his set or jammed the frequency on the other end."

There was another possibility, of course. But April knew that she didn't have to remind Hal of that other alternative. She tried not to think about it herself.

"The attack may be coming down right now and he's too busy to respond," she said with a confidence that sounded forced even to her own ears. "He'll get back to us."

Hal nodded acknowledgment without turning from the radio. "I just wish we could get through to him."

"You think it's that important, the information about those men he killed at the canal earlier tonight?"

"The fact that they were all Americans — the fact that according to our man in Org Crime they are a direct franchise of what's left of the local Family since Striker's last swing through here — yeah, I think it's plenty important that he know.

"They're Mafia torpedoes. Now where the hell would they fit in? This thing gets screwier and screwier."

April stepped forward and touched feather-light fingertips to the boss's shoulder.

"Hal...."

The fed chuckled mildly. He reached across with his left hand and patted those fingertips.

"I know, April. Cool down and easy does it. But we've got to keep trying."

Then, with his right hand, he brought the transceiver back to his mouth and began repeating over and over again, "Striker, this is Stony Man on channel bravo. Do you read?"

April pulled back and returned to her own chair. She couldn't shake the feeling somewhere deep inside that all hell was breaking loose at this moment, ninety miles north in Potomac.

The feeling was tearing her guts to shreds.

At that moment, the man she cared about was probably fighting for his life.

The big, beautiful man named Mack Bolan who had come into her world and touched her soul and changed that world forever.

A man who had taught her the true meaning of the words sacrifice and concern.

Yes, it was happening in Potomac at this minute.

She could feel it.

But all she could do was sit and wait. And hope. And try not to think about bad things.

Bolan was playing the enemy's game, doing his best to take them by surprise. Keep them guessing.

A quick scan up-range had shown that two of Minera's guard patrol had been hit. One was wounded but returning sporadic fire; the other appeared dead. One looked okay in the scope's greenish tint.

The commandos hadn't sustained any losses yet. The remaining terrorists to Bolan's right were returning the guard patrol's fire.

Team Number Two continued advancing along the left side of the driveway, moving steadily from approximately five hundred yards. These three were still sending occasional rounds toward the pool area and the front of the house, but they hadn't spotted Bolan on his perch atop the cabana.

The big warrior changed all that.

He triggered the M1 and sent a flash grenade zinging into the right flank of the team. The grenade went off with a blinding flare. When Bolan looked up from shielding his eyes to the flash, the first thing he saw was the three men standing out from behind their cover and clawing at scorched eyes, oblivious to everything but their pain.

Bolan readjusted the M1's selector mode and squeezed off a round. That dropped the first of the stunned commandos.

One of the guards got off a shot at that point, and another Iranian grunted and pitched flat onto his face, lying motionless.

Number Three finally got some sense and flattened out of sight.

The guard patrol would have to handle that one, Bolan decided. He had other priorities. Such as the squad advancing along the left side of the driveway.

He saw through the scope from about four hundred yards that two of them were toting the RPG-7. They were in the process of pulling away from him, falling farther away to the left. Their plan seemed to be to cut around the far end of the pool, away from Bolan, and come around in front of the main house via the cobblestone walk.

That was the plan.

Except that Bolan had exposed his position by firing the flash grenade.

In one smooth movement that resembled an acrobatic exercise, the big warrior and the M1 and Uzi were off the cabana roof without benefit of the wooden steps.

Bolan landed gracefully and sped off in the direction of the house, hugging the opposite side of the pool from the commando team, following the path that Minera had taken a few minutes earlier.

He jogged along low and fast and had covered close to ten yards when the RPG-7 belched smoke and noise in the distance.

One second later the cabana on which Bolan had been perched only seconds before exploded in another nightmare of sound and spewing brick and glass.

Bolan continued along the cobblestone walk, skirting the edge of the pool, passing the body of Dr. Nazarour with barely a sideward glance. The body appeared as he had last seen it.

Gunfire continued to echo from inside the house.

The commandos out front would now be continuing on toward the house from their own side of the pool. Bolan's actions and decisions in the next few seconds could well determine the outcome of this fight.

He reached the cabana situated at the end of the pool closest to the house. He had won the race with the terrorists who were advancing from the other side of the swimming pool.

The cabana stood three hundred feet from the house. The sun deck would afford a view of the hit squad's approach, as well as of the side windows of the main house, which was probably their destination.

Bolan knew there were only heartbeats left now until that squad would be moving into view in the moonlight. They must have written him off as dead from the rocket attack on the other cabana.

Strapping the M1 over the shoulder opposite the Uzi, Bolan moved to the area of ground between the cabana and the house, over which the squad would have to approach if Bolan's reading of their strategy was correct.

He was a blurred shadow in the darkness. When he reached a spot midway between house and cabana, he paused and reached into the pouch that had been riding at his left hip. He carefully withdrew the curved metallic body of a portable claymore antipersonnel mine. He positioned the mine on the ground so as to cover the approach of the expected team, pointing it away from the cabana. The object was indistinguishable in the nighttime shadows.

The snap of a twig ten yards off told Bolan how little time he had left. He had gained some seconds by his jog around the pool. But they were still coming. Almost on top of him.

Call it twenty seconds on the outside.

All at once he was aware that the gunfire from inside the house had ceased.

He continued preparing the surprise, unrolling a long strip of pressure-sensitive detonation tape and running it across the width of ground where he expected Yazid's men to pass. Then, with all due care and pressing speed, he connected the wires of the trigger tape to the mine. With seven seconds to spare, he reeled around and got the hell out of there, back to the cabana, taking the wooden steps on the run and sprawling out flat across the roof of the sun deck. He swung the Ml back and around, sighting through the Startron to pinpoint the enemy.