Force Lines. Don Pendleton

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      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.