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Which left the ATF nowhere. Ditto the FBI, the state police, San Bernardino County’s sheriff, and the other agencies that had examined scattered pieces of the new militia puzzle. Brognola and Stony Man Farm were poised to move against the NMM, but first they needed something to substantiate the “something big” that Halsey was supposed to be preparing.
Taking back our country.
Which meant taking it away from the majority of rational Americans, turning it into…what?
It struck Bolan as a bad idea.
AND SO THE EXECUTIONER prepared for war. He wasn’t rushing into anything, though time was of the essence. That was true whenever Brognola approached him with a new assignment, always an emergency, but rushing blindly into battle wasn’t Bolan’s style.
For starters, he had to cross the continent, and that meant traveling by land unless he planned to make the trip unarmed. Some twenty-two hundred miles of highway lay between D.C. and San Bernardino. Amtrak needed fifty-eight hours to deliver him by train, leaving Bolan afoot at his destination. The alternative was driving: thirty-five hours to cover the distance at a steady sixty-five miles per hour, plus allowances for stops to fill his stomach and the car’s gas tank, maybe a break to sleep somewhere along the way.
In Bolan’s book, the road still beat the rails.
He could be unobtrusive when he wanted to, flying—or driving—underneath the radar. Bolan had perfected the art of “role camouflage,” wherein the average human eye saw what it was trained to expect, rarely looking past a standard-issue uniform or attitude.
In this case, he would be Joe Tourist, passing through en route to somewhere else. If asked, which was unlikely, he’d adjust his destination based on his location at the time, forever moving westward.
Bolan’s current ride was borrowed from a drug dealer in Maryland who had no use for a car these days. The pusher’s forwarding address was the Potomac River, but he’d carelessly forgotten to inform his friends and colleagues of the move. The car was a gray, two-year-old Lexus LS 10 sedan, nothing ostentatious about it unless you peered at the company logo and knew that the L in a circle had doubled the price for a midsize four-door. After Bolan had switched out the plates, he was ready to roll.
He kept in touch with Brognola from the road, adjusting his ETA based on weather, fatigue, construction delays and the car’s peak performance at twenty-odd miles on a gallon of fuel. In fact, it took Bolan forty hours and change to cross the continent, improving Amtrak’s time by three-quarters of a day.
His first stop was a chain motel, where Bolan slept six hours straight, dined twice in the coffee shop and left feeling fit for step one of the campaign he’d mapped out in his head on the long, lonely drive from D.C.
He was supposed to infiltrate Clay Halsey’s private army, prove that it was blitz-worthy before he brought the house down, and Bolan knew the militia chief would be doubly cautious with new recruits after finding an informer in his ranks. Bolan reckoned he couldn’t just show up and volunteer his services. He needed a foot—or a fist—in the door.
To that end, he’d contrived a plan with Brognola to make himself presentable, by fringe extremist standards. First, Stony Man Farm would prep a military file on Bolan—or, rather, on Major Matt Cooper, whose sterling combat record and assorted decorations hadn’t saved him from early retirement after he publicly challenged the fitness and patriotism of his commander in chief.
While that legend was polished and set into place, “classified” but still accessible to determined hackers, Brognola would prepare the scene for Bolan’s introduction to the NMM. Brognola, through the ATF, already knew the name and location of Halsey’s favorite watering hole. All he needed was a group of agents who could hold their own against the target and his vigilante inner circle, until Bolan intervened and it was time for them to take a dive.
Simple.
But simple plans, in Bolan’s world, had a disturbing tendency to go awry. A man living on borrowed time should take nothing for granted.
Assuming Brognola could find the proper cast—which seemed a certainty, given his pull at Justice and the wide array of undercover agents he could call upon—the set itself would still be fraught with danger. And if it fell apart, Bolan’s best shot at penetrating Halsey’s group would go to hell just as quickly.
Anything could happen once the players picked a fight. Halsey’s people could be armed, might even start shooting and hope for the best on a self-defense plea. Local jurors would be impressed by their grooming and righteous demeanor, opposing a band of shaggy barbarians.
But it would never go to trial, if Halsey or his men pulled guns. In that case, Bolan would be forced to intervene, and no one could predict how it would end, with undercover Feds and innocent civilians in the cross fire.
