Renegade Agent

17

Bolan was actually slightly ahead of the numbers as he pulled the Jag to the side of the straight two-lane blacktop access road to Wheelus.

In the scrub grass to either side lay the wreckage of the boxy Mercedes and the sleek Saab Turbo, along with the bodies of the men who had been taking Toby Ranger on her last long ride.

He slid out from behind the wheel, opened the trunk, and began to rig for hard combat.

The fashionable threads that had been part of the Sid Bryant role camouflage were doffed. Underneath the compress, the twin punctures in his shoulder were an angry red. Bolan squeezed on more antibiotic salve, rebandaged them.

He could no longer move the left arm more than a few inches away from his side before the pain's protest overcame free will. From here on he was essentially a one-armed fighter; even pulling on the blacksuit became too difficult for the expenditure of the energy required. Bolan used the Fairbairon stiletto to cut off the suit's left sleeve, slitting down the left side to the waist. After that he was able to struggle into it. The customized Beretta 93Rather machine pistol nestled in leather on his right hip, primed for one-handed firing. The powerful little Uzi hung from a lanyard around his neck. Bolan could not afford to be without full-automatic fire capability, and though it cost him more pain, he found when he experimented that he could get his left arm out far enough to support the submachine gun's barrel. He seated an L-shaped double magazine in the well and charged the weapon. Extra speed-loaders, as well as an assortment of grenades and other small armament, went into the utility belt. In a specially designed case on his left hip were the Litton Night Vision Goggles.

He was patting down the suit, rechecking and memorizing positions and placements, when the sound of approaching vehicles came from beyond the rise that hid him from the Wheelus gate. Bolan slid back inside the Jag. There were two of them, a 15-seater Mercedes minibus and a square-bodied Rover with two people up front, four passengers facing each other on the rear benches. Slumped in the Jag, Bolan caught glimpses of figures, faces. He saw mechanics coveralls white lab coats, well-worn American-style baseball caps. No one gave more than a passing glance at the Jag or the two wrecks in the field. The faces were etched with fear of what had just been left behind, and concentration on getting as far away as possible, as quickly as they could.

These were the noncombatants, routed moments earlier by Toby, sent fleeing into the glare of the early morning sunshine. Judging from their expressions, roby had convinced them beyond doubt that they did not want to be caught in the firestorm about to come. They were the scientists, the mechanics, the hi-tech gurus — the wizards of the arcane lore that was at the heart of Edwards's grand scheme.

Perhaps, Bolan contemplated, the world was becoming a technocracy, a society managed by the technical experts. Certainly the indications were there.

They existed on the personal level, in the form of television systems allowing the viewer to talk back, or banks replaced by machines that swallowed or spewed out cash. It was just another way of hamstringing people's capability for direct action, by distancing them. Communication with or through a machine was not really communication; it was conveyance. The technocrats held far greater power than that, however.

They were at the heart of the systems of defense and destruction that lay poised and ready in the bowels of the supernations. For now they were at the fulcrum of the cosmic equilibrium. But if the technocrats overstepped their mandate, or miscalculated in any of a dozen different ways, the result could easily be a holocaust.

Without the technocrats, Frank Edwards would have been just another petty international hood.

The technological corps of Edwards's army of the night was hardly composed of innocents. If these people were intelligent enough to run Edwards's computer banks, communications net, and other state-of-the-art support equipment, they were intelligent enough to at least divine an inkling of what was going down. But intelligence and insight were two different things, and like many men of hard scientific knowledge, Edwards's people could be highly prone to the old forest-trees shortsightedness.

And there were relative degrees of guilt. These were not gun-toting hardmen who had turned their back on the country that had nurtured them. They were not fanatical terrorists to whom murder was as impersonal as life. Sure, indirectly their activities supported these types. But Bolan could not expect to eliminate, on suspicion only, every person who was vaguely tainted by the stink of terrorism.

Maybe the lesson of what was about to come down would impress itself upon these people. In any case they would not have their hi-tech toys to play with anymore.

This was the essential weakness of a technocracy: destroy its technology, and you bring the society to its knees.

That was Bolan's immediate objective.

There would still be men on the base, according to Toby's intelligence. At any given time, two to three dozen of the iron-hard inner circle were billeted at Wheelus. As at the Valais chalet, the guards were all active members of terrorist organizations, selected for their demonstrated commitment to violent propagation of "the cause." They were chosen to go to the base for various reasons: to select and purchase weapons, to maintain contact with other groups in the terrorist network, to receive advanced training from Edwards or his handpicked associates in sabotage, espionage, assassination, guerilla fighting, and all the rest of the black arts. In exchange for this, they served tours as base guards. The largest and hardest contingent was assigned to the armory where Edwards's stock of illegally exported weaponry was stockpiled. Every precaution was taken, for here was the source of Edwards's immediate wealth, the financial base for much of his operation.

Unlike the technologists, these men fell into no gray area. They were pure black, dedicating their lives willing even to sacrifice them, in some fanatical cases — to their so-called "ideals." If anything about repression, intolerance, persecution, subjugation, and domination could be called "ideal."

Bolan rose in the seat as the Mercedes minibus, and the Rover rumbled on by. Maybe some day the technocrats would realize they were their own worst enemy.

As for the terrorists, the lesson would be more immediate, more direct, and far more deadly.

Bolan keyed the ignition and the Jag rolled on toward the Wheelus base. The electric gate eased open as he approached. Bolan pulled to a stop at the guardhouse.

The contusion on Toby Ranger's forehead was yellow and purple, and her face was pale and drawn. When she opened the half-door of the guardhouse, Bolan had a brief glimpse of the limp figure of the regular guard, sprawled on the little structure's floor.

Bolan slid over, and Toby got in behind the wheel. Her eyes widened in inquiry when she saw the blacksuit's amputated sleeve.

"I'm all right," Bolan told her. He grinned. "if it doesn't fall off in the next ten minutes, we're home free." He was trying to take the edge off, but both of them had fought enough long-odds battles to know that ten minutes could pass in an eyewink — or stretch into a lifeless eternity. "What about you?" Bolan asked.

"I'm...." She glanced back toward the guardhouse and unconsciously touched at the Colt .45 now strapped around the waist of the snug-cut white jump suit.

But when she turned back to Bolan her expression was set with resolution, and color was returning to her face. Bolan understood. If he did not know how many men had died at his hand, he did know that every kill had been personal. When his finger tightened on the trigger, no matter how great the necessity, no matter how evil the target, there was some recessed component of reluctance in Bolan's psyche.

A reminder that he was not, could not think of himself, as all-knowing, all-power. A reminder the man was human.

"I'm okay," Toby assured him, her voice strong and even. "Lead on, Captain Blitz."

Bolan checked his chronometer. "Eight forty-one forty," he said.

"One sec." Toby clicked at the button on her own matching timepiece.

"Eight forty-two," Bolan said. "Mark!"

"You got it." Toby slipped the Jag in gear and gave it gas.