Chapter Twenty-Two
"All right, what have we got?"
Mack Bolan settled back into a straight-backed wooden chair and lit a cigarette, his eyes on Lyons and the lady fed. Around them, cheap motel decor reminded him of something from a grade-C movie set.
Lyons glanced at Toby, finally shrugged resignedly.
"Okay. Three days ago I popped a drug connection in Durango. It was a snafu from the beginning, and we lost two friendlies going in. One of the hostiles was the Raven."
Bolan felt the short hairs rising on his neck. "You've seen him then? Before today?"
The Lyons grin surprised him. "Seen him? Hell, I killed the bastard."
Toby frowned. "You're rambling, Carl."
"I wish I was," he told them both. "There's no mistake. I dropped the guy, stone cold. Eyeballed him closer than I am to you right now. I took a couple of fingers with me for the technos back in Wonderland, you dig it?"
Toby grimaced. "And?"
"No prints. An expert surgical removal."
"So you can't be positive," Toby Ranger said.
"Like hell. Did anybody have a problem recognizing him today?"
The lady wasn't buying it. "But it we saw him, then..."
"He's either risen from the grave, or else..."
"He was a ringer," Bolan said.
"Affirmative." The Ironman's eyes were sparkling with the excitement of the hunt. "Brognola thinks we may be dealing with a team."
"What makes him think so?" Toby asked.
"Another Raven showed himself in Germany the same time I was popping mine in Mexico."
"Says who?"
"McCarter. Yakov."
"Did they tag him?"
"Nope. Clean miss, from what I understand."
"How could they let him get away?"
"How could we let him get away?"
Mack Bolan cleared his throat. "Let's start at the beginning," he suggested. "Each of us is here on different missions, but they obviously interlock. I think it would be helpful if we pooled our information."
Toby's brow was furrowed with suspicion. "You go first."
"That's fair. I came up looking for Vachon. His name was given to me by a contact in New York. According to my source, he moved the weapons for an operation that the Raven ran down recently."
"Flight 741."
Lyons's voice was soft but clearly audible across the room. His eyes met Bolan's, and the Executioner was suddenly aware of something there, inside, that had not surfaced heretofore.
"That's right."
He kept the answer simple, fighting down the sudden flood of images. The crowded cabin of a 747, reeking after so many hours of close confinement. Naked bodies pressed together in the narrow seats. A slender figure, masked for Halloween and brandishing an ax.
"Brognola knows," the Able warrior said.
The simple statement startled Bolan, sent a crackling electric current racing up his spine.
"How long?"
"He didn't say. I got the feeling it had been a while."
The lady fed was glancing back and forth between them now, confused, her irritation growing by the moment. "Hey, what is all this? Would you two like to be alone, or what? I thought that we were coming clean."
Her fiery tone provoked a smile from Bolan, which appeared to irritate her all the more.
"I was on Flight 741," he told her.
Toby's mouth was open, working silently, and Bolan thought it was the first time he had ever seen her at a loss for words. It didn't suit her. "But... I mean..."
"It's over."
"Is it?" Lyons asked.
The soldier thought about it, Finally shook his head. "No way."
"So you were Raven hunting."
"Tracing his connection," Bolan answered. "When I spotted Gerry Axelrod and company, I put the probe on hold for the duration. I was looking forward to a conversation with Vachon when all his guests went home."
The lady fed was staring at her hands, a flush of color rising in her cheeks. "My turn," she said. "I've been with Axelrod a while... inside the Brotherhood. It wasn't what it looked like. Hey, I mean he doesn't like the ladies, 'kay?"
Carl Lyons chuckled to himself. "You're serious? The ranking redneck in America is gay? How did he plan to raise another master race come doomsday?"
Toby blushed again. "We never talked about it. I was there for show, a household decoration. When it came to business, he was something else."
The Able warrior waved an open hand, limp-wristed, simpering. "I'm sure."
"All right, Carl. Are we playing games, or what?"
"Go on." The Executioner was not amused.