Best-case scenario: Bolan saved the day and was welcomed into the milia’s fold.
Worst-case scenario: a massacre.
Bolan could only keep his fingers crossed, as he prepared for his debut as Major Cooper. He had used the name before, sans rank, but nowhere that it would’ve reached Halsey’s ears. Meanwhile, the personality he’d picked for this Matt Cooper was entirely different.
After his rest, with hours left to kill, Bolan went shopping in Berdoo. He bought clothes suited to a former military man who’d fallen on hard times. Not living hand-to-mouth, but spending too much time alone and on the road from place to place.
He’d found the Harley Nightster at a used-bike shop, spent some of the money from the dealer back in Maryland to make the buy, and he was good to go.
Whatever happened next, Bolan had done his best to be prepared. If Fate stepped in to lend a hand—or strike him down—the Executioner would take it as he always had.
Facing the enemy and fighting back.
3
The guy could take a punch, no doubt about it. Bolan hit him squarely in the face—no swing-and-miss stunt from the movies, pulling it just enough to keep from breaking anything—and felt the shock reverberate along his arm, into his shoulder socket.
Anyone on the receiving end should have gone down, but not the biker-Fed. He staggered back a step, then shook it off and flashed a set of teeth resembling something from a Sasquatch horror film.
“You wanna play?” he asked. “Awright!”
The giant fired a roundhouse right toward Bolan’s head, immediately followed by a looping left that grazed his scalp while Bolan was backpedaling to give himself some combat stretch. The agents were supposed to lose this fight, but he guessed that they’d been told to make it realistic.
Or the big guy might just be pissed off.
In either case, Bolan had a fight on his hands.
He flicked a glance toward Halsey, saw his target standing once again, looking confused as he watched Bolan with the pseudo-biker, doubtless wondering who Bolan was and what did he think he was doing.
They were still light-years away from gratitude, which wouldn’t come unless they won the fight in any case.
So Bolan buckled down to win it, let his shoulder block a heavy right that nearly numbed his arm and darted in below the swing to beat a tattoo on his adversary’s ribs. Right-left, right-left and out again.
He wasn’t Rocky, working out on sides of beef, but Bolan put enough behind his blows to tell his sparring partner it was time to wrap the show. The big ox grunted, clutched one side for all of half-a-dozen seconds, then came back for more.
Bolan obliged him, opening one hand to slash its knife edge down across the hulk’s collarbone. He couldn’t hear it snap, with all the uproar that surrounded him, but Bolan saw the giant dip to one side while his arm went limp.
To follow up on that advantage, Bolan gave one knee a light kick and dropped the biker into prime position for his own roundhouse, using an elbow rather than his achy fist. Before his adversary hit the floor, Bolan was looking for another fight.
No shortage there.
The six remaining Diableros were taking their time, working over a couple of Halsey’s civilian commandos. Two of the others were already down—one puking on all fours, the other struggling to rise from a pool of spilt beer and gravy—while Halsey rushed to help his friends.
One of the two-wheel terrors saw or heard him, caught him with an elbow coming in and put him down. Not good, if the milita man was out and missing the charade, but Bolan had no time to check on him.
The Fed who’d just dropped Halsey turned back to the limp rag doll his shaggy fellow Fed was using as a punching bag. One arm came back, fist clenched—then froze as he released it for a crushing blow, stopped dead in Bolan’s grasp.
The agent spun toward Bolan, twisting in a vain attempt to break his grip, then firing off a hard left toward the Executioner’s head. Bolan ducked, still clutching enemy’s arm, slamming a kick to the weak spot behind the tall Diablero’s right knee. Bolan put the guy on his back in two heartbeats, and kept him there with a rabbit punch between the eyes that bounced his thick skull off the floor.
Two down, and five to go.
But one of them was faster than anticipated, charging like a rhino to collide with Bolan from behind, clutching his belt and jacket, lifting him, propelling him in the direction of a booth packed with teenagers. One of the young women screamed as the soldier went airborne, launched toward her table like an old-time human canonball.
