LITMIR.BIZ

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cash and cursing the defective ATM had been shocked for a frozen moment by the four people who had slipped in and bolted the double doors. A man and a woman stood at the front windows, the woman nervously peering out, then rapidly glancing back to the interior, the man coolly training his Glock machine pistol on the floor. The woman carried a mini-Uzi. Anyone who looked carefully enough would see it gently shaking.

      The vulpine man, whose bearing and speech marked him as the alpha male, had strode into the middle of the room, whipping an HK MP5 from beneath his duster and waving it in an arc, the implicit threat enough to make the customers and tellers snap out of their fear freeze and hit the deck. The woman who had joined him was stone-faced, her eyes unreadable, but leaving little doubt as to her intent.

      The vulpine man looked up to one of the closed-circuit television cameras that surveyed the bank interior from all angles.

      “An audience. Good. I want you to listen. We do not want to harm these people, but if they get in our way, they are expendable. Make no doubt of that. Today’s little raid is to help finance our crusade against the state that seeks to oppress us and to force us ever closer to extinction. We have inside knowledge of the way in which our government—which has the audacity to claim that it serves on our behalf—is working, and we will bring it to its knees. As you can see, we have Elena Anders, who is a devotee of the Seven Stars, and who is committed to our cause. Through her, we have discovered more of the secrets of power. When the time is right, and we can launch our revolution of the heart and mind, her knowledge will be shared with more than just our existing brethren. Then the fire of justice can spread throughout the land, and we will be as free as our constitution promises we are.”

      The woman murmured something too low for the mics on the CCTV to pick up clearly. The alpha man shot her a venomous glance, but nodded briefly in deference to her and turned to the tellers.

      “You—out here, now. Don’t give me no time-lock shit, either. The locks you have on the vaults here have manual overrides. I want you and everyone in the back room out here now. Call the sheriff and it’s the babies who’ll get it first. You want that on your piggy little consciences?”

      To emphasize his point, he fired a short burst into the floor between the two mothers, who screamed hysterically as they clutched their children to them.

      It had the desired effect: within a couple minutes, bank bags with cash, securities and items from safe deposit had been piled on the counter, ready to be carried out. The vulpine man’s psychology had been sound; this was a small town where everyone was either distantly related or friends of friends. There were no strangers here, and no one wanted anyone to get hurt. They complied almost with eagerness.

      He gestured to his stone-faced companion and to the nervous woman by the door. They moved forward and loaded the haul into large hemp sacks, which they then carried toward the doors as their compatriot undid the bolts. The vulpine man covered their retreat, pausing before he exited to stare directly at the camera above the door. His smile this time was arrogant and triumphant before he moved out of frame.

      The footage continued for a few minutes after this. The people in the bank were too shocked to move or make a sound for a few eerie seconds. In the distance, the sirens of a late-arriving cruiser approached. The raiders’ research and preparation had been good—they’d picked a time when the sheriff’s staff roster was low, and they’d placed hoax calls that stretched the department’s resources, dragging officers far from the main street and buying valuable time.

      Then, just before the CCTV footage finally elapsed, the silence was broken by a wail of fear and relief from one of the mothers. After that, pandemonium broke out, as the hardware clerk and one of the men rushed to offer what first aid they could to the stricken security guard, while the bank staff and the other male customer tried to comfort the mothers and children.

      The picture cut out abruptly just as the sheriff’s team entered the bank.

      Hal Brognola hit the remote, and the wide-screen monitor on which they had been viewing the footage blinked and shut off.

      “What about the guard?” Mack Bolan asked, although he was certain he already knew what the big Fed would say.

      “Three days in intensive care. Didn’t regain consciousness,” he said shortly, shaking his head. “Albert Myres, sixty-year-old vet. Fifteen years on the Jacksonville sheriff’s department, twenty-five in the service.”

      “Some part-time job for retirement,” the soldier said. His tone was brooding, both at the waste of the old man’s life, and the stupidity of the suits who had thought nothing of putting him in that position.

      Brognola shrugged. “People walk around with their eyes shut all the time, Striker. Not much we can do about that. And to be fair, this is a real sleepy town where nothing much happens aside from the annual gator hunt. It’s a family and retirement town, with just the newspaper industry to keep it afloat.”

      Bolan frowned. “Newspapers? In rural Florida?”

      “I use the term loosely.” Brognola shrugged. “It’s the editorial and printing headquarters for the Midnight Examiner. Hardly cutting edge news, but—”

      “But it’s been a while since I was in line at the supermarket long enough to be tempted,” Bolan finished. “I had no idea that rag was still going.”

      “It’s not what it was, but it keeps the town afloat. More relevant to us, it still has a strong circulation, and being the only game in town, it got to the CCTV before we did.”

      Bolan’s eyebrow quirked. “We, Hal? Why would a small-town robbery interest you that much?”

      “You heard the man on the movie. Elena Anders.”

      As he spoke, Brognola tossed a copy of the Midnight Examiner across the desk. Bolan picked it up and scanned the headlines. “But there’s nothing in here about any bank robberies.”

      “Exactly,” Brognola said.

      As Bolan read on, it became obvious that the Midnight Examiner’s reputation as a celebrity scandal sheet and paranormal purveyor left its writers ill-equipped to cover the kind of story that had fallen into their laps.

      “The Seven Stars is a religious cult,” Brognola explained. “They peddle a mix of Christianity and an apocalyptic worldview fueled by too many B-movies and ‘true-life’ UFO books. A few months ago, Senator Dale Anders’s daughter, Elena, left her college in Tampa and fell in with this cult. Our intel stops there. At this point, we can only speculate about how much of Ms. Anders’s participation is willing, and how much of it is forced.”

      Bolan sighed as he threw down the tabloid. “They clearly excel in stories about celebrity diets and alien abductions, but why would they omit such a huge scoop? Especially if they got the footage?” He paused. “There’s a backstory here, right? And it won’t be long before the serious reporters start sniffing around.”

      Brognola nodded, but remained silent.

      “There’s a reason this hasn’t broken yet,” Bolan continued. “And there’s a reason you called me here.”

      Brognola walked across the room and stared out his office window.

      “Dale Anders is a good man, Striker. A kind, fair man. That’s rare enough among senators, these days. He’s the kind of guy Jimmy Stewart would have played.”

      “We’re not doing this—whatever this is—because you like him, Hal,” Bolan said softly.

      The big Fed shook his head. “No, but it is relevant. Dale really cares about his job. He’s never courted headlines, and doesn’t see this as a fast track to presidential nomination. He actually wants to make a difference. Both sides of the House like him, despite policy differences. He’s got integrity. I know he was worried about Elena for a good while before she finally disappeared. He even tried to accept that she was old enough to make her own decisions, even though it killed him. But anyone with half a brain gets alarm bells ringing when it comes to crank cults, and so he called me up for

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