The lady cleared her throat and started over.
"Axelrod's been moving weapons to the right-wing underground the past two years or so. We know it, but we haven't had a thing to hang indictments on. The SOG's been looking at him lately, after all the coverage his Brotherhood's been getting in the media. We'd like to take him down a peg or two before the stakes get any higher."
"Is there anybody on it with you?" Bolan asked.
She shook her head. "I'm it... reporting back through channels, natch. The brass thought Axelrod might get suspicious if he saw too many unfamiliar faces all at once."
"The bureau must have people in his family."
The lady shrugged. "I guess. It's need-to-know so far. Whatever, they've been getting feedback after the event. Hal wanted some preventive medicine before the fever spreads."
"I guess it's spreading anyway."
"In spades." The lady sounded tense again. "You know the score. These bastards feed on misery. A father out of work. A family looking at eviction somewhere down the road. It's nice to have a scapegoat and some easy answers. Blame the Jews, the Democrats, the PTA."
And Bolan knew the story, sure. It was the classic line employed with fine impartiality by zealots of the left and right, recruiting cannon fodder for their private wars by playing on the weakness of their fellow man. Appeal to greed or bigotry or sheer naivete, but make the sale at any cost. And once you had your sucker on the line, committed to a course of action he would never even contemplate in saner times, you wrapped him up in guilt, indebtedness, intimidation — anything it took to keep him loyal and close at hand. It was a classic, sure, and it was rarely known to fail.
"Vachon," he prompted her.
"Okay. The Canadian was an arms connection — one of Gerry's favorites, I think. He had some kind of in with European sources, something hot. I never got the details, but I gathered that the Brotherhood was sitting on a mother lode of automatic weapons. I mean, mass-production time."
The Executioner recalled Vachon's last words, the whispered name of Steyr. A town in Austria... and more. A multinational concern that had been turning out the latest word in light, efficient automatic arms the past few years.
An in at Steyr would be the mother lode, indeed. Mack Bolan didn't even want to think about those sleek, sophisticated weapons in the hands of Gerry Axelrod and his affiliated brothers of the blood. He didn't want to think about it, and then again, he had no choice.
He turned to Lyons. "Fill me in about Durango."
"Sure." The Able warrior took a moment to collect his thoughts. "We had a rumble out of DEA that major moves were in the works to tap a brand-new source of heroin. Unlimited supply, improved delivery, the works. The agency had lost two men by the time I got the tag. Our rumbles were that the delivery was being made to Axelrod."
"Say what?"
The lady fed was clearly startled, craning forward in her chair as if to spring at Lyons, wrench the story from his throat before he had a chance to speak. The Ironman frowned.
"You didn't know that he was into chemicals?"
"Aside from the explosive kind, I didn't have a clue."
"Well, there's your need-to-know."
"Goddamn it!"
Bolan kept his eyes on Lyons. "Go ahead."
"Where was I? Oh, Durango, right. Well, anyway, I made con
nections with some local eyes, we made the pop... and in the middle of it all, we find a Raven on the menu."
Bolan's mind was racing, feeling out the different possibilities, the implications of this new intelligence. He didn't like the rapid, dizzy changes of direction, not at all.
"You mentioned Germany."
Lyons nodded. "This is straight from Katz and McCarter. They were sitting on some Baader-Meinhof types around the time that I was in Durango. Someplace south of Munich, I forget the name. Whatever, when they sprang the trap they found a Raven in it with the other bastards. Bastard got away, but Katz was sure he made the face."
"And that was — what? — how long ago?"
"Four days."
"So Mr. Germany had time to catch a plane."
"I guess. Hell, yeah. So what?"
The Executioner stubbed out his cigarette. "I'd like to know how many men we're dealing with."
"It couldn't hurt."
"You got an eyeball on our man today?" Bolan asked.
"Damn straight. That's why I opened up. I didn't want the bastard shagging out before I had a chance to scorch his tail."
"How did he stack against the Raven in Durango?"
