SILENT KNIGHTS

A key witness in a money-laundering case gets cold feet before testifying and flees to a monastery in the Sierra Nevadas. But the cartel behind the scheme isn’t about to let someone with that kind of information escape unharmed, and they dispatch hit men into the mountains.

Mack Bolan, tasked with protecting the witness, barely reaches the Sierras ahead of the cartel killers. With an epic winter storm raging, Bolan will need to combine his combat and survival skills to prevent the thick monastery walls from becoming a prison. He can’t control the weather, but with the monks fighting beside him, the Executioner is prepared to unleash a deadly blizzard of his own on the enemy.

Bolan waited for the signal from Grimaldi, then leaped into the storm.

The Cessna’s slipstream carried Bolan backward, his arms and legs splayed, then the plane was gone and gale-force winds attacked him like a sentient enemy. His goggles frosted over almost instantly.

From thirteen thousand feet, Bolan had about two minutes until he’d hit the ground below. Ninety seconds before he reached four thousand feet and had to deploy his main chute. If he dropped any lower without pulling the ripcord, the reserve chute would deploy automatically in time to save his life.

In theory.

At the moment, though, Bolan was spinning like a dreidel in a cyclone, blinded by the snow and frost on his goggles, hoping he could catch a glimpse of the altimeter attached to his left glove. Without it, he’d have to rely on counting seconds in his head. A miscalculation, and he’d be handing his life over to the emergency chute’s activation device, hoping it would prevent him from plummeting to certain death in the Sierras.

If he didn’t survive this jump, it could mean a massacre. A dozen lives, maybe two or three times more, depended on him without those people knowing it. If he arrived in time, unbroken, and could circumvent the coming siege...

A burst of wind spun Bolan counterclockwise, flipped him over on his back, then righted him again so he was facing the jagged peaks below. He kept counting through the worst of it and reached his silent deadline.

Breathing through clenched teeth behind his mask, Bolan reached up to grasp the ripcord’s stainless-steel D ring.

Dark Savior

Don Pendelton

There is a heroism in crime as well as in virtue.

—William Hazlitt

If the law must be bent in the service of justice, so be it. I do what’s necessary to defend innocent lives. End of story.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quote

Legend

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Las Cruces, New Mexico

“It’s hot,” Rob Walker said.

“You say that every day. New Mexico,” Greg Kilhane replied. “It’s always hot.”

“Hotter today than usual.” Walker used a handkerchief to blot his sweaty face.

Kilhane, who never seemed to sweat, drew on his cigarette and shook his head. “Go back inside, then. I can handle this alone.”

The two of them were standing on the patio so Kilhane could smoke. No smoking in the safe house under the established guidelines. Nearly dusk, and it was still too hot for Walker’s liking, but he’d come out anyway and left their third man with their subject.

“Don’t mind me,” said Walker. “Just keep poisoning yourself.”

Bitching was part of witness duty with the U.S. Marshals Service. Guarding rats was tedious, dead time, when they could just as well have been out serving warrants, busting fugitives, transporting prisoners from jail to court or court to prison. Anything was better, more exciting, than babysitting squealers in the Witness Security Program.

“Only two more days,” Kilhane said.

Until their witnesses testified, that was. Which meant they’d all be flying out the day after tomorrow, headed back to New York City and the high life, handing off their pigeon to the Special Operations Group for coverage until he testified against whomever he’d decided to betray in exchange for a new name, new life, new whatever.

Walker didn’t know the details of the case, except that it was “big,” according to the supervisory deputy who’d handed them the assignment. “Big as in bad guys with billions,” he’d said, a real wisecracker.

That raised the threat level and meant they had two AR-15 rifles and a shotgun at the safe house, in addition to their standard-issue .40-caliber Glocks. There were vests in the house, one for each marshal and a spare for the rat, but Walker hadn’t tried his on and wouldn’t bother with it till they headed for the airport, day after tomorrow.

Easy duty, sure, but boring. And hot today, as usual, even at sundown.

“Done yet?” he asked Kilhane.

“Are you the nicotine police?”

“Forget it.”

Kilhane stubbed his butt into a three-foot-tall ceramic ashtray filled with sand, and sighed smoke. “Yeah, I’m done. Let’s make sure Marshal Marshall hasn’t lost the subject.”

Walker laughed at that, the way he always did, on reflex. Ethan Marshall was their third team member, “Marshal Marshall” to the others like Kilhane, who couldn’t let it go. Sometimes Walker wondered if he’d gotten out of high school, after all. Still hanging out with jocks and trading silly puns, except the stakes were higher. If he dropped the ball on this job, it could cost him his life.

* * *

“THEY’RE GOING BACK INSIDE,” Killer Combs said. “Over.”

A second later Spike O’Connor’s voice came back to him, the walkie-talkie giving it a tinny echo. “Copy that. Let’s do it.”

“Roger that,” Combs responded.

His mama hadn’t named him Killer. She had called him Cleveland, of all things, and that had drawn the schoolyard bullies like a magnet pulls iron filings from the dirt, until Combs taught them that he didn’t swallow any shit. “Killer” came from buddies in United States Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance, two tours of duty in Iraq, one in Afghanistan. Combs might’ve still been in the Corps, maybe a master sergeant by now, if slotting Afghans and Iraqis hadn’t turned him on so much. If only he’d restrained himself a bit that day, outside of Lashkar Gah.

To hell with it, he thought, and moved out toward their target. It felt strange, working inside the States and with a dozen guys involved, but who was he to question clients with that kind of cash to throw around? They wanted certainty, an ironclad guarantee that no one in the house would ever bother them again, with cell phone snaps to prove the job was done.

Quirky, but what the hell.

“You heard the man,” he told Cohen and Hitchener. “Let’s roll.”

* * *

“WHERE’S WALKER?” KILHANE asked Ethan Marshall.

“In the crapper.”

“Jeez. How long has he been in there, anyway?”

Marshall considered that, checking the TV against his watch, the six o’clock news winding down into sports and weather. “Twenty minutes, give or take,” he said.

That put a frown on Kilhane’s face. “I’m gonna check on him and—”

The second part of his sentence was cut off as the doorbell rang. Walker emerged from the bathroom.

“Who’s that?” Walker asked.

“How the hell should I know?” Marshall countered. “Jehovah’s Witnesses? Or maybe Girl Scouts pushing cookies.” He rose from the sofa and unholstered his Glock.

“Check it,” Kilhane said to Walker. And to Marshall, “Back him up. I’m going for the subject.”

