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  They both were wounded.

  Before Bolan could change magazines, the man vanished behind the far end of the same bunker Bolan lay on.

  Bolan ran along the top of the hundred-foot mound, watching the end and the far side where he thought the Syrian might come out. The man did not show.

  The Executioner flattened out at a spot where he could cover the trenches and the end of the bunker, a fresh 30-round magazine in the AK.

  He waited.

  For five minutes there was no movement, no sound. Then he heard explosions and rifle fire at the far end of the base. There was nothing valuable up here now, nothing to capture or defend, so the Syrians had not sent a force up here. Then why one man?

  As Bolan pondered, he saw an arm and then a black ball sailing toward him through the hot dusty air.

  He watched the small bomb coming. It was short and to the left. Bolan rolled away from it, the rifle clamped on his chest. As he rolled over his left shoulder he groaned in blinding pain. The red wave washed over his retinas and he could see nothing. The grenade went off with an ear-throbbing roar and he felt one shard of shrapnel hit his leg. But it was small and he was not even sure it had penetrated the skin. He could see nothing for ten seconds. Then the red curtain eased, faded, shattered into splinters and vanished after another five seconds.

  First he looked at the trenches. The man was not there. The Executioner took the last grenade from his shirt pocket and pulled the pin. He threw it where he had seen the arm. The bomb hit and bounced, then rolled over the lip of the bunker and went off. He heard screams of pain.

  Almost before the explosion faded, a head jolted up and looked over the mound. Bolan fired six rounds, then he heard a sound every combat man dreads — the clack of a jammed weapon. He tried to unjam it, but it would take a tool. The Executioner knew he had to get back to the trenches for another weapon.

  The head bobbed up again, and this time Bolan could see the features. The man was not a Syrian.

  He was Aleksandr Galkin. The Russian had come for vengeance. The Executioner ran back the way he had come, along the top of the mound, then down the far side. He carried the rifle as a bluff. It almost worked.

  He was twenty feet from the trenches when a burst of hot lead churned the ground around him. All missed. He looked toward the end of the near mound and saw the Russian working on his weapon. He had run out of ammunition.

  Bolan turned and ran toward him, the fury building in him. As he ran the thirty yards, he pulled an Israeli fighting knife from his belt. He saw the Russian taking out his own knife.

  Aleksandr straightened when his enemy was ten yards away.

  "So, it has come down to this, American?" he said.

  "You and me, Galkin. No Syrians, no Russians, no Israelis and no Americans. Just two men and two knives."

  "I was always good with a knife," Galkin said.

  Bolan was four inches taller than the other man. Galkin was overweight and the Executioner guessed out of shape. But a sharp blade would cut for any hand.

  Beside Galkin lay a briefcase. Bolan motioned to it.

  "Your five million dollars?"

  "Part of it. They paid on delivery, of course. How they handled the canisters after that was their problem."

  "Considerate of you." Bolan saw the wound on the Russian now. It was bad, still bleeding. The left arm hung at Galkin's side, which meant nothing. He could be faking that much. "I should have taken you out in Idaho."

  "You were there?"

  "Remember the guard the dogs tore apart? I should have finished your safehouse that night."

  Bolan moved forward, the six-inch blade held in front of him with the tip forward the way one would hold a pointer. It was the classic knife-fighting position that let you slash up, down or sideways, or drive forward in a thrusting motion.

  Galkin nodded as he assumed the same pose.

  "We could bargain," the Russian said. "I have almost two million American dollars in this briefcase. We could split it evenly, and each walk out of the base by a different route."

  "I want it all, then I might let you go," Bolan said.

  "I never know when Americans are joking. It doesn't matter, you would not accept a compromise."

  "You have that right."

  They were ten feet apart. Bolan held out his left arm so Galkin knew he had use of it. The Russian's left arm hung by his side.

  The Executioner drove in with the blade, his boots dancing through the sand. He faked a slashing blow to the belly, stopped it and swung the sharp blade at Galkin's right shoulder. The steel caught only the tan shirt the Russian wore, making a two-inch tear.

  As Bolan jumped back, he felt the throbbing pain in his shoulder from the jolt, but beat it down.

  The Russian came forward slowly, as if tired. Then suddenly he charged, his left arm rising to take any blow from Bolan's knife, so he could get inside.

  The Executioner slashed the left arm, sidestepped and spun away from the swinging cold steel. He suffered only a scratch on his left shoulder above the bullet wound.

  Quickly they faced each other again.

  "My offer still stands," Galkin said. "Half for each of us."

  Bolan felt the red coming back, fought it, but knew it would flood over his eyes soon. Slowly he shook his head at the offer. The Russian stood six feet away, facing him. In ten seconds the Executioner would be helpless. He shifted his grip on the handle, and in a swift and long-practiced movement threw the heavy knife. The attack came so swiftly that Galkin had time only to lift his right arm and start to drop away.

  The knife flew the six feet point first, penetrating between ribs as Galkin fell to the ground, gripping the handle of the blade.

  He stared at Bolan in disbelief, then his eyes closed and opened. The blade had missed his heart, but severed two large arteries. He coughed, spit up blood.

  Bolan let the red haze come then, not knowing how long it would last. He stared hard through unseeing eyes at Galkin, at the place where he had been when the mists had blocked out his sight. For fifteen seconds the Executioner stood there, blind, waiting, listening to the man in the sand. Galkin made only one sound, a rasping wheezing, then he coughed as he strangled on his own blood and fell back into the sand.

  When Bolan's sight returned after twenty seconds, he saw the Russian dead on the ground, a pool of blood in the sand beside his mouth.

  Bolan sagged to his knees, then stood, holding his left arm across his chest and ran back to the trench. He looked down at the woman he thought was dead. She had just finished washing the blood off the side of her head, and had a bandage half in place.

