The sheet held. Bolan went hand under hand down again, one, two, three —

And then, with the razzling sound of a burpgun's ripping burst, the sheeting ripped apart and dropped him free-fall to the bottom, smashing into the unyielding concrete.

As a lad born and raised in a Massachusetts metropolitan area, The Executioner, also known as Mack Bolan, knew virtually nothing of serpents, whether tame or wild, harmless or deadly.

After some twelve years in the army, and two tours in Nam where poisonous snakes killed men in the jungles, and huge tigers carried them off clamped between saber-like teeth, Sgt. Mack Bolan became educated.

Men in his command helped, the kids off Arizona ranches, New Mexico farms, Texas cotton patches.

The way a man's absolutely sure he's killed a snake as it makes an effort to slither silently, unnoticed, with deadly intent into a man's sleeping bag, is by cutting off the head.

Chop it, with a K-Bar knife. Or an entrenching tool.

Stomp it, if you have the guts and can move that fast.

Use a long-bladed machete.

Or just shoot the son of a bitch.

But you have to get the head.

Maybe it was . . . and perhaps it was not. . . some old hill-country or backwoods tale: if you chopped a snake apart but left his head, his brain, alive; he could — and would— grow another, new, bigger, better, more powerful length.

Fantasy. Fiction. Truth.

Mack Bolan did not know. He had all he could handle with the problem of personal survival.

When the ripped sheet dropped him free-fall, he'd expected death. But the drug the treasonous doctor had given him affected Mack's depth perception. He fell perhaps ten feet. He was not sure. He sprained slightly the ankle on the same leg where the wound from Philly stung like fire. Otherwise, he got away clean. For five blocks.

It may be true you can never find a cop when you want one, and it may be true, Bolan thought, you always have one belch down your throat when a cop's the last thing on earth you hope to see. But there he stood. The word was big.

Mack Bolan stood over six feet by a considerable margin, and weighed more than two hundred pounds, naked and bone dry. The cop scooped Mack Bolan up virtually one-handed, slammed him against the wall of a building near Lexington and East 27th and in a voice that conveyed absolute fearlessness, the cop said, "Okay, asshole, what about it?"

Dredging up from some long ago memory, Mack Bolan said, "I'm diabetic."

The huge cop shoved his hooked nose in Mack's face, sniffed loudly, said, "Okay, you're not drunk," then walked fast to the callbox on the corner. Minutes later Mack lay on the litter in an ambulance en route to Bellevue.

The ambulance crew off-loaded him, rolled the wheeled stretcher into the corridor and left Mack near the door of an emergency treatment room. He got up and walked out the door.

He had to stop and rest three times, but he made it back to the parking lot where he'd left the shark-like Maserati. He expected what he found, after scouting. Two malacarni stood patient watch.

He waited almost an hour, resting, building his strength and lasting power before he took the first. He came in low, behind, in sock feet, chopped the hardened ridge of his right half-doubled fist just under the soldier's ear and caught him as he fell backwards, unconscious.

Mack lowered the heavy bulk to the concrete, frisked, came up with a .38 snubnosed, twelve rounds extra ammo, and nine hundred dollars cash in ten and twenty dollar bills. It figured. Soldiers carried misdemeanor bond or bribe dough as a matter of course.

The Executioner put the loose ammo in his right trousers' pocket, stuffed the cash in his left pocket. He stripped the lightweight suitcoat off the soldier, wadded it around the .38 and shot the malacarni through the left cheek of his butt ... all meat, not deadly, a muffled sound.

A moment later, from across the parking lot, Bolan heard the other man call out, softly, "Lou! Hey, you Lou...! That you?"

Bolan grumbled an unintelligible noise.

"Lou — ?"

Bolan muttered again.

"Lou, goddammit!"

Bolan heard the shuffle of heavy feet, and a moment later saw the shape of a big man move from the shadows.

"Lou!"

"Here," Bolan called, muffling his mouth with his left hand. "Help — hurt — !"

The big shape broke into a run.

Bolan timed it perfectly.

As the big shape came running in, Bolan raised himself to a crouch, planting both heels solidly, and when the man came into range, he swung. His right fist, still holding the snubnosed revolver for grip and solidity, burying into Big Shape's guts, and the man haaawffed violently.

Bolan reached and gripped, tangling his left hand in Big Shape's greasy long hair, and jerked the head down as he rose in a single smooth motion and drove his knee upwards into the blurred face.

Bolan's knee met the face and he felt the whole nose go and some upper teeth. He jerked the head up and lowered his knee and smacked them together again, felt the man sag, and as he went down Bolan chopped the snubnose across the back of the man's head.

Once more Bolan had to rest.

He slumped beside the two unconscious forms, himself almost equally out of it. He was human, too. No matter what they said. Whoever in the hell they were . . . the assholes, the cops, Leo Bragnola, that Fed in Philly.

Oh God, thought Mack Bolan, I am so tired.

I am shot to pieces and I've been drugged and slammed up against a brick wall and it seems like I've walked halfway across Manhattan. If they came to take me now — whoever the hell they are — I couldn't even defend myself.

But I've got to get the snake! The evil, slithering, totally cold-blooded snake. Chop off his head. Back in the old country. Homeplate. Don Cafu's ballpark.

Through sheer effort of will, Bolan made himself roll over to his hands and knees and crawl forward. He had Big Shape's gun, his fat wallet, and was going through the rest of the man's pockets when he heard slow, deliberate footsteps approaching along the parking lot's concrete paving.

Bolan dropped Fat's wallet and rolled over on his butt, bracing his back against the Maserati. It felt like lifting a ton, but he managed to bring the .38 Special snubnosed Detective Special up and gripped it with both hands, aiming into the dark toward the sound of approaching footsteps.

With effort, he cocked the hammer. He wanted to be sure his first shot killed. With the gun cocked, all he had to do was touch the trigger, breathe on it, and pow! He was afraid he'd throw the shot wide, pulling all the way through, double-action.

But at the slight, metallic sound of cocking, four distinct clicks, the footsteps halted.

Bolan wearily drew up his legs and braced his locked elbows on his knees, holding the revolver in his right hand with his left cupped around the bottom of his right fist.

A time without end passed.

With activity, Bolan had fought off the effects of the drug, but now in the silent dark, drowsiness washed over him.

He felt his hands sag under the weight of the gun and jerking himself awake, almost loosed a wild shot.

He swore at himself. Combat rule number one — how many kids had he pounded that into out in Nam? Don't reveal your position!

Bolan knew he could not last much longer.

He felt as though he'd lost a quart of blood. And he now bled afresh, feeling the sticky, wet clammy red running down his leg, and the wound in his side had opened again. His eyelids weighed tons. His chin sagged toward his chest.