“Right,” Walker replied, the three of them all business now.

“Up and at it,” Kilhane ordered. “This is not a drill.”

* * *

COLIN HUME WAS dressed up in a brown UPS uniform, the van they’d stolen for the evening behind him, idling at the curb. His parcel was a cardboard box large enough to hold a Bizon submachine gun with fifty-three 9 mm Parabellum packed into its helical magazine, ready to rip. Hume had cut out the back of the box, and now he slid his right hand inside to clutch the Bizon’s pistol grip. A clipboard balanced up on top helped his cover.

He was on the verge of trying the doorbell again when a voice from inside asked, “Who is it?”

Hume smiled at the peephole in the door, its blocking shadow proof that someone was already eyeing him. “Parcel delivery,” he answered, adding a mush-mouth garble for a name.

“What’s that?” the man behind the door demanded.

Hume spat out another mess of jumbled syllables, his index finger on the Bizon’s trigger, that part of the weapon borrowed from larger rifles designed by its creator, the great Viktor Kalashnikov.

Some men were giants in their field. Others, like Colin Hume, stood on their shoulders for a better shot at whoever was marked for death today.

“Hang on,” the guy behind the door said now, clearly disgruntled, maybe wondering if he should get his ears checked. Hume kept smiling as a dead bolt clacked, and then the door began to open.

Easy does it...

Hume waited until he had a clear view of the doorman, checked him with a glance to see if he was wearing Kevlar underneath his wilted dress shirt, then fired a six-round burst into the stranger’s chest. The Parabellum rounds slammed the guy backward as he spouted crimson from a tidy group of holes above his heart, and Hume pushed through the doorway into a small sitting room.

The second marshal waited for him there, as Hume had expected, wielding his Glock but firing just a beat too slow, still not quite believing that he’d seen his partner killed before his eyes.

Hume dropped to one knee, ditched the smoking box and gave the second guard two short precision bursts. The first one opened up his belly before the second caught him doubling over, tattooing his startled face.

Two down, but there were three guards on the target. Hume went looking for the third. The back door opened with a bang, three of his team members moving in to help him sweep the place. Two more were close behind Hume, bulling through the front door he’d left open, which left six outside in various positions, covering the action from a distance, watching for police.

O’Connor, the leader of the operation, began barking orders, and the men fanned out to check the other rooms. Each of them had the floor plan memorized: kitchen and a smallish dining room to the right, four bedrooms, one en suite, and a separate bathroom all off to Hume’s left, down a hallway. In front of him, glass sliding doors faced the desert and a backyard somebody had stripped of grass, replacing it with rocks and cacti.

As Hume started for the hallway, Mueller and Ornelas jogged past him, not wanting to let him hog the fun. He didn’t hurry, knowing that the third watchdog would come to them after he’d heard the racket in the living room.

Safe house, my ass, Hume thought, smiling.

Even if number three were on the phone right now, making a panic call, the reinforcements wouldn’t come in time to save him or the target he was guarding. They were out of time, beyond salvation now.

As if on cue, the third marshal showed himself, clearing the hallway in a rush, an AR-15 at his shoulder. He was clearly stunned to encounter the six men still in the living room, and hesitated long enough for all of them to open up at once, making him dance as bullets riddled him from neck to knees.

“Rest in pieces,” Killer Combs advised the dead guy, as Hume moved past him down the hallway. He focused on the shared bathroom, the room nearest to him.

He kicked the door in, checked behind the shower curtain, then turned toward the window. Funny that it didn’t have a screen to keep the bugs out. Moving closer, Hume peered through the frame and saw the screen in the flower bed below, twisted from being hammered out, dented from someone stepping on it as he cleared the window.

Hume retreated, found the others scanning bedrooms and returning empty-handed. “Spike!” he called. “We lost him.”

“What?”

“See for yourself.”

O’Connor checked the window and immediately turned the air blue with profanity. When that storm passed, he turned to Hume and asked, “How could we miss him leaving?”

“Don’t ask me. I was with you. Sordi and Gounden had the east side covered.”

“Shit!”

“What now?” asked Mueller, from the bathroom doorway.

“Now we split,” O’Connor answered. “Now I call the man and tell him we screwed up.”

“He won’t like that,” Hume said.

“No shit.” O’Connor scowled and hurried past him, out the door.

1

Over the Sierra Nevadas, California

“This is crazy,” Jack Grimaldi said. “It’s snowing like there’s no tomorrow. If I didn’t have the instruments—”

Mack Bolan interrupted him. “There won’t be a tomorrow for the target, if we wait. The window’s small and closing fast.”

“What window?” Jack asked. “Can you see anything down there?”

“It doesn’t matter. We’ve been over the terrain.”

“From photos, sure. What good is that when you can’t see the ground?”

“None at all,” said Bolan, “unless you, or one of a half dozen pilots skilled enough to drop me on the spot, is in the cockpit. And you’re the best among them.”

“Half a dozen?” Jack looked skeptical. “I would’ve made it three or four.”

“Well, there you go then.”

“All right, dammit. Flattery will get you anywhere. Almost.”

The aircraft was a Cessna 207 Stationair, thirty-two feet long with a thirty-six foot wingspan. Its cruising speed was 136 miles per hour in decent weather, with a maximum range of 795 miles.

Today was far from decent weather, any way you broke it down.

They’d flown out of Modesto City–County Airport, traveling due east. The storm had been barely a whisper in Modesto, but it was kicking ass in the Sierras.

Bolan’s chosen landing zone would be bad enough on a clear day, great fangs of granite jutting ten thousand feet or higher, bare and brutal stone on top, flanks covered with majestic pine trees and red fir. A drop directly onto any one of those could easily impale him, or he might get tangled in the rigging of his parachute and hang himself.

In theory, the jump was possible. In practice it was rated very difficult. But in a howling blizzard—for a novice jumper, anyway—it would be tantamount to suicide.

Bolan was not a novice jumper. He had more than his share of combat drops behind him, and had mastered new techniques as they developed, both in uniform and after he’d left military service, following his heart and gut into an endless private war. Today he’d be doing a modified HALO jump, a form of military free fall. The good news: the Cessna’s altitude meant there’d be little danger of hypoxia—oxygen starvation—or potentially fatal edema in Bolan’s brain or lungs. The bad news: with the blizzard in full cry, he could be whipped around like a mosquito in a blender, lucky if the winds only propelled him miles off course, instead of shredding his ripstop nylon canopy and leaving him to plummet like a stone.