  "Sorry I got hit just when you needed me," Luana said. "It just grazed my head but bled as if I'd been slaughtered. That shoulder!"

  She helped him into the trench, and he saw she had four loaded rifles and six grenades stacked beside her. "I figured the Syrians would come sooner or later."

  He put his good arm around her and held her closely for a moment, then blinked and eased away.

  He saw the small radio lying on top of the grenades.

  "Remember that last chopper?" she said. "I just talked to some of our air. They're sending in another one. ETA is five minutes. Gives me time to get that shoulder patched up."

  Bolan nodded, then looked back at where he had left the Russian KGB agent.

  "First a small detour." He stepped out of the trench and walked to the spot where Aleksandr Galkin had set down his briefcase. It was worth a look. There could be some cash in the bag. He carried it back to the trench.

  "Open it," he said to Luana.

  She unsnapped the clasp and spread the bag top open. Bolan saw several big envelopes. Inside one he found negotiable American stocks and bonds of large denominations.

  Luana opened a small blue velvet bag with drawstrings. When she looked inside her eyes went wide, then she rolled something into her hand.

  In her palm lay ten brilliant-cut diamonds, each from four to six karats.

 
; "Oh, my!"

  "Each one of those stones is probably worth a hundred thousand dollars," Bolan said.

  "Galkin's payoff? Was that Galkin who shot me?"

  "Yes. And those baubles are your medical-insurance payment."

  "Oh, I couldn't."

  "We'll talk about that later. If your chopper friends get here before the Syrians do. Look down there."

  They saw a dust trail lifting off the desert floor. It came from across the field and angled directly for them.

  Bolan put the diamonds and stocks back in the briefcase.

  They each set up four rifles on the small parapet and waited.

  "Bumblebee. Calling Bumblebee. This is Little Bo Peep. Where are you? The wolf is coming."

  "Peeper, glad you're still there. Our ETA is about one minute. Not to worry about that six-by truck headed your way. We'll make a run on him coming past."

  They could hear the faint whup-whup of the chopper then. A stain in the sky wheeled and two rockets jetted from the chopper and exploded below. One caught the truck in the side and rolled it three times and set it on fire.

  The chopper powered on toward them, circled the dead highway tractor and its trenches as the pilot and gunner checked for enemy troops, then settled to the ground.

  "Come on, Little Bo Peep, I think you've found your sheep," the Executioner said.

  21

  The warm water swept ashore in a small wave, crested and rolled over the brown sand. Mack Bolan took a deep breath and let it escape slowly. The sun overhead was warm; it would soon be too hot for his kind of limited beach play. He stood slowly, washed the sand off his legs and strolled to a solitary umbrella on the mile-long stretch of deserted beach.

  The Executioner sat down in the shade beside Luana, who wore a bikini and rubbed sunscreen lotion on her arms. They were on a secure beach about five miles from the small village of Ashdod in southern Israel, down toward the Gaza Strip.

  Bolan winced as he sat down. Any strain on the shoulder came through loud and clear now. He and Luana had walked to the chopper that last day at the Atsi airport in Damascus and had been put on stretchers at once and treated like casualties for three days by the Israeli army medics. By the time Luana made her explanations and told "Mack Scott's" part in the plot to destroy Israel, the story had leaked to the press.

  Israel had wanted to declare Mack a national hero, but he had bluffed them with talk about a top-security problem and that any such notice would blow his cover and his usefulness in future operations. He talked them into using another name for him and downgrading his part in the operation. He insisted that Luana be given a medal for her part.

  The incident would soon blow over and be only a minor paragraph in the history of Israel, but the tightening up of American security should be beneficial and long lasting.

  The crease along the side of Luana's head was healing. She had taken a week's leave and was nursing him like a mother hen. They were living alone in a cabin just behind the small sand dunes. The place had a view of the water, all the comforts and was directly adjacent to a highly classified and secure army zone.

  They watched TV and she interpreted the newscasts for him. they watched American dramas with subtitles and he told her when the subtitles didn't quite tell the whole story.

  For a week they had been wading, swimming, sunning and at night watching the stars from a bonfire on the beach.

  No longer did the red tide block his vision. The medics said it was all a part of the shock he'd suffered after the wound, and it had almost killed him.

  They still had the briefcase. Bolan had kept it with him and told the authorities it had top-secret material inside, which he was responsible for. They did not question his word, and even now the briefcase sat in the cottage living room.

  "Have you decided about the money?" he asked her.

  Luana looked away, dark eyes troubled. She turned toward him, a small frown on her face, then sighed.

  "No, I haven't. True, it is Syrian money. It is not stealing to take it, to use it for good causes. But I feel it should go to the government."

  He touched her hand. "Luana. I need money to finance my operations. I'll take half of it — the stock certificates. You can use the rest as you want to. Give it all to the Israeli national treasury, or start your own offensive against Syria. Or you could buy some reasonably sized diamonds and a mink coat. But promise me you'll save some of it for yourself. You earned it the hard way."

  "That sounds like a good plan. You'll have enough to keep working. And I'll have some satisfaction, maybe both ways. I don't have to decide right now."

  Luana reached over and touched his shoulder. "Remember in my apartment when I told you I was just another soldier?"

  "Yes, I remember."

  "And we slept in the same bed that night and you never touched me?"

  "Yes."

  "Now I feel different. I don't want you to think of me as one of the guys."

  He reached out and kissed her soft lips and she responded.

  "Do you want to go up to the cabin?" she murmured.

  "No."

  "Right here?"

  "Yes. Right here, right now."

  She watched him, her face serious. Then she smiled, reached out and kissed his lips again. She untied her bikini top and let it fall to the towel.

  "Mack, I love you," she whispered.