down the Mob's Caribbean Carousel to the Glass Bay stronghold of Vince Triesta.
During the flight south for this rescue today, names and scenes of violence from long-ago action had flashed in Bolan's memory: Quick Tony Lavagni, Triesta, Riappi, the brutal firefights that had seen their end...
And Eve Aguilar, the beautiful, gutsy, tender woman who had played a vital role in aiding Bolan destroy the Caribbean plans going down at the time.
That very special lady held permanent claim to a large part of this warrior's large heart.
Bolan was aboard the now-doomed floating charnel house off Exuma Cay to rescue his kind of woman. And to ensure no replay by the hoods who held her.
This was not a rescue mission like with Toby Ranger, who had become involved once the mission was under way.
This was a mission occasioned by a friend from the very outset.
This was a personal mission with a vengeance.
Bolan was supposed to be on R & R to speed recovery from some badly ripped-open flesh inflicted by a misinformed rookie in London, England. Thanks to the doctors in London and back home in Virginia, Mack Bolan a.k.a. Colonel John Phoenix of the new Terrorist Wars was healing well — too well to stay at home. Rest and goddamned recreation was out of the question, he had told Hal Brognola. Forget it. Hear the real world, Hal.
Bolan did not listen to his liaison officer's woeful predictions about the real world of good health. Instead he listened to bitter news. It was news played to him hourly by the monitoring computers of his organization. It was the data that had brought him here to this unhealthy boat. Sufficient data to launch a search and rescue: self- evident, self-justifying. Like all bad news about good people, it was a call to action.
Eve's agency had not heard from her in seven days. Too long. Eve had been sucked into the Jericho operation, her cover probably blown.
Bolan was here to do whatever damage he could to the unfolding Jericho scam... which, under the circumstances, would be considerable.
They had Eve.
Bolan was
2
Three men were sitting around a table playing cards. The air had become stale and hazy with cigarette and cigar smoke. A naked low-watt bulb cast the walls and corners of the room in dark shadow.
The men were all armed.
They were all fast.
But they were not fast enough.
Bolan plugged an ugly, scarred Puerto Rican with an even uglier hole through the head. The shot sent the guy spiraling backward from his chair into the corner, a hand still wrapped tight around the butt of a shoulder-rigged .357.
The second guy was big, and fast enough that he managed to fill his fist with a P-35 Browning hi-power and track it around on Bolan, before death from the Beretta stopped him cold. He was kicked back in a deadfall slide to join the first corpse.
In microseconds Bolan sidestepped deeper into the crew's quarters, deep in the belly of Lenny Jericho's yacht. The third guy, an Arab, had lunged for a sawed-off Remington 870 pump shotgun that was positioned on the floor near his chair.
He never made it.
The Beretta sneezed a third time.
A third man died.
Not one of them knew what in hell had come exploding through that door.
Bolan straightened. He saw a wall of personal lockers, another with a row of bunks.
And he saw one lower bunk, separate from the others, built into the far bulkhead.
Gliding over the three dead men, he moved over to it and made a cursory inspection of the bunk.
It was indeed different from the others. Heavy chain shackles that ended in braces were built in to imprison the occupant by wrists and ankles. Rough blankets were in twisted disarray, indicating a recent struggle.
Tiny red droplets on the mattress screamed in Bolan's eye. He reached down and touched the stains with a fingertip.
Blood. Still sticky.
He hustled back into the corridor, to his left now, along the narrow walkway toward midship.
He slowed his pace when he reached the hatchway that led up to the deck. Then in silent, ghostlike manner he mounted the hatchway steps. He was halfway to the companionway when the opening was fully filled with the bulky form of a crewman toting an ugly FN Model 49.
Bolan pulled off two rounds, head shots. The man was propelled backward as if pulled by invisible forces. Bolan holstered the Beretta and unlimbered the mighty AutoMag as he continued on up the steps.
He erupted onto the deck, then wove a brisk zigzag pattern across the forty feet that separated him from cover at the base of the wheelhouse superstructure.
The second guard, partner of the late creep with the FN, had not left his post behind the windows of the wheelhouse. The guard spotted the black-clad figure in the dawn's early light before Bolan had gone five paces.
The guard leaned through an open window and opened fire. A NATO round splintered the planking of the deck where Bolan had been a split-second earlier.
Bolan halted his course, in the same movement bringing up Big Thunder on the guard's silhouette on the bridge, and squeezed off a round from a two-handed target-range stance. The blazing issue of the mini-howitzer ruptured the guard's skull into a misty pink shower. The guy toppled down and out of sight.
Silence reclaimed the dawn.
Bolan gained the base of the superstructure. He knew that half his allotted time had run out since planting the five-minute fuse on the plastique.
Bolan heard a dull bump on the port side.
He responded with economy of movement. He circled the wheelhouse and cabin and came around a corner on the far side of the superstructure, just as Leonard Jericho was reaching over to activate the lowering mechanism for the lifeboat in which he was standing.
The bump was the hull of the lifeboat clunking against the yacht as Jericho clambered aboard.
Lenny was not alone.
His co-passenger was a heavyset guy, in his fifties, dressed in a five-hundred-dollar suit that was as out of place as hailstones in these surroundings.
Bolan quit the safety of cover with no attempt at secrecy. Still drenched, but silent as a wraith, he approached the lifeboat.
The two men sensed their executioner's presence. They glanced in unison toward him and their eyes widened.
The guy in the sharkskin suit reacted first.
He was Manny Mandone. Bolan recognized him from his Dixie mop-up.
Right now the Mafia shark was trying to negotiate too many things at once: turning around in the small boat, trying to maintain his equilibrium, reaching for his hardware.
The AutoMag belched flame from Bolan's fist, the heavy round tearing flesh and bone. Manny Mandone toppled over the side of the lifeboat with an astonished look on his face and a baseball-sized cavity where his heart had been.
Leonard Jericho did not move except to glance over the side, ever so briefly, after Mandone. Then he looked back at Mack Bolan.
Bolan recognized him from the intel dossier. Ten years ago, Jericho had been movie-star handsome. But now that he was assessed to be the third or fourth richest man in the world, layers of dissipated flab had been
