Rivera smiled. He was not going anywhere just yet. The jackals might be hungry, snapping at his heels, but he had always managed to outsmart the competition, and he was not finished yet. One man could not defeat him, not when he had dared so much and come so far alone. It was unthinkable.
Possibly the gringo bastard was dead already. If he was, and if Rivera could not find his body in the desert, then the problem would remain unsolved. He might be forced to fabricate an enemy, provide a straw man for display to his competitors, to show results. If worse came to worst, he would not mind the lie. Not if it helped to save his empire, everything he had built and everything he had become.
But, then, the worst of it would be not knowing. If he did not see the body for himself, if he could not reach out and touch the lifeless flesh, how could he ever rest in peace? How could he be certain that the warrior wouldn't come back, this time to kill Rivera in the very heart of his estancia, his castle?
Scowling, he admitted to himself that there could be no substitute for certainty. Whatever he might tell his competition, and whoever's corpse he might display for their inspection, he would have to know and be convinced that it was settled with this stranger who appeared from nowhere, striking like the wrath of God. Luis Rivera had no faith in anyone or anything outside himself; he was not part of an organized religion, viewing it as a placebo for the peasant class. No Marxist, he was still convinced that fat cats and politicos supported different churches as a method of controlling superstitious millions, falling back upon the name of God whenever man proved frail and fallible. It was a crutch he had never leaned upon.
There were several drug traffickers active along the Mexican-U.S. border and he wondered why the solitary warrior had selected him. He wondered how the man had scouted his defenses, how he knew precisely when the merchandise would be available and where it would be stored. Sufficient mysteries to baffle any man, and Rivera would never know the answers if he didn't find his enemy.
It would be best, of course, if he could take the man alive. Interrogation might be fruitful, and it certainly would entertain the troops. However, the odds were long against securing a prisoner, and if he had to settle for a corpse, he would be satisfied. As long as he found something, anything, to prove his enemy was dead beyond a shadow of a doubt.
The gringo's death was not sufficient in itself, however. If he spilled his guts to the authorities before he died, Rivera might have to cope with bad publicity and pressure from the States, outraged denials of complicity from Mexican officials on the pad. It would not matter, in the long run, if the federales raided him or not. Publicity itself was fatal, in sufficient quantities, and while the spotlight focused on Rivera, his competitors were free to move against him from the shadows, gobbling up his customers, his territories.
There were precautions to be taken. At home, the cleanup crew would have removed all traces of narcotics from the ranch by now. The bodies of his soldiers would be tucked away for later burial, well hidden in the event of a police search. The damage to his property could be described as accidental, even written off against his fire insurance with a little sleight of hand, but none of that concerned Rivera now.
His enemy was still at large, most likely still alive, and he remained a liability until his head was safely in the bag. As for that head, Luis Rivera would be happy to assist in its removal.
"What is the nearest town?" he asked Camacho, certain that he knew the answer even as he spoke.
"It will be Santa Rosa, jefe."
"Take one car north to watch the road beyond, and leave another in the town itself. But be discreet. I want no contact with the enemy until we are prepared."
"It will be done."
"Remain in contact via radio. I will be waiting two miles south of Santa Rosa to receive your news."
"Si, jefe."
He cast a final glance at the Mercedes.
"Burn the car before you leave. It must appear to be abandoned by a car thief who desired to leave no clues."
Camacho hustled off to do his master's bidding, and Rivera ambled back in the direction of the highway, where his convoy waited. Stone-faced gunners followed him with eyes that showed no trace of human feeling.
They were close. He felt it in his bones as some men feel cold weather in the offing. Soon the prey would fall into his hands and he would make things right again. He would have justice for himself, and for the wrongs he had suffered at a stranger's hands. With any luck at all he would find out who was behind the raid, and his retribution could include the brains behind the gun.
