Force Lines

“Further, it does not help our cause on two specific fronts. One, that your vaunted leader deemed it necessary to make himself a national television star. Attention is the last and most dreaded area we need to concern ourselves with at this late juncture. Two, that your organization was infiltrated.”

Drobbler grimaced. “I thought you said you took care of that?”

“Be all that as it may, we still do not have absolute control over the United States Department of Justice, even from the deep shadows, even with all of our resources.”

“The attention thing, right?”

“Very astute.”

Drobbler fought to keep the scowl off his face, as he spotted a sarcastic twinkle in those blue eyes. He turned away from Infinity’s laughing stare, just as he heard the wail ripping from the east edge of the main building. An icy shiver walked down his spine an instant before he saw the dancing shadows come flailing into the aura of spilled light. Infinity had the tactical radio in hand before the horror fully registered in Drobbler’s mind.

“Infinity to Dragon leader!”

Drobbler heard the order barked for the door in question to be sealed, but it was too late. The human comet streaked onto open ground, ran on for a few feet, thrashing inside the fireball, as if it could somehow escape from that hellish cocoon. Then it seemed to wilt inside the shroud of fire, toppling in a slow-motion buckling of the legs. Drobbler had seen more than enough. But, even as he turned away and fell back into the fuselage, the screams of a man being burned alive—an employee of the United States government—echoed in his ears. He felt sick to his stomach. Suddenly, had it all been up to him…

But it wasn’t. And, even if he could refuse to move forward, what he’d just witnessed, he was sure, was meant to serve as a warning.

He was onboard for the full ride, and began to wonder if it all was only just bound for Hell.

CHAPTER TWO

The man in black was a silent ghost, virtually invisible to the naked eye at that predawn hour, as he crept to the edge of the dense western exterior of pine forest. With the HK MP-5 SD 3 submachine gun and its integral sound suppressor, he knew it was a safe bet that he wouldn’t be mistaken for some hunter who had lost his way, or some weekend warrior most notable for blustering through the local saloons of Montana’s Glacier Country with tall tales of big game kills from a half mile or more out.

He was, though, in the strictest and most lethal sense, a hunter, and of the most dangerous game. Here, east of Flathead River and at the western edge of the Continental Divide, and now as anywhere then previous in his War Everlasting, Mack Bolan had no interest in bagging grizzly, elk or bighorn sheep to stuff and hang on his trophy mantel.

As for the warrior part…

The big, tall shadow hit a crouch at what he determined was the most secure scouting roost, as he spied his perch through the green world of his night-vision goggles. Concealed in a horseshoe of thick brush, the man also known as the Executioner took a few moments to get his bearings, review, assess, upon giving his six and flanks another thorough scan.

No warrior, he knew, no matter how good, how often he’d been tested in the fires of combat could ever rely on the bloody glory of yesterday’s victories to carry him through the next engagement. That would be foolishness. But it was something often overlooked by the arrogant, the proud, the bully, those who believed all they had to do was to show up for the fight and fearsome reputation would take over, all but send a foe scurrying to hide under his bed.

There was, Bolan knew, always a David out there to every man’s Goliath.

That in mind, the lone wolf operative for the ultra-covert Stony Man Farm couldn’t say, one way or the other, if the two FBI agents who had gone undercover to infiltrate the Sons of Revelation had been careless and sloppy, falling back on their own hallowed and sanctioned law-enforcement status, which, of course, no sociopath, no armed reprobate ever respected anyway. Whatever the case, they were found, beaten to a pulp in an abandoned log cabin up near the town of West Glacier, before, that was, they’d each been shot once in the head. Since the FBI fell under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Justice, and considering the nature of their shadow work and the group believed to have executed them, Hal Brognola had offered Bolan the assignment.

Looking back, Bolan should have declined—murder investigations were somebody else’s job description—but Brognola was a high-ranking official at the Justice Department who also headed up the Sensitive Operations Group at the Farm. Beyond that, and notwithstanding he was the soldier’s longtime friend, Brognola was liaison to the President of the United States, the Man being one of the few in the loop about Stony Man’s existence, and who also gave the Caesar’s thumbs-up or -down to each mission. That the murder of a federal law-enforcement agent fell under the statute of capital punishment was serious enough to give Bolan second consideration, but there were other factors involved that had seen the soldier give the man from Justice the final nod. Aside from the fact that both agents were leaving behind grieving widows and children, stoking the natural fires of Bolan’s sense of justice, both men had managed to pull together enough loose threads of a general conspiracy, one that allegedly involved the import of foreign enemies of America, and who were believed associated with the radical militia group now in question.

