Arctic Kill
“Possibly,” Mervin said. “We will act as if that is the case.” He pulled an old-fashioned pocket watch out of his coat pocket and opened it. It was his only memento, a gift from his mother. Or so he assumed. He had not known her well and barely recalled her voice. “We will give them an additional hour. If they haven’t called by then, we continue with the plan.” That, too, was part of the routine, a routine Mervin had spent years crafting. The servants of the Society of Thylea operated like well-oiled clockwork. If one gear slipped or was stripped, another took its place. Mervin appreciated clockwork. Besides nicotine, only the click of clockwork could soothe his mind when it skipped its track. The regular rhythm settled his heart rate and helped him slide his thoughts into their proper alignment.
“Without Ackroyd, it’s going to be difficult,” Kraft said. He scraped his palm across his freshly shaved chin, thinking. Mervin hated the sound flesh on stubble made. It grated on his nerves. He snapped the watch closed.
“But not impossible.”
“No,” Kraft agreed. He smiled. “Nothing is impossible for us. It will be a great day, the day after it is done. It will be a new era for the pure peoples, Vril-YA!”
“Yes, yes, Vril-YA,” Mervin agreed. He wished, sometimes, that he had Kraft’s devotion to the Promise of Tomorrow. But the ruthless, implacable logic that made Mervin useful to the Society also prevented him from fully buying into the Nazi bedtime story that had propelled them for almost a century.
Facts shifted in the Rolodex of his mind. Where Kraft was an engine of destruction, Mervin was an engine of calculation, and as such, he collected facts and fancies with a glutton’s instinctive frenzy. The Society had first flown the banners of Thylea in 1918, envisioning a hyperborean mega-continent of ice-sculpture citadels and pure-blooded Nordic giants linked to the Vril, the life-blood of the cosmos. A Jotunheim Utopia, where gods and giants were one and the same, that ruled over the past and future of the Aryan Race. The Society of Thylea had been founded on the principles of that nonexistent continent, and was ruthless in seeking to bring about their particular melanin-based Ragnarok. They longed to create the Aryan utopia only dreamt of by frantic xenophobes, believing that it would bring a sacred peace to the world.
It was all rot, of course. In Mervin’s opinion, there was no more truth to these tales than to the stories of the Bible or the Koran. Stories told to justify and rationalize a campaign of murder and obfuscation that had been going on for almost a hundred years. Men like Kraft clung to the stories of Thylea with brutal naiveté. But Mervin was a man of logic. He saw little need to waste energy on self-justification. Not when there were more important matters at hand.
In the aftermath of World War II, the Society of Thylea had gone underground, as had so many groups and persons with ties to the Nazis. Unlike those groups, however, the Society had money, and lots of it. Even today it had its financial supporters. And using the resources of those supporters, the Society had, for decades, hunted for weapons it could employ in its battle against the lesser races. It had sought to find the singular spear of destiny it could thrust into the heart of sub-humanity.
And, eventually, it had found something, in a place called HYPERBOREA.
It was pure poetry, that name. And a fair amount of serendipity, too.
Mervin was growing tired of the Society. More, he was growing tired of Kraft. He looked at the big man, his expression bland, imagining Kraft broken, bloody and dead. There was no particular reason for his enmity. It was simply his nature. Familiarity bred contempt. He was good at hiding it, he thought. If any of them suspected, they said nothing.
“Are the others ready?” he asked.
Kraft frowned. “If not, I’ll have their hides.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
Kraft grinned. “So precise,” he said. “Yes, they are ready. The charter plane has been booked. We will deal with the pilot on the day, given that we don’t need her.” He made a face. “She is a native. Likely a bad pilot, anyway.”
“Given the reviews of her business, I doubt that,” Mervin said. He sighed as he caught Kraft’s deepening frown. “A bad pilot is statistically unlikely to care for his plane, or to have a reputation that guarantees noninterference. Neither of those things would be of help to us. I chose the best pilot available. Ergo, she is a good pilot.”
“I meant no insult,” Kraft said, smiling slightly. He patted Mervin’s shoulder. “And what if Sparrow calls?”
“Then we follow through with the current plan. We will meet the others at the airport and escort Dr. Ackroyd to the charter plane. You will dispose of the pilot in front of Ackroyd, as an object lesson, and then we will go to meet our destiny.”
“Object lesson, eh?”
“Waste not, want not,” Mervin said. Kraft laughed heartily. Mervin hated that laugh.
