"Fair enough."

  "And in the meantime I'll have the sheriff double-check security."

  "Don't bother. He's done everything he can."

  "We have a vested interest in your safety, Mr. Bolan."

  "So do I. And it's impossible to guarantee inside a cell."

  The lady rose to leave. "You'll have your day in court," she told him solemnly.

  "I'll see you there."

  Dan Fleming stayed behind a moment, scrubbing at his glasses with a tissue, then finally snugging them in place. His eyes were weary, hopeless, as they locked with Bolan's.

  "You're committing suicide," the lawyer said, his voice reminding Bolan of a sigh.

  "It's all a matter of perspective, Counselor. For me the suicide is waiting, sitting still."

  "But even if you get your trial tomorrow — and I don't believe in miracles — you'll still be sitting through the arguments, the testimony, cross-examination, the consideration of a verdict."

  "It's a chance I have to take," the soldier told him. "I'll be safer in an open court than here."

  A sudden thought occurred to Fleming, deepening his frown. "She didn't try to bargain down," he said. "I should have tried to deal."

  The soldier's smile was natural, serene. "The lady can't afford to bargain this one down," he said. "McLary County's underneath the microscope. They're first at bat, and she's afraid to take it in a walk."

  "But it's a standard move..."

  "And this is not your standard case," the Executioner reminded him unnecessarily. "They've got the evidence. They've got the stage. Careers are built on trials like this."

  Dan Fleming's frown was carving furrows in his cheeks. "About that evidence... it stinks."

  "You don't believe I killed the lady?"

  Fleming thought about it for another moment, then finally shook his head in a reluctant but emphatic negative.

  "No way. I've followed your... career... through media reports. I have a fair idea of what you've done. But this one smells. It positively reeks."

  Mack Bolan grinned. "I hope the judge has got your nose."

  "His nose is fine... but there's a problem."

  "Only one?"

  "He may not let you waive the jury trial."

  "I have that right."

  "Of course you do. We'd fight it on appeal."

  "I haven't got that kind of time."

  Dan Fleming shrugged. "So keep your fingers crossed."

  "Is that your best advice?"

  "It couldn't hurt."

  Mack Bolan liked this man and regretted that the lawyer's life had been entangled with his own. Fleming appeared to age before his eyes as if a heavy weight had settled on his shoulders, threatening to pull him down.

  "Don't let it eat at you," he told the counselor. "You've done your best with what you had. It was a lemon going in."

  "That doesn't make it any easier to live with."

  "Living's tough enough without the extra baggage. Lay it down."

  Dan Fleming met his eyes, a sudden spark of anger flaring there. "You firing me?"

  The soldier hesitated, then finally shook his head.

  "Then spare me the condolences. This isn't over yet."

  Bolan smiled, appreciating Fleming's nerve. The lawyer had to know by now that simply standing next to Bolan placed his life in jeopardy. Defending Bolan in a court of law could be the kiss of death, but something in the counselor's makeup would not let him back away.

  And Bolan didn't have to search for fancy labels to describe that quality.

  He called it guts.

  Integrity, damn right.

  As court-appointed counsel, Fleming knew he had three strikes against him. He lacked the state's investigative facilities, cash reserves, the sheer ability to sway a verdict through the power of a title tacked behind his name. His client's notoriety would be strike two. Strike three, the butchered woman found in Bolan's rented room along with other "evidence" collected at the scene.

  Elimination of a jury shaved the prosecution's lead by placing the decision in the hands of one experienced and educated man. If Fleming smelled the stench behind a frame, the judge might also notice something in the wind, assuming that he was honest and unconnected to the syndicate by any ties past or present.

  If Bolan drew a judge who had been bought and paid for... well... it was a gamble that he had to take. Selection of a jury spread the risk around — but it would also give the Mob a greater range of targets to select from when it came to serving up threats, or promises of a rich reward.

  He felt a reasonable certainty that he would be safe in court unless some trigger-happy moron slipped his leash. There would be deputies and bailiffs standing by to deal with any overt threats, and Hal Brognola could be counted on to have some troops behind the scenes. A raid in open court would bring down heat enough to fry the mafiosi in their burrows, and for now that was the only life insurance Bolan had.

  The soldier did not think beyond tomorrow and his day in court. He might not see the sun set on another day, but death did not intimidate Mack Bolan. He had come to terms with the inevitable early in his endless, hopeless war, accepting the realities of his selected course. So far he had not only named the game but also had effected some surprising changes in the rule of play. And yet the soldier knew that he could not escape or second-guess the final hand.

  The odds had been against him from day one. He had defied them, had mocked the laws of probability and had walked away with mind and body more or less intact. The soul was something else again, and Bolan's bore the scars of countless wounds inflicted by his enemies. From time to time the pain would stir inside him and Bolan would be forced to scan the roll call of the lost. So many lives, and in the end it all came down to a McLary County cell.

  But if the cell became his final bivouac, if they should cut him down in transit, or decide to field another team inside the block itself, the soldier would be satisfied that he had done his best. One man could make a difference, could defy the odds.

