The tall shadow materialized right before his eyes

It was as if the battle smoke had breathed the armed figure forth from the night. Braxton hesitated for a split second, as he found his stare riveted on the icy blue eyes framed in the black-streaked face. Eyes that seemed more like orbs of pure fire than anything human.

But there was something about the man Braxton thought he recognized, or maybe it was the stare that burned back, telling him something about himself, as if the shadow had known him all along.

And he was judged.

The distance was twenty yards, nothing too great to overcome, but where he hesitated in bringing his assault rifle to bear, Mack Bolan’s M-16 was already shooting flame.

Other titles available in this series:

Vendetta

Stalk Line

Omega Game

Shock Tactic

Showdown

Precision Kill

Jungle Law

Dead Center

Tooth and Claw

Thermal Strike

Day of the Vulture

Flames of Wrath

High Aggression

Code of Bushido

Terror Spin

Judgment in Stone

Rage for Justice

Rebels and Hostiles

Ultimate Game

Blood Feud

Renegade Force

Retribution

Initiation

Cloud of Death

Termination Point

Hellfire Strike

Code of Conflict

Vengeance

Executive Action

Killsport

Conflagration

Storm Front

War Season

Evil Alliance

Scorched Earth

Deception

Destiny’s Hour

Power of the Lance

A Dying Evil

Deep Treachery

War Load

Sworn Enemies

Dark Truth

Breakaway

Blood and Sand

Caged

Sleepers

Strike and Retrieve

Age of War

Line of Control

Breached

Retaliation

Pressure Point

Silent Running

Stolen Arrows

Zero Option

Predator Paradise

Circle of Deception

Devil’s Bargain

False Front

Lethal Tribute

Season of Slaughter

Point of Betrayal

Ballistic Force

Renegade

Survival Reflex

Path to War

Blood Dynasty

Ultimate Stakes

State of Evil

Force Lines

Mack Bolan®

Don Pendleton

The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts her in the hour of danger.

—Andrew Jackson,

1767–1845

It’s gotten so these days that it’s sometimes hard to tell the good guys from the bad. Honor, in some cases, seems to be a thing of the past, integrity just another word. But justice will not fade away, and shall prevail. Judgment is waiting. I consider it a duty.

—Mack Bolan

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

“They’re here.”

Hamal Amarshar acknowledged his lieutenant’s grim pronouncement with a flip of the half-eaten oblong date, plunging it into the fire barrel before taking up his AK-74. The sudden current of tension through the cave told him his fighters were braced for the worst, whereas he had to maintain, at the very least, the appearance that he anticipated the best of all possible news. Had there been a significant boost in numbers of Americans or a noticeable upgrade in their hardware, he would have been forewarned, his scouts in the hills keeping the vast wasteland at the eastern edge of the Dasht-e-Kavir under constant surveillance for those on the other side foolish enough to stray outside the arrangement.

He briefly pondered the words of the man who called himself Black Dog, spoken at their first meeting.

“Hey, if I wasn’t here to deal straight with you, my friend, if I wanted your scalps in a bag as trophies—and collect enough bounty on your hides in the process that would set me up for my golden years—it would be no large feat for me to bring down a Tomahawk or a bunker buster or two on your heads.”

That much may well be true enough, he supposed, having already done the math in terms of geography, as best he could, without, that was, the advantage of the enemy’s high-tech wonder toys. Their hideout was a dozen or so meters up, weathered out by time and the cruelty of the desert in the side of a low-chain of rock that had aeons ago broken off from the Payeh Mountains. Between U.S. Navy warships stationed in the Gulf of Oman, roughly seven hundred kilometers due south—with Kabul about eight hundred kilometers east as the eagle flew in what was a major surrounding area of occupation by the enemy—there would be enough cruise missiles and fighter jets on hand and within striking distance to blow him to Paradise—or seal him up in the side of the mountain.

Amarshar considered both the moment—hopefully the gift his guests would come bearing, as promised—and the future. The Iranian listened to the rumble of engines, the squeal of timeworn brakes, saw the thinning spool of dust that rose from the floor of the wadi, as doors opened and closed and shadows began to filter up through the gritty sheen of harsh sunlight. It was a bizarre affair, to understate the matter, this striking a bargain with the devil, but an alliance that placed him at the crossroads of destiny. Just what the future promised—both immediate and long term—remained to be seen.

He struck a pose of calm defiance, legs splayed, assault rifle cradled across his chest as they filed in. He restrained the smile when two of them stepped forward, holding the large black box by thick straps before they carefully set it down in front of him. At the risk of appearing too eager, Amarshar took his time, scouring the faces, hidden behind dark sunglasses and partly swathed in keffiyahs that matched their buff-colored fatigues. It was either a testament to their courage, he thought, or their own greed and ambition that Black Dog and his armed canines even dare stray across the border. They were U.S. special operatives, was about all he could say, and that came from two former SAVAK agents who had originally come to him with the proposal to do business with the Devil.

Amarshar watched as Black Dog, the M-16/M-203 combo pointed at the ground, waved over his shoulder. Three operatives stepped forward and deposited black nylon bags on the ground, then fell back, hard, sun-burnished faces wandering over the Iranians hugging both sides of the cave.

“The CD was left with your SAVAK buddies back near the border,” Black Dog said in near-perfect Farsi that drew a few eyes of admiration mixed with suspicion from the newer warriors.

Amarshar felt the scowl harden his features at what he considered no less than a breach of contract, a grotesque inconvenience at best. He gestured for his men to open the merchandise all around. “Without the operating instructions, then what you brought me is useless,” he said.

“Just a precaution, you understand, until we’re safely back in Afghanistan.”

“A precaution? Or…”

“There’s no ‘or.’ If you don’t like it, you have a radio, call one of them, if you’re worried. The operating procedures are so basic, your people could walk you through it in under two minutes.”

True enough, perhaps, and he wanted to openly question that, but he was turning his stare toward the merchandise as two of his warriors knelt beside the black box. Amarshar blinked twice at the strange insignia painted on the lid.

As he took a step forward, bending at the neck, he thought at first it was some kind of joke. Then he began to slowly discern what it was he thought he saw. Those were four faces of what appeared a lion, a human, a calf and an eagle, staring him back. Only half of each face was connected to the next creature, so that they were four distinct faces but appeared as one. Surrounding them were what, at first glance, appeared to be six wings above and beneath each face—twenty-four in all, he counted upon further scrutiny—and circling them, with the faces appearing to come straight out of a roiling cloud of fire, with numerous black dots all over the faces, which he supposed passed for eyes.

Amarshar looked at Black Dog who, adjusting his shades, simply said, “They would be the Four Living Creatures you’re gaping at.”

“From the Christian Bible,” Amarshar said as he felt several pairs of eyes look his way, puzzled. “The Book of Revelation, I believe.”

Black Dog smiled. “Give the man a gold star. Supposedly they surround the throne of God. The Four Living Creatures, the strongest, wisest, swiftest and most noble.”

“And which would be you and your men?”

“I didn’t say that. You did.”

“And they represent, as I recall, the coming of the Day of Judgment?”

“I believe your Koran holds some similar version regarding the Day of Reckoning.”

“Indeed. Where the unbelievers will be separated from the faithful and cast into a lake of fire for all eternity.”

“Something like that, if, that is, you choose to believe.”

“I take it you believe in something else.”

“I believe in what I can see and touch in the here and now. Like money—for starters.”

“Ah, but, of course. You wish to be like your Donald Trump perhaps.”

“Not hardly. I’m all man, all warrior. I don’t need to hide behind money or flaunt it because I have nothing else going for me.”

“I see. Still…this insignia of the Four Living Creatures…”

“Hey, I couldn’t tell you exactly who did the artwork, but mine is not to question my own higher and invisible authority.”

Amarshar wanted to push the matter, certain the infidels were trying to warn him about personal doom, but sensed the sudden elevation in tension before one of his men, staring at the keypad, demanded to know the access code. As one of Black Dog’s operatives began to rattle off numbers and one of his lieutenants punched the sequence into a personal digital assistant, barking at him to slow down, Amarshar watched two of his men zip open the other nylon bags. Long slender tubes of gunmetal gray displayed, Amarshar stared at the eyeless face of Black Dog. In the corner of his eye, noting the bubbled helmets and spacesuits being hauled out and unfolded, he said, “I hope you’ll understand if I contact my men first and confirm what you have told me.”

Black Dog looked set to curse as his lips parted to bare clenched teeth. “Yeah, okay. But make it quick.”

Amarshar shut down an image of this man tied down and going under the heated blade of a knife that would skin him alive. The unmitigated arrogance of the infidel never failed to both amaze and enrage him, but he maintained an even tone as he said, “Then you’ll understand, also, that I have some concerns regarding what you have delivered.”

Black Dog scowled. “And they would be?”

“It is my understanding that the agent before us,” Amarshar said as his lieutenant finished punching in the last numbers on the keypad and he heard a soft click that told him the lid was unlatched, “may not be as potent as you have previously indicated.”

“How’s that?”

“High explosives tend to incinerate the agent before it can be fully, effectively dispersed.”

Black Dog chuckled, glanced over his shoulder at his men as if he were stuck in the presence of a fool.

Amarshar bristled, his grip tightening around the assault rifle. “You find what could potentially prove a colossal waste of money on my part amusing?” he growled as one of the operatives, his cheek swollen with chewing tobacco, spit on the ground.

“Fear not. The charges have been shaped—engineered, if you will—to prevent just what you fear from happening. What you’ll get is a muffled pop, not much more than a smoke bomb going off, but with just enough force to disperse the agent in a vapor that is nearly undetectable to the naked eye. As advertised, I may add. Now, before your men there,” he said as Amarshar noticed the lid opening to reveal two neat rows of what appeared to be aluminum canisters, “start fooling around with that stuff like it’s nothing more than a handful of dung patties, I suggest you make that call, so me and mine can be on our way. One more thing.”

Amarshar turned as one of his men hustled forward with the portable sat link. He held out a hand, a silent gesture that stopped the warrior in his tracks.

“For the full desired effect, I suggest you figure out which way the wind is blowing before you go lobbing around those canisters.” Black Dog chuckled. “And I’d strongly urge jumping into one of those HAZMAT suits before you go much further examining that merchandise. They’re sealed up good with some state-of-the-art alloy I’ve never heard of, but you never know.”

Amarshar shook his head at the men peering his way. They stood quickly, nearly jumping back two or three feet as if they’d just stumbled onto a nest of vipers.

“That’s right, jump back, Jack. That stuff,” Black Dog said, “is virulent enough to maybe kill every man, woman, child and camel in this country. And, once again, my Iranian friend, that’s just as advertised.”

“So you had previously mentioned. Which leads me to my next concern. What about the vaccine?”

“Well, as I also previously mentioned, once my own agenda is accomplished you’ll get your magic fix.”

Amarshar snorted. “You’ll forgive my suspicion and my impatience in that regard, being as I have already delivered into your hands fifteen of my own warriors.”

Black Dog had to have sensed he was stepping toward the edge of an invisible precipice as he glanced at the armed Iranians taking a step or two closer to his left flank. “Take it easy. You’re asking me when will it happen?”

Amarshar glanced at his men, smiled. “The man is a mind-reader,” he said.

