Here, on April 19, 1775, four hundred Minutemen had faced and repulsed the hated Lobsterbacks. Dispirited, discouraged, hurting, the British retreated toward the safety of Boston.

By the time they reached Meriam's Corner, a mile east of Concord, they believed they had made it.

They sighed their relief, and thinking themselves secure once more, marched on.

Instead they walked into a hellground.

Without warning the woods exploded. The flash of primer, heavy reports of musketfire, made dense clouds of black powder smoke that drifted on the still midday air.

Heavy .75-caliber lead balls tore through Redcoat flesh. White with fear, hovering on the brink of wild-eyed panic, the British tried to return fire but there was nothing to shoot at. The Minutemen had melted back into the forest like specters.

Mack Bolan smiled grimly in the darkness.

He heard the boom of gunfire, saw the soldiers marching on through the countryside, their red wool uniforms drenched with sweat despite the spring coolness, terror marching at each man's right hand.

A tree, a house, a stone wall anything big enough to hide a man and a musket could spell death.

Yeah, the Redcoats had learned the same lesson that Mack Bolan was teaching the human predators of the twentieth century: how the icy touch of dread really felt when the oppressor turned into the oppressed. The feel of that bony finger along the spine.

And so began the American Revolution. In its parts it was a war like any other war in warrior mankind's history, filled with pain and death, heartache and futility. Yet from it arose a greater nation than had ever before existed.