The Executioner gazed down the road. "A helicopter is coming to Medevac Ramzin out. I want you and Koontz to go with it. There may be a Red Falcon or two running around in the woods, and your house is only a mile or two from here. Baibakov is running. At this point we have to hope the authorities can catch him."

McCain looked at Bolan doubtfully. "Do you think they will?"

He gazed at the forest as it burned. Baibakov had escaped again, and he always left himself a bolt-hole. If he had to bet, the giant would be holed up safe within the hour. Bolan flexed his burned hands and shook his head. "No, Senator. I don't think they will. Baibakov is still at large, and I'm fresh out of leads on how to find him."

17.

Valentina Svarzkova looked up as Bolan came into the doctor's office. Her nose had been set and was covered with a bandage and tape. There was a spot of blood on the bandage where the deep gash continued to seep. Her upper lip was magnificently swollen, and it had taken four st.i.tches to close the split on her lower one. She looked as though she had gone a hard ten rounds with someone outside her weight cla.s.s. Bolan grinned at her. "Hey, sailor, want a date?"

The lieutenant snorted and touched her lips gingerly. "You would have to be a greatly drunken sailor to wish to kiss this face. How are your hands?"

The soldier held up his gauze-wrapped hands and wiggled his fingers. "Minor to first-degree burns, and I have some blistering on my neck. I'll live."

Svarzkova shivered. "Fire is bad. Sometimes, when my father had been drinking vodka, he would tell my brothers and I stories of the Great War. My father was a soldier, and he fought the n.a.z.is in the streets of Stalingrad. Once my father told us a story of the Germans breaking through his position with flamethrowing tanks." She shivered again at the memory. "You are very lucky."

Bolan nodded soberly. He had seen more than his share of what napalm and white phosphorus could do to the human body. Fire was always bad. He had been very lucky in the woods of Arlington. He had barely escaped one of the most horrible deaths imaginable. "Do you need anything?"

Svarzkova shook her head. "No. The doctor has said I do not have a concussion, but he wishes to keep me in hospital overnight. I do not wish to stay here. I wish to go where you are going."

"All right. Let's see about checking you out of here."

A nurse walked into the office and looked at Bolan. "Mr. Belasko, Major Ramzin has regained consciousness. He is demanding to see you, and he is being very, you might say, adamant about it. Could you please see if you could make him more cooperative? He nearly lost his right leg, and he's lost a great deal of blood. He needs rest, he won't allow anyone to sedate him and he's threatening to kill people if you aren't brought to him immediately."

The Executioner's eyes narrowed. "I'll see him."

Bolan followed the nurse into the wards and found Ramzin lying in a private room. The major looked like death warmed over. The only color in his face was from the bruises he had suffered at Bolan's hands and in Vermont. Against the deathly pallor of his skin, they looked horrible. Both of the man's legs were elevated and heavily bandaged. An IV dripped into his arm. His left eye had opened slightly from its swelling, and both bloodshot eyes rolled in their sockets and looked at Bolan as he entered the room.

Ramzin's voice was remarkably lucid.

"You and I need to speak."

Bolan turned to the nurse. "I need to speak to the major alone."

The nurse frowned.

He spread his hands. "Give me five minutes with him, and I promise I'll shut him up and make him go to sleep."

The nurse sighed. "All right. Five minutes. No more."

Ramzin waited until the nurse had left and closed the door. "First I must ask you for your promise."

The Executioner stared at Ramzin frankly. "I can't promise you anything, but if it's in my power I'll do what I can."

Ramzin raised his head with an effort and stared Bolan in the eye. "If the doctor takes my leg, shoot me." The Russian sagged back onto his pillow with a sigh. "Then shoot him."

Bolan almost smiled. "I'll do you one better." He took one of Ramzin's pilfered 9 mm Browning Hi-Power pistols out from under his jacket and tossed it onto the bed next to the Russian. "Keep that under your pillow. I have to go find Baibakov, and I can't sit around here baby-sitting you because you have a contract on your head. If you want to blow out your brains in the meantime, that's up to you. But the nurse told me that you almost lost your leg, not that they were going to saw it off."

The pistol seemed almost too heavy for him to lift, but with an effort Ramzin managed to push the pistol under his pillow. He sagged back onto the bed in exhaustion. "Thank you. You are a good comrade."

"You're welcome." Bolan's tone hardened slightly. "Now tell me why you threatened to kill the nurse unless I saw you tonight. You had more on your mind than making me promise to give you the bullet."

"Exactly so. You are correct." Ramzin sighed. "I have not been completely honest with you, or your government."

Bolan's tone went arctic. "What haven't you told me?"

"You recall the affair in Arizona?"

Bolan's tone didn't change. "I do."

"In my effort to escape I used two nuclear-demolition charges."

"Yes, one was detonated in the tunnels. The other was directly under your base. You prevented that one from going off yourself."

Ramzin nodded his head and closed his eyes. After a long moment he spoke. "There was a third device."