The Society thought HYPERBOREA would mean a new beginning.
And for Saul Mervin, it would.
Chapter 3
Reno, Nevada
Bolan’s fingers scrabbled at the hood of the SUV as he fought to hold on. The vibration of the engine thrummed through him and he felt as if his teeth might rattle loose from his jaw. Horns blared as the vehicle bulled through traffic, weaving back and forth across the median as it roared toward Reno’s commercial district. Bolan hooked his feet into the front grille and tried to shove himself up, but the SUV was simply moving too fast and his own weight was acting against him. He grabbed for the hood ornament and it snapped away in his hand. His arms and legs ached with tension and he knew it was only a matter of time until he lost his grip or was dislodged from his perch by a speed bump.
Traffic whipped around the Executioner in a blur of lights and sounds. The SUV jerked to the side and, caught by surprise, Bolan half swung off the front end, cursing, before he crashed back against the vehicle and regained his grip. He had to get off the SUV and soon. He could make out the thin squeal of distant sirens. The police weren’t far behind. The way Sparrow was driving, he wouldn’t be able to avoid their notice. Maybe he didn’t intend to. Bolan met Sparrow’s furious gaze through the cracked windshield. The kidnapper wasn’t happy about his stowaway. Bolan wasn’t exactly enthused himself. If he’d been thinking more clearly, he’d have let Sparrow go and simply followed. But there hadn’t been time to think. He’d been determined to bring down the last of the kidnappers, and now he was clinging to the front of an erratically driven SUV. If Bolan had his KA-BAR combat knife, he might’ve been able to punch a hole in the radiator, but as it was, he was at the mercy of gravity and physics and unless he acted—and soon—he was going to suffer the same fate as every unlucky insect ever to strike a windshield.
The SUV began to weave again. A four-door sedan was brushed aside in a scream of crumpled metal and shattered glass. Bolan hunched forward. The SUV drifted to the side and Bolan realized that Sparrow was trying to scrape him off. Twisting his head, he saw that they were approaching the Virginia Street Bridge. That would have to be his stop. Bolan felt a twinge of regret at having to leave Ackroyd in the hands of his captor, but there was nothing for it. He wouldn’t do Ackroyd much good smeared across downtown Reno. I won’t do anyone much good that way, he thought grimly. Too much was depending on him.
With a grunt of effort, Bolan began to make his way down the grille. Grit thrown up by the wheels stung his eyes and face. His shoulders and hips burned. Moving carefully, the Executioner lowered himself between the front wheels of the SUV. He was only going to get one shot at getting off this ride. Luckily, he’d been in similar situations before. He wedged his lean frame between the wheels and hooked his feet around the rear axle. Clutching the bottom of the SUV’s frame, Bolan began working himself toward the back of the speeding vehicle, his body mere inches from the street. Exhaust filled his mouth and lungs. His muscles were screaming by the time he reached the back end of the vehicle.
The SUV bumped as it drove onto the bridge. Bolan nearly lost his grip and he felt something in his shoulder pop. His legs struck the street and for a moment he was being dragged behind the SUV on his back. The road seemed to rise up to meet him like a hungry predator, and the hard, hot surface kissed his back. His shirt and pullover were shredded and his body armor seemed to provide no protection at all. With a hiss of pain, he flipped himself around. The throbbing in his shoulder grew and was joined by a dull ache between his shoulder blades. His eyes found the license tag and, acting on impulse, he reached out and hooked it with his fingers. He tore it free with a single, sharp jerk and then, after checking behind him for oncoming traffic, let go.
Bolan curled into a ball as he rolled across the bridge, tucking in his arms and legs. He struck the rail, hard, and all of the air whooshed out of his lungs as he uncoiled. He still held the SUV’s tag. Bolan grabbed the side of the bridge and hauled himself to his feet. Pain sparks burst and spun across his eyes and he felt like a water-balloon punctured by a stick. The bridge was two lanes wide, coming and going. The Truckee River was a placid, dark mirror running beneath it. Bolan spat blood. His lip was mashed and torn, and his body was bruised up one side and down the other. He’d made it off in one piece, but just barely. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a flash of blue lights. He needed to move, and fast.
