They hadn’t cornered Bolan yet

But it could happen if he didn’t stay ahead of them. Step one was blacking out the light, before it marked his place and someone on the sidelines made a lucky shot.

He saw the glaring beam wash over his position, even though it couldn’t find him in the shadow of the small communications hut. It wouldn’t take the sentries long to close around him, pin him down. Numbers could defeat him then.

He wasn’t Superman, wasn’t invincible. A storm of fire would drop him where he stood.

Unless he found a way out of the trap.

MACK BOLAN®

The Executioner

#255 War Bird

#256 Point of Impact

#257 Precision Play

#258 Target Lock

#259 Nightfire

#260 Dayhunt

#261 Dawnkill

#262 Trigger Point

#263 Skysniper

#264 Iron Fist

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

#327 Serpent’s Lair

#328 Triangle of Terror

#329 Hostile Crossing

#330 Dual Action

The Executioner®

Dual Action

Don Pendleton

The fires of hate, compressed within the heart, Burn fiercer and will break at last in flame.

—Pierre Corneille 1606-1684

Le Cid

I’m fighting fire with fire this time. The risk is that the end result may be scorched earth.

—Mack Bolan

To Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Prologue

“Jeez, you get a load of that one?” Eddie Sawyer asked.

“There’s nothin’ wrong with my eyes,” Joe DeLuca answered from the shotgun seat beside him. “Twenty-ten, last time I read the chart.”

“So, what’s the score, Hawk-eye?”

“I’d give her six.”

“I bet you would,” Sawyer quipped, “if you had the six to spare.”

He tried to get another quick glimpse of the blond hitchhiker in his right-hand mirror, but the armored truck was rolling at a steady 60 mph, and her form had dwindled to the size of a toy soldier in the glass.

“I’m sayin’ I’ve seen better,” DeLuca said.

“Not today, you haven’t.”

“Well—”

“Let’s ask the mole.” Sawyer reached back and keyed the intercom that linked the driver’s section of the truck with the cargo vault behind. “Hey, Tommy boy!” he called. “You see that sweet young thing?”

Tom Nelson’s scratchy voice came back at Sawyer through the speaker. “Screw the botha youse.”

It was a running joke among the men of Truck 13, Ohio Armored Transport. Nelson’s line of vision from the vault was strictly limited, and it was well-known that he spent his travel time immersed in Popular Mechanics, trying to “improve” himself. He never saw the sweet young things at roadside, standing with their thumbs out, and a good deal more besides. They always asked him, though, and his reply was perfectly predictable within a narrow range.

Screw you.

Piss off.

Blow me.

The Nelson repertoire.

It never failed—and always got a laugh out of DeLuca.

“Never mind there, Tommy. Sorry I disturbed you,” Sawyer offered in meek apology before switching off the intercom.

During the spring and summer months, girl watching was a principal diversion for the men of Truck 13. Of course, they lost the female scenery in autumn, and they saw no one at all on foot during their long runs in the winter. It got boring in a hurry, then, with nothing to watch out for but the black ice on the highway, waiting for a chance to put them in a ditch.

Their long run, once a week, was back and forth from Dayton to Columbus, with a stop in Springfield on the eastbound leg. It wasn’t all that far, really—no more than fifty miles—but it seemed longer with the load they had to escort over open country.

Wednesday mornings, as regular as clockwork, they were out on Highway 70 with ten to fifteen million dollars riding in the back.

On Wednesdays, Sawyer had an extra cup of coffee in the barn before they hit the road. It kept him sharp, ready for anything—although, in truth, nothing had ever happened on a Wednesday run, or any other time.

He had been lucky driving Truck 13. DeLuca was a decent partner, if somewhat opinionated. Sawyer had seniority with four years longer on the job, and both of them had Nelson ranked. He was the baby of the family, all six feet seven inches of him, with a pair of hands that made the M-16 they kept in back look like a toy.

Not that they’d ever had to use the rifle, or the shotgun mounted on the dashboard, or the pistols on their hips. Sawyer had never fired a shot himself, except in practice, and he hoped he never would.

Still, you could never tell.

“You hear about that orange alert on the news this morning?” he asked DeLuca.

“Sports arenas, what they said on Channel 7. Maybe sports arenas, maybe on the coast. Of course, they couldn’t say which coast. ‘No further details. Sorry. As you were.’”

“I hear you.”

Ever since the 9/11 attacks, Ohio Armored’s management had tried to keep up with the terrorist alerts from Washington, but who could follow all of that? It had been years of running through the color code with “credible” alerts from “trusted” sources, and they never came to anything. Lately, Sawyer suspected the alarms were issued automatically, either to justify the Homeland Security payroll or to make the Feds seem like they were achieving something with their sound and fury.

Mostly, Sawyer thought it was a waste of time and energy, but if he dropped his guard and something happened for a change, it would be his ass in a sling. He was the senior man on Truck 13, and thus responsible for anything that went awry.

He glanced at the odometer and told DeLuca, “We just hit the point of no return.”

It was another ritual. DeLuca grunted, as he always did, acknowledging that they would have to top off the gas tank before they started back to Dayton from the capital. The armored truck burned fuel like there was no tomorrow, no price gouging at the pumps, no crisis in the Middle East. Come rain or shine, Truck 13 guzzled gas, and Sawyer didn’t want to be caught short when they were on the open road.

Not that a chase was anything to fret about. If anything went down, they had a cell phone and a two-way radio with which to summon reinforcements. State police could reach them anywhere along the route within ten minutes, give or take.

Ten minutes wasn’t bad.

“We got some company,” DeLuca said.

The road ahead was empty, but a square gray van was gaining on them from behind, growing in Sawyer’s left-hand mirror. “Let ’em pass, if they’re in such a—What the hell? You see that, Joe?”

“See what?” DeLuca asked.

The mirror needed cleaning, which prevented him from seeing details, but it seemed to Sawyer that a portion of the van’s windshield had opened. Was that even possible with modern vehicles? Some of the old jeeps used to have windshields that—

“Jesus!”

A jet of flame shot from the dark hole in the van’s windshield, and Sawyer heard the ringing impact as a high-powered projectile slammed into the rear of his truck. Before his tongue could wrap around the first of the emergency commands they had rehearsed a hundred times, Tom Nelson started screaming in the cargo vault.

DeLuca swiveled in his seat, shouting, “Tommy! What’s going on, man?” When the only answer was another high-pitched scream, DeLuca slammed his palm against the speaker. “Listen, dammit! Will you—”

“Joe!” Sawyer shouted. “Wait! He isn’t on the intercom.”

DeLuca blinked at that, then opened the sliding hatch that screened their only interior view of the vault. He stared at the square of inch-thick glass and then recoiled, gagging.

Sawyer was losing it. So many years of training, practice runs, and still the real thing took him by surprise. His eyes were torn between the road ahead, the gray van in the mirror, and his partner’s stricken face. He clutched the steering wheel in hands that ached, their knuckles blanched bone-white.

“What is it, Joe?”

“He’s burning,” DeLuca moaned. “God Almighty, Tommy’s burning up!”

Sawyer could smell it, the scorched-flesh smell he’d never quite forgotten from the summer twelve years earlier, when he had driven past a five-car pileup on the interstate, southeast of Cleveland. Bodies cooking, doused in gasoline.

This smell was different, though.

No gasoline, for one thing—and those corpses hadn’t screamed.

“Pull over, Eddie! Jesus!”

“Are you kiddin’ me? We’re under fire!” he told DeLuca.

“Shit!” DeLuca keyed the intercom and leaned into the speaker, kissing-close, to shout, “Use the extinguisher, Tommy! It’s right behind you!”

There were thrashing sounds followed by more screams.

“Get on the radio!” Sawyer snapped. “Get some help out here, right now!”

“The radio. I hear ya.”

As DeLuca swung toward the dashboard, reaching out for the microphone, Truck 13 took another hit and began to fishtail. Sawyer fought the swerve, turning a deaf ear to the screams of agony behind him, but he couldn’t keep it on the road. Another second passed and he felt the front tires spitting gravel, losing traction. The armored truck rolled over on the driver’s side.

1

Clay County, Arkansas

Mack Bolan crouched in darkness, studying the “holy city” from a hundred yards outside its southeastern perimeter. He’d never seen a piece of Paradise on Earth before, but on the rare occasions when he pictured it, his vision had excluded razor wire and guards in camouflage fatigues, with military rifles slung across their shoulders.

Then again, Camp Yahweh wasn’t what most mainstream pastors would’ve called a theological retreat. Its population—269 at last report—was committed to a militant version of Christian Identity, the “seedline” doctrine that proclaimed Nordic folk the true offspring of Adam, while nonwhite “mud people” sprang from Eve’s adulterous affair with Lucifer in reptile form.

