Half an hour, they told him. He returned to the lounge. The high, flat, vibratoless cadences of the taped alto explored a scale somewhere up among the stars. Out on the apron the stressed metal skin of the Cessnas was shivering in the wind.

Bolan was waiting outside the terminal ten minutes before his cab was due. He blew into his cupped hands, hunched against the icy breeze. To his surprise he saw the cab turning into the airport entrance almost at once.

The vehicle a Mercedes sedan with the light behind the for-hire sign extinguished swung around and headed for the taxi stand.

Bolan picked up his luggage, stepped out into the roadway and waited for the car to stop.

Instead the big sedan picked up speed as the driver slammed the lever into second and floored the pedal. The engine screamed as the wide Mercedes leaped for Bolan.

Only the Executioner's seasoned nerves, razor sharp through half a lifetime of combat in the world's hot spots, saved him from the hurtling vehicle. In the hundredth of a second's advantage given to him as the danger signal flashed from eyes to brain to muscles, he threw himself violently backward into the shelter.

The driver wrenched the wheel as Bolan fell. The Mercedes stewed sideways on the pavement, and the front fender missed him by a fraction of an inch as it plowed into a steel support halfway along the shelter. The support buckled and split; the shelter erupted in a fountain of glass and splintered wood.

Tires squealed. The sedan broadsided half across the roadway, snaked and then righted itself. Bolan was shouldering his way up and out of the wreckage, the Beretta in his right hand. He fired, shook glass fragments from his hair and fired again a three-shot group that starred the rear window of the Mercedes.

Once more the big car swerved. Then the exhausts bellowed and it powered toward the highway. Evidently the killers were not armed... or they didn't expect their intended victim to be toting iron and preferred not to trade shots with a professional.