Bolan smiled.
"This is Lema one to Lema two and three," Opersdorf drawled into his radio. "We're changing course." He gave the gunships the new headings. The flight turned north.
"How do you propose we go about this?" Opersdorf asked Bolan.
"We land ahead of the column and I talk to them."
"What if they take you hostage?" said Opersdorf. "Then where will we be? I'd rather you negotiated from the air. We have a bullhorn on board."
Opersdorf called the crew chief and told him to get the bullhorn out. Next he briefed the gunships and his own machine gunners. They flew on.
"The Shan soldiers in the back," said Opersdorf. "What do we do with them?"
"Drop them off near some village," said Bolan. "But after the rescue."
The plain appeared, a vast stretch of grassland dotted with an occasional tree. Opersdorf gave Bolan a pair of field glasses. As Bolan brought them to his eyes, his heart sank. He and Nark had miscalculated the column's speed. It was traveling much faster than they had figured. Instead of being on this side of the plain, it was nearing the other.
"Going to be touch and go," said Opersdorf, observing the plain.
The plain would have been a perfect place to attempt a rescue had they arrived an hour or two earlier. They would have had time to reconnoiter the force and identify Ty Ling — and time in which to do some selective shooting in case the column did not comply with their demands.
At the approach of the helicopters, the foot soldiers scattered, throwing themselves into the grass while the horsemen broke into a gallop, heading for the safety of the tree line ahead. The tree line was only about three miles away. Too little time for a rescue.
"We're out of luck, Colonel," said Opersdorf.
"An eagle snatch, Captain," Bolan said. "Let me try it!"
"Move fast, Colonel."
A minute later Bolan emerged from the side of the Chinook wearing a harness. He sailed down at the end of a rope, coming to a halt ten feet above the heads of the galloping horsemen. He spotted Ty Ling right away. She was near the front, her horse attached by a long rope to the saddle of a horseman ahead of her.
"Agent is at eleven o'clock," said Bolan into the side mike of his helmet. "The wide straw hat. A hundred yards from me."
"We see her," said Opersdorf. He was leaning out of a porthole coordinating the operation while the copilot flew the helicopter.
"Drop me five feet, left ten yards," said Bolan.
Slowly Bolan flew over the heads of the galloping riders. On either side flew the gunships, their side gunners pointing their weapons down at the riders.
"Right two yards."
Now he could hear the thunder of the hooves, could smell the horses' sweat. Behind him he heard a shout of surprise. A burst of fire rent the sky as a Huey fired at a rider about to take a potshot at him.
"Slow down a little!"
Only two riders were left between him and Ty Ling. A tree passed him. The second Huey fired. Another tree passed him. Now he was directly behind Ty Ling, her back approaching him. Coming. Coming.
"Down two feet for pickup."
Two yards, a yard. He bumped against the horse's rump, a hoof kicked him in the leg, he bent his knees, the movement swung him out, he bumped the side of the rump.
Ty Ling turned. A frightened cry escaped her lips. Then she recognized him through his goggles.
"Let go of the stirrups!'' he shouted.
The rope swayed. He came away, then swayed back to the horse. This time he threw his arms around her. The animal sidestepped, and she fell out of the saddle. But he had her.
"I got her, I got her," he shouted into the mike. "Take me up!"
The galloping horsemen receded as he rose holding on to Ty Ling with all his might, fighting the sway, fighting gravity, his mind empty of all thought but one, to hold on!
The din from the Chinook overhead grew, he felt the air blast of its blade, heard his clothes flapping, and then he was bumping against its side. Hands reached out and pulled them in. He had done it!
The crew chief helped Ty Ling to a side bench while Bolan took off his helmet, harness, and goggles. Opers-dorf came up to him and shook his hand. The gunners shook his hands, everyone shook his hand.
A feat like his stirred the imagination, warmed the heart: a twentieth-century knight swooping out of the sky to save a lady in distress. Chivalry was not dead.
As for the lady, she stared at him with such emotion in her eyes that he lowered his. As he sat down beside her, Ty Ling gripped his hand with almost animal ferocity in a secret message he preferred not to decode.
And that's how they flew out of Burma, and that's how the mission ended, with the Executioner and his victim's daughter holding hands.
"Achtung!Achtung!"
The loudspeakers at the Frankfurt airport announced the final call for Lufthansa Flight 167 for Dusseldorf. Bolan touched Ty Ling's arm and pointed upward. She hung up the pay phone, and they set out for the boarding gate.
"Gunther is meeting me at the airport," she said. "We will marry next month. Will you come to the wedding?"
"I'll try."
"I would like you to give me away. Would you?"
Bolan's throat tightened. "Yes, it would be an honor to give you away," he said, "I'll come for certain."
They arrived at the gate. Ty Ling got her boarding pass ready and turned to Bolan, eyes glistening.
Her arms went around his neck, and she pressed her mouth to his. Then, without a word, she was gone.
Bolan walked back to the bar to rejoin Hal Brognola. The U.S. president's special assistant, who had been attending a conference in Berlin, had flown in to meet him.
"The lady left?" he asked as Bolan resumed his seat.
"Yes, she's gone."
"Some woman."
"Yeah," said Bolan. He toyed with a matchbook.
Brognola reached under the table for his briefcase. "Received a report on Galloping Horse this morning," he said. "We're picking them up like flies. We've won the battle, Mack."
"A battle, Hal, a battle," said Bolan pensively. "In the fight against evil there is no final victory. For that you would have to destroy the whole human race because evil lurks in all of us. New Tigers will rise from the ashes of the old."
"I guess you're right," Brognola sighed. "A disturbing thought."
"Not really," Bolan reflected aloud. "In the process of fighting evil, a person also discovers good. That, too, is in all of us. And that's what makes the fight worthwhile."
Epilogue
Mack Bolan is a soldier, and he fights a soldier's battle. His munitions are all real articles used by combatmen everywhere, and whatever Bolan accomplishes with his weaponry is within the realm of human achievement.
But he also fights a more cosmic war, in which good and evil are far greater concepts than mere weapons in the arsenal of stale ideas. To Bolan, Armageddon is not some future mythical war to be waged between God and Satan — it is here, now, and always has been, as the life force of this planet continually strives to perfect itself.
To achieve every possibility of human excellence within his reach, Bolan must keep moving.
The entire world is on his ass. He must keep moving.
To stay alive.
For the horrors have only just begun...