Bolan didn’t know if the heavy who’d tossed him intended great bodily harm, or if he was simply swatting a large, pesky fly. The Executioner’s skull missed the edge of the table by inches, head and shoulders plowing through plates, spilling food and drink into four heaving laps. The young girl screamed again as he rolled, faced the ceiling, then slithered back to a firm fighting stance.
They were making him work for it, right—and making him wonder how well they’d been briefed, going in. He guessed that none of them had heard from Washington or Stony Man Farm directly. Brognola would have left the briefing to a local supervisor—one who might resent his undercover agents being used as pawns in Bolan’s game, while crucial details were withheld from him.
Maybe he’d told them to get in a few licks while they could, or something similar. It wouldn’t be the first time soldiers of the same side came to blows. Fair enough.
Bolan had hoped for a realistic fight, and now he had one. Putting on a grin that would have scared a hungry shark, he waded back into the brawl.
CLAY HALSEY, STUNNED and struggling to his feet, wasted no time trying to analyze how dinner with the boys had gone to hell so quickly. Shit happened, as he had good reason to know, and survivors dealt with it as best they were able.
Anger put Halsey on his feet for the second time in less than two minutes. He saw bikers hammering Mosier and Doolan, while Webb puked his guts up and Gruber tried to get back in the game. Halsey was lurching to join them, get his piece of the action, when a total stranger came off the sidelines and took down one of the thugs who was working on Doolan.
Halsey recognized this man as the stranger who had come in solo, minutes ahead of the one-percenters. He didn’t know why the lone wolf chose to mix in someone else’s trouble, but damn, he could fight!
Halsey blinked as the newcomer clotheslined one of the bikers, took him down and booted his ribs before stooping to finish the job with his fists. It was pay-per-view cool, but Halsey wasn’t interested in spectator sports at the moment.
He rushed the other Diablero, a two-hundred-pounder who held Doolan’s left arm extended and twisted, some kind of weird come-along grip, while he stomped on the shoulder and growled like an animal. Focused on what he was doing, the man missed Halsey’s approach, his first warning a punch to the side of his head from behind.
Halsey regretted the punch, grimaced over the pain in his knuckles and wrist, but it had the desired effect. Doolan’s snarling assailant let go of his arm, spun to face the new threat and was still turning as Halsey let fly with a right to his gut.
And cracked his other fist against a saucer-size belt buckle made out of brass, Harley-Davidson’s logo impressed on his flesh. Cursing bitterly, Halsey lashed out with a kick, but the biker was faster, grabbing his ankle and lifting, twisting, exposing his groin to a swift counterkick.
Before the steel-toed motorcycle boot could find its mark, a fist sailed past Halsey’s face and into the biker’s. It glanced off one mutton-chopped cheek, failed to score a knockdown, but encouraged the punk to release Halsey’s foot. The militia leader hopped clear and found his proper footing as the Diablero and the stranger started trading blows.
It wasn’t like a prizefight on the tube, no Marquess of Queensberry rules to protect either slugger. The grungy goon lunged at Halsey’s unexpected ally, reaching for his throat, while the stranger ducked and hooked a fist into the biker’s abdomen. He missed the buckle, found the solar plexus more or less and emptied out the shaggy snarler’s lungs.
That made it easier but dropping him still took a flurry of blows that were almost too fast for Halsey to follow. Ribs, neck, ribs, jaw and then the Diablero took a dive, collapsing to the littered floor.
The stranger turned toward Halsey, seemed to give a little shrug before another of the bikers rushed him from his blind side. Halsey cried, “Look out!” and saw him turn to face the looming threat before another Diablero tackled Halsey, swept him off his feet and rode him down.
The impact stunned him. Fireworks flared behind Halsey’s eyelids as his skull bounced off the floor. He felt consciousness slipping away, as callused fingers found his throat and tried to finish him. A few more seconds, if the biker put his weight behind it, and—
Halsey bucked and flopped like a fish out of water, pushing with elbows and heels. He nearly threw the biker off, succeeding in loosening his grip enough to draw a rattling breath before the fingers tightened once again. Inspired by panic, Halsey brought up his hands, clapping them over the Diablero’s ears in unison, driving a lance of pain through his attacker’s eardrums.
