LITMIR.BIZ

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Deacon answered, like he gave a damn.

      “I’m on it,” Smith said, detouring through the A-frame’s kitchen for supplies, then on to the rear deck. “You want to get the door, Ed?”

      Smith’s partner put his newspaper aside, got off the couch and ambled to the sliding door. It was a lot of glass for a safe-house. Deacon had asked, first thing, if it was bulletproof, and one of his protectors had advised him not to worry. Maybe it was bulletproof, which wouldn’t help him if the sliding door was open.

      And he had to give the snipers credit. Deacon didn’t know how long they had been watching, waiting, but they fired in unison as soon as his two babysitters were exposed. He didn’t hear the shots, but saw their impact. Crimson spouting from the wounds in two slack bodies as they toppled to the hardwood floor.

      Shitshitshitshit! was all Deacon could think.

      He bolted, knowing that the back of the house was covered and he had no place to hide inside the A-frame. He considered doubling back to grab one of the Glocks his late protectors carried, but that would’ve meant exposure to the riflemen outside.

      Which left the front door, with the marshals’ two-year-old Jeep Cherokee standing outside. He didn’t have the keys, of course, so there’d be no escape with gravel spewing out behind him. No high-speed pursuit along that winding mountain road.

      All he could do was run, and Deacon knew that it would be a freaking miracle if he made more than twenty paces from the cabin.

      But he didn’t even get that far.

      Three men were waiting for him when he yanked open the front door. Deacon recognized the tallest of them, and the other two were suddenly irrelevant.

      “Hey, Jeff,” his killer said, “we’ve missed you. Aren’t you gonna ask us in?”

      1

      Apple Valley, California

      The motorcycle was a Harley Davidson Nightster, that sinister offspring of the classic Sportster produced in 2007 by designer Rich Christoph, who had said in the press that he wanted people to wonder if the bike was legal. Mission accomplished.

      The Nightster’s paint was billed as “vivid black,” from chopped fenders and gas tank to the ventilated chain guard to the matte-finished 1200 cc Evolution engine itself. The bike had black steel-laced wheels, black low-rise handlebars, black front-fork gaiters, and a black seat mounted barely two feet off the pavement. The only hints of chrome showed on the rear springs and the dual slash-cut exhausts.

      This night, Mack Bolan had the Nightster up to eighty-something miles per hour on a desert highway going anywhere and nowhere, arrow-straight as far as the headlight could burn through the darkness. He savored the cooling breeze on his face, in his hair, creeping under the worn leather jacket he wore over nondescript T-shirt and jeans.

      He sensed that the desert was seething with life—and with death—around him, but it sparked no fear. For the moment, at least, he was the baddest thing in the valley.

      He saw the roadhouse up ahead, putting it just two miles outside town. The neon sign out front read Scoots. With no apostrophe, he didn’t know if it had been misspelled or was supposed to be a verb.

      Bolan had two-wheeled it from Los Angeles, seventy-odd miles behind him now, to find this rundown dive. It wasn’t the kind of place where he’d normally drop in to sample the brew.

      This night was work, not playtime. He had buzzed through L.A. traffic, through its eastern suburbs and into the wasteland of San Bernardino County to locate a target.

      The mission, as always, was search and destroy—but he couldn’t be hasty.

      This outing required some finesse.

      Approaching Scoots, he scanned the parking lot. It had the standard vehicle assortment for a rural juke joint—dusty pickups, desert-bleached sedans—and two new SUVs. The only other bike, an old Japanese model, had been parked around the west side of the roadhouse, chained to a steel hitching post.

      Bolan rumbled into the lot, smelling beer on the breeze before he was clear of the two-lane blacktop. Music was playing in the bar, but all he got was base line, like the heartbeat of a drowsy dinosaur. Inside, it would be loud and smoky.

      Cruising the lot, he eyed the SUVs, one Hummer H2 and one Ford Explorer, both shiny beneath a patina of dust that no ride in the desert could ever escape. Bolan rolled past them, backed into an unmarked space near a cage filled with squat propane tanks and switched off the motorcycle.

      He dismounted, pocketed the Harley’s key, and let his fingers stray for just a second to the black KA-BAR Bowie knife sheathed on his hip. State law in California granted him permission for the fighting knife, as long as it was not concealed. It made a statement, right up front, and if the message didn’t come across, its nine-inch blade could emphasize the point.

      Bolan moved to the bar’s stout front door, steel-toed Red Wing 988 motorcycle boots crunching sand and cracked concrete under thick soles. He pulled the door open, stepped into the racket and haze.

      Scoots was like any other low-end roadhouse found from coast-to-coast, border-to-border. Same songs on the juke box, same signs advertising basic beers and whiskeys for the drinker who came in without a plan in mind. There was a kitchen in the back that smelled all right, considering. Bolan supposed the burgers would be safe enough, and felt his stomach growl in answer to the thought.

      Scoots had a fair crowd for the time of night, still short of nine o’clock. He found an empty booth midway along the south wall, made a beeline for it without meeting anybody’s gaze along the way.

      Some of the drinkers checked him out, while others were already drifting on an alcoholic tide toward sweet oblivion. Two bartenders were working, one of them a porky bouncer-type who hadn’t shaved in several days, the other a willowy redhead who seemed a cut or two above the level of her customers. One barmaid for the tables, circulating constantly with no apparent time to rest.

      Before he sat, Bolan already had his targets marked.

      All he had to do was wait.

      “NEW GUY,” LARRY MOSIER said around a bite of porterhouse.

      Clay Halsey glanced up from his T-bone, toward the stranger, taking in his chiseled face and rangy build. He looked like another drifter, passing through.

      “Nobody,” he replied.

      “Can’t have the same old faces every night,” Steve Webb chimed in.

      “Some of them never change,” Mosier said.

      “’Cept for getting uglier and older,” Tommy Gruber added, reaching out for his Corona longneck.

      Including Brian Doolan, they were five in number at a table near the middle of the room. Halsey supposed they were considered regulars, spending at least one night a week at Scoots when they were in the area, but he would never put himself in the same class as those who always seemed to have a bar stool claimed whenever he stopped by. Scoots was a place for Halsey to relax, wash down a steak with beer from time to time, but it would never be a lifestyle.

      He felt certain he would always stand apart from, the sweaty laborers and farmhands who had nowhere else to go after they clocked out from another working day. He was their natural superior.

      Not that he’d ever say that to their faces.

      It was all about equality these days—at least, for people of a certain kind, he thought, a common breed and background. There were no blacks in the bar. No Asians or Hispanics, either. Scoots had no sign on the door forbidding them to enter—which, of course, would violate the law and bring the Feds to crack their whips—but most people knew where they’re welcome.

      And where they’re not.

      “So, anyway,” Webb said, “about the shipment—”

      “I’m still working

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