Now, though, Mack Bolan was on the run.

A lone outsider waging a solo war for justice in a hostile world.

After twenty-four successful antiterrorist missions, Bolan witnessed the slaying of the woman he loved during an assault on his command center.

He found and terminated the KGB mole, planted at White House level, responsible for planning the attack. Bolan canceled the Russian ploy to sabotage America's intel apparatus from within.

But an unavoidable result was the blowing of the elaborate cover of John Phoenix and his government-sanctioned missions with his combat units, Phoenix Force and Able Team.

The public, the Mafia, the KGB, — the world — now knew that Mack Bolan, The Executioner, was alive.

Especially the KGB.

The death of April Rose was permanently seared on Bolan's soul. April died stopping a bullet meant for Bolan. He owed it to her to keep on.

He owed it to himself.

But Bolan could never again "come in from the cold" as he had during his Phoenix period.

Phoenix Force and Able Team continued to play vital parts in America's antiterrorist operations, but Bolan preferred not to complicate the lives of his buddies by contacting them.

His past was now wired by the CIA, FBI, NSA — the whole acronymic litany of intelligence agencies around the world. Those groups feared the lone warrior to be a security risk because of his unsanctioned activity.

The orders to all agents in the field: Terminate Bolan with extreme prejudice.

The Executioner had shifted operations to a new target: the Soviet spy-terror network, the KGB. The real force behind the action that killed April Rose.

Same breed as the Mafia, sure.

Cannibals that had to be stopped.

Bolan's Phoenix period made him realize that in centering his efforts on individual acts of world terrorism, he had concentrated on tentacles, not the heart of the beast. The principal enemy was a force of seven hundred thousand agents worldwide, specializing in subversion, oppression and terror. Its aim: world domination. Its name: the KGB.