aside. No one complained, including the burly bartender, who clearly knew a stacked deck when he saw one.
How would it play?
If these were Brognola’s men, they’d been sent to start a fight with Bolan’s targets, giving him a chance to lend a hand and make new friends. He normally preferred a more direct approach, without the playacting and subterfuge, but the Executioner was versatile.
He’d even played the role of a Mafia “black ace” for several months, back in his old life, and had sold it to the toughest critics in the world.
Before he buried them.
This night’s job should be simple by comparison, if he could use that term for any mission where his life was balanced on a razor’s edge. All Bolan had to do was watch and wait.
The bikers would start something with his targets, or they wouldn’t. If they did, he’d have to hope that they were agents, not a group of thugs strung out on meth and alcohol, picking a fight just for the hell of it. Real bikers would be more of a challenge, and they wouldn’t hesitate to stick a knife between his ribs or put a bullet in his head, if Bolan interfered with their idea of fun.
See how it goes, he thought, still working on his fries. Either way he’d get the job done. The waitress passed by, asking if he needed anything. A little flirty smile to sell it, and he asked her for a refill on the coffee. As she poured it, raucous laughter echoed from the bar. Her smile became a nervous frown.
“Bad news?” he asked.
“Could be.”
“Are those guys regulars?”
“We get the type a lot,” she said. “Same patches, too. But I don’t recognize them.”
“Thanks,” Bolan said, when she’d finished topping off his mug. “Be careful, eh?”
“I’m always careful, mister.”
Words to live by.
Bolan sipped his coffee, while the bikers downed their first round of beers and called for refills, telling the beefy bartender to run a tab. Again, he didn’t argue.
Could be trouble there, if they refused to pay, but nothing helpful. Bolan wasn’t there to serve Scoots as a cooler or to collect its bar bills. If the might-be outlaws didn’t drag his targets into it, he’d have no play.
Just then, one of the long-haired bikers turned with beer in hand, back to the bar, and scanned the room. He looked a little bleary-eyed, which could’ve been an act or the combined effect of chemicals and desert night-riding. From Bolan’s angle on the sidelines, he was ill-equipped to judge.
But he felt hopeful when the guy nudged one of his companions, pointing toward the table where five men hunched over plates of food, and said, “Well, lookee here. Those pricks are in our seats.”
“AW, SHIT!”
“What is it now?” Clay Halsey asked.
“They’re coming over here,” Doolin replied. “Who is?”
“Those punks. Who do you think?”
“Just chill,” Halsey advised. “We’re in a public place. The rule of law prevails.”
“You think so?” Gruber asked him.
“So they tell me,” Halsey said. “Until it doesn’t, anyway.”
“And when’s that?” Webb asked.
“When I say so.”
Halsey didn’t turn to watch the motorcycle scum advancing on him. He could hear them coming, and a moment later he could smell them. Sweat and motor oil, a mix Halsey sometimes thought of as Eau de White Trash.
Not that he’d ever say as much out loud. Too many good ol’ boys might take offense and look for someone else to stoke their rage.
Halsey ignored the bikers as they ranged themselves behind him, concentrating on his meal. He’d see a sucker punch before it landed, telegraphed by the expressions of his four dinner companions, and the steak knife in his hand could do some wicked damage in a pinch.
But Halsey hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
The very last thing that he needed was another incident involving cops and bad publicity. The media was after him already, snapping at his heels, sniffing around for dirt. As for police—
“You’re in our seats,” one of the bikers said, somewhere behind Halsey and well above him.
“Our seats,” another of them echoed, sounding like an idiot.
Halsey swallowed the bite of steak that he’d been chewing, half turned in his seat, keeping his knife and fork in hand.
“I think there must be some mistake,” he told the long-haired man who appeared to be the leader of this motley pack.
“You made it,” the biker said, grinning through a salt-and-pepper mustache and goatee.
“I mean to say,” Halsey explained, “that we’ve been here for something like an hour and a half. You just walked in.”
“Don’t matter,” the leader said. “They’re reserved.”
“Someone forgot to post it, then,” replied Halsey, feeling heat rise in his face. “You need to take it up with management.”
“We need this table and these friggin’ chairs,” the biker said with a sneer. “And management ain’t sittin’ in ’em.”
“We’ll be pleased to move,” Halsey replied. “As soon as we’re all finished with our dinner. And dessert.”
He knew the afterthought was pushing it, but figured why not?
Sometimes a spot of trouble couldn’t be avoided after all.
“You’re finished now,” the long-haired biker said, then spat a stream of brown tobacco juice directly onto Halsey’s plate.
“Looks done to me,” another biker observed.
Halsey considered stabbing the tobacco-chewer, but he knew the penalty for using deadly force unless his life was clearly threatened. Stifling the killer urge, he said, “That’s inconvenient. Now I’ll have to get another steak and start from scratch.”
“He’s fuckin’ with you, man,” one of the bikers told his chief.
“You think so?” the leader asked.
“Hell, yeah,” another said.
“That’s one stupid-ass mistake,” the leader said. Addressing Halsey, he inquired, “Is that right, boy? You fuckin’ with me?”
“I can’t imagine anything less appetizing,” Halsey said.
“You got a smart mouth, for a citizen.”
