Force Lines

The real thing.

At the balcony, picking up his cigarettes, shaking one free and lighting up, he stared down at the inline skaters, the lovebirds and the early morning breakfast crowd gathering under the thatched-roof cabanas, lounging poolside.

Oh, how he loved Miami, but it was more of a love-hate relationship now that he thought about it.

South Florida, he thought, was the East Coast’s answer to the shallow, superficial and spineless PC asylum that was Southern California. They partied, drank, drugged the nights away in South Beach. They drove the newest, hottest cars, looking good and outfitted with the latest fashions at the top of the list of their concerns. At the number-one slot of all things vain—they had to be “seen” in all the right and trendiest clubs, these hyena wanna-bes craving to rub elbows with all the vile film and recording and sports worms that had in recent years oozed down here in their silken, bejeweled, perfumed snakeskin carcasses when careers were usually circling the bowl and they had to find a way to keep their faces out there.

Beyond his general contempt, outside of New York City, some of the most atrocious, senseless crimes—fueled, in large part, by a drug scourge that had never really gone away—had become so commonplace they were little more than the most fleeting of sound bites on the local news.

As he took a sudden gust of hot breeze in the face and drank deep, the big man’s words rang through his thoughts.

“Picture this. Five hundred fall suddenly, mysteriously ill. Two hours or so later another five hundred or so are staggering into emergency rooms in yet another city, burning up with fever, puking and crapping all over themselves. Two or three hundred suddenly die. By the following morning it’s a thousand, two thousand. By noon another American city sees it citizens dropping like the proverbial sprayed flies. One, then two more cities find their citizens croaking, and from clear across the other side of the country as walking contagions board planes, trains, buses, or simply drive to the next town. It’s found in the water supply. It’s killing livestock, it’s infected produce, wheat. It’s in the air, the water, maybe even the ground they walk on.”

Shivering, as he killed the man’s voice behind the rest of his beer, Lawhorn became aware the sweat was running off his chin in fat, thick drops. Twenty-four hours. And after that? he wondered. Would there be enough time? Say if even one of them became stricken, then what?

There was international travel to consider. There was the rabble doing the first leg of the dirty work for them. There was the fact that once they left the country…

He stabbed out his cigarette, but lingered as he still smelled her from where he’d done her for the fifth time, mashing her face into the railing.

The evil creature disgusted him.

He found her huffing away, her voice on the petulant side as she informed him it would be another thousand dollars if he wanted her for the day.

Lawhorn grabbed another beer. “Shut up. Get dressed and get out of here. Take the garbage with you. On second thought.”

Before she could squawk or even blink, Lawhorn had the mirror in hand. He hurled it across the room, scattering a snowstorm of four to five grams. She became the perfect nude model for shock and horror.

“Five seconds to beat it, and then I get ugly.”

FORMER LOS ANGELES Homicide Detective Mitch Kramer was nowhere near the full reprobate package the soldier had expected. After the first round of blunt questions and when Bolan decided he had enough to proceed he’d learned something about the ex-cop’s life, or, rather, lack thereof. The subsequent and toned-down Q and A was more to get a read on the man’s character and motivations than simple idle curiosity, since Bolan was on the verge of launching total war. He was still in the process of deciding what to do with the man.

With a few possible exceptions, Kramer’s tale of woe was pretty much the same for veteran cops worn out and broken down by the job. They were divorced, friendless with the exception of other cops, more often than not had kids who couldn’t stand being around them. They collapsed into all manner of vices, and more often than was publicly reported they ate their gun. As the years ground by on the job, their world shrank and grew darker by the day, and a once-decent conscience, beaming with good intentions and pointing the way of truth and justice, was blunted and callused to the point where a man became an angry loner, aware in some way he couldn’t quite define or understand that he had become contaminated by the very ills and crimes he used to abhor and fight. Oh, indeed, human nature being what it was—inclined to Self and its own needs and desires—the soldier could well imagine the eroding toll of having to listen to lies and excuses and the flimsiest justifications and even for the most heinous of crimes around-the-clock. Of being feared and held in disrespect and contempt by a society that was rapidly becoming more plagued by crime and corruption and where the bad guys were sometimes better armed than whole SWAT teams. Where even far too many law-abiding citizens couldn’t care less about a policeman, as long as they were front and center when they were faced with mortal danger or loss of money and property.

Bolan realized he was perhaps painting it with a broad brushstroke of cynicism, but, for damn sure, it took a special brand of man, a unique and iron self-control and discipline and courage to march out there, day after day, shift after shift, year in and year out, and do what the average citizen couldn’t or didn’t want to do, or didn’t dare dream capable of handling. Even with the most tenacious of moral resolve, a number of cops didn’t make it, couldn’t cut it. Used up, burned-out, staring over the edge of the grave and down into the waiting worms and maggots.