Ignoring his protesting muscles, and clutching the license tag, the Executioner grabbed the wrought iron railing that lined the bridge and jumped over it. He hit the water feet first, crossing his arms over his chest. The water wasn’t deep, but it was enough to cushion his landing. As he surfaced, he saw a low, ornate rock wall that lined the opposite bank. Above, on the bridge, horns honked and sirens wailed. The police were in pursuit, but it was too much to hope that they’d catch Sparrow. Spitting water, he headed for the rock wall.
It took him an hour to get back to his designated Reno safe house; it was a rare taxi that wanted to pick up a bedraggled, sopping-wet bum, much less one that was bleeding. When he’d finally caught one, it was already late afternoon.
The safe house—located in the Chisholm Trailer Park—was one of several Bolan had scattered over the state of Nevada. During his war against the Mafia, Bolan had been to Nevada more than once, hunting his prey through the neon jungles of Las Vegas and Reno. Bolan didn’t use this safe house much these days. It was registered under the name of Frank LaMancha, an old alias he used when posing as a Black Ace.
The mobile home was a Spartan affair—a rumpled bed, an unplugged fridge and, of course, the armory. After closing the door and pulling the blinds, he carefully moved the bed aside, folded up the carpet and opened the hidden hatch built into the floor. Inside was his gear from an earlier operation. Fatigues, a second set of body armor, web gear, the UMP and spare ammunition, his combat knife and a backup pistol. He extracted the Desert Eagle and checked the magazine. He wasn’t happy about losing the Beretta, but the motel was likely already a crime scene. It would end up in an evidence locker somewhere, unclaimed and forgotten. He could get another easily enough, but like all craftsmen, Bolan hated to lose a proven tool.
In truth, however, he preferred the Desert Eagle. For sheer stopping power, that particular gas-operated, semi-automatic pistol was hard to beat. It could quickly be converted to fire a wide range of ammunition, from .44 to .357 Magnum calibers.
He put the pistol aside and set about peeling off his stinking clothes. He grimaced as he took off the light armored vest he’d been wearing beneath his thrift store secondhands. The material had been scraped from the metal and the vest looked like it had lost a fight with a bobcat. He tossed it into the hatch and went to take a shower. Bolan spent longer under the thin spray of lukewarm water than he’d intended. The water stung the abrasions that marked his body, making him wince. But the pain helped him to organize his thoughts. The Executioner’s ability to observe and recall, even without consciously intending to do so, was second to none.
The kidnappers’ weapons had been store bought. That meant they weren’t working for the government, under contract or otherwise. Professionals picked up weapons wherever their target was, usually from a previously established contact. The clothes had been newly purchased, as well. They were off-the-rack—from a department store.
Everything about the men he’d fought screamed disposable—their clothes, weapons and transportation; all of it was cheap and easy to replace. Even their lives. The German had willingly sacrificed himself so that the Nebraskan—Sparrow—could escape with Ackroyd. That spoke to either personal loyalty or fanaticism. What had the German yelled as he’d attacked? Vril-YA... What did that mean? The phrase was somehow familiar.
He stepped out of the shower, dried off and wrapped the towel around his waist. Then, sitting on the edge of his bed, he used his satellite phone to make contact with Stony Man Farm.
Brognola answered after the first ring. Bolan smiled slightly, imagining the big Fed fretting near the phone. “Striker—what the hell happened?” Brognola asked. “It’s all over the local news—the shoot-out, the SUV, all of it.”
“I got careless,” Bolan said and his smile faded. That wasn’t strictly true, but he saw little reason to sugarcoat the failure.
Brognola snorted. “Bull. They just got lucky. It happens to the best of us, once in a while. What about Ackroyd?”
“They got him. Well—he got him. There was only one kidnapper left. We went for a bit of a drive and then I went for a quick swim. I don’t think they’re planning to kill him, though. Not after what they went through to get him,” Bolan said. He bent and picked up the license tag. “I have something that might be of use.” He rattled off the plate number. “I got it off the SUV they were using. It’s probably a rental, or stolen, but I’m betting on the former. I’m also betting that address is wherever they’re forting up. If you can find an address...”
“I can do better than that,” Brognola said. “I can pinpoint where they are and send backup. Lyons and Able Team—”
“No time for that,” Bolan said. “Just get me that address. I’ll handle it from there.”
“Striker—”
“Address,” Bolan said, cutting him short. “You dealt me in, don’t complain about how I play my hand. If I need help, I’ll call. You know that.”
“I know, Striker.” Brognola sounded tired. “Address in ten.”