Black Dog’s voice turned to glacier ice as he said, “Soon. It will happen real soon. That’s about all I can tell you. So, I would suggest you keep in touch with your chat room in Mashhad and inform them they’ll want to stay glued to al Jazeera for breaking news.”

Amarshar paused, fighting down his rising anger, wondering just how far he should push this contest of wills. He nodded, grunted, hoping both the gesture and noise came across as a man in charge but who could accept the enemy’s terms in a show of mercy. In truth, he found himself trusting the infidels even less than their first meeting, even less certain now which direction precisely the future as he envisioned it would take, and what that future was. Yes, they were on his hallowed ground, such as it was, they had come to him via cutouts, granted, and he had agreed, more or less, to their terms, but…

But what?

Was he afraid for his own personal safety, now that they had delivered what they had promised, at least in terms of the agent? That much made sense, as he considered how they were holding out on what could eventually prove the ultimate lifesaver, if and when, and where and how he chose to release the agent, and on whom.

Amarshar decided to let the immediate future take care of itself, one way or another, and snapped his fingers for the sat link to be brought to him.

“CRYING RACISM has become the hoped-for trump card of the coward.”

“Who you callin’ a coward!?”

“The race card has become the last refuge of the wicked and the guilty in this age of spineless political correctness and where near everyone in this society seems to be running around bewailing how they are victims of even the smallest perceived slights.”

“Who you callin’ wicked!? Who you callin’ guilty!?”

“You dare on national television inquire about cowardice? You dare ask about wickedness and guilt?”

And Jason Hall groaned, more out of pain from the increasingly persistent nausea and burning knots in his guts than revulsion over the fireworks just getting touched off on “The Bigger Picture.” Some other night, and the former U.S. Marine would be front and center, planted in his easy chair, glued to the television set for the full hour as the moderator, Jim Bright, danced through his charade as peace-maker while upholding his image, the modern King Solomon on the side of right and just, as he nightly self-anointed his role before lighting the fuse to loose cannons on both sides of the political fence. Or, in this instance, lobbing grenades down both sides of the racial-social spectrum.

For another few moments, Hall watched, despite his best intentions. As usual, the thought occurred to him that America had become a land of endless, needless babble, ranting and raving, on and off the television. Fanning the flames of division and hostility by rumor, gossip, detraction and slander, not to mention who could shout the loudest, had become something of a national sport, so much so that it was a rare piece of pure gold when Hall stumbled across one man in a thousand of civil tongue. As a decorated war hero Hall’s personal creed was, “Speak little, endure all.”

Ah, but where to be found such a pillar of decency and courage these days? he wondered. True, it was perhaps easy enough for him to keep in fine-tuned character, living as he did, alone, at the east edge of Flathead Lake, far removed from the bustling tourist traps at Polson and Bigfork. The two-story stone-and-wood home had been built from scratch, due in no small part to his father’s inheritance. No circling buzzard where inheriting the hard-earned life savings of blood was concerned, and unlike several roustabouts he’d known from the service and who had squandered the small fortunes of inheritance on fast-and-loose living, he had charted another, and what had looked to be a wise course.

A personal crusade, in fact, he anticipated would any night now bring the wolves baying to his doorstep.

Hall listened to the wilderness beyond the deck overlooking the placid waters. He thought he heard something, a faint, distant noise that wanted to set off warning bells in tried-and-true instincts. Anything—man or beast—could be out there, he knew, both real and mythical. Something like 128 miles of wooded shoreline, Flathead Lake was the biggest body of fresh water his side of the Mississippi. Rumors abounded in these parts about the Flathead Nessie, in fact locals dedicated lengthy cult ceremonies to this alleged relative of the Loch Ness Monster, though no one had yet to make a sighting of the creature, much less catch even a fleeting shadow of the thing on film.

He shut down his laptop, picked up the Colt Commando assault rifle leaning against the side of his desk, but didn’t budge from his chair. He reached for the remote control, one eye and ear still trained on “The Bigger Picture,” the thought crossing his mind that he was daring fate by not scrambling to his feet, malingering as he listened to the verbal Hellfire barrage.

They were here.

What remained to be seen was exactly who “they” were.

The shorter version of the M-16, bought at a local gun show and modified by his own hand for fully automatic, was up and leading his charge a second before the light show hit the roof. Braking in midstride, he didn’t hear the familiar whirlwind of rotor wash until a few heartbeats later.

Somehow he moved and found the gas mask at the edge of the desk, tugged it on. The suddenness and sheer audacity of the attack told him nothing less than black ops were hitting the roof, as he made out the running drumbeats of combat boots above. Squinting, he slipped the open nylon satchel around his shoulder, the bag stuffed with spare clips and an assortment of flash-bang, tear gas and fragmentation grenades he’d likewise recently collected across a state that had proved itself an arsenal that could just about match anything the United States armed forces had on hand. The rotor wash finally descended, full blast in his ears, providing nasty silent penetration, as it all but covered the enemy’s moves.

At least by sound.

Three, then four shadows, framed against the curtains and armed with subguns clearly nozzled with fat sound suppressors, were crouched and hustling down the deck when Hall hit the trigger and raked the moving silhouettes with a long burst of autofire. For an angry second, as the shadows dropped out of sight, he wondered if he’d only blasted out the windows, shredding fabric. A moment later failure was confirmed as the canister sailed into the study, trailing a fat dragon’s breath of billowing smoke.

He turned about-face, moving for the open door, adjusted his body to hose down the visible armed breaching point to his left wing, thinking about cover, when he sensed their approach from the living room.

Hall had to get the truth out to the world at large. It was something to fight for.

And he would do it his way, the Jason Hall version.

He determined the entertainment stand with stereo and giant speakers made for as respectable cover under the circumstances as he could hope for. He was delving into his war bag for a frag bomb, swinging his aim toward the living room and capping off three or four rounds when something speared deep into his left arm.

He held on, shooting for the ceiling on the fall, bellowing out a curse even as he knew he was finished.

It could have been two seconds or two hours, but he felt the mask ripped off, the weapon and war bag stripped away by angry hands.

So much for his way.

Shadows and voices swirled around him as Hall stared through the mist.

“Where did you find it?”

“Behind his Bible, where you said it would be, sir.”

The CD. They knew, but somehow he’d already suspected as much. Given the sudden disappearance of the others, recalling before their vanishing acts their own dire predictions and suspicions, how all of them were aware what the defenders of national security were capable of…

He was shuddering up on an elbow, ready to fire off a battery of questions when the fever seemed to balloon behind his eyes like a living fire, a sickness so sudden and shocking it was all he could do to manage to hold back the greasy spears of molten liquid ready to burst, one end to the other orifice. He fell on his back, outstretched in a sloppy crucifixion, a groan of pure misery floating away into the white light.

They were still talking, when he made out a pair of black boots and matching pants, heard a lighter clacking, smelled the cigarette smoke. Something then rattled and was dumped on his chest. It was his rosary.

“You’ve got about thirty minutes before what’s in your bloodstream burns out your brain, ten minutes, unfortunately, before you’re swimming in your own waste. Still, that’s plenty of time, Mr. Hall, pain and all the evil filth about to spill out of you aside, to say all five decades before the end.”

Hall looked at his tormentor as a stream of smoke funneled his way from the hole of the mouth behind the black hood.

“Who are we, you ask? You wouldn’t believe me, if I told you. Why are we here, you ask? Well, Mr. Hall, you should have kept your mouth shut, but a few of your jarhead buddies found that out the hard way, but I’m sure you’ve already figured out as much when you discovered your Web sites zapped then began your nightly armed recon around this stretch of Flathead Lake. Yes, you guessed correctly. You have been under constant surveillance. Okay, moving on. Instead of you accepting a chance to expiate your own guilt and treason, you turn down a reasonable offer to work for your country on a classified counter-bio warfare project, but you decided to stick to your lingering rebel nature. It wasn’t enough you came home from the first Gulf War and incited the whole of the U.S. Senate and Congress about what you thought you and a lot of other vets had fallen ill from over there.”

“You’re going to kill me because I told the truth?”

“The truth was, more or less, already out there, Mr. Hall. Pyridostygmine was supposed to have been a vaccine to prevent the effects of any nerve gas Saddam might have thrown at the troops. Then some snippy Congressman whose panties you got all twisted up did some investigating—or more to the point—had somebody else do the work for him, and he comes out claiming before God and the whole world to hear that somehow the vaccines were contaminated by the AIDS virus. Just to clue you in, the so-called Gulf War Syndrome bore, more to the truth, similarities to the West Nile virus, but the AIDs claim was what got the hue and cry sounded.”

Bile squirted up Hall’s throat. The fog was thickening in his eyes, or had he been hit by another wave of smoke? He struggled for breath that felt like flames in his throat as he said, “We were used as guinea pigs.”

“Maybe, maybe not. If you were test subjects, then let’s say it was for a just cause, being as Gulf One may have been the first time our troops were threatened by the mass deployment of chemical or biological weapons. In other words, our side needed to know something in order to engineer a preventive measure. Unfortunately, the experimental vaccine didn’t pan out as hoped. But, your mouth, that was strike one.”

“Men who fought for this country died…”

“Strike two was refusing the offer. Strike three was putting out on the Internet to all your former comrades-in-arms and any other conspiracy fruitbasket who would listen to what little you thought you knew but which, by your crusade, might have well placed national security at grave risk nonetheless.”

“So I die. You can’t kill us all.”

“And that would be you blustering it out until the bitter end?” The black hood chuckled. “Now then. What’s killing you, you ask? To my knowledge—which, I may add, in this particular field is extensive—there are fifty-one known toxic warfare agents.” He shrugged, smoked, then quickly added, “Actually there are sixty-five, but that’s when I count those agents not even those in the sanctified realm of U.S. intelligence know about between our side, the Russians, several Mideast terror orgs and North Korea. But that’s another story. Anyway, you have been stricken with, you guessed it, an experimental agent that is formed from the recombinant DNA of seven toxins. Botulin, anthrax and dioxin which, as you so boldly put out there, is an ingredient used in pesticide and which you believe was what caused GWS. But these are three of the seven you would be most familiar with, I’ll leave the others to your imagination.”

Hall watched as the black-clad executioner rose, staring at his watch.

“You have about twenty-five minutes now, Mr. Hall. Have a nice journey.”

Hall watched the man as he stepped past before he was swallowed up into the white light.

He wanted to be angry over this treason, murdered, no less, by agents of the very government he had fought and killed for, outraged, terrified he was minutes away from dying…

But felt a calm peace settle over him. Still, this was no way for a warrior, he thought, to die, as he felt the first wave of white-hot pain knifing from head to toe. Still, there were those out there who knew something about the compound, who believed, and whom, he was sure, could count on to spread the truth. Or would they? Were there any even left to talk?

CHAPTER ONE

“What in the name of…”

Benjamin Dekel collapsed into the wall, aware that God had nothing to do with why he was about to die, had nothing to do with why he was burning up with maybe a 104 degree temperature, and climbing. Or why the pain in his chest was turning to a clenching fire that was seconds away from squeezing off the last bit of air to his lungs. Or why every last drop of bodily waste and liquefied organs was set to burst from both ends as his stomach and bowels caught fire. He was verging, he knew, on the edges of what they called “the liquid state.”

