Fire in the Sky

by Don Pendleton

  "Still no sign?" he asked, as they careened wildly, lifting off the seats with each change of row.

  "No... nothing."

  Julie continued scanning behind and around them, and Bolan slowed even more, listening to the grinding of an impaired axle that was on the verge of collapse.

  He stopped the vehicle in a truck lane, making sure there were no lights on anywhere in the vehicle.

  "Okay," he said quietly. "Let's check it out."

  They got out of the Jeep, the machine leaning seriously to the passenger side.

  "Bolan, I…"

  "Shh," he whispered, finger to his lips. "Don't slam your door."

  They stood in the orange grove, nothing but rows of dark trees as far as they could see in any direction.

  The night was still, the aromatic, pungent odor of oranges a physical presence all around them. Bolan listened intently. Far in the distance he could hear the revving engine of a car trying to get out of a ditch. They were safe. For the first time in hours he relaxed.

  Julie sagged against the Jeep, burying her face in her hands. "Life with you is just one carnival after another, isn't it?"

  He moved up close to her. "Are you okay?"

  "Of course I'm not okay!" she snapped. "Do you think normal people live this way?"

  The soldier reached out a comforting hand, but she turned from him, jerking away. "Oh, just leave me alone."

  He shrugged. "Fine."

  The first thing he needed to do was to check the damage to the wheel. Moving behind the Jeep he walked to the closest orange tree and found the five-foot gas jet pole that the orange growers use to keep the trees warm during Florida's cold spring evenings when the temperature got below freezing.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out the disposable lighter that had belonged to Ike Silver and had already saved his life twice that night. When the chips had been down, Ike had been there. Bolan wondered if he'd be able to say the same for Julie Arnold.

  The debacle at the institute had left an emptiness in the pit of his stomach. He hadn't known any of the dead very well, but all of them deserved better than being chewed up and spit out simply because they'd been in the way when the GOG boys had come for him.

  Bolan thumbed the lighter and held it to the top of the jet, turning on the gas. It lit with a thump, the blue-white flame lighting the immediate area like a campfire.

  He walked back to the Jeep and squatted by the back wheel to take a look. The tire was nowhere to be seen, the shreds of rubber lost somewhere on the trip through the grove. The rim was bent, but if he could devise a decent lever, it could be straightened. He'd be able to get the spare on and drive them out of there. But not tonight. Tonight he wasn't going anywhere.

  He felt Julie's eyes on him as he walked back to the trees and picked an orange off the branch. He returned to the Jeep and sat on the ground, leaning against the broken wheel while he peeled the fruit.

  "Look," she said from several feet away. "I didn't mean to jump all over you. I… I killed a man tonight, I…"

  "You shot him," Bolan corrected, pulling apart the orange, "but he was already dead. I don't miss. So, you didn't do what you thought you did. Here, keep up your strength."

  She walked over to him and accepted the proffered segment. "I would have killed him. I wanted to kill him."

  Bolan shoved a segment into his mouth. "The alternative would have been to let him kill you."

  She slid down to sit beside him. "It was horrible. I was in the bedroom, thinking about taking a shower. They...they just tore right through the front door. I...I didn't think, I just ran for your guns, and they were there, shooting, and I...I..."

  "You shot back," Bolan said gently. "Even civilized people have to do it sometimes."

  She looked up at him, the gaslight alive in her eyes. "I guess so," she said softly.

  He handed her another segment. "The thing I don't get," he said, "is the fact that they seem to know every step we're going to take before we take it. We've reduced this operation to the most basic level, cut out all links in the chain, and they still seem to know."

  A look of pain crossed her face that he couldn't quite understand, then she looked down at the ground without responding.

  They sat eating for a moment, Bolan feeling the aches and pains in a body that had taken a lot of punishment over the years. Then Julie said, "What do we do now?"

  "You mean besides trying to stay alive?" he asked, not expecting an answer. "Well, there's a place that Hal wants us to check out just north of here called Baylor Goggle and Optical Company. He seems to think…"

  "What?" she interrupted. "Did you say Baylor Goggle and Optical?"