Camp Yahweh was a monument to racial hatred, but that didn’t make it anything unique in the United States, or in the world at large. There were at least a hundred similar communities that Bolan was aware of, from Alaska to the bayou country of Louisiana, high in the Sierra Madre or—like this one—tucked away in the Ozarks.

Venomous hatred didn’t make Camp Yahweh special.

The Executioner was in search of something else.

The eight-foot cyclone fence with razor wire on top was not electrified. He’d tested it on his first visit to the compound, after snapping photos of the layout to prepare himself for penetration. Bolan guessed they’d found the cost of generator fuel prohibitive in recessionary times, when even zealots had to pinch a penny and donations on the neo-Nazi fringe fell short.

He had the compound’s blueprint firmly fixed in mind, knew the routines of the soldiers on perimeter patrol and when they were relieved. He didn’t know exactly where the object of his search might be concealed, but there were only three apparent possibilities. One unit plainly served as storage. The sentries drew their weapons from another, prior to going on patrol. His third choice was the base command post, occupied by a bearded, long-haired character who could’ve been auditioning for a part as a nineteenth century mountain man.

Bolan rated the command post unlikely, but he couldn’t say for sure until he had a look inside. If he struck out on targets A and B, he’d have to try his luck with C.

But first, he had to get inside.

Bolan crept forward, boots and elbows digging at the soft soil underneath him. He was dressed in black, his face and hands painted to match. The compound wasn’t brightly lit, and while they had floodlights mounted in twin watchtowers, north and south, they weren’t illuminated at the moment. Bolan guessed that they would save the major candlepower for emergencies or combat drills.

Stay dark, he mentally ordered the sentries in the towers. Don’t look down.

Bolan was ready if they saw him, with a Colt Commando assault rifle slung across his back, a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle semiauto pistol on his hip and a sound-suppressing Beretta 93-R selective-fire side arm nestled in a quick-draw armpit rig. His other battle gear included extra magazines for his three firearms, a stiletto, a garrote, grenades and wire cutters.

He used the cutters first, selecting a well-shadowed portion of fence where wild grass had grown taller than usual, nearly knee high. He settled amidst it, waited for the sector guard to pass, then busied himself with the wire. Nocturnal insects covered ered the sounds that his cutters produced, snipping links on a line two feet high, then six inches across.

Bolan timed his move, slid through the flap, then sealed it loosely behind him with a black twist tie. It wouldn’t pass a close inspection, but the guards he had observed so far were young—for Nazis, anyway—and seemed to have no fear of imminent attack.

Indeed, as Bolan knew, there’d been no challenge to their compound at its present site. The first Camp Yahweh, in Missouri, had been raided by a flying squad of FBI and ATF agents in 1997, but the raiders were embarrassed by their failure to discover fugitives or outlawed weapons. The sect had called a press conference to crow about its “victory,” then pulled up stakes and moved to Arkansas.

There had been other changes, too. The former Seed of Yahweh was under new management these days, renamed the Aryan Resistance Movement. Its leaders were more militant, more outraged by the slow drift of society toward equal rights for all.

And if the information out of Washington was accurate, they had a deadly secret.

Finding it, defusing it, was Bolan’s job.

He lay in shadow, clutching the Beretta, while yet another sentry passed by, heedless of his presence in the weeds. When it was clear, the soldier rose and bolted toward the compound’s armory.

He reached it, tried the door and found it locked. Bolan was kneeling, pick in hand, ready to remedy that problem when a scuffling footstep sounded close behind him and a gruff male voice demanded, “Who the fuck are you?”

SIMON GRUNDY LOVED his life. It was a strange thing for him to imagine, knowing where he’d come from—foster homes and juvey hall, a half-assed motorcycle gang, state prison—but it was God’s honest truth.

Praise Yahweh.

Who’d have guessed that a habitual offender, malcontent and full-time badass would mature into an officer and gentleman, committed to salvation of his race and nation from encroachment by an enemy who made the Russians and the Red Chinese seem penny-ante by comparison?

Grundy supposed it would’ve made his mother proud, if she had crawled out of a bottle long enough to focus on her only son for ten or fifteen seconds in her worthless life. As for his father, well, Grundy would need a name to find that shiftless bastard, and it wasn’t worth the trouble after thirty-seven years.

The Aryan Resistance Movement was his family now, and that made Grundy proud.

He stood before the mirror in his quarters, counting brushstrokes as he groomed his flowing beard. Most of his troops preferred the skinhead look, but Grundy favored a more biblical style. It could’ve looked bizarre, but he believed his hulking build and forceful personality made him imposing, rather than ridiculous.

Grundy was midway through stroke ninety-five, just after midnight, when somebody gave a shout outside. He didn’t recognize the voice, heard no coherent words, but any breach of Camp Yahweh’s decorum was his ultimate responsibility. Grundy set down his brush, considered putting on a shirt, then stepped outside bare-chested.

Let the ladies look, if they were so inclined.

At first glance, from the doorway of his quarters, nothing seemed to be amiss. He checked the towers, then the fence, and found his sentries standing ready, trying to pinpoint the sound. They were having no luck, so far.

The voice had been a man’s, but Grundy couldn’t say if it had sounded angry, startled or afraid. He ruled out joy, since none of Camp Yahweh’s inhabitants would draw attention to themselves with shouts of glee at midnight.

He should count the guards, Grundy decided, make sure none of them had suffered any kind of mishap or—

The fireball nearly blinded him. Its shock wave struck a second later, driving spikes of pain into his eardrums. Grundy rocked back on his heels, with the concussion of the blast, then felt its heat wash over him.

The armory.

He didn’t have to guess. Even if Grundy hadn’t known Camp Yahweh’s layout perfectly, he would’ve recognized the sound of ammo cooking off, the rapid fire of boxed rounds burning. He instinctively recoiled, crouching, and scuttled back inside his quarters.

What in hell was happening?

He plucked an AR-15 from a wall rack mounted near the door and peered outside again. Guards kept their distance from the flaming ruin of the armory, ducking and dodging slugs that whined through darkness from the pyre. Grundy was on the verge of self-congratulation for their discipline—no panic firing yet—when suddenly an automatic weapon stuttered in the night, some thirty yards east of the burning building.

Full-auto? Something was very wrong.

Machine guns were forbidden in Camp Yahweh. Grundy knew each weapon in the armory—whatever might be left of it—and he examined every private piece brought into camp, from knives to long guns. Nothing was allowed that might provoke another raid, be it a switchblade or a silencer. Up front, at least, he played it strictly by the book.

Which meant that any shooter with full-auto capability was an intruder, wreaking havoc with his men.

Grundy was looking for the prowler’s muzzle-flash, tracking his noise, when someone called out in the night, “That isn’t one of us!”

The sentries started to converge, drifting off-station from the fence, but Grundy didn’t want them moving yet. If there was one intruder in the compound, why not more?

He shouted to the guards, identified himself and ordered them to stand their ground. They were conditioned to obey and did as they were told, although reluctantly. Grundy supposed he’d lose them soon, unless—

“Give me the lights!” he bellowed at the tower guards. “Light up the east side, now!”

As if in answer to his order, yet another thunderous explosion rocked the camp. It was the storage shed this time, roof lifting on a jet of fire that made him think of a volcano spewing lava toward the sky. Two of its walls fell outward, burning, while the others stood in stark relief against the darkness that surrounded them.

Storage.

They kept no arms or ammunition in that shed, but there was fuel for vehicles and generators, propane tanks for cooking. All together, burning fiercely now to light the darkest corners of the camp.

The floodlights blazed, sweeping the compound, bright beams crossing, passing on, returning to the site of the explosion. As they swept across the landscape, Grundy saw a black-clad figure ducking for the shadows, painted face averted from the light.

“Intruder!” he called out to anyone within earshot. Pointing, he ran after the stranger, shouting orders all the way. “Fall in, goddammit! Head him off! I want that prick alive!”

THE EXECUTIONER squeezed off a short burst from his autocarbine as the troops converged. One of his targets stumbled, fell and didn’t rise again.

The lights were trouble, tracking him across the compound when he might’ve otherwise eluded hunters in the dark. Ducking behind a hut that sprouted radio antennas from its angled roof, he craned around the corner, found his mark and milked a 5 or 6 round burst from his stuttergun. The nearest of the floodlights imploded and went dark as soldiers scattered from it, ducking out of sight below the tower’s waist-high walls.

Someone—perhaps the mountain man—was shouting orders at the other troops, coordinating the advance. They hadn’t cornered Bolan yet, but it could happen, if he didn’t stay ahead of them. Step one was blacking out the other light before it marked his place and someone on the sidelines made a lucky shot.

He saw the glaring beam wash over his position, even though it couldn’t find him in the shadow of the small communications hut. It wouldn’t take the sentries long to close around him, pin him down, and numbers could defeat him then. He wasn’t Superman, wasn’t invincible. A storm of fire would drop him where he stood, like anybody else, unless he found a way out of the trap.