All that to reach the craggy ground below, where the real danger would begin.

“We could go back and get a snowcat,” said Grimaldi. “Go in that way. Any small town up here should have one.”

Bolan shook his head. “That means an hour’s turnaround back to Modesto, grab the four-wheel drive, and what? Pick out the nearest town—”

“I’d land at Groveland,” Jack replied. “They’ve got an airport, they’re closer to the mountains—”

“And a snowcat maxes out at fifteen, maybe eighteen miles per hour if the visibility is good enough to risk that. That would mean five hours over mountain roads without the blizzard. The weather we’ve got now, it could be a day and a half on the road, and I could end up driving over a cliff.”

“Still safer than the jump,” Grimaldi countered.

“I can handle it. Just get me there.”

Frowning, Grimaldi said, “Your wish is my command. Five minutes, give or take.”

Bolan got up and started toward the Cessna’s starboard double doors, head ducked, crouching in his snow-white insulated jumpsuit. He secured his helmet, ski mask and goggles, and double-checked the main chute on his back and the emergency chute on his chest. He was laden with combat gear to keep himself alive once he was on the ground.

Assuming he reached the ground.

One of the side doors opened easily, caught in a rush of frigid air. The other required more of an effort, the wind pressing it closed, but Bolan got it done.

Outside and down below was a world of swirling white.

Bolan watched and waited for the signal from Grimaldi in the cockpit, answered with a thumbs-up, and leaped into the storm.

The Cessna’s slipstream carried Bolan backward, his arms and legs splayed in the proper position for exit from an aircraft, then the plane was gone and gale force winds attacked him like a sentient enemy. His goggles frosted over almost instantly, which wasn’t terribly important at the moment, when he couldn’t see six feet in front of him regardless, but he’d have to deal with that soon.

The insulated jumpsuit kept him relatively warm, but it wasn’t airtight, and the shrieking wind found ways inside: around the collar, through the eyeholes of his mask, around the open ends of Bolan’s gloves. The freezing air burned initially, then numbed whatever flesh it found, threatening frostbite.

From thirteen thousand feet, Bolan had about two minutes until he’d hit the ground below. Ninety seconds before he reached four thousand feet and had to deploy his main chute. If dropped any lower without pulling the ripcord, the reserve chute would deploy automatically in time to save his life.

In theory.

At the moment, though, Bolan was spinning like a dreidel in a cyclone, blinded by the snow and frost on his goggles, hoping he could catch a glimpse of the altimeter attached to his left glove. Without it, he’d have to rely on counting seconds in his head. A miscalculation, and he’d be handing his life over to the emergency chute’s activation device, hoping it would prevent him from plummeting to certain death in the Sierras.

Bolan brought his right hand to his face with difficulty, scraping at the ice that blurred his goggles. For a second they were clear enough for him to raise his other hand and glance at the altimeter. Eleven thousand feet, which meant he had to count another seventy seconds before deploying his parachute.

And what would happen after that was anybody’s guess.

If he didn’t survive this jump, it could mean a massacre. A dozen lives, and maybe two or three times more, depended on him without those people knowing it. If he arrived in time, unbroken, and could circumvent the coming siege...

A burst of wind spun Bolan counterclockwise, flipped him over on his back, then righted him again so he was facing the jagged peaks below. He kept counting through the worst of it and reached his silent deadline. Breathing through clenched teeth behind his mask, Bolan reached up to grasp the ripcord’s stainless steel D ring.

Instantly, he felt the shock of chute deployment, amplified tenfold by winds that snatched the ripstop canopy, inflated it, then fought to drag their new toy off across the raging sky. Bolan fought back, clutching the lines, knowing his strength was no match for the forces stacked against him.

When the snow cleared for a heartbeat, whipped away as if a giant’s hand had yanked a curtain back, Bolan saw frosted granite looming to his left and treetops rising up to skewer him. He’d missed a mountain peak by pure dumb luck and now he had split seconds to correct his course before a lofty pine tree speared him like a chunk of raw meat in a shish kebab.

He hauled hard on his right-hand line, rewarded with a change in course that might be helpful, if it wasn’t canceled out by the swirling wind. Bolan was going to hit tree limbs, come what may, but there was still a chance he could escape a crippling impact if his luck held.

As if ordained, the wind changed, whiting out the world below, and he was blind again.

Stout, snow-laden branches started whipping Bolan’s legs as he dropped through them. Seconds later, just as he had drawn his knees up to his chest and crossed his arms to protect his face, his parachute snagged something overhead and brought him to a jerking, armpit-chafing halt.

It didn’t take a PhD in forestry to realize that he was hung up in a tree.

Craning his neck, he couldn’t see the chute above him, only the steering and suspension lines above the slider, disappearing into snow swirl ten or twelve feet overhead. Below him, ditto: whipping snow concealed the distance to the ground.

He assessed his options. Hanging around for any length of time could test the ripstop nylon to its limits. If it had been weakened by a tear, Bolan’s weight—or any movements that he made while dangling there—could make things worse and send him plummeting to earth. Conversely, if he couldn’t free himself, he would eventually freeze here. Escaping from the parachute itself was not a problem. Each of his harness’s shoulder straps was fitted with a quick-release clip for the canopy, while other clips at the chest and groin would free him from the harness altogether. That was easy, but he couldn’t rush it; his first false move could finish him. Out here, in this weather, even a fairly short drop could be fatal if he broke his legs and became stranded in the storm.

Bolan remained immobile for a long minute, staring down between his dangling legs until an eddy in the storm gave him a fleeting glimpse of stone and snow-covered ground some ninety feet beneath his boots. A drop from that height would almost surely break his legs and crack his pelvis, maybe drive his shattered femurs up into his body cavity to spear his internal organs. The snow and any fallen pine needles below would cushion him a bit, but likely not enough to avoid crippling injury.

And in this storm, no help within a hundred miles or more, that was a death sentence.

So plummeting was off the table. He would have to climb down—slowly, cautiously—through branches wet and slick with snow and ice, fighting tremors from the cold and the onset of hypothermia.

Bolan considered dropping bits and pieces of his gear—the Steyr AUG assault rifle, at eight pounds loaded; his Beretta 93R, nearly three pounds; his field pack with survival gear, spare magazines and such, tipping the scale at thirty pounds—but balked at that. He didn’t plan on losing anything he’d carried with him when he left the Cessna, and whatever Bolan dropped into the storm from where he hung was very likely to be lost.

