Fire in the Sky
Page 33
Bolan and Ito shouted their victory, Julie looking oddly at them. "What's the big deal?" She pointed to her wrist-watch. "We've still got five minutes to spare." Then the tears came, as Bolan knew they would. She had just realized that mankind was safe and that she was a killer.
He put an arm around her and led her out of the booth to one of the carts. Medics had already loaded Oscar Largent onto a stretcher and were wheeling him away. "Listen," he said quietly. "You did what you had to do."
"But, Mack, I...I..."
"I know," he said. "You just visited the place where I live all the time. I know how you feel, and I'm here to tell you that you can walk away from it."
"I'll never…"
"You may never forget," he agreed, "but you'll heal. You helped to save the world. You had to give up a little humanity to do it."
She looked at him, her eyes peering deeply into his, then turned to look at Robbie Hampton's body. "I don't know if I'm sorry he's dead or not."
"He was intelligence without restraints," Bolan replied. "Gentle himself, but dangerous to civilization. I don't know what I'd have done with him had he lived."
"There's no law against a probing mind. This isn't the Middle Ages."
He stared hard at the body, glad that the decision had been taken out of his hands. For there was no answer for Robbie Hampton, no way to pigeonhole his thoughts. America was, for all its problems, a free country. And that meant the freedom to have bad thoughts as well as good.
"Hey!" Bob Ito called from the booth doorway. "I've got Hal on the line in here. He wants to congratulate you."
Bolan climbed out of the cart. Julie slid over behind the wheel. He smiled at her. "You coming?"
She shook her head. "It's time for me to walk away from all this, to try to... forget." She patted the seat beside her. "You've done your duty. Come with me. Walk away."
He looked at her, then turned to stare at Bob Ito, at the telephone receiver he still held in his hand. He wanted to go, wanted to let others worry about the state of the world; but that was a reality he had dreamed of for a long time, a dream that was for others, not Mack Bolan. "You go on," he said. "I've got business."
She leaned out of the cart and kissed him then, a sad, lingering kiss. When she pulled away from him she said, "I couldn't live like this."
He took her face in his hands. "I wouldn't want you to. I wouldn't want anyone to."
She wiped a small tear from the corner of her eye, and turned on the ignition. "See you around," she said huskily. "Yeah."