Dual Action
“The place outside of Taos, where they want to start the Great White Nation.”
“Jesus, right.” It still amazed Brognola, sometimes, all the crap people believed. The fantasies they used to guide their destiny. “Okay. I’ll clear you out of Fort Zumwalt, west of St. Louis, landing at Fort Bliss. That’s at the wrong end of the state, I realize, but—”
“Closer than I am right now,” Bolan said. “Thanks. It’s fine.”
“Let’s use the Colonel Brandon Stone ID, since it’s on file,” Brognola said. “Switch back to Cooper or whatever when you’re on the civvy side.”
“Sounds good. I found a flier at the last place, printed for the ARM. It rambles on about a Day of Judgment coming. Pretty standard for the Nazi fringe, except it mentions bolts from Heaven and a blazing lance.”
“Could be our toy,” Brognola granted.
“Or, it could be crap.”
“That too. Let’s hope the author knew what he was writing, for a change.”
“Still doesn’t help us track it down,” Bolan reminded him, “but if I find someone to squeeze, we may still have a shot.”
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”
“It couldn’t hurt,” the Executioner replied. “All right, I’ve got a plane to catch.”
“It’ll be waiting for you,” Brognola assured him.
There was red tape to be severed and finessed, but the big Fed’s assignment to the Stony Man project included top-level clearance and a short list of phone numbers virtually guaranteed to get results. He used them sparingly, but without hesitation when a pressing need arose.
When he was finished making calls, Brognola sipped his coffee and considered what might happen if his judgment on the mission had been wrong from the beginning. What if Bolan could find nothing linking members of the ARM to the elusive supergun because there were no links? What if some other group of psychopathic misfits had the weapon and were plotting where to use it next, while Bolan chased the wrong suspects across the countryside?
In that case, Brognola thought, he was up one very stinky creek without a paddle to his name. It might not cost his job, but he would find it awkward to continue, in good conscience, if his judgment was that flawed. If it had led to killing and the risk of Bolan’s life without due cause.
He wouldn’t give up yet, of course. Bolan still had a few tricks up his sleeve, some sources to interrogate—if he could find them. Failing that, however, Brognola might need to think about another line of work.
Or maybe he should just retire. Look for a beach somewhere, where he and Helen could relax and take things easy for a change. It would be nice. No crisis calls before sunrise, scrambling young men to kill or be killed at the farthest corners of the Earth.
An end to secrets, as it were.
Someday, Brognola thought. But not yet.
5
Taos, New Mexico
As such things go, the flight was uneventful. No one poked through Bolan’s bags when he arrived at Fort Zumwalt, nor did they question the U.S. Army ID he carried, naming him as Colonel Brandon Stone. The fact that he was out of uniform raised no eyebrows—or none that Bolan was allowed to glimpse, at any rate. The transport plane took off on time and landed at Fort Bliss, west of Carlsbad, on the outskirts of the White Sands Missile Range, four minutes early.
A rental car was waiting for him in the tiny town of Sunspot, and he traveled east from there on Highway 62 until he reached Artesia, then turned north and followed Highway 285 through Roswell, across the sunbaked desert to Vaughn and another junction. From there, the scorching flats turned into wooded mountain slopes, where bold Apache warriors had resisted all invaders for the best part of four hundred years. That struggle had been fierce, conducted without mercy shown by either side.
The kind of war that Bolan understood.
These days, there was a different breed of rebel in those mountains. Tax protesters and would-be secessionists, the throwbacks to a time before law reached the West, when range wars settled arguments and lynch mobs meted out revenge disguised as justice. The new breed went beyond protest to insurrection, waging ceaseless war against environmental laws, zoning, even refusing to apply for driver’s licenses on the peculiar theory that their government had no authority to rule. In such an atmosphere, groups like the Aryan Resistance Movement found prime soil in which to plant their deadly seeds.
Bolan rolled into Taos at 1:30 p.m. and stopped to fill the rental’s tank before proceeding to a diner on the town’s main street, where he consumed a mediocre hamburger and French fries cooked to a tooth-grating crisp. Strong coffee and a slice of startling key lime pie redeemed the disappointing meal, and Bolan’s tip secured directions from his waitress to the rustic suburb he was seeking.
Rebels often claimed they’re “going back to nature,” but the effort frequently included computer access, satellite TV and other modern frills undreamed of by pioneers who carved their homes from real-life wilderness. The place he sought, likewise, was a “survival” compound in name only. Deprivation wasn’t something that its tenants wished to sample in the long run. They played war games in the woods, then trundled back to fireside couches, boozing while they argued over hidden meanings in Mein Kampf.
Bolan had no good reason to suppose the supergun was in Taos, but Camp Nordland was the last address he had for anything resembling an official ARM facility. Assuming that the weapon wasn’t there, at least he had a shot at bagging someone who had heard of it and might know where to find it.
One last shot.
He made a drive-by of the rural property, saw next to nothing of the camp beyond a screen of trees, and so decided to return at nightfall for a closer look. He paid too much for a motel room, slept until a half hour before sundown, then suited up and drove back to the target site.
Bolan expected tight security after his raid in Arkansas, but he met no significant obstructions as he hiked in from an unpaved access road that marked the southern boundary of the property. He took his time, watching for guards and traps along the way, but finding neither. Only when he neared the big house, a converted hunting lodge, did men with weapons suddenly appear.
They weren’t patrolling, in the standard sense. Two of them stood smoking on the front porch, rifles slung, enjoying conversation while they scanned the night from time to time. Circling around behind the house, Bolan found one more sentry there, another smoker, looking lonely as he stood beneath a light that ruined any chance of his detecting prowlers in the shadows.
