on his right hip and in a quick-draw underarm shoulder holster respectively. Bolan was outfitted much as he had been less than two days ago when this mission had begun for him in the waters of Exuma Cay in the Bahamas. Explosives courtesy of both Kennedy and Grimaldi rode securely on his left hip. Knives, garrotes and other instruments of silent death were secured at various points.
Vague, indeterminate sounds, a sense of activity, carried to him across the wide open spaces from the vicinity of the base, more than a mile away, as he made his approach.
Except for this impression of activity, there was silence. Cold shadows hugged the lunarlike landscape. There was no sign of life out here beyond the Aujila oasis and the base situated there.
There was only Bolan.
Alone with his thoughts.
Mack Bolan preferred a combat posture as the quiet infiltrator. Bolan the penetration specialist was in his natural element.
He covered the distance without incident.
Bolan's breathing was steady as he jogged that hilly distance. He was pacing himself for the firefight that lay ahead. His strength would be far from sapped at the end of this run.
He did not try to block his thoughts from touching on the woman he hoped to locate and rescue in that military compound.
In most ways Eve Aguilar was what this mission was all about, symbolically as well as literally.
Thinking about it pushed him on, harder and faster.
He thought about a rustic bungalow on Douglas Lake in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, some two hundred miles from Nashville.
That was the last time Mack Bolan had been with Big Eve. He remembered it now with vivid, aching clarity.
At the time, Bolan had just completed shaking up the Nashville operation of Nick Copa as part of the Executioner's war against the Mafia.
At the windup of that Music City action, Hal Brognola had approached Bolan with an incredible offer: Presidential pardon, full amnesty for past illegalities, a new identity and a chair on the National Security Council...
Bolan and Evita Aguilar had already made arrangements for a rendezvous back then, a plan for some R & R together at the close of Bolan's Tennessee Smash, since both he and Eve were between missions.
The secluded cabin, which had been theirs for a day and a night, had commanded a view of a breathtaking pine valley. This was Davy Crockett country. Old Andy Jackson, too. Hero country, yeah. The backbone of the American spirit, set amid some of the most spectacular natural beauty east of the Mississippi.
For much too short a time, it had seemed as if that paradise had belonged to two soldiers named Mack Bolan and Eve Aguilar.
They had pleasured themselves with each other sexually, sure, and with each other's intellect. But every bit as important was the sense of shared space that they had experienced, even while allowing each other their separate, personal thoughts during their brief time together.
Eve obviously had things on her mind as much as Bolan did. They had planned on spending more than a scant twenty-four hours together. But now Brognola was waiting for Bolan's response, and the plans had to be alerted.
During those twenty-four hours in their Smoky Mountain paradise, Bolan and Eve had separated for some five hours.
Bolan hiked to a secluded cove for some solitary roaming and thinking. When he returned to their cabin near dusk, he had found Eve sitting on a rock formation overlooking the lake.