Then the hunches, swirling around some big event the agents had tagged the Day of Judgment, though what the exact nature of the conspiracy had gone to the grave with them. With money, however, with the arsenal the enemy was alleged to possess—and there was no telling what other kind of firepower they had at their disposal—anything was possible, the soldier knew, even the sale or acquisition of a tactical nuke, a so-called dirty bomb, or chemical or biological agents. Throw the fuel of twisted ideology into the fire of one man’s belief in his superiority to his fellow man, and that all but blazed his will to use violence and intimidation. From grim and countless personal experience, Bolan knew just such individuals would spare no extreme, would even view collateral damage—the murder and misery of the innocent—as the cost of their revolution, and to further their agenda.

The Sons of Revelation had more than a few former lawmen, ex-military and two ex-spooks that Bolan knew of among the bunch of armed malcontents. That alone raised a red flag in the warrior’s mind.

Shedding the high-tech headgear, Bolan adjusted his trained night-stalking vision to the sheen of light that enveloped the compound. He took one last look at the PDA, found the coordinates—programmed into the palm-held cutting-edge computer by the cyberteam at the Farm, gleaned from Brognola’s facts as the FBI knew them on the general vicinity—were on the money.

It was just under a mile hike from where he’d ditched the Ford Explorer rental in a wooded gorge. The big war bag with the heavier firepower, satellite link, spare clips and grenades was stowed in the back of the SUV, and may God have mercy on the man fool enough to venture forth with curious or felonious hands. The vehicle was rigged with a state-of-the-art zapper, voltage enough to dump a man on his back, out cold. Should some enraged vandal witnessing a comrade’s initial failure then smash out the windows, the war bag was armed with sensors, primed to cut loose with enough sulfuric acid to melt its contents into a molten puddle, and in the meantime cook off some rounds and frag bombs to send the more brazen and stupid running for cover. Should a local cop or state trooper pose a problem, then Bolan was armed with his bogus Justice Department credentials that declared him Special Agent Matt Cooper.

All set, then, but for what exactly?

The soldier had a plan, but the more he thought about it he began amending the original blitz to include, above all else, the capture—or at the very least—the grilling of an SOR reprobate on the spot.

The stone-and-timber lodge and surrounding six acres was the sole property of the leader of the Sons of Revelation. He was a former Boise sheriff who had retired before suspicions of alleged corruption were brought to light. Two stories high, with veiled light striking against thick curtains on his side—the south end—the Stony Man warrior counted two sentries posted on the east and west edges, both armed with assault rifles. If timing was everything in life then it looked as if a full SOR gathering was underway beneath the roof. Strung out to the east and north of the lodge was a motor pool of SUVs, backwoods 4X4s, with a few classics to finish off the vintage car show. The late and lamented undercover men cited the rabble at forty to fifty strong, maybe more, depending on plebes undergoing initiation pains, the likes of which had also reached Brognola’s desk. Then there were drifters, handfuls of other miscreants believed loosely affiliated with the right-wing vultures, local cops suspected of being buried deep in the group’s coffers.

Dirty cops posed something a problem. In the beginning—a hundred lifetimes and a thousand battles ago—Bolan had vowed to never gun down an officer of the law. But with the changing times his personal philosophy could be altered enough to include a tainted shield, especially when it came down to them or him. In truth, the more he thought about it, a dirty badge was worse than the criminal they had publicly sworn to protect law-abiding citizens and their property from.

But he would take the savages, on either side of that thin blue line, as they came, as they called the play.

Evil was still evil, no matter the law, flag, money or mask of human respect it hid behind.

The soldier gave the narrow plateau another search, this time through small field glasses he switched to infrared. As he panned the wooded perimeter around the compound, he felt the combined weight of his walking arsenal hung from webbing, slotted in a combat vest. Given what little he knew, the soldier wondered if the mixed assortment of grenades, twenty pounds of C-4 with radio-remote primers, the spare clips for his subgun, the shoulder-holstered Beretta 93-R and the .44 Desert Eagle Magnum hung on his hip in quickdraw leather would prove sufficient.

So far, the EM scanner hadn’t turned up any sensors and cameras. In truth, Bolan knew a den of Goliaths may be on hand, waiting for his special brand of scorched earth, but the Executioner wasn’t about to take any man for granted.

The living ghost in black spied a narrow trail that snaked northward, marked it on the personal digital assistant, and set out to ring in the new day for the Sons of Revelation.

CHAPTER THREE

It was beyond insanity. And, he decided, when he weighed the truth and the rediscovered precepts of his own faith against the present, he now knew, beyond a morsel of doubt, that he no longer belonged, no longer fit.

That he was living a lie.

Or was he now simply donning the disguise of wolf in sheep’s clothing?

Whatever the case, the strange state of utter and miserable aloneness he now found himself submerged, Mitch Kramer braced for the coming events. If the past proved true to form—and he had little doubt it would—the floorshow would be one part briefing, laced with the usual fire and brimstone about the ills of America and the coming Apocalypse, one part initiation. The latter already had him squirming in his seat, even as he tried to will away the first onslaught of revulsion.