  He turned to stare at her. "Ring a bell?"

  She nodded. "Remember when you asked me to commit the billboard outside Grolier to memory?"

  "Sure."

  "Well, one of the companies that helped pay the salaries of the institute's employees was a subsidiary of Baylor Goggle. Isn't that weird?"

  "Wait a minute," he said waving her off. "I think, I..."

  "What?"

  "The second series of words in the code," he said.

  "Waterfront legend sea specs?"

  "Yeah. Think about it. A port city, a waterfront city, is usually located on a bay."

  "And 'legend' is synonymous with 'lore,'" she said, picking up on it. "Bay-lore... Baylor. But what about specs... specifications?"

  "No," he said. "Specs is a slang term for glasses."

  "Glasses...goggles, right?" she said excitedly. "Then sea is simply the homonym for see."

  "Right. See...optic. Baylor Goggle and Optical. But Baylor is here in Florida, not in Gila Bend."

  "I'm still hungry," she groused.

  He gestured around. "Help yourself. It's your turn to cook."

  "You plan to stay out here all night, don't you?"

  He nodded. "It's going to take me several hours to fix the tire. I'm not up to it tonight. We'll sleep in the Jeep, fix it in the morning, then be bright-eyed for our meeting at Baylor Goggle tomorrow."

  "Where I come from," she complained, "camping out means staying in a hotel without a makeup case."

  "Well, right now no makeup case is the least of our problems. I'm worried about gas and about us eating something tomorrow besides oranges."

  Julie smiled and stood up. "Living with you teaches a person self-reliance," she said, removing a wad of cash — the rest of Brognola's money — from her pocket. "I never travel light, Dr. Sparks."

  "Bolan," he said, staring at the money. "The name is Bolan."

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hal Brognola knelt on a mat in the soft earth of the begonia bed beneath the dining-room window and tried to repair the damage to the garden as best he could. Working in the garden was a pleasure that he and Helen shared, something simple that could take their minds off the pressure and phoniness of Washington life and remind them of the common bonds and values that guide people's lives. All that was ruined now, the garden destroyed in a matter of minutes during the firefight of the night before.

  He turned the trowel in the rich, dark earth, exposing a worm that inched away quickly to get into the shade.

  "Someone's coming," Ted Healy called from the porch, where he stood guard with a riot gun.

  "Thanks," Brognola said, standing and taking off his leather gardening gloves. He turned to the street, half a football field away. One of his people was waving an arm from behind the barricade of cars that blocked the entire front of the property.

  Brognola waved back, walking to the porch to pick up his suit coat from the wooden swing. As he put it on he saw Greggson approaching, flanked by his bodyguards.

  "Good morning," the man said when he'd reached the porch. It looked to Brognola as if he hadn't slept in days.

  "There's coffee inside," the Fed said in response, reaching out to shake Greggson's hand and lead him into the house.

  "This place is beginning to look like a bunker," Greggson said as he observe
d the guards on the upstairs balcony. Brognola's people had finished the job on the windows that the intruders had started the night before, knocking out the rest of the glass and filling up the spaces with sandbags with cutouts for weapons. "Are we operational again?"

  "Completely," the Fed replied, pointing to the activities in the living room. Five people sat at the phones on the table, while three others sat before CRT screens, working the computers. "I can do anything here that I can do at the office, plus have the benefits of my own security system. We were up most of the night with this, but it was worth It."

  "Have the operatives I sent over arrived yet?"

  "Yeah," Brognola said. "Come on back to the den, we're ready to have a briefing."

  The men walked through the dining room, white sheets covering the scarred furniture, then through the kitchen, a mess of paper plates, cups and fast-food wrappers, and into the sunken den.

  A dozen casually dressed men and women milled around the large, airy room. Here, too, the windows were sandbagged. Two women dressed in jeans did warm-up t'ai chi in the corner, while a man who was stripped to the waist vigorously pedaled the exercise bike that Brognola used as a dust collector. A pool table, which had been moved to one side, held a slide projector pointing toward wall space that was covered by a hastily tacked-up sheet.