So he began his treacherous descent, shedding the canopy but not his harness, reaching for the thickest branch that he could see or feel, and hoping it wasn’t rotten to the core. When both gloved hands had found their grip, Bolan relaxed his arms enough from the chin-up position for his boots to dangle lower, searching for another branch that would support his weight. When they found purchase, he tested his foothold by slow degrees until he trusted it to hold his weight.

Which wasn’t quite the same as holding him.

When he released his grip above, the game would change. The gusting wind could knock him from his icy perch, or he could slip. It took the concentration and the balance of a tightrope walker for him to remain upright once both hands left the upper branch, his muscles straining as he slowly sank into a crouch.

Seven or eight feet covered, another eighty-three or so remaining. Bolan knew that as he neared the forest floor, the great tree’s branches would become both sparser and fatter, each more difficult to clasp with snow-slick gloves, making a drop more likely. Wind-whipped, cold and tiring, he resumed his painstaking and perilous descent.

2

Washington, D.C., One Day Earlier

Mack Bolan walked among the tourists and joggers at the National Mall, but he hadn’t come to see the sights. Somewhere amid the shrines to embattled democracy, among the ambling visitors, another man was watching for him or en route to keep their scheduled rendezvous, a man who might send Bolan to his death.

The risk of meeting here was minimal, by Bolan’s normal standard. No one in D.C. knew his face, except the man he’d come to see. Some might recall his name, but if they heard it spoken, it would likely jar a fading memory of his reported death. Oh, that guy, they’d say. I heard something about him once. He’s long gone.

And they’d be correct, in part. Mack Bolan had been buried in a ceremony thronged by paparazzi, laid to rest forever with his famous face and fingerprints. The tall man strolling down the southern side of the Reflecting Pool toward the Korean War Veterans Memorial was someone else entirely. But he waged the same long war.

Approaching the memorial, Bolan spotted Hal Brognola, director of the ultrasecret, antiterrorist Sensitive Operations Group standing beneath the steel soldiers.

“I’ve got something up your alley,” Brognola said.

“I got that much on the phone,” Bolan replied. “Care to share the details?”

“Did you hear about a shooting in New Mexico two days ago? Las Cruces?”

Bolan frowned in thought. “It doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Three U.S. marshals KIA,” Brognola explained. “It played on CNN for half a day or so.”

“Missed it,” Bolan replied.

“They were on WITSEC duty, covering a witness set to testify in New York City, day after tomorrow.”

“That’s a rarity,” Bolan said. “Not the coverage, the shooting.”

“Right. The service has a pretty solid track record. But things went wrong this time.”

“And the witness?”

“Gone.”

“Taken?”

“The marshals and the FBI say no. There’s evidence—don’t ask me what—that he bailed out before the shooters went in gunning for him. DOJ’s convinced he’s in the wind.”

“A dumb move,” Bolan said. “Except it saved his life.”

“Short term,” Brognola said. “Smart money says the shooters will be after him, trying to take him out before the marshals reel him in. Both sides are gambling big time on a win.”

“They have to find him first,” Bolan observed.

“As it turns out, that’s not the problem.”

“Oh?”

“We’ve zeroed in on his location.”

“Is it definite?”

“Good as,” Brognola said.

“So pick him up.”

“Not so easy,” Brognola said. “You’ll love this part. He’s in a monastery.”

Bolan cut a glance toward the big Fed but said nothing.

Brognola forged ahead. “You know the rules surrounding sanctuary?”

“It’s political,” Bolan said.

“Not in this case. Think medieval, as in pilgrims fleeing persecution.”

“So, religious.”

“Bingo.”

“I’m no lawyer, but I’ve never heard of a statute in the States that recognizes any church’s right to harbor fugitives.”

“Because there isn’t one. We have a free press, though, and when you think about the Bureau’s history with sieges, going back to Ruby Ridge and Waco, down to Cliven Bundy in Nevada...well, let’s say nobody wants a repetition in the spotlight.”

“That’s a problem,” Bolan granted.

“Plus, if we know where he is, the hunters know. They’re well-financed and well-connected, through their sponsors.”

“Let me guess. The folks your witness planned to put away.”

“The very same.”

“Can’t say I like his odds.”

“He needs a hand, no question. I was thinking, maybe yours.”

“You think the monks will pass him off to me?”

“They’re brothers, technically. And no. You’d have to go in uninvited. Try to make them see the light.”

“Because that’s so much better than a siege.”

“I hope so, anyway.”

Bolan stopped short and faced Brognola. “Rewind. I need to hear it from the top.”

Brognola launched into how it all began. The missing witness was a CPA, one Arthur Watson, thirty-one and never married, formerly employed by a low-profile megabank, U.S. Global Finance. Bolan had not heard of them before and said so.

“That’s no accident,” Hal told him. “The outfit is privately owned by some billionaire types—three Americans, one Saudi and a Russian autocrat. There are no other shareholders, so you won’t find them on the New York Stock Exchange, NASDAQ or any of the rest. They specialize in large commercial deals worldwide, taking in money from depositors and then recycling it as low-interest loans.”

“In other words, a money laundry,” Bolan said.

“Big time. Justice has tracked connections to Colombian and Mexican cartels, the Russian mob, the Yakuza, a couple dozen shady government officials from the Balkans and on across the Middle East to Africa. And that’s without our homegrown filthy rich—owners of two casino chains, some Wall Street sharks, plus a fellow in Atlanta who just beat a human trafficking indictment when the prosecution’s witnesses went belly-up.”

“The DOJ knows this, but can’t put anything together?”

“Couldn’t,” Brognola corrected him, “until this Arthur Watson suffered an attack of conscience after five years of cooking their books. From what I hear, he never managed to explain the change of heart. Just tumbled out of bed one morning and decided he should do something about it. He approached the IRS in Philadelphia, where he was living at the time. They handed him to Justice. Watson spilled his guts, and two weeks back we got a sealed indictment on the top three officers at U.S. Global. Sheldon Page, the president, was on vacation in the south of France, and the FBI held off on busting the other two, CEO Cornell Dubois and CFO Reginald Manson, until Page got back Monday night.”

“Arrests like that, I would’ve thought they’d make the news.”

“Me, too. But U.S. Global has a ton of influential friends, as you may well imagine. Some of them are in the House and Senate, always grateful for those PAC donations at election time. A federal judge in New York City put a gag order on the proceedings until trial convenes—or was supposed to—day after tomorrow.”

“And they’ve lost the witness.”

“Lost and found,” Brognola said. “He’s with the Brothers of Saint Faustus at their monastery up in the Sierras.”