They were gathered in what was called the Council of the Living Creatures. He was seated at the knight’s table with the other so-called High Sons, while the regular army—just over thirty strong—was forced to take its place in the rows of metal chairs at the back of the hall, reserved for the grunts. Two of the big chairs were empty, and about twelve seats from the grunt gallery were vacant, but he had his suspicions, based on what little he knew about the Day of Judgment. Dear God, he heard his mind groan, what had he done? What had he involved himself in?

As he felt the anticipation build from without and the blazing furnace of disturbance heat up from within, he felt himself on the verge of a sudden and frightening revelation. For the first time since day one—when he’d allowed himself to become entangled through what he reasoned was the sheer loneliness and maddening isolation that was alcoholism and the final dirty vestiges of every vice attached to his old ways he had sought so desperately to shed—Mitch Kramer saw it all in a new and blinding light.

He had begun to pull himself together a few short hours ago and then the call had come from the First High Son, demanding his immediate presence. Reporting, then, to the SOR compound, he felt trapped, surrounded by living evil. In truth, his very participation in the events about to unfold would find him condemned by his faith, both in this world and the next.

From the far end of the knight’s table, he watched as their leader took his chair, a mahogany throne, rather, with gold trim around the arms, on which protruded white marble cherubim and seraphim. Jeremiah Grant cleared his throat in a rumble that called them all to order.

The lingering silence seemed to carry a living force all by itself, as Grant sat, unmoving, glaring down the table, with the coat of arms of the Four Living Creatures seeming to roll out of the wall directly behind the man. With smoke clouds swelling the air from one end of the hall to the other, Kramer stole the dramatic pause to search each face in turn, and wonder about the madness of it all.

“Soldiers and Sons of Revelation, we are the chosen converts of the Almighty. As such, we are no longer ‘of’ the world, but are simply ‘in’ the world, a world, we all know, that is quickly succumbing to the dominion of the adversary. Our own country, once the land of the free and the brave, is being devoured with each passing minute by an army of infernal spirits who masquerade among us as human beings in the present day American society.”

And thus Grant began, but in a slightly altered version of his usual preamble. It was all Kramer could do to stifle the groan. Suddenly, the vision wanted to flame back to mind, and he wondered why the .45 Glock grew heavy in its shoulder rigging beneath his sheepskin coat. He glanced at the leader, fearing he might be singled out for lack of rapt attention. He was pretty sure that sparkle in Grant’s eyes was owed more to a shot or two of whiskey-spiked-coffee than any fire of fanaticism, though there was no question in Kramer’s mind the man was deadly serious.

“In the name of God, we are prepared at what is the most critical juncture in the history of democracy to carry out His justice. We are at war, my friends, make no mistake, and we must stop the sons of Cain—the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex of the United States shadow government and who uses the mass media as its propaganda puppet-slaves, but who control what was once a great and God-fearing nation. Yes, we know well who the sons of Cain are, my friends. They are the devil’s vanguard. They dwell and claim seats of power and influence from the nation’s capital to Wall Street, from the scattered and numerous classified military bases around the West and Southwest to the whoremongers and purveyors of filth of Hollywood, but this is our supreme hour. We must, therefore, take courage. And since we are on the side of God—and if God is for us, then who can be against us?—we will unleash what will be the breath of divine wrath on all those not of the elect and who would trample us to dust with every outrage, every vice, every blasphemy, every abomination. Nothing short of a vengeance that far exceeds anything that annihilated Sodom and Gomorrah in the blink of an eye is demanded.”

And there it was, Kramer decided. For all of his next spiel about all of them renouncing their former ways, how there were no deathbed conversions among them and which was what made them all so real and heroic, doing what was right and true in the name of God’s work without the terror of impending death forcing them to answer the call to divine arms, Kramer knew the very rottenness of their former lives and transgressions was what had led them all to this room.

To this moment in their lives where eternity would be decided.

“Before I get to the heart of our mission, I would like to remind you men of the simple facts of life, lest you feel your backbone begin to lose some of its iron.”

Kramer glanced at the small black file in front of him. Each of them had been given their marching orders, detailed, more or less, on the CD-ROM inside each packet. He reached out and picked his intel package up, then spotted the tremble in his hand. He realized the other hand had suddenly somehow moved toward his coat lapel, just inches below the hidden semiautomatic pistol. Quickly, he dropped both his hands in his lap, one ear tuned to Grant, as his own voice seemed frozen in the blackest of midthought, shocked at what he realized he was prepared to do.

By slow degrees, he became aware of the doors opening, a shabby naked figure being marched forth, hustled toward the shower stall near the east wall, midway down. He heard the snickers from the grunt gallery, as one of the soldiers twisted the knob and water hissed from the nozzle. It was just about all Kramer could endure. As they held the plebe by the arms and whose hands covered his crotch and who wore the despair and horror of a condemned man he recalled his own agonizing rite of passage into the Sons of Revelation.