Don Pendleton: Save the Children

A black Corvette cruised through the freezing November night, the twin funnels of light created by its halogens sweeping the neighborhood as the car turned off a secondary residential street on the north side of Chicago.

A big man sat behind the wheel of the sportster, and the glow from the dashboard cluster only served to further etch the features of an already grim visage like sculpted granite. His steely gaze probed the darkness ahead of the lighted area carved by the car's twin beams.

Mack Bolan guided the sleek vehicle into a parking lot almost filled with similarly sporty cars.

He braked the Vette, then backed into a parking space as close as he could to the canopied main entrance of a sprawling, single-level structure.

He cut the sportster's engine and headlights and paused for a moment.

No one knew it yet, but Death had come to the New Age Center.

Mack Bolan watched a couple in their twenties leave the center through double glass doors, one of which was held open for them by a hulking doorman.

The couple did not notice the man behind the Vette's steering wheel. They passed Bolan hurriedly, moving toward their own vehicle somewhere across the lot, chattering happily. In the high-intensity illumination of the parking area, he quietly observed the puffs of frosted breath escaping like smoke signals in the frigid air.

Bolan shifted his attention from the pair as they disappeared beyond a line of cars.

Through the Vette's windshield he eyeballed the doorman at his post just inside those double glass doors.

The guy reminded Bolan of a cartoon character who sold cleaning solvent on tv commercials: T-shirted; thick, corded arms folded across a massive chest; head shaved bald, a single gold hoop earring dangling from the lobe of his left ear. The giant, stuffed into tight-fitting Levi's, was as tall as Bolan, plus thirty pounds.

The doorman did not seem to mind the icy blast each time the door was opened; he gazed out into the crisp night with no undue attention directed toward the recently arrived Corvette.

Bolan heard a vehicle gun to life close behind him. He remained motionless.

He figured it was the couple he had just seen.

The headlights of their car sliced through the Corvette's interior for an instant before the car turned onto the street and drove away.

Bolan, who was known as the Executioner, made a quick, final weapons-check.

He drew the Beretta 93-R from beneath his jacket, checked the action, then, satisfied, reholstered the pistol in the speed rig beneath his right arm.

He had been carrying the 93-R into combat for some time now and it had not let him down yet.

The Beretta would give him no trouble this night.

An advanced self-loading pistol, the 93-R can be triggered in either single or three-shot modes, which means a rate of fire of 110 rounds per minute with the detachable box magazine of twenty rounds. This Beretta had been modified to Bolan's personal specifications with sound suppressor.

Bolan would not need the detachable magazine or silencer on this very hard hit, now only seconds away.

The Beretta was ready and so was the .44 AutoMag, which resided in a specially constructed fast-draw holster beneath his left arm. Bolan quickly withdrew the .44 from its rig.

The six-and-a-half-inch barrel on the stainless-steel automatic handgun glinted in the lamplight spilling through in the Vette's window.

The AutoMag, weighing in at close to four pounds, is as close to a rifle as any handgun can be. A recoil-operated pistol with a rotating bolt head controlled by cam tracks in the pistol frame, the Series C AutoMag fires "wildcat" slugs...

.44 revolver bullets with cut-down 7.62 mm NATO rifle cartridge casings...

capable of tearing through the solid metal of an automobile engine block. The gun requires a bolt with six locking lugs to contain explosive internal gas pressures. The weapon also requires a powerful grasp.

An easy match for this big man, who now slid the hand howitzer back into its holster.

He unlatched his car door and left the Vette, heading directly, briskly, toward the front entrance of the New Age Center. His steady footfalls crunched ice and hard-packed snow.

The doorman spotted the tall dude striding toward the building.

The muscle-bound baldy did not take his narrowed, scrutinizing eyes from the figure in dark slacks and jacket coming his way, even as he held open the glass doors for another arm-in-arm, laughing couple who floated out of the health club and down stone steps past Bolan.

Bolan pushed inside, knocking the door handle out of the guy's grip.

The doorman was actually a bouncer, and he took exception to the way this new arrival, whom he did not recognize, tried to get past him.

He snarled something and started forward toward Bolan, huge fists clenching.

"You're not a member..." he began.

Bolan reached out and grabbed the collar of the man's T-shirt and the belt at the back of his slacks. He twisted slightly, using the bouncer's forward momentum to sail the giant out through the door.

The glass shattered and thousands of razor-sharp shards tinkled to the ground as the doorman hurtled headfirst down the stone steps. He uttered a howl of pain, and trickles of blood spiderwebbed across his bald pate as he landed in the snow and lay unmoving beneath the entranceway.

Bolan continued on into the subdued illumination and tasteful decor of the health spa's lobby.

Chic onlookers, dangling Adidas gym bags, watched him with a mixture of fascination and horror.

The lobby of the New Age Center reminded Bolan of a blend between a singles' bar and a top-line country club. Indirect lighting played discreetly on expensive mahogany and leather.

Bolan ignored the twenty or so people staring at him. They were doing exactly what he expected in a situation like this.

For all the macho posturing of the men, there was something almost interchangeable about them and the female patrons of this health club. Their well-tuned physiques suggested decadence instead of strength. And Bolan could bet that if any of them were put into a survivalist camp, they'd come apart in six hours. Over Scotch and sodas it was easy for someone to convince himself that an hour a day on a Nautilus machine made him a tough guy, but the Executioner had doubts about tough guys who spent more on a haircut than a Marine did on a month's worth of beer. The media called them Yuppies.

Bolan did not like doctors, lawyers, advertising people and others who patronized health clubs run by mafioso, however trendy the establishment.

He paused in the middle of the lobby, reached into his pocket and withdrew something that looked like a hand grenade.

Pandemonium broke out in the lobby as the "beautiful people" lost all interest in the formidable-looking man who had pitched a bouncer through a glass door.

Everyone started scrambling for the nearest exit.

Bolan pulled the pin of the "grenade" and tossed it into a nearby corner. Before it landed, he turned toward the front desk of the club where a young female receptionist appeared frozen and terrified.

He reached her just as the smoke bomb detonated with a pounding blast and began filling the lobby with rising swirls of smoke.

The young woman opened her mouth but no words came out.

Bolan touched her arm, not forcefully, but to bring some reason to this innocent bystander whom he wanted out of this firezone as quickly as possible. That was the reason for the smoke bomb.

"Parelli," he said quietly. "Where's his office?"

The lobby was now devoid of bystanders.

The receptionist heard the question and turned frightened eyes in the direction of a doorway behind her desk.