  "Is it ready?" Brognola called to Hendry, who fiddled with the projector.

  The man smiled and nodded.

  "Let's get a seat."

  "Not until I've had some of that coffee you promised," Greggson said wearily, then walked to the wet bar to pour a cup from a steaming carafe. As he stirred sugar into the coffee, he called across the room, "What's gotten into Leland? I stopped by Justice before coming out here today and they said he'd been calling all morning, hopping mad." He held up his coffee. "Can I bring you one?"

  "Sure," Brognola replied. "So, our boy's mad. I hope he chokes on it."

  Greggson returned to the sofa and handed Brognola one of the cups. "Chokes on what?"

  The man from Justice took a sip, found it too hot and set the cup on the gold-carpeted floor. "I pulled a DDS-113 on him this morning."

  Greggson looked at him quizzically. "Maybe I'm not up on my legs the way I should be, but doesn't a DDS-113 have something to do with gambling?"

  Brognola nodded. "Evidence has come to my attention of a massive bookmaking operation being run on government property, the Pentagon in particular."

  "Bookmaking," his companion said suspiciously. "You don't mean..."

  "That's right. Terry Richards's football pool."

  "But you bet in that one all the time!"

  "Just gathering evidence."

  "God, and that's right under Leland's nose."

  "That it is." Brognola reached down to try the coffee again. "I typed up the authorization last night, and hit those offices bright and early this morning with a team of investigators. They tried to stop me, but regulations are clear about the Justice Department handling such things. The attorney general had signed it himself."

  "You, of course, didn't go there for any other reason."

  "Well," Brognola said expansively, drawing out the syllable, "if one of my electronics people just happened to be there with the investigators, and if he just happened to install listening devices in key places, I'd be a fool not to listen, you know?"

  "Who'd you get?"

  "We'll start with Leland's personal secretary."

  Greggson shook his head. "I didn't hear any of this."

  "I understand," the Fed replied, then set down the coffee again and clapped his hands. "People! Let's have your attention!"

  Everyone drew closer, Brognola motioning them to seats on the floor or on chairs, facing the makeshift screen on the wall.

  He waited until everyone had gotten settled and quiet before continuing. "You all know basically why we're here, and I'd like to welcome you newcomers. I won't thank you because you are performing the work and the duty of any good American in helping preserve the greatest system ever devised for self-rule, but I will tell you all how proud I am of you.

  "Our operation is divided into two parts: research and observation. You, ladies and gentlemen, are part of the observation team. Your job is to conduct surveillance on certain suspect individuals and report back on behavior patterns. If somebody will get the lights, I'll show you some of our targets."

  As soon as the room was plunged into darkness, Hendry hit the projector switch, a bright white light coming on, spotlighting the center of the sheet.

  "General Mordechai Leland," he said when the general's face appeared on the sheet, the picture taken by telephoto lens as the man was getting into a car. "Primary target. In the top six or seven at the Pentagon, distinguished record, loved by the President, connected at NSC. Also, the operations manager of Project GOG, whatever that is. We want everything on him — his contacts, his women, his eating habits, his phone conversations if we can get them. Next."

  Another picture came up. "Captain Norman Michaels. Leland's adjunct and right-hand man."

  "He looks like Oscar!" someone shouted.

  "We're watching Michaels carefully," Brognola said. "He's been running around, going to the cleaners, the bank. It's almost as if he's putting his affairs in order. He seems, at the very least, to be preparing for something. We're staying on him."

  The next picture came up. "Lieutenant Colonel Kit Givan. Assigned to Project GOG and, according to our evidence, a cold-blooded killer. We're also watching him carefully.

  "A new face," the Fed announced when the crew-cut blonde came onto the screen. "His name's Mark Reilly. He's a Company man, under-assistant to the head of Covert Operations. We photographed him three times yesterday meeting clandestinely with Leland or members of his staff. He is officially on leave of absence from the CIA.