Lights first.

Taking a chance, he stepped into the open, raised his weapon, sighting down the beam of that all-seeing eye. Before the startled hunters could react, Bolan triggered another burst and blacked out the floodlight, toppling one of its minders from his lofty perch into a screaming swan dive to the earth below.

The sudden darkness covered him, but not for long. On orders from their chief, the camp’s guards were advancing, still maintaining discipline of fire, but it would only take one glimpse of Bolan in the shadows, one stray shot, to spark chaos.

Why wait?

Bolan fired two quick rounds toward the west, then pivoted, already moving, and triggered two more to the east. He was running south toward the command post when someone to the east returned his fire, immediately echoed by a weapon to the west.

Good hunting, Bolan thought, and left them to it. Gunfire popped and crackled through the compound, drowning out the gruff voice of the officer who tried to shout it down. The leader would have a rough time with control, Bolan calculated, but the danger hadn’t passed, by any means. A stray shot could be just as deadly as a sniper’s well-aimed bullet, and the sudden crash in discipline meant sentries would be trigger-happy all around the compound.

Bolan concentrated on his first task, pushing on through firelight and shadows toward the command post. If the object he sought wasn’t there, he was stumped—and that boded ill for his mission.

Where was it?

What was it?

Bolan had hoped he’d recognize the object when he saw it, but so far the camp had yielded nothing even close to what he sought. If he struck out at the CP, he’d have to seek another source of inside information that could put him on the track.

Inside.

Someone from Camp Yahweh might do the trick, but that would mean escaping with a hostage under fire. It would be risky, at the very least, perhaps impossible. A last resort, in any case.

Bolan stayed focused on his first priority. The camp CP was fifty yards in front of him, with two men posted on the porch. He saw no trace of the leader, guessing that the bearded officer would be among his troops.

So much the better.

Closing from their right-hand side, the Executioner drew the 93-R from its armpit rig and triggered two quick shots. The nearer guard collapsed as if he were a puppet and someone had snipped his strings. The other spun to face a danger he couldn’t identify, and Bolan dropped him with a quiet Parabellum round between the eyes.

He left them there, shrouded in shadows, and passed through an unlocked door into the boss man’s private quarters. They were neat enough, but still possessed a kind of musky odor that he couldn’t place.

Ignore it, he thought.

Bolan swiftly checked any hiding places he could think of in the Spartan quarters: closets, footlocker, beneath the sturdy cot. He checked desk drawers, in hope of finding sketches, plans, perhaps a note that would direct him to a secret cache.

Nothing.

Bolan retraced his steps through empty rooms, back to the porch. The two dead guards were lying where he’d left them, but they weren’t alone.

Five gunmen ringed the porch, all watching Bolan over weapons pointed at his chest.

“DROP THE WEAPON! Raise your hands! Don’t move!”

The shouted orders echoed from behind Simon Grundy, causing him to turn and squint through firelight toward his quarters. Several of his men were clustered there, pointing their weapons at a tall man on the porch.

A tall man dressed in black, faces and hands painted with combat cosmetics to match.

“Hold up, there!” Grundy shouted at them. “Don’t—”

Before he could complete the thought, a burst of automatic fire blazed from the stranger’s weapon, toppling one of Grundy’s troopers from the porch. At the same instant, as if propelled by his weapon’s recoil, the trespasser sprang backward, slammed the door with his free hand and disappeared.

The others started pouring fire into the bungalow, as fast as they could pull the triggers on their AR-15 carbines. Bullets drilled the wall, blew out the windows, rattled the vibrating door in its frame. Grundy imagined his belongings in there, shot to hell, but he was focused on the stranger.

“Cease-fire, dammit!” Rushing among them, he grabbed first one rifleman and then another, wrestling them off target, shouting in their faces to be heard above the small-arms racket. “Hold your fire! I want that bastard breathing!”

“Too late, Major,” one of them replied. The youngster grinned and giggled.

“Oh, you think so?” Grundy shoved him toward the bullet-scarred front door. “So, get in there and check it out.”

The skinhead hesitated, then put on his war face, nodded once and rushed the door. He didn’t think to try the knob, but kicked it open, Grundy waving others in behind him as he rushed the living room.

There was no body in the living room, no blood to indicate that any of his men had scored a hit with their wild firing through the wall and windows. They fanned out, checking the corners, even though they offered no concealment for a man-sized target.

Stalling.

Grundy led them to the bedroom door, which he knew he had left ajar. The trespasser had closed it, and two bullet holes marked the painted surface, as if peepholes had been carelessly installed, off center and at different levels.

“Nowhere else for him to go,” one of the soldiers said. They moved in closer, ringed the door with scowls and steel.

Grundy was trembling, but he couldn’t order one of them to go ahead of him this time. What would they think, if he sent someone else to check his sleeping quarters, maybe check under the bed for bogeymen.

Clutching his piece one-handed, Grundy turned the knob and shoved the door back with sufficient force to make it strike the wall, crouching as it swung open. Reinforcements crowded close behind him, leaning in to aim above his head and shoulders. If they fired, he would be deafened, but he didn’t mind the company just then.

The empty room made nonsense of their melodrama. Grundy rushed the closet, threw it open to reveal his extra uniforms, but no intruder hiding there. As he turned back to face the room, two of his men were peering underneath the cot from different sides and making faces at each other.

“Nothing,” one of them declared.

“The window’s unlocked, Major.”

Grundy saw it closed, the way he’d left it, but the corporal was right. The latch was open now. He always kept it locked from force of habit. Someone else had opened it, used it as an escape hatch. Leaning closer, he saw scuff marks on the wall, probably from boots.

“Outside!” he shouted. “Make a sweep! We have to find out where he went and stop him. If he gets away…”

He meant to say, We’ll never know who sent him, but his soldiers were already rushing out, not waiting for the why and wherefore of it. Orders were enough for them, these fine young savages. They lived for action, didn’t give a damn why they were fighting, as long as someone tagged the mission with a rousing call for race and honor.

They were children, but they weren’t afraid of dirty work.

He followed them outside, eyes sweeping Camp Yahweh for any sign of the intruder or companions who had thus far managed to avoid detection. Were there others, lurking in the shadows? Were they Feds or mercenaries? Members of some rival nationalist movement or some leftist private army?

There was only one way to find out.

He had to capture one alive and make him squeal.

“Stay sharp!” he ordered his assembled soldiers. “Cover every corner of the camp. We need—”

Across the compound, at the motor pool, an engine growled and headlights blazed. Before Grundy could snap out a fresh command, one of their jeeps was off and racing toward the gate.

THE JEEP was military surplus, which required no key. Bolan needed a ram to breach the gate, and speed to give him an advantage on Camp Yahweh’s infantry. A mile would do it, if he got that far. He could discard the stolen wheels, then, and proceed on foot to reach his own.

But first, he had to make it out of camp alive.

About the time that his pursuers finished ransacking the CP hut, he slid into the driver’s seat, reviewed the world’s simplest controls and gunned the jeep to life. There was no point in running dark, since they could see him by the light of leaping flames in any case, so Bolan used the high beams as offensive weapons, blinding any troops who stood directly in his path.

There weren’t that many of them. Most had rushed to join their CO at his quarters, or else fanned out to police the camp’s perimeter. Of the dependents in Camp Yahweh, the wives and children of the “Master Race” commandos, Bolan had seen nothing yet and hoped to keep it that way. They were not civilians in the strictest sense, having withdrawn from civilized society to live a racist pipe dream fraught with danger, but he didn’t want them in his line of fire, if it could be avoided.

Wherever they were hiding, none of them emerged as Bolan made his short run toward the gate. He gunned the jeep to its top speed, aimed at the double gates a hundred yards downrange. Two guards were stationed there, and by the time he’d covered half the distance to his target, others were arriving, racing to assist their comrades.

Others still were firing from behind him, peppering the jeep with semiauto fire that struck like ringing hammer blows. A hollow thunk told Bolan that one round had drilled the gas can mounted on the tailgate, but he knew he had fuel enough to get where he was going, and the gunmen would need tracer rounds to set the sloshing gasoline on fire.

Racing across the open camp, he swerved the jeep from side to side, ducking as low as possible while still maintaining visibility across the dashboard. By the time he’d covered fifty yards, the windshield was a pile of pebbled safety glass in Bolan’s lap and strewed around his feet. Sparks flew from glancing bullet strikes, while solid hits drilled through the fenders, flaking paint in perfect circles.

Thirty yards.

The soldiers on the gate were firing at him now, so Bolan aimed his autocarbine through the empty windshield frame and held down the trigger, sweeping its muzzle back and forth in short arcs, left and right. The Colt Commando’s 30-round magazine emptied in less than three seconds, but it lasted long enough to sweep the resistance from the gate and scatter bodies in Bolan’s path. One thumped beneath the tires before the Jeep hit the chain-link gates and powered through.

