Don Pendleton: Renegade Agent

They existed on the personal level, in the form of television systems allowing the viewer to talk back, or banks replaced by machines that swallowed or spewed out cash. It was just another way of hamstringing people's capability for direct action, by distancing them. Communication with or through a machine was not really communication; it was conveyance. The technocrats held far greater power than that, however.

They were at the heart of the systems of defense and destruction that lay poised and ready in the bowels of the supernations. For now they were at the fulcrum of the cosmic equilibrium. But if the technocrats overstepped their mandate, or miscalculated in any of a dozen different ways, the result could easily be a holocaust.

Without the technocrats, Frank Edwards would have been just another petty international hood.

The technological corps of Edwards's army of the night was hardly composed of innocents. If these people were intelligent enough to run Edwards's computer banks, communications net, and other state-of-the-art support equipment, they were intelligent enough to at least divine an inkling of what was going down. But intelligence and insight were two different things, and like many men of hard scientific knowledge, Edwards's people could be highly prone to the old forest-trees shortsightedness.

And there were relative degrees of guilt. These were not gun-toting hardmen who had turned their back on the country that had nurtured them. They were not fanatical terrorists to whom murder was as impersonal as life. Sure, indirectly their activities supported these types. But Bolan could not expect to eliminate, on suspicion only, every person who was vaguely tainted by the stink of terrorism.

Maybe the lesson of what was about to come down would impress itself upon these people. In any case they would not have their hi-tech toys to play with anymore.

This was the essential weakness of a technocracy: destroy its technology, and you bring the society to its knees.

That was Bolan's immediate objective.

There would still be men on the base, according to Toby's intelligence. At any given time, two to three dozen of the iron-hard inner circle were billeted at Wheelus. As at the Valais chalet, the guards were all active members of terrorist organizations, selected for their demonstrated commitment to violent propagation of "the cause." They were chosen to go to the base for various reasons: to select and purchase weapons, to maintain contact with other groups in the terrorist network, to receive advanced training from Edwards or his handpicked associates in sabotage, espionage, assassination, guerilla fighting, and all the rest of the black arts. In exchange for this, they served tours as base guards. The largest and hardest contingent was assigned to the armory where Edwards's stock of illegally exported weaponry was stockpiled. Every precaution was taken, for here was the source of Edwards's immediate wealth, the financial base for much of his operation.

Unlike the technologists, these men fell into no gray area. They were pure black, dedicating their lives willing even to sacrifice them, in some fanatical cases — to their so-called "ideals." If anything about repression, intolerance, persecution, subjugation, and domination could be called "ideal."

Bolan rose in the seat as the Mercedes minibus, and the Rover rumbled on by. Maybe some day the technocrats would realize they were their own worst enemy.

As for the terrorists, the lesson would be more immediate, more direct, and far more deadly.

Bolan keyed the ignition and the Jag rolled on toward the Wheelus base. The electric gate eased open as he approached. Bolan pulled to a stop at the guardhouse.

The contusion on Toby Ranger's forehead was yellow and purple, and her face was pale and drawn. When she opened the half-door of the guardhouse, Bolan had a brief glimpse of the limp figure of the regular guard, sprawled on the little structure's floor.

Bolan slid over, and Toby got in behind the wheel. Her eyes widened in inquiry when she saw the blacksuit's amputated sleeve.

"I'm all right," Bolan told her. He grinned. "if it doesn't fall off in the next ten minutes, we're home free." He was trying to take the edge off, but both of them had fought enough long-odds battles to know that ten minutes could pass in an eyewink — or stretch into a lifeless eternity. "What about you?" Bolan asked.

"I'm...." She glanced back toward the guardhouse and unconsciously touched at the Colt .45 now strapped around the waist of the snug-cut white jump suit.

But when she turned back to Bolan her expression was set with resolution, and color was returning to her face. Bolan understood. If he did not know how many men had died at his hand, he did know that every kill had been personal. When his finger tightened on the trigger, no matter how great the necessity, no matter how evil the target, there was some recessed component of reluctance in Bolan's psyche.

A reminder that he was not, could not think of himself, as all-knowing, all-power. A reminder the man was human.

"I'm okay," Toby assured him, her voice strong and even. "Lead on, Captain Blitz."

Bolan checked his chronometer. "Eight forty-one forty," he said.

"One sec." Toby clicked at the button on her own matching timepiece.

"Eight forty-two," Bolan said. "Mark!"

"You got it." Toby slipped the Jag in gear and gave it gas.

A main drive bisected the old USAF base. To the left was the primary aviation facility: maintenance shop, a terminal with control tower, then hangars, and beyond the buildings stretching across the flat concrete-covered plain, a maze of runways. To the right were the support structures: first some office buildings, and behind them a subdevelopment of billets, ranging from barracks to fairly nice homes that once housed married officers, now gone toward disrepair. After the billets came some stores, and then a couple of warehouses.

The last one housed the primary inventory of Frank Edwards's illicit weapons supply business.

But Toby turned the Jag to the left, heading for the hangar opposite the warehouse. She drove onto the apron. Parked down toward the terminal, Bolan spotted the Lear on which Bryant had arrived, along with a Beechcraft single-engine for local hops, and a surplus C-119 Flying Boxcar that had to be 30 years old. Sure, having your own cargo plane made good business sense, when you were dealing in the volume that Edwards was. Toby steered the Jag around the end of the last hangar. There was a four-seater bubble-front helicopter in front of it, squatting on its skids. Toby Ranger was already an IFR-LICENSED pilot in the days when she teamed with Bolan in Detroit. It was she who had flown the blitzing fighter north to Toronto to pursue one thread of the motor city investigation, and even in those days she was experienced and proficient with both the Lear and the Beechcraft.

Since then, Bolan had been pleased to learn, she had added the chopper to her repertory.

The little rig's maneuverability would be an invaluable asset to the battle plan Bolan had worked out.

Within the shade of the hangar's wall, a guy was seated in the lotus position, his hands palm up in his lap. He wore a cap over dark hair, and khaki cutoff shorts, and he had a gut that hung over their waistline. The cap, the shorts, and the guy were all stained with motor oil. His eyes were closed, and he did not open them until Toby got out and slammed the Jag's door.

Toby nodded at the chopper. "Did you get her running, Buddha?"

The guy blinked at the sunlight. "Sure. Just a bearing in the tail rotor. She's running good as new now." The guy's chatter ran down then; he had finally come out of his meditative trance enough to notice the .45 in Toby's hand.