Kramer had fairly told him as much about himself, with a look and tone the soldier read as saying that a simple thank-you way back when would have sufficed to keep him chugging along with an eye toward a half decent tomorrow. But, Bolan, ever the realist, knew there were some professions where, if a man was looking for a pat on the back, promotion or glory, then he was in the wrong line of work. What was more—and even worse—he could never fully do the job.

Soldiers dropped into that particular category.

For the warrior on the front lines it was all guts and no less than steely commitment to duty, with no expectations, or they caved when it hit the fan, or ended up seething wrecks of whining recrimination, bitter regret and the kind of relentless self-pitying anger that rotted out the very soul itself.

The world was a tough place, but the soldier was more than acquainted with the bitter facts of good and evil, life and death.

Another look at Kramer, and Bolan wasn’t sure what to make of the man. He was no angel, but he was damn sure fallen. At the moment, the ex-cop was on his haunches, perched up against the base of pine tree. The laminated card was in his cuffed hands. Figure he was praying to the Holy Lady of Desperate Cases, and, for some reason, that alone was pushing the soldier toward a decision that might well prove one of his worst to date.

Or would it?

Bolan left Kramer to what sure appeared penitent reflections and silent imploring of divine intervention and walked forward several feet. Crouched behind a thicket of bramble and ferns—M-16 with M-203 grenade launcher having replaced the HK subgun now that it was all leaning toward open-ground warfare—the soldier gave the lay of the land a second thorough scan, while scraping together the few shreds of a strategy, given the few facts and rumor the ex-cop had laid out. Between the PDA and the mobile GPS unit he had mounted to the dashboard of his Explorer SUV, he found the remote wilderness where the big event was supposed to go down.

To the north, the misty shroud above the snowcapped sawtooth peaks of the Swan Range was being cleared away by the early morning sun. A few miles west, at the opposite edge of the Flathead National Forest, the Swan River ran in a north-south parallel course to Highway 83. Somewhere to his back, the soldier made out the cries of geese, mallards and other winged creatures taking to flight or searching out a meal. East, across rolling grassland he imagined once teemed with legions of bison, the soldier made out the road as it humped up and spined its two-mile-or-so course to what Kramer informed him was a forest ranger station.

The wide, undivided but paved road was nowhere to be found on any map.

Using its own intelligence sources and renowned cyberhacking, the Farm—after the soldier had faxed Kramer’s CD with what were believed encrypted marching orders—believed the ranger station was a front for a classified government facility, but for the life of them they didn’t know what went on there. With cyclone fencing around a squat steel-walled compound, the cyberwizards learning the road was slashed out of the forest and grasslands a few years back by the Army Corps of Engineers, and after Bolan had seen from a distance through his field glasses…

Well, the posted warning at the far south end of the road had sealed it. No trespassing, property of United States Government, and authorized to use deadly force cued the soldier that, despite his prisoner’s ignorance of the finer details, this was the right place where the wrong thing—and what that was remained to be seen—would go down.

According to Kramer it would all begin any time now. What the cargo the Sons of Revelation planned to hijack, well, Bolan could venture a sordid educated guess.

WMD, of some type, and the soldier hadn’t brought along his HAZMAT suit for the lethal party.

And with Kramer mentioning something about two men in black he read as spooks gathering for two recent private meets with the so-called Highest Sons that he knew of…

Problems, all around, but Bolan was never short on the determination, skill and experience to work them out.

Then there were enemy numbers to consider, and which could range from anywhere to a known forty or fifty to another ten to twenty. If there were snakes wrapped in the Stars and Stripes and hidden among the spook convoy that was due to roll its way from the north, if an inside job was about to land a cache of biological, chemical or radiological matériel into the hands of the Sons of Revelation for reasons that included money, twisted ideology…

Bolan turned and dropped a long look on Kramer. The question hung in his mind, as the Stony Man warrior knew a moment of truth had painted him into a corner. “Who was she? Saint Rita.”

A tired smile crossed Kramer’s lips, his eyes telling Bolan he was reaching back into memory. He slipped the prayer card into a coat pocket, said, “I was in a motel room, real crumby part of Hollywood, which really isn’t saying much. I was loaded, as usual, with some hooker. I wasn’t two steps inside the room when her pimp, or boyfriend or whoever, drove a knife square into my gut. Another inch or so higher, if he’d twisted up some even, or ripped down…sixty-two dollars and forty-four cents is what they took off of me. Funny, you know, how a guy can remember something so damn trivial, exactly how much his life might have cost him…or the amount of money he was prepared to throw away on his soul.

