was another ritual. DeLuca grunted, as he always did, acknowledging that they would have to top off the gas tank before they started back to Dayton from the capital. The armored truck burned fuel like there was no tomorrow, no price gouging at the pumps, no crisis in the Middle East. Come rain or shine, Truck 13 guzzled gas, and Sawyer didn’t want to be caught short when they were on the open road.
Not that a chase was anything to fret about. If anything went down, they had a cell phone and a two-way radio with which to summon reinforcements. State police could reach them anywhere along the route within ten minutes, give or take.
Ten minutes wasn’t bad.
“We got some company,” DeLuca said.
The road ahead was empty, but a square gray van was gaining on them from behind, growing in Sawyer’s left-hand mirror. “Let ’em pass, if they’re in such a—What the hell? You see that, Joe?”
“See what?” DeLuca asked.
The mirror needed cleaning, which prevented him from seeing details, but it seemed to Sawyer that a portion of the van’s windshield had opened. Was that even possible with modern vehicles? Some of the old jeeps used to have windshields that—
“Jesus!”
A jet of flame shot from the dark hole in the van’s windshield, and Sawyer heard the ringing impact as a high-powered projectile slammed into the rear of his truck. Before his tongue could wrap around the first of the emergency commands they had rehearsed a hundred times, Tom Nelson started screaming in the cargo vault.
DeLuca swiveled in his seat, shouting, “Tommy! What’s going on, man?” When the only answer was another high-pitched scream, DeLuca slammed his palm against the speaker. “Listen, dammit! Will you—”
“Joe!” Sawyer shouted. “Wait! He isn’t on the intercom.”
DeLuca blinked at that, then opened the sliding hatch that screened their only interior view of the vault. He stared at the square of inch-thick glass and then recoiled, gagging.
Sawyer was losing it. So many years of training, practice runs, and still the real thing took him by surprise. His eyes were torn between the road ahead, the gray van in the mirror, and his partner’s stricken face. He clutched the steering wheel in hands that ached, their knuckles blanched bone-white.
“What is it, Joe?”
“He’s burning,” DeLuca moaned. “God Almighty, Tommy’s burning up!”
Sawyer could smell it, the scorched-flesh smell he’d never quite forgotten from the summer twelve years earlier, when he had driven past a five-car pileup on the interstate, southeast of Cleveland. Bodies cooking, doused in gasoline.
This smell was different, though.
No gasoline, for one thing—and those corpses hadn’t screamed.
“Pull over, Eddie! Jesus!”
“Are you kiddin’ me? We’re under fire!” he told DeLuca.
“Shit!” DeLuca keyed the intercom and leaned into the speaker, kissing-close, to shout, “Use the extinguisher, Tommy! It’s right behind you!”
There were thrashing sounds followed by more screams.
“Get on the radio!” Sawyer snapped. “Get some help out here, right now!”
“The radio. I hear ya.”
As DeLuca swung toward the dashboard, reaching out for the microphone, Truck 13 took another hit and began to fishtail. Sawyer fought the swerve, turning a deaf ear to the screams of agony behind him, but he couldn’t keep it on the road. Another second passed and he felt the front tires spitting gravel, losing traction. The armored truck rolled over on the driver’s side.
1
Clay County, Arkansas
Mack Bolan crouched in darkness, studying the “holy city” from a hundred yards outside its southeastern perimeter. He’d never seen a piece of Paradise on Earth before, but on the rare occasions when he pictured it, his vision had excluded razor wire and guards in camouflage fatigues, with military rifles slung across their shoulders.
Then again, Camp Yahweh wasn’t what most mainstream pastors would’ve called a theological retreat. Its population—269 at last report—was committed to a militant version of Christian Identity, the “seedline” doctrine that proclaimed Nordic folk the true offspring of Adam, while nonwhite “mud people” sprang from Eve’s adulterous affair with Lucifer in reptile form.
Camp Yahweh was a monument to racial hatred, but that didn’t make it anything unique in the United States, or in the world at large. There were at least a hundred similar communities that Bolan was aware of, from Alaska to the bayou country of Louisiana, high in the Sierra Madre or—like this one—tucked away in the Ozarks.
Venomous hatred didn’t make Camp Yahweh special.
The Executioner was in search of something else.
The eight-foot cyclone fence with razor wire on top was not electrified. He’d tested it on his first visit to the compound, after snapping photos of the layout to prepare himself for penetration. Bolan guessed they’d found the cost of generator fuel prohibitive in recessionary times, when even zealots had to pinch a penny and donations on the neo-Nazi fringe fell short.
He had the compound’s blueprint firmly fixed in mind, knew the routines of the soldiers on perimeter patrol and when they were relieved. He didn’t know exactly where the object of his search might be concealed, but there were only three apparent possibilities. One unit plainly served as storage. The sentries drew their weapons from another, prior to going on patrol. His third choice was the base command post, occupied by a bearded, long-haired character who could’ve been auditioning for a part as a nineteenth century mountain man.
Bolan rated the command post unlikely, but he couldn’t say for sure until he had a look inside. If he struck out on targets A and B, he’d have to try his luck with C.
But first, he had to get inside.
Bolan crept forward, boots and elbows digging at the soft soil underneath him. He was dressed in black, his face and hands painted to match. The compound wasn’t brightly lit, and while they had floodlights mounted in twin watchtowers, north and south, they weren’t illuminated at the moment. Bolan guessed that they would save the major candlepower for emergencies or combat drills.
Stay dark, he mentally ordered the sentries in the towers. Don’t look down.
Bolan was ready if they saw him, with a Colt Commando assault rifle slung across his back, a .44 Magnum Desert Eagle semiauto pistol on his hip and a sound-suppressing Beretta 93-R selective-fire side arm nestled in a quick-draw armpit rig. His other battle gear included extra magazines for his three firearms, a stiletto, a garrote, grenades and wire cutters.
He used the cutters first, selecting a well-shadowed portion of fence where wild grass had grown taller than usual, nearly knee high. He settled amidst it, waited for the sector guard to pass, then busied himself with the wire. Nocturnal insects covered ered the sounds that his cutters produced, snipping links on a line
