Sabotage

by Don Pendleton

  “All right, Hal,” Bolan said. “I’m on it.”

  “And, Striker?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Take them down. I want these people, and so does the Man.”

  “So do I, Hal,” Bolan said. He closed the connection.

  The conversation, still fresh in Bolan’s mind, had taken place several hours ago. The cemetery in which Mack Bolan now stood was a short drive outside of Green Bay, Wisconsin, where Stony Man pilot Jack Grimaldi waited at the Austin Straubel International Airport. Grimaldi would even now be crawling over every inch of the C-37A that was Bolan’s transportation for the duration of his mission.

  The Stony Man pilot had traded up; he and Bolan had hopped an available USAF C-21A Learjet to Straubel while local federal assets had the longer-range C-37A prepared and positioned for their use. The modified Gulfstream V was a twin-engine, turbofan aircraft with an intercontinental range of 6,300 miles. This particular jet had been outfitted by a black-ops shop affiliated with the Farm. All in all, Bolan was traveling in style. Except for the new jet’s speed and range, however, these details were irrelevant in Bolan’s mind. He had work to do. He refocused his Zeiss binoculars, taking a more critical look at the scene below.

  Then he heard the motorcycles.

  The soldier zoomed in on the reactions of the mourners below. The set of their bodies, the way they stood or moved, indicated surprise—and relief. The loud roar of two-dozen motorcycles rolling up the access road drowned out all other sound. As Bolan watched, the men on the motorcycles brought their machines neatly into line and killed the engines. After they dismounted, they conferred briefly, and the largest of the bikers walked forward to speak with someone from the funeral party. From the man’s dress and bearing, not to mention the large zippered portfolio he carried under his arm, Bolan thought he might be the funeral director.

  Brognola hadn’t mentioned these guys on the phone, but the data files that were part of Bolan’s briefing had included their write-ups. The men on the motorcycles were the Patriotism Riders, a group of citizen bikers, many of them also military veterans, who rode to military funerals to protect the families from protesters. They were nonviolent and apolitical, for the most part; they sought only to put themselves between the families and the protests to protect the relatives of dead service people. Someone within the Patriotism Riders’ network had alerted them to this service at the last minute, apparently. Bolan admired their dedication and the service they provided.

  As Bolan watched, the Riders took up their position on the access road, linking arms and forming a human chain across the pavement. They stood, quiet and watching, their eyes scanning the access road, their heads slightly bowed out of respect for the mourners.

  They didn’t wait long.

  The funeral director and the representative from the Patriotism Riders finished whatever hushed conversation they were having. The Rider joined his fellows on the access road, while the director hurried back to the graveside. As if on this signal—Bolan realized as his brain processed what his eyes took in through the binoculars that there had to be some unseen coordination by scouts or observers hidden from view—a cargo van roared up the access road.

  The van was moving too fast to be harmless. The Patriotism Riders scattered as the old Ford barreled through their ranks, narrowly missing the men closest to the center of the road.

  Battle was joined.

  The Remington 700 came up in Bolan’s hands as the van below lurched to a stop on whining, squealing brakes. As the van’s side door was shoved aside, the Executioner was already acquiring the first target through the Leupold telescopic sight.

  The group that piled out of the van was a mixed half dozen—four men, two women. They ranged in age from perhaps early twenties to maybe middle thirties, wearing a mixture of grunge and protest chic. Each one carried a hand-lettered cardboard sign attached to a wooden handle.

  Through the Leupold scope, Bolan could see that each also carried a gun.

  Whether to make some political point or as a means of distracting their victims before they struck, the “protesters” were waving their signs with one hand while holding handguns behind their backs. Bolan, from his vantage, could see that clearly; the Protest Riders and the mourners beyond them couldn’t. The first of the protesters started to bring his weapon up from behind his leg.