“California.”

“More precisely, Mariposa County. The brothers call their hangout Holy Trinity.”

“And Justice found him how?”

“He’s got a brother at the monastery,” Hal replied. “By which I mean blood brother and a full-fledged member of the order. Brother Andrew Watson, who is also Arthur’s only living kin.”

“Well, if you found him—”

“Others can,” Brognola said, nodding. “No doubt about it. We don’t know any of the hunters, but there’s no way they’re not on his trail by now.”

“Has anyone communicated with the monastery?” Bolan asked.

“Oh, sure. The honcho there—Brother Jerome, he’s called the abbot primate—took some calls and tried to plead the Fifth at first, then finally admitted that our guy has joined them as a postulant.”

“Which is...?”

“The lowest rung on the monk ladder,” Brognola said. “Informal training, getting used to how things work behind the walls, without a uniform or any formal vows. Apprenticeship, you might say, going on for weeks or months, depending on the candidate. If he sticks with it and the monks agree, he graduates to novice and receives his habit, taking on full duties. Make it through a year of that, then he’s a junior for the next three years, and finally a brother, if they vote to keep him on.”

“It doesn’t sound like Watson has four years and change to spare.”

“He may not have four days,” Brognola said. “For all we know, the shooters from Las Cruces or another crew are moving in right now. The only thing to slow them down would be the weather.”

“Weather?”

“Right. Did I mention they’ve got a blizzard moving in? Supposed to be the worst since 1890-something, in the mountains anyway.”

“So the witness has a price tag on his head—”

“Six figures, I was told.”

“—the monks won’t give him up, the shooters likely have his twenty, and a giant storm is moving in to seal the whole place off like Christmas in the Arctic.”

“That’s it in a nutshell.”

“It sounds impossible,” said Bolan.

“Well, I wouldn’t say—”

“When do I leave?”

* * *

THE NEXT FLIGHT OUT of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport took off two hours later, bound for Sacramento, California. Bolan caught a break when Brognola informed him Jack Grimaldi was in San Francisco, on some kind of surveillance gig for Stony Man. The pilot volunteered before Bolan could hint around the job’s details, although the blizzard gave him pause.

“No sweat,” he’d said after a moment. “If they’ve still got air, we’re airborne.”

Grimaldi would meet him when the flight landed in Sacramento, with a plane ready to go. He’d drop Bolan into the High Sierras, as close as he could get him to Holy Trinity, weather permitting, then he’d circle back at a prearranged time to pick up the soldier and, if all went well, Arthur Watson.

While Bolan waited for his flight to board at Reagan National, he popped a USB key Brognola had given him into his laptop. He reviewed the photographs and text describing U.S. Global Finance from its inception in the early nineties to the present day, with current assets estimated in the mid twelve figures. That was property and money on the books; no telling what was tucked away in safe deposit boxes or invested overseas.

Sheldon Page, the president, was fifty-one but could have passed for ten years younger, thanks to money, solid genes and plastic surgery. Before his present gig he’d worked for a major bank as a financial counselor, then jumped ship with his richest clients when U.S. Global started up. He was on first-name terms with several presidents south of the border, though he kept his distance—in the public eye, at least—from the leaders of their top cartels.

The CEO, Cornell Dubois, was forty-eight and twice divorced, a Harvard legacy who’d gone from graduation to the second-largest law firm in Manhattan, keeping big-time clients out of trouble with the IRS, the SEC and anybody else who sniffed around their fortunes. That experience had prepped him for the position he held at U.S. Global’s helm, leading a bicoastal life with junkets out of country when the need arose. Fluent in Spanish, French and Russian, he could wheel and deal in something like a hundred countries with the best of them.

Reginald Manson was the chief financial officer and youngest of the three at forty-six, a bachelor who played the field when there was time between his workload and his private passion, which was big-game hunting. Shooters’ magazines and websites showed him standing over carcasses—the African “big five” and other species standing on the knife’s edge of extinction—with a rifle in his hands and a smug look on his face. Before landing at U.S. Global he had worked for five top banks in various capacities, leaving each post with glowing letters of recommendation.

The fourth man Bolan met in Brognola’s files was Brad Kemper, chief of U.S. Global’s security division. He was twenty-nine, an Iraqi war vet and short-time LAPD officer, forced to resign after a series of brutality complaints climaxed with a dicey shooting, costing the city seven figures in compensatory damages. From there, he’d jumped to corporate security, working with a private military company that banked a bundle from Afghanistan and was suspected of coordinating drug shipments through Turkey to the West. That may have helped Kemper with his next move, to U.S. Global, where he’d caught the guy who hired him skimming funds—or framed him for it, as the case might be. Whichever, Kemper had replaced the tarnished chief and held his post today.

It would have been Kemper, Bolan thought, who’d fielded hunters to dispose of Arthur Watson. He would not have led the team himself, too risky, but the shooters would be dancing to his tune. If all else failed, Bolan thought Kemper might be worth a closer look, maybe through the crosshairs of a rifle’s scope.

Sacramento, California

JACK GRIMALDI WAS waiting in the terminal as promised when Bolan disembarked The pilot looked the same as ever, suntanned, just a trifle cocky in the way of men who’ve overcome the handicap of gravity and earn their living in the clouds. His grasp was firm as they shook hands. Grimaldi got right to business.

“I bagged a Cessna 207.” he told Bolan. “Not one of the old ones, but a fairly new production model.”

“Fairly new?”

“Early two thousands,” Grimaldi replied. “No worries about getting where we need to go.”

“Except the storm,” Bolan said.

“Well, there’s that. We won’t know whether the National Weather Service is overstating it or not until we’re in the middle of it.”

“Great.”

“We’ll play it by ear, right?” Grimaldi suggested. “I don’t wanna die any more than you do. If you can’t drop in safely, we’ll try something else.”

Except Bolan knew there would be nothing else. He’d either jump into the storm for Arthur Watson, or he’d have to sit it out. Ground travel through the High Sierras would be deadly slow, if it was even possible. He was already starting out behind the field, no way of knowing where the hunters were, what kind of lead they had, or how they would approach their prey.

Bolan had searched Holy Trinity on the internet while he was passing over Kansas. The place looked ancient, like a fortress from a movie about medieval times, when knighthood was in flower and encroaching armies laid siege to a rival’s keep for weeks or months on end.

Neither Bolan nor the hunters had that kind of time, of course. The shooters would be aware that their mark could change his mind again and get permission for the FBI to land at Holy Trinity, extract him and return him to New York to testify. In that case, there would be no payday, and the failed hunters might find their own heads on the chopping block.

