Slayground. Don Pendleton

THE SEDAN moved out of sight, Carl went into the backyard, closing the gate behind him. He called out to the girls to make sure they kept it shut, before moving back through the house and down to the basement. Yates was seated at his desk, staring into space.

      “I don’t like him,” Carl said without preamble.

      “We don’t have to like them, we just have to like their money,” Yates replied. “Frankly, I don’t like any of them. But you’re right about Cooper. Terrible name, obviously made up by some desk monkey with no imagination. No man who was completely in the fold would ever need to use a dealer like myself to supply his needs. However, someone who was working in such deep cover that they didn’t officially exist...”

      “If he’s here to cause trouble, then chances are it’s going to be with your customers,” Carl said.

      “Indeed,” Yates said drily as he reached for the phone. “I don’t mind setting them against each other if it makes me a profit, but someone like Cooper is not going to give me that kind of pleasure. If he’s a government man of any stripe, then I think I may have a shrewd suspicion of where he’s headed.” As he spoke, he punched in a number.

      “Ah, Ricke,” he purred into the mouthpiece, “I think I have something that might be of interest to you.... No, no, Duane hasn’t been causing any problems.... I don’t know exactly what you’re up to, but I think you should be aware of a few facts that have come to my attention....”

      * * *

      BOLAN TOOK A COUPLE hours to get away from the Miami metropolitan area and out into the county that was his destination. Once he crossed the border, he left the highways and took the smaller roads that led him to Griffintown. By the time he drove down the main drag it was dusk, and some of the larger stores were shut. The smaller mom-and-pop operations were still open, as were the diners and coffee shops. There was no mall on the outskirts of this town, so the streets were still busy. It looked idyllic.

      At one end of the community was the small industrial park that housed the Midnight Examiner’s printing plant and editorial offices. Six stories tall, the building dwarfed everything else in town. In the evening light, it wasn’t too fanciful to see how the town was dominated by the tabloid and its owners. How much they knew about the secretive cult on their stoop was something Bolan wanted to probe, if possible, without alerting an eager staff to a potential story.

      Right now, he needed a hotel, a shower and a chance to study the rest of the intel Kurtzman had sent him, before getting some rest and checking out the area around Eveland.

      He found a quiet hotel with a white-painted wooden facade, a terrace and a swing in the front yard. Inside, the owners had gone for the colonial look. A man who appeared to be the same age as the dead security guard, Myres, signed Bolan in. The ex-soldier and sheriff’s officer should have been doing a job like this, not peddling his waning skills and waiting to be taken down. There was a lesson here, if Bolan cared to pay attention.

      He was shown to his room, then thanked the proprietor, ordered a meal and took a shower. Over steak, Bolan studied the maps and topographic reliefs he’d downloaded. He had a fair idea of what to expect.

      But there was nothing like the real thing.

Chapter 4

      Bolan left the hotel at sunrise. As this was a soft probe, he dressed in casual clothes rather than his blacksuit, although he wore combat boots for ease of movement on what might prove to be treacherous terrain. He had on a dark T-shirt and pants, with a loose jacket under which he carried the HK, plus spare magazines in his pants’ pockets. The TEKNA knife was sheathed at the small of his back. In one of the duffel bags—the one not safely hidden with the rest of his ordnance back in his room—he carried the surveillance equipment, audio and visual, he’d picked up in Miami. He didn’t foresee any real dangers at this stage, since he wasn’t expected, as far as he was aware. Nonetheless, caution had to be balanced with traveling light and fast.

      As he drove the sedan through Griffintown he saw very few signs of life—just a couple delivery trucks and a few people on their way to an early start at work. The monolith of the Midnight Examiner building loomed dark and brooding over the town.

      Bolan was no reader of tabloids, but it did strike him as strange that the Seven Stars had never been mentioned in the pages of the Midnight Examiner—at least, not according to the background intel on the group he had asked Stony Man to collate for him. To have a loopy pseudo-religious cult in your backyard would, he assumed, have been perfect for the tabloid’s agenda. It could be worth his while to find out if there was a reason. Anything that might stand in the way of his mission was worth a few minutes’ detour. But right now, there were more pressing matters.

      The road before him was empty. Lush, tropical vegetation and low-lying trees hung over the edges of the black ribbon of asphalt, threatening to take it back and absorb it into the swamps and rich loam that lay beyond.

      He traveled on for several miles until his GPS told him he was approaching the old service road that cut through to the derelict amusement park. He scanned the sides of the highway for a spot where he could pull over and take the sedan into some kind of cover.

      About five hundred yards from the service road, he noticed a semicircular patch of bare earth, likely formed by vehicles repeatedly cutting into the vegetation. Bolan figured it was likely to have been the sheriff’s transport resting up or lying in wait for traffic violations. He might as well take advantage; he didn’t intend to be long, and even if he encountered law enforcement because of this incursion, he could make use of the situation for further intel.

      After pulling as far in as possible to shield the sedan from casual view, Bolan got out and shouldered the duffel bag, then took his bearings and headed into the overgrown flora that bordered the blacktop. He would probably be safe in that spot for a while, as it was still early and he had seen no traffic since leaving town. Evidently they were not believers in rising early in these parts.

      The ground was soft, spongy with every step, and the roots and vines threatened to entangle his feet. There was no path, and he had to pick his way around tree trunks and thick brush. He could hear the scurrying of small animals as his approach scared them, the distant splashes as they ran through pools of water and mud in their bid to escape. Leaves in the canopy rustled as his progress disturbed birds nesting above his head. The constant background rattle and hum of insects made it hard for him to isolate any sounds that would indicate another human presence. If the senator’s daughter was being kept captive against her will, then it was an outside possibility that the cult would have defensive patrols around their base. Come to that, given the nature of the cult, it was possible they would do so anyway. Their beliefs would incline them to paranoia.

      Despite the early hour, the sun already bore down and the heat pulled humid puffs of steam from the soil. He could feel sweat start to prickle on his scalp and the small of his back.

      Bolan pressed on, zigzagging as the vegetation dictated. He advanced half a mile through the dense undergrowth before he hit a sparser, more barren stretch. Through the filigree of leaves on bushes that sprouted along its length he could see the gap where the service road cut through the growth, leading to the old amusement park. The ground here was sodden, and it sucked at his boots. Having to almost pull his foot free with each step slowed him down, and he sought a slightly firmer footing. The muck explained why there was less growth along this edge, and also why the service road had been built up, to add a firmer base.

      Cursing softly to himself, he moved back into the denser, harder-to-negotiate undergrowth. The road and the stretch running parallel to it would leave him too exposed, too close to the park entrance.

      Circling out so he would reach Eveland’s perimeter a good distance from the entrance, he stopped suddenly, senses quivering. Lurking beneath the sounds of the small animals and birds there was something else, something rhythmic and barely discernible. He was sure it was regular footfalls, now approaching him. He located the sound as coming from his right and about three hundred yards