Interception. Don Pendleton

as far as Sungkar was concerned. Whatever plan Victor Bout had, that was up to him. Sungkar took pay for his play, and that was all that mattered to him.

      Sulu stepped into the camcorder’s picture, already aroused. The sight of the man caused the girl to try to scream around her ball-gag. Spittle flew. Sungkar felt a tightening in his own crotch.

      Karen Rasmussen threw herself against her restraints, but the triad captain had learned his knots from a master, and escape was hopeless. Giggling like a little girl from behind a black leather mask, Sulu stalked toward the teenager.

      MACK BOLAN UNFOLDED from the skylight like a great malignant spider. He hung for a moment, poised as the twisted scene below him played out. He was dressed head to toe in black from his customary combat blacksuit to his balaclava hood. He held the diver knife in his left hand and rappelled easily with his right.

      The distance was ten feet, maybe eleven. He laid the blade flat against his leg and let go. He dropped, as silent as a stone falling down a well. He hit the floorboards of the warehouse’s second story and rolled along his right side like a paratrooper on an airborne drop. He came smoothly to his feet out of the shadow cast by the harsh commercial production filming lights used to illuminate the scene.

      The mask-wearing rapist with the swirling, full-body tattoos screamed out loud and tried to swing a clumsy overhand blow at the intruding shadow. Bolan came up out of his roll inside the man’s reach and the diver knife flashed in the wattage of the film lamps. Three times it plunged into the rapist’s body, and blood thudded like rain drops on the dusty wooden slats of the floor.

      The first stab punched through Sulu’s solar plexus and pierced his diaphragm, stealing the porn star’s air before he could draw breath for another scream. The second thrust took him under the rib cage and sliced up to bury an inch of stainless steel into the thudding drum of the man’s pounding heart. The third strike punched through the cartilage of his throat and cracked his C-3 vertebrae.

      Bolan yanked his knife free as Sulu’s corpse tumbled backward like an animal in a slaughterhouse kill-chute. He sprang forward after Sungkar, who had managed to raise a half shout as he scrambled for a silver .40-caliber pistol lying under his folded jacket on an extra chair.

      The Executioner slapped at his chest with his right hand, his palm finding the custom handle of his silenced machine pistol. Sungkar threw back his jacket to dig for his weapon, not bothering to scream because he knew his bodyguards would never reach him in time anyway. His fingers found the cold, comforting weight of the handgun and wrapped around the handle.

      The big American’s sound suppressor hacked out a triple pneumatic cough.

      Sungkar straightened like a man electrocuted as the 9 mm Parabellum rounds slammed into his body just under his right shoulder blade. His body shuddered with the impact, and he arched backward at an unnatural angle not unlike a reverse comma. Bolan’s second triburst lifted the top of the hired killer’s skull up off his face and splashed his brains across the warehouse. The man stumbled forward and struck the floor.

      The Executioner rose from his crouch.

      KAREN RASMUSSEN looked over at the long table next to the camcorder. There was a power drill, dental instruments and some bloodstained carpenter tools. In the middle of the implements a black candle burned next to a bottle of Ouzo. Abdullah Sungkar had told her in loving detail exactly what he was going to do with each and every single item, speaking slowly so that each word was captured in perfect clarity by the continuously running camera.

      The killing shadow moved toward her, gun in one hand and bloody knife in the other. She recoiled in terror from the gore-stained apparition. Seeing her reaction, Bolan stopped and returned his silenced pistol to its shoulder holster before pulling down the balaclava and revealing his face.

      “Easy,” he whispered. “I’m here to get you out.”

      He cut her hands free just as he heard the first thundering of footsteps on the stairs outside the room door. He pulled the blade toward him in one smooth motion and sliced the bonds binding her hands, then pressed the knife hilt into her shaking grip.

      “Cut yourself free,” he ordered.

      She took the knife automatically but when she looked up, the night fighter was gone, swallowed by shadows. The door to the room was kicked inward, the frame splintering along one hinge, and a handful of men armed with utilitarian machine pistols burst into the room. They wore dirty jeans and expensive shirts with gold gleaming in the form of watches and bracelets on their wrists, in their teeth, at their ears and across their knuckles. They looked every bit the part of modern-age pirates.

      The leader’s eyes had grown wide in surprise at the bloody corpses, his jaw dropping to his chest in a reaction so exaggerated it was nearly comical. His head jerked left then right as he tried to peer into the thick shadows filling the edges of the long room. He saw the bloody knife in the American girl’s hands but saw also that she was still bound to the chair at the neck, waist, knees and ankles. She looked at him, her expression blank in her fear. Behind him the rest of the crew tried to press forward.

      The man, a lieutenant named Kis, barked something in his own language and waved the stubby barrel of his machine pistol. Karen Rasmussen just looked at him. He switched to a broken, almost pidgin English.

      “What happened!” he demanded. “You kill boss?”

      The girl tried to shake her head, her mouth locked into an “O” shape by the red rubber ball of her gag. She could barely turn her head against the stylized wrappings of the knots. But she held a dripping knife in her hand.

      Cursing, Kis charged forward.

      Growling, the crew of triad hitters surged after him. There was a heavy thud on the old floorboards as something metal struck the camcorder and knocked it over. Every head turned in that direction. Kis blinked as it looked as if a pale green can of soda pop was rolling across the floor toward them.

      A white light like a sun going nova flashed, followed by a sharp, overwhelming bang that filled his ears with disorienting pain. From behind the milling, confused gang of rapists and kidnappers a black figure detached itself from the shadows and moved among them.

      The silenced pistol fired from near point-blank range, putting 3-round bursts into the skulls of confused men. Hot blood and chunks of brain splashed terrified, uncomprehending faces, and bodies started to hit the floor.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      In her chair Karen Rasmussen watched the Executioner at work.

      He moved like a supranatural force coldly dispatching the slavers from the very middle of their milling cluster. He spun and twisted, and his gun hand pointed, lifted and pressed and his trigger finger worked repeatedly. The weapon’s slide kicked back, spilling gleaming, smoking brass cartridges out of the oversize ejection port.

      Her head whirled and spun from the flash-bang grenade concussion, and her vision was obstructed by blurred spots. She blinked, catching disjointed images like still pictures clipped from a movie reel. She blinked again, seeing those shells tumbling with surrealistic clarity but still seeing the faces of the falling men as blurs. She blinked again, and her vision snapped into focus. There was only the night fighter, his gun still raised, in the middle of a pile of leaking corpses.

      The man turned toward her, and she could see smoke curling out the end of the weapon in dark gray ribbons. The stench of cordite cut through her nostrils, burning like smelling salts, and snapping her back into the sharp reality of the moment.

      “There’s more downstairs,” Bolan said. “I’ve got to take them out if we’re going to get out of here. Hurry! Cut yourself free and get a weapon.” He indicated the black metal machine pistols scattered around the floor at his feet. Rasmussen looked down. It seemed like the weapons were floating in a lake of blood.

      “Get under the table and watch the door,” Bolan continued. “Do not shoot me when I come back in. Hurry!”

      Then he turned and made for the door to the triad