Interception. Don Pendleton

the blink of an eye. If Bolan had leaped when that gust had hit, his amphibious insertion would have shattered bones and left him crippled and helpless in rough seas.

      “I don’t like this, Sarge!” Grimaldi yelled.

      Looking up from the increasingly violent water, Bolan nodded his agreement. “We’ve been over this before,” he shouted back, pulling the hood of his dry suit into place. “It’s the most expedient manner to infiltrate Azerbaijani custom controls on such short notice.”

      “Ten to one Karen is already dead and buried so deep in a hidden grave we’ll never see her again!” Grimaldi argued. “There’s too much about this we don’t know. We should pull back now before we lose track of two Americans,” he said pointedly. But he also said it like a man who didn’t quite believe the story he was pushing.

      Bolan tugged his snorkel and facemask into place. “If there’s even one chance of getting her out, I’ve got to try.” He snapped his swim fins onto his belt and reached for the handle of the copilot door. He grinned at the frowning Grimaldi. “Try not to splatter me all over the Adriatic.”

      “No promises, Sarge,” Grimaldi answered. But he nodded and worked his controls, fighting the helicopter into position.

      Bolan opened the door and stepped onto the landing skid. Instantly sharp wind and needles of sea spray slapped into him. His dry suit kept him warm, but the exposed flesh of his face felt raw and brutalized. Though technically Mediterranean, the water still held a bite this time of year. He squinted hard against the spray and slammed the door of the helicopter shut.

      Despite his joke about splattering on the water, Bolan knew he had to move as efficiently as possible to minimize the hovering helicopter’s exposure to the variables of the weather and sea. He looked down, saw a swell rise up to greet him and pushed away from the aircraft. He stepped off with one foot to clear the helicopter.

      His grip in his clumsy dry suit mitten slipped on the rain-slick handle of the door as an erratic blast of air slammed into him like a subway car. His feet were knocked clear of the landing skid as Grimaldi frantically fought the helicopter back under control and Bolan tumbled out into space.

      Cursing to himself, he tried to twist as he dropped as below him the path of the wind cupped out a depression in the churning sea and ten feet became fifteen and then twenty. He got one hand up in time to secure his mask and snorkel, then hit the water hard along one side with enough force to drive the wind from his lungs like a gut punch.

      He plunged through the waves and into the deep, cold embrace of the water. The ocean closed like a black hole around him, sucking him into chilly brine and foam. He turned in the water, briefly disorientated by the fall, and he could no longer discern the surface.

      His hands went to his chest and he fumbled for a moment, slapping himself, searching for the release. Just as his lungs felt as if they were going to burn to a cinder with the pain of his asphyxiation, he found and jerked the activation handle.

      The compartments in his life vest popped open and jerked him chest-first toward the surface. He rose through the cold black like a buoy and broke the surface, gasping for breath, and began to kick. Above him he heard the sound of the helicopter hovering overhead. He kicked hard and waved a hand to show that he was fine.

      Grimaldi pulled up and away, taking the helicopter out of danger. A wave broke over Bolan’s head, pushing him down, and when he got to the surface again he was alone.

      ESCHEWING THE MASK and snorkel, Bolan cut through the water using the sidestroke, the preferred movement for combat swimmers on endurance insertions. He kept himself oriented toward the brilliant beacon of Split, and after some time the rolling of the surf began to push him in that direction.

      The swimming was hard work. He found a rhythm, pulling down with his arm while drawing back his leg and scissor-kicking. The taste of the ocean was in his mouth, the water stinging his eyes.

      He kicked to the top of one rolling wave and slid down the trough on the other side. The sea and the sky were black, but the easy landmark of the glowing city light of Split drew him on. His working body was warm inside his suit and he began to perspire lightly. Gradually the lights grew closer.

      IN DARKNESS there was death.

      The Executioner watched from the shadows, his eyes tracking every movement of the rooftop sentry like the targeting system of a surface-to-air missile. As the guard strolled along the edge of the warehouse, Mack Bolan slid in closer, step by step, with murderous intent.

      The Asian gunslinger was a triggerman for the Mountain and Snake Society triad. Compared to more common criminals, the sentry moved around his area of operations with purpose and discipline, hands on the pistol grip of his submachine gun.

      The Croat-based triad had carved out a niche serving as underworld enforcers for hire, providing security to drug and weapons shipments as well as occasionally providing shooters for criminal acts throughout the region. Its primary income came from the kidnapping and trafficking of underage girls to fill the prison brothels of India. They were child-rapists and slavers, and the Executioner had come for them.

      Bolan crept out of a deep shadow. The guard stood with his back unprotected, facing the lights of the city across the bay. His hands were filled and busy as he worked a lighter to light a cigarette, leaving the submachine gun dangling loose.

      The Executioner moved smoothly in a choreographed ballet of violence. His hands were parallel to each other, the knuckles of his middle fingers almost touching as he gripped the wooden dowels of the garrote. The length of piano wire between them formed an oblong loop, and he slipped it like a noose over the man’s head. He jerked his hands back and apart, snapping the loop closed, and the wire bit into his quarry’s neck with merciless efficiency.

      The man gagged as his larynx was crushed. Blood rushed out as the thin wire bit deep. The blunt hammer of Bolan’s knee connected hard with the man’s kidney and he folded like a lawn chair, dropping to his knees. As the man went down, Bolan’s jerked back on the garrote like a tourist hauling in a Marlin into a fishing boat off Mazatlán. Blood spilled out like water from a cracked-open fire hydrant and the man blacked out.

      His arms fell limply, and Bolan put the knobby tread of his boot against the sentry’s back and pushed against the tension of the wire, finishing the job. He dropped the handles and let the body slump over. The blood was obsidian in the faint moonlight, and it stained the man’s cigarette then snuffed it out with a slight hiss.

      Pulling a sturdy diver knife from his combat harness, Bolan crossed the roof to where a skylight broke the surface in a Plexiglas bubble. He knelt and began working, as expertly as any cat burglar.

      TWO MEN were in the room. One was almost naked, and both looked at Karen Rasmussen with a vulture’s bleak appetite. She was tied to a straight-backed chair by a white hemp rope in intricate and stylized knotting and patterns of bonding, clothed in only her underwear. She was unaware of it, but Rasmussen had been bound according to ancient Hojojutsu techniques. The binding was considered an erotic S&M art form in Japan, and when this episode was done that was where Philippine national Abdullah Sungkar hoped to unload at least a hundred thousand U.S. dollars’ worth of the DVD.

      The teenage girl stared at him with terror in her eyes, and Sungkar looked to his camcorder to make sure it was on. The look was worth cash when the pedophile online network began their critiques and reviews. His tongue, pink and small, quickly darted out to moisten his lips.

      Behind him the actor named Sulu was zipping his leather mask into place. Karen Rasmussen was the daughter of the American embassy official in charge of development of agriculture and commerce projects. Sungkar, a field captain in the Mountain and Snake Society, had been paid by a representative of Russian syndicates to kidnap the young woman then rape and torture her. And to film it, so copies could be sent out to the press as an example of America’s powerlessness. It was not a request that made sense to Sungkar, as it didn’t seem to advance the business interests of the Russian.

      Indeed such brutal tactics had already been tried and rejected