  One grim, determined man could move the world — or stop it cold — depending on his methods and his goals. How many times had one demented gunman altered governments and changed the course of history? How many lone, obsessive madmen had disrupted cities, states or nations with their brutal fantasies?

  Too many.

  Bolan was the balance weight, a single force against the cannibals, someone who was determined that their savage appetites would not be satisfied today.

  Tomorrow, sure, would have to take care of itself.

  The Executioner would give tomorrow all the aid and comfort that he could... but first, he had to help himself.

  And that would be no easy task.

  For openers it would be necessary to convince a judge that justice would be served by the avoidance of a jury trial. A conscientious magistrate might not agree; he might insist that Bolan plead his case to twelve impartial people.

  But if he was forced to waste the time involved in the selection of a jury panel, Bolan was as good as dead. He recognized that truth, and it would be his task to make the court accept that simple fact.

  Without a jury, and without delays, he had a chance.

  The slimmest, most anemic chance.

  If death was the inevitable end to any soldier's private war, the soldier owed it to himself to choose the time and place. But failing that, if he could not select the killing ground, he could at least resist the final curtain call. He could fight back with all his strength and grim, ferocious energy until the enemy overwhelmed him and brought him to earth.

  Mack Bolan was prepared to go down fighting — in the cell block, in the courthouse, any way it came.

  The Executioner would have his day in court, or die in the attempt. And take along a couple of the cannibals.

  It was the very least that he could do.

  16

  Johnny Bolan had been driving for the better part of twenty hours, fueled on truck-stop coffee, greasy burgers and the burning urgency that ate him up inside. He had pushed the 4 x 4 Jimmy at a steady pace, avoiding speed traps in New Mexico and Arizona, skirting larger towns with their police and traffic lights unless he needed food or fuel. And he had made it through without an incident.

  Almost.

  His full attention had been focused on the radio, an hourly newsbreak in the endless flow of strident rock, the announcer's voice declaring that the fugitive, Mack Bolan, had been locked up in McLary County, Texas, facing charges in a local homicide. Authorities from around the nation and the world would be arriving in the days to come, each staking out a claim until the jurisdictional disputes could be resolved.

  The news flash left Johnny feeling dizzy, undecided whether he should scream or laugh hysterically. They knew his brother now, and they should not have known him — after surgery, the alteration and erasure of his fingerprints, the cover that he would have carried on his Texas run.

  They knew him, and it had to mean that Mack had let the information slip deliberately or otherwise. The miserable alternative was too much to contemplate now, and Johnny thrust it out of mind, returning his attention to the road, his rearview mirror... and the flashing lights of a police cruiser on his tail.

  His mind had not been on the road, on the speedometer, and he had missed the city limits sign staked out a good five miles before the tiny desert town was visible. No time to wonder which dusty crossroad was approaching now. He had to shake the cruiser; he couldn't let its driver scrutinize the automatic weapons and other paramilitary gear that he had stowed behind the Jimmy's driver's seat.

  He floored the gas pedal, knowing that he could not outrun the squad car's powerful Police-Pak on the open road. But he had four-wheel drive and rugged off-road tires to see him through maneuvers that the standard street cop's chariot could never hope to emulate. Johnny had no doubt that he could evade the rural squad car, leaving its occupant with nothing worse than bruises to his dignity.

  The siren wailed behind him, eerie in the desert night, and Johnny smiled, his mirror image green and ghostly in the dashboard light. The officer would have his license number now, but that would be the least of Johnny's problems. He kept a set of spares, complete with registration papers, but he would need some time and space to make the switch. Some time and space without a screaming cruiser on his ass.

  The younger Bolan cut his wheel hard left and dropped the Jimmy into four-wheel drive before he cleared the shoulder of the two-lane blacktop. Accelerating, Johnny kicked the headlights onto high beams and momentarily lost his pursuer in a cloud of roiling dust and sand. The siren faltered, seemed to momentarily choke, and then took up the howl of the pursuit once more.

  He hated taking time to play this game when there was so much to be done and so little time. Unmindful of the sand and stones and sagebrush whipping past beneath the Jimmy's undercarriage, Johnny pushed its engine to the limit, rocking with the motion of its progress on the rough terrain.

  A blowout or a broken axle now would finish him — would finish Mack — and Johnny knew the risk that he was taking when he left the road. Maybe he should have simply taken the citation with a smile, but then again...

  One Bolan locked away was bad enough. Two Bolans caged would be the end of everything, and there was more at stake.

  His brother's war, his life and soul, were riding on the line, and Johnny knew that he could not afford to gamble on the odds. There would be time enough for that when he reached McLary and saw how best he could assist his brother in escaping from his cell.

  It never once occurred to Johnny Bolan to do nothing, to just simply let the chain reaction of events proceed along its charted course. If there was one thing he had learned from Mack, from life, it was the lesson that a single man could make a difference, anytime and anywhere, no matter what the odds.

  Standing on the gas, he slowly brought the Jimmy back around in the direction of the highway. Behind him, the pursuer's headlights wavered crazily, now pointing to the heavens, now just as swiftly nosing down again and flattening against the rocky earth. The cop was catching hell back there but hanging tough. He would have placed the call for backup by this time. Johnny knew they might be waiting for him on the highway, but he would have to take that chance.