Behind him, gunfire stuttered on for several seconds, but Bolan quickly killed the headlights and robbed them of their target. It was open country for another hundred yards or so, before he hit tall grass approaching spotty woods. Beyond that point, he had to risk the low beams as he sought a winding path around and through the trees.

Pursuit was possible, since Bolan hadn’t taken time to disable the other vehicles in camp, but it would take some time to organize, and he would see the headlights coming. By the time they found the abandoned jeep, Bolan would’ve found his way on foot back to the rental car he’d stashed a mile due north of Camp Yahweh.

If any of them followed Bolan that far, it would be their last mistake.

He found a place to park, then changed his mind and pushed the vehicle into a ravine with water rippling somewhere near the bottom. There was no point making its retrieval easy on the enemy, he thought. At that point, leaving empty-handed, any inconvenience he could cause was a victory of sorts.

And Bolan wasn’t finished with the Aryan Resistance Movement yet.

CampYahweh hadn’t yielded what he hoped to find, but there were other places he could look, people he could interrogate.

He wasn’t giving up.

The cost of failure was too high, in terms of human lives and suffering.

When Bolan’s job was done, the enemy would know it.

Those, that was, who’d managed to survive.

2

Two days earlier

A coded-access steel door barred them from the War Room at Stony Man Farm. Barbara Price keyed in her access code, then crossed the threshold as the heavy door slid open. Mack Bolan followed, heard the door shut behind him as he scanned the conference table for familiar faces.

Hal Brognola sat at the head of the table, flanked by Aaron Kurtzman in a wheelchair on his left, two empty chairs immediately on his right for Price and Bolan. Next to Kurtzman, facing one of the empties, sat Huntington Wethers, an African/American cybernetics specialist who’d been lured to the Farm team from a full professorship at Berkeley.

Bolan nodded all around in lieu of handshakes, took his seat and answered the usual small talk about his flight. Even with the chitchat still in progress, he could see Brognola stewing, anxious to be on about the business that had brought them all together.

“We’ve been saddled with a problem,” Brognola began, as if the team had ever been assembled to receive good news.

“I’m listening,” Bolan replied.

“Maybe you heard about the tank incident in Baghdad a few months ago?”

Bolan frowned. “Specifics?”

“An Abrams tank was on routine patrol when it was hit by something that burned through the side skirts and armor on one side, grazed the gunner’s flack jacket and sliced through the back of his seat, then drilled a pencil-sized hole almost two inches deep into the four-inch armor on the turret’s other side. No projectile was recovered. Officially, the incident remains unexplained.”

“And unofficially?” Bolan asked.

“The Pentagon’s as worried as hell. They don’t know what they’re dealing with, who’s got it, how many are out there—in short, they don’t know a damned thing.”

“A secret weapon,” Bolan said. “Each war produces innovations and surprises. Put the SEALs or Special Forces on it. Shake things up. They’ll find a guy who knows a guy and track it down.”

“No luck with that so far,” Kurtzman said. “Top priority or otherwise, they’re pumping dry holes over there.”

“One logical alternative,” Bolan replied, “is a defective weapon of some kind. Guerrillas mix and match. Sometimes they fabricate to meet their needs. New weapons frequently have unpredictable results when they’re first used in combat. Maybe your hotshot was a mistake, and they’ve worked out the bugs.”

“We don’t think so,” Brognola said.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s surfaced in the States.”

Bolan leaned forward in his chair. “Say what?”

“On Wednesday morning, in Ohio,” the big Fed confirmed. “There’s no mistake.”

“Go on.”

“Somebody hit an armored truck en route from Dayton to Columbus, carrying 65 million dollars. Somebody fired twice through the back doors with the supergun—whatever. Cooked the guard back there and spooked the driver, so he rolled it. After that, they used conventional C-4 to pop the doors, iced the witnesses, then made off with the cash.”

“That’s all we have?” Bolan asked.

“Not quite,” Brognola said. “The guards up front got off a radio alarm about the hit. An old gray van, they said, and ‘something weird,’ which pretty much describes the supergun. A couple of state troopers saw the van and started a pursuit.”

“I’m guessing that they didn’t catch it,” Bolan said.

“You’re right. The fugitives lit up a gasoline truck, killed the driver, forced the troopers off the highway, set the fields on fire.”

“The troopers?” Bolan asked.

“One of them’s in a Cincinnati burn ward as we speak. The other didn’t make it.”

“What about the van?”

“Stolen out of St. Louis two weeks earlier,” Brognola said. “Painted and overhauled. They torched it outside Louisville, Kentucky. Wiped out anything forensically significant, but they left stolen license plates from Little Rock, and we could still see how they modified the van inside.”

“Is that significant?” Bolan asked.

“Absolutely,” Wethers interjected. “First, they built a swivel unit where the backseat used to be, then ditched the shotgun seat and fixed the windshield so the right-hand side would lower on a hinge.”

“To fire the supergun,” Bolan said.

“In our estimation, yes. With the arrangement we discovered, they could aim it fore or aft. They made it mobile, and it served them well.”

“Too bad we don’t know who they are,” Bolan remarked.

“I just might have a lead on that,” Brognola said. “It isn’t definite, by any means, but—”

“Give me what you have,” the Executioner replied.

“How much do you know about Christian Identity?” Brognola asked.

“A neo-Nazi version of King James. The Nordic tribes of Israel. Jews are demons, nonwhites are mud people, the usual racist garbage.”

“That’s it, in a nutshell,” Brognola said, “with the emphasis on nuts. It used to be the creed of choice with white supremacists until the 1990s, when a lot of them turned Odinist to claim their Viking roots. The hard core hanging with Identity is more extreme than ever now, maybe to balance what they lost in numbers.”

“If you want to call that balanced,” Wethers said.

“In any case,” Brognola said, forging ahead, “we’ve got a clique of suspects who line up with the events in question geographically. Are you familiar with an outfit called the Aryan Resistance Movement?”

“Not offhand,” Bolan replied.

“Aaron?”

Kurtzman keyed a button from his chair, and Bolan watched a screen descend behind Brognola. From the far wall opposite, a slide projector hummed to life, projecting a map of the central U.S. on the screen. Brognola half turned in his chair to eye the map, as he continued speaking.

“They’re a neo-Nazi outfit, as you might imagine from the name. Still clinging to Identity theology, against the far-right trend. They have a compound here.” He pointed to the northeastern corner of Arkansas with an infrared beam. “You’ll find their background information in the file I brought you, but to summarize, they started in Missouri, then moved south, and they’ve been getting more extreme—more militant—as time goes by. Nonsense about the call to topple ZOG, and so on.”

“That’s the Zionist Occupation Government,’” Barbara Price reminded him. “Otherwise known as the U.S. of A.”

Bolan nodded, familiar with the term from other contacts on the fascist fringe. He waited for Brognola to continue.

“Anyway,” Brognola said, “geography.” The pointer danced across the broad projected map as he continued. “Here we’ve got the ARM, holed up in what they call Camp Yahweh. A hundred miles to the southwest is Little Rock, source of the stolen license plates. Due north, St. Louis, where the movement got its start—”

“And where the van was stolen,” Bolan finished for him.

“Right, you are. Ohio, where they made the hit on Wednesday, is a straight shot, more or less, from northern Arkansas along the interstates. And coming back, there’s Louisville. Stop by and torch the van that’s served its purpose.”

“It’s suggestive,” Bolan said, “but it’s also circumstantial.”

“Granted, but we’re looking for a weapon, not preparing for a trial.”

“Okay,” Bolan replied. “Convince me.”

“Right. For starters, three known members of the ARM were once associated with the Phineas Priesthood and the Aryan Republican Army.”

Both of those groups, Bolan knew, had robbed banks and armored cars across the United States in the 1990s to finance a scheme they liked to call Racial Holy War. Some members had been prosecuted and were serving time, but others wriggled through the nets for want of solid evidence connecting them to a specific crime. Broader sedition charges filed against both groups had been dismissed on grounds that anyone in the U.S. was free to advocate destruction of the government, as long as they made no attempt to pull it off.

“All right, we’re closer,” Bolan said.

“It’s apparent from the new group’s publications that they idolize the Phineans and ARA,” Brognola added, “but their straight-up heroes are Bob Mathews and The Order.”

In the early 1980s The Order—also called the Silent Brotherhood—had blazed a path of mayhem across the Pacific Northwest. Its membership was never more than twenty-five or thirty diehards, but the group had declared war on “Red America” and financed its campaign with a series of daring armed robberies that netted several million dollars from banks and Brinks trucks.

“You’re looking for a blueprint,” Bolan said.

“Already found it,” Brognola replied. “It’s right there in The Turner Diaries.”