"What happened to it?"

"I buried it in the desert. I kept the third demolition charge in reserve, in case of an emergency. When we evacuated the base, I had no opportunity to recover the device, and when my men and I were captured, I did not reveal its existence to your government." Ramzin met Bolan's hard stare unflinchingly. "I did not intend to spend the rest of my life in Leavenworth. If I escaped, I would need money. There are many people in the world who would like to get their hands on a nuclear device. Failing a conventional escape method, I had entertained thoughts of arranging to have half of the prison demolished with a low-yield detonation, then escaping in the confusion."

"Why didn't you tell me about it when I sprang you?"

"Even if your government set me free as it had promised, I would return to Russia a penniless former military officer. The streets of Moscow are full of such men, and unlike them, I would be blackballed for my renegade activities in the United States. As you can imagine, my prospects would not be favorable. And as you can imagine, a nuclear device, even a low-yield demolition charge, would bring a high price in hard currency on the black market. I was keeping the device as a nest egg for my return to Russia."

"Why are you telling me this now?"

The Russian grimaced and looked down at his bandaged legs. "I suspect I will be in Washington, D.C., for the next few weeks. I think perhaps I will not be safe in Washington, D.C. I think perhaps no one in the city of Washington, D.C., will be safe."

Bolan stared at Ramzin icily. He had no doubt the man was telling the truth. The Russian would have had no qualms about vaporizing half of his fellow inmates to escape. He had once attempted to vaporize Bolan and five hundred innocent Mexican civilians. Now Bolan suspected Ramzin's nuclear nest egg had gone into a worst-case scenario.

"Does Baibakov know where the device is?"

"No. I never told him where I had hidden it. But he knew of the third device's existence, and he ran many of the surveys when we were looking for places to hide materiels. I wished quick access to the device if I needed it. I did not bury it too deep or too far away."

"You think he might be able to find it?"

Ramzin closed his eyes again. "He knows my mind, he knows the area well and he knows what he is looking for. Yes, I believe it is possible."

Bolan's voice was as cold as the grave. "Give me the coordinates."

Ramzin pointed a finger at the closet. "I wrote them down for you in case I was killed. The piece of paper is among my personal things."

Bolan went to the closet, took out a large wallet and removed a piece of heavy paper. There was a short paragraph of written directions in English and a hand-drawn map with coordinates graphed onto it. Bolan folded the paper and put it in his jacket pocket.

The major's voice rose as Bolan headed out the door. "I wish to be transferred to a hospital outside of the District of Columbia."

Bolan stopped in the doorway and looked at the Russian emotionlessly. "You'll take your chances with the rest of the city."

The Executioner raced the sun across the American Southwest.

The F-15D's airframe vibrated as Jack Grimaldi flew the two-seat fighter on afterburners at two and a half times the speed of sound. Bolan looked off to his left. Valentina Svarzkova sat in the front seat of another two-seat F-15D trainer. An Air Force pilot named Steven J. Anderson was ferrying the Russian agent in the wingman's position. Lieutenant Anderson didn't understand the reason for his mission, but the parameters had been explained to him succinctly by Grimaldi before takeoff at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland.

"Lieutenant, we're going to Arizona. I'm taking the gentleman. You're taking the lady. Try to keep up."

Bolan doubted Anderson was having any problem with his orders. It wasn't every day that they stuck a woman in his plane, gave him permission to abandon normal flight regulations and told him to break world speed records across the United States. The twin-engine fighters screamed across the sky.

Grimaldi spoke from the rear seat of the c.o.c.kpit. "We have an incoming communication from the Farm, Sarge." Bolan keyed his radio. "This is Striker."

"Striker, this is the Bear."

"Go ahead, Bear. What's the situation?"

Kurtzman's voice was tight. "The White House is trying to keep the situation quiet. They don't want anyone to know there may be terrorists running around the country with nuclear devices. The border patrol has been scrambled into the area along the border to stop anyone going over. They haven't been told what's going on, just to expect an undetermined number of heavily armed fugitives trying to escape into Mexico. The Pentagon is dropping a company from the Tenth Special Forces group into the area. Publicly they're on a training mission, but they've been briefed on the situation. They're flying out of Fort Carson in Colorado and should be jumping within the next hour."

Bolan looked at his watch. "Jack, what's our ETA?"

"We'll be landing in Fort Huachuca in fifteen minutes."

The Executioner nodded. "Bear, we're going to need immediate transportation to get out to Ramzin's coordinates. Preferably a helicopter."

"Way ahead of you, Striker. There is an armed Blackhawk fueled, warmed up and ready for you on the field."

"Thanks. We'll contact you once we're on the ground. Striker out."

Bolan watched the desert grow beneath him as Grimaldi began his descent.

