Don Pendleton - Savannah Swingsaw

Bolan shrugged. "With that many eyes, maybe you'll be able to see this coming next time." And he snapped a front kick straight into Rodeo's chest. The chest bones dented inward as three ribs cracked from the impact.

Rodeo doubled over, and Bolan threw a right hook and left uppercut combination that rocked Rodeo back into the wall. Blood seeped out over his lip and down his chin. It looked as if he'd been chewing raw meat. The Executioner tried a spinning kick into the kneecap to disable him, but Rodeo was ready this time. He flung himself off the wall and swung his right fist at Bolan's temple. The Executioner managed to raise his left arm to block the punch, but the brass spikes punctured his arm at the triceps. Pain flamed through the arm, numbing it from wrist to shoulder. When he pulled away, he saw Rodeo grinning, holding his triumphant fist high. Blood capped each brass spike like melting red snow.

"Come here, little eyeballs," Rodeo sneered, stalking closer. Bolan's left arm was useless.

He still had no weapon. And the damage he'd done to Rodeo so far was minor, barely slowing him down.

He looked past Rodeo and saw Carrew loading another dart into his blowpipe. He was tempted to say nothing, pretend he didn't even see it.

Right now a dart in Rodeo would be just the distraction he'd need. Carrew placed the pipe to his lips, stared into Bolan's eyes. And Mack Bolan shook his head. No.

Carrew hesitated, then lowered the pipe.

Bolan had no intention of losing this fight.

He'd fought tougher, smarter opponents before.

He'd been a prisoner before. But being in prison, the institution, had dulled him. The boredom had allowed the possibility of failure to creep into his thoughts. What if he failed? He'd be locked in here for years. He'd never worried about the consequences of a mission before. But this time he had without even being aware of it. No more.

He forced a cold wind through his mind, a cleansing bracing breeze. Rodeo stepped in for another attack. His looping right glanced off Bolan's shoulder, the brass teeth biting a chunk of flesh from the shoulder. Bolan ignored the pain, stepping closer to Rodeo, slipping under a punch, wrapping his right arm around Rodeo's waist, pulling the giant up over his hip and flinging him to the ground.

Without pause, Bolan loaded all his weight into one knee and dropped full force onto Rodeo's breastbone, cracking it like a lobster's shell. Rodeo's eyes widened with pain and Bolan raised his right hand like a claw above the giant's face. Rodeo's face cringed with terror as the realization of what was about to happen jangled through his brain. He opened his mouth to scream, but by then Bolan was already moving again, driving his stiffened thumb straight down into Rodeo's right eye, squeezing past the gel of the eyeball, plunging deep into the brain, destroying nervous-system functions. Killing the brain.

Beneath him, Rodeo convulsed slightly, tensed, gagged, relaxed into death with a sigh.

Bolan withdrew the thumb, wiped it on Rodeo's shirt and walked with a slow exhausted gait toward Carrew, stepping over bodies as he walked. "How do we explain all this?" he asked.

Carrew shrugged. "Mass suicide?"

Bolan smiled grimly as Carrew led him away. The numbness in his left arm was worse. He tried to rub some feeling back into it. He wasn't too worried about a prison investigation. By the time officials got around to him, he and Reed would already have made their escape. Or would have been shot trying.

"We'd better get back to our cell," Bolan said. Ninety minutes to go before the breakout.

"Sure thing," Carrew said, muscling his wheelchair along. "But there's just one detour we need to make." He stopped, spun the chair around to face Bolan.

"Detour?" Bolan asked. "Where?"

Carrew smiled. "That's a surprise."

Bolan felt a little alarm jangle in his head.

Something was wrong. He closed his fists and started for Carrew. But he was too late. The first gunman appeared behind him, the second popped out of the storage closet in front. Both were dressed in black hoods. Each had a Star Model PD .45 pointed at him.

He felt the pinch of a needle as the gunman behind him stabbed his arm with a hypo. There was nothing to do now.

Fighting would be useless. They didn't intend to kill him, at least not yet, or they would have done so already.

Perhaps they just wanted information. But who were they? How did they get in here? What was Lyle Carrew's connection? What did they...

Bolan's eyes closed and he dropped endlessly through black space, past the floating bodies of all the friends and enemies who had died violently during the past years.

They stared as he dropped past them. Some cried out to him in warning. Others laughed and waved for him to join their ranks.

Bolan was conscious but he didn't dare open his eyes. He used his other senses to assess the danger, study his predicament. He was naked to the waist and could feel the fresh bandages taped to his body. Knife cut on left shoulder, puncture wounds from Rodeo's spiked knuckles on his left triceps, a chunk the size of a rat bite on his right shoulder, the slash across his shin.

A radio played in another room. A commercial for a popular wine. Faintly, Bolan heard a young woman's voice harmonizing with the jingle. She was pretty good.

Onions. He sniffed the tangy scent of cooked onions, his mouth watering involuntarily, his stomach churning from hunger. How long had he been out?

Beneath him, movement. He dug his fingertips into the bed he was lying on and felt the mattress shift like Jell-O. A water bed. "How long you gonna keep playing this game, Mack Bolan?" a woman's voice drawled. He pedigreed that sassy voice from a lifetime ago. Bolan opened his eyes and stared into the face of the same beautiful woman he'd seen earlier at the jail with Lyle Carrew.

"Hi, Shawnee," he said.

"Hi yourself." She walked over to the bedroom door, leaned her head out into the hallway and shouted, "He's awake." Footsteps pattered down the hallway.

Three other equally gorgeous women huddled anxiously around the doorway. A leggy blonde, a tall dark-haired woman, a petite Asian.

They stared at him as if he was a visitor from another galaxy.

"You all right, Mr. Bolan?" the one with the short blond hair asked. "I hope we didn't hurt y'all none."

Bolan lifted himself up to his elbows. His head was still a little cottony, which the rolling of the water bed didn't help. He nodded at her. "I'm fine."

"Of course he's fine," Shawnee said. "He was in expert hands."

"You stuck me with the needle, right?"

She smiled. "Of course, Mack. You deserve the very best." She turned to the other women. "Okay, you've seen him. Introductions later. Right now Mack and me got some catching up to do." The three women nodded and left. The blonde began singing along with the radio again. Bolan struggled to the edge of the shifting bed, waiting for the grogginess to clear. It didn't.

"I know what you need," Shawnee said. She sat next to Bolan and began rubbing his neck and shoulders. Her long fingers were hard as the prongs of a rake as they expertly worked his tired muscles, avoiding the bandaged areas. "How's that?"

"Haven't lost the touch, huh?"

"About the only thing I haven't lost." Bolan looked her up and down appreciatively. Her Jenim cutoffs and T-shirt didn't hide much.

"I noticed. Must be about forty pounds."

"Yep. I'd gained about thirty of them my first year in Nam. That's when we met. Took me years to get rid of them."

"You look good."

"Good? Hell, I look great." Bolan laughed. "I stand corrected."

"You didn't even recognize me, did you? Admit it. When you saw me at the jail today with Lyle, you didn't know who I was."