"it is time we rejoined the others." Thamby waited for Vu to take a chair in his office, then repeated his question. "How much will your government give to get you back?" "I don't think they'd give you one gun for me.

My government doesn't pay ransom to kidnappers, especially weapons." "All governments sell weapons. We do business with quite a few who compete for our money," Thamby replied. "Why is your government any different?" The American shrugged. "You can try, but you won't get anywhere bargaining for my life. I volunteered to come over here to try to get you and the government to come to a truce. n.o.body sent me." "Then we will have to wait and see what your government thinks you're worth." Vu had never encountered anyone as cold-blooded as the Tamil confronting him. "I came here with peaceful intentions," he reminded the Tiger chieftain.

"Let us hope that the response from your government will let you leave with them," Thamby said, smiling icily. "Otherwise we will send you back to the United States dead." "Perhaps," a voice said, amending the statement.

Thamby turned to see who had spoken. It was Konamalai.

The Boosa Camp consisted of rows of low whitewashed buildings surrounded by barbed wire.

Hard-faced men in sweat-stained uniforms patrolled the open ditches beyond the electrified fences. It was here that Bolan hoped to get his first lead on where to find Thamby and John Vu.

Garbage filled the almost-empty streets, and a handful of prisoners in filthy prison garb moved aimlessly, pushing large brooms at the piles of filth.

Expressionless armed guards kept staring at the listless captives from the other side of the barbed wire fence. Bolan studied their faces. All of them wore the callous look of men who had killed too many people to feel emotion any longer.

The Executioner waited until an armed patrol pa.s.sed, then picked up a rock and threw it at the last of the soldiers marching by.

Falling behind a small rise, he watched as the irritated guard stopped and looked around, then turned back to shout something to the others in the patrol.

The others smiled at one another, clearly knowing what their comrade had in mind, then continued to walk the perimeter of the camp.

Shouldering the AK-47, the guard pulled out a long black club from a belt around his waist and walked back. Slowly he moved along the outside of the barbed wire, searching for where the culprit was hiding.

Combat knife gripped in his right hand, the Executioner waited until the infuriated soldier moved past him, then rose to his feet and wrapped a large, muscular arm around his adversary's neck.

Lashing out with the club, the soldier tried to beat his attacker off, with no success.

Bolan applied just enough pressure to render the man unconscious.

However, the sagging body brushed against the barbed wire, generating a cloud of sparks that raced through the soldier, killing him. The electric current held the slain guard fast to the fence.

Bolan heard a loud alarm start to blare. He knew that other guards would race to this spot to see what caused the noise. Moving back into the untrimmed brush, he waited until he heard the sounds of running feet.

As he watched the guards remove the body, Bolan knew the electricity had been temporarily shut off. Removing a pair of wire cutters from a pocket of his combat vest, the Executioner quickly moved to the fence and snipped an opening, then bent the wires toward him.

Knowing how prison guards thought, Bolan was sure they'd believe that there had been an escape.

Who in his right mind would want to break into the camp?

Easing through the opening, the big American looked for an avenue of escape.

The stocky STF sergeant was stripped to the waist.

The teenage girl who stood before him, glaring in defiance, spit out curse after curse. Blood from the torn skin on her back, raw from the continuous beatings from the black leather whip in the noncom's hand, formed into a puddle around her bare feet.

"Butcher! Murderer of innocent children! Unclean offspring of a Colombo wh.o.r.e!" Raja had been trying for an hour to get the young woman to confess she was the sister of the Tiger chief.

"If I were his sister, he would have already come for me and torn your small genitals from your body with his bare hands!" The sergeant was stymied. The orders from the colonel were not to kill her, but he said he wanted to find out where Thamby was hiding.

There was one possible solution. He put the whip on a wooden chair and went to the heavy door.

Opening it, he shouted for one of the guards to join him.

A brutish man with scars that covered his face came into the interrogation room. "You called me, Sergeant?" "Where are your two roommates?" "Resting in our room. Why?" Raja untied the young woman and supported her so she wouldn't faint from the beating.