The flight from Sacramento to Modesto was a short hop, sixty-odd miles, under thirty minutes at the Cessna’s cruising speed. They landed and refueled with ample daylight left to make the drop, Bolan trusting Grimaldi to have checked his parachute first-hand. Bolan strapped it on when they were airborne, heading east toward a wall of gray and white that was the blizzard blanketing the Golden State’s main mountain range.

And all that he could do was tough it out from there, bearing in mind the cost of failure if he turned back or was otherwise prevented from completing his assignment. Arthur Watson was the target, but it didn’t take a West Point graduate to figure out that U.S. Global’s mercs would leave no witnesses alive. From what Bolan had read online, there were about three dozen full-fledged monks at Holy Trinity, plus a handful of postulants, juniors and novices. Call it forty-plus to be on the safe side, and write them all off if the mercs got inside with no one to stop them.

What could one man do?

That was the question Mack Bolan had fielded from day one of his private war against the Mafia, through combat on a global scale against the predators who menaced civilized society. His answer, then and now, remained unchanged.

One man could do his best. If he was trained, experienced and willing, that could make the difference between a massacre of innocents and a defeat for evil. Permanent elimination of the threat was never part of the equation. Every battle was a thing unto itself. The enemies you killed today would be replaced tomorrow.

But one man could make his mark, all right. In blood.

3

Sierra Nevadas, California

Descending from the ancient pine tree was a slow and awkward process. Bolan relied mostly on touch, as swirling snow and frosted goggles prevented him from seeing more than a few feet in any direction. Swiping the goggles clear meant letting go of a branch, a dicey proposition, but he risked it periodically to keep himself from being completely blinded.

Another problem: Bolan’s high-topped jump boots were designed to save his ankles from a break or sprain on landing, and for marching the necessary distance to his goal, but their lug soles quickly caked with frozen snow, putting him at even more risk for a fatal slip.

He felt exposed up in the tree, knowing that anyone who’d seen him drop could wait below for an easy shot and pick him off, no problem. On the upside, Bolan thought he was at least a mile from Holy Trinity. That meant a grueling hike through knee-deep snow, but it also limited the possibility of encountering an enemy.

If there were shooters in the neighborhood, they would be headed for the monastery, bent on finishing their work and getting out again before the storm trapped them there. Meeting a hostile party here and now would be a fluke, defying logic and the odds, though it was not out of the question.

As for the High Sierras’ natural predators, they would be deep in hibernation or long departed for warmer elevations by now, or at the very least huddled in shelter from the storm. The checklist wasn’t long to start with—mountain lions, bears, coyotes, rattlesnakes. If he met killers here, they’d be the worst that nature had to offer: human beings.

And the Executioner was used to those.

A heavy-laden branch snapped under Bolan’s feet. One second he was balanced, pausing to wipe his goggles, and then his perch dropped out from under him, its crack sounding as loud as rifle fire.

Sixty feet of empty air yawned underneath him, broken only by the branches that would bruise and break him as he fell. Bolan had one hand on a limb, and he felt his fingers slipping through the slush. His free hand found another one in time, but only just, and dangling there in space, his shoulder sockets burning, Bolan knew he was in trouble.

He would have to find another branch to stand on, then use as his next handhold, which meant moving closer to the pine’s trunk, and inching to his left or right until he found another limb to take his weight.

A bare inch at a time, he worked his way toward the trunk. It was too stout for him to wrap his arms around, but with one hand on the branch overhead and the other hugging the tree, Bolan was hopeful he could extend a leg to the left or right and find another perch before he lost his grip and fell. The pine’s bark, normally as rough as ancient alligator hide, was glazed with ice that made it slicker than a polished fireman’s pole.

It took the better part of ten minutes to pull it off, each minute giving an advantage to his enemies if they were closing in on Holy Trinity. Even if they weren’t—say that the storm had overtaken them in the foothills somewhere and prevented them from getting to the monastery—time still mattered. Bolan had to find the place, wangle a way inside, find Arthur Watson and convince him that he had to finish up the job he’d signed on for.

All that, and then get Watson out alive through snow that might be chest-deep by then, with no flat, open ground to let Grimaldi land, if he could even fly in the blizzard. Did Watson have cold weather gear? The monks, presumably, would stay inside when weather canceled gardening or other chores, huddling by their simple fires or meditating in their Spartan living quarters. Bolan would carry Watson out swaddled in homespun blankets if he had to, but he didn’t like the odds of surviving that scenario.

Bolan’s foot found the branch he had been searching for and he shifted his weight forward, still bracing against the trunk. When he was certain the limb would hold him, he swung his other leg onto it, leaning into the tree for stability. He rested briefly, and when he could feel his arms and hands again, resumed his grueling descent toward whatever awaited him below.

* * *

THE SNOWCAT WAS A Thiokol 601 Trackmaster, designed originally for the U.S. military and adapted over time for various civilian tasks. It was bright orange—or had been, before snow and ice had crusted over it—and reminded Spike O’Connor of a school bus jacked up to accommodate tank treads. The heater worked all right; in fact, he felt a little sweaty, packed in with eleven other guys. The heavy-duty windshield wipers were another story, snow-clotted and leaving more behind than they were clearing on each pass. Not that it mattered in the near-whiteout conditions they were facing.

Denikin handled the driving. Who better to navigate a winter wasteland than a Russian who had done part of his Spetsnaz training in Siberia?

O’Connor left him to it. The other members of his team, clad in all-white uniforms, were from Germany, South Africa, Australia, Israel, Italy, England and the USA, but each possessed that look common to men who had been tested in the fire of battle and proved themselves. Their weapons had been chosen for utility and uniformity. O’Connor and the seven others carried Galil MAR assault rifles, the compact models with folding stocks and eight-inch barrels that still provided the parent rifle’s full firepower, feeding 5.56 mm NATO ammunition from thirty-five-round magazines at seven hundred rounds per minute in full auto mode. Two men packed Benelli M4 Super 90 shotguns, twelve-gauge semiautomatics with collapsible stocks, loading six rounds in the magazine plus one up the spout. Two others, their snipers, carried Accuracy International Arctic Warfare rifles topped with Schmidt & Bender 3-12x50 PM II P telescopic sights. They fed 7.62 mm NATO ammunition from ten-round detachable box magazines, but O’Connor’s marksmen rarely needed second shots to do their job.