Bolan nodded, frowning. While he hadn’t read the novel, self-published in 1978 by a former physics professor turned Nazi guru for a pack of dim-witted disciples, Bolan knew the basic plot: America, enslaved by “ZOG,” is rescued from the brink of race-mixing and social chaos by a band of vigilantes called The Order, who rob banks, hang “race traitors” and finally demolish Congress with a huge truck bomb. The Diaries had inspired a host of homegrown terrorists over the past quarter century, from Mathews and the real-life Order to various Klansmen, militias and the Oklahoma City bomber.

Playing the devil’s advocate, Bolan noted the obvious. “They’re not the only bunch of redneck psychopaths who have the Diaries memorized. I’m guessing you could point to six or seven other groups right now, within the same half-dozen states.”

“You’re right again. I could. But only one of them has been in touch with this guy. Aaron?”

On the screen, a grinning face replaced the map. The man was bearded, sunburned, appearing to be an Arab. He looked vaguely familiar to Bolan.

“Wadi Amal bin Sadr,” Brognola declared. “He’s an Iraqi Shiite cleric, presently in exile. We’ve had sightings from Tehran to Paris, but the only one confirmed so far was here.”

The picture changed again. This time, the man stood with two Caucasian males. Flat desert and a small adobe building could be seen in the background. All of them were smiling for the camera, apparently delighted to be there.

“Wadi again,” Brognola said, aiming his pointer at the second face in line. “This one is Curt Walgren, self-styled supreme commander of the ARM, and on his left is Barry James, his second in command.”

They didn’t look like much to Bolan, though they could’ve been a pair of Gulf War veterans in their desert camouflage fatigues. Bush hats concealed what might have been evidence of skinhead sympathies, or simply military-style buzz cuts. They had no visible tattoos, and sunglasses concealed their eyes. About all he could judge from the group photo was their strong, white teeth.

“When did they meet?” Bolan asked.

“This was taken in October,” Brognola replied, “outside of Ciudad Juarez. That’s just across the Tex-Mex border from El Paso.”

“Been there,” Bolan said.

“Oh, right.”

“Stop me if I’m mistaken, now,” Bolan began. “Our theory is that Sadr passed the supergun along to these yahoos, so they could—what? Rob armored cars? Raise hell at random in the States?”

“We can’t ask Sadr,” Brognola answered. “Rumor is the Israelis vaporized him with a rocket attack in Jordan, last week, but I doubt that we’ll ever confirm it. Motive-wise, there’s not much difference between his sect and what passes for Christianity inside the ARM. They both hate Israel and believe that Jews are children of the devil. Both regard the U.S. government as a Satanic instrument. Walgren would spit on Sadr for the color of his skin, but if the Arab helps him hit the Jews, he’d play along. You know the old saying—‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’”

Bolan nodded. “It’s logical enough,” he said. “You think they’ve got the weapon stashed at their compound inArkansas?”

“When we connect the dots, that’s where they lead.”

“No inside information, though?”

The man from Justice shook his head. “So far, the ARM has been impervious to infiltration. Strict security, including polygraphs for all prospective members and alleged initiation ceremonies that would compromise a law-enforcement officer.”

“Participation in some criminal activity,” Brognola said. “The rumors range from strong-arm robbery to murder.”

“No defectors? Rejects who tried out but didn’t make the cut?”

“None we’re aware of,” Price replied. “It makes us…curious.”

“Okay,” Bolan said, nodding toward the fat manila folder resting on the table. “I’d better read that file.”

BROGNOLA HAD FLOWN back to Washington after the briefing, leaving Barbara Price and her team at Stony Man to answer any questions Bolan had after he’d read the dossier on Walgren and the ARM.

Bolan had one question that he wouldn’t have asked Brognola, in any case. “What do you really think about this mission, Barb?”

She frowned and told him, “Everybody from the Pentagon to Pennsylvania Avenue has been looking for this supergun. It wasn’t high priority while they were looking in Baghdad, but now someone has brought the war home to the States. Right now, the ARM is what we’ve got, in terms of leads. It’s something, and we need to run it down.”

“I see the group’s suspected in a string of cases, going back to its foundation, in Missouri.”

“Right.” She nodded. “Stickups in the early days. Some bombings—an abortion clinic, gay bars, a Missouri synagogue. Some deaths and disappearances. No charges ever stuck.”

In fact, as Bolan knew, few charges had been filed. Two members of the ARM had been indicted for the synagogue attack, but jurors had acquitted them after a witness changed her testimony. Several deaths and disappearances had been connected to the group—including the peculiar “suicide” of Walgren’s predecessor, hanged with hands duct-taped behind his back—but no indictments had been filed.

“Could be a hornet’s nest,” he said, “or a wild-goose chase.”

“You don’t like to waste the time.”

“It’s not a waste if it pays off. But I’d feel better if we had a pair of eyes inside.”

“The Bureau tried, back in the day,” she said.

He’d seen that in the file. One of the missing persons theoretically connected to the ARM had been an FBI informant who dropped out of sight soon after he applied for membership. Headquarters still suspected Walgren’s people had disposed of him, but they had never found the body, and their spy had also irritated heavy hitters from at least two other far-right paramilitary groups along the way. His death could be attributed to any of those enemies.

No evidence, no case.

“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” the warrior said at last.

“When are you heading out?” she asked.

“First thing tomorrow. Have a look around the place tomorrow night, then pop in for a visit the day after.”

“What’s Plan B, if you don’t find the supergun?”

“I’ve got some names and addresses,” Bolan said. “If I can’t grab someone from the compound for a chat, I’ll work my way around the circuit. It’s a small world, on the fringe.”

“Still easy to get lost in,” Price said.

“I’ll light a candle,” Bolan told her. “Maybe leave a trail of bread crumbs.”

“Just so you come back.”

“That’s always in the plan.”

She didn’t tell him what they both already knew, that best-laid plans often went sour during life-or-death engagements with the enemy. She didn’t have to say it, since that message was tattooed on Bolan’s soul, and on her own.

“Tomorrow early, then,” she said.

“The proverbial crack of dawn. I’ve got a flight out of Fort Pickett at seven o’clock, to Camp Robinson outside North Little Rock.”

“You need your rest, then.”

Bolan shrugged. “I don’t mind sleeping in the air.”

“I think you ought to be in bed.”

His smile was cautious. “Do you want to go upstairs?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

3

Bolan’s secondary target lay across the Arkansas-Missouri line, some thirty miles away, at Poplar Bluff. The man he wanted was a gunsmith for the ARM, one Neville Alan Hoskins. Friends called him “Chopper,” in homage to his fondness for machine guns, but rumors persisted that certain jailhouse wolves had dubbed him “Nellie” when he pulled a five-spot in Atlanta, for weapons and explosives violations.

Federal dossiers named Hoskins as an ARM member who stayed “in the world,” conducting business of a sort in mainstream society while serving the cause when he could. Rumor had it that his services included the purchase of banned weapons and conversion of semiautomatic civilian arms to full-auto illegals, but no such charges had been proved since his emergence from the pen.

From all outward appearances, Hoskins and his small appliance repair shop in Poplar Bluff were completely legitimate, if decidedly low-rent and on the terminally scruffy side. The photos Bolan had examined didn’t show a classic member of the Master Race, by any means.

He hadn’t taken out the commo hut at Camp Yahweh, but he’d done the next best thing—alerting county sheriff’s officers to the attack while he was on the run—assuring that the compound would be overrun with uniforms before another hour passed. Still, Bolan knew his adversaries could’ve spread the word on his attack before he’d reached the county line. And while that posed no threat to him per se, he feared that those he hunted might escape to parts unknown if they were spooked.

It all depended on the system of communication from Camp Yahweh. First alerts would go to those who ran the ARM—Curt Walgren, Barry James and their top aides. Beyond that, if they had no network for emergency alerts in place, the news might spread haphazardly, skip certain members altogether. Then again, they might turn on their TV sets and catch the live broadcast of the search for bodies at CampYahweh on all the news channels.

There was a chance that Neville Hoskins wasn’t in the loop, so far, and that the neo-Nazi armorer might have at least some clue about the nature and whereabouts of a certain mystery weapon. If Bolan could find him, the gunsmith would spill what he knew. That much was guaranteed.

If Bolan could find him.

The Executioner reached Poplar Bluff without incident, no sign of patrol cars on the highway or the city streets. It seemed to be a dead night in the Show Me State, and Bolan hoped that it would stay that way. His mission in the town of eighteen thousand could be a relatively simple one—or it could go to hell in nothing flat, if things went wrong.

He found the combination shop and residence where Hoskins hung his overalls, circling the block to check for lookouts on the street. In light of what had happened farther south, Bolan supposed police might have the place staked out, or soldiers from the ARM might’ve rallied to a brother who had served them well. If there were any watchers on the quiet street, though, they were well concealed.

