CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Bolan’s earlier call to Stony Man had updated him on Lyons’s progress and his imminent arrival at Seeger’s Colorado residence. It had only taken a short check via Kurtzman to get the radio frequency of the Cessna.
“What’s your ETA?” Bolan asked, keying the transmit button on the SUV’s com set. He let go of the button and waited for Lyons’s response.
“Bud says under an hour. You?”
“According to my GPS I’ll be there in the next forty minutes. I’ll go EVA some way out, come in on foot and wait for you to touch down. To be honest, I could do with a time-out.”
Lyons chuckled. “Getting too much for you?”
“That’ll be the day. I just need to catch my breath.”
“Watch yourself, Striker.”
Bolan cut the transmission and concentrated on driving. The terrain, though flatter than the higher country behind him, was still rugged. He was guiding the vehicle across rough country and despite its design as an all-terrain vehicle, the ride was far from comfortable. He was still feeling the effects of his wild ride down the off-trail slope, the jolting ending and the crack on the head. His half-joking reference to Lyons about a time-out hadn’t exactly been a joke. A long, hot shower, a meal and a soft bed sounded good to Bolan. The thought filtered through his mind and whispered off into thin air. His concentration centered around the upcoming clash with the Brethren. It was past due, something that had to be dealt with before the militia group carried out any more murderous acts against the American public and tried to spread what they considered a necessary message to the country. The strikes Bolan and Lyons had engineered had started to disentangle the threat the Brethren posed, but as long as the will of their leadership was broadcast, the militia soldiers would respond. If they were left alone now, they would undoubtedly regroup. Bolan was going to see that never took place. If it meant he had to take them all down and raze Seeger’s residence, then so be it. There were times when rampant evil could only be totally stopped by grinding it to dust underfoot. Stopping at the citadel gates was not enough. Those gates had to be flattened and whatever stood behind them crushed, as well.
DEACON RIBAK GLANCED UP as his communications man leaned in through his office door.
“Beller’s caught some turbulence,” he reported. “Slowing him down some. He’ll be at least another thirty minutes.”
“You talked to him?”
“Well, yeah. If I hadn’t, how would I know he’s going to be late?”
Ribak smiled. “I asked if you talked to Mort Beller.”
“Reception was a little rough but…”
“Okay. Forget it.”
When the man had gone Ribak stood behind his desk. He picked up the pistol he had just been loading and slipped it into the holster on his right hip. He turned to look out of the window. Late afternoon. The day was hot and still. No breeze of any kind. The clouds in the sky were solid and unbroken. Ribak was no weatherman, but from what he could see there was no unsettling wind. He understood conditions might change at a higher altitude. Enough to slow down a flying plane? He wasn’t sure, but there was enough of a doubt to caution him.
Since the strike at the high country base and the scattering of the Brethren militia up there, Ribak had been on edge. It was a culmination of everything that had happened over the past few days. There had been enough setbacks to have made Napoleon turn back from Moscow and volunteer to go and sit it out on Elba. All one way. The guy—no, two guys—who had engineered those strikes were damn good. He gave them that. They had excellent intel and used it to their advantage. And they were ruthless in their attitude. No half measures. They hit and hit hard, leaving very little behind that was of much use. Search and destroy. Take down the enemy by reducing his ordnance and his ground locations to rubble. Do the same with personnel if they put up any resistance. It wasn’t the first time they had been in the field. They were running their assaults like they were in a war situation.
Ribak knew, too, it was not their last strike. He had a feeling they might well be on their way here, to Seeger’s last line of defense, wanting to make it a final cut into the Brethren’s belly. He touched the butt of his handgun. Let them come. It wasn’t over until it was finished.
And Deacon Ribak was far from finished.
Something struck him then, making him grin as he took it in.
This had all really started back at Jerome Gantz’s house in Tyler Point, when those two guys had turned up just when Ribak’s team was getting at the information about the diamonds Gantz and his then-unknown partner Zac Lorens had lifted from the Brethren. From that clash the pair had moved on, picking out and hitting Brethren targets like they were toppling dominos. Ribak laughed as the thought took hold. All because of Jerome Gantz. As if he wasn’t being paid enough for his work already. Lorens had been the same. The guy had already been wealthy. Both of them had just gotten greedy. Ribak had to admit that four million dollars’ worth of diamonds certainly was a worthwhile sum to go for. He could almost get a taste for that kind of money himself. As far as Gantz and Lorens were concerned, long-term loyalty to the Brethren had flown the coop. The wealth the diamonds had promised had taken hold. They had gone over to the enemy.
His desk phone rang. It was Seeger. He sounded panicky. Again. Ribak was wanted immediately. When he put the phone down, Ribak realized he would be damn well glad when he could walk away from this bunch of idiots. When his assignment had been outlined by General Carson and Eric Stahl, it had seemed like a worthy challenge. The past months now felt like a stretch in prison, surrounded by wannabe hard-liners who would never had made the grade as soldiers. Oh, they were cold-blooded bastards, no argument there. Ready to plant a few bombs and take out unsuspecting civilians and shout their radical slogans from platforms. But the minute they were faced by a real soldier it was a turkey shoot. In the end the Brethren militia was only good for what Stahl and the general had set it up for—to be fall guys. Once the genuine coup took place, Seeger and his Brethren would be on their own. But only for as long as it took Carson to point the finger and burn them down.