"Here. She's yours. And theirs." The scarred man's eyes brightened as he threw a huge arm around the teenager's waist. As she began to scream in terror, the sergeant added a warning.

"I want her to be able to tell me about her brother after the three of you are done with her." The man's mouth curled into a leer of antic.i.p.ation, then the scarred man started to laugh.

"When we've had our fun, she'll be willing to tell you anything, Sergeant." Bolan moved swiftly past the one-story buildings, listening for any voices that would give him a clue to who was inside.

Most of the buildings were silent. He had seen the prisoners working in the semibarren fields, trying to till the almost-arid soil.

A woman's scream from two buildings away caught his attention. The voice was filled with terror and hate.

Some instinct told him he had found Thamby's sister. Checking the clip on the Beretta, he headed toward the building.

The windows were blocked by a layer of dust and dirt. Carefully he rubbed away a small circle and looked inside.

A naked young woman was pinned down on a cot.

A brutish man was on top of her, trying to force her legs apart, while two uniformed guards watched with lascivious smirks.

Like a cornered wildcat, the young woman slashed at the would-be rapist's face with her nails.

Finally, in fury, the heavyset man closed his hand and rammed his fist into her face.

She collapsed, unconscious.

Her attacker spread her legs, then unbuckled his belt.

Bolan tried the doork.n.o.b, which was locked.

Flicking the Beretta's fire selector to automatic mode, the Executioner slammed his solid two-hundred-plus pounds against the door, the force of his weight tearing it from its wooden frame.

The man on the bed jumped to his feet and tripped on his pants, which had slipped to his ankles. The other two hardmen recovered quickly from the surprise entrance and grabbed for their a.s.sault rifles, hanging from wooden pegs on a nearby wall.

The Executioner stopped them cold with a short burst.

Staring at the huge cavern in his stomach, the first of the pair started to protest, then fell across a second bed in the room. His companion seemed oblivious to his wounds and continued to move toward his a.s.sault rifle.

Bolan took out the dying guard with a round that cored his brain.

The brute-like man tried to crawl under the bed, a Chinese copy of a 9 mm Makarov pistol falling from his pants pocket.

The young woman reached down and grabbed it, pointing the weapon at his crotch. A lead slug, embedded with steel shot, ripped into the would-be rapist's t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es, stunning him.

Shocked, he looked down and saw the blood running down his legs. Despite the pain, he forced up the hand that held the pistol, intending to kill her.

Bolan slammed the b.u.t.t of the Beretta against the enraged man's head.

The guard released his grip on the pistol and fell back to the floor.

The Executioner looked at the young woman. "Are you okay?" When she didn't answer, he repeated the question. She turned away, still not speaking.

"I'll get you back to your family," Bolan promised. She shook her head. "No, they are all here. Dead." "Don't you have a brother who can take care of you?" "You came to have me betray my brother," she said, her voice filled with emptiness, then reached for the necklace she wore.

Before the Executioner could stop her, the young woman pulled the ornate chain to her mouth and bit down on it.

Bolan rammed his finger into her mouth. He could smell the almonds on her breath. Cyanide.

She went limp in his arms. Gently he placed her on the bed and covered her body with a sheet.

The barrel-chested camp sergeant wondered how his men were making out trying to get the Tamil women to talk. As he marched down the dirt street to their quarters, he kept slapping his short, leather-covered riding crop against the sides of the building.

"We are not animals," the government official had warned. The words still irritated Raja. The animals were the Tamils, especially those with relatives in the Tiger terrorist movement.

The sergeant wanted no more interruptions. He was busy preparing for the Third Corps War Shu compet.i.tion, which was coming up in a week. For the past five years, he had been the champion, but young men, with more stamina, were entering the contest. Fortunately none of them had his experience or skills.

Many members of the Third Corps had been discharged with permanent physical damage after they had fought him in the past. Raja antic.i.p.ated that the following week's compet.i.tion would be no different.

His thoughts stopped when he saw a large man who looked English, or at least foreign.

What was he doing in the Boosa Camp?

