pistol in his fist—straight into the backs of the two women in front of him, cutting them down in his haste to react to the threat he couldn’t find. Bolan calmly worked the Remington’s bolt, tracked the shooter and put a bullet through his brain.
The Patriotism Riders had recovered quickly from their initial shock, surging toward the attacker. Several of them tackled the last of the men, burying him in a crush of bodies. Bolan caught this but ignored it; there was one other variable still unaccounted for.
The van’s engine roared to life and the vehicle started backing down the access road.
That would be the Ford’s driver, whom Bolan knew had never left the van. It was a tricky shot, through the windshield of the moving van, but there was no more experienced a sniper than Mack Bolan. He made the shot easily. Beyond the suddenly spiderwebbed windshield, the driver slumped over the steering wheel. The van slowed to crawl, and then came to rest half on and half off the access road.
Bolan ejected the empty brass from the Remington and placed the rifle on its hard case. Drawing the Beretta 93-R and flicking the selector switch to 3-round burst, he surveyed the killing ground below him as he stalked toward the aftermath of his deadly handiwork. The Riders were dragging the subdued, disarmed survivor out of the road. Several had spotted Bolan and were pointing at him. A couple looked ready to charge him, and Bolan mentally lauded them for that; they were taking no chances, and Bolan was an armed, unknown man who could be foe as easily as he could be friend.
“Cooper,” he said as he neared them. “Justice Department.”
“Justice?” One of the Riders shook his head. “Man, you ain’t kidding.”
Bolan nodded grimly. Justice, it was.
This was only the beginning.
CHAPTER TWO
Bolan stood, leaning against the nearest of the police cruisers, as local law enforcement prowled the area. Already the crime scene was being meticulously photographed, tagged and logged, while uniformed officers and a couple of plainclothes personnel circulated among the Patriotism Riders. The mourners had been questioned first, their statements taken quickly. Most of them had left. Bolan sympathized with them. Most wouldn’t be able to imagine the emotions that the family and friends of the dead serviceman had to be experiencing, with a tragedy in the family burned so raw by fresh, seemingly random terror and gunfire. The Executioner, on the other hand, had seen more than his fair share of death, tragedy and inhumanity. He understood. He also felt a grim satisfaction at being able to stop these killers before they could take more innocent lives, before they could pervert this graveside service into the type of obscene political statement their kind craved.
The local law enforcement had, as usual, been extremely suspicious. Bolan had given them his “Matthew Cooper” identification and the Justice Department credentials Brognola’s people had issued to that alias. It had still taken a few phone calls, one of them eventually fielded by the big Fed himself, before the police were satisfied. They had grudgingly accepted Bolan’s presence after that, and even done a pretty good job of pointedly ignoring him. The soldier could understand some of the territoriality that came with the job, and he knew only too well that his violent intervention wasn’t something that good cops just dismissed easily.
To those police and any other observer, Mack Bolan was simply waiting around. There was no good reason, in the minds of the police, for this mysterious federal agent not to leave the scene. Bolan imagined they thought he, too, was being territorial, perhaps not trusting the local boys to do a thorough job with the crime scene. The truth was something far different, of course. Bolan was playing a hunch, one spurred by long experience and countless battlefield scenarios.
Something wasn’t quite right, and he could feel it.
There was a loose end somewhere; Bolan was sure of it. As he stood, seemingly observing the police as they took the Riders’ statements, he was surreptitiously scanning the perimeter of the cemetery. The spotter, if indeed there had been one working with the shooters in the van, was bound to be somewhere along that perimeter somewhere, offering him a view similar to the one Bolan had enjoyed from his sniper’s vantage. Unless the man—or woman—had the sense to flee immediately when the action went down, he or she was still up there. Bolan had been watching. That feeling that he, in turn, was being watched was something he couldn’t shake. He had been under fire enough times to know to trust his gut. His finely honed combat instincts were screaming at him. He was listening.
A knot of the Riders no longer speaking with the police had drifted toward Bolan. They were a fairly typical bunch, at first glance—mostly large men in leather jackets, boots and jeans, with a sprinkling of other accessories and licensed motorcycle brand accoutrements. There were a few tattoos in evidence. They looked like bikers, but without the hard edge that Bolan had seen in so many outlaw clubs. These were simply citizens who rode motorcycles, first and foremost, and in this case for a good cause.
The nearest man, who sported a blond crew cut and wore a pair of sunglasses on a cord around his neck, shuffled closer to Bolan and cleared his throat. This was the man Bolan had seen talking to the funeral director.
“Excuse me, sir?” the man asked.
“Yes?”
“Mitch Schrader, sir,” the biker said, extending his hand. Bolan shook it; Schrader’s grip was firm, but not aggressive. “With the Patriotism Riders.”
“So I gathered.” Bolan nodded. “Matthew Cooper.”
“So you said.” Schrader grinned. “You really with the Justice Department? You’re not FBI, or something?” Schrader asked.
“I really am,” Bolan said. In a certain sense, it was true. The soldier worked for nothing more than unbridled justice, justice in its purest and most righteous form.
“I wanted to thank you,” Schrader said. “The boys and I, we, well, we wondered if maybe something like this might happen.”
“What do you mean?” Bolan asked.
“Well—” Schrader shrugged “—the protests, they’re bad enough. We’ve been fighting that for a while. But we figured it was only a matter of time before they stopped being ‘peaceful,’ you know? It wouldn’t be the first time.”
“I’m not aware of any violence at the funerals of military personnel,” Bolan said warily.
“’Course not.” Schrader grinned. “You’d have to say that, wouldn’t you? But come on, Cooper, you and I both know that’s probably not true. You hear things. Most of the guys are vets themselves. We stay in touch. We network. That’s how we know what the buzz is, where to ride, what services to protect. Makes me sick.” Schrader turned and jerked his chin toward the bodies of the attackers. “They aren’t all like them, I suppose. Not all terrorists or murderers or whatever. But the ones who march and chant, they’re just as bad, aren’t they? Pissing on the graves of war dead. Upsetting the families. Turning the deaths of brave men into a political statement.”
“And women,” one of the other Riders put in.
“And women,” Schrader stated, grinning. “That’s Ben. He’s our resident equal rights activist.”
“Up yours,” Ben snarled.
“Anyway,” Schrader said, his smile fading, “I mean it, man. You didn’t just save them—” he motioned toward the few