“TEN MINUTES, Doug.”
Lyons nodded. He reached for the hand microphone and turned the dial to Bolan’s frequency.
“Big Bird to Striker. Over.”
“I hear you. I’m in place. You ready to touch down?”
“In just under ten,” Lyons said.
“I’ll take position behind landing strip. Is our package in residence?”
“Might have been moved on. Couldn’t confirm.”
“Understood.”
“We’re staring to descend now. Big Bird out.”
BOLAN SPOTTED the Cessna as it made a wide sweep over the area, then dropped quickly and touched down on the first approach. The aircraft rolled along the compacted strip to the far end, away from the stone-and-timber house.
The SUV’s com set began to transmit. Bolan picked up the handset as Lyons’s voice came through.
“You see us, Striker?”
“Got you. I’m going EVA as of now. Should be at the target in just over five.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
“Over and out.” Bolan switched off the radio and exited the vehicle. He moved into the brief cover offered by brush and timber, working his way toward the Seeger residence and keeping his eyes out for any Brethren hardmen who might be patrolling this far out. As it was, he didn’t encounter anyone. Not until he was yards away from where the cleared terrain commenced just short of the landing strip.
He spotted a camou-clad guard, with an M-16 over his shoulder. The man was lounging against a tree, his gaze directed at the Cessna. Something seemed to have attracted his undivided attention, and Bolan saw him operating a com set. He was close enough to hear what was said.
“I just remembered what you said about Beller coming in on his own. There are two of them in the plane. Something else, Ribak. Neither of them looks like Mort Beller. Yeah, okay, I’ll do that.”
The guard clicked off and hung the com set from a clip on his belt. He brought his M-16 into play, checking the load, and prepared to head toward the Cessna.
Bolan caught hold of his jacket collar and yanked him back. The guard slammed into the trunk of a solid tree, the impact jarring him. Bolan followed through with a hard blow from the butt end of his M-16 to the guy’s skull. As he went to his knees, the Executioner struck again, slamming him to the ground, gripping the guy’s head and twisting it savagely. Bolan crouched beside the dead man and frisked him, locating two extra magazines for the M-16 and placing them in his pockets.
Aware that time was slipping by, Bolan followed the brush line until it petered out, then cut across a strip of open ground, staying as low as possible until he was able to close in on the Cessna. Lyons had spotted him as he moved along the aircraft and reached the cockpit. He acknowledged Bolan’s presence, taking in the man’s battered and bloody appearance, his torn and stained clothing.
“Looking a little rough, aren’t we?”
“You know how it is,” Bolan said.
“So how do we play this?”
“I’ll cut across and around this side of the house, see if I can get inside. You take the left side. Make as much of an entrance as you can. Draw attention to that side.”
Bud Casper leaned around Lyons. “Hey, Coop. Still making a damn nuisance of yourself I see.”
Bolan grinned. “Good to see you, too, Bud. I want you to stay with the plane. Could be we might need a fast getaway.”
“You got it.” He exposed the Uzi Lyons had given him.
Bolan nodded. “Give me a minute or so, then head out.”
He turned then, staying low, and rounded the front of the Cessna. Lyons had made Casper run the aircraft to the extreme end of the strip where a bank of shored-up earth formed a barrier. Bolan was able to work his way around the rear of the solid bank, then cut in behind more brush, working his way toward the low wall that ran across the rear elevation of the house. He eased over the wall and waited until Lyons started to make some noise. He didn’t have to wait long. The boom of a shotgun reached him and a little while later the dull explosion as the fractured fuel tank blew. That was Bolan’s signal to move.
LYONS CUT ACROSS open ground, his SPAS tracking ahead of him. Armed men rushed from a side door, autorifles lifting as they spotted Lyons. The Able Team leader kept moving in their direction, his wild action making the Brethren gunners pause for an instant. If they had known Lyons, they might have expected this kind of behavior. The psychology of confrontation was implanted in Lyons’s mind. He was aware that the sight of an armed, determined opponent rushing hard toward an enemy went against the grain. The militiamen would have expected Lyons to dive for cover, not charge them. By the time they took it in Lyons already had them in his sights and started to pull the shotgun’s trigger, the combat weapon spitting fire as it discharged its deadly charges, Lyons firing continuously. The 12-gauge shots, made even deadlier because of the short range, ripped and tore into the targets. The first three hardmen were scythed to the ground, bloody and dying. The survivor turned to seek cover so that Lyons’s final shot blasted in between his shoulders, the force lifting him off his feet and dumping him facedown on the hard ground.
Lyons took one of the grenades from his combat vest and yanked the pin. Turning, he tossed the grenade under the fuel tank he’d passed, then flattened against the wall of the house. The grenade detonated, the force of the blast bursting the underside of the tank and igniting the aviation fuel store inside. The explosion threw blazing fuel in all directions. As the fireball rose behind him, Lyons calmly reloaded the shotgun, then moved toward the front of the house.
