The moaning sound came from a ghastly hole that had been her mouth.
Bolan took this in as he burst through the doorway. He dodged into the deepest shadows near the door.
Gunfire lanced out at him from the darkness beyond the table. A slug whistled harmlessly to his left.
The torture master had fired a too-hasty round and identified his position.
Bolan's Thompson submachine gun chattered off a full half clip, cutting to shreds whatever the room held... including an obese blob of human fat in a plastic apron stained with fresh bits of human crud.
Santos.
The Butcher was blasted into the circle of light as the heavy .45 slugs tore him apart, flopping his bloated body against the surgical table, then to the floor where it did not move, a rapidly spreading dark pool forming beneath him.
Santos would butcher no more.
But he had butchered this one...
Bolan felt so many emotions tearing at him as he turned toward the victim on the table that he thought he would explode.
The living dead spoke to him.
"Q-quiero... please..."
It was a voice from the grave.
Bolan felt hot tears in his eyes.
"Eve... my God, Eve..."
"Please..." whispered a scratchy voice from that pitiful, butchered, ravaged person. "Quiero... Dios... let me die ..."
The moaning started again.
Bolan heard footfalls and equipment clanking as soldiers approached on the run from upstairs.
"Go with God," he bade her softly.
He ended her living hell, granting her last wish with a mercy round placed inches above the mouth-hole in the gory, skinned stump. And all he could think of was how beautiful she had looked that time on Lake Douglas...
The moaning ceased.
A soul was released to Infinity.
And a bellow of blind rage screamed up from his warrior's soul, bursting forth, erupting into this foul torture room.
Bolan the human being lost all conscious track of time and action then. He would never recall exactly what happened during the next fifteen minutes.
A machine does not think in such a contemplative fashion.
And Mack Bolan had become a killing machine.
The thunder of approaching footfalls grew louder as they came into the HQ building overhead. A pause as the bodies in the CQ room were discovered. Seconds later, bootsteps came clattering down the stairwell.
The killing machine stepped out through the doorway, leaving the torture chamber behind, into the narrow passage.
Three soldiers charged around the dogleg at the bottom of the stairs.
The killing machine was waiting.
The Thompson stuttered in fury. Hammering bullets, on a sizzling firetrack of flame and smoke, blew away three rebels into piles of dead matter.
The killing machine moved on. Back up the stairs.
He reached for the small triggering device in his pocket.
As he emerged from the stairwell into the main hallway of the HQ building, he activated the detonator.
The night shuddered with sound and fury. A rapid series of explosions thudded from the direction of the armament and equipment stored on the tarmac across the parade field. A simultaneous blast from the armory blew out one wall into the hallway and shuddered the building to its foundation.
The HQ corridor, filled with billowing smoke and dust, now boasted four Libyan rebel troopers who had heard the gunfire from downstairs and were advancing two abreast toward the stairwell. The killing machine stepped out to meet them.
The guards had been ready for something, but the explosions from the armory room and outside still rumbled in their eardrums. The guards had glanced off in the direction of the noise. But they did not miss seeing the figure in combat black. They only missed the chance to do anything about it.
The killing machine hit the deck. The tommy-gun blazed.
All four rebels died from a stitching figure-eight hail of steel-jacketed shredders that pulped the men into oblivion. It came from a being of cold eyes and hot aim. The enemy had no hope in hell.
The Executioner was up and moving out along the hallway in the same direction as he had entered, emerging moments later from the back door of the building, into the night.
The Executioner jogged a bee-line away from the admin building, toward the private residence that stood across five floodlit yards to the southwest.
A klaxon siren continued to blare.
Fires raged out of control from across the parade field where he had placed explosives amid the Soviet war machinery.
That equipment was now an inferno of golden tongues licking at the dark heavens.
The commotion of running men and shouting filled the night.
Most of the Libyan troops were breaking formation around the two Huey helicopters on the parade field and were rushing toward the fire.
A cluster of Leonard Jericho's mercs maintained guard around Doyle's chopper carrying the Strain-7, their Galils and Largo Star machine guns held ready as the mercs warily scanned the night around them.
The killing machine continued its course to the rear environs of the Moorish white stone structure.
He gained the back wall of the house and moved to a door. It was unlocked. He stepped inside. A short hallway. He heard voices and a shuffle of activity beyond a closed swing door in front of him. The killing machine pushed on through.
The big .44 AutoMag came unleathered as he covered the distance through an archway into what had been the dining room by original design.
It was now a command post in the process of hurriedly breaking camp.
The Executioner recognized Leonard Jericho. Two men were with Jericho. Doyle was toting a Largo-Star. The third man had a slick, simonized American lawyer look about him. The lawyer and Jericho carried briefcases and all three were on their feet; they had been in the process of moving toward an entranceway at the front of the house.
All sensed the Executioner's presence and spun as one to confront him.
"I... I'm not armed!" screamed the lawyer.
"That's your problem," said the machine.
The AutoMag roared. The slickster died.
The giant handgun tracked next to Doyle. The number two merc's slate eyes registered panic as they realized he was about to die. He yanked the hi-power up from its holster. That was all. Doyle caught two rounds from Big Thunder. He died on his feet.
The body was still thumping to the floor when the last man, Leonard Jericho, raised his arms.
The renegade moneyman was in disarray. His eyes were rabid. The upraised hands trembled, as if trying to wave off his tab with eternity.
"No! Stop! I can buy you! Name your price!"
The killing machine in a single fluid movement holstered the AutoMag and swung the Thompson around into play by its shoulder strap.
"That's what the other Jericho said. The one I killed in the Bahamas."
This Lenny Jericho brightened. His breathing came faster.
"Carlyle. Yeah, I knew him. Hey, guy — wait! What makes you think I'm the real Jericho?"
"You'll do for now," grunted the Executioner.
The Thompson bucked.
And this particular Leonard Jericho was spun around by a flaming stream of millimeters that chewed his body into bits amid a curdling death cry. The steel-jacketed projectiles ate away at Jericho's death-jigging body, sections at a time, though the guy's final jig lasted less than ten seconds to pile his corpse into the corner.
This kill was for Eve.
Maybe machines could feel, sometimes.
Mack Bolan swung away from the execution. He quit the dining room, moving into the front entranceway, punching off every light switch that he passed, plunging the house of death into blackness.
When he reached the front door, he stationed himself against the inside wall.