He made a second pass, then parked his rental car two doors north of Ace Appliance and cut through a silent yard to reach the alleyway in back. Jeans and a nylon windbreaker covered Bolan’s blacksuit, while his hands and face were stripped of war paint. He could pass a casual inspection in the seedy neighborhood, as long as no one checked beneath his jacket, where the sleek, silent Beretta nestled in its shoulder rig.

Against all odds, the gunsmith had no dogs. Bolan had been concerned that he might have to deal with Dobermans or pit bulls in the yard, but no such threat materialized. Instead, he simply had to hop a sagging chain-link fence and sneak up on his target’s dark apartment from the rear.

So far, so good.

The back porch sagged and groaned under his weight, two-hundred-plus pounds added to the appliances and parts collected there with no apparent system to their storage. Bolan tried the back door, certain that it would be locked, and froze when it moved at his touch.

Was it a trap, or was his quarry simply careless? Bolan drew his Beretta, stepping well back from the doorway as he gave the door a shove. It swung wide open on a kitchen redolent of grease and deep-fried food. No guns blazed, no burglar alarms shrieked for attention in the predawn silence. After another cautious moment, probing with his mind and senses, the soldier stepped across the threshold into the unknown.

The kitchen was a long-established mess. Whatever else Hoskins believed in, sound nutrition hadn’t made the list. For all its grime and clutter, though, the room held no proof that its owner had evacuated. Neither did the living room, where empty beer cans had assumed the status of an art form, posed on every flat surface available. The kitchen’s oil smell gave way, in this room, to stale sweat and mildew.

Bolan found the proof of hasty exit in his target’s bedroom. There, general disorder of his living space gave way to ransacked chaos. Drawers from a cheap dresser had been dumped out and discarded. Wire hangers from the closet made a trail across the floor, some of them bent where clothing had been jerked away. Presumably, the missing items had been packed, since Hoskins’s bedroom had less clutter on the floor than any other room Bolan had seen, so far.

There had been weapons in the closet, too. He could smell the oil and solvent. His guns were probably the only thing Hoskins had truly cared for, beer aside, and they were gone. Besides the lingering aroma, all Hoskins had missed was a half box of .357 Magnum cartridges, pushed back into a corner on the topmost closet shelf.

Something had spooked the Nazi gunsmith. Whether it was Bolan’s raid in Arkansas or something else, the end result was still identical.

Hoskins was gone, without a forwarding address.

And Bolan had to choose another target from his shrinking list.

“SO, WHAT’S THE FINAL body count?” Curt Walgren asked.

“Holding at nine dead, seven wounded,” Barry James replied. “Grundy’s ass-deep in cops and Feds.”

“Of course he is. They’ll tear the place apart before they’re finished. Where’s our fucking lawyer?”

“On his way,” James answered in a soothing tone. “I had to wake him up.”

“The rates we pay, I don’t care if you had to raise him from the dead. I want him shadowing those cops and Feds. Make sure they don’t take anything that isn’t specified by warrant.”

“He knows what to do.”

“He’d better.” Walgren bolted down his second shot of straight tequila, left the glass and went to sit directly opposite his chief lieutenant. “All right, Barry, what the hell is this about?”

“You have to ask?”

“Ohio? That’s impossible.”

“Is it?”

“The Feds suspect us, naturally. They would be total morons if they didn’t,” Walgren said. “But they need evidence. They come with warrants, not like this. Some joker with a painted face, running around at midnight, blowing things to hell. Give me a break.”

“Black ops, remember? Christ, we’ve talked enough about it from day one.”

“They pull that shit in other countries, Barry. Black ops in the States means bugs and wiretaps, stings, entrapment, setting up an ambush when they have the chance.”

“All right,” James said. “Who else is there?”

Walgren echoed his aide’s own words. “You have to ask? Think Yiddish. Try Mossad, maybe the JDL.”

James thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think so, Curt.”

“Why not?”

“Mossad might bomb your car or shoot you on the street, but this is too high profile for an operation in the States. Also, they’d never send a single man to pull a deal like this. Same thing for Jewish Defense League, assuming they had any talent on this scale.”

“So, it’s a mystery? We let it go at that?”

“Nobody’s saying let it go. We just have to be careful now, with so much going on. The last thing we need, with the big day so close, is some kind of high-profile vendetta,” James said in caution.

“Play it cool, you’re saying.”

“Right.”

“Roll with the punch.”

“Until we know who threw it, anyway.”

“And then?”

James shrugged. “We choose the time and place for payback. Make it count.”

“You always were conservative,” Walgren said.

“That’s why I get the big bucks, right?”

Walgren could only smile at that. “We’ll think about it, Barry. In the meantime, get that shyster on the line, will you? Make sure he’s earning every goddamned cent we pay him.”

“Right. Will do.” James rose and stiffened to attention, clicked his heels and snapped off a straight-arm salute. “Hail victory!”

Walgren responded from his chair, halfheartedly. When James was gone, he rose and crossed the room, pushed through another door into his private sleeping chamber. There he sat, relaxed as best he could, as he addressed his mirror image.

“So, you heard all that?”

“I always hear,” his reflection said.

“Barry wants to cool it. See what happens.”

“What do we want?”

“Waiting sucks,” Walgren said. “It’s cowardly. It sends the wrong message.”

“Make an example, then.”

“Of who?”

“It’s whom.”

“All right. Of whom?”

“Identity is less important than impact,” the mirror image answered. “In a totally corrupt society, who are the innocents?”

“No one.”

“Precisely. All except the faithful are complicit in the crime.”

“All guilty should be punished,” Walgren said.

“In time. Until that day…”

“A choice.”

“Our choice.”

“A demonstration.”

“An example.”

“Good.”

The choice would be a challenge, with so many enemies around them. Still, Curt Walgren knew whatever choice he made would be the proper one. He was inspired, at times like these, with a perception and intelligence beyond his normal limits.

In such moments, he knew how the old-time prophets felt, spreading the word of Yahweh to a world that didn’t care and wouldn’t listen. A reckoning would follow, and the unbelievers would be punished for their doubts, their mockery. Walgren would supervise their punishment himself, and he would glory in it.

But until that day…

There was a demonstration to arrange, and he had to also make concerted efforts to identify the enemy responsible for the attack upon Camp Yahweh.

It was not a crippling blow, would not defeat them or postpone the great day that was coming, but it still required an answer. James was wrong about the wait-and-see approach, which only signaled weakness to an enemy and thus encouraged him to strike again. Retaliation was the answer, and a larger demonstration to society at large.

A warning of the wrath that was to come.

One man against a small army.

Who had such skill and daring? Walgren wondered. His worst enemies were Jews, the schemers after world dominion, but it seemed incredible to him that the U.S. could produce such fighters. Israel had been forced to breed them, train them from the cradle upward, but Americans were soft by definition, their pampered minorities all the more so. They lacked discipline, determination, and the will to sacrifice.

The man who had rampaged through Camp Yahweh might be an Aryan, given the courage and ability he had displayed. Who was he? Why had he chosen this, of all times, to attack the Aryan Resistance Movement?

James was right. It had to be Ohio.

Dammit!

“Never mind,” his mirror image said. As always, the reflected face could read his thoughts, almost before they formed inside his head. “We’ll make it right.”

“We have to,” Walgren echoed.

“And we will.”

“Identify the enemy.”

“Identify and locate.”

“Locate and destroy.”

“In Yahweh’s name.”

“Amen!”

4

Bolan drove through the night and predawn hours to reach his next target in Russellville, Missouri, a few miles southwest of Jefferson City. It was the last target Bolan could reach that day, without a plane ride, and he hoped to make it count.

The man he wanted, Vernon Upshaw, was a former high school English social studies teacher, driven from his job when he began insinuating Nazi propaganda into daily lesson plans. Around the time he told a class of freshmen that the Holocaust was a colossal hoax created in the postwar years by Communists and the “Jews Media,” the school board cut him loose and his appeals had been rejected by the courts. Since then, Upshaw had turned his questionable talents to production of theAryan Resistance Movement’s monthly newsletter and sundry other publications, printed in the basement of a house that he’d inherited from relatives.

Bolan had the address, and dawn seemed like a good time for a pop quiz with the former teacher. If he passed, and didn’t raise a fuss, maybe Upshaw would live to foul another day.

Maybe.

The house was small, situated in a neighborhood that had outlived its glory days. The people Bolan saw leaving for early shifts at work were mostly Hispanic or black, a circumstance that had to have rankled Upshaw. He was caught in the classic bigot’s dilemma: live with nonwhite neighbors, or risk selling his Aryan homestead to more of the same. It was the kind of problem that would keep a Nazi up at night.

Bolan was ready with a wake-up call.

He parked in front, walked up and rang the bell. He sensed neighbors were watching as he waited on the tiny porch. There was no answer from within, leaving Bolan to choose a point of entry in broad daylight, under scrutiny.

