Don Pendleton - Save the Children

Bolan knew now with a cold certainty that he had at last identified the undercurrent of this Chicago setup that had been bugging him since this strange night began.

Not the dirty senator.

Not vague talk of a Mafia Godmother running the show.

Not even the elusive target of Mr. David Parelli, himself.

Every one of those angles combined to make this an unusually touchy operation for a man on the run from all sides, but here at last was the thread that tied all those diverse elements into one tight package marked for termination.

The warrior shook his head sadly.

Stealing children, the true innocents of the earth.

But there would be a reckoning.

And more hellfire and killing to back it up.

Tonight.

Sergeant Lester Griff had never found it easy to concentrate at the precinct office that he shared with other detectives. Somebody always had a radio playing or the officers sitting around at their desks were constantly yapping at the other guys or pounding their typewriters as they wrote up reports or questioning suspects.

Headquarters was a bitch.

Especially since he was supposed to have been off duty tonight. He could have been home with Kathleen, trying to relax.

Who was he kidding, Griff asked himself irritably. If he had been home, he might have been relaxed on the surface, for Kathleen's sake, but inside he would have been seething, just the way he was here.

It was all the fault of that bastard, Bolan.

That was what they called the guy and the name fit as far as Griff was concerned.

All of Chicago was in an uproar because of Bolan's sweep through the city. Everyone from the mayor on down was hollering, which was why Griff and the rest of the Org Crime Task Force had been called in to man the office.

Griff felt as if they were all hollering at him.

After Bolan left his house, Griff felt he was duty bound to turn Bolan in. So he placed an anonymous call to a different precinct where he felt no one would recognize his voice. The sergeant gave a description of Bolan's car and the clothes he was wearing, knowing full well that Bolan could have changed both of those things within minutes of leaving his house. But Griff had felt there was no other option open to him. He relayed the information to a distant precinct to cover his own ass.

No way was he going to let anybody know that there had been personal contact between himself and Bolan.

If he did that, he'd be under pressure from the Commissioner, Internal Affairs, maybe even the FBI, and with all of that coming down, he would hardly be able to do what he had to do.

For Kathleen...

He glanced around the squad room.

Everybody was busy, trying to get a handle on the seemingly nonstop, disconnected reports on Bolan and his latest campaign.

It seemed as if the whole city had turned into a war zone since the Executioner hit town, but nobody in the Org Crime unit was really accomplishing anything, Griff had realized shortly after reporting in.

He opened the middle drawer of his desk, took out a bottle of antacid tablets and started popping them into his mouth one at a time as he stared blankly at the dirty linoleum on the floor, wondering what he should do next. Griff shook his head, amazed at the ease with which everything in a man's life could turn to crap all at once...

Detective sergeant Harry Laymon sat at his desk, facing his partner, Lester Griff.

Laymon had reports spread out on the metal top of his desk but he was not really paying any attention to them. He was watching Griff eat the stomach pills as if they were candy.

Laymon was a short, stocky man with close-cut blond hair. He had been a cop for seven years, a lot less time than his partner, but he knew when something was wrong, like now, with Griff.

Laymon pushed the paperwork to the side and stood.

"I'm going to get some coffee, Les. You want some?"

Griff shook his head and threw another tablet into his mouth.

"No thanks." He chewed on the pill. "Bad for my stomach."

"Sure," Laymon grunted.

It wasn't coffee that was eating away at Griff's stomach, though. Laymon was certain of that.

A coffee maker sat atop one of the file cabinets in the corner.

He strolled over to it, got a Styrofoam cup from the stack next to the machine and poured a cup of strong black. He made a face as he sipped from it.

Cops had to make lousy coffee, Laymon thought sourly. It was part of their job description.

Across the room, Laymon watched as Griff lifted his desk phone and started to dial.

Laymon stayed where he was.

Griff seemed more nervous than usual, edgy. He had an almost furtive look on his face as he spoke quickly into the receiver, as if afraid he was going to be overheard.

Laymon wished he had seen the number Griff had dialed.

Holding his cup carefully so that the hot liquid would not slosh out onto his hand, he threaded his way back across the busy headquarters office, dodging some of the other scurrying Org Crime unit detectives.

Griff saw him coming and hung up the phone.

Laymon felt a surge of anger.

The guy was his partner, dammit, he thought. Griff didn't have any right to keep secrets from him. It wasn't like they were married, but when you worked with a partner for several years, the relationship was damn close to a marriage, at least as far as being honest with each other was concerned. A cop's life could and often did depend on his partner and that meant trust was the name of the game.

Maybe it was just some sort of personal problem, Laymon thought. He knew Griff's wife wasn't in the best of health; maybe she was having trouble again. But if that was the case, why was there such a guilty look on Griff's face, Laymon wondered as he found his seat again.

"This Bolan business is no damn good for a cop's sleep, is it?" Laymon said, trying to make conversation more than anything else.

"Yeah," Griff grunted.

"Seems like every time the guy comes to Chicago it gets worse," Laymon went on. "That Bolan's like a blizzard. You hope for the best and wait for it to move on."

"I wish he had just left us alone," Griff said with sudden vehemence.

Laymon glanced sharply at his partner, then gazed across the room of ringing phones and men taking in new reports at the map of central Chicago on the wall, multicolored pins denoting the scenes of action since Bolan had made his presence known earlier that night at the New Age Center.

"At least he hasn't wasted anybody yet who didn't deserve it."

Griff reached for his roll of antacid tablets again.

"Ah, hell," he rumbled. "What does it really matter, anyway?"

Laymon had never heard Griff talk like that. There was a fatalistic tone in the older man's voice that surprised Laymon, and worried him.

"Uh, look Les," he ventured, "if something's bothering you, if there's anything you want to talk about..."

Griff cut him off with an abrupt wave of his hand.

"Nothing to worry about, kid. Everything's under control, really. Except for this damn Bolan situation, and there's not a whole lot we can do about that, much as we'd like to. You say it's like a blizzard. I say a whirlwind is more like it. There's no way in hell of knowing where he'll strike next, damn him."

"Right." Laymon nodded, trying to sound casual. "Say, who was that you were talking to on the phone a minute ago?"

Might as well ask it straight out, he thought.

Griff grimaced, trying to hide the expression.

"Uh, I was just checking in with Kathleen, making sure she was all right. Thought I'd better tell her it looks like we'll be here most of the night."

A plausible enough answer, Laymon thought.

It was also a lie.

He wasn't sure how he knew, but his gut told him that Griff was lying. Les hadn't been talking to his wife.