Don Pendleton - Thunder Down Under

Inside the market, he took a moment to breathe in the smells of the open-air stalls with their cured meats, fresh fish and aged cheeses. Those were just some of the wares on display; you could pretty much get anything you wanted from homemade fudge to locally brewed root beer.

Bolan’s plans were simple: a quick sandwich and then he’d hit the road. But as he walked up to the order counter at Beck’s Cajun Café, his trained senses noticed a young man, maybe in his midtwenties, with close-cropped, dirty-blond hair and wearing a beat-up Army jacket. He was sitting alone at a nearby table, staring at a plastic cup of water.

It was the intensity of his stare that attracted Bolan’s attention, but he was careful not to watch the young man too closely lest he spook him. As he waited for his lunch basket to be brought out, he observed the man in the reflection of the chrome napkin holder and saw him drop one hand to the right pocket of his jacket and pat something inside.

Bolan looked around—the area was crowded today, with throngs of people moving along the narrow aisles to do their shopping or have lunch. He glanced casually at the young man once more then took out his smartphone and sent a quick text.

His lunch arrived and he paid for it. He then took it and a glass of water over to the empty chair on the other side of the young man’s table. “Hey,” he said with a smile. “Mind if I sit here?”

The man didn’t look up for a moment, then his head slowly swiveled to regard Bolan. For a moment the Executioner thought he might draw right then and there, and he was ready to move if the guy did. But he just gave a half-hearted shrug. “Free country.”

“That it is, that it is.” Bolan sat and picked up half of his alligator-sausage po-boy. “Have you tried this place yet? It’s fantastic.”

The young man looked around, as if trying to see if they were drawing any attention. “Not really in the mood to talk.”

“Hey, I understand. If I keep talking, I won’t be able to eat my lunch.” Bolan fell silent for a couple of minutes, chewing as he observed the guy sitting across from him. He had put both hands on the table again and now picked up the plastic cup and took a quick drink. His movements were quick, furtive—and his right hand never strayed far from his jacket pocket.

Bolan was familiar with the type, having encountered several variants during his long career. The majority often wound up in the military and then, if that didn’t address their need—which it often did—they usually entered private military contracting to continue doing what they thought they needed to do to pacify themselves.

He thought this man hadn’t gotten as far, for whatever reason. That didn’t make him any less capable of sowing violence here, and Bolan would have to make sure to handle him carefully.

At this range, there were at least a dozen ways he could incapacitate the man, from rendering him immobile on one end of the spectrum to leaving him a corpse on the other end. But he hoped none of that would be necessary.

Bolan finished the first half of his sandwich and then nudged the plastic basket holding the other half toward the man. “Whew, getting full. Sure you don’t want any?”

“Hey, man, what’re you trying to do?” The man’s voice got louder toward the end of the sentence and he bowed his head and tried to look inconspicuous. “What do you want with me? Why are you doing this?”

Time to lay the cards on the table. “Because I think you’re getting ready to make a terrible mistake and I don’t want you to,” Bolan replied.

The young man’s head came up at that and he stared at Bolan, his right hand edging toward that pocket. “What? You a cop?”

“Not at all.” Bolan raised his left hand slightly off the table in a calming gesture—but also ready to grab the guy’s hand if necessary. “Just a concerned citizen who doesn’t want to see anyone get hurt today.”

A chattering family brushed by—a father and mother with three children all under twelve years old—on their way to the Mennonite bakery at the west end of the market. Bolan watched him watch them, ready to spring if he tried anything. But the man’s hand was still outside his pocket. Everyone was still safe...for now.

“You say you’re not a cop. What are you, private security? Military?”

“I was in the military, a while ago,” Bolan replied. He pointed at the jacket. “You?”

The man looked away. “Couldn’t...