But first he had to find the warrior, run him to ground before the man could report on Rivera's operation. Time was of the essence, and instinct told him that the answer to his problems would be waiting for him when he got to Santa Rosa. Fortunately he was represented in the town. If the stranger tried to hide there, he would know it, and his wrath would fall on anyone who helped his enemies.
Rivera settled back into his padded seat and smiled. It had the makings of a perfect day.
3
Santa Rosa's main street was deserted as Mack Bolan made his way along the sidewalk, concentrating on each step, determined not to stumble. He looked strange enough already, with a full day's growth of beard, the rumpled, dusty trench coat covering his skinsuit. He could not afford to stagger like a wino coming off a bender, drawing more attention to himself from any casual passersby.
As if in answer to his thoughts, an ancient pickup turned the corner behind him, grumbling along the curbside lane and gathering momentum, heading out of town. The driver did not seem to notice Bolan as he passed, but half a block beyond he did a double take, examining the grimy stranger in his rearview mirror as he pulled away. Discreetly, trying not to lose it, Bolan turned to casually inspect a menu mounted in the diner's plate-glass window.
Santa Rosa was the kind of town that noticed strangers. Given its location and its size, the soldier could not have expected otherwise. The farmer, cowboy, or whoever, could not double back, but he would file the sighting, store it for future reference, and he would doubtless mention it to friends throughout the day. "A stranger down on Main Street? Half-past six? Well, I declare."
And it would rest there, unless some incident revitalized those memories. Unless some other strangers happened to ask about a tall man, sickly looking, traveling on foot. The farmer and his cronies might or might not answer, but their silence, if they chose to keep the secret to themselves, might tell the hunters all they had to know.
He wondered how much effort it would take to seal off a town like Santa Rosa from the outside world. The phone lines would be easy, and the traffic shouldn't be much problem either. One or two cars on the road in each direction, letting everybody in, nobody out. It would be safe to assume that the roadblocks would not be swamped with cars. Communication via radio might be another story; if there was a marshal's office or a tow truck operator with a CB, isolating the town would be more difficult. A Mayday message might be broadcast to surrounding towns before the hunters could complete their sweep. There might be opportunities to reach the county sheriff, or the state police.
His mind was drifting, and the warrior brought it roughly back to here and now. His first priority was the location of a medic. Failing that, he had to get inside the pharmacy, stock up on some essentials, and get out again before he was discovered. Bolan had no cash and no prescriptions for the items that he needed; neither could he wait for normal business hours if he planned to make his getaway with minimal endangerment of innocent civilians.
Medical attention, wheels, escape. They were his top priorities, but Bolan liked to hedge his bets. The service station wasn't open, but its pay phone was in working order and he was relieved to find that he could dial the operator without depositing a coin. The nasal voice verified his "Michael Beeler" credit card and took the Southern California number, asking him to hold.
The calling card was perfectly legitimate, aside from the employment of an alias to cover Bolan'
s tracks. The billings were dispatched each month to a post-office box in Los Angeles, from which they were routinely forwarded to yet another box in San Diego. No one ever called upon the L.A. box, and no one ever would. The semiannual rent was paid by mail, and it existed only for the purpose of receiving monthly bills. A snoopy sort could hang around the post office for months on end and never see a soul approach Box 2035.
The number Bolan had requested was another cutout, shunting calls from a studio apartment in San Ysidro to Johnny Bolan's home and headquarters at Strongbase One, in San Diego. The apartment, rented month-to-month by "Joseph Breen" was vacant except for a card table, telephone and automatic switching device. The remote-controlled passover occurred on the third ring; the fourth would be answered by Johnny, or, if he was out, by a tape that would take the message. Johnny checked in each hour, on the half, when he was not at home. That meant another fifty minutes if they missed connections now, but it was still the best the Executioner could do.