“I remember the girl. One of these corn-fed Mid-western blondes who comes to Hollywood, thinking she’s the next Marilyn Monroe, but ends up tricking and doing porn and looking like an eighty-year-old hag by the time she’s thirty. She was cussing like a fleet of drunken sailors the whole time he’s rifling my pockets, pissed because that was all I had on me. Here I am, bleeding like the proverbial stuck pig, holding in my guts, and all she’s worried about is how much dope she’s going to get from setting me up and seeing me eviscerated, all in a snit because it’s not nearly enough she’d hoped for. Funny thing, I saw her kind more than I count, worked some of the worst murders when I was a cop, but when cold-blooded murder is actually happening to you like that, when you’re helpless and your number is up…Anyway, she kicks me a couple real beauts like only a junkie whacked out of her gourd and dying for the next hit can, all that geeking rage and hate. She wants the knife to finish me off but her boyfriend wouldn’t give it to her—why, I couldn’t tell you. Funny. Miserable as I was, how often I thought about dying—you know, Dear Mother of God, won’t you come and take me away from this vale of tears—when it’s actually happening I was terrified and wanted nothing more than to live, more out of my conscience screaming at me that what was waiting on the other side was a whole bunch of accounting.

“Long story short, I crawled to the phone, reached up like my arm was shot out of a cannon. Knocked the phone down and along with it comes a Bible. Brand-spanking new. I remember that because the edge of the spine felt like a steel rod when it bounced off the side of my face. The thought hit me—why in the world do they keep Bibles out for the kind of people go there to do what they’re doing anyway? God is the very last thing on their minds. Well, turned out, somebody was reading it. Out comes the bookmarker.”

“Saint Rita.”

“Yeah, Saint Rita. How it ended up in my pocket, how it was still there when I was released from the hospital.” Kramer paused. “I don’t know how long it was, but I entertained a wicked desire to use some cop buddies I still had in Hollywood. Track those two down. Payback, the likes of which I couldn’t even imagine the Devil himself conjuring up. Then, for some reason I can’t explain, I’m in a library, a nagging suspicion that as bad as my life was it could get a whole lot worse, when I stumble across an encyclopedia on the lives of the saints. Who was she, you ask? Saint Rita wanted nothing more than to go into a convent when she was a young girl, but it seemed her family had promised her out in marriage. She marries, they have two sons, but her husband was murdered. Her two sons then set out to avenge his death. She prayed that they would die before they could carry out their plan of cold-blooded murder, thus condemning themselves to eternal ruin. Seems her prayer was answered. They died, but no one knows the circumstances. After that, she entered a convent, like she always wanted, became an Augustinian Nun. Prayed to share in Christ’s suffering and bore the mark of a thorn on her forehead until she died. Almost six hundred years ago, and her incorrupt body is still just like it was, resting in a basilica in Cascia, Italy. My little motel misadventure was no epiphany, but I’ve kept her with me ever since. I’m not sure I can explain why.”

As Kramer fell silent, Bolan held the man’s look, thinking about the story he’d related, weighing the sincerity behind the words. As much evil as the soldier had faced in his War Everlasting, as many near death experiences as he’d brushed up against himself, he couldn’t help but wonder right then if maybe there was such a supernatural phenomenon as miracles, guardian angels, the guiding hand of a divine force that could hand out mercy to the repentant, justice to the wicked, but already knew the answer. The simple fact that he was prepared to always offer the ultimate sacrifice to keep the scourge of Evil from devouring the innocent and the peacekeepers was proof enough in his mind there was a God, a creator, an eternal judge. When the dust of battle always settled, and the living were separated from the dead, the wheat from the chaff, it was the only concept that made any sense.

The ultimate good was the only principal worth fighting for.

Bolan made the decision. He had crossed the point where he felt it safe to say it wouldn’t prove a fatal mistake. Mitch Kramer was a man in search of new life, who needed redemption, however and wherever it came.

So be it.

The soldier picked up the small war bag, inside of which rested the HK, with spare clips and a bevy of fragmentation, flash-bang, smoke and incendiary grenades. He went and removed the plastic cuffs off Kramer’s wrists, dumped the small arsenal by his side.

“Chances are,” Bolan told the man, “I’m going to need some help. Don’t let me live to regret it. Fair enough?”

Kramer nodded. “More than I deserve.”

CHAPTER SIX

“Bison One to Hammer Wheel.”

The man’s voice crackled around the cab of the Ford GMC, sounding as if it were reaching out from some cavernous echo chamber. He was alone, with only Grant’s voice reverberating in his head, and he wondered if maybe that by itself wasn’t the clue, the opening…