Complete internal organ meltdown, followed by paralysis.

His voice struck his ears from a great distance as he heard himself croaking, “Help…someone…”

There was no answer, and he knew there was little time left now, perhaps down to a mere few minutes, since when the pain and nausea had finally driven him out of a deep sleep and he had heaved himself off the cot. And even if he reached the vault in what was called the Gold Room he was far from certain the Trivalent antitoxin derivative could be administered in time through the 20 ml IV vial, much less combat the effects of the hybrid strain he himself had taken part in creating.

With a sudden viciousness, he cursed the very day he’d quit Fort Detrick and accepted this post in what would now not only prove the middle of nowhere, but would be his final resting place. More money, they’d pledged, and delivered that much, and with talk among his colleagues about the possibility of a Nobel Prize…

His vision, he discovered, as predicted during the early stages of testing on African monkeys, was the first of the senses to start collapsing. Within moments, after the initial onslaught of the fractured maze with gray light webbed around narrowing peripheral vision, total blindness would descend. That would prove the least of his concerns, he knew, though it somehow might prove a blessing in disguise.

He stumbled, limbs turning quickly to boneless rubbery appendages, into the main corridor, gasping for breath, like the drowning man he knew he was. The stark white of the concrete walls seemed to drive hot needles through raw eyeballs, and served only to inflame the fire in his brain. Alternately hugging and sliding down the wall, it occurred to him one of several scenarios had taken place. The agent had either been accidentally released from the Hot Zone—the Black Room—or this was an act of sabotage. The contagion, he knew, could be spread by food, water and air. And he could have been infected as far back as six to eight weeks for all he knew. For that was just one of the insidious natures of the pathogenic mycoplasma they’d spliced and engineered into the whole hellish concoction. It laid dormant, evading the human immune system as the man-made bomb hid—no, vanished—deep inside cell nuclei, the lab-bred microbe near impossible to detect and diagnose as it ticked away, biding its time until it decided when it would strike. Then there was the other batch, able to act within minutes…

Which one?

It didn’t matter, as he cursed himself for even entertaining such a foolish thought, as if that alone could bolster vain hope.

Beyond the terror of knowing he was dying on his feet, Dekel felt the strange vast emptiness stretching out before and behind him. In fact, nothing seemed to move, no sound anywhere, but that could just be his senses on the verge of meltdown as his brain became nothing short of microwaved jelly. Still, near forty personnel between the science staff, security and management and yet someone by now should have appeared. Or…

Were they, too, dying? Or already dead?

The vomit shot into his mouth then past lips, spilling off his chin, just as the strange notion struck him that the entire base felt as empty and lonely as an entire lifetime dedicated to the advancement of defensive biological-and-chemical warfare. The very idea there was anything remotely defensive about so-called preemptive advancements in the bio-chem theater of war was something of an obscene joke by itself, but he long since knew the United States had to play the diplomatic charade in accord with the agreement they’d signed with the Russians and their other allies many years back.

Was he now, thus, an ultimate dupe of what was an ultimate lie?

Where is everybody? he heard his mind scream. Was there anybody out there?

Was that a shadow at the deep south end?

“Hello? Help…me…”

He struggled to stay on his feet, saw the shadow grow, a figure slowly materializing around the corner. He wasn’t sure what he saw at first, blinking away the sweat burning into his eyes, then…

The scream was on the tip of his tongue as he recognized the HAZMAT suit, the silver hose in its hand for what it was. The human, safe in his white cocoon, strode straight for him, moving with purpose, he believed was the common military jargon. And the moment was somehow made even more horrifying by the fact he couldn’t see the face hidden by the black shield, as if by eye contact he could communicate the plea for mercy he heard building to a raging crescendo in the furnace of his brain. The distance was ten feet and closing when Dekel felt his eyes bulge in shock and horror, aware of what was coming.

And the shriek ripped from his mouth an instant before the silver hose burst forth its cleansing fire.

“YOU CALL THEM WHAT?”

“The Black Wizards. And that would be ‘called them.’”

Mark Drobbler shot a sideways glance at what he privately called his tour guide. Despite his cryptic tone, the encrypted e-mails that had detailed their rendezvous and the night’s subsequent jaunt in the Black Hawk helicopters—the first stop less than an hour ago to deal with a local rabble-rouser—the man in black hood and matching one-piece combat suit he knew openly as Infinity wasn’t as much an enigma as the operative wanted him to believe. Drobbler was one of the few recruits of his organization who was a former U.S. government employee—what they called Storm Trackers—for the Department of Defense, but he had a feeling Infinity knew as much, if not more.

For nearly a decade, before putting in for early retirement following the collapse of his second marriage, he had a sizable hand in collecting and sorting out critical intelligence regarding homegrown terrorists operating under the guise of militias, and international terror cells that had established roots in the Continental United States.

Another lifetime, that was, without question. These days…

Well, these days it was a whole different game, a different outlook, an ideology that was in lockstep with the good fight against the signs of the times he and the others believed were leading to the Apocalypse.

Looking away from Infinity’s penetrating stare, Drobbler felt a moment’s gratitude he was both armed with a shoulder-holstered Glock .40, and was accompanied by two of his own people, but who were right then on-board one of the other four Black Hawks that had descended on the compound. As he had requested an aerial view of the clean-up task, he stood in the open doorway, the gunship hovering about a hundred feet up and to the south of the cyclone fencing.

It wasn’t much, as far as classified compounds went. The compound sat on about five to six acres, with the squat one-story concrete block grabbing up an area about the size of a football field, the heart of the base tucked back in the dense pine forest of rolling hills. Over those hills, Lake Pend Oreille was the site of longstanding rumors, he knew, about a top secret Navy project named Cutthroat. In the recent past, he had seen from a distance the silver boxes that were set in a triangulation pattern around the second largest lake west of the Mississippi. They were called Horizontal Control Stations and Electronic Sites. The public had been told they were permanent lookout stations for the local forest rangers, but the whispers around these parts was that they were, supposedly, testing the kind of cutting edge satellite and electronic communications equipment that had spawned rumors all over the Panhandle. They ranged from UFO landing sites to technology that could harness and control lightning, which, in recent years, was believed to have been the cause of sudden and inexplicable wildfires that had devastated much of northern Idaho.

Which left him wondering, being as they were in such close proximity to another classified government facility, how they intended to hide the mess they were in the process of creating.

Infinity had referred to the night’s outing as an invisible program of confirmation and cooperation, and Drobbler went back to watching what he couldn’t see but had been told was happening inside the walls of the germ factory. There were no vehicles, now that the black GMCs had rolled through the main gate with their cargo of nylon bags, evidence seized, he suspected, that wouldn’t leave behind any trace of what the Dormitory—as Infinity called the bio-chem compound—was all about. The small helipad was already chocked to capacity by the Black Hawks, and the men in spacesuits who had disgorged from those gunships had been inside for twenty-some minutes by his reckoning.

“I know what you’re thinking.”

Drobbler threw the man a sideways look. If Infinity did, then he might want to pull the HK MP-5 SD 3 subgun off his shoulder. Now that he knew what was happening down there, he wasn’t sure he was all that keen on going the full distance. His attitudes, opinions, in short, his whole point of view about the dreadful and rapidly deteriorating state of affairs in the Western World were anarchist, to put it kindly, but he was a few short hours away from…

“Even with full cleansing of the Dormitory and the kind of plausible deniability we are able to erect around ourselves, we cannot safely determine at what point and how this will all warrant a closer investigation.”

“Which is why the green light…”

“Further, it does not help our cause on two specific fronts. One, that your vaunted leader deemed it necessary to make himself a national television star. Attention is the last and most dreaded area we need to concern ourselves with at this late juncture. Two, that your organization was infiltrated.”

Drobbler grimaced. “I thought you said you took care of that?”

“Be all that as it may, we still do not have absolute control over the United States Department of Justice, even from the deep shadows, even with all of our resources.”

“The attention thing, right?”

“Very astute.”

Drobbler fought to keep the scowl off his face, as he spotted a sarcastic twinkle in those blue eyes. He turned away from Infinity’s laughing stare, just as he heard the wail ripping from the east edge of the main building. An icy shiver walked down his spine an instant before he saw the dancing shadows come flailing into the aura of spilled light. Infinity had the tactical radio in hand before the horror fully registered in Drobbler’s mind.

“Infinity to Dragon leader!”

Drobbler heard the order barked for the door in question to be sealed, but it was too late. The human comet streaked onto open ground, ran on for a few feet, thrashing inside the fireball, as if it could somehow escape from that hellish cocoon. Then it seemed to wilt inside the shroud of fire, toppling in a slow-motion buckling of the legs. Drobbler had seen more than enough. But, even as he turned away and fell back into the fuselage, the screams of a man being burned alive—an employee of the United States government—echoed in his ears. He felt sick to his stomach. Suddenly, had it all been up to him…

But it wasn’t. And, even if he could refuse to move forward, what he’d just witnessed, he was sure, was meant to serve as a warning.

He was onboard for the full ride, and began to wonder if it all was only just bound for Hell.

CHAPTER TWO

The man in black was a silent ghost, virtually invisible to the naked eye at that predawn hour, as he crept to the edge of the dense western exterior of pine forest. With the HK MP-5 SD 3 submachine gun and its integral sound suppressor, he knew it was a safe bet that he wouldn’t be mistaken for some hunter who had lost his way, or some weekend warrior most notable for blustering through the local saloons of Montana’s Glacier Country with tall tales of big game kills from a half mile or more out.

He was, though, in the strictest and most lethal sense, a hunter, and of the most dangerous game. Here, east of Flathead River and at the western edge of the Continental Divide, and now as anywhere then previous in his War Everlasting, Mack Bolan had no interest in bagging grizzly, elk or bighorn sheep to stuff and hang on his trophy mantel.

As for the warrior part…

The big, tall shadow hit a crouch at what he determined was the most secure scouting roost, as he spied his perch through the green world of his night-vision goggles. Concealed in a horseshoe of thick brush, the man also known as the Executioner took a few moments to get his bearings, review, assess, upon giving his six and flanks another thorough scan.

No warrior, he knew, no matter how good, how often he’d been tested in the fires of combat could ever rely on the bloody glory of yesterday’s victories to carry him through the next engagement. That would be foolishness. But it was something often overlooked by the arrogant, the proud, the bully, those who believed all they had to do was to show up for the fight and fearsome reputation would take over, all but send a foe scurrying to hide under his bed.

There was, Bolan knew, always a David out there to every man’s Goliath.

That in mind, the lone wolf operative for the ultra-covert Stony Man Farm couldn’t say, one way or the other, if the two FBI agents who had gone undercover to infiltrate the Sons of Revelation had been careless and sloppy, falling back on their own hallowed and sanctioned law-enforcement status, which, of course, no sociopath, no armed reprobate ever respected anyway. Whatever the case, they were found, beaten to a pulp in an abandoned log cabin up near the town of West Glacier, before, that was, they’d each been shot once in the head. Since the FBI fell under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, and considering the nature of their shadow work and the group believed to have executed them, Hal Brognola had offered Bolan the assignment.

