Renegade Agent

18

A main drive bisected the old USAF base. To the left was the primary aviation facility: maintenance shop, a terminal with control tower, then hangars, and beyond the buildings stretching across the flat concrete-covered plain, a maze of runways. To the right were the support structures: first some office buildings, and behind them a subdevelopment of billets, ranging from barracks to fairly nice homes that once housed married officers, now gone toward disrepair. After the billets came some stores, and then a couple of warehouses.

The last one housed the primary inventory of Frank Edwards's illicit weapons supply business.

But Toby turned the Jag to the left, heading for the hangar opposite the warehouse. She drove onto the apron. Parked down toward the terminal, Bolan spotted the Lear on which Bryant had arrived, along with a Beechcraft single-engine for local hops, and a surplus C-119 Flying Boxcar that had to be 30 years old. Sure, having your own cargo plane made good business sense, when you were dealing in the volume that Edwards was. Toby steered the Jag around the end of the last hangar. There was a four-seater bubble-front helicopter in front of it, squatting on its skids. Toby Ranger was already an IFR-LICENSED pilot in the days when she teamed with Bolan in Detroit. It was she who had flown the blitzing fighter north to Toronto to pursue one thread of the motor city investigation, and even in those days she was experienced and proficient with both the Lear and the Beechcraft.

Since then, Bolan had been pleased to learn, she had added the chopper to her repertory.

The little rig's maneuverability would be an invaluable asset to the battle plan Bolan had worked out.

Within the shade of the hangar's wall, a guy was seated in the lotus position, his hands palm up in his lap. He wore a cap over dark hair, and khaki cutoff shorts, and he had a gut that hung over their waistline. The cap, the shorts, and the guy were all stained with motor oil. His eyes were closed, and he did not open them until Toby got out and slammed the Jag's door.

Toby nodded at the chopper. "Did you get her running, Buddha?"

The guy blinked at the sunlight. "Sure. Just a bearing in the tail rotor. She's running good as new now." The guy's chatter ran down then; he had finally come out of his meditative trance enough to notice the .45 in Toby's hand.

Bolan got out of the car, stood by its side but did not interfere.

"Gassed up?" Toby asked.

The guy she'd called Buddha — whether the nickname came from his meditative practices, or that godly gut, Bolan was not sure — stared at her. Toby repeated the question, a little more sharply. The guy nodded.

"Start her up, Buddha." Bolan went into the shop, found a rag and a coil of insulated radio wire on a workbench. Behind him he heard the noise of the chopper's six-cylinder power plant starting up. A few moments later, Toby herded the fat guy into the dimness, and a few moments after that he was lying in a corner on his stomach, gagged and trussed like a turkey.

Bolan checked his chronometer and said, "Three minutes."

"Three it is, Captain Numbers," Toby said. "And counting." She reached out, touched his arm.

"Be good," she said softly, "Captain Wonderful."

Be good, for sure.

Be good or be dead.