Rita.”
“Yeah, Saint Rita. How it ended up in my pocket, how it was still there when I was released from the hospital.” Kramer paused. “I don’t know how long it was, but I entertained a wicked desire to use some cop buddies I still had in Hollywood. Track those two down. Payback, the likes of which I couldn’t even imagine the Devil himself conjuring up. Then, for some reason I can’t explain, I’m in a library, a nagging suspicion that as bad as my life was it could get a whole lot worse, when I stumble across an encyclopedia on the lives of the saints. Who was she, you ask? Saint Rita wanted nothing more than to go into a convent when she was a young girl, but it seemed her family had promised her out in marriage. She marries, they have two sons, but her husband was murdered. Her two sons then set out to avenge his death. She prayed that they would die before they could carry out their plan of cold-blooded murder, thus condemning themselves to eternal ruin. Seems her prayer was answered. They died, but no one knows the circumstances. After that, she entered a convent, like she always wanted, became an Augustinian Nun. Prayed to share in Christ’s suffering and bore the mark of a thorn on her forehead until she died. Almost six hundred years ago, and her incorrupt body is still just like it was, resting in a basilica in Cascia, Italy. My little motel misadventure was no epiphany, but I’ve kept her with me ever since. I’m not sure I can explain why.”
As Kramer fell silent, Bolan held the man’s look, thinking about the story he’d related, weighing the sincerity behind the words. As much evil as the soldier had faced in his War Everlasting, as many near death experiences as he’d brushed up against himself, he couldn’t help but wonder right then if maybe there was such a supernatural phenomenon as miracles, guardian angels, the guiding hand of a divine force that could hand out mercy to the repentant, justice to the wicked, but already knew the answer. The simple fact that he was prepared to always offer the ultimate sacrifice to keep the scourge of Evil from devouring the innocent and the peacekeepers was proof enough in his mind there was a God, a creator, an eternal judge. When the dust of battle always settled, and the living were separated from the dead, the wheat from the chaff, it was the only concept that made any sense.
The ultimate good was the only principal worth fighting for.
Bolan made the decision. He had crossed the point where he felt it safe to say it wouldn’t prove a fatal mistake. Mitch Kramer was a man in search of new life, who needed redemption, however and wherever it came.
So be it.
The soldier picked up the small war bag, inside of which rested the HK, with spare clips and a bevy of fragmentation, flash-bang, smoke and incendiary grenades. He went and removed the plastic cuffs off Kramer’s wrists, dumped the small arsenal by his side.
“Chances are,” Bolan told the man, “I’m going to need some help. Don’t let me live to regret it. Fair enough?”
Kramer nodded. “More than I deserve.”
CHAPTER SIX
“Bison One to Hammer Wheel.”
The man’s voice crackled around the cab of the Ford GMC, sounding as if it were reaching out from some cavernous echo chamber. He was alone, with only Grant’s voice reverberating in his head, and he wondered if maybe that by itself wasn’t the clue, the opening…
Mark Drobbler kept him waiting, staring out the windshield at the eye of the camera that was hidden behind some ferns. Had the spooks not done their job, he knew he would have been swarmed by men in black fatigues already. Or…
Either way, it was zero hour.
Which was why he found his hands shaking uncontrollably.
He took a deep swig of whiskey from the silver flask, for all the good he reckoned it would do to calm the firestorm of raw nerves and churning stomach. The grim chuckle he sounded against his will seemed to ring back, loud and insidious, in his ears, like a death knell. He was minutes away from venturing into what he suspected was no less than a dark world of hurt he couldn’t begin to imagine.
There were a few simple facts to consider along that line of pessimistic thought. First, he knew how spooks operated, despite all of Grant’s promises and reassurances they were aboveboard, and that coming from a man who had been little more than some backwater dirty badge with both hand and extra-marital tool out. Right. Mr. Fire and Brimstone, always preaching about the end of the world, how the elect needed to get busy scrambling to fight the good fight, and before the barbarians at the gate devoured the few standing God-fearing Christians. All this from a man who had his own agenda here on Earth, and that involved nothing other than big, quick and easy money, so he could coast through the rest of his golden years.
As for the spooks, they came to them, smiling sheep, pretending to be nothing other than simple government officials, but in this case, they came bearing gifts and promising Paradise on Earth—a cash ticket for Easy Street—for the Sons of Revelation. Drobbler knew their ilk. They were nothing less than snarling wolves behind the lamb’s mask. The clincher, in his experienced mind, though, was the fact the spooks had actually told them who and what they represented.
Homeland Security.
Considering what was before them, that revelation was unheard of, tantamount, in fact, to professional suicide.
Or capture.
Assuming they were to be believed, there was the dilemma all of them were being marched into an elaborate Federal trap, hammered and cut to ribbons, and whatever rabble left to be scooped up would be branded as treasonous cutthroats in front of God, man and country. All this before they were even out of the gate. To compound what he couldn’t deny was mounting horror and doubt, there was the attack at the lodge, right before daybreak. Car bombs, of all the maddening mystery—and planted under the very noses of watching sentries—though he thought of those guards in the loosest sense of anything close to resembling vigilant—had reduced to smoking rubbish what was a fleet of top-of-the-line vehicles, vintage classics a few of the less devout were still whining over, demanding immediate compensation, retribution, but, for God’s sake, were up in arms and angrier than ever to follow through with the mission. To throw fuel on the fire of the mystery, there was no sighting, no sign whatsoever upon subsequent combing of the woods and general perimeter of some adversarial force that had up and vanished like a ghost.
To make matters worse still, one of the High Sons was missing, a former L.A. cop, gone to take a leak, ostensibly, but vanishing into thin air.
Hence—the missing cop—was another godforsaken riddle, and this, after they’d been infiltrated by the Feds there was no telling…
“Hammer Wheel! Respond!”
He felt his hand reaching out for the gearshift, but realized he needed to turn on the ignition first.
Stay or go?
How far to 83? Missoula? How close was the nearest town…?
“Hammer Wheel! Why are you just sitting there?”
Drobbler flinched. They were watching. That sealed him in.
He picked up the radio. “Yeah?”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking.”
“The thinking part’s already done. Move out and