Looking back, Bolan should have declined—murder investigations were somebody else’s job description—but Brognola was a high-ranking official at the Justice Department who also headed up the Sensitive Operations Group at the Farm. Beyond that, and notwithstanding he was the soldier’s longtime friend, Brognola was liaison to the President of the United States, the Man being one of the few in the loop about Stony Man’s existence, and who also gave the Caesar’s thumbs-up or -down to each mission. That the murder of a federal law-enforcement agent fell under the statute of capital punishment was serious enough to give Bolan second consideration, but there were other factors involved that had seen the soldier give the man from Justice the final nod. Aside from the fact that both agents were leaving behind grieving widows and children, stoking the natural fires of Bolan’s sense of justice, both men had managed to pull together enough loose threads of a general conspiracy, one that allegedly involved the import of foreign enemies of America, and who were believed associated with the radical militia group now in question.

Then the hunches, swirling around some big event the agents had tagged the Day of Judgment, though what the exact nature of the conspiracy had gone to the grave with them. With money, however, with the arsenal the enemy was alleged to possess—and there was no telling what other kind of firepower they had at their disposal—anything was possible, the soldier knew, even the sale or acquisition of a tactical nuke, a so-called dirty bomb, or chemical or biological agents. Throw the fuel of twisted ideology into the fire of one man’s belief in his superiority to his fellow man, and that all but blazed his will to use violence and intimidation. From grim and countless personal experience, Bolan knew just such individuals would spare no extreme, would even view collateral damage—the murder and misery of the innocent—as the cost of their revolution, and to further their agenda.

The Sons of Revelation had more than a few former lawmen, ex-military and two ex-spooks that Bolan knew of among the bunch of armed malcontents. That alone raised a red flag in the warrior’s mind.

Shedding the high-tech headgear, Bolan adjusted his trained night-stalking vision to the sheen of light that enveloped the compound. He took one last look at the PDA, found the coordinates—programmed into the palm-held cutting-edge computer by the cyberteam at the Farm, gleaned from Brognola’s facts as the FBI knew them on the general vicinity—were on the money.

It was just under a mile hike from where he’d ditched the Ford Explorer rental in a wooded gorge. The big war bag with the heavier firepower, satellite link, spare clips and grenades was stowed in the back of the SUV, and may God have mercy on the man fool enough to venture forth with curious or felonious hands. The vehicle was rigged with a state-of-the-art zapper, voltage enough to dump a man on his back, out cold. Should some enraged vandal witnessing a comrade’s initial failure then smash out the windows, the war bag was armed with sensors, primed to cut loose with enough sulfuric acid to melt its contents into a molten puddle, and in the meantime cook off some rounds and frag bombs to send the more brazen and stupid running for cover. Should a local cop or state trooper pose a problem, then Bolan was armed with his bogus Justice Department credentials that declared him Special Agent Matt Cooper.

All set, then, but for what exactly?

The soldier had a plan, but the more he thought about it he began amending the original blitz to include, above all else, the capture—or at the very least—the grilling of an SOR reprobate on the spot.

The stone-and-timber lodge and surrounding six acres was the sole property of the leader of the Sons of Revelation. He was a former Boise sheriff who had retired before suspicions of alleged corruption were brought to light. Two stories high, with veiled light striking against thick curtains on his side—the south end—the Stony Man warrior counted two sentries posted on the east and west edges, both armed with assault rifles. If timing was everything in life then it looked as if a full SOR gathering was underway beneath the roof. Strung out to the east and north of the lodge was a motor pool of SUVs, backwoods 4X4s, with a few classics to finish off the vintage car show. The late and lamented undercover men cited the rabble at forty to fifty strong, maybe more, depending on plebes undergoing initiation pains, the likes of which had also reached Brognola’s desk. Then there were drifters, handfuls of other miscreants believed loosely affiliated with the right-wing vultures, local cops suspected of being buried deep in the group’s coffers.

Dirty cops posed something a problem. In the beginning—a hundred lifetimes and a thousand battles ago—Bolan had vowed to never gun down an officer of the law. But with the changing times his personal philosophy could be altered enough to include a tainted shield, especially when it came down to them or him. In truth, the more he thought about it, a dirty badge was worse than the criminal they had publicly sworn to protect law-abiding citizens and their property from.

But he would take the savages, on either side of that thin blue line, as they came, as they called the play.

Evil was still evil, no matter the law, flag, money or mask of human respect it hid behind.

The soldier gave the narrow plateau another search, this time through small field glasses he switched to infrared. As he panned the wooded perimeter around the compound, he felt the combined weight of his walking arsenal hung from webbing, slotted in a combat vest. Given what little he knew, the soldier wondered if the mixed assortment of grenades, twenty pounds of C-4 with radio-remote primers, the spare clips for his subgun, the shoulder-holstered Beretta 93-R and the .44 Desert Eagle Magnum hung on his hip in quickdraw leather would prove sufficient.

So far, the EM scanner hadn’t turned up any sensors and cameras. In truth, Bolan knew a den of Goliaths may be on hand, waiting for his special brand of scorched earth, but the Executioner wasn’t about to take any man for granted.

The living ghost in black spied a narrow trail that snaked northward, marked it on the personal digital assistant, and set out to ring in the new day for the Sons of Revelation.

CHAPTER THREE

It was beyond insanity. And, he decided, when he weighed the truth and the rediscovered precepts of his own faith against the present, he now knew, beyond a morsel of doubt, that he no longer belonged, no longer fit.

That he was living a lie.

Or was he now simply donning the disguise of wolf in sheep’s clothing?

Whatever the case, the strange state of utter and miserable aloneness he now found himself submerged, Mitch Kramer braced for the coming events. If the past proved true to form—and he had little doubt it would—the floorshow would be one part briefing, laced with the usual fire and brimstone about the ills of America and the coming Apocalypse, one part initiation. The latter already had him squirming in his seat, even as he tried to will away the first onslaught of revulsion.

They were gathered in what was called the Council of the Living Creatures. He was seated at the knight’s table with the other so-called High Sons, while the regular army—just over thirty strong—was forced to take its place in the rows of metal chairs at the back of the hall, reserved for the grunts. Two of the big chairs were empty, and about twelve seats from the grunt gallery were vacant, but he had his suspicions, based on what little he knew about the Day of Judgment. Dear God, he heard his mind groan, what had he done? What had he involved himself in?

As he felt the anticipation build from without and the blazing furnace of disturbance heat up from within, he felt himself on the verge of a sudden and frightening revelation. For the first time since day one—when he’d allowed himself to become entangled through what he reasoned was the sheer loneliness and maddening isolation that was alcoholism and the final dirty vestiges of every vice attached to his old ways he had sought so desperately to shed—Mitch Kramer saw it all in a new and blinding light.

He had begun to pull himself together a few short hours ago and then the call had come from the First High Son, demanding his immediate presence. Reporting, then, to the SOR compound, he felt trapped, surrounded by living evil. In truth, his very participation in the events about to unfold would find him condemned by his faith, both in this world and the next.

From the far end of the knight’s table, he watched as their leader took his chair, a mahogany throne, rather, with gold trim around the arms, on which protruded white marble cherubim and seraphim. Jeremiah Grant cleared his throat in a rumble that called them all to order.

The lingering silence seemed to carry a living force all by itself, as Grant sat, unmoving, glaring down the table, with the coat of arms of the Four Living Creatures seeming to roll out of the wall directly behind the man. With smoke clouds swelling the air from one end of the hall to the other, Kramer stole the dramatic pause to search each face in turn, and wonder about the madness of it all.

“Soldiers and Sons of Revelation, we are the chosen converts of the Almighty. As such, we are no longer ‘of’ the world, but are simply ‘in’ the world, a world, we all know, that is quickly succumbing to the dominion of the adversary. Our own country, once the land of the free and the brave, is being devoured with each passing minute by an army of infernal spirits who masquerade among us as human beings in the present day American society.”

And thus Grant began, but in a slightly altered version of his usual preamble. It was all Kramer could do to stifle the groan. Suddenly, the vision wanted to flame back to mind, and he wondered why the .45 Glock grew heavy in its shoulder rigging beneath his sheepskin coat. He glanced at the leader, fearing he might be singled out for lack of rapt attention. He was pretty sure that sparkle in Grant’s eyes was owed more to a shot or two of whiskey-spiked-coffee than any fire of fanaticism, though there was no question in Kramer’s mind the man was deadly serious.

“In the name of God, we are prepared at what is the most critical juncture in the history of democracy to carry out His justice. We are at war, my friends, make no mistake, and we must stop the sons of Cain—the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex of the United States shadow government and who uses the mass media as its propaganda puppet-slaves, but who control what was once a great and God-fearing nation. Yes, we know well who the sons of Cain are, my friends. They are the devil’s vanguard. They dwell and claim seats of power and influence from the nation’s capital to Wall Street, from the scattered and numerous classified military bases around the West and Southwest to the whoremongers and purveyors of filth of Hollywood, but this is our supreme hour. We must, therefore, take courage. And since we are on the side of God—and if God is for us, then who can be against us?—we will unleash what will be the breath of divine wrath on all those not of the elect and who would trample us to dust with every outrage, every vice, every blasphemy, every abomination. Nothing short of a vengeance that far exceeds anything that annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah in the blink of an eye is demanded.”

And there it was, Kramer decided. For all of his next spiel about all of them renouncing their former ways, how there were no deathbed conversions among them and which was what made them all so real and heroic, doing what was right and true in the name of God’s work without the terror of impending death forcing them to answer the call to divine arms, Kramer knew the very rottenness of their former lives and transgressions was what had led them all to this room.

To this moment in their lives where eternity would be decided.

“Before I get to the heart of our mission, I would like to remind you men of the simple facts of life, lest you feel your backbone begin to lose some of its iron.”

Kramer glanced at the small black file in front of him. Each of them had been given their marching orders, detailed, more or less, on the CD-ROM inside each packet. He reached out and picked his intel package up, then spotted the tremble in his hand. He realized the other hand had suddenly somehow moved toward his coat lapel, just inches below the hidden semiautomatic pistol. Quickly, he dropped both his hands in his lap, one ear tuned to Grant, as his own voice seemed frozen in the blackest of midthought, shocked at what he realized he was prepared to do.

By slow degrees, he became aware of the doors opening, a shabby naked figure being marched forth, hustled toward the shower stall near the east wall, midway down. He heard the snickers from the grunt gallery, as one of the soldiers twisted the knob and water hissed from the nozzle. It was just about all Kramer could endure. As they held the plebe by the arms and whose hands covered his crotch and who wore the despair and horror of a condemned man he recalled his own agonizing rite of passage into the Sons of Revelation.

It was Grant’s version of baptism, only these waters were scalding hot, and the only stain they purified was the surface dirt and grime.

With the concrete walls spaced just far enough apart to allow a man to squeeze between, there was no escaping even a few drops.

Kramer could already feel the man’s pain. Every second in that cramped cubicle, he recalled, felt like an hour, as what seemed like no less than liquid fire wanted to eat the flesh right off the bones. A man quickly forgot about the shame of his nakedness.

As if reading the grim confusion on a few of the faces of the High Sons, Grant explained that this was penalty for failure, only it would be eternal.

