MacK Bolan: Bloodsport by Don Pendleton Page B

true."
    "Of course it is." She widened her smile until he turned away, then she threw it away like old coffee grounds. As always, she had told him what he had wanted to hear, and that would satisfy him for the time being. Poor Thomas had always been a little weak in the brain. Though he was older by 86 seconds, she always looked upon him as her younger brother. Had it not been for her, he'd have flunked out of the university and be working in a Volkswagen factory somewhere. Some people were born to follow and some were born to lead. But Thomas had his uses. Men still did not like taking orders from a woman. So whenever possible, she gave the orders to Thomas and by the time he had passed them on to the men, he had convinced himself that he'd made them up. It worked quite well.
    "Tomorrow we take the sergeant with us on the mission," continued Tanya. "After tonight's raid we are short of men. And we can use his military experience. Despite our own experience, he is still a professional and we are amateurs."
    "Why would he help us?" bleated Thomas.
    She laughed dryly. "We will offer him money. And after we're successful tomorrow, you and Rudi can kill him."
    Thomas smiled. "And make him an example?"
    "If you must."
    "It's the only way to show the world that we mean business," seethed the brother.
    His sister smiled. "After tomorrow, history will know us in all our crimson magnificence. Do what you will, Thomas, do what has to be done."

17
    Rudi sat on the edge of his cot, the gnarled log balanced across his knees, his meaty hands wrapped around each end. He scowled across the room at Bolan, huge teeth glistening with saliva.
    "We have to stop meeting like this," Bolan grinned.
    Rudi tightened his grip on the log. "American humor," he sneered and spat on the dusty floor.
    "Yeah, well, you don't exactly keep me in stitches, guy. Though I think you'd like to."
    "Shut up!" spluttered Rudi, saliva spraying from his lips. He struggled to control his temper. It was what the twins would want him to do, but still it was so difficult at times, especially with this infuriating American. There was something about this man that made Rudi seriously nervous. Rudi had, to his knowledge, never been afraid of anything before in his life.
    But with this American it was different. The U.S. Army sergeant goaded and pushed in such a way that Rudi wanted to crush him. Breaking his back would not be enough, he would have to use his thumbs to gouge out those taunting eyes, too. He hated those eyes. They were hard confident eyes that somehow drained Rudi of his own confidence. And that could not be tolerated. He would try to control his temper, for the sake of the twins, but there were limits beyond which even he could not be pushed.
    "Enough talk," Rudi warned. "You talk too much, but say nothing."
    "An American custom," Bolan nodded. "We call it small talk. It's supposed to make us good buddies."
    "Buddies, hah!" Rudi snorted and spat on the floor.
    "Is it true what they say about you?"
    The muscles in Rudi's neck bulged like steel cables on a bridge. "What do they say?"
    "That the difference between you and an ape is that the ape smells better."
    Three hundred pounds of screaming flesh came hurtling across the small cabin, all of it aimed at Mack Bolan.
    The Executioner dived to one side. Rudi went crashing into the cot, smashing it to splinters.
    He arose like a maddened bull and lunged at his quarry, grabbing a new hunk of wood, in his hand as he did so. Bolan grabbed the man-mountain by the face, slowing his advance, and held back the club with all the strength of his left arm. Then he smashed his forehead into the thick wide nose of the giant terrorist. Rudi's cartilage cracked dully and a sticky spray of warm blood shot out of his nostrils as if from a garden hose. Rudi cried out, and Bolan snapped his head forward again, even harder. Rudi wailed and his grip loosened in every way. Rudi had had enough. He stood with his frying-pan hands covering