  "Some of you will draw his assignment. For those who do, watch out. He's a strange one. He's got a history of suffering from manic depression, something he feels has kept him from promotion. When he was in Vietnam, a squad he led was implicated in a village massacre in which all the civilians had been tortured and killed with Ka-bar knives. No formal charges were ever filed. Watch him."

  A small parade of others came and went on the screen, members of Leland's staff or outsiders with whom he'd had contact. Brognola flagged them all by importance, assigning surveillance details by a point system from most to least important in order to conserve manpower.

  When the slide show was finished, he said, "We feel that Leland has a network that extends beyond, perhaps far beyond, the pictures we've shown today. We are only able to pick up on conspirators as they become available to us through contact with known conspirators. I must stress to you, then, that absolute security is a must. Trust no one. Send your families away if you can for reasons that become quite obvious when you look around our command post. Are there any questions?"

  "When do we take this higher up?" an agent from Greggson's division asked. "It seems that the legality of what we're doing could be put into question immediately."

  "Which is our problem," Greggson answered. "We feel that time is short, so short that to go through regular channels would totally defeat our purpose. We're doing what we feel we must, but to take this through the system right now would be disastrous. When we feel we have acquired a preponderance of evidence, even illegally obtained evidence, we'll go on to the next step. Our only purpose at this moment in time is in stopping what we suspect could be an attempted military takeover of the government. We'll worry about legalities later. But until then, we're on our own...and yes, I agree that we are operating totally outside of the law. We haven't performed so much as one legal act since this whole thing began. So, at least give us high marks for consistency."

  Everyone laughed, somebody turning the lights back on. Bob Ito entered the room, his face slack and puffy, his eyes tired. He wore faded jeans and a T-shirt that read Nuke the Whales. "We've had some movement from the bug at the Pentagon," he said.

  Br
ognola stood, picking up his coffee. "What's happened?"

  "We just picked up Leland's secretary making an airline reservation for Captain Michaels, for tomorrow morning."

  "He's not flying military airlift command?" Greggson asked.

  Ito shook his head. "Commercial," he said. "They probably didn't want to log it."

  "Where's he going?" Brognola asked.

  "Miami International," Bob Ito replied.

  "All roads lead to Florida," Greggson muttered.

  The Justice chief turned to Hendry, who was still fiddling with the slide projector. "Put Michaels back up on the screen."

  The man started the projector, quickly running through the pictures until reaching Norm Michaels. It was a shot of the man leaving the Pentagon, dark glasses covering his eyes, a briefcase dangling at his side.

  "Oscar," Brognola said. "Go up and stand by the screen."

  Hoots and applause followed the agent as he walked to the screen and turned around, squinting into the bright light.

  "Somebody give him some sunglasses," the Fed ordered, and the task was quickly accomplished.

  He stared at the two heads side by side. The men were somewhat alike in build and facial structure, but were hardly twins. But, then again, for what he was thinking he really didn't need a twin.

  * * *

  Julie Arnold sat behind the wheel of the used Cadillac, trying to stiffen her back against the pain she'd inflicted by sleeping in the Jeep, and watched white, watery soap running down the windows, totally blocking her view out. Then came the huge rotating brushes that descended upon her from all sides, cleaning the soap-loosened dirt from the car.

  Once, when she was in high school, she'd made love with the captain of the swim team as his car was being pulled through an automated wash like this, the two of them just barely straightening their clothes as the red-and-white buffer brushes were finishing up. It had been so many years ago — a lifetime, maybe more than one.

  Buying the Caddy had been mandatory. The Jeep had been so pocked with bullet holes and abuse that they'd drawn attention everywhere they went.

  The rinse cycle came up, compressed water sheeting down the windows, making it seem as if she were driving underwater. She was still confused about last night, still wondering who the hell the men were who'd come to the house. According to Mark, they couldn't have been Bolan's people because he needed her alive to translate the notes. So, if they weren't Bolan's people, and they weren't Mark Reilly's people, then who were they? A third party that even Mark Reilly didn't know about? Perhaps he'd been wrong about Bolan. It was all so confusing.