As far as handguns went, he’d left it up to each individual, half of them choosing Glocks, most of the rest drawing various SIG Sauer models. The lone exception was their German, Kurt Mueller, who carried a Walther P1 identical in its appearance to the old P38 his forebears might have carried into battle during World War II. Nostalgia, maybe, or brand loyalty to the Fatherland.

O’Connor was frustrated by the snowcat. They were grinding along at ten miles per hour at best through the drifts and high winds, but at least they were still on course, their vehicle’s GPS device providing turn-by-turn navigation to Denikin. There were no cliffs in the immediate vicinity, and even if the Trackmaster veered off the narrow, snowed-in road a bit, its treads would bring them back in line. O’Connor’s major worry now was fallen trees, which could prevent the snowcat from proceeding and leave them on foot, with five miles left to go.

If that happened, so be it. They had a job to do and had been paid half in advance. The snafu in New Mexico had been a setback, but O’Connor wasn’t dwelling on it. If they failed this time, however, then they might as well die trying. Their employers were like elephants, forgetting nothing, and they didn’t know the meaning of forgiveness.

This was do or die at thirty-five below and dropping, arm’s length visibility and winds that forced a strong man to hunch over.

This time we get it right, O’Connor told himself, or we’re not going home.

* * *

WHEN BOLAN’S BOOTS met solid ground he stopped and leaned back against the pine tree’s massive trunk to get his bearings and catch his breath. The air he inhaled through his woven mask was frigid, making his throat burn, while the hairs inside his covered nostrils had a crisp and brittle feel. His arms and legs were strained from the descent, but there was no time to relax, no place to sit or lie down in the snow, which was more than knee deep and was accumulating rapidly.

He had to push on. Forty-odd lives depended on his perseverance, along with the indictment of three parasites who had grown bloated on the blood of innocents.

Before proceeding, Bolan shed his parachute harness, took a lightweight parka from his field pack and slipped into it, then removed a GPS device from one of his jumpsuit’s pockets. Switching it on, he waited for the LED display to orient him in a world of blinding white. The screen told him he was 1.5 miles south-southwest of Holy Trinity.

He spent another moment checking out his hardware: a Steyr AUG assault rifle with white polymer furniture and translucent double-column magazine; a Beretta 93R selective fire machine pistol; six M26 fragmentation grenades; and a Mark I trench knife with a seven-inch blade and a brass knuckle handle. When he’d verified the items were in their proper places, all undamaged, Bolan struck off through the drifts.

Fighting the wind, which was against him, and the snow, which made each step feel as if his feet were mired in tar, he strode toward Holy Trinity. Flakes were settling on his hood and shoulders, clinging to his sleeves and gloves. He’d kept his tinted goggles on, to guard against snow blindness and the biting cold, and he scanned the white landscape incessantly, watching out for movement and for any sign of tracks.

So far he seemed to be alone.

No reason why the hunters should have come this way, of course. In fact, he highly doubted that they would have jumped into the mountains as he had. He figured there had to be a team, as in Las Cruces, when they’d taken the U.S. Marshals down and missed their prize. Multiple jumpers in the storm likely would have been separated, maybe scattered over rugged miles, losing precious time while they regrouped, assuming all of them survived.

So, Bolan calculated, they’d be coming overland. The question was when.

He’d scouted the terrain as best he could, with satellite photography Brognola had provided, learning that a single narrow, winding road linked Holy Trinity to the outside world. On clear days, it would take a driver in a 4x4 about three hours to reach the nearest town, Groveland, 3,136 feet above sea level and a population of just over six hundred. A small town, obviously, boasting one main drag and two hotels competing for the tourist trade, no doubt including someplace where determined men with cash in hand could rent or buy adequate transportation to the high country.

Not simple SUVs in this weather. Land transport to Holy Trinity on a day like this meant snowmobiles or something larger that could flatten three-foot drifts and cling to icy pavement without mishap.

Snowmobiles were loud. As for the larger possibilities...

Bolan stopped short, blinking behind his goggles. Ahead of him, partially obscured by blowing powder, a wall stretched as far as he could see from right to left. It was approximately twelve feet high, no razor wire on top, just ice and snow to make it slippery.

Something he’d anticipated.

Dropping his field pack, Bolan opened it and reached inside.

* * *

BROTHER THOMAS LOVED the snow. Its chill and silence stilled his memories of the chaotic desert hell where he had served three tours of duty among people who despised him, wished him dead and did their level best to make it so. The hush a deep snow brought to Holy Trinity was music to his ears and to his soul.

In truth, though, Brother Thomas loved all seasons at the monastery. He was pleased—not proud, worst of the deadly sins—to be a member of the small community devoted to communion with the Lord and greater understanding of His plan. The brotherhood demanded nothing of him that involved deciding who should live or die, walk free or be confined pending interrogation by the faceless men who called the shots outside the monastery’s walls.

Snow shovel duty was his lot this afternoon, a task that might seem futile with the storm still raging, but it kept him fit and served his brothers as they went about their daily tasks. It was an hour past None—one of the Little Hours, celebrated with psalms at 3:00 p.m.—and Brother Thomas had three paths to clear before Supper at half-past five. Someone else would likely have to do the job all over again before Vespers, the day’s last Major Hour, when the monks gathered to celebrate sunset.

As he began to clear a path serving the refectorium—what would have been the mess hall in his bygone military sojourn—Brother Thomas warmed from the exertion. Work was deemed a privilege at Holy Trinity, not something to be borne, but rather celebrated as a service to the brotherhood and to their Lord. It varied with the seasons, gardening from late spring into early fall, woodcutting for the stoves and fireplaces, whatever maintenance the monastery might require year-round. The best part was that none of it involved divesting any other soul of life or liberty.

The path was almost clear when Brother Thomas heard a sharp metallic clinking. It had come from somewhere to his left, in the direction of the monastery’s high west wall, and was alarming in its unfamiliarity. He stopped and listened, but the sound was not repeated. Leaning on his shovel, Brother Thomas pondered whether he should put it out of mind or go investigate.

It’s likely nothing, he decided. But what if it was something that required repair?

Taking his shovel with him, Brother Thomas moved in the direction of the sound, his boot tracks quickly fading as snow filled them up. His view of the west wall improved as he advanced, but snowy gusts still masked it. Was there something moving on the wall, descending toward the garden plot inside?

A trespasser, dressed all in white, his movements deft and spider-like.

Brother Thomas clutched his shovel like a weapon.

As the man in white touched down, boots crunching into snow, Brother Thomas called out, “Who are you?”

