Brognola had addressed him as Striker, and Bolan immediately knew something foul was in the wind.

At the mention of his code name, his fresh four-inch wound earned in Algeria smarted as if in alert.

Information had come directly from the Defense Intelligence Agency, but not nearly as specific as Stony Man Farm would have liked except for the timetable. Specifically, it was a now-or-never operation. April and Hal had shown him photographs and filled him in on the few details they knew. Too damn few, and Bolan had complained about it at the time.

But in this business, damn few was sometimes all you got.

So it had to be enough. And this time it was.

Certainly enough to send him packing, still chewing his porterhouse steak as Jack Grimaldi joined him to jet them both to Frankfurt. To stop a "business" meeting that must never take place.

Not if Mack Bolan could help it.

Bolan looked at the two anxious MP'S assigned to him and grimaced. Corporal Philo Tandy was a baby-faced hulk from Tennessee who towered over Bolan like a cement wall. He had told Colonel Phoenix that he still dreamed of parlaying a Creek Bend High School MVP football trophy into an NFL half-back career, after he had paid his dues to Uncle Sam.

Not dumb, Bolan knew, just a mite inexperienced in the ways of the world outside Creek Bend, Tennessee. Not so his partner. Corporal Isaac Cleveland was a skinny, soft-spoken black man from Miami who had taken the trouble to learn German while stationed overseas and was now studying Russian. He was apparently not the kind of man to waste an opportunity: if he stayed in the army, Bolan realized, he would probably end up a general. And considering the mess that Bolan had been sent over to straighten out, the army could use a few more officers like Isaac Cleveland.