It was almost dawn.

The 125-foot yacht, ghostly silent, rode the calm surface of Exuma Cay, 230 nautical miles southeast of Miami. The smoothness of the water was like dark glass.

It did not look to be a scene just minutes short of shattering into hellfire and destruction.

But it was.

The big man broke the water's surface fifteen feet below the "pleasure craft's" stern.

He moved soundlessly from stern to bow, then wrapped hands and ankles around the heavy chain of the boat's anchor line. The dripping of the water was the first sound he had made.

Bolan moved as one with the darkness. He hoisted himself upward, rapidly.

The nightscorcher was outfitted for a hard, fast hit. At his right hip rode the formidable .44 AutoMag, "Big Thunder." Beneath his left arm was the 9mm Beretta Brigadier equipped with a silencer of Bolan's own design. Both weapons were protected by snap-sealed waterproof holsters. Hardpunch munitions rode dry in the waterproof pouch at his left hip. The slit pockets of his blacksuit carried garrotes and small knives. The suit, designed to Bolan's specifications, was skintight, nothing to get snagged or impede movement.

He dropped, catlike, onto the boat's deck.

The predawn stillness appeared undisturbed.

Bolan fisted the Beretta Belle. He eased into a crouch, scanning the deck to encompass all that might lurk there.

Thirty feet separated him from a companionway that led below deck. Just beyond the open hatch was the gray slab of a helicopter landing pad, twenty feet by fifteen feet. Beyond that, the deck stretched to the main cabin and the bridge. A radar dish, turning endlessly, was dimly visible there.

Bolan could make out the forms of two men standing watch behind the windows of the wheelhouse. He saw the pinpoint glow of a cigarette.

He sprinted low and fast toward the hatchway. His black shoes were designed to make no sound, wet or dry. He reached the hatchway and disappeared into it.

Aboard this yacht there was a Puerto Rican agent, and she was known to Mack Bolan.

Known and respected.

And loved.

Bolan moved with the swift advantage of prior intel to a below-deck companionway that led to the fuel tanks. He paused briefly beside the tanks and unsnapped the waterproof pouch at his left hip, withdrawing a plastic-wrapped clump of plastique explosive that he wedged in between the tanks and the hull. He inserted a timer fuse, set the detonation cap for five minutes, then continued on into the companionway, toward the sound of murmuring voices.

Masculine, relaxed sounds.

The companionway was carpeted a plush red, further muffling his approach.

The human sounds led him two doors down, to his left. He reached the closed door.

A kick that sent the wood panel splintering inward off its hinges powerhoused him through.

The Executioner went in low, the Beretta up and spitting.

Mack Bolan was here to deliver the final tab from Mother Universe for a lifetime of violent and merciless exploitation.

The yacht Traveler was owned by financier Leonard J. Jericho — fugitive financier, financier Puerto Rico-style.

Jericho was Bolan's target.

The Executioner had long been aware of Lenny Jericho and the man's shadowy dealings in high places. The name had come up more than once during Bolan's previous war.

But Jericho was always an illusive presence: a vicious, hungry cannibal, the same age as Bolan, who personally directed a widespread web of activities (read: crimes) from any number of secret bases around the world that neither the authorities nor the majority of Jericho's own associates could ever identify.

For Bolan it was simple cat and mouse. Easy to identify, easy to hit, easy to git. Easy to mark up as one more scene for Stony Man to cleanse while the authorities blinded themselves with dollar signs and international law.

Except that Bolan would never have allied himself with the get-Jericho forces if his own ally was not personally imperiled. That made it a whole different game.

Jericho was under federal indictment charging him with looting an estimated three hundred million dollars from Paris-based Investors International Services Limited. The globe-trotting financier was also accused by Senate investigators of masterminding a thirty-million-dollar bribe network that had reached into the White House itself during two recent administrations.

The CIA also suspected him of Central American gunrunning.

Jericho had the money and the brains to stay out of the picture, yet he controlled the picture itself, bartering souls with an impunity bought by bribery, fear, murder.

Thanks to the Puerto Rican authorities, the Justice Department had finally gotten a handle on Jericho. The man was tolerated but not loved in his place of exile. The guy's connections to international organized crime were particularly visible in both Puerto Rico and the Bahamas, and the rumors were that Jericho had been busy establishing a new heroin pipeline for the tattered remains of some of the U.S. Mafia families.

The Puerto Ricans had eventually planted an undercover agent in the middle echelon of the Jericho Bahamas organization, and the agent had picked up tremors of something of even greater import.

The agent's name was Evita Aguilar.

Eve was Bolan's friend and she had been his lover.

She possessed the unmistakable capacity for living large.

Bolan had first met the female firestorm during his war against the Mafia, when the Executioner hunted down the Mob's Caribbean Carousel to the Glass Bay stronghold of Vince Triesta.

During the flight south for this rescue today, names and scenes of violence from long-ago action had flashed in Bolan's memory: Quick Tony Lavagni, Triesta, Riappi, the brutal firefights that had seen their end...

And Eve Aguilar, the beautiful, gutsy, tender woman who had played a vital role in aiding Bolan destroy the Caribbean plans going down at the time.

That very special lady held permanent claim to a large part of this warrior's large heart.

Bolan was aboard the now-doomed floating charnel house off Exuma Cay to rescue his kind of woman. And to ensure no replay by the hoods who held her.

This was not a rescue mission like with Toby Ranger, who had become involved once the mission was under way.

This was a mission occasioned by a friend from the very outset.

This was a personal mission with a vengeance.

Bolan was supposed to be on R & R to speed recovery from some badly ripped-open flesh inflicted by a misinformed rookie in London, England. Thanks to the doctors in London and back home in Virginia, Mack Bolan a.k.a. Colonel John Phoenix of the new Terrorist Wars was healing well — too well to stay at home. Rest and goddamned recreation was out of the question, he had told Hal Brognola. Forget it. Hear the real world, Hal.

Bolan did not listen to his liaison officer's woeful predictions about the real world of good health. Instead he listened to bitter news. It was news played to him hourly by the monitoring computers of his organization. It was the data that had brought him here to this unhealthy boat. Sufficient data to launch a search and rescue: self-evident, self-justifying. Like all bad news about good people, it was a call to action.