He wanted John to have some grasp of what was happening, in case it went sour in Santa Rosa. He had briefed his brother on the mission generally, but John was not personally involved. It was a one-man show, which had gone suddenly, perhaps disastrously, wrong. But if Mack Bolan was about to buy the farm in Santa Rosa, he would not go out without alerting others to his fate, preparing a surprise for the Rivera forces somewhere down the road.
Three rings. He waited for the fourth and wondered whether he would hear his brother's voice live or the recorded version.
"Yes?"
Relief hit Bolan like a second wind.
"Is this the Blaylock residence?" he asked, allowing Johnny time to scan the oscillator and confirm his voice-print.
"Yes," the younger Bolan replied, "but Mr. Blaylock isn't in just now. Is there a message?"
"No, I need to speak with him directly."
A muted tone on the line announced completion of the voiceprint scan, and Johnny dropped his tone of stiff formality.
"You're late," he said. "Is something wrong?"
"I ran into a problem on delivery."
"Explain."
"The client's personal security was better than anticipated. I'm a little winded, but I'm pulling out as soon as I can rent a car."
"Where are you?"
"Santa Rosa. It's a pit stop just across the border."
"I can find it."
"No!" The soldier's voice was rigid now, intense. "It's not a family matter. I'll be home before you know it."
"How the hell..."
"Just listen. In case there's some delay, our friend in Wonderland may have an interest in establishing relations with the client. If you haven't seen me by tomorrow, pass the case files on to him for further action."
"Damn it, Mack..."
He saw the scout car coming, recognized it immediately for what it was, and cradled the receiver instantly, cutting off Johnny's protest. Still too far to count the gunners, but it didn't matter. The driver was cruising slowly, taking his time while his passengers rubbernecked, scanning the storefronts and side streets for any sign of life. Two blocks away and closing. Bolan knew that it was time to move.
He ducked behind the service station, moving out as rapidly as possible. He knew they hadn't seen him yet, but they were almost to the end of Main Street, and soon they would begin to section off the side streets, poking into alleyways and yards. He could elude them for a time, but Bolan did not have the strength for a protracted game of cat and mouse. If he was forced to hide for any length of time, he might as well confront them now and get it over with. The end result would be the same.
He paralleled the main drag, pausing frequently to check his backtrack and apply more pressure to his bleeding wounds. It didn't help. No sooner had he staunched the crimson flow than he was forced to move, renewing it again. He was not bleeding quite as much, but it was steady now, his skinsuit saturated to the knee. Another hour would finish him.
There was no time to find the doctor, even if there was one in town, no way to reach the pharmacy without encountering Rivera's gunners on the street. They would be looking for him in the alleys, and Bolan wondered if he should let them find him. He could choose his ground, prepare an ambush, maybe even take them if his head was clear enough, his gun hand steady. But if he missed them with his first rounds...
The sign was blurry, but it still attracted his attention, drawing Bolan toward the back porch of an old, renovated house. He climbed the concrete steps, sat back against the railing as he tried to focus on the swimming letters:
SANTA ROSA CLINIC
R. KENT, M.D.
Beneath the doctor's name, there was a number to be called in case of emergency. Without a phone, it did the Executioner no good, and he lurched forward, peering through the curtains that covered a window set into the door. No lights, no sign of movement from the dark interior.
He knocked again, then gave up and drew the slim stiletto from a pocket of his skinsuit, stooping painfully to scrutinize the lock. It was an easy one, pot metal and aluminum. He had it open in a moment, took another look along the alley, left and right, then slipped inside.
The former kitchen had been turned into a lab of sorts. He noted microscopes, a centrifuge and sterilizer, stainless-steel sinks and instruments, a cabinet for drugs, an X-ray machine standing in the corner. Bolan did a recon: four examination rooms, a waiting area, a single rest room, all deserted now. There would be hours posted somewhere, but he had no time left. Already fading in and out, the soldier knew that he would have to act now or it would be too late.