And Kramer could believe it.

“Put him in,” Grant ordered.

Kramer felt sick to his stomach as the figure was shoved ahead, all but vanishing into the thick billows of steam. At the first scream, Kramer was rising from his seat. He glimpsed the victim trying to fight his way out of the watery hell but, as part of the price for such a display of cowardice and timidity, he suffered vicious blows to the head and stomach that drove him back, his so-called guardians shouting curses in his face. Of course, he could quit, holler as much, but there would be no money, and he would be sent packing, warned to never return or speak about what happened and under the most severe penalty. When it was over, when he was freed—or sometimes collapsed from pain and shock—every inch of skin would be raw, his flesh like living coals but that burned inward. There would be blisters the size of thimbles all over, a relentless maddening itch from head to toes that would last for…

Kramer suddenly realized he was heading for the door, as Grant’s voice boomed and shattered the sense he was a disembodied figure slogging through a bad dream.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to take a leak.”

It was not altogether a lie, but he was surprised at how easy, how quick the words left his mouth, then how Grant seemed so ready to accept his excuse, the man nodding, then returning to the torture show.

Mitch Kramer somehow forced himself to move, slow and steady, even as the screams of pure agony flayed his ears and hit his back like invisible fists.

THE PLAN CAME to Bolan, walked straight toward him, in fact.

Opting for the sound-suppressed Beretta, he was settling into a low crouch, poised to launch from a half circle of bramble and hanging ferns, the last of four-pound blocks just planted and primed when the first of the bone-chilling screams, muffled as they were by the wall, struck his ears. The fireworks were staggered, every third or fourth vehicle, the shaped charges just inside wheel wells closest to the few gas caps he discovered lacked the modern era necessity of locks. He counted the headwinds as another small blessing, whatever fumes meant to be ignited by the initial blast wave carried away from the sentries.

The lean figure in sheepskin coat was ambling away from his two militia pals, both of whom were chuckling and hooting about his lack of nerve while Sheepskin turned and shot them the middle finger salute. He was hollering back something about a little privacy, when the soldier judged the hang-dog expression that struck him as akin to depression, or regret. Bolan considered himself better than a decent judge of character—though the darkest corner of the human heart and mind was capable of hiding the worst of evil and treachery—and as Sheepskin shuffled closer he made a sudden decision.

A choice that would either burn him down before the mission was even out of the gate, or lead him through a back door, hopefully to step on the tail end of the vipers.

The next moment turned even brighter for Bolan. Sheepskin got the privacy he demanded, as the soldier watched the sentries vanish around the far south end. For a heartbeat or two, the warrior analyzed the look, weighed his next move against the pluses and minuses of the hard probe.

Sheepskin, the bulge beneath his coat warning Bolan he was packing, stepped onto the narrow path, took a few more strides his way, unaware of the problem ready to spring on him from little more than an arm’s length away. He put a cigarette on his lip, shook his head about something, scowled, reached for his fly. That was disgust, contempt or the expression, the warrior decided, of a man in search of a new future. Clearly, he was pondering some deep thought that had left him spooked, some far-away glaze to the eyes that Bolan would have sworn was the face of a man who had just seen a ghost—or his own death.

Just as he was torn between lighting his cigarette and tugging at his crotch, Bolan rose and surged forward. Sheepskin became aware, too late, of the dark menace boiling out of the brush. He was turning, as Bolan slammed an overhand left off his jaw and sent man and cigarette flying.

IT WAS BEYOND the point of no return, and this was only the start of the very beginning.

As Mark Drobbler trailed Infinity to the keypad on the steel door of the oversize black barn a mental picture flamed to mind, out of nowhere. He saw himself doing a rapid about-face, washing his hands all the way back to the Black Hawk. But, then what? He was too old, too tired, too set in his ways. There was nothing but an empty mobile home in the deepest bowels of the remotest wilderness to return to if he bolted. Four walls, inside of which he could sit, swill beer and whiskey and pass the time watching cable television or hang out in the local tavern for yet more drinking and mental gnawing on all that could have and should have been while…

Right. While opportunity passed him by. And if the others didn’t outright hold him in contempt for bailing, all but branding him a coward and a traitor, he would never know a moment’s peace for whatever the remainder of his days. Not without looking over his shoulder. Not without sleeping with his assault rifle set on full-auto under the covers.

Infinity was punching in the sequence of numbers, then Drobbler found those lifeless chips of glacier ice were looking back at him, as if the black op was having second thoughts about something.

Drobbler broke the stare, scanned the dark wood-line. He was sure that hidden cameras, motion sensors were all over what was another classified U.S. government compound. Up to then he’d only heard a word or two about what waited inside the black barn, aware that the bulk of the matériel had only been shipped by van and military transport with U.S. government plates two days ago.

The door opened on a soft pneumatic hiss.

“After you, Mr. Drobbler.”

Without hesitating, lest that stare turn even darker, Drobbler was past the man. Three steps inside the sprawling makeshift factory and he caught his breath, braking to an abrupt halt. The walls, he reckoned, were soundproof, had to be since the noise of hydraulic drills driving home bolts and the hiss and spray of blowtorches assaulted his senses, and would have carried clear to town, a short distance away.

A look to his side and Drobbler found the twelve handpicked Sons of Revelation. They were grouped around a large steel table, poring over what he knew were blueprints, computer-enhanced specs, to a man as grim as death. Two men in black raid suits with shouldered HK subguns were hovering behind them as they ran down mission logistics and parameters.

The drills suddenly ceased. Two figures in face shields stepped back from the rear of the bus they worked on, the blue-orange flames from blowtorches shrinking as Infinity rolled out to the middle of the floor. He was all award-winning actor, that one, eyes beaming as he claimed the spotlight. It was his world, no question, and this was his stage.

Drobbler took a few steps toward Infinity, one eye running the length of the leviathan. It was painted black, and for the life of him he couldn’t tell where the windows began and ended. Eagle Charters was painted in bold white letters above where a cargo hold would have been. The single door to the front portside was open, with three steps leading up to a walled-in cubicle where the driver sat.

“There it is, Mr. Drobbler. Attila. In just a few minutes, it’s all yours.”

Drobbler saw Infinity motioning for him to step his way, then the black op slipped the subgun off his shoulder.

“Coming your way inside, gentlemen!” he called, then cut loose with the subgun.

Drobbler flinched as the first few rounds scorched the hull, his ears spiked as those bullets, muzzling at what he believed was 400 meters per second, marched a line of sparks down the side. Ricochets went screaming toward the nose end, the wall beyond and beside the entrance door absorbing more slashing steel-jacketed hornets. Drobbler felt a flash of gratitude that Infinity had seen fit to pull him away from Attila at the angle he now stood. Infinity shifted his aim, drilling some rounds where Drobbler suspected the windows were positioned. A split-second pause, then the black op burned out the clip, the final rounds pounding the rear tire with a peculiar loud thud.

Infinity was all smiles behind the rising cordite as he said, “You like it?”

Drobbler examined the bus, stem to stern, top to bottom, but couldn’t spot the first nick, dent or scratch. Without a close-up inspection, though…

“Well?”

“Let me guess. The tires are reinforced by Kevlar?”

“And the hull is all titanium-plated. Double-layered where the driver sits. Nothing short of a cruise missile will knock him out of his seat. Hubs, axles, the whole chassis is reinforced steel with, again, a titanium coat.”

“Windows are bulletproof, I gather?”

“Better. Right around your gun revetments and the driver’s half of the window it’s diamond layered.”

Drobbler took another long hard look at it, their beast of burden. “Nothing short of a cruise missile, huh?” he muttered.

He had to admit he was impressed, but if he was supposed to be grinning like a school kid and jumping up and down…

The black op rolled past Drobbler and dumped the large nylon bag at his feet. He zipped it open, and Drobbler beheld the down payment. Three million dollars, rubber-banded stacks of hundreds, stared him back. He was about to bend, thinking he should touch a few stacks, just to make sure it wasn’t too good to be true, when Infinity took a step toward him.

“You can count it on your own time, Mr. Drobbler. Right now, we have work to do and not much time to do it in before you and your men ship out.”

“THE CHOICE IS REAL SIMPLE.”

The voice was graveyard, icy, with no room for compromise. It matched the coldest set of blue eyes he’d ever seen. Those eyes, framed in the black-face of combat cosmetics, told stories all by themselves.

Bad stories. Real stories. Stories about death and pain and misery, and, Mitch Kramer could damn well believe, more given than received. This was not some weekend local yokel stumbling about the woods, playing paintball grab-ass with a few drunken morons.

This was the real deal. This, his gut screamed at him, was Death in human flesh.

Something hit his stomach, and Kramer saw it was his wallet. He was told to get up, wondering if he moved fast enough for the man’s liking, but it was all he could manage just to get his legs back on the ground. He rubbed his jaw, worked his mouth, tongued his teeth. All there. The big man knew, then, about applying just the right amount of force where it didn’t go too far, break something, put a guy in a coma or in the ground. Cop stuff. Or military training?

On second look, decked out in commando gear with slung sound-suppressed HK subgun, with all the right bearing, all the right attitude, the commandeered Glock now snug in his waistband, maintaining a nice distance where he could fire at will with his sound-suppressed Beretta before he could cut the gap in a quick rush…

The stranger was examining something in his hand. Kramer gathered his bearings. He had been dragged a few more yards deeper into the woods. He was wondering if the two SOR clowns posted as sentries had heard the ruckus, how long he’d been laid out when the big guy spoke.

“You come with me, cooperate as my prisoner, answer my questions.”

Kramer was almost afraid to ask for the alternative, but said, “Or?”

“I’ll send you back.”

Why did that sound not only too easy, too good to be true, but no choice at all? Who the hell was this guy?

“You take option number two, be forewarned. When I bring the walls down on the Sons of Revelation, I spare no one. There will be no second chance.”

Just being in the man’s presence, Kramer could believe as much. “You know, you may not believe this, but I was looking for a way out.”

The stranger held out what he’d been examining. Kramer took it and smiled even though it hurt. Somehow his laminated daily prayer card to Saint Rita had been dislodged from his wallet. During the fall, or the frisk? And did it matter? Glancing at the first few lines—“O powerful Saint Rita, rightly called Saint of the Impossible, I come to you with confidence in my great need”—and Kramer thought he might lose it. This was it. This was the moment, the deciding point in the fork of the road. He was a wretch, beaten, whipped, broken, defiled his whole life by his own hand. He was the vilest of worms, deserved nothing less than sudden death and instant justice, and yet…

He was tucking the card away, as the big man, holding up a small black box with a flashing red light, told him, “I even catch the whiff of a problem from you, and you’ll have less than a second to call on that holy lady.”

Kramer didn’t need convincing, but he knew what was coming. The motor pool was maybe forty, fifty yards away, but to Kramer it sounded like the trumpet blast of Judgment Day, calling forth the living and the dead. He held his ground as the fireballs tore through the vehicles, pulped the classics that were worth, he’d heard, a combined quarter mil. There was shouting and screaming and cursing next as the wreckage pounded the east and north walls. Something told him, as he was ordered to get moving, this was only the beginning of the end for a whole bunch of bad men.

