answered after the first ring. Bolan smiled slightly, imagining the big Fed fretting near the phone. “Striker—what the hell happened?” Brognola asked. “It’s all over the local news—the shoot-out, the SUV, all of it.”
“I got careless,” Bolan said and his smile faded. That wasn’t strictly true, but he saw little reason to sugarcoat the failure.
Brognola snorted. “Bull. They just got lucky. It happens to the best of us, once in a while. What about Ackroyd?”
“They got him. Well—he got him. There was only one kidnapper left. We went for a bit of a drive and then I went for a quick swim. I don’t think they’re planning to kill him, though. Not after what they went through to get him,” Bolan said. He bent and picked up the license tag. “I have something that might be of use.” He rattled off the plate number. “I got it off the SUV they were using. It’s probably a rental, or stolen, but I’m betting on the former. I’m also betting that address is wherever they’re forting up. If you can find an address...”
“I can do better than that,” Brognola said. “I can pinpoint where they are and send backup. Lyons and Able Team—”
“No time for that,” Bolan said. “Just get me that address. I’ll handle it from there.”
“Striker—”
“Address,” Bolan said, cutting him short. “You dealt me in, don’t complain about how I play my hand. If I need help, I’ll call. You know that.”
“I know, Striker.” Brognola sounded tired. “Address in ten.”
“While we’re waiting, let me talk to Aaron,” Bolan said. Aaron Kurtzman was Stony Man’s burly computer expert. Brognola did as Bolan requested.
“Striker, you’re missing one excellent pot of coffee today,” Kurtzman said, and the phone vibrated with the sound of his subsequent slurp. Bolan winced at the thought of Kurtzman’s particular concept of coffee. Swill was a more accurate term, in Bolan’s opinion. It was a gut check to even get past the first mouthful.
“Sounds heavenly,” Bolan said. “Have you ever heard the phrase Vril-YA before?”
“Vril-YA, huh,” Kurtzman said, sounding amused. “Bulwer-Lytton replaced Cervantes as your favorite wordslinger?”
“Bulwer-Lytton,” Bolan said. Suddenly, it clicked. “Edward Bulwer-Lytton. I knew I’d heard that somewhere before.” An English author, Bulwer-Lytton had written a novel called The Coming Race, in 1871. The book was about a subterranean master race and their deadly energy weapon and had been one of the most badly written pieces of tripe Bolan had ever laid eyes on. “I need you to cross-reference that book with any sort of organization. Specifically ones that might want to kidnap a man like E. E. Ackroyd.”
“Seriously?” Kurtzman asked, his tone edged with disbelief.
“Have you ever known me not to be serious?” Bolan asked.
Brognola came back on the line. It had taken him less than ten minutes to roust his contacts for the address tied to the license plate. As Bolan had suspected, it was a rental. “We’re back-tracing the credit card that was used to rent it,” Brognola said. “It’s probably a fraudulent account, but we’ll put a trace on it, just in case they use it again.” He gave Bolan the address and added, “Are you sure you don’t want to wait for backup? According to the Reno PD, your playmate used that SUV to bull through a barricade. He nearly ran down several officers and ditched it in a parking garage.”
“Someone picked him up,” Bolan said. It wasn’t a question.
“Which means it wasn’t just those three,” Brognola said. “You’re looking at multiple hostiles who’ve already shown they don’t particularly care about starting a public ruckus.”
“Then the sooner they’re taken off the board, the better,” Bolan said firmly.
Brognola sighed. “Be careful, Striker.”
“Always am,” Bolan said and hung up.
Satisfied, he tossed the phone onto the bed. Then, without hurry, he began to dress for the battle to come.
Sparrow stared at the phone as if it were a snake preparing to strike. He gnawed his bottom lip. Mervin wasn’t going to like hearing that his meticulously crafted plans had fallen through. At least Kraft was safely in Anchorage with the psychotic little android and not anywhere close enough to wring Sparrow’s neck.
To say that things had not gone well was an understatement. No one should have known about Ackroyd, save themselves. But someone had been there, and that someone had made quite an impression. Indeed, thanks to the nameless antagonist’s interference, Sparrow had almost been caught by the Reno police before he’d managed to abandon the SUV and meet with the others. He hoped that their unknown attacker—Ackroyd had sworn he didn’t recognize the man—was now just a greasy spot on the street.
Luckily, the license tag for the SUV had vanished during the chase. That meant they had some time before the police tracked the vehicle to the rental agency and then traced the credit card they’d used. The card would lead the authorities back here—to the SunCo warehouse they were using as a base—and to the company itself, one of a dozen Society fronts in the greater United States.
Mervin had assured Sparrow that even if the authorities discovered the credit card and the identities attached to it, they could always burn the warehouse. To Mervin’s way of thinking, most things could be solved by the proper application of bullets and/or gasoline. He was a straight-ahead thinker, Mervin.
It was all about speed with him, a speed and precision that escaped most of the soldiers the Society employed. Mervin was inhuman, and so was Kraft, come to think of it, but those who followed Mervin’s orders were only too mortal, Sparrow reflected sourly, and he included himself in that estimation.
Sparrow had joined the Society of Thylea as a young man. His father had been a member, and his father’s father. It was a tradition, and a good one, since the Society offered more than any church or political movement. It wasn’t just talk. The Society was determined to bring back the age of titans, free of the shackles imposed by lesser, weaker races.
Sparrow deeply, desperately wanted to be a hero. And he would be, if they succeeded. He and the others would be the heroes of a new age, venerated and immortalized in song and film. He comforted himself with the thought of what was to come.
“It’s not going to get better, the longer you hesitate,” Alexi said, leaning against the office door. “Just call him.”
Sparrow looked at Alexi and frowned. The big Russian was a bottle blond, with a face like a mattock and shoulders like a stretched coat hanger. There was more Eurasian in him than the Society normally liked, but between the hair dye and his ability to recite the Volsunga Saga, people made allowances. He’d been a member of some Moscow-based Neo-Nazi group before he’d joined the Society, and the tattoos that covered his arms told a story as brutal as any old Aryan saga.
Behind Alexi, out in the warehouse proper, Sparrow could see the others. They were packing up their gear and preparing for the exodus to come. Counting Alexi and himself, there were only eight men. There had been ten, but their