Lyons thought about it for a moment. "Close," he said at last. "I mean, I made him right away... but it was at a distance, right? If I could get a look up close..."
"The bottom line."
"Okay. Let's say they'd pass for twins...but not identical. You follow?"
Bolan followed, sure — and he was far from happy with the ultimate direction that his mind was traveling.
"Would someone kindly tell me what the hell is going on?"
"A ringer," Bolan answered simply. "Could be more than one. There isn't just a Raven anymore."
She took it in, a hint of color fading from her cheeks as she ran through the gruesome possibilities.
"But why?"
"You know the why," he told her. "Optimum mobility and maximum exposure. Ask your average citizen to name a terrorist, and nine times out of ten he'll name the Raven. Julio Ramirez. He's a legend in his field. The perfect bogeyman."
"He's indestructible," Lyons added, with a hint of wonder in his voice. "It means there's no way we can tag the guy, not really. Hell, the real Ramirez may be dead already... if there ever was a real Ramirez."
"Jesus," Toby muttered, "this is something else."
"In spades," the Executioner replied. "A custom-tailored monster for the media. They eat him up and keep on coming back for more."
Both Lyons and the lady noted bitterness in Bolan's voice. They let it go.
"There could be half a dozen Ravens," Toby said, incredulous. "There could be twenty, or..."
"There could be hundreds," Lyons finished for her. "Moscow could be mass-producing them by now. It makes the goddamn guy immortal."
"No. Not yet." The grim resolve in Bolan's tone demanded full attention. "He's been too sporadic up to now; let's call it too disorganized. I'd say it's possible the ringers are a relatively new idea."
"Which means that we could head the bastards off, provided we knew where to start."
Bolan smiled at Lyons's new enthusiasm.
"Well, we've got a start," he told them, "thanks to Paul Vachon."
"How's that?"
"The Raven was accepting payment on the deal with Axelrod. I'd say that indicates direct involvement with supply."
"Yeah, so what?" Lyons said.
"So, we already know his source."
"The Steyr plant?"
"Uh-huh," Bolan replied, smiling thinly, the expression totally devoid of warmth.
"Now wait a second," Toby cautioned, glancing anxiously from one determined warrior to the other.
Lyons grinned. "I understand Bavaria is nice this time of year."
The Executioner was way ahead of him already, scanning through the moves that would be necessary, calculating risks before he put the wheels in motion. Finally, he knew it made no difference in the end. No matter what the cost, no matter what the dangers, he was totally committed to the chase. He would pursue the Raven now because he had to, right. He simply had no other choice.
The bastard had humiliated Bolan, made him play the silent, helpless witness to atrocity. At any other time, in any other circumstances, Bolan would have seen him dead before the drama had progressed beyond the first, abortive stages.
Except that there had been no other circumstance. Bolan had been dealt a losing hand by fate, the universe, whatever. He had played the only cards he had, and now he was compelled to seek a rematch, with the odds presumably more equal the second time around.
Presumably.
But he had never counted on a second Raven, or a third, a fourth. How many were there, waiting for him, circling the globe like plague birds, seeking helpless prey? Was there a chance that he could ever bag them all? That he could even hope to find the Raven who had led the raid against Flight 741?
The bastard might be dead already, Bolan knew. Carl Lyons might have tagged him in Durango, making ail of this a wasted exercise.
It didn't matter, Bolan realized, if he should ever find his Raven. By definition, they were all his enemies, and he was pledged to take them out by any means at his disposal. It was not a personal vendetta, after all; the soldier knew that hate could only fuel a righteous flame so long. Beyond that point some other fuel was needed.
Dedication.
And heart.
In Pittsfield, when his family lay in ruins at his feet, the Executioner had pledged undying enmity against the Mafia... but hatred had not carried him through more than two-score winning battles with the syndicate. In time, his loss had been absorbed, preempted by the pain and suffering of victims everywhere, his fight becoming every man's, his sacrifice a universal offering to gods unknown. His war did not revolve around a single incident, a single act of barbarism. He was waging war against the cannibals, for life, and he would still have been compelled to hunt the Ravens, even if he had been unaware of the atrocities aboard Flight 741.