CHAPTER FOUR

“We’re creatures of habit, Mr. Radfield. Each one of us is, to some greater or lesser extent, predictable. We wake up at the same time for the same job. We drink the same brand of coffee and the same amount before we drive roughly the same route to our place of employment that expects us there at the same time, five days of the week. We drink the same brand of beer, watch the same brand of movies, listen to the same brand of music. We go to the same church at the same time on Sunday and sit in the same pew, on the same side. We…”

Paul Radfield got the gist of it. And still he went on with the infernal litany, until Radfield had the urge to bellow at the guy to shut his damn piehole. But that was just a wishful thought. He’d been stalked and kidnapped, and was now cuffed, blind, and God only knew where.

How they’d done it—and who they were—was beyond him, but he had some general suspicions.

He stared at the pitched blackness, listening to what he began to think of as the Voice. It was smooth, educated, white, a taunting ring to the words, and why not? The SOB held all the right cards, and in his roundabout infuriating superior way was letting him know all about it. There was no Texas twang or Southern drawl he could make out, no accent of any kind, and that made him just about any man from Anywhere, U.S.A., with the possible exceptions of New England and New Jersey. As for where he was? Talk about a shot in the dark. There was something like 367 miles of Gulf Coast—624 miles of tidewater coast when he threw in all the lagoons, swamps and bays and with the longest chain of barrier islands to be found anywhere on the planet—so he could be anywhere, even south of the border. Or maybe he was out on the water, only there was no discernible rock and roll that would come with even the most gentle of swells. And, for all he knew, once he’d been hit with the dart in the garage of his suburban enclave southeast of Houston, recalling how he’d glimpsed the dark shadow rising from beside the free-weight jungle gym, it could have been one hour or one day since he’d gone under. A little bladder gauging, however, told him it was the former, give or take.

Where then? And what about…

“We make love to the same woman the same three nights of the week, but, to one man’s credit—that would be you, Mr. Radfield—rarely in the same position, though Cynthia—or Kit, as she likes you to call her when in the throes of passion—seems to like Thursday nights a little more than the others. That is, if I judge the sound of her voice and the way she cries your name correctly.”

Radfield felt the blood pulse into his eardrums like a molten war drum. The bastard had bugged, worse, maybe installed hidden mini-cams all over the house, but he wasn’t surprised. He felt his face flush next, as hot as live coals, wondering if the rotten SOB had maybe videotaped their passion for his own personal viewing pleasure. Get a grip! Shame was the least of his woes, he knew, as he then smelled his breath, sucked back in on his sweaty face, thanks to the tight confines of his hood. It was still ripe from the previous night’s veal and pasta, those three whiskey and waters and a glass of red wine, with the residue of the morning’s three—predictable three—cigarettes swirling up in his nose. He also took a whiff of the first tainted aroma of something else.

Fear.

Then he felt the sweat run cold down his face, slithering up under his jaw and chin, but where it ended suddenly, as the hood had been cinched—or noosed?—tight around his neck. The faceless human viper chuckled about something but the cold steel bit into his wrists as he felt his fists clenching, so hard his knuckles popped off like pistol cracks.

Impotent rage was not a feeling he was used to.

The former United States Special Forces captain knew how to keep his cool, though, and under the worst of conditions. These—as it next turned out to his mounting horror—were worse than dodging Iraqi bullets and sniffing out chemical and biological stashes for a little known black op during Gulf One called Operation Specter Run. And his heart began to beat like a jackhammer, harder than before, if such a thing was possible, as the Voice recited, chapter and verse, the daily routines of his wife and two sons. Their likes, dislikes, habits. Right down to the type of music Ben and John both listened to, Kit’s favorite television programs and which room she preferred, which sealed it that the house had been wired for visual spying. Then their movements, and by the hour, the eateries and friends they visited after school, when, where and who, down to the same time his wife hit the same health spa after work, and which housewives and where she had two dry gin martinis at her favorite bar, and which two days of the week. Son of a…

Stay cool, breathe slow, he told himself. Instinct told him nothing had happened to his family—yet—and he kept hope alive.

There was a long pause, during which Radfield wondered if his captor had left the room, the building, the boat, wherever he was.

“I have yet to hear the usual questions, Mr. Radfield. Even for a Medal of Honor winner, you’re too cool and collected.”

“Okay. I’ll bite. Who are you?”

“Wrong first question. Unanswerable anyway.”

“Right. If you told me, you’d have to kill me. You want something. What? And if I don’t agree, then what happens to my wife and sons?”

“What happens?” The Voice made a noise somewhere between a chuckle and a snort. “Do I actually have to say the words?”

Radfield ground his teeth, steadied his breathing some more. No, the bastard couldn’t see him sweat, but he had to control his own voice. “Yeah. You do.”

“They’ll be killed. Very quietly, very efficiently.”

“Are they safe?”

“For the moment, they’re going about their daily routine.”

“What do you want?”

“How do you like Miami, Paul?”

Friendly like, confidence growing, the hook was in.

“Too hot, too much crime, too phony.”

“Agreed. Not to mention there’s something vaguely disturbing about an entire city built right over a swamp.” The Voice chuckled. “It’s almost as if the fools who live there are begging for some natural calamity to happen, between a giant sinkhole swallowing them whole and hurricanes blowing them clear out to the Everglades. Anyway…be that as it all is, it’s the business you perform as part of your duties for your company out of Miami that will require an immediate attitude readjustment on your part.”

And there it was. But the punch line, he suddenly knew, was merely part of the irony of his predicament.

His captor knew as much, and went on to tell him, “As chief of security for Manexx PetroChem, you designed certain safety procedures at the Trans-World Bank of Miami.”

“Okay. And?”

“Hasn’t it ever struck you as odd that you are required every three months to escort the same three men donning the exact same black sunglasses and wearing the same three-piece black suits and who you, of course, do not know but provide security to and from the WBM and to and from their posh hotel suite, and who literally have the same briefcases chained to the same wrists? That for all of their public mantras about the need for this country to tap into new oil reserves that there are all of two—count them—two Manexx platforms out on the Gulf and with no plans in the foreseeable future to expand? That when you designed their off-shore security there was virtually no mention of deep-sea drilling, with just the basic equipment and skeleton crews necessary to maintain appearances?”

Radfield had, in fact, wondered about all of that, among a few other items not yet mentioned. As he had some nagging idea where this was headed, he felt the first itch of nicotine craving coming on when—

Fingers like iron rods twisted up the hood around his mouth. He heard something metallic—the snap of scissors?—then raw combat instincts flared. There was fire in his limbs, sudden anger to strike back coiling him. He was an inch or so off the seat when the gun muzzle was shoved against his temple. He barely heard the snip against the metallic click of the weapon’s hammer as a section of hood was sliced away from his mouth.

“Here, have a smoke.”

It was placed on his lip and lit.

“Now. Sit down, relax and listen. Should you even for the flash of an instant again think about fighting back you will be shot dead, dumped in the Gulf and…well, you can imagine the next regrettable step. Or, rather, three steps.”

The weapon fell away, the second presence melting back. That left his captor, right in front of him. Two, then, at least, and his hands were cuffed in front of him, as he lifted them to work the cigarette. If not for his family…

“Are you with me so far, Paul?”

“I’m listening.”

“We know that you suspect fallen comrades under your command in Gulf One were infected by our side in a vaccine program that was meant to combat the effects of what is now commonly referred to as Gulf War Syndrome.”

“But which, was, in fact, our guys contracting the effects of a nerve gas agent and an unknown bio agent that was covered up by Washington after we blew up a couple of depots and were infected by subsequent fallout and which we were never told what was in said depots.”

“Or everyone in the area in question was stricken by undetermined biohazards relating to Saddam’s torching of those oil fields when his soldiers were sent packing from Kuwait.”

“Or both.”

“Or both. Correct. You made something of a spectacle a number of years back, but, as is the case of general public apathy when it comes to the military and the running assumption out there in America that national security is, in fact, ‘secured,’ and how it gets done is none of their affair as long as their lives go happily on in blissful ignorance, you kept up contact with certain men in the armed forces. Most of whom, I need to inform you, are no longer among the living. You were fanning the flames from the shadows, Paul.”

“I was looking for the truth.”

“The truth. You want to know about the truth, Paul?”

“I bet you’re going to tell me, ‘I can’t handle the truth?’”

The Voice turned cold. “That stash you came across in southern Iraq was some of the most virulent bacteria before then known to man. Those three mobile labs you seized? Those bioagents were confiscated and shipped back to America for analysis.”

“For upgrade and potential deployment, you mean. Unless some of those late comrades of mine you mentioned missed their guess, they were cultivated in germ factories in Idaho and Montana—recombinant DNA, altered genes and so forth—and for the advancement of a secret biological-chemical warfare scheme.”

“Of which you and the others had nary a clue as to what it was—is—really all about.”

Radfield pulled on his cigarette, blew a stream in what he suspected was the general direction of his tormentor. “Really? So, our theory that a general conspiracy about a shadow government within our government engineering a controlled genocide program and running experiments on live test subjects without them knowing it is a bunch of nonsense?”

“Not necessarily. What you suspect has been done before. Pesticide spraying in New York, New Jersey, Miami, for instance.”

“Where there were so-called mosquito infestations that were spreading the West Nile Virus? Except the only areas being sprayed were the black and Hispanic neighborhoods? That conspiracy?”

The Voice chuckled. “You’re getting warm. Think of a circle, Paul. Think of how the past somehow all circles back to the present.”

Radfield felt his hand freeze as he put the cigarette on his lip.

“That’s right, Paul. Manexx PetroChem.”

“You’re telling me…”

“I am, indeed. You work for a classified Homeland Security operation that is involved in producing both counter and offensive biological and chemical weapons, the likes of which would be catastrophic if they were unleashed. Only there is far, far more involved.”

“Homeland Security?”

“That’s right, or, rather, a recent and covert arm known only among the few elite as National Security Military Intelligence. Paul, you were chosen, you were groomed, and specifically for this moment in time. Think of it as destiny calling.”

Radfield was inclined to believe the man, all of it. There were secrets, things—black ops—the United States government did in order to protect, secure and maintain the country’s vested interests, both at home and abroad. Even if he were a nonmilitary citizen, reason alone would tell him the United States was number one in the lion’s share of global weapons sales. That, all by itself, informed even the most unsuspecting and naive that America was, by and large, using its vast wealth to either thwart the expansion of rogue nations and terrorism, or seeking to foment chaos and plant their own lackey criminal regimes in countries of interest in order to keep the United States on top of the world heap. At the forefront of that list were the oil-producing nations. Then there were various strategic nation states that could serve as buffered armed outposts where attack could be launched with the quickest of ease…

Then it hit him.

Now he knew who and what the Voice represented. Now there was no choice how he left what was, without question, the hot seat.

“I can almost hear your thoughts, Paul. Play ball, save your family or—I would at least allow you the dignity of making your peace with God.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Go to your office. Proceed with the day as you normally would. You will receive an e-mail that will give you step-by-step instructions on the access codes we require. Your movements for the immediate future will be detailed, and monitored. You will obey?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“There’s always a choice, Paul.”

“I’ll go with the program.”

“Then, not only will I spare your life and the lives of your family, but I assure you that when this is done you will be more than adequately compensated. Both in terms of money, and the truth you seek.”