As the biker howled and fell away from him, Clay Halsey rolled in the other direction, pushed up to his hands and knees, then into a crouch. The biker was tough, already recovering, spewing profanity with no regard for coherent insults.
From his crouch, Halsey launched himself into a wild looping swing, saw his fist strike the biker’s large nose, felt the cartilage snap on impact. Another howl of pain and rage erupted from his opponent, as Halsey pounded the guy’s blotched, bloody face.
He could have kept punching all night, would’ve loved it, but Halsey regained his composure in time to stop short of manslaughter. Around him, the fight was still raging, onlookers still hooting and cheering.
I might as well give them a show, Halsey thought, as he rose to his feet and went back to the fray.
BOLAN PUNCHED HIS THIRD opponent in the gut, then drove a knee into his face as the Diablero folded, riding the pain. The biker’s hairy face felt spongy, but his beard and mustache weren’t effective bumpers. Impact flipped him over like a turtle on its back, sprawling.
Three down.
The soldier turned in time to see another Diablero boot one of Halsey’s friends in the face. He wondered for a second if the undercover Feds enjoyed the opportunity to cut loose on an adversary, virtually without rules and then dismissed the notion as irrelevant.
Bolan was here to win a fight, not act as referee. And if he lost, his shot at joining Halsey’s crew would vanish.
So he rushed the hairy figure who was kicking Halsey’s friend around the floor with evident delight, came at the brawler from his blind side with an elbow shot that caught his target just behind one ear. It could’ve been a knockout blow, but Bolan pulled it, spared the guy from a concussion.
Big mistake.
The phony biker rounded on him, growling like a junkyard dog, and swung a big, ring-studded fist toward Bolan’s face. The soldier dodged most of it, felt something tear his cheek. He gripped the hurtling arm and twisted it, cranking the elbow to an angle that evoked a squeal and let him spin the Diablero like an awkward dancing partner.
When he hit the Fed a second time—same ear, same elbow—Bolan put his weight behind it, making sure he got the job done.
There was no time for self-congratulation, as the last three Diableros rushed him, coming on as one. Bolan had time to wonder if their briefing had included orders not to cripple him, then he was lashing out to slam a kneecap with his steel-toed boot, rewarded by a stream of high-octane profanity.
He followed with a stiffened knife hand to the hopping biker’s abdomen, an inch or so below the sternum. Not a killing blow, although it could have been, but but Bolan’s target might believe that he was dying for a few tense moments, while his lungs remembered how to work.
He was turning toward the last two Diableros when they hit him, slamming Bolan with a fist, a knee, maybe a forehead, as they drove him back against the nearest wall with stunning force. The pair of them, together, weighed at least four hundred pounds, and the soldier’s ribs felt every ounce of that on impact, registering pain even before the bikers started pounding him.
No pulling punches here. These two had seen their friends laid out, and they were getting in their licks, regardless of their marching orders.
Payback was a bitch.
Bolan fought back with everything he had—fists, elbows, knees, a head butt for the biker on his left—but they ducked some of it, absorbed the rest and hammered him with a determination that was almost gleeful in its sheer ferocity.
If this was what they called taking a dive, Bolan was glad he didn’t have to fight the pair of them for real.
Or, then again, maybe he was.
A right hand to his forehead dimmed the lights for just a second, left him vulnerable, but before his two opponents had a chance to take advantage of it, someone grabbed the guy on Bolan’s left and dragged him backward, fingers tangled in his salt-and-pepper ponytail. Squinting through his pain, Bolan saw Halsey throwing hard right hands into the reeling biker’s face, then it was time to deal with number two.
A knee slashed toward his groin, but Bolan blocked it with his thigh, taking the hit, rebounding with a straight-arm shot into his adversary’s throat. Again, Bolan pulled the killing blow and left his opposition gagging, trying to remember how he’d breathed for all the years before this night.
While he was working on it, Bolan hooked a fist into the man’s ribs—once, twice—and thought he felt one give. It was time to wrap this up and get the hell away from Scoots before the next wave hit, with badges, clubs and guns.
Halsey was moving toward him through a crimson haze. Bolan wiped blood out of his eye and braced himself, fists clenched.
“Hey, I’m not one of them,” Halsey said, raising open hands. “You jumped in on my side, remember?”