He backtracked to the lab and rifled drawers until he found the necessary implements for suturing a wound. The exit hole, in back, would be a bitch, but once he stitched the entry wound, a butterfly bandage might do the trick until he found some wheels and made it to another town, one with a doctor. He couldn't chance an anesthetic — it would knock him out immediately, but the drug stash might contain a stimulant that would help him stay alert while he was on the road.
The light-headedness returned as Bolan struggled to thread the long, curved needle, and he felt the room begin to spin. He reached out for the counter, missed it, tried again, and then his knees were folding. He was losing it, and there was not a damned thing he could do to save himself.
The floor rushed up to meet him like a runaway express train, and the darkness claimed him.
* * *
"Hello? Hello?"
The line was open, humming for an instant, then the dial tone came back loud and harsh in Johnny Bolan's ear. He didn't bother jiggling the plungers on his telephone. It only worked in movies, anyway, and if he could have raised the operator, what in hell would he have said?
He cradled the receiver, conscious of a sudden chill that raised the short hairs on his neck. Mack's message had been loud and clear: he was on foot and wounded in a town called Santa Rosa near the Mexico-Arizona border. Something had gone wrong with the Rivera strike, and Mack had lost his wheels, had suffered injuries of unknown severity. The very fact that he had mentioned being "winded" was an indicator of his serious condition, but the nature of his wounds, his access to emergency assistance, was a mystery.
Johnny fetched a highway atlas from the bookshelf, paging through the maps until he found a spread for southern Arizona. Santa Rosa was in Pima County, near the border, less than fifty miles from the Rivera stronghold in Sonora. It was 230 miles from San Diego into Gila Bend, if Johnny took the interstate, and after that he would be running two-lane blacktop all the way, through Ajo, Gu Vo, Pisnemo. Extra time, perhaps, but he could push it on the smaller county roads and cut off sixty miles that he would have to cover if he doubled back to Santa Rosa out of Tucson.
Mack had asked him not to come. Correction: Mack had told him not to come. But he was always trying to protect "the kid," a designation that he hadn't used to Johnny's face for some time now, but which was always on his mind. The older brother's natural concern was touching, even heartwarming, but it had no place in com
bat, when his life was on the line.
Some things you did because you had to, no matter what the private risk. When Johnny thought about the times that Mack had laid it on the line for him, the weight that he had carried for the family all these years, the young man knew he could do no less.
He had been just a kid when Mack came home from Vietnam to see their parents and their sister buried in the family plot outside of Pittsfield. Johnny was the sole survivor of Sam Bolan's final, desperate act, a murder-suicide that had left the family decimated, brothers stripped of everything and everyone they had loved in life. When Mack had taken up the war against their father's enemies, becoming the most-wanted fugitive in Massachusetts, then in the United States, John Bolan watched the final vestiges of family slip through his fingers, gone, as he had supposed, forever.
Val Querente had been everything a foster mother could ever hope to be. Jack Gray, her future husband and an agent for the FBI, adopted Johnny as his own, but there was no attempt to denigrate his past, the sacrifices his older brother made from day to day. Both Jack and Val had understood — Val most of all, since she had shared the Executioner's original campaign, had seen the man in action, on and off the battle line.
As Johnny Gray, the younger Bolan had enlisted in the military, serving with distinction in Grenada and Beirut. He had been blooded in those killing grounds, returning home to become a paralegal, never dreaming that his life would somehow intersect his brother's everlasting war. But intersect they had, and in the merger of their spirits, the indomitable Bolan will, a new and powerful alliance had been born.
Johnny did not delude himself that he would ever be his brother's equal. He was competent with weapons, trained for combat, seasoned in the fire, but if he lived to be a thousand he would never share the same experience, the seasoning, that made his brother something special. Double tours in Vietnam, backed up by forty-odd campaigns against the Mafia, innumerable clashes with the terrorist elite of Europe, Africa and Asia: all of that combined to make the Executioner a man apart, unique in his commitment and ability to accomplish what he set out to do.
Run to Ground te-106 Page 3