* * *

INSTEAD OF ANSWERING, Bolan slowly turned, his right hand drifting automatically to the Steyr AUG’s smooth pistol grip.

“You need to answer me,” the same voice said.

The man who stood before him was approximately Bolan’s height, possibly bulkier beneath his thick parka. Below the coat’s hem, Bolan saw the dark sweep of a snow-dusted robe over black rubber boots. Gloved hands clutched a broad shovel as if it were an ax. The man’s ebony face was grim but handsome.

“Names aren’t important,” Bolan said.

“Then you won’t have a problem sharing yours.”

“I’ve come to help you.”

“With your handy Steyr AUG?”

The brother knew his weapons, and he had a military bearing—feet apart, the shovel held up defensively.

“It’s for protection,” Bolan replied.

“Uh-huh. Against what, the abominable snowman?”

“Trouble’s coming.”

“Looks to me like it’s already here.”

“I’m telling you—”

“No weapons on the monastery grounds. You need to give it up.”

Bolan considered that, released the Steyr’s pistol grip and raised his free right hand. “I’ll trade it for a face-to-face,” he said. “Take me to see Brother Jerome.”

The shovel-bearer frowned. “You know the abbot primate?”

“Haven’t had the pleasure yet,” Bolan replied. “But I’ve got news he needs to hear.”

It was the monk’s turn to consider his options. Finally, he said, “I take the rifle and you walk ahead of me.”

It was a gamble, but the other choices ran against the grain. “Okay.”

“Unsling it, hold it by the telescopic with your left hand and pass it over to me. Any fancy moves, you get to sample my Paul Bunyan imitation.”

“With a shovel?”

“You’d be surprised how sharp it is, from all those years of scraping ice.”

“I’ll take your word for it.” He passed the Steyr over, and the monk received it with respect and confidence. “You know your weapons,” Bolan said.

“Used to, but I still recall enough. This way.” He gestured with the Steyr’s muzzle and Bolan preceded him across the courtyard to a path partially cleared of snow. The monk set down his shovel there, leaving both hands free for the AUG.

Two minutes later, they were standing at a massive, ironbound wooden door. “Go on,” the brother said. “It isn’t locked.”

Bolan opened the door and passed into the lobby of a stone-and-mortar building. The floor under his dripping boots was gray tile. In front of them a broad staircase ascended to the second floor.

“Upstairs,” the monk directed. “Then the first door to your right.”

Bolan began to climb the stairs. A younger brother met them halfway up and hurried on his way after he saw the gun. When Bolan reached the second floor, he turned right, stopped and waited for the monk’s next move.

He knocked, keeping his eyes on Bolan the whole time. A deep voice on the other side said, “Enter!”

“Go ahead,” the monk said.

Bolan stepped into an office with a simple desk and wooden chairs, cheap filing cabinets against one wall. The setup seemed out of place beneath a twelve-foot ceiling. Multicolored light came through a stained glass window set in stone behind the desk. Christ in a garden of olive trees. Even without a clear sky behind it, the window was impressive, ancient-looking, wrought with care.

A tall man in a drab brown habit rose from where he had been seated at the desk, examining the new arrivals through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. “What on earth is this?” he asked the brother holding Bolan’s AUG.

“He came over the wall, Father,” the monk replied. “With this.”

“A firearm.”

“Yes, Father.”

The abbot turned to Bolan. “Who are you?”

Rather than debate it, Bolan used the name printed on the ID he’d left with Jack Grimaldi. “Matthew Cooper.”

“Named for a disciple?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“Brother Thomas,” said the abbot, “I’ll relieve you of your burden.”

“Father—”

“Please. And wait outside.”

It was the monk’s turn to obey, passing the Steyr to his boss, shooting a warning glance at Bolan as he left and closed the door.

Brother Jerome studied the rifle for a moment, placed it on his desk and said, “I won’t ask why you’ve come. It’s sadly obvious.”

“Or maybe not,” Bolan replied.

Brother Jerome cocked one gray eyebrow at him, clearly skeptical. “We have a visitor among us, claiming sanctuary. He desires to be a postulant. Intruders from his old life seek to take him from us. You are one of them.”

“You’re half-right,” Bolan granted. “But I’m not the only one who’s coming, and I’m on your side.”

“We don’t need men with guns to help us do the Lord’s work, Mr. Cooper.”

“There are others coming,” Bolan said again. “They’ve killed already, would’ve taken your visitor long before he got here if they hadn’t missed him. He got away once. Between your setup and the storm, I can’t imagine he’ll be lucky twice.”

“Who do you represent?” Brother Jerome demanded.

“No one who’ll acknowledge me,” Bolan replied. “We’re off the record here.”

“I see. Perhaps I should inform you that I’ve spoken to the FBI, the U.S. Marshals Service, and someone claiming to be a deputy attorney general. I have told them all the same thing. Sanctuary is a sacred principle that I am not prepared to violate.”

“That’s why I’m here, and not a SWAT team,” Bolan said. “Nobody’s looking for another Waco, but the men tracking your guest are only paid to do one thing—and I can promise you they don’t leave any witnesses.”

Brother Jerome stood silent for a moment, fingertips pinning the Steyr to his desktop. Finally, he said, “The choice cannot be mine. Brother Thomas!”

In a second flat, the monk who had delivered Bolan stood beside him. “Father?”

“Please fetch Brother Andrew and the postulant at once. I need to speak with both of them.”

4

Modesto, California

The storm chased Jack Grimaldi back to town, whipping his rented Cessna 207 all the way. He landed none the worse for wear and set about refueling before he tied the aircraft down. The blizzard’s trailing edge was rattling shrubbery around the airport terminal, but snow was limited to tiny flakes, like dandruff, which vanished on contact with the pavement.

The guy who’d checked Grimaldi’s license and his rental paperwork came out to meet him, flicking nervous glances at the clouds. “Did she treat you all right?”

“Sweet as candy,” Grimaldi replied.”

“Think you’ll be going up again?”

Grimaldi deflected with a question of his own. “I’ve got it through tomorrow, right?”

“Right, right. I only wondered, with the storm and all—”

“I’m waiting on a call,” Grimaldi said. “It comes, I go. Till then, she’s battened down.”

“Yessir. Okay.”

The guy veered off and left him, doubtless going to inspect the plane. Grimaldi had already signed off on insurance that would reimburse the owner with a new plane if he wrecked it, whether he survived or not. Still, he understood the natural, paternal feeling the man had for the machine that earned his living for him.

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