And he was abruptly dismissed, as the cigarette was knocked off his lip and a viselike grip hauled him to his feet. There was no point in counting paces, direction and time from there on, but instinct took hold. It was roughly a dozen yards before a door opened and the sense of sound and smell began to give him some clue as to his whereabouts. There was a faint but sickly taint of sulfur in the air. There was no other smell like it he knew of, and it was more than noticeably noxious in certain areas around Galveston Bay where the waters around the island city were still yellow from ships spilling the infernal toxin from years gone by. He heard seagulls, caught a whiff of shrimp and diesel fuel, figured he was in the general vicinity of Seawall Boulevard, named so for the ten-mile, seventeen-foot-high wall built after the 1900 hurricane had all but wiped the fledgling town off the map and dunked it in the Gulf. He was three steps, smelling and listening, when a hand he figured could palm two basketballs dropped over his skull, bent him at the head and shoulders and shoved him ahead where he crashed into the soft padding of a long seat.

“Don’t move.”

By God, he wanted to spring at the new voice, would have if it had just been himself he was looking to save. Before he knew it the cuffs were gone, the cinch around his neck loosened. The hood was whipped away, but just as he began adjusting his eyes to harsh sunlight the figure was a blurring shadow, slamming the door in his face. His temporary home, he found, was the well of a limousine, with, of course, the windows blacked out from the inside. Hunched, he moved to the other seat, discovered the driver’s partition was likewise blackened, and, most likely, shatter-proof. As he picked up the small black file on the seat beside him, a voice patched through the intercom and told him, “You are to read and memorize that and leave it on the seat when you leave. Do what you are told, Mr. Radfield, and you and your family will be fine.”

They were pulling away, smooth and slow, when he picked up the file. No sooner had he opened and looked at the first sequence of numbers than Paul Radfield felt his stomach wanting to roll over. He wasn’t one hundred percent certain what they wanted, but judging by what they wanted him to do—at least initially—a dark cloud settled over his thoughts.

Conspiracy and treason leaped to mind.

And which he was now part of. With three innocent lives he cared about more than his own life he was along for the full ride.

Stuck.

No way out.

CHAPTER FIVE

23:59:59.

It was T-minus now, and it was all Donald “Brick” Lawhorn could do to keep the smile off his face.

He was moving for the curtained balcony—hitting a button on the side of his Rolex watch, making the instant readjustment with a quick depression and scrolling reset on the digital secondhand display—when he heard the groan.

“Where are you going? What time…”

There was some purred question about why the clock was ticking backward as 50 flashed to 49.

Pulling an ice-cold Heineken beer from the small fridge, cracking it open, he looked back over his shoulder. She was a perfidious little courtesan, straight out of the Yellow Pages under Sweet Dreams Escorts, self-centered, self-indulgent, as vain as the night had been long. She had served his needs well enough, he supposed. That was when he could get her face out of the coke and shut her mouth long enough for her to stop talking about herself. She was supposedly working her way through some local college, doing porn on the side, telling him with a smirk as wide as Biscayne Bay beyond the balcony she got off thinking how other men would abuse themselves while looking at her naked body, all the legions of perverts and family men out there who could only ever have her in their inflamed imaginations, her spreads stoking their evil fantasies and leaving them suspended in frozen burning desire for her while she, on the other hand, could pick and choose who was worthy enough to even breathe the same air as her. Briefly, he pictured his hands around her throat, staring into eyes that silently begged him to spare her life. Any other time…

He gave her a look he hoped would send her diving under the covers. Instead, the overpaid trollop reached for the tray of white powder on the bed stand.

He slipped on the dark sunglasses, rolled his shoulders, enjoying the weight of the shoulder-holstered .45 Para-Ordnance P13. When she finally took a breath to deem him interesting enough to inquire what he did for a living, he had told her was head of security for a major computer-telecommunication company, and the VIPs he protected were in a different arena than the usual stuffed suits, hence the weapon. That either sufficed her phony attempt to be curious or she just didn’t give a damn, beyond, that was, collecting her thousand bucks.

As he brushed past the curtains and stepped onto the pink coral balcony, harsh sunlight, mirrored off the Bay and the Atlantic Ocean beyond the Art Deco enclaves and hotels of North Beach, glinted off stainless steel. He decided the morning sun felt good, another taste of paradise, in fact, as it beat down on bronzed naked flesh that was chiseled to lean, sinewy muscle. He was scarred around the torso and shoulders from ancient war wounds, and that had, indeed, caught her curious, anxious eye, trophies warning her that she was, indeed, sleeping with a lion.

The real thing.

At the balcony, picking up his cigarettes, shaking one free and lighting up, he stared down at the inline skaters, the lovebirds and the early morning breakfast crowd gathering under the thatched-roof cabanas, lounging poolside.

Oh, how he loved Miami, but it was more of a love-hate relationship now that he thought about it.

South Florida, he thought, was the East Coast’s answer to the shallow, superficial and spineless PC asylum that was Southern California. They partied, drank, drugged the nights away in South Beach. They drove the newest, hottest cars, looking good and outfitted with the latest fashions at the top of the list of their concerns. At the number-one slot of all things vain—they had to be “seen” in all the right and trendiest clubs, these hyena wanna-bes craving to rub elbows with all the vile film and recording and sports worms that had in recent years oozed down here in their silken, bejeweled, perfumed snakeskin carcasses when careers were usually circling the bowl and they had to find a way to keep their faces out there.

Beyond his general contempt, outside of New York City, some of the most atrocious, senseless crimes—fueled, in large part, by a drug scourge that had never really gone away—had become so commonplace they were little more than the most fleeting of sound bites on the local news.

As he took a sudden gust of hot breeze in the face and drank deep, the big man’s words rang through his thoughts.

“Picture this. Five hundred fall suddenly, mysteriously ill. Two hours or so later another five hundred or so are staggering into emergency rooms in yet another city, burning up with fever, puking and crapping all over themselves. Two or three hundred suddenly die. By the following morning it’s a thousand, two thousand. By noon another American city sees it citizens dropping like the proverbial sprayed flies. One, then two more cities find their citizens croaking, and from clear across the other side of the country as walking contagions board planes, trains, buses, or simply drive to the next town. It’s found in the water supply. It’s killing livestock, it’s infected produce, wheat. It’s in the air, the water, maybe even the ground they walk on.”

Shivering, as he killed the man’s voice behind the rest of his beer, Lawhorn became aware the sweat was running off his chin in fat, thick drops. Twenty-four hours. And after that? he wondered. Would there be enough time? Say if even one of them became stricken, then what?

There was international travel to consider. There was the rabble doing the first leg of the dirty work for them. There was the fact that once they left the country…

He stabbed out his cigarette, but lingered as he still smelled her from where he’d done her for the fifth time, mashing her face into the railing.

The evil creature disgusted him.

He found her huffing away, her voice on the petulant side as she informed him it would be another thousand dollars if he wanted her for the day.

Lawhorn grabbed another beer. “Shut up. Get dressed and get out of here. Take the garbage with you. On second thought.”

Before she could squawk or even blink, Lawhorn had the mirror in hand. He hurled it across the room, scattering a snowstorm of four to five grams. She became the perfect nude model for shock and horror.

“Five seconds to beat it, and then I get ugly.”

FORMER LOS ANGELES Homicide Detective Mitch Kramer was nowhere near the full reprobate package the soldier had expected. After the first round of blunt questions and when Bolan decided he had enough to proceed he’d learned something about the ex-cop’s life, or, rather, lack thereof. The subsequent and toned-down Q and A was more to get a read on the man’s character and motivations than simple idle curiosity, since Bolan was on the verge of launching total war. He was still in the process of deciding what to do with the man.

With a few possible exceptions, Kramer’s tale of woe was pretty much the same for veteran cops worn out and broken down by the job. They were divorced, friendless with the exception of other cops, more often than not had kids who couldn’t stand being around them. They collapsed into all manner of vices, and more often than was publicly reported they ate their gun. As the years ground by on the job, their world shrank and grew darker by the day, and a once-decent conscience, beaming with good intentions and pointing the way of truth and justice, was blunted and callused to the point where a man became an angry loner, aware in some way he couldn’t quite define or understand that he had become contaminated by the very ills and crimes he used to abhor and fight. Oh, indeed, human nature being what it was—inclined to Self and its own needs and desires—the soldier could well imagine the eroding toll of having to listen to lies and excuses and the flimsiest justifications and even for the most heinous of crimes around-the-clock. Of being feared and held in disrespect and contempt by a society that was rapidly becoming more plagued by crime and corruption and where the bad guys were sometimes better armed than whole SWAT teams. Where even far too many law-abiding citizens couldn’t care less about a policeman, as long as they were front and center when they were faced with mortal danger or loss of money and property.

Bolan realized he was perhaps painting it with a broad brushstroke of cynicism, but, for damn sure, it took a special brand of man, a unique and iron self-control and discipline and courage to march out there, day after day, shift after shift, year in and year out, and do what the average citizen couldn’t or didn’t want to do, or didn’t dare dream capable of handling. Even with the most tenacious of moral resolve, a number of cops didn’t make it, couldn’t cut it. Used up, burned-out, staring over the edge of the grave and down into the waiting worms and maggots.

Kramer had fairly told him as much about himself, with a look and tone the soldier read as saying that a simple thank-you way back when would have sufficed to keep him chugging along with an eye toward a half decent tomorrow. But, Bolan, ever the realist, knew there were some professions where, if a man was looking for a pat on the back, promotion or glory, then he was in the wrong line of work. What was more—and even worse—he could never fully do the job.

Soldiers dropped into that particular category.

For the warrior on the front lines it was all guts and no less than steely commitment to duty, with no expectations, or they caved when it hit the fan, or ended up seething wrecks of whining recrimination, bitter regret and the kind of relentless self-pitying anger that rotted out the very soul itself.

The world was a tough place, but the soldier was more than acquainted with the bitter facts of good and evil, life and death.

Another look at Kramer, and Bolan wasn’t sure what to make of the man. He was no angel, but he was damn sure fallen. At the moment, the ex-cop was on his haunches, perched up against the base of pine tree. The laminated card was in his cuffed hands. Figure he was praying to the Holy Lady of Desperate Cases, and, for some reason, that alone was pushing the soldier toward a decision that might well prove one of his worst to date.

Or would it?

Bolan left Kramer to what sure appeared penitent reflections and silent imploring of divine intervention and walked forward several feet. Crouched behind a thicket of bramble and ferns—M-16 with M-203 grenade launcher having replaced the HK subgun now that it was all leaning toward open-ground warfare—the soldier gave the lay of the land a second thorough scan, while scraping together the few shreds of a strategy, given the few facts and rumor the ex-cop had laid out. Between the PDA and the mobile GPS unit he had mounted to the dashboard of his Explorer SUV, he found the remote wilderness where the big event was supposed to go down.

To the north, the misty shroud above the snowcapped sawtooth peaks of the Swan Range was being cleared away by the early morning sun. A few miles west, at the opposite edge of the Flathead National Forest, the Swan River ran in a north-south parallel course to Highway 83. Somewhere to his back, the soldier made out the cries of geese, mallards and other winged creatures taking to flight or searching out a meal. East, across rolling grassland he imagined once teemed with legions of bison, the soldier made out the road as it humped up and spined its two-mile-or-so course to what Kramer informed him was a forest ranger station.

