Bolan's target had not been the hangar or the fortress ranch house. After icing careless sentries on the north perimeter, he concentrated on the Quonset huts where heroin, cocaine and marijuana were prepared for shipment into the United States. Rivera's chemists and assorted flunkies sometimes worked around the clock to get a shipment ready, but the sheds were dark that night as Bolan had approached to lay his plastic charges, placing the incendiary packs for maximum effect. He would have been content to torch the goods and pick off Rivera another day, and he was prepared to disengage, when fate and refried beans had intervened. A sentry long on flatulence had made an unexpected run for the latrines, encountering a black-clad specter in the process. He was dead before his bowels let go, but not before his dying finger loosed a warning shot and brought down the whole damned army on Bolan's head.

Getting in had been a breeze compared to getting out. Rivera's troops were armed and dangerous, and they were thirty men to Bolan's one. He had already shaved the odds by half a dozen when a rifle bullet knocked him down, but swift elimination of the sniper had not camouflaged the desperation of his plight. Still dazed and losing precious blood, he had been fortunate enough to commandeer a car — Rivera's own Mercedes — for his getaway. The tank was built with personal security in mind, but errant ricochets had found their way beneath the undercarriage, doing mortal damage to the power plant, and after twenty miles or so, the Merc had died. That left approximately another ten miles to the border, and he had spent the past three hours following the highway at a distance, leaking precious blood into the desert sand.

A sudden wave of dizzy nausea brought Bolan to a lurching halt. He fought the blackness that was threatening to overwhelm him, drop him in his tracks.