There might be nothing dangerous per se about her latest story, but it was important to her all the same. It had begun with scrawled, anonymous complaints, alleging criminal mistreatment of the residents at certain D.C. nursing homes. A string of interviews with residents, beneath the watchful eye of smiling nurses, had done nothing to substantiate the stories. But an off-the-record conversation — and a strictly off-the-record payment — with a member of the cleaning staff at one facility had cast a different light upon the scene. Provided with a suitable inducement, her informant had agreed to take a camera inside the rest home where he was employed. His photographic style would never rate a one-man show, but his subject matter spoke to Susan Landry's heart. Police were studying the photos now, together with a tape that her informant had secured while wired for sound, but she was not inclined to wait for the indictments. UPI was waiting for her lead and talking a potential series. The police would have to watch her dust.
The piece was small compared to other stories she had handled. Susan's coverage of the Cleveland underworld had flirted with a Pulitzer, and she had won acclaim for coverage of the Bolan trial in Texas. Still, the subject matter counted, meant more to her than the national exposure she was likely to receive. It mattered when her writing made a difference in the lives of people on the street, in boardrooms where the fear of media exposure made the fat cats think twice before proceeding on their merry way and trampling the little man. But Susan Landry didn't write for glory or for the recognition of a byline. Several of her hottest stories had been quietly suppressed, against her own best interests, and the Bolan trial had been a fluke.
Bolan...
She thought about the solitary warrior often, wishing there was some way she could tell his story to the world. A part of it had surfaced after Cleveland, rising from the ashes of her own irrevocably altered life, but she had so much more to say about the man. So much that she could never say in public.
He had saved her life on two occasions: once in Cleveland, and again in Washington, before the roof fell in on Bolan's supersecret operation with the government. Each time the guy had risked his own life to pull her out of jeopardy created by her innate curiosity. She would be dead now if it was not for the man in black, but there was nothing she could say or do to repay that debt.
In Cleveland he had saved her from the syndicate; in Washington, from strung-out members of a street gang on the payroll of some renegades at the CIA. The shock waves from his D.C. operation had produced some changes in the Company, but they had also left Mack Bolan once more on the outside, looking in. She wasn't privy to the fine points of his previous arrangement with the government, the price that he had doubtless paid through loss of freedom in return for coming in from the cold. But Susan knew that there had been a hefty price tag on his leaving. She had gleaned from fragments of unguarded conversation that a part of Bolan's heart, a portion of his soul, had been severed, left behind when he was banished from Stony Man.
No, scratch that. The soldier had not been expelled. From all accounts — and there were precious few available — the choice to leave had been his own. If Bolan was in exile now, the penalty was self-imposed, and Susan knew that he would live with it the way that he had lived with being hunted like an animal throughout his early war against the Mafia. From what she gathered off the wires, that war was still in progress, and the Mob was having no more luck at pinning Bolan down today than in the bad old days.
They had come close in Texas with their scheme to put the guy on trial for murder, pin him up in jail where he would be an easy mark for assassination or where he would doubtless find himself condemned to execution for his "crimes." It had been close, but even in a cage, the Man from Blood would never be an easy mark. The trial had been an education in itself, but sudden violence had disrupted the proceedings prior to the delivery of a verdict. Susan wondered what the decision might have been, but the presiding judge steadfastly fended off requests for interviews. If he had come to a decision in the Bolan case, he seemed determined that it would not surface in the headlines.
She thought about the last chaotic moments of the trial in Texas. Bolan had been marked for murder in the courtroom, with assassins salted through the spectators and others waiting on the street outside. But in the final moments he had not been alone. With cameras excluded from the courtroom, there had been no photographs of Bolan's comrade, and the sketchy "artists' renderings" reminded Susan Landry of a Saturday cartoon. She had observed the action from a ringside seat, had passed within ten feet of Bolan's young compatriot as he sat taking notes, a Press badge pinned to his lapel. She had not seen him since, might never cross his path again, but if she did...
And maybe Bolan wasn't out there on his own, alone against the overwhelming odds. Perhaps he had a friend — or two, or three — to stand beside him when the flames were licking at his ankles. But she was wrong again, and recognized the fact before the thought was fully formed. The soldier never lost sight of his goals. And if his goals were ultimately unattainable... well, he would persevere in any case. It was the very definition of a hero and, in Susan Landry's eyes, Mack Bolan fit the bill.
It wouldn't do for Susan to express herself in print — the wires and major magazines were known to frown on editorials romanticizing "common criminals" — but in her heart she knew that there was nothing common in Mack Bolan's private war. Someday, somehow, she might be able to describe the man as she had known him, make the reading public understand the driving force, the dream, behind his long crusade. Despite their relatively short acquaintance, Susan felt that she could see inside the warrior — one facet of the man, at any rate — and understand what made him tick. The truth was painful in its brutal simplicity.
He was decent, nothing more nor less. Too decent for the modern world, perhaps, and certainly too decent to permit the savages, the cannibals to go about their business unmolested. He attacked the enemy because he had to, and because he had the skills required to make it stick. When courts of law broke down and justice failed, when predatory animals were circling their prey, the Executioner stood ready to exterminate the vermin, to restore a measure of security, of sanity to daily life inside the urban jungle. Having seen him work, and having shifted from the opposition's viewpoint to the status of an unabashed admirer, Susan Landry knew that Bolan's contribution was important, even vital to the maintenance of civilized society.
Someday, somehow, the world would see Mack Bolan through her eyes. She only hoped that he would be around to share her vision, and to realize precisely what he meant to one reporter in D.C.
The telephone disturbed her private reverie, and Susan got it on the second ring. She recognized the voice at once, a junior officer at Justice who had given her some leads from time to time. The guy had trouble understanding why her gratitude had never been expressed in bed.
"How are you?" Friendly, but with distance that would let him know his place.
"We're jammed up to the rafters, but I thought you'd want to know about your friend."
Alarm bells chimed softly in the back of Susan's mind. "Which friend is that?"
"Brognola."
"What about him?"
"Hey, I guess you really haven't heard."
"What's going on?"
"Perhaps we could discuss it over dinner?"
"Sorry, I'm on deadline. Now, if you've got something for me..."
"Always."