His kill would bring no profit his tribe would applaud, his victory no honors.
He was a soldier without convention; he stalked his brother, rapacious man; his final victory would be his ultimate defeat; he would be buried in dishonor.
That was reality, and that was another sort of reference.
He'd left his vehicle far to the rear, responding to a sense of caution born long ago and reinforced on a Seattle waterfront less than twenty-four hours earlier.
Whatever the game, it was being played for high stakes.
He accepted the stakes, not even knowing what they were, and played the game by that sense of value. He would not be trapped by a layered defense this time.
And he was not.
The unmistakable burping chatter of Thompsons in fast unload came from three hundred yards in, two at once in sustained bursts that shattered the calm of the night and slew paradise for certain. The muted glow from the cabin up there was still no more than an indistinct shimmering of the mists.
Bolan had not even come close. And as he circled warily toward the road, armed with only the 9mm Beretta and stalking now only the uncertainties of the night, he saw the flare-up of automobile headlamps and heard the whine of the vehicle as it spun out of the graveled drive, the screech of tires finding purchase on asphalt pavement.
A lot of things came together in the combat mind during that infinitesimal moment of decision. Then he was crashing through the underbrush in a dead run through blackest night, on an intersecting course and damning himself for failing to awaken to truth five minutes earlier.
He got there several heartbeats ahead of the fleeing headlamps and fired on the run, dispatching a full clip without breaking stride — then diving and reloading as the shattered vehicle swerved abruptly and headed across the road to the woods on the opposite side.
It smacked head-on into a tree, veered off and swung around to break itself open upon another.
Yeah — his brother, the car.
Flames erupted immediately, spreading quickly and flashing up to engulf the wreckage in an all-consuming bonfire.
Bolan found an ejected body ten feet from the flaming pyre, entirely dead and minus a foot. It was a familiar body. He'd soft-touched it on an ambitious island some sixteen hours ago.
Stay soft, he muttered, and continued the evaluation.
There was no saying for sure, but what evidence lay quickly available disclosed a hit crew of but three men. A small crew, and Bolan was certain this time there were no layers. An easy hit. Sure.
He ran on up the road and into the cabin.
It was nice. Bolan himself would enjoy this cabin. One big room, with a loft. Fireplace across one wall, small kitchen and dining area, the rest living space in knotty pine and open-beam ceiling, casual furniture scattered about.
Two big logs danced flames in the fireplace. Spread in front of that cheery scene was a thick white rug of soft, nubby material. It would never be pure white again. Sprawled upon it in grotesque attitudes of violent death were the naked bodies of a man and a woman.
He was, sure, Allan Nyeburg.
She was some pretty young loser who'd found the easy way the hardest. Pretty, once. Now she and her partner in death were virtually chewed to hamburger by an untold quantity of big mean .45 caliber dumdums.
Bolan reached between them to pick up abloody marksman's medal. Cute. But no thanks. The Executioner would not take credit for this one, not this way.
Easy hit, yeah.
And you really blew it — didn't you, Allan? You had it all going for you, guy. Had it all. Brains, education, looks, charm — even a halfway decent business base to build upon. Then a real cool lady and a daughter any man would claim — and you blew it, guy, you blew it! For what?
Bolan's gaze traveled along that misused young female body punched out there, and he wondered if Nyeburg had actually seen any of them.
His brother, the satyr.
Bolan had known alkies and junkies, compulsive gamblers and suicidals of very persuasion — but this was the first guy he'd ever known to actually screw himself into the grave.
He shook his head and went away from there.
Scratch another domino. Sorry, Margaret, but that's all the guy had ever been. A domino. With no chain — no chain at all.
And what a hell of a brew it was getting to be.
As he withdrew to his vehicle, Bolan found his thoughts centering around Margaret Nyeburg. Why Margaret? Why not the junior edition, with whom he'd shared so much of mind and flesh?
They were a contrast, those two — so alike yet so different — so together yet so apart. It was no simple matter of generation gap. There was something basically offkey.
His mind could not touch it.
Only his guts could.
He needed a talk with Margaret. Suddenly, almost desperately, that demand rose up from the animal side of his consciousness.
So okay. He would go for a parley with the cool lady.
11
Scorched
He left the car at the end of the lane and continued on by foot. The mists were in full sway once again at waterside — now concealing, now revealing with a ragged bottom edge that seemed to raise and lower in unpredictable patterns. The lights from the beach house were dim, barely visible through the shifting fog but still a beacon in the gloom drawing Bolan inexorably toward some deepfelt if intellectually unrecognizable crisis — like a moth, he supposed, homing on a candle's flame, compelled by some universal force beyond comprehension to seek its own certain destruction.
Bolan recognized the feeling, and it was the reaction thereto that dictated the wary approach. With a momentary flashback of consciousness, he was in enemy country again and that was a VC hut perched at the edge of a ricefield. There was no way to know what awaited him there, but he did know that a pursuing enemy band were sniffing along his trail and already combing through the rice paddy at his rear. Certain death lay behind, an uncertain goal ahead. The hut could mean brief sanctuary or imprisonment, solace or pain, survival or extinction — but it was beckoning him and he went, all the while aware of the moth and the flame.
Of such incomprehensible directions are the destinies of men written and fulfilled, especially Mack Bolan's sort of man.
The "rear base" beach house was a simple, oblong structure with a single bedroom, bath, a larger area without walls that served for cooking, dining, lounging — small porch to the rear, a screened porch on the beach side.
He circled the building once, picking up no vibrations of life within or without, then went to the rear and quietly let himself in. Two small table lamps were softly lighting the living area. The door to the bedroom was closed. Diffused light spilled from the open bathroom doorway to illuminate the closet-size hallway separating bedroom and bath.
There was not a sound upon the place.
The night was young but the women could have turned in early — it had been a traumatic day for both.
That uneasy feeling was still ruling Bolan's guts, though; he moved softly along the wall of the large room and sprang the Beretta.
Margaret picked that moment to walk out of the bathroom, wearing absolutely nothing but a small towel wound about the head like a turban.
She spotted Bolan immediately and froze in mid-stride with a soft exclamation of dismay.
It was a body to make young men wish they were older and old men yearn for youth one more time around, glowing with the soft allure of mellowed maturity yet youthful in carriage and striking of form.
And Bolan knew, in a flash of understanding, at least part of the answer to the contrasts between mother and daughter. Dianna was a beautiful kid, sure — all fresh and sparkling and natural — but Bolan now understood that natural could also mean raw.
That lady standing there, for all her naked embarassment, was a rare piece of feminine art — refined and polished and fully turned beyond the raw by the craftswoman who lived within.