Don Pendleton - Run to Ground

One final stop to make before he doubled back and got his father's pistol at the station. One more stop before he set about exacting his revenge. It might be brief, but it would still be sweet, for all of that. When he was finished — when they finished him — the bastards would be conscious of the fact that someone had opposed them, someone had resisted to the death. It wasn't much, but at the moment it was all Rick Stancell had. And it would have to do.

Enoch Snyder had been old as long as anyone in Santa Rosa could remember. He had been Old Enoch, since the fifties, maybe earlier. He had been old at twenty-two, when he came home from Tarawa with steel enough inside him to make magnets go berserk, and scars like some demented road map covering his slender frame. At twenty-three, his hair had been snow white, and he had been Old Enoch ever since. A man could only see so much and cling to youth, a solemn fact Enoch viewed with philosophical acceptance, leaving the regrets to others who were cursed with worse misfortunes than himself. He did not really mind the way his body ached all over just before a rain; the rains were few and far between in Santa Rosa, as it was, and he had not seen snow in more than thirty years. At sixty-six, the wiry former Leatherneck admitted that was old now, but he was far from finished.

Those madmen in the street had startled him — with all their guns, and bodies being hauled out of the ambulance that way — but he was not afraid. He knew that he would miss Bud Stancell and their conversations over coffee in the afternoon. Ex-Leathernecks were hard to find these days, and Stancell knew — had known — what it was like to lose your youth inside a foxhole, waiting for the enemy to hit you one last time before the break of dawn. Korea wasn't Tarawa, but hell was hell, no matter where you found it. And if you came out of the flames at all, you were a different man. You came out old before your time, with something hard and cold inside that never really went away. The memory of wholesale killing followed you around forever, waiting on the fringe of your unconscious for a chance to haunt your dreams, but you survived and went about your life as if that frozen part of you inside was still alive and well.

For Enoch Snyder, fear had been erased at Tarawa, blown out of him along with spleen, appendix and eighteen inches of intestine. Having seen the worst that life could offer, having dragged himself away from it and lived to walk again, he knew that fear was nothing more than dread of the unknown. He did not pass his hand through fire or pick up rattlesnakes, because he knew precisely what would happen, but he did not fear tomorrow, either. Having seen and done the worst that man could see or do, he had no tune for fear. He would survive, or he would die, depending on his timing, whether it turned out to be his turn, and in the end, it would not make a bit of difference either way.

But in the meantime he could make the dirty sons of bitches dance a little, yes, indeed.

The M-l rifle was a classic carbon copy of the one that he had used on Tarawa. He had not fired the piece in over seven years, but it was oiled and polished, sighted in and ready. Once a week or so, he took the weapon out and cleaned it, for the practice, for the memories it held. They did not give him nightmares anymore; they were the stuff of Snyder's life, and he had learned to live with them, as he had learned to live with stiffness in one hip, the aches and pains of growing old with bits of shrapnel in your flesh.

His eyes were clear, his vision twenty-twenty, uncorrected, and his hands were steady as he raised the rifle to his shoulder, looped his index finger through the trigger guard and sighted on a mental image of the dark man's face. On Tarawa, he had been taught to kill up close and personal, before the world exploded in his face and he was hauled away for makeshift reconstruction on the mercy ship offshore. How many had he killed before they nearly killed him back? No way to tell, at this late date. In the confusion, with steel and smoky thunder in the air, you killed with the finesse of a demented butcher run amok, and some of those you killed got up a moment later, slashing at your back, your friends, with bayonets and sabers. It's hard to keep a tally when the dead don't die, and all a man can think about is whether he has ammo left to kill again, again, again.

Old Enoch had sufficient ammunition for the job at hand, and no mistake. A thousand rounds of ought-six, eight rounds to a clip, all ready for the big Garand to feed. In Snyder's mind, he could already feel the recoil kicking at his shoulder, rapid-fire reports like thunder in his ears. He had a GI bayonet to fit the rifle, but he would not need it; there would be no place, no time, for any action hand-to-hand. If they got close, if he was still in any shape to notice, he would fall back on his .45 for mopping up. If that was not enough to do the job, or if he moved too slowly, they would kill him, sure, and that would be the end of it.

But not before he made the sons of bitches dance.

He owed Bud Stancell that, at least, and while he never had much dealings with the Grundys, it was wrong for some slick shit to take them out that way. A lesson was required, and Enoch Snyder was the very man to teach it, while he lasted. Enoch loaded the Garand and set its safety, smiling to himself.

A little while, and school would be in session for the grown-ups. He was betting that the class would be a damned sight smaller when the last bell rang, but no one would be bored. Hell, no.

Old Enoch was about to make a cameo appearance in the hottest show around.

Rebecca Kent was startled by a sudden rapping on the back door of the clinic. There was something less than fifteen minutes left before the expiration of the stranger's cryptic deadline, and his men were still on Main Street, so it must be someone else. Without a word Bolan faded into an examination room and closed the door behind him. She could almost see him, standing in the darkness of the little cubicle with gun in hand, prepared to kill a total stranger if he was discovered. Strangely, though, his presence gave her comfort, as if he were a living talisman that warded off evil.

More like a lightning rod, she thought, proceeding through her surgery to reach the door, where someone had begun to knock insistently. On second thought, it sounded more like they were kicking at the door. She peeped through the Venetian blinds and was immediately stricken by a sense of deja vu.

Rick Stancell stood outside, a woman cradled in his arms, all swaddled in some kind of pink material. Rebecca threw the door back, motioned him inside and saw at once that it was Amy Schultz. Her face was bruised and swollen, there were other bruises on her legs, and she was obviously naked underneath what seemed to be a smock of some sort, draped around her body like a cape.

"In here," she said, and realized at once that Rick would know the way. It had been — what? three hours — since his father had come through that door in need of help, and now Bud Stancell was a corpse, stretched out on Main Street with the Grundy brothers. In a flash, before she concentrated fully on her patient, Kent had time to wonder what must now be going through the young man's mind.

"Where did you find her, Rick?"

"The hardware store," he grunted, lifting Amy up onto the table, stepping back, as if afraid to touch her now. "Her mom and dad are dead."

Another jolt, but she was getting used to sudden death. "What happened?"

"They hit the store for guns and ammunition," he replied, and there was no need to explain who "they" might be.

"She's fortunate to be alive." And even as she spoke the words, she thought, or is she? Having glimpsed the smear of drying blood on Amy's thighs, she knew the teenage girl had suffered more than just a beating. Sometimes, Dr. Kent suspected — or had once believed, at any rate — survival was the worst of it.