“Yeah,” Bolan replied. “Okay.”
“You want to tell me why you did that, stranger?”
“I didn’t like the odds,” Bolan said. “Looking back, it didn’t seem like such a great idea.”
“I owe you, anyway,” Halsey said. “How about a drink, somewhere without the riffraff.”
Bolan used a precious second, feigning doubt, then nodded. “Sure. Why not?”
“Okay.” Surveying his companions, Halsey added, “All I have to do is get these guys back on their feet.”
“We’d better hurry up,” Bolan replied, “before the riot squad gets here.”
THEY MADE IT TO THE parking lot with sirens wailing in the middle distance, drawing closer by the second. Bolan helped the bruised and bloodied into their vehicles, reflecting that it would be simple enough to let a pistol do his talking for him, leave them where they sat for the police to find.
Another desert mystery.
But Brognola needed evidence that Halsey and his men were up to “something big,” not simply one more group of weekend warriors with an ax to grind against big government, vague threats of socialism, or a black person in the Oval Office.
For his own sake, Bolan needed proof, as well. He hadn’t signed with Brognola and Stony Man to be a troubleshooter for the thought police. In fact, he’d fought and killed halfway around the world from home to guarantee that all Americans retained the right to curse their government in a variety of languages, for any reason they could think of.
That was freedom.
But when dissent turned into terrorism, it was time to draw a line. And when the local, state, or federal authorities were faced with clear and present dangers that defied all rules and regulations in the book, then Bolan was prepared to try a more aggressive strategy.
Illegal? Absolutely. And if there were consequences for his actions, either here or on the other side, he’d face them as they came.
On this night, the Executioner had work to do.
“Your bike?” Halsey asked, as he gunned the Hummer’s engine, shifting it into reverse.
“It gets me where I need to go,” Bolan replied.
“We’re heading east, a ways,” Halsey informed him. “Keep up if you can.”
“I’ll do my best.”
They passed the first police car moments later, racing in from somewhere in the vast, dark desert that surrounded Apple Valley. If the driver noticed them, he gave no sign of it.
Bolan felt wobbly on two wheels for a half mile or so, then got it back and kept up with the SUVs, not crowding them, but keeping pace. Some kinds of desert wildlife liked the blacktop after dark, claiming the day’s leftover heat, and Bolan didn’t want to hit a tortoise, maybe drop the Nightster in the middle of the highway—maybe finish what the biker-Feds had started back at Scoots.
He also didn’t want to tailgate Halsey’s two-car motorcade in case his target had some kind of treachery in mind. It seemed unlikely, but he hadn’t stayed alive this long by taking stupid risks.
Only the calculated kind. When there was time to calculate.
Scoots was ten miles or so behind them when the Hummer signaled a left turn and swung onto a northbound access road. The Ford Explorer followed, Bolan bringing up the rear. Another mile and change brought them to a tin-roofed structure built from cinder blocks, painted some kind of beige that almost matched the desert soil.
Bolan pulled in and parked beside the Hummer, switched off the Nightster and waited for Halsey to exit his vehicle. The militia chief was favoring his left leg just a little, watching while the others dragged themselves out of their seats, some grimacing with pain.
“I didn’t get your name back there in the excitement,” Halsey said.
“Matt Cooper.”
Halsey’s grip on Bolan’s hand was firm, but not a bone crusher. Maybe he’d seen enough to let the schoolyard challenge slide.
“This is our home away from home,” Halsey explained, jangling a ring of keys as he approached the building’s plain front door. “I guarantee we won’t be interrupted here by any kind of trash.”
Inside, the place was sparsely decorated, with a table in the center of its main room, half-a-dozen metal folding chairs lined up along each side and more stacked against one wall. No signs or posters on the wall to give it any character. A line of plain black filing cabinets stood along the room’s south wall. Two other doors faced Bolan from a wall directly opposite the entrance. Both were closed, blocking his view of any other rooms beyond.
“About that drink,” Halsey said, moving toward the filing cabinets and opening one of the drawers. “Is single malt all right?”
“Perfect,” Bolan replied.
Halsey produced a bottle, while another of his men ducked into one of the backrooms, returning with three glasses in each hand.