Force Lines. Don Pendleton

you, Mr. Drobbler.”

      Without hesitating, lest that stare turn even darker, Drobbler was past the man. Three steps inside the sprawling makeshift factory and he caught his breath, braking to an abrupt halt. The walls, he reckoned, were soundproof, had to be since the noise of hydraulic drills driving home bolts and the hiss and spray of blowtorches assaulted his senses, and would have carried clear to town, a short distance away.

      A look to his side and Drobbler found the twelve handpicked Sons of Revelation. They were grouped around a large steel table, poring over what he knew were blueprints, computer-enhanced specs, to a man as grim as death. Two men in black raid suits with shouldered HK subguns were hovering behind them as they ran down mission logistics and parameters.

      The drills suddenly ceased. Two figures in face shields stepped back from the rear of the bus they worked on, the blue-orange flames from blowtorches shrinking as Infinity rolled out to the middle of the floor. He was all award-winning actor, that one, eyes beaming as he claimed the spotlight. It was his world, no question, and this was his stage.

      Drobbler took a few steps toward Infinity, one eye running the length of the leviathan. It was painted black, and for the life of him he couldn’t tell where the windows began and ended. Eagle Charters was painted in bold white letters above where a cargo hold would have been. The single door to the front portside was open, with three steps leading up to a walled-in cubicle where the driver sat.

      “There it is, Mr. Drobbler. Attila. In just a few minutes, it’s all yours.”

      Drobbler saw Infinity motioning for him to step his way, then the black op slipped the subgun off his shoulder.

      “Coming your way inside, gentlemen!” he called, then cut loose with the subgun.

      Drobbler flinched as the first few rounds scorched the hull, his ears spiked as those bullets, muzzling at what he believed was 400 meters per second, marched a line of sparks down the side. Ricochets went screaming toward the nose end, the wall beyond and beside the entrance door absorbing more slashing steel-jacketed hornets. Drobbler felt a flash of gratitude that Infinity had seen fit to pull him away from Attila at the angle he now stood. Infinity shifted his aim, drilling some rounds where Drobbler suspected the windows were positioned. A split-second pause, then the black op burned out the clip, the final rounds pounding the rear tire with a peculiar loud thud.

      Infinity was all smiles behind the rising cordite as he said, “You like it?”

      Drobbler examined the bus, stem to stern, top to bottom, but couldn’t spot the first nick, dent or scratch. Without a close-up inspection, though…

      “Well?”

      “Let me guess. The tires are reinforced by Kevlar?”

      “And the hull is all titanium-plated. Double-layered where the driver sits. Nothing short of a cruise missile will knock him out of his seat. Hubs, axles, the whole chassis is reinforced steel with, again, a titanium coat.”

      “Windows are bulletproof, I gather?”

      “Better. Right around your gun revetments and the driver’s half of the window it’s diamond layered.”

      Drobbler took another long hard look at it, their beast of burden. “Nothing short of a cruise missile, huh?” he muttered.

      He had to admit he was impressed, but if he was supposed to be grinning like a school kid and jumping up and down…

      The black op rolled past Drobbler and dumped the large nylon bag at his feet. He zipped it open, and Drobbler beheld the down payment. Three million dollars, rubber-banded stacks of hundreds, stared him back. He was about to bend, thinking he should touch a few stacks, just to make sure it wasn’t too good to be true, when Infinity took a step toward him.

      “You can count it on your own time, Mr. Drobbler. Right now, we have work to do and not much time to do it in before you and your men ship out.”

      “THE CHOICE IS REAL SIMPLE.”

      The voice was graveyard, icy, with no room for compromise. It matched the coldest set of blue eyes he’d ever seen. Those eyes, framed in the black-face of combat cosmetics, told stories all by themselves.

      Bad stories. Real stories. Stories about death and pain and misery, and, Mitch Kramer could damn well believe, more given than received. This was not some weekend local yokel stumbling about the woods, playing paintball grab-ass with a few drunken morons.

      This was the real deal. This, his gut screamed at him, was Death in human flesh.

      Something hit his stomach, and Kramer saw it was his wallet. He was told to get up, wondering if he moved fast enough for the man’s liking, but it was all he could manage just to get his legs back on the ground. He rubbed his jaw, worked his mouth, tongued his teeth. All there. The big man knew, then, about applying just the right amount of force where it didn’t go too far, break something, put a guy in a coma or in the ground. Cop stuff. Or military training?

      On second look, decked out in commando gear with slung sound-suppressed HK subgun, with all the right bearing, all the right attitude, the commandeered Glock now snug in his waistband, maintaining a nice distance where he could fire at will with his sound-suppressed Beretta before he could cut the gap in a quick rush…

      The stranger was examining something in his hand. Kramer gathered his bearings. He had been dragged a few more yards deeper into the woods. He was wondering if the two SOR clowns posted as sentries had heard the ruckus, how long he’d been laid out when the big guy spoke.

      “You come with me, cooperate as my prisoner, answer my questions.”

      Kramer was almost afraid to ask for the alternative, but said, “Or?”

      “I’ll send you back.”

      Why did that sound not only too easy, too good to be true, but no choice at all? Who the hell was this guy?

      “You take option number two, be forewarned. When I bring the walls down on the Sons of Revelation, I spare no one. There will be no second chance.”

      Just being in the man’s presence, Kramer could believe as much. “You know, you may not believe this, but I was looking for a way out.”

      The stranger held out what he’d been examining. Kramer took it and smiled even though it hurt. Somehow his laminated daily prayer card to Saint Rita had been dislodged from his wallet. During the fall, or the frisk? And did it matter? Glancing at the first few lines—“O powerful Saint Rita, rightly called Saint of the Impossible, I come to you with confidence in my great need”—and Kramer thought he might lose it. This was it. This was the moment, the deciding point in the fork of the road. He was a wretch, beaten, whipped, broken, defiled his whole life by his own hand. He was the vilest of worms, deserved nothing less than sudden death and instant justice, and yet…

      He was tucking the card away, as the big man, holding up a small black box with a flashing red light, told him, “I even catch the whiff of a problem from you, and you’ll have less than a second to call on that holy lady.”

      Kramer didn’t need convincing, but he knew what was coming. The motor pool was maybe forty, fifty yards away, but to Kramer it sounded like the trumpet blast of Judgment Day, calling forth the living and the dead. He held his ground as the fireballs tore through the vehicles, pulped the classics that were worth, he’d heard, a combined quarter mil. There was shouting and screaming and cursing next as the wreckage pounded the east and north walls. Something told him, as he was ordered to get moving, this was only the beginning of the end for a whole bunch of bad men.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      “We’re creatures of habit, Mr. Radfield. Each one of us is, to some greater or lesser extent, predictable. We wake up at the same time for the same job. We drink the same brand of coffee and the same amount before we drive roughly the same route to our place of employment that expects us there at the same time, five days of the week. We drink the same brand of