LITMIR.BIZ

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over here,” Doolin replied. “Who is?”

      “Those punks. Who do you think?”

      “Just chill,” Halsey advised. “We’re in a public place. The rule of law prevails.”

      “You think so?” Gruber asked him.

      “So they tell me,” Halsey said. “Until it doesn’t, anyway.”

      “And when’s that?” Webb asked.

      “When I say so.”

      Halsey didn’t turn to watch the motorcycle scum advancing on him. He could hear them coming, and a moment later he could smell them. Sweat and motor oil, a mix Halsey sometimes thought of as Eau de White Trash.

      Not that he’d ever say as much out loud. Too many good ol’ boys might take offense and look for someone else to stoke their rage.

      Halsey ignored the bikers as they ranged themselves behind him, concentrating on his meal. He’d see a sucker punch before it landed, telegraphed by the expressions of his four dinner companions, and the steak knife in his hand could do some wicked damage in a pinch.

      But Halsey hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

      The very last thing that he needed was another incident involving cops and bad publicity. The media was after him already, snapping at his heels, sniffing around for dirt. As for police—

      “You’re in our seats,” one of the bikers said, somewhere behind Halsey and well above him.

      “Our seats,” another of them echoed, sounding like an idiot.

      Halsey swallowed the bite of steak that he’d been chewing, half turned in his seat, keeping his knife and fork in hand.

      “I think there must be some mistake,” he told the long-haired man who appeared to be the leader of this motley pack.

      “You made it,” the biker said, grinning through a salt-and-pepper mustache and goatee.

      “I mean to say,” Halsey explained, “that we’ve been here for something like an hour and a half. You just walked in.”

      “Don’t matter,” the leader said. “They’re reserved.”

      “Someone forgot to post it, then,” replied Halsey, feeling heat rise in his face. “You need to take it up with management.”

      “We need this table and these friggin’ chairs,” the biker said with a sneer. “And management ain’t sittin’ in ’em.”

      “We’ll be pleased to move,” Halsey replied. “As soon as we’re all finished with our dinner. And dessert.”

      He knew the afterthought was pushing it, but figured why not?

      Sometimes a spot of trouble couldn’t be avoided after all.

      “You’re finished now,” the long-haired biker said, then spat a stream of brown tobacco juice directly onto Halsey’s plate.

      “Looks done to me,” another biker observed.

      Halsey considered stabbing the tobacco-chewer, but he knew the penalty for using deadly force unless his life was clearly threatened. Stifling the killer urge, he said, “That’s inconvenient. Now I’ll have to get another steak and start from scratch.”

      “He’s fuckin’ with you, man,” one of the bikers told his chief.

      “You think so?” the leader asked.

      “Hell, yeah,” another said.

      “That’s one stupid-ass mistake,” the leader said. Addressing Halsey, he inquired, “Is that right, boy? You fuckin’ with me?”

      “I can’t imagine anything less appetizing,” Halsey said.

      “You got a smart mouth, for a citizen.”

      While Halsey understood the slang term for a working stiff of square, he found the comeback irresistible.

      “So, what are you?” he asked. “Some kind of wetback?”

      With a snarl, the long-haired biker lunged for him, surprised Halsey by clutching his right wrist with one hand, twisting, forcing him to drop the knife, while the biker’s right hand grabbed Halsey’s shirt and hoisted him out of his chair, as if he weighed nothing at all.

      “Smart mouth,” the biker said. “Dumbass.”

      And then Halsey was airborne, tumbling across the table through clattering plates, silverware and bottles of beer, on his way toward impact with the floor.

      BOLAN PUSHED HIS PLATE and coffee cup aside. So far, so good.

      He’d watched the seven grungy outlaws swagger toward the table where his targets sat and then interrupt their meal. He’d worried for a moment that the bikers might stand back and wait for one of their intended marks to throw the first punch, when the seated diners didn’t seem inclined to do so, but it worked out in the end. The spokesman for the group lipped off just enough to get himself picked up and tossed across the table.

      Bolan stayed where he was watching, waiting.

      He couldn’t jump in yet. If it turned out that the targets could handle themselves and were giving the bikers a beating, his uninvited help would be superfluous. Suspicious, even. It could blow his only shot at breaking in.

      He had to hope his targets lost the fight—or, rather, started losing in a clear, decisive manner. Bolan couldn’t sit and wait to see them punched unconscious or delay until the cops showed up.

      The bartender already had a cell phone open in his hand, but Bolan knew response time was an issue. Apple Valley was an incorporated township sprawling over seventy-odd square miles, with law enforcement covered by a police department composed of fifty-five San Bernardino County sheriff’s officers. Of those, four were administrators, five were detectives and eight were patrol supervisors—which left twelve officers per eight-hour shift, less those with days off or vacation time scheduled.

      Bolan had learned all that from the internet, within ten minutes of discovering that he’d be meeting his intended marks in Apple Valley. Now, his first trick would be staying out of jail.

      Brognola had arranged the setup—if these were, in fact, his bikers—but he hadn’t shared their secret with the locals. Bolan had no reason to believe that any of the Apple Valley cops were tied to Halsey’s crowd in any way, but small towns thrived on gossip. It was a rule of life.

      And anywhere you went, the walls had ears.

      So, he’d be going for a ride in cuffs if Apple Valley’s finest caught him brawling with a bunch of thugs in Scoots. He could plead self-defense, of course, then post bail and take a hike. But Bolan didn’t want his face in any mug-shot files, his fingerprints in the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System—IAFIS—or any other data bank.

      He was a dead man, after all.

      And planned to stay that way, as long as he was breathing.

      The bikers weren’t pulling their punches with Clay Halsey’s men, but the casual diners weren’t punching bags, either. They gave back as good as they got—well, almost—and two of the Diableros were bloodied already, though still on their feet and swinging. One of Halsey’s guys, by contrast, had been punched or booted in the ribs and lay off to one side, hunched in a fetal curl.

      Bolan checked his watch—one minute gone and counting. The barkeep was still on his phone, likely giving details to the AVPD dispatcher. Any second, a prowl car would receive instructions, fire up lights and siren, and race through the desert night toward Scoots.

      With how many others to follow?

      They wouldn’t send one cop to handle a dozen-odd brawlers. More likely, the night shift would roll out en masse, unless some of the shift’s personnel were already scattered on other duties. With approximately seventy-three

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