The wide, undivided but paved road was nowhere to be found on any map.

Using its own intelligence sources and renowned cyberhacking, the Farm—after the soldier had faxed Kramer’s CD with what were believed encrypted marching orders—believed the ranger station was a front for a classified government facility, but for the life of them they didn’t know what went on there. With cyclone fencing around a squat steel-walled compound, the cyberwizards learning the road was slashed out of the forest and grasslands a few years back by the Army Corps of Engineers, and after Bolan had seen from a distance through his field glasses…

Well, the posted warning at the far south end of the road had sealed it. No trespassing, property of United States Government, and authorized to use deadly force cued the soldier that, despite his prisoner’s ignorance of the finer details, this was the right place where the wrong thing—and what that was remained to be seen—would go down.

According to Kramer it would all begin any time now. What the cargo the Sons of Revelation planned to hijack, well, Bolan could venture a sordid educated guess.

WMD, of some type, and the soldier hadn’t brought along his HAZMAT suit for the lethal party.

And with Kramer mentioning something about two men in black he read as spooks gathering for two recent private meets with the so-called Highest Sons that he knew of…

Problems, all around, but Bolan was never short on the determination, skill and experience to work them out.

Then there were enemy numbers to consider, and which could range from anywhere to a known forty or fifty to another ten to twenty. If there were snakes wrapped in the Stars and Stripes and hidden among the spook convoy that was due to roll its way from the north, if an inside job was about to land a cache of biological, chemical or radiological matériel into the hands of the Sons of Revelation for reasons that included money, twisted ideology…

Bolan turned and dropped a long look on Kramer. The question hung in his mind, as the Stony Man warrior knew a moment of truth had painted him into a corner. “Who was she? Saint Rita.”

A tired smile crossed Kramer’s lips, his eyes telling Bolan he was reaching back into memory. He slipped the prayer card into a coat pocket, said, “I was in a motel room, real crumby part of Hollywood, which really isn’t saying much. I was loaded, as usual, with some hooker. I wasn’t two steps inside the room when her pimp, or boyfriend or whoever, drove a knife square into my gut. Another inch or so higher, if he’d twisted up some even, or ripped down…sixty-two dollars and forty-four cents is what they took off of me. Funny, you know, how a guy can remember something so damn trivial, exactly how much his life might have cost him…or the amount of money he was prepared to throw away on his soul.

“I remember the girl. One of these corn-fed Mid-western blondes who comes to Hollywood, thinking she’s the next Marilyn Monroe, but ends up tricking and doing porn and looking like an eighty-year-old hag by the time she’s thirty. She was cussing like a fleet of drunken sailors the whole time he’s rifling my pockets, pissed because that was all I had on me. Here I am, bleeding like the proverbial stuck pig, holding in my guts, and all she’s worried about is how much dope she’s going to get from setting me up and seeing me eviscerated, all in a snit because it’s not nearly enough she’d hoped for. Funny thing, I saw her kind more than I count, worked some of the worst murders when I was a cop, but when cold-blooded murder is actually happening to you like that, when you’re helpless and your number is up…Anyway, she kicks me a couple real beauts like only a junkie whacked out of her gourd and dying for the next hit can, all that geeking rage and hate. She wants the knife to finish me off but her boyfriend wouldn’t give it to her—why, I couldn’t tell you. Funny. Miserable as I was, how often I thought about dying—you know, Dear Mother of God, won’t you come and take me away from this vale of tears—when it’s actually happening I was terrified and wanted nothing more than to live, more out of my conscience screaming at me that what was waiting on the other side was a whole bunch of accounting.

“Long story short, I crawled to the phone, reached up like my arm was shot out of a cannon. Knocked the phone down and along with it comes a Bible. Brand-spanking new. I remember that because the edge of the spine felt like a steel rod when it bounced off the side of my face. The thought hit me—why in the world do they keep Bibles out for the kind of people go there to do what they’re doing anyway? God is the very last thing on their minds. Well, turned out, somebody was reading it. Out comes the bookmarker.”

“Saint Rita.”

“Yeah, Saint Rita. How it ended up in my pocket, how it was still there when I was released from the hospital.” Kramer paused. “I don’t know how long it was, but I entertained a wicked desire to use some cop buddies I still had in Hollywood. Track those two down. Payback, the likes of which I couldn’t even imagine the Devil himself conjuring up. Then, for some reason I can’t explain, I’m in a library, a nagging suspicion that as bad as my life was it could get a whole lot worse, when I stumble across an encyclopedia on the lives of the saints. Who was she, you ask? Saint Rita wanted nothing more than to go into a convent when she was a young girl, but it seemed her family had promised her out in marriage. She marries, they have two sons, but her husband was murdered. Her two sons then set out to avenge his death. She prayed that they would die before they could carry out their plan of cold-blooded murder, thus condemning themselves to eternal ruin. Seems her prayer was answered. They died, but no one knows the circumstances. After that, she entered a convent, like she always wanted, became an Augustinian Nun. Prayed to share in Christ’s suffering and bore the mark of a thorn on her forehead until she died. Almost six hundred years ago, and her incorrupt body is still just like it was, resting in a basilica in Cascia, Italy. My little motel misadventure was no epiphany, but I’ve kept her with me ever since. I’m not sure I can explain why.”

As Kramer fell silent, Bolan held the man’s look, thinking about the story he’d related, weighing the sincerity behind the words. As much evil as the soldier had faced in his War Everlasting, as many near death experiences as he’d brushed up against himself, he couldn’t help but wonder right then if maybe there was such a supernatural phenomenon as miracles, guardian angels, the guiding hand of a divine force that could hand out mercy to the repentant, justice to the wicked, but already knew the answer. The simple fact that he was prepared to always offer the ultimate sacrifice to keep the scourge of Evil from devouring the innocent and the peacekeepers was proof enough in his mind there was a God, a creator, an eternal judge. When the dust of battle always settled, and the living were separated from the dead, the wheat from the chaff, it was the only concept that made any sense.

The ultimate good was the only principal worth fighting for.

Bolan made the decision. He had crossed the point where he felt it safe to say it wouldn’t prove a fatal mistake. Mitch Kramer was a man in search of new life, who needed redemption, however and wherever it came.

So be it.

The soldier picked up the small war bag, inside of which rested the HK, with spare clips and a bevy of fragmentation, flash-bang, smoke and incendiary grenades. He went and removed the plastic cuffs off Kramer’s wrists, dumped the small arsenal by his side.

“Chances are,” Bolan told the man, “I’m going to need some help. Don’t let me live to regret it. Fair enough?”

Kramer nodded. “More than I deserve.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Bison One to Hammer Wheel.”

The man’s voice crackled around the cab of the Ford GMC, sounding as if it were reaching out from some cavernous echo chamber. He was alone, with only Grant’s voice reverberating in his head, and he wondered if maybe that by itself wasn’t the clue, the opening…

Mark Drobbler kept him waiting, staring out the windshield at the eye of the camera that was hidden behind some ferns. Had the spooks not done their job, he knew he would have been swarmed by men in black fatigues already. Or…

Either way, it was zero hour.

Which was why he found his hands shaking uncontrollably.

He took a deep swig of whiskey from the silver flask, for all the good he reckoned it would do to calm the firestorm of raw nerves and churning stomach. The grim chuckle he sounded against his will seemed to ring back, loud and insidious, in his ears, like a death knell. He was minutes away from venturing into what he suspected was no less than a dark world of hurt he couldn’t begin to imagine.

There were a few simple facts to consider along that line of pessimistic thought. First, he knew how spooks operated, despite all of Grant’s promises and reassurances they were aboveboard, and that coming from a man who had been little more than some backwater dirty badge with both hand and extra-marital tool out. Right. Mr. Fire and Brimstone, always preaching about the end of the world, how the elect needed to get busy scrambling to fight the good fight, and before the barbarians at the gate devoured the few standing God-fearing Christians. All this from a man who had his own agenda here on Earth, and that involved nothing other than big, quick and easy money, so he could coast through the rest of his golden years.

As for the spooks, they came to them, smiling sheep, pretending to be nothing other than simple government officials, but in this case, they came bearing gifts and promising Paradise on Earth—a cash ticket for Easy Street—for the Sons of Revelation. Drobbler knew their ilk. They were nothing less than snarling wolves behind the lamb’s mask. The clincher, in his experienced mind, though, was the fact the spooks had actually told them who and what they represented.

Homeland Security.

Considering what was before them, that revelation was unheard of, tantamount, in fact, to professional suicide.

Or capture.

Assuming they were to be believed, there was the dilemma all of them were being marched into an elaborate Federal trap, hammered and cut to ribbons, and whatever rabble left to be scooped up would be branded as treasonous cutthroats in front of God, man and country. All this before they were even out of the gate. To compound what he couldn’t deny was mounting horror and doubt, there was the attack at the lodge, right before daybreak. Car bombs, of all the maddening mystery—and planted under the very noses of watching sentries—though he thought of those guards in the loosest sense of anything close to resembling vigilant—had reduced to smoking rubbish what was a fleet of top-of-the-line vehicles, vintage classics a few of the less devout were still whining over, demanding immediate compensation, retribution, but, for God’s sake, were up in arms and angrier than ever to follow through with the mission. To throw fuel on the fire of the mystery, there was no sighting, no sign whatsoever upon subsequent combing of the woods and general perimeter of some adversarial force that had up and vanished like a ghost.

To make matters worse still, one of the High Sons was missing, a former L.A. cop, gone to take a leak, ostensibly, but vanishing into thin air.

Hence—the missing cop—was another godforsaken riddle, and this, after they’d been infiltrated by the Feds there was no telling…

“Hammer Wheel! Respond!”

He felt his hand reaching out for the gearshift, but realized he needed to turn on the ignition first.

Stay or go?

How far to 83? Missoula? How close was the nearest town…?

“Hammer Wheel! Why are you just sitting there?”

Drobbler flinched. They were watching. That sealed him in.

He picked up the radio. “Yeah?”

“What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking.”

“The thinking part’s already done. Move out and assume your position.”

Too late, but Drobbler had known as much, hours earlier. Whatever hope he’d clung to evaporated as he felt watching eyes somewhere in the forest. He grabbed up the Colt Commando assault rifle, the small nylon satchel with spare clips, shouldered out the door.

The trail was narrow, but he knew it by heart from prior walk-through. Originally, his role had been that of advanced scout only, which he was abandoning to now…

It was a short walk, and he saw it looming before his eyes, too soon, too sudden.

A beast of burden.

A monstrous thing of death and destruction.

The door was open and waiting. Drobbler climbed the few steps and dropped behind the wheel of Attila.

IT WAS T-Minus 21:48:47 and counting when Donald Lawhorn spotted them, and fought back the scowl before the look betrayed the murderous rage thundering in his heart. They were in the deep back corner, that section reserved for those fools under the delusion a few games of pool would stand them out as something more than the usual hyenas. The doors were barely open for business, and there they were, playing grab-ass with two strippers.

Cheap thrills he could understand, but this little floor show was beyond stupid.

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