“While we’re waiting, let me talk to Aaron,” Bolan said. Aaron Kurtzman was Stony Man’s burly computer expert. Brognola did as Bolan requested.
“Striker, you’re missing one excellent pot of coffee today,” Kurtzman said, and the phone vibrated with the sound of his subsequent slurp. Bolan winced at the thought of Kurtzman’s particular concept of coffee. Swill was a more accurate term, in Bolan’s opinion. It was a gut check to even get past the first mouthful.
“Sounds heavenly,” Bolan said. “Have you ever heard the phrase Vril-YA before?”
“Vril-YA, huh,” Kurtzman said, sounding amused. “Bulwer-Lytton replaced Cervantes as your favorite wordslinger?”
“Bulwer-Lytton,” Bolan said. Suddenly, it clicked. “Edward Bulwer-Lytton. I knew I’d heard that somewhere before.” An English author, Bulwer-Lytton had written a novel called The Coming Race, in 1871. The book was about a subterranean master race and their deadly energy weapon and had been one of the most badly written pieces of tripe Bolan had ever laid eyes on. “I need you to cross-reference that book with any sort of organization. Specifically ones that might want to kidnap a man like E. E. Ackroyd.”
“Seriously?” Kurtzman asked, his tone edged with disbelief.
“Have you ever known me not to be serious?” Bolan asked.
Brognola came back on the line. It had taken him less than ten minutes to roust his contacts for the address tied to the license plate. As Bolan had suspected, it was a rental. “We’re back-tracing the credit card that was used to rent it,” Brognola said. “It’s probably a fraudulent account, but we’ll put a trace on it, just in case they use it again.” He gave Bolan the address and added, “Are you sure you don’t want to wait for backup? According to the Reno PD, your playmate used that SUV to bull through a barricade. He nearly ran down several officers and ditched it in a parking garage.”
“Someone picked him up,” Bolan said. It wasn’t a question.
“Which means it wasn’t just those three,” Brognola said. “You’re looking at multiple hostiles who’ve already shown they don’t particularly care about starting a public ruckus.”
“Then the sooner they’re taken off the board, the better,” Bolan said firmly.
Brognola sighed. “Be careful, Striker.”
“Always am,” Bolan said and hung up.
Satisfied, he tossed the phone onto the bed. Then, without hurry, he began to dress for the battle to come.
Chapter 4
Sparrow stared at the phone as if it were a snake preparing to strike. He gnawed his bottom lip. Mervin wasn’t going to like hearing that his meticulously crafted plans had fallen through. At least Kraft was safely in Anchorage with the psychotic little android and not anywhere close enough to wring Sparrow’s neck.
To say that things had not gone well was an understatement. No one should have known about Ackroyd, save themselves. But someone had been there, and that someone had made quite an impression. Indeed, thanks to the nameless antagonist’s interference, Sparrow had almost been caught by the Reno police before he’d managed to abandon the SUV and meet with the others. He hoped that their unknown attacker—Ackroyd had sworn he didn’t recognize the man—was now just a greasy spot on the street.
Luckily, the license tag for the SUV had vanished during the chase. That meant they had some time before the police tracked the vehicle to the rental agency and then traced the credit card they’d used. The card would lead the authorities back here—to the SunCo warehouse they were using as a base—and to the company itself, one of a dozen Society fronts in the greater United States.
Mervin had assured Sparrow that even if the authorities discovered the credit card and the identities attached to it, they could always burn the warehouse. To Mervin’s way of thinking, most things could be solved by the proper application of bullets and/or gasoline. He was a straight-ahead thinker, Mervin.
It was all about speed with him, a speed and precision that escaped most of the soldiers the Society employed. Mervin was inhuman, and so was Kraft, come to think of it, but those who followed Mervin’s orders were only too mortal, Sparrow reflected sourly, and he included himself in that estimation.
Sparrow had joined the Society of Thylea as a young man. His father had been a member, and his father’s father. It was a tradition, and a good one, since the Society offered more than any church or political movement. It wasn’t just talk. The Society was determined to bring back the age of titans, free of the shackles imposed by lesser, weaker races.
Sparrow deeply, desperately wanted to be a hero. And he would be, if they succeeded. He and the others would be the heroes of a new age, venerated and immortalized in song and film. He comforted himself with the thought of what was to come.
“It’s not going to get better, the longer you hesitate,” Alexi said, leaning against the office door. “Just call him.”