But Bolan was aware, and he would not forget while life remained. His hate was not the driving force behind his war, by any means, but it would help to keep him warm, to steel his nerves and guide his hand when it was time to strike.
And hatred had its uses. It could be very therapeutic, in its way.
He smiled again, and there was warmth behind the Executioner's expression now, a hidden fire.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The plan had been simplicity itself... and it had come about by accident. The individuals who played a relatively minor role in its conception were catapulted to the status of superior tacticians in the secret war against the West.
Their contribution was regarded as significant and they were rewarded with prestige, a kind of covert fame that was the best they could hope for in the circumstances. None of those were as startlingly successful, as "inspired" as the original... but then, they were not provided with another Julio Ramirez.
No one seriously thought the Venezuelan was special. He showed a certain recklessness in college, cutting classes, disregarding the instructions of the party when it suited him, applying too much energy to the pursuit of women and a swinging bourgeois life-style. Some within the party apparatus were prepared to write him off, convinced that further schooling in the arts of war would be a waste of time, but they were overruled — by chance, coincidence, what-have-you. Being communists, they could not call it fate, although a few would happily have credited — or blamed — the gods in days to come.
Ramirez did not seem to be a natural for covert training. The pretentious middle name, Ilich failed to move the officers of the KGB. They saw through such transparent stratagems at once, and they were not deceived. The young man's record was average, at best, but his Hispanic heritage might count for something, after all.
The training camps were swamped with Palestinians, a scattering of Germans, Irish, Japanese — but in the Western Hemisphere, despite the Cuban revolution, terrorism lagged far
behind the times. Conservative regimes held sway from Mexico to Argentina; Sandinistas, Tupemaros, Salvador Allende and the rest were still unknown outside their limited preserves. The memory of Che Guevara, cherished by assorted unwashed radicals in the United States, was scorned within his native land.
Ramirez, and perhaps a dozen others like him, were accepted as apprentice terrorists to meet a quota, chosen on the basis of their Hispanic names and olive skins to meet a need at Dzerzhinsky Square. Ideally, they were to be the vanguard of a revolutionary movement in the West. If nothing else, their actions might inflate the withered ranks of Hispanic revolutionaries toward the day when South America would rise in arms against her neighbor to the north.
In training, Julio Ramirez revealed a certain unexpected skill with weapons and explosives, taking to the theater of violence avidly, but he was still no more impressive than the average fedayeen. His background, staunchly upper middle class, was a solid strike against him in the camps, and many of the terrorists in training bitterly resented him from the beginning. Still, his progress was adequate, and he was posted to a fighting cell in Paris with the expectation that his Latin charm would serve the movement in peripheral capacities. He was a sort of flesh-and-blood recruiting poster in those early days, but circumstances swiftly got the better of intended strategies.
The Israeli Wrath of God chose Easter 1973 to execute Amal Haddad in Paris, and the sudden vacancy in leadership kindled a new ambition in the Venezuelan's mind. And if the KGB was not precisely overjoyed by Julio's emergence at the forefront of an armed commando squad, it deigned to make the best of an uncomfortable situation.
Julio Ramirez was a wild card from the outset, choosing targets on his own, ignoring the "suggestions" of his KGB control more often than he followed orders. Still, where terrorism was concerned, there could be no such thing as bad publicity; each bombing, each shooting on the street, discredited the Western governments and left them looking completely ineffectual. It was touch and go in 1973 after the shoot-out in Rue Toullier, but the confrontation with security police was a blessing in disguise.
It was only then, with two policemen and a paid informant dead, that members of the media singled out Ramirez for special treatment in the headlines. He had been a nameless "suspect" in the past, but he was guilty now, and any killer of policemen merited a special scorn. He was "the Raven" now — a scavenger of carrion — in headline stories and on television. Julio was angered briefly by the nickname, but in time he came to see how it might work to his advantage.
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