With nothing much to lose, he tried the front door’s knob and felt it turn. A chilly sense of déjà vu washed over Bolan as he slid a hand inside his windbreaker, gripping the pistol in its armpit rig, and brainstormed on the call.

He couldn’t go all SWAT-team on the threshold, with the local busybodies studying his every move. Likewise, if Bolan left the stoop and went around back, suspicious neighbors might alert police. He couldn’t count on them dismissing it as “white man’s business,” where their homes and families were concerned. Potential crimes in progress were a danger to the neighborhood at large, and Bolan thought someone was sure to phone it in.

Which left a classic bluff.

Watchers could see him, but they probably couldn’t hear him, unless they were shadowing the house with advanced electronic surveillance equipment. It was also unlikely that they could see past him and into Upshaw’s living room if he opened the door. For all they knew, their racist neighbor could be welcoming an early-morning visitor.

Of course, the bluff would put Bolan’s life at risk. He couldn’t draw his weapon or take any other normal duck-and-cover steps to guard himself against an ambush or a booby trap. He’d had to mime a conversation, step inside as if by Upshaw’s invitation and proceed to search the place after he’d closed the door.

And if Upshaw was waiting for him, with a weapon pointed at the door, Bolan would know it in the split-second before he died.

He gave the door a shove, quickly withdrew his hand and raised it in a gesture of greeting. No muzzle-flash erupted from the inner darkness, and he heard no clamoring alarms, but that still didn’t mean the house was empty, much less safe.

Bolan went through the motions, mouthing silent words although he wasn’t sure that any watchers had a clear view of his lips. He nodded once, then shrugged, nodded again, and stepped across the threshold into Upshaw’s murky living room. He used a heel to shut the door behind him, cutting off the light.

The drapes were drawn, which would shut out the neighbors, but also left him in a twilight world of hulking shadows. Bolan found a wall switch, flicked it, and a pair of tall, cheap-looking lamps provided ample light to see that no one else was in the room. He drew the pistol, took a chance and called out Upshaw’s name. His voice fell flat and dead within the musty silence of the house.

Nobody home? Nobody answering, for sure.

He made a rapid tour of the kitchen, bathroom, two small bedrooms and the basement. There was no one to be found, and while Upshaw’s abode was tidier than that of Neville Hoskins, it revealed signs of a swift and unexpected exit. Coffee had been brewing when the tenant left, but it had long gone cold. Dust patterns on a bedroom dresser told him that a six-by-ten-inch box was missing, likely Upshaw’s nest egg or a jewelry box. The only evidence of weapons was a small oil stain on one of Upshaw’s pillows.

As for any superguns, no dice.

In the basement propaganda mill, Bolan sifted through stacks of newsletters and pamphlets with a common theme: Jews were the spawn of Satan, blamed for ninety-odd percent of all recorded wars and natural disasters from Old Testament times to the present. Upshaw strung events together, from famines to assassinations to volcanic eruptions, in a panorama of conspiracy that would’ve been hilarious—if some sick minds didn’t regard it as the gospel truth.

One pamphlet, undated but bundled and ready for shipping, was headlined: THE DAY IS AT HAND!!! Below a crude sketch of muscular, bare-chested Aryans pummeling hawk-nosed Hassidim, Bolan read:

Warriors! The great day we have long awaited is upon us! We shall soon close ranks with allies to reclaim the Holy Land for Yahweh and destroy the usurpers of pseudo-Israel! With a mighty bolt from Heaven we shall slay them in the thousands and ten thousands, until none stand in our way! Be ready for the call to battle when it comes! Watch for the signs of Armageddon as the day draws near! The blazing lance of Faith leads us to victory! A world of racial purity at last! If you have not already pledged yourself to aid the cause, now is the time! History waits for no man! VICTORY OR DEATH!

An Arkansas post office box was listed at the bottom of the proclamation, just in case readers were inspired to send donations for the cause. Bolan shook his head. It was the standard piece of Nazi nonsense, melodrama to the max, but parts of it caught his eye. Specifically, he focused on the mention of a mighty bolt from Heaven and a blazing lance.

Those might be flights of fancy—Upshaw’s takeoff on the legend that the Third Reich’s leaders had possessed a magic spear of destiny that dated from the Crucifixion—or, they might refer to something else.

A supergun, for instance, out of Baghdad via Ciudad Juarez?

Bolan pocketed the flier, left the house and jogged back to his car. Five minutes later, he was on the open highway, eastbound toward St. Louis.

Bolan had no means of tracing Vernon Upshaw at the moment, but he wasn’t giving up. Someone inside the ARM had answers, and they couldn’t all have disappeared.

He hoped not, anyway.

For if they had, there could be hell to pay.

BROGNOLA TOOK THE CALL at home, as he was brewing coffee for his first cup of the day. He picked up automatically, not waiting for the answering machine to screen the call, and recognized the caller’s voice at once.

“It’s me,” Bolan said. “Sorry, but it couldn’t wait for office hours.”

“No sweat. What’s up?”

“Are we secure?”

“As modern high-tech crap can make us,” Brognola said. His home and office lines were swept for taps three times a day, and built-in scramblers were installed to make sure any eavesdroppers the sweepers missed were treated to a stream of gibberish and static.

“Okay,” Bolan replied. “I’m striking out here, in Ozark country. If I don’t hook up with someone who can manage conversation pretty soon, we won’t have anything.”

“I see. What’s next?”

“I’m heading west. The ARM has people in New Mexico. They may feel safe enough out there to stay at home and wait for orders. Anyway, it’s worth a look.”

“You need a lift?”

“If possible. Saves time spent shopping for new hardware on the other end.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem,” Brognola said.

The 9/11 attacks had not only made things more difficult for terrorists in the United States. Airport security was still erratic, prone to errors that made headlines, but in terms of baggage screening it was almost impossible to move firearms on a commercial carrier in check-through luggage without filling out a ream of paperwork for every gun and round of ammunition registered. Brognola might’ve pulled some strings from Washington, but that would only turn the spotlight on clandestine ops and lead to further problems in a time when even famous senators were hassled with their names on airline “no-fly” lists.

It saved time all around to book a private charter flight or schedule Bolan for a military ride across country. There would be paperwork involved in that scenario, as well, but it was classified and might even be “lost” with help from Aaron Kurtzman’s team at Stony Man Farm.

“Where are you going, in New Mexico?” Brognola asked.

“The place outside of Taos, where they want to start the Great White Nation.”

“Jesus, right.” It still amazed Brognola, sometimes, all the crap people believed. The fantasies they used to guide their destiny. “Okay. I’ll clear you out of Fort Zumwalt, west of St. Louis, landing at Fort Bliss. That’s at the wrong end of the state, I realize, but—”

“Closer than I am right now,” Bolan said. “Thanks. It’s fine.”

“Let’s use the Colonel Brandon Stone ID, since it’s on file,” Brognola said. “Switch back to Cooper or whatever when you’re on the civvy side.”

“Sounds good. I found a flier at the last place, printed for the ARM. It rambles on about a Day of Judgment coming. Pretty standard for the Nazi fringe, except it mentions bolts from Heaven and a blazing lance.”

“Could be our toy,” Brognola granted.

“Or, it could be crap.”

“That too. Let’s hope the author knew what he was writing, for a change.”

“Still doesn’t help us track it down,” Bolan reminded him, “but if I find someone to squeeze, we may still have a shot.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”

“It couldn’t hurt,” the Executioner replied. “All right, I’ve got a plane to catch.”

“It’ll be waiting for you,” Brognola assured him.

There was red tape to be severed and finessed, but the big Fed’s assignment to the Stony Man project included top-level clearance and a short list of phone numbers virtually guaranteed to get results. He used them sparingly, but without hesitation when a pressing need arose.

When he was finished making calls, Brognola sipped his coffee and considered what might happen if his judgment on the mission had been wrong from the beginning. What if Bolan could find nothing linking members of the ARM to the elusive supergun because there were no links? What if some other group of psychopathic misfits had the weapon and were plotting where to use it next, while Bolan chased the wrong suspects across the countryside?

In that case, Brognola thought, he was up one very stinky creek without a paddle to his name. It might not cost his job, but he would find it awkward to continue, in good conscience, if his judgment was that flawed. If it had led to killing and the risk of Bolan’s life without due cause.

He wouldn’t give up yet, of course. Bolan still had a few tricks up his sleeve, some sources to interrogate—if he could find them. Failing that, however, Brognola might need to think about another line of work.

Or maybe he should just retire. Look for a beach somewhere, where he and Helen could relax and take things easy for a change. It would be nice. No crisis calls before sunrise, scrambling young men to kill or be killed at the farthest corners of the Earth.

An end to secrets, as it were.

Someday, Brognola thought. But not yet.