The over-muscled noncom moved into the shadows of one of the whitewashed buildings and waited for the foreigner to walk past him. Grabbing the man around his waist, Raja wrapped his other arm around the man's throat and began to squeeze.

Struggling to break free of the strangulation grip, the Executioner suddenly let his body go limp.

The prison guard wondered if he had broken the stranger's neck, and he began to release his hold.

For Bolan the momentary diversion was enough. Reaching behind him with a leg hook, he threw the Sinhalese off balance and followed with an over-the-shoulder throw.

For a heavy man the sergeant was surprisingly fast. Jumping to his feet, he reached out his right leg, hoping to throw the intruder off balance. But before his leg could make contact, the big foreigner moved backward in a dancing motion.

Exploding with fury, Raja threw himself at the stranger, concentrating his anger into his two ma.s.sive arms. Finesse was no longer important.

All that mattered was winning.

Bolan started to pivot away, then let his body go limp as the ma.s.sive man lifted him into the air with both hands, spun him and threw him to the ground.

Slowly he got up. The sweating guard was standing a few feet back, waiting for him to move, his face still flushed with anger.

"You will die from my hands, foreigner," Raja snarled.

"Let's see if you can fight as well as you can talk." The sergeant recognized the accent. American.

This wasn't the time to wonder why this man was here. He could find that out after he had killed him.

The prison guard watched the American, then he suddenly hurtled his body at him before the foreigner could get his arms up again. For a moment the sergeant wondered if he'd been drawn into a sucker move as the American lightly jabbed his hand at Raja's heart cavity.

It was too late to worry about it. Besides, he had hardly felt the blow.

He forced his leg behind the intruder's right knee, twisted his arm and threw him to the ground.

The American lay there, seemingly unable to rise. He held up a hand in surrender.

The prison guard decided to make the American's death painful. Twisting his left foot, he aimed the metal-tipped toe at the center of the fallen man's ear. He knew the pain would be more than the American could tolerate.

Afterward he'd crush the windpipe by grinding the heel of his heavy boot into his adversary's throat.

As he pulled his foot back for the final blow, the sergeant felt suddenly weak. It made no sense.

The fallen American had hardly touched him.

As he again tried to thrust the toe of his boot forward, he felt the weakness again.

Then he felt nothing as he fell forward to the ground. Bolan's kung-fu heart thrust had killed him.

The administration building sat at one end of the camp, next to a pair of wire gates. A parking lot filled with a variety of military vehicles was next to it.

There was a locked door at one end of the building, protected by a pair of dozing uniformed guards.

Bolan suspected it was the camp armory. If he was going to complete his plans for the camp, he needed more firepower than the Beretta and the Desert Eagle.

Edging his way around the large building, the Executioner reached down and picked up some pebbles, then threw them against a wall of the secured room.

One of the guards snapped his eyes open. "What was that noise?" The other shook his head. "I don't know. Check it out." "Why me?" "Because I said so," the other snapped. "And I'm in charge of guarding the storeroom." Looking disgusted, the annoyed soldier tucked his AK-47 under his arm and walked slowly around the corner.

Bolan was waiting for him, his combat knife in hand. Before the guard could shout a warning, the Executioner tightened his hold on the man's neck and severed the carotid artery. Easing the dead man to the ground, he waited patiently for the second guard.

A voice from around the corner asked a question angrily.

The second guard strode around the side of the building, then spotted Bolan. He raised his AK-47 and started to shout.

The big American dropped him with a couple of 9 mm stingers.

Bolan pulled both bodies against the wall, where they wouldn't easily be seen from a distance. Searching their pockets, he found a ring of keys. One of them, he knew, would open the storeroom of guns and munitions.

As SMALL AS THE ROOM WAS, it was crowded with a variety of rifles and handguns.

Cases of ammunition were stacked in tall piles against a wall.

Searching, the Executioner found a case of dynamite. It had most likely been used to blast large boulders during the construction of the road he had seen just outside the camp fence.

A small crate of detonators and fuses was next to the explosives.

Working quickly, the Executioner spread the sticks of dynamite around the room and fitted them with fuses.