  Bolan took a breath, let out half of it and allowed the rifle to fire itself as his trigger finger applied pressure. The first 146-grain, 7.62 mm M-80 NATO specification bullet screamed toward its target. The metal-jacketed slug struck the would-be shooter before he could utter a sound, the fist of an avenging god smiting him from on high.

  The gunner was dead before he hit the pavement.

  For a fraction of a heartbeat, nothing moved. From mourners to Riders to the attackers themselves, each man and woman present struggled to process the sudden death that had appeared, unbidden and unforeseen, in their midst.

  Then someone among the funeral-goers screamed and hell was unleashed.

  Bolan was working the bolt of the Remington before the dead man completed his fall. He had lined up the next of the armed protesters as the mourner’s scream reached his ears, and he was pulling his rifle’s trigger before the next shooter in line could bring his handgun to bear on the nearest potential victim. For a second time, thunder pealed, and a second man fell dead before he knew the end had come.

  One of the protesters, near the rear of the suddenly dwindling group, started to fire blindly. He emptied the .45 pistol in his fist—straight into the backs of the two women in front of him, cutting them down in his haste to react to the threat he couldn’t find. Bolan calmly worked the Remington’s bolt, tracked the shooter and put a bullet through his brain.

  The Patriotism Riders had recovered quickly from their initial shock, surging toward the attacker. Several of them tackled the last of the men, burying him in a crush of bodies. Bolan caught this but ignored it; there was one other variable still unaccounted for.

  The van’s engine roared to life and the vehicle started backing down the access road.

  That would be the Ford’s driver, whom Bolan knew had never left the van. It was a tricky shot, through the windshield of the moving van, but there was no more experienced a sniper than Mack Bolan. He made the shot easily. Beyond the suddenly spiderwebbed windshield, the driver slumped over the steering wheel. The van slowed to crawl, and then came to rest half on and half off the access road.

  Bolan ejected the empty brass from the Remington and placed the rifle on its hard case. Drawing the Beretta 93-R and flicking the selector switch to 3-round burst, he surveyed the killing ground below him as he stalked toward the aftermath of his deadly handiwork. The Riders were dragging the subdued, disarmed survivor out of the road. Several had spotted Bolan and were pointing at him. A couple looked ready to charge him, and Bolan mentally lauded them for that; they were taking no chances, and Bolan was an armed, unknown man who could be foe as easily as he could be friend.

  “Cooper,” he said as he neared them. “Justice Department.”

  “Justice?” One of the Riders shook his head. “Man, you ain’t kidding.”

  Bolan nodded grimly. Justice, it was.

  This was only the beginning.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bolan stood, leaning against the nearest of the police cruisers, as local law enforcement prowled the area. Already the crime scene was being meticulously photographed, tagged and logged, while uniformed officers and a couple of plainclothes personnel circulated among the Patriotism Riders. The mourners had been questioned first, their statements taken quickly. Most of them had left. Bolan sympathized with them. Most wouldn’t be able to imagine the emotions that the family and friends of the dead serviceman had to be experiencing, with a tragedy in the family burned so raw by fresh, seemingly random terror and gunfire. The Executioner, on the other hand, had seen more than his fair share of death, tragedy and inhumanity. He understood. He also felt a grim satisfacti
on at being able to stop these killers before they could take more innocent lives, before they could pervert this graveside service into the type of obscene political statement their kind craved.

  The local law enforcement had, as usual, been extremely suspicious. Bolan had given them his “Matthew Cooper” identification and the Justice Department credentials Brognola’s people had issued to that alias. It had still taken a few phone calls, one of them eventually fielded by the big Fed himself, before the police were satisfied. They had grudgingly accepted Bolan’s presence after that, and even done a pretty good job of pointedly ignoring him. The soldier could understand some of the territoriality that came with the job, and he knew only too well that his violent intervention wasn’t something that good cops just dismissed easily.

  To those police and any other observer, Mack Bolan was simply waiting around. There was no good reason, in the minds of the police, for this mysterious federal agent not to leave the scene. Bolan imagined they thought he, too, was being territorial, perhaps not trusting the local boys to do a thorough job with the crime scene. The truth was something far different, of course. Bolan was playing a hunch, one spurred by long experience and countless battlefield scenarios.

