Hostile Odds. Don Pendleton

it to you nearly three weeks ago, and you didn’t seem interested.”

      “I’m interested now. But I’m not a law unto myself, pal, and I damned sure can’t just go busting down doors without hard evidence. The only things you brought me were theories and conjecture. The FBI doesn’t operate speculatively.”

      “Maybe you should start,” Bolan said as he walked around Kellogg and continued toward his car.

      “You’re not bulletproof, Cooper!” Kellogg called after Bolan. “Don’t go doing something stupid, or I’ll bust you in no time flat.”

      The soldier got into his car and split. Kellogg was too obtuse to realize Bolan had probably just saved his hide. Bolan considered his options as he drove back to his room at the Tulelake lodge. He’d just left one of many of Mickey Gowan’s operations. But while some of the people at that underground casino were helping to line Gowan’s pockets, Bolan couldn’t categorize them in the same class as the crime boss. Many were there simply to have some fun, and certainly hadn’t done anything worthy of the Executioner’s wrath. Besides, Bolan had what he needed. Something big was happening just over the border in Timber Vale, one of the lumber towns north of Klamath Falls. Less than a two-hour drive from Tulelake, it was filled with lumberjacks, mill workers and carpenters. The mill there also had a union, which was run by one of Gowan’s underlings.

      As Bolan drew closer to the lakeside lodge where he’d been staying, he noticed two pairs of headlights swing into the review mirror. The hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. He’d driven this road enough to know it was practically devoid of traffic this time of night. Despite the fact this was tourist season in Siskiyou County, he could chalk up a single vehicle to coincidence but not two.

      Bolan increased speed as soon as he rounded a curve and the lights disappeared, then he pumped the brakes and swung the wheel hard left. Halfway into the turn he released the brake and floored the accelerator, jerking the wheel back to the right and then hard left again. Bolan maneuvered out of the power slide and stopped cold, his car now pointed the way he’d come. He kept one hand on the wheel while he reached over to the glove compartment, popped the latch and withdrew the Beretta 93-R. He placed it on the seat next to him and waited.

      A few seconds elapsed before the first tail car rounded the bend and its occupants found Bolan’s rental directly in their path. Bolan caught the flash of surprise in the driver’s face as he cranked the wheel and slammed on the brakes to avoid a head-on collision. The Executioner dropped into low gear, depressed the brake and spun his wheels by putting pedal to metal in hopes his opposition would think he was trying to flee. The tactic worked and the tail car immediately swung around to pursue—right into the path of their backup car just now rounding the curve.

      The second vehicle T-boned the first, and then Bolan released the brake and floored the accelerator. He put a little distance between the two vehicles and then pulled to the shoulder and backed into a private road leading into the darkness of the woods. When he’d proceeded about fifty yards he killed his lights and engine. Bolan reached beneath his sport coat and withdrew his cellular phone. He would have preferred to use a pay phone, given it had better security than wireless, but such weren’t always the luxuries of field operations.

      The voice of Johnny Gray answered on the second ring. “What do you say, Sarge?”

      Only two men had ever called him that: Jack Grimaldi, ace pilot for Stony Man, and Johnny Gray, Bolan’s brother.

      “Hey,” Bolan replied. “We’re not secure.”

      “Got you,” Johnny said.

      “I need you to look into something for me,” Bolan continued. “Start gathering intelligence on a place called Timber Vale. It’s a logging town just north of Klamath Falls, Oregon.”

      “What are you looking for?”

      “Not sure yet…just anything unusual or different.”

      “You thinking of heading that way?”

      “It crossed my mind. Can you find out and get back to me?”

      Johnny paused for a moment, and Bolan could hear the faint clack of a computer keyboard. A moment later, Johnny said, “Give me an hour.”

      “You got it.”

      As Bolan hung up the phone, he saw one of the pursuit vehicles race past the road. He smiled, placed the phone on the seat next to the Beretta and started the engine. He turned onto the road that would take him down the hill and eventually lead to Highway 139. He could leave his belongings at the lodge for now—he was paid up through the month. Something told Bolan the answers he sought awaited him in Oregon.

      In a town called Timber Vale.

      JOHNNY GOT BACK to his brother with the information in the time frame he promised.

      “There have indeed been some eye-opening activities,” he told the Executioner.

      “Like what?” Bolan asked.

      “I hooked up a secure-shell Telnet to Bear’s system at Stony Man,” Johnny said. “About a week ago, two F-15E training fighters crashed as they took off from Kingsley Airfield. You familiar with that area?”

      “Slightly,” Bolan said, searching his almost eidetic memory. “It’s an Oregon Air National Guard base.”

      “Right. Preliminary information has already been fed through the Pentagon’s computer systems, which of course was no trouble for Bear to access.”

      Bolan believed it. Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman, cybernetics wizard and leader of Stony Man Farm’s in-house technology team, had saved countless lives with his uncanny ability to deliver the right intelligence at the right time.

      “Who’s in charge there?”

      “A guy by the name of Colonel Harlan Winnetka.”

      The name didn’t ring any bells, but Bolan filed it away. “What else you have?”

      “Well, like I said, the official reports aren’t in but we think the jets were shot down, possibly by the Earth Liberation Front.”

      The FBI had first classified the ELF a domestic terrorist organization in 2001. Membership in the ELF had sprung from the Earth First movement that originated in Brighton, England. Catching the ELF’s highest ranking members had proved more than difficult for the FBI and other agencies. Its rolls were highly secretive, its meetings held in diverse places and infrequently, and it almost never claimed action for acts that were clearly driven by concerns with ecology and ecosystems.

      “That’s interesting but I don’t see how it ties to what I’m looking at,” Bolan replied.

      “I would have agreed until I started digging deeper into the ELF’s history,” Johnny said. “For a lot of years their activities declined in the Northwestern states, particularly in Washington, Montana, Oregon and Utah. They sort of went silent in that area along with two other major domestic terrorist groups.”

      “Who?”

      “You might not believe it when I tell you.”

      The Executioner chuckled. “Try me.”

      “The Aryan Brotherhood and the Militia for Liberation from Government.”

      Bolan took note as he passed the sign welcoming him to Oregon, and then said, “Probably both of which shared membership.”

      “Right,” Johnny said. “And that means they also would have shared financing.”

      “Sure. It’s no secret these types of groups dip into joint coffers. Pooling their fiscal resources makes them stronger.”

      “Yes, but it’s interesting that only ELF-related activities are on the rise there again,” Johnny said. “Not those two groups or any others, for that matter.”

      “Which means they’re now getting their money from someone else,” Bolan concluded.