Bolan looked down as the helicopter swept across the desert. In the distance the Red Star mining outfit loomed up out of the sand. Border-patrol vehicles were visible moving along the road out of the town of Crucible to the east. The soldier glanced ahead. The desert sand was turning from purple to orange as the sun's light spilled over the horizon. The Executioner spied twin columns of rock at the feet of the mountains and pointed. "There!"

Grimaldi nodded and banked the helicopter sharply toward the landmark. Svarzkova rode in the back with six armed Air Force police from Fort Huachuca. The local APs were the closest troops Bolan could lay his hands on. Guarding Air Force bases against terrorists was their primary job, and Bolan had told them it was terrorists they were after. The APs held their M-16 rifles and maintained uniform expressions of grim determination. Two more APs stood behind door-mounted M-60 machine guns on either side of the aircraft. Beneath the black helicopter's stub wings was a pair of twenty-four tube rocket pods, a 20 mm multibarrel cannon, and four wire-guided TOW ant.i.tank missiles.

The helicopter's copilot occasionally looked at Grimaldi, then back over his shoulder at Bolan. It was clear to him he was the weapons officer on this mission. What wasn't clear was why he was flying on an armed mission over Arizona. The helicopter descended and stopped twenty yards from where the rock spines suddenly swept into mountains.

Grimaldi shouted over the rotor noise, "That's as close as I can get. Once you and your team are out, I'll orbit with the weapons ready."

Bolan nodded and slapped Grimaldi on the shoulder. The Blackhawk's wheels ground into the sand, and the Executioner moved into the back of the helicopter. Svarzkova stared at him over her bandaged nose. He jerked his head at the desert outside. "Let's go!"

The soldier squinted against the flying sand in the helicopter's rotor wash as he jumped out and moved toward the rocks, Svarzkova and the six APs deploying behind him. The 220foot spires of rock stood like grim sentinels at a crack in the mountain. The crack was a sandy wash that wound inward. Bolan frowned. A wash wasn't an ideal place to bury a nuclear weapon. Flash floods were a common occurrence in the desert rainy season, and anything buried shallow stood an excellent chance of being exposed and washed away. The crack in the rocks he was in would only channel water and speed up the process.

Bolan followed the cleft in the rock deeper into the mountain, and sheer rock walls rose up cathedral-like around him. The sky above was lightening, but inside the crack it was still dusk. The wash grew steeper and began to wind. Bolan flicked the safety off his M-4 carbine and moved around a bend.

The Executioner stopped short. The wash ended abruptly. There was a larger crack in the rock ten feet up where water would be channeled and fall into the wash to flood it. Dripping water had slowly sculpted the rock over the centuries and formed an overhang. Beneath it was a ten-foot s.p.a.ce that would never flood. Bolan climbed up the incline and stared down as a cold feeling of dread rose up his spine.

A hole had been dug under the overhang. It was four feet deep, and approximately four feet long and two feet wide. Bolan lowered his carbine as he stared into the hole.

They were too late.

18.

Mack Bolan sat in a secure communications room at Fort Huachuca and stared at the walls. The Army base was the national test center of the United States Signal Corps, and some of the most sophisticated technology in military electronics was tried and tested there. It had no shortage of secure communications rooms. Valentina Svarzkova sat next to Bolan with her chin in her hands. Her battered face was a study in defeat. The Executioner understood her feelings. The fact was, there was little left he could think of to do. He stared at the soiled bandage on his right hand as he curled his burned fingers into a fist.

Igor Baibakov was at large, and he had a nuclear weapon.

The communications console chirped, and Bolan punched the speaker b.u.t.ton. "What's happening, Aaron?"

Kurtzman spoke tiredly across the satellite link. "Baibakov has threatened to blow up Washington."

Bolan unclenched his fist and looked at his hand. "How did he make contact?"

The computer expert saw the line of questioning. "He used a current Russian military code, and he described the make and model of the nuclear demolition charge. It's him, all right. He says he's dialed the yield up to the maximum ten kilotons."

Ten kilotons was about two-thirds the yield of the weapon dropped on Hiroshima. It wouldn't wipe Washington, D.C., off the face of the planet, but millions of people would die, and the seat of American government would be a radioactive hole in the ground.

"What does he want?"

"For starters full withdrawal of all United States forces from the former Yugoslavia."

Bolan's eyes suddenly narrowed. "I don't buy it." Svarzkova blinked at the Executioner incredulously. Kurtzman paused. "You don't think he has the device?"

"I know he has the device."

"You don't think he intends to use it?"

"Oh, he intends to use it, all right."

Kurtzman suddenly seized the idea. "You think it's a feint."

Bolan nodded. "I do."

"I think you're in the minority there, Mack. Everyone around here is on full alert. They're expecting Armageddon. The President and his immediate staff are already on Air Force One and halfway across the country." Kurtzman let out a breath. "You think you have Baibakov's head figured out?"

Bolan smiled slightly. "I think I do. I see a highly trained special-forces officer who knows his enemy well."

Kurtzman was obviously intrigued. "So what are you thinking?"