If anything, he might seem too clean, but the business cover would hold up if someone tried his contact numbers in the Untied States, all routed back to Stony Man Farm for automatic clearance in the case of an emergency. It might not stop some hotshot with a hard-on for Americans from holding Bolan past his scheduled departure time, but he’d done everything that could be done to head off such occurrences.
He started to relax with the announcement that his flight would soon be boarding. First-class passengers were summoned first. Bolan, whose seat was in an exit row around midfuselage, waited his turn to board while others disappeared inside the jet, then rose and followed them inside the belly of the beast.
The exit row had more leg room than usual, and Bolan had the window seat. He tuned out all the multilingual preparations for departure, already well-versed in fastening his seat belt and the other rituals that went along with takeoff. While the flight attendants spoke and displayed their skills, he watched the runway, half expecting military vehicles to swarm around the plane, but none appeared.
Ten minutes later they were airborne, westbound, leaving Pakistan and all her countless problems far behind. One of them was resolved for now, at least, but Bolan knew that it would only be a temporary fix. As long as men of varied creeds or races schemed to kill each other, there would always be another threat, and yet another after that, into infinity. Bolan supposed that it would take a fundamental change in human hearts and minds to make the world a truly safer place, and he had zero expertise in that regard.
As far as Bolan knew, he’d never changed a human heart.
He only stopped them cold.
Bolan allowed himself a glass of overpriced white wine with dinner from the galley’s microwave. It wasn’t great, but he was ravenous, needed the food before he went to sleep, hoping he wouldn’t be disturbed before their next touchdown.
With any luck at all, he would not dream.
Epilogue
Arlington National Cemetery
Another walk among the tombstones, silently communing with the fallen. Some of them, he knew, had died civilians, years after their separation from the service, but they’d come from near and far to rest with comrades who had died in battle.
Coming home.
A few of the civilian dead were heroes in their own right—or, at least, renowned figures from history. John Kennedy was there, and Mississippi’s Medgar Evers, murdered for his stand on civil rights five months before a sniper killed the nation’s president in Dallas. Two of thousands who had touched their countrymen and maybe left the world a slightly better place.
Or not, depending on the watcher’s point of view.
Bolan dismissed the vagaries of politics and waited for Hal Brognola to appear.
Footsteps sounded and Bolan turned to face his friend. “You’re always here ahead of me,” Brognola said.
“I wouldn’t want to keep you waiting.”
“Nice tan,” Brognola said.
“Comes with the territory,” Bolan said.
“So, how’d it go?” the big Fed asked.
“I thought you’d probably tell me,” Bolan replied. “I was a little close for an evaluation, but I think we did all right. Upset the applecart, at least.”
“And burned the orchard too, from what I’m hearing on the air,” Brognola said.
Bolan could only shrug. “There’s nothing on television.”
“Not that air. NSA’s been monitoring traffic over Pakistan and India since you went in. We’ve got some saber-rattling on both sides right now, but not much worse than usual. The Indians are pretty sure something went wrong across the border, which improves their disposition all to hell, but they don’t know exactly what it was or how close they came. Meanwhile, Karachi’s going on about a flash fire at a fertilizer plant. No list of casualties available for who knows how long. Maybe never.”
“No rebellion, then,” Bolan said. “No warheads.”
“Rebellion, in a paradise like Pakistan? You must be joking, son. As for the warheads, everybody knows they’re sitting on a batch of nukes. Karachi won’t admit they had a suitcase bomb fast-tracked to toast their neighbors, even if they don’t mind leaking hints that it could happen any time,” Brognola said.
“So, that’s a nice fat slice of status quo,” Bolan said.
“Pretty much the best that we could hope for in the circumstances.”
“What about Ohm? Pahlavi and his sister and the rest?”
“Officially, of course, they don’t exist. Denying or ignoring a rebellion means you can’t be slapping rebels into jail. Bandits and public enemies are something else entirely, but they have to catch them first.”
“So, no arrests?”
“As far as I can tell,” Brognola said, “they’re still at large. I won’t say in the clear, because we know Pahlavi and his sister now have files that won’t be closed until they’re dead or sitting in a cage. As for whatever’s left of Ohm, they’re lying low, taking it one day at a time.”
Bolan knew what that felt like.
“You’re wishing there was more you could’ve done,” Brognola said, trying to read his mind.
“There wasn’t any more to do,” Bolan replied. “Nothing.”
“That’s right. Remember that. You solved a problem. Made it go away, at least for now. No one expected you to change the world.”
“It would be nice, though, wouldn’t it?” Bolan asked.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Hell,” Brognola said, “if the human race woke up tomorrow courteous and kind across the board, I wouldn’t have a job. Neither would you.”
“Would that be bad?”
Brognola shrugged. “It could be boring. How the hell do I know? Shit’s been getting deeper every day since I was old enough to notice. It’s the way things work. We grab a shovel and jump in. No way to stop it getting on you, but you always hope it doesn’t get inside.”
“Well, if it ever happens, you could always try philosophy,” Bolan remarked.
Brognola’s tone changed subtly as he asked, “You listen to the news this morning?”
“Pakistan’s new missile? Right, I heard. They’re saying they can drop a warhead in New Delhi if they’re threatened. Makes you wonder, sometimes.”
“If we should’ve skipped the whole damn thing?” Brognola asked.
“It just seems…I don’t know.”
“I think futile would be the word you’re looking for,” Hal said. “But I don’t think it’s accurate.”
“I hope not,” Bolan answered.
“I’m convinced it’s not. You want a little more philosophy before we go have the world’s greasiest burgers?”
“Let’s hear it,” Bolan said resignedly.
“Okay. I think we just do what we can, with what we have. Today, the Pakistanis claim they have a missile. Maybe it’s true, and maybe it’s not. Either way, they’re on record about it. Doesn’t mean some idiot won’t use it, but at least the country’s leaders will be on the hot seat to explain what happened, if it happens.”
“Right. Okay.”
“The deal you worked on was another thing, entirely,” Brognola pressed on. “They would’ve used it. I’ve no doubt at all, and blamed it on the Sikhs or UFOs or whoever in hell they thought might take the rap. They would’ve done it just because they could, and just because they thought no one could prove they did it. And we stopped that. You did, rather. That’s a good thing, I’d say. It’s a positive. They can’t sneak in and pull some crap without a ton of consequences falling on their necks. They’ll think twice now, unless they’re all stone crazy. And there’s nothing anyone can do about it if they are.”
Brognola had a point, Bolan realized. In fact, it was the only point of view that let him get up in the morning and continue with his lonely war. If Bolan started second-guessing every order, every move he’d made, he would be paralyzed with microscopic self-examination of his past until the pallbearers showed up to carry him away. His whole life, literally, might have
been in vain.
And there was no way he believed that.
Not a chance in hell.
“I guess we wait and see about those missiles,” he remarked.
“I guess we do. It’s down to diplomats from this point, and you know how slow they move.”
They started back toward the parking lot, leaving the ghosts behind. Bolan hoped they would rest in peace, but if they couldn’t manage that, he hoped their restless dreams were not entirely grim. It was the best that he could wish them, after all their pain and sacrifice.
It was the best that he could wish himself.
ISBN: 978-1-4603-7418-4
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Mike Newton for his contribution to this work.
NUCLEAR REACTION
Copyright © 2007 by Worldwide Library.
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