Only three outside, but undoubtedly more within. And the three he could see were blocking Bolan’s only means of access to the house. He hadn’t planned a blitz this time, but it might be the only way to go.
In which case, he would want to kill all power to the house.
Bolan finished his circuit of the former lodge and found no evidence of any supplemental generator. If he cut the power lines outside, the house and grounds should plunge immediately into darkness. He could move then, striking while the guards were still off balance, slipping in to wreak havoc among the other lunatics in residence.
But sparing one of them, at least.
Camp Nordland’s commandant was named in federal dossiers as Richard Joseph Hall, a twenty-nine-year-old with prior convictions for domestic violence and drug abuse who’d “gone straight” as a neo-Nazi following his last release from jail. His record, doubtless altered in the telling to incorporate a private struggle against ZOG, was something like a merit badge within the ARM.
He’d be the man to ask about a supergun.
Bolan retraced his steps around the house, meaning to drop the power lines some distance back into the woods. A silent burst or two from the Beretta 93-R ought to do the trick, and he could jog back to the house before his enemies recovered from the shock of sudden darkness. Time enough to drop the two guards on the porch before the folks inside could grope their way to flashlights or candles. Once he was inside—
His train of thought was interrupted when the back door opened, fifty feet in front of him, and three men left the house. A glance told Bolan one of them was under escort by the other two. They walked on either side of him and clutched his arms, which seemed to be secured behind his back. The middle man was arguing, dragging his feet, but the resistance only earned him rabbit punches to the gut and kidneys. Grunting in pain, he slumped between his escorts, leaving them to drag him toward the nearby woods.
The back door guard appeared to have no interest in the incident. He stayed put, barely noticing as two of his comrades carried a third into the trees. Bolan, meanwhile, was curious enough to veer off course and follow them.
“I NEVER SEEN A RAT this big, before,” Jimmy McCarthy said.
“You never know what to expect, here in the woods,” Gary Krakower replied.
Through pain and fear, it came to Randy Coyle that he had one last chance to save himself. “I’m not a rat,” he challenged. “Yahweh knows it.”
“It’s a bad idea to take His name in vain,” Krakower said. The punch that followed drove a spike of agony between Coyle’s ribs.
“This is a huge mistake,” Coyle gasped.
McCarthy sneered. “You made it, traitor.”
Coyle supposed that there was nothing he could say to countermand their orders. Someone had reported him for heresy and worse, snooping around the lodge. When he was questioned, Coyle had tried to bluff it out—lie and deny—but a search of his room had turned up the digital camera with snapshots of the house and grounds, strictly forbidden by Commandant Hall. At that point, someone started calling him a Red Jew bastard, and Coyle knew that he’d been lucky to escape the room alive.
Lucky, that was, until they voted to dispose of him.
A dozen skinheads volunteered to pull the trigger, but Hall had picked McCarthy and Krakower on the basis of experience. Both were ex-convicts, with time in maximum security, and they had spilled blood long before they found the cause. Now that their violent acts were sanctified, they had an extra zeal for mayhem, all in Yahweh’s name.
“Stay sharp, traitor,” McCarthy goaded him. “We’re almost there.”
“Came out this afternoon and got the spot all ready for you,” Krakower informed him.
“I’m telling you, there’s been a terrible mistake. When Hall finds out—”
“Mistake my ass,” McCarthy said.
“And if it was,” Krakower added, “what the hell? I figure, better safe than sorry.”
“Better safe than sorry,” his companion echoed.
“And then, who’s next?” Coyle asked, dragging his feet to slow them in the woods. “You piss somebody off, they finger you, and then you’re gone. Remember this, when you’re the one on the receiving end.”
“It’s never gonna happen, rat,” McCarthy said. “They wouldn’t find a fucking camera in my room.”
“It isn’t mine,” Coyle lied. The best that he could do, under the circumstances.
“Tell it to your maker, Jew Boy,” Krakower suggested. “On your way to hell.”
They reached a clearing in the woods, a shovel standing upright in the middle of it, as if planted in the soil. McCarthy shoved Coyle from behind, driving the captive to his knees, then placed a foot between his shoulder blades and pinned him facedown on the ground. A cold blade passed between Coyle’s wrists, parting the heavy tape that held them tight together.
“You know the Auschwitz motto, don’t you, rat?” McCarthy asked. “Arbeit macht frei.”
“That’s ‘work makes one free,’” Krakower reminded him. “And here’s your chance to work.”
“Start digging, rat,” McCarthy ordered.
Coyle rose to all fours, then lurched erect. He flexed his fingers, feeling the return of circulation to his hands. He staggered toward the shovel, thinking he could use it as a weapon, but McCarthy and Krakower had stepped back out of swinging range, both watching him with pistols in their hands.
“No funny business, rat,” Krakower said. “Just dig.”
“My own grave, right?”
“You’re catching on,” McCarthy said, beaming.
Coyle straightened, squared his shoulders, let the shovel drop. “Dig it yourselves, assholes.”
The skinheads blinked at each other, taken by surprise. “What did you say?” Krakower asked.
“You heard me, shithead. If you want the job done, do it yourselves.”
McCarthy cocked his pistol. “If I have to dig that hole,” he said, “you’ll go to hell without your kneecaps. Understand?”
Coyle was surprised by his own sudden, stubborn courage. “Dead’s dead,” he replied. “No way I’m helping you.”
“We’re wasting time,” Krakower growled. He raised his pistol, sighting down the barrel. “Say goodbye, rat.”
Coyle stood waiting for the shot, afraid to close his eyes, and so he witnessed an extraordinary thing. Krakower’s head seemed to explode, a crimson halo bursting from his skull as he pitched forward. Falling, he squeezed off a shot that whined past Coyle with room to spare and vanished whispering among the trees.
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