Brognola paused to light the half-done stogie that was wedged between his chubby fingers, thought better of it.

"Rideout is our key to the Jericho operation. Listen to this. Rideout was approached four days ago by people representing Leonard Jericho. He was paid ten thousand dollars and told to stay on call to leave the country. Rideout — and our people who had him wired — received that call last night, Striker, while you and Jack were on your way to the Bahamas to do your own thing with the yacht. He caught the next commercial flight to Libya.

Like the Bear said, all of the agencies are cooperating on this because of the NCB tie-in. The CIA people were notified at the other end and they intercepted Rideout when he landed in Benghazi this morning. They're holding him now.

We could do what Able Team did so successfully in their Texas showdown recently — ride in on a nowhere man.

What I'm saying is, you could take Michael Rideout's place."

Bolan stood. He turned to Kurtzman.

"Bear, I want a full printout on Thatcher, Jericho and the current situation in Libya. I need to study it on the flight over."

"You've got it," said Kurtzman.

Bolan looked back at Hal.

Hal looked from Bolan to April Rose and decided to relight his cigar.

The lovely "boss lady" of Stony Man Farm stood from the couch and walked to Bolan, then wordlessly bowed her face and touched her forehead to his mouth. The natural scent of her was strong in his nostrils, yet subtle and provocative.

His arms encircled her shapely waist and held her to him.

"What is it, lady?" he asked comfortingly. "We should be used to saying goodbye by now. It goes with the job, you know that."

"I do know it," she whispered. "But I also know that this mission is different for you. You've told me how much you and Eve mean to each other."

"What Eve and I had together was before you came along, I've told you that too," he said gently.

"You big, beautiful man," she said. "I'm not jealous, Mack. I'm only trying to tell you that I'm worried about you for the same reason that Hal is. And I think Eve must be a very special human being for you to care about her the way you do."

"She is special, April. So are you, for understanding."

"Just one promise," said April Rose. "Bring the both of you back safely, okay?"

Bolan kissed her forehead.

It was time to commence preparations for the mission to Libya.

Final preparations, as they always were for The Executioner.

April held Bolan's hand for a heartbeat more, then released it.

"On your way if you must, Colonel Phoenix," she said. "And I know you must, Mack."

And she released him.

Bolan's fellow passengers from Tunis had included well-dressed European businessmen, casually attired British and American oil-field workers, at least two dozen other professional-looking Westerners, many of whom would have similarly attired welcoming par ties awaiting them at Benghazi.

No one met "Michael Rideout" at the Benghazi airport.

Bolan was wearing worn denim and work shirt, the uniform of the American oil-field worker abroad. He had one carry-on piece of luggage.

He emerged from the air terminal into the arid, 120-plus-degree midday heat. Libya was booming.

A row of shiny new taxis were parked in the terminal loading zone. Bolan hired one for the ride into the city. He observed with curiosity this Mediterranean powder-keg country.

Upon touchdown in the army transport plane at Tunis, Bolan had regretfully entrusted his Beretta and AutoMag to Jack Grimaldi for temporary safekeeping. Mike Rideout would not be carrying heat on a commercial flight.

Bolan knew that he would be provided with firearms as soon as he made contact, as Rideout, with Jericho's people here in Libya. Until then he was armed with a knife, purchased from a street merchant outside the airport, worn concealed at the small of his back.

Most of the houses along the dusty, palm-lined "highway" into Benghazi were timeless mud-brick affairs. Street signs and all advertisements were in Arabic, but indications of Western-style prosperity were everywhere.

In the city proper, the streets became clogged with an uncomfortable number of Japanese, American and European cars.

Traditional Arabic architecture gave way to towering glass-walled office buildings.

Everywhere Bolan looked, there was movement, energy and commerce. And oppressive heat.

The country's oil fields made Libya the world's ninth largest producer. Of all the Arab nations, Libya had used its oil as a political weapon more than any other.

It was incredibly inflated profits that fueled the heavy activity in trade and housing and industrialization that Bolan saw all around him.

Government-owned and -subsidized supermarkets and stores were rapidly replacing the ancient tangled bazaars.

Libya's population, predominantly Arab Muslims, never thought that they would ever have it this good.

Of course, there was a price. And his name was Khaddafi.

The Company's Benghazi cover operation was a small accounting firm that serviced many of the second-string U.S. business concerns in Libya.

The offices of Mid-Am Incorporated were in the old section of the city, on a hillside of narrow, winding lanes that only donkeys and pedestrians could negotiate, where the poor lived crowded together amid occasional small business fronts that shared the crumbling, antiquated stone architecture.

Mid-Am's quarters were behind such a storefront. The glass had been painted black. Only the silver lettering on the painted glass door indicated that this storefront was occupied at all.

The flow of the street scene before the storefront seemed unconcerned and unaware of Mid-Am Inc. The storefront was around the corner from the neighborhood Bah el atouk, the Street of Merchants. The sounds clearly carried of grocers in their open-air stalls, all enthusiastically and simultaneously proclaiming the virtues of green figs, pomegranates, lemons, oranges, almonds. All around, under blue skies but in the shade from the throbbing sun, buzzed the added hubbub of foot traffic in and out of scores of craft shops specializing in jewelry and leatherwork and shoemaking. Berber music from flutes and goatskin drums filled the air.

Even along this narrow side street fronting the offices of Mid-Am, which was little more than a cobbled footpath, the scene bustled with local women clad in traditional veils, on their way to or from the market, and the Arab men — Berbers, Kabyles, Mzabites and Bedouins — wearing the burnous, a hooded mantle, all pushing, shoving, chattering their way about their business.

Within the desultory building, the offices of Mid-Am were a modern complex of "work areas" that housed just one cell in a network of covert CIA operations in Libya.

The head man of the Benghazi facility was an amiable Bostonian named Lansdale. At least, that was what he said his name was. Bolan met the guy after passing through two separate security checkpoints that blocked his path in the facility.

Grim-faced men and some women hurried busily about their errands, answering phones, checking files.

Lansdale showed "John Phoenix" to the soundproofed cell in one of the basement work areas where the real Michael Rideout was being detained.

Bolan gazed in upon the Spartanly furnished, not uncomfortable, room and saw the renegade American stretched out in a sedated sleep.

Ten minutes after his arrival at the Company offices, Mack Bolan was alone with Lansdale in the head agent's office in the back of the building.

"The first piece of classified news I have for you is that Pentagon investigators tracked down General Thatcher stateside," said Lansdale. "Unfortunately, the general is not doing any talking. The coded communique we received says he got his hands on a gun and blew his brains out. Before any questioning got underway."