LITMIR.BIZ

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reports claimed Lone Star Aerospace was near completion of the solid rocket boosters necessary for a launch, along with an overhauled Lunar Excursion Module—the LM-14, scrapped when plans for Apollo 19 fell through—and a snazzy Lunar Roving Vehicle. Show up with a truckload of cash and anyone could drive a dune buggy around the dark side of the moon.

      There was nothing on the CD about fissile material. Bolan would have to hear that from the Ranger, assuming there was anything to tell.

      From Ridgway, he moved on to Hal’s files on the New Texas Republic, a secessionist militia outfit based in Tom Green County, near San Angelo, Texas. Headquarters was a rural compound squatting on scrubland west of town, home to eighty-odd families, by the FBI’s estimate.

      The NTR’s founder and crackpot-in-chief was Waylon David Crockett, a self-proclaimed descendant of Davy Crockett, one-time Tennessee congressman and Alamo martyr. That genealogical link had never been confirmed officially, but Waylon’s adherents in the NTR were satisfied.

      Crockett had grown up poor and tough in Brownsville, on the Tex-Mex border. Starting at the tender age of fifteen, he had been arrested nineteen times, convicted on two juvie raps and three adult charges. The most serious, drug dealing, had sent him to Huntsville’s prison for a five-year stay, but he was paroled in three.

      Crockett had found the Lord while he was caged, and came out preaching a mix of politics and ultrafundamentalist religion, picking up disciples as he had roamed across the countryside. He first hooked up with Ridgway shortly after 9/11, when Crockett joined the Midland Militia, ready to defend his state against a rampaging Islamic horde that never showed up. Three years later he’d branched out on his own with the NTR and welcomed Ridgway’s whole-hearted financial support.

      The New Texas Republic hadn’t been accused of any criminal infractions yet, but it was on watch lists maintained by the FBI, ATF and Homeland Security. Budgetary constraints and Crockett’s strict screening process for new recruits had foiled any covert infiltration so far, but there were always rumors: hidden arsenals, inflammatory words, dire schemes.

      Crockett’s second in command was Kent Luttrell, ex-Klansman, ex-security guard for the Aryan Nations “church” compound in Idaho, ex-member of California’s Minuteman Project—the “citizens’ vigilance” border patrol praised by Governor Schwarzenegger in 2005 for doing “a terrific job” against illegal immigrants.

      Five years running, Kent had made news for holding candlelight prayer vigils on June 11, the date when Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed for mass murder. Now Kent was the NTR’s sergeant-at-arms, enforcing discipline and supervising details of the minuscule “republic’s” daily operations for his chief.

      The two of them made a peculiar pair. Crockett was five foot five and wiry, had a Charlie Manson smile and looked like he’d forgotten how to use a comb around the time he quit high school. Most of his photos showed a face with sunken cheeks and stubble, bushy brows and dark eyes possessed of a thousand-yard stare. He wasn’t quite the Unabomber, but a stranger could have been excused for thinking Crockett and Kaczynski had been separated at birth.

      Luttrell, by contrast, was a strapping six foot five, clearly a bodybuilder, with a blond buzz cut and narrow brows to match. His thick arms swarmed with typical tattoos—iron crosses, lightning bolts and swastikas, the usual—while the police files said his broad back bore a life-sized portrait of Der Führer dressed in shining armor, battle flag unfurled.

      That had to have stung.

      Photos depicting Crockett and Luttrell together showed a Mutt and Jeff team—almost comical until you thought about their records and their crazed philosophy. They had been dangerous as individuals, before they met. Together, Bolan reckoned, they were even worse.

      The New Texas Republic had an estimated 650 members, half of those residing more or less full-time at Crockett’s Tom Green County compound. A few of the others were locked up on various charges, mostly weapons’ violations or domestic violence, with the remainder at large throughout Texas. Bolan viewed the available mug shots and candid photos, memorizing the angry faces for future reference, in case they crossed his path.

      Finally he turned to Adlene Granger’s file. It surprised him to discover that she’d joined the U.S. Army out of high school, age eighteen, with the announced intent of making a career in uniform. The 9/11 strikes occurred when she was two years in, and she’d been posted to Afghanistan.

      Two tours over there, with action around Kandahar and Tora Bora, had changed her mind about an army life, but not the uniform. She’d separated from the service at twenty-two and had joined the Texas Rangers when they had started taking on women to prove they were diverse. She’d earned her sergeant’s stripes last year, something to celebrate.

      Now she had lost the final member of her family to unknown gunmen. She knew he needed to report something urgent, but he wouldn’t share details on the telephone. Ridgway was mentioned and the NTR, something about fissile material, but Jerod Granger had not lived to pass on anything more. Adlene had considered talking to her boss in Austin, then decided she should try her Uncle Hal, instead.

      Bolan had no idea what he would find in Texas. Maybe nothing but the paranoid delusions of a dead man—but if that were true, who’d want him dead? From the description of his body and the crime scene, it had been a more-or-less professional elimination. At the very least, Bolan knew the shooters had experience. They’d killed before and had gotten away with it.

      But maybe not this time.

      Bolan wasn’t, strictly speaking, in the vengeance business. He wouldn’t mind taking out the team that had killed Jerod Granger—three different weapons had been confirmed—but that didn’t rate a call from Stony Man or a flight to San Antonio. He would assess the situation once he’d heard the Ranger’s story and decide on where to go from there.

      Full speed ahead or back to Washington with a report for Hal, scrubbing the job.

      If Ridgway, Lone Star and the NTR were up to something wicked—planning a catastrophe, in Jerod Granger’s words—Bolan would see the mission through. If it was all just smoke and mirrors, another zany pipe dream from the “New World Order” crowd, he’d walk away.

      He heard his flight’s first boarding call, erased the CD and switched off his laptop, then headed toward the gate, hoping he wouldn’t have to share his row with some behemoth or an infant that would wail for fourteen hundred miles, across four states. A little peace and quiet would be nice.

      But something told him that it wouldn’t last for long.

      Chapter 3

      San Antonio—Now

      Rolling east on Crockett, Bolan soon found himself approaching Bowie Street. He could go north or south from there, not straight, since one-way Elm Street turned to meet him up ahead, barring access to the north-south lanes of Interstate 37.

      Turning left on Bowie would propel them north to Fourth Street, back toward downtown San Antonio. A right-hand turn would lead south to Market Street, which then became South Bowie, just to keep drivers confused. South Bowie granted access to the interstate, but if Bolan stuck to surface streets, he would be leading his pursuers into residential neighborhoods.

      No decent choices, either way.

      Whichever way he chose, he risked having cops join the parade and putting bystanders in danger. If he made it to the freeway, it could add potential contact with the state’s highway patrol. The only law he likely wouldn’t see would be the Texas Rangers—and he had one of them riding in his shotgun seat.

      With half a block to spare, he chose the right-hand turn. Given the hour, Bolan knew downtown would have more traffic on the streets, people returning home from restaurants, concerts and theaters, whatever. More police patrols, for sure, keeping an eye on high-rent stores and offices. If he could lead the hunters south, then west toward the San Antonio River, the street map he’d memorized during his flight told Bolan he would find dead ground, where they could stop and settle it.

      The

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