5

Taos, New Mexico

As such things go, the flight was uneventful. No one poked through Bolan’s bags when he arrived at Fort Zumwalt, nor did they question the U.S. Army ID he carried, naming him as Colonel Brandon Stone. The fact that he was out of uniform raised no eyebrows—or none that Bolan was allowed to glimpse, at any rate. The transport plane took off on time and landed at Fort Bliss, west of Carlsbad, on the outskirts of the White Sands Missile Range, four minutes early.

A rental car was waiting for him in the tiny town of Sunspot, and he traveled east from there on Highway 62 until he reached Artesia, then turned north and followed Highway 285 through Roswell, across the sunbaked desert to Vaughn and another junction. From there, the scorching flats turned into wooded mountain slopes, where bold Apache warriors had resisted all invaders for the best part of four hundred years. That struggle had been fierce, conducted without mercy shown by either side.

The kind of war that Bolan understood.

These days, there was a different breed of rebel in those mountains. Tax protesters and would-be secessionists, the throwbacks to a time before law reached the West, when range wars settled arguments and lynch mobs meted out revenge disguised as justice. The new breed went beyond protest to insurrection, waging ceaseless war against environmental laws, zoning, even refusing to apply for driver’s licenses on the peculiar theory that their government had no authority to rule. In such an atmosphere, groups like the Aryan Resistance Movement found prime soil in which to plant their deadly seeds.

Bolan rolled into Taos at 1:30 p.m. and stopped to fill the rental’s tank before proceeding to a diner on the town’s main street, where he consumed a mediocre hamburger and French fries cooked to a tooth-grating crisp. Strong coffee and a slice of startling key lime pie redeemed the disappointing meal, and Bolan’s tip secured directions from his waitress to the rustic suburb he was seeking.

Rebels often claimed they’re “going back to nature,” but the effort frequently included computer access, satellite TV and other modern frills undreamed of by pioneers who carved their homes from real-life wilderness. The place he sought, likewise, was a “survival” compound in name only. Deprivation wasn’t something that its tenants wished to sample in the long run. They played war games in the woods, then trundled back to fireside couches, boozing while they argued over hidden meanings in Mein Kampf.

Bolan had no good reason to suppose the supergun was in Taos, but Camp Nordland was the last address he had for anything resembling an official ARM facility. Assuming that the weapon wasn’t there, at least he had a shot at bagging someone who had heard of it and might know where to find it.

One last shot.

He made a drive-by of the rural property, saw next to nothing of the camp beyond a screen of trees, and so decided to return at nightfall for a closer look. He paid too much for a motel room, slept until a half hour before sundown, then suited up and drove back to the target site.

Bolan expected tight security after his raid in Arkansas, but he met no significant obstructions as he hiked in from an unpaved access road that marked the southern boundary of the property. He took his time, watching for guards and traps along the way, but finding neither. Only when he neared the big house, a converted hunting lodge, did men with weapons suddenly appear.

They weren’t patrolling, in the standard sense. Two of them stood smoking on the front porch, rifles slung, enjoying conversation while they scanned the night from time to time. Circling around behind the house, Bolan found one more sentry there, another smoker, looking lonely as he stood beneath a light that ruined any chance of his detecting prowlers in the shadows.

Only three outside, but undoubtedly more within. And the three he could see were blocking Bolan’s only means of access to the house. He hadn’t planned a blitz this time, but it might be the only way to go.

In which case, he would want to kill all power to the house.

Bolan finished his circuit of the former lodge and found no evidence of any supplemental generator. If he cut the power lines outside, the house and grounds should plunge immediately into darkness. He could move then, striking while the guards were still off balance, slipping in to wreak havoc among the other lunatics in residence.

But sparing one of them, at least.

Camp Nordland’s commandant was named in federal dossiers as Richard Joseph Hall, a twenty-nine-year-old with prior convictions for domestic violence and drug abuse who’d “gone straight” as a neo-Nazi following his last release from jail. His record, doubtless altered in the telling to incorporate a private struggle against ZOG, was something like a merit badge within the ARM.

He’d be the man to ask about a supergun.

Bolan retraced his steps around the house, meaning to drop the power lines some distance back into the woods. A silent burst or two from the Beretta 93-R ought to do the trick, and he could jog back to the house before his enemies recovered from the shock of sudden darkness. Time enough to drop the two guards on the porch before the folks inside could grope their way to flashlights or candles. Once he was inside—

His train of thought was interrupted when the back door opened, fifty feet in front of him, and three men left the house. A glance told Bolan one of them was under escort by the other two. They walked on either side of him and clutched his arms, which seemed to be secured behind his back. The middle man was arguing, dragging his feet, but the resistance only earned him rabbit punches to the gut and kidneys. Grunting in pain, he slumped between his escorts, leaving them to drag him toward the nearby woods.

The back door guard appeared to have no interest in the incident. He stayed put, barely noticing as two of his comrades carried a third into the trees. Bolan, meanwhile, was curious enough to veer off course and follow them.

“I NEVER SEEN A RAT this big, before,” Jimmy McCarthy said.

“You never know what to expect, here in the woods,” Gary Krakower replied.

Through pain and fear, it came to Randy Coyle that he had one last chance to save himself. “I’m not a rat,” he challenged. “Yahweh knows it.”

“It’s a bad idea to take His name in vain,” Krakower said. The punch that followed drove a spike of agony between Coyle’s ribs.

“This is a huge mistake,” Coyle gasped.

McCarthy sneered. “You made it, traitor.”

Coyle supposed that there was nothing he could say to countermand their orders. Someone had reported him for heresy and worse, snooping around the lodge. When he was questioned, Coyle had tried to bluff it out—lie and deny—but a search of his room had turned up the digital camera with snapshots of the house and grounds, strictly forbidden by Commandant Hall. At that point, someone started calling him a Red Jew bastard, and Coyle knew that he’d been lucky to escape the room alive.

Lucky, that was, until they voted to dispose of him.

A dozen skinheads volunteered to pull the trigger, but Hall had picked McCarthy and Krakower on the basis of experience. Both were ex-convicts, with time in maximum security, and they had spilled blood long before they found the cause. Now that their violent acts were sanctified, they had an extra zeal for mayhem, all in Yahweh’s name.

“Stay sharp, traitor,” McCarthy goaded him. “We’re almost there.”

“Came out this afternoon and got the spot all ready for you,” Krakower informed him.

“I’m telling you, there’s been a terrible mistake. When Hall finds out—”

“Mistake my ass,” McCarthy said.

“And if it was,” Krakower added, “what the hell? I figure, better safe than sorry.”

“Better safe than sorry,” his companion echoed.

“And then, who’s next?” Coyle asked, dragging his feet to slow them in the woods. “You piss somebody off, they finger you, and then you’re gone. Remember this, when you’re the one on the receiving end.”

“It’s never gonna happen, rat,” McCarthy said. “They wouldn’t find a fucking camera in my room.”

“It isn’t mine,” Coyle lied. The best that he could do, under the circumstances.

“Tell it to your maker, Jew Boy,” Krakower suggested. “On your way to hell.”

They reached a clearing in the woods, a shovel standing upright in the middle of it, as if planted in the soil. McCarthy shoved Coyle from behind, driving the captive to his knees, then placed a foot between his shoulder blades and pinned him facedown on the ground. A cold blade passed between Coyle’s wrists, parting the heavy tape that held them tight together.

“You know the Auschwitz motto, don’t you, rat?” McCarthy asked. “Arbeit macht frei.”

“That’s ‘work makes one free,’” Krakower reminded him. “And here’s your chance to work.”

“Start digging, rat,” McCarthy ordered.

Coyle rose to all fours, then lurched erect. He flexed his fingers, feeling the return of circulation to his hands. He staggered toward the shovel, thinking he could use it as a weapon, but McCarthy and Krakower had stepped back out of swinging range, both watching him with pistols in their hands.

“No funny business, rat,” Krakower said. “Just dig.”

“My own grave, right?”

“You’re catching on,” McCarthy said, beaming.

Coyle straightened, squared his shoulders, let the shovel drop. “Dig it yourselves, assholes.”

The skinheads blinked at each other, taken by surprise. “What did you say?” Krakower asked.

“You heard me, shithead. If you want the job done, do it yourselves.”

McCarthy cocked his pistol. “If I have to dig that hole,” he said, “you’ll go to hell without your kneecaps. Understand?”

Coyle was surprised by his own sudden, stubborn courage. “Dead’s dead,” he replied. “No way I’m helping you.”

“We’re wasting time,” Krakower growled. He raised his pistol, sighting down the barrel. “Say goodbye, rat.”

Coyle stood waiting for the shot, afraid to close his eyes, and so he witnessed an extraordinary thing. Krakower’s head seemed to explode, a crimson halo bursting from his skull as he pitched forward. Falling, he squeezed off a shot that whined past Coyle with room to spare and vanished whispering among the trees.

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