  Something wasn’t quite right, and he could feel it.

  There was a loose end somewhere; Bolan was sure of it. As he stood, seemingly observing the police as they took the Riders’ statements, he was surreptitiously scanning the perimeter of the cemetery. The spotter, if indeed there had been one working with the shooters in the van, was bound to be somewhere along that perimeter somewhere, offering him a view similar to the one Bolan had enjoyed from his sniper’s vantage. Unless the man—or woman—had the sense to flee immediately when the action went down, he or she was still up there. Bolan had been watching. That feeling that he, in turn, was being watched was something he couldn’t shake. He had been under fire enough times to know to trust his gut. His finely honed combat instincts were screaming at him. He was listening.

  A knot of the Riders no longer speaking with the police had drifted toward Bolan. They were a fairly typical bunch, at first glance—mostly large men in leather jackets, boots and jeans, with a sprinkling of other accessories and licensed motorcycle brand accoutrements. There were a few tattoos in evidence. They looked like bikers, but without the hard edge that Bolan had seen in so many outlaw clubs. These were simply citizens who rode motorcycles, first and foremost, and in this case for a good cause.

  The nearest man, who sported a blond crew cut and wore a pair of sunglasses on a cord around his neck, shuffled closer to Bolan and cleared his throat. This was the man Bolan had seen talking to the funeral director.

  “Excuse me, sir?” the man asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Mitch Schrader, sir,” the biker said, extending his hand. Bolan shook it; Schrader’s grip was firm, but not aggressive. “With the Patriotism Riders.”

  “So I gathered.” Bolan nodded. “Matthew Cooper.”

  “So you said.” Schrader grinned. “You really with the Justice Department? You’re not FBI, or something?” Schrader asked.

  “I really am,” Bolan said. In a certain sense, it was true. The soldier worked for nothing more than unbridled justice, justice in its purest and most righteous form.

  “I wanted to thank you,” Schrader said. “The boys and I, we, well, we wondered if maybe something like this might happen.”

  “What do you mean?” Bolan asked.

  “Well—” Schrader shrugged “—the protests, they’re bad enough. We’ve been fighting that for a while. But we figured it was only a matter of time before they stopped being ‘peaceful,’ you know? It wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “I’m not aware of any violence at the funerals of military personnel,” Bolan said warily.

  “’Course not.” Schrader grinned. “You’d have to say that, wouldn’t you? But come on, Cooper, you and I both know that’s probably not true. You hear things. Most of the guys are vets themselves. We stay in touch. We network. That’s how we know what the buzz is, where to ride, what services to protect. Makes me sick.” Schrader turned and jerked his chin toward the bodies of the attackers. “They aren’t all like them, I suppose. Not all terrorists or murderers or whatever. But the ones who march and chant, they’re just as bad, aren’t they? Pissing on the graves of war dead. Upsetting the families. Turning the deaths of brave men into a political statement.”

  “And women,” one of the other Riders put in.

  “And women,” Schrader stated, grinning. “That’s Ben. He’s our resident equal rights activist.”

  “Up yours,” Ben snarled.

  “Anyway,” Schrader said, his smile fading, “I mean it, man. You didn’t just save them—” he motioned toward the few mourners still present, who were speaking with the funeral director beyond the circle of bustling police “—you saved all of us. We’d have been the first to catch one. I thought maybe, well, it’s hard to explain. But I knew coming here might be bad for us. We couldn’t stay away, though, not thinking there was a protest going down.”

  “How did you find out about that?” Bolan asked.

  “I got a phone call, man.” Schrader shrugged. “Last minute. Don’t know the guy. He said just that he was a fellow American, and that he knew the service today was going on, and that there was supposed to be a big peace protest here. Said he figured that would be of interest to me, and yeah, it was. It’s what we do. We stand up for people who can’t do it themselves, you know? People who’ve already given everything there is to give. You can dig that, right?”