  And he was watching when the trailing headlights disappeared.

  The sudden, swirling darkness was so absolute that it was blinding. Johnny braked and sat idling for a silent moment, listening for the siren, but in vain. He cautiously reversed his track now, navigating through the settling dust clouds with his rearview mirror, dousing his own lights just in case the officer was trying to take him by surprise.

  And in the desert darkness Johnny Bolan almost missed the lip of the ravine.

  It had been fate, perhaps, that had made him miss the gully on his headlong charge to nowhere, pure dumb luck that had led the officer to cut his wheel hard right instead of veering left. The cruiser had survived a drop of seven feet with minor damage to the grill, where it had burrowed deep into the sandy bank, the engine dead on impact, robbing power from the beacon lights and siren. A scuffling movement behind the dusty windshield told Johnny that the driver had survived. He would be hailing reinforcements soon with his mounted microphone.

  Johnny found the pavement more by instinct than by navigation, running dark against the possibility of other cruisers waiting for him on the highway, but he was alone. He took the Jimmy up to eighty-five and held it there until he crossed the Texas line, and only then did he allow himself to wind her down to find a turnout and switch the license plates.

  Soon he passed the highway sign that told him he was entering McLary County, Texas. Twenty minutes more and he was in the town itself, the Jimmy rolling on past dusty, faded storefronts, past the redbrick courthouse, homing in on the Alamo Hotel. The parking lot was filling up with rental cars, and there was a sprinkling of vans with tv network logos painted on their sides.

  Johnny found a space in back beside a service entrance that probably opened on the kitchen if his first impression was correct. He locked the scaled-down utility and walked around to enter through the lobby, thankful for the small relief provided by the ceiling fans inside.

  The desk clerk was a balding man in shirtsleeves, sporting half-moon perspiration stains under his arms. He eyed the new arrival with sullen curiosity.

  "Help you?"

  "I could use a room."

  "How long?"

  "A day or two. It could be more."

  "You with the networks?"

  Casual, but with cautious animation creeping in, thought Johnny. The desk clerk had attained a small degree of secondhand celebrity, and he had a story, sure, if someone cared enough to roll the tape and cross his palm with coins.

  "I'm free-lance," Johnny told him noncommittally.

  The desk clerk nodded knowingly, pretending that he understood. "In town to do a story on this Bolan thing?"

  "That's right."

  "I knew it." The clerk's caution was disappearing now as Johnny finished filling out the registration card and pushed the first night's rent across the counter. "I was working when they brought him in, you know."

  "In here?"

  The desk clerk looked confused. "Well, no... not here. They took him to the jail, right there, across the street."

  "I see."

  "You couldn't miss him. It was like Clyde Barrow come to town or somethin'. He was six foot seven if he was an inch, I swear to God."

  "I always thought he was a small man."

  "Who?"

  "Clyde Barrow."

  Brief confusion gave way to irritation on the desk clerk's sallow face. "I meant that Bolan."

  "Oh, well, my mistake."

  Johnny snared the key and turned his back before the clerk could formulate an answer. He passed into brilliant, baking sunshine once again. He would retrieve his meager baggage from the Jimmy, bring it through the service entrance to avoid another meeting with the sage in residence... and he would try to sleep.

  It was the only sensible course, considering the time of day and the weight of sheer exhaustion that had settled on his shoulders. He could do nothing for Mack in daylight, and his search for evidence could wait another hour, two at most, until his energy reserves had been replenished from the drive. When he was rested...

  What?

  He would survey the battleground for openers. And it would be a battleground, this little desert crossroads, if they tried to take his brother down in jail. Or if they tried to take him out of jail. Any way it played, it would be Johnny's job to save him.

  But first he needed sleep. Then he would begin unraveling the skillful frame that had, at last, ensnared the Executioner.

  * * *

  The soft, insistent trilling of the telephone demanded Ethan Peck's attention. He put the VCR on pause, arresting naked bodies on the twenty-six-inch screen. It was his private line, goddammit, and he knew that he could not afford to ignore it. A nagging sense of apprehension was already churning in his stomach as he shouldered the receiver.

  "Yeah?"

  "We're waiting, Ethan."

  And he recognized the voice at once.

  It was the last voice in the world he wanted to intrude upon his tight, intensely private world.

  "I ran into a little problem here."

  "We heard about your little problem, Ethan. Fix it."

  "I've got people working on that now. Another couple days..."

  "You're stalling."

  There was something worse than anger in the deep, familiar voice. An icy finger traced the flabby nape of Ethan's neck and brought the short hairs there to attention.

  "Hey, you know me, right? I've never let you down before. Your hitter dropped the ball. You can't hold me responsible for that."

  "Of course we can."

  "I'm gonna patch things up," he told the disembodied voice. "Don't worry, huh?"

  "We're paying you to worry, Ethan. If you don't think you can handle it..."

  "They've got his ass in maximum security. It's gonna take some time."

  "You haven't got a lot to spare."

  "I've got some people on the local force..."

 

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