Sparrow looked at Alexi and frowned. The big Russian was a bottle blond, with a face like a mattock and shoulders like a stretched coat hanger. There was more Eurasian in him than the Society normally liked, but between the hair dye and his ability to recite the Volsunga Saga, people made allowances. He’d been a member of some Moscow-based Neo-Nazi group before he’d joined the Society, and the tattoos that covered his arms told a story as brutal as any old Aryan saga.
Behind Alexi, out in the warehouse proper, Sparrow could see the others. They were packing up their gear and preparing for the exodus to come. Counting Alexi and himself, there were only eight men. There had been ten, but their mysterious attacker had seen to Horst and Bridges. Sparrow felt a flicker of guilt for abandoning Horst. The big German had been right, of course. The mission was the only important thing. Their lives meant nothing next to the resurrection of Thylea. Still, it nagged at him. He’d left a fellow paladin—a fellow servant of the holy cause—to die by an assassin’s hand. No man blamed him, but Sparrow still felt slightly sick thinking of it.
“Maybe you should call him,” Sparrow said acidly.
Alexi made shooing motions with his big, scarred hands. “Oh, no, you are in charge, my friend. Man in charge calls the Tick-Tock Man. Those are the rules.”
“Don’t call him that,” Sparrow said.
“Why? He isn’t here. He wouldn’t care even if he was.” Alexi shrugged. “He is—ah—‘tick tock,’ yes? Crazy,” he said.
Sparrow couldn’t argue. Mervin was crazy. Not crazy violent or crazy fanatical, but crazy all the same. At some point, Saul Mervin’s clockwork had sprung its track and now he bobbed along like a crippled toy. He wasn’t a person anymore, but a machine. An abacus with a two-pack-a-day habit.
Nonetheless, the Sun-Koh—ruling body of the Society of Thylea—had entrusted many of their operations to Mervin. It was through Mervin that their will was directed and accomplished. The Tick-Tock Man, as Alexi called him, was the Sword of Thylea, and his word was law. It was through him that the Coming World would be revealed. That was why they had come to Reno, in pursuit of the old man. That was why they had been searching for any word of HYPERBOREA, which Sparrow had been half convinced was just a myth concocted by conspiracy theorists.
But Mervin had believed. And now they had found it—the spear they would thrust into the belly of the fallen world, to spill an ocean of blood from which a new, stronger world would be born.
Nonetheless, Mervin was, as Alexi had so eloquently stated, crazy.
“Yes, Alexi, he’s crazy. Hence my hesitation,” Sparrow grunted. He expelled a shaky breath. Someone had to make a status report. And unfortunately, that someone was him. “Fine, give me the office.”
Alexi nodded and stepped out, closing the door behind him. Sparrow cursed softly and picked up the phone. Mervin answered on the first ring. Sparrow shivered, imagining Mervin’s pale eyes staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring. It really was like waiting for a snake to strike. “We got him,” he said.
“You’re late,” Mervin replied. His voice was a hollow chirp, high-pitched and mechanical, but not amusing. It stung Sparrow’s ears and pride.
“There was interference.”
“Inconsequential,” Mervin said.
“Decidedly not,” Sparrow answered. “Horst and Bridges are dead. Someone was watching Ackroyd—a bodyguard, maybe. Or someone’s rumbled us.”
“Inconceivable,” Mervin said. Then, “Describe them.”
“Him,” Sparrow corrected. “Just one man. He was lethal, fast, effective. Dressed like a bum, but moved like—well, like Kraft.”
“Identity?” Mervin asked. That was how he spoke to everyone who wasn’t Kraft—terse, wasting no words. With Kraft, he was practically loquacious. Sometimes Sparrow pitied Kraft.
“No clue—he didn’t identify himself. He just did his level best to kill us.”
Mervin was silent for a long moment. Then, “But you have Ackroyd?”
“I do.”
“Satisfactory. I wish to speak to him.”
Sparrow let out a slow breath. He put the phone down and called out, “Alexi? Send the old man in.”
The door opened and Ackroyd stumbled through, thanks to a none-too-gentle shove from the Russian. Ackroyd cursed and turned, but Sparrow caught him by the scruff of the neck and shoved him toward a chair. “Someone wants to talk to you, Doctor. Give him all due attention, if you value your fingers,” he snapped, switching the phone to speaker. Ackroyd was proving to be a less-than-docile victim. In fact, the old man had a mouth like a sailor and was steadily, if slowly, tap-dancing on Sparrow’s last nerve.