Raised voices from ahead alerted him to more Brethren gunners heading toward him. Drifting smoke from the burning tank blew in front of Lyons. As it began to clear, he made out the hazy figures. Four, maybe five of them. He raised the shotgun and hit the group before the militiamen were aware of his presence, the SPAS booming loudly, the close-range blasts tearing into them with stunning force. Lyons fired on the move, ignoring the risk of return fire, which never came. He had caught the opposition off guard. It had been only a fraction of time but in a combat situation hesitation walked in league with sudden death. The law of survival in combat was to be first, fast and refuse to give any kind of advantage to the enemy. Compassion could come later, if it was needed. In the fragmented confusion of battle the rule was to ignore everything but personal survival. Forget that and the other guy won.
THE CESSNA SHOULD HAVE been empty except for the pilot. The report from his sentry worried Ribak.
There should not have been a passenger.
Ribak felt a rise of anger when he saw a figure climb out from the pilot’s side of the cockpit and join the solidly built blond man.
Neither man was Mort Beller.
“A fuckin’ trick,” Ribak muttered. He raised his voice so it carried across the room. “Hostiles comin’ in.”
There was a lack of immediate response from the gathered Brethren. They looked at one another, then back to Ribak, unsure whether he was serious or simply throwing another of his unannounced tests.
Ribak pulled his jacket aside and took out his pistol. “They’re fuckin’ federal agents,” he yelled. “Get your butts off those seats and let’s go. Let’s go.”
As his command rolled across the room, there was the distant crack of a shotgun coming from the grounds outside the house. There was the heavy thump of an explosion that sent a faint tremor through the house.
“Go help your buddies,” Ribak yelled.
The gunners made a concerted effort, pushing chairs aside and grabbing their weapons. The militiamen headed for the exit, boots thumping on the floor as they crowded for the main door.
Ribak followed but didn’t join them. His attention had been taken by the sound of breaking glass coming from the far side of the house opposite to where the two men had left the plane.
There was a third man.
As Ribak made his way down the main passage, he passed Liam Seeger’s office and saw the man himself emerge.
“Deke?”
“Looks like you were right. We got visitors, Mr. Seeger. We are under attack.”
“No. Not at my house.”
“Mr…. The hell with it. Liam, are you forgetting how we have more than pissed off the federal authorities? Believe it. They are on your doorstep right now.”
Ribak was convinced the strike was the work of the persistent bastard who had been dogging the Brethren since Tyler Bay. The guy, along with his sometime partner, had been slicing and dicing at anything and everything Brethren ever since the attack at Gantz’s place. At the start of this day he had turned up at the Brethren high-country base and blown it all to hell. Now he was bringing his war to Seeger’s home. He snapped back the pistol’s slide, pushing the first 9 mm round into the breech.
Okay, you irritating mother, come see how a real soldier does it, Ribak thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Bolan saw a window that looked ideal for his purpose in the end wall of a section that jutted from the main house. He was angling in that direction when he picked up the murmur of voices coming from the side of the house.
Two armed figures burst into view, weapons up but not purposeful enough to track onto Bolan in time.
The Executioner’s M-16 fired first, 3-round bursts dropping the pair in a heartbeat. Bolan stepped around them, reaching the wood-framed window. He rapped the butt of his rifle against the glass, then cleared the base of the frame of shards before he hauled himself over the sill and dropped into the room. It was crammed from floor to ceiling with cartons and sealed bags. A swift glance revealed the room held survival supplies, canned and sealed packs of food. Other cartons held self-heating rations and drinks. There was clothing, blankets and sleeping bags. Bolan made a quick estimate and figured there had to be enough for dozens of men. Whatever else he might be, Liam Seeger was serious in his inten
tions.
But at what cost?
The Brethren had showed its true colors in the actions it had taken. Indiscriminate slaughter was not the basis for a new order. It had been used before, too many times, and usually resulted in a continuation of those methods. It had no place in American society.
Bolan reached the door and eased the handle, edging the door open so he could check out the exterior of the room. He saw a corridor leading to a wider open area, and wooden stairs led to the upper floor.
Gunfire still sounded from outside. Lyons was doing his part, but Bolan couldn’t expect him to keep it up indefinitely. He stepped out of the room and turned to make his way along the passage.
RIBAK SAW THE DOOR open and a tall, black-clad man stepped into the hall. Just looking at him Ribak knew this was the bastard who had been causing all the Brethren’s problems. And he could see why. The guy had a presence. It showed in the way he held himself, the way he moved. His eyes were never still, and the way he carried his M-16 rifle told Ribak he was no beginner. He took into account the handguns the guy wore. They were not there for show.
It was almost a pity to have to kill the big guy.
Ribak’s pistol was already on the man, his finger against the trigger. One step more…
And that was when Liam Seeger stepped into the corridor, moving so that his body blocked Ribak’s target.
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