  “I can.” Bolan nodded. Indeed, he could.

  “We network,” Schrader said, indicating his fellow Riders. “There are other chapters of Riders in this part of the country, and a few other groups that go by different names, folks who do the same thing we do. We stay in touch and we tip each other off when a ride comes up, especially if we think one of those protest groups, especially the crazier ones you see on the news, is aware of the service and looking to march on it. We were, all of us, on CNN just last month. But I’m telling you, Cooper, this is the first time I’ve ever gotten an anonymous phone call like that. I’m thinking now it was some kind of setup.”

  “You could be right,” Bolan acknowledged. He took a small notebook from inside one of the pockets of his blacksuit. Using the metal pen clipped to it, he wrote down a phone number. The number would route a call through several satellite cutouts and eventually to Bolan’s secure satellite phone, while flagging the call as an unsecured transmission from a potentially unknown third party. No amount of tech-tracing would produce any intelligence on Bolan’s phone or the soldier’s whereabouts, but to the caller it would still appear to be a direct line. Bolan tore out the slip of paper and handed it to Schrader.

  “If you hear anything more,” Bolan said, “anything through your contacts or those in your organization, call me. I’m interested in anything you hear about protests, or if you anyone calls you.”

  “Here,” Schrader said, pulling out his cell phone and flipping it open. “I have the number on my phone from this morning, the number this Deep Throat or whatever called me from.” He recited it, and Bolan copied it down.

  “That may help.”

  “You’re wondering who’s got it in for our boys, aren’t you?” Schrader asked quietly, looking shrewd.

  “Justice,” Bolan said simply. “I’m just looking for justice.”

  “I heard that.”

  Bolan excused himself and moved to the corpses of the shooters. He had already taken photos of each of them and sent them via secure upload to the Farm for analysis. The locals hadn’t liked that much, from their body language, but they hadn’t tried to stop him and they hadn’t asked any questions. Bolan had left the scene undisturbed while they were tagging and cataloging, but they were finished now. He knelt and carefully started searching the closest corpse.

  “You won’t find much, sir,” one of the uniformed officers said. He nodd
ed at Bolan and help up a plastic evidence bag. “I personally checked their pockets and the lining of their clothes. No IDs.”

  “Thank you,” Bolan said. “Officer…?”

  “Copeland, sir,” the cop said.

  “Anything of consequence there?” Bolan nodded at the evidence bag.

  “No.” The officer shook his head. “A few personal effects. Combs, pocketknives. A pair of wristwatches, domestic and unremarkable. Nothing, really. No car keys, no money, no matchbooks or scraps of paper. They more or less emptied their pockets beforehand, I guess.”

  “What about him?” Bolan pointed to the driver, dead behind the wheel of the van. “And the vehicle.”

  “We’re checking the vehicle identification number now.” Officer Copeland shook his head. “The plates came back already. They were stolen off a Toyota pickup twenty-five miles from here. I can tell you that van will come back as stolen. See that shattered side window up front, the little access window? That’s how they get in to hot-wire it. Sure sign the thing is hot. They must have grabbed it and then switched plates. It would have been enough cover in transit from wherever they got it, to here.”

  Bolan nodded. He liked this Copeland. He was young but knew his business, and wasn’t afraid to share information with another department—in this case, one he had to know was decidedly above his pay grade.

  “Nothing on the driver, either.”

  Bolan looked over the dead men and women once more. That was strange. Amateurs were rarely so thorough, and these sign-waving shooters had hardly been professionals. They’d been sloppy, careless and, in the case of the one man who’d taken down two of his partners, dangerous to one another as much as to their targets. That didn’t make a lot of sense…unless these were the types of politically motivated pawns some greater interest, such as Trofimov, was controlling from higher up. That scenario made more sense. But if that was the case, then there definitely was likely to be someone—