Grave Mercy. Don Pendleton

is a rental, after all.”

      It was one of those rare moments when the Executioner would have smiled, suppressing a chuckle at Grimaldi’s smart-ass remark, but the pain of wrenching off his load-bearing vest had overridden that bit of levity. The blood-smeared ballistic nylon shell dropped to the floor in a clump, and Bolan could see multiple deep gouges and burns where shrapnel and flame had tried to reach him. He gently touched his shoulder again and felt for the biggest pieces of broken glass. There were four jagged shards, and he’d have to take care of them before peeling himself out of his blacksuit top.

      The largest piece of glass had plunged into Bolan’s shoulder muscle and come out far too easily for Bolan’s taste. He grimaced as he saw bits of human tissue—his muscle fibers to be exact—clinging to the blast-sharpened tip. The soldier let it tumble out into the wind. The other three pieces were smaller, but Bolan had to explore the wounds with his fingertips. He felt the ragged gash, wincing as he carefully advanced deeper into the rift of flesh, looking for any remaining bits that might not have come with the big shard. The cut was wide, and deep, so the soldier reached into a pocket of his vest for a packet of coagulant powder. The moment the compound hit the cavity of his shoulder wound, it turned into a semisolid gel that conformed to the shape of the injury, sealing off severed capillaries and damaged veins.

      It wouldn’t last long, but Bolan could hold on long enough. Now that he’d stopped the bleeding, he plucked out the other square pieces of glass. A splinter at the top of his right biceps slid out with sickly stickiness, but none of these lesser lacerations were going to be a problem. The soldier slapped gauze and tape on the smaller cuts, then laid a thicker pad of sterile dressing on top of the shoulder wound, with medical tape sealing the clotting agent in place.

      “Sarge, that boat must be rocket-powered,” Grimaldi said. “I’ve got this baby up to 110 miles per hour, and he’s still holding his distance.”

      “Are you saying you can’t catch up with him?” Bolan asked, shrugging into the bloodied load-bearing vest. He winced as the shoulder wound took the pres sure, but the field dressing would stay in place, ironically thanks to the added weight. A fast pat-check showed him that he had three magazines left for the M-4, and the Beretta 93-R stored in a holster clipped to the side of the vest. Usually the Executioner liked having a shoulder rig for the sleek 9-mm pistol, but with heavy kit like the armored vest, he didn’t have space beneath the shell to fit his holster straps.

      He zipped up the armored vest, tugging on its side vent straps to accommodate the lost layer of clothing. He didn’t need his gear bouncing and jiggling around, possibly doing more damage to his injured arm. Bolan flexed his right hand, then bent the arm a few times. He had movement, enough to handle his weapons, but it would be a temporary thing. He’d taken serious injuries before, and experience taught him that anything more than a few minutes of activity would sap the strength from the wounded limb.

      Bolan transferred the M-4 to his left hand. While he was born predominantly right-handed, years of warfare had made him ambidextrous. He was glad he hadn’t taken a bullpup rifle into this fight because he didn’t have the time now to shift an ejection port for left-handed use. The M-4, as it was configured, was relatively friendly to left handers, especially with its selector switch and magazine release on both sides of the receiver. He adjusted the holographic scope atop the weapon, adjusting it for his “off-side” eye, knowing that the settings for his normal use would be way off target for his left eye. The new parallax was perfectly aligned now, enabling Bolan to put every bullet where he needed it to be.

      He put Long Eddy in his sights, the red holographic dot centered on the Jamaican’s spine. Bolan pulled the trigger, but the physics of the helicopter and the cigarette boat over choppy waves sent his bullets careening over the side of the speedy watercraft. The tall Jamaican whipped his head around as fiberglass was chewed by autofire so close to his spine. Though there was no magnification on the holographic sight, Bolan knew that Long Eddy was shouting something. There was someone else on the boat.

      “Jack! This has got to end!” Bolan roared. Grimaldi checked over his shoulder. Even through the dark visor of his pilot’s helmet, the soldier could see the look of concern on his friend’s face.

      “You’re hurt!” Grimaldi called back, but already the sleek helicopter nosed down, its bulbous front locked on to the rapid, dartlike boat. “Too hurt for close quarters!”

      “But not hurt enough to accept collateral damage,” Bolan growled. “He’s got someone down there.”

      Grimaldi’s sigh hissed over their intercom. The Executioner knew that the pilot, his faithful friend through countless wars, had given himself over to the orders he had received. The two men had been working with relentless urgency in an effort to stop the Jamaican drug dealer, especially since Long Eddy had taken captives. For a brief few minutes, before Bolan had turned the heroin lab into a blazing funeral pyre for contraband and bandits alike, he had been under the impression that he had rescued all but one of the USO performers who were contributing their time and effort to American servicemen engaging in humanitarian aid in Haiti.

      It had been a reckless firefight in an arena where there were plenty of volatile chemicals, but the one hostage that the Executioner had thought he’d failed was a young woman whose stage name wasn’t much different from the one she’d used when they’d first met in Japan. Punk singer Vicious Honey, despite her nearly anarchist lyrics and music, was still an artist who gave her all for the U.S. military. With the thought that Honey might have been dead in a ditch somewhere, Bolan had shut down and became an unstoppable killing machine. Only the blast of burning lab chemicals hurling him to the sand had snapped him out of his numbed warrior state.

      For a moment Bolan wished that he’d still been in that war fury, as pulled muscles, bruises, burns and lacerations were weighing heavily on his shoulders. A flash of the familiar mix of pink-and-blond hair appeared in the cockpit of the speedboat.

      “She’s alive!” Grimaldi spoke up. “But you already knew that.”

      “Get me close,” Bolan said, discarding the M-4. In the tight quarters of the racing watercraft, even its compact length would be too unwieldy. This fight was going to need speed and brutality, so the Executioner drew his Beretta, removing its blunt suppressor so it would move even faster in his grasp. He wrapped his right hand around the handle of his combat knife, his teeth gritted as he knew that violent activity wasn’t going to do his injured arm any good.

      Pain and convalescence were going to have to wait until a life was saved.

      Bullets peppered against the bottom of the helicopter as Grimaldi swung the aircraft close enough for the warrior to jump. With a kick, Bolan hurled himself toward Long Eddy and the renegade Rasta who held Honey by the back of her neck.

      For a brief heartbeat the world came to a stop, the roar of the rotor, the chatter of autofire, the rush of wind. Bolan was free from gravity, sailing to a spot between the tall masts of the cigarette boat’s airfoil spoiler. Even as he hung weightless, traversing from air to watercraft, he saw Honey’s blue eyes lock on him with recognition.

      The shock of the diving Executioner left Long Eddy’s man staring at him, agape. Long Eddy himself, clutching the wheel of the boat with one hand and a sawed-off shotgun in the other, was also frozen in surprise.

      The audacity of Bolan’s attack had bought him vital moments as his waffle-treaded boots slammed hard into the fiberglass shell between the spoiler’s supports.

      Long Eddy recovered his wits, swinging up his shotgun up as Bolan pushed himself forward. Honey twisted, lowering her head, making herself even smaller than her petite five-foot-one. The Rasta struggled to keep Honey’s head up with his forearm under her chin, the Uzi in his other hand still aimed up toward the helicopter. The Executioner knew that he was going to take some pain, but he had committed to this, his lightning-fast mind plotting out the angles even as his forearms uncrossed.

      The knife in his right hand struck the barrels of the stubby shotgun that Long Eddy raised, steel clanging on steel just a moment before the twin 12-gauge shells within detonated, launching their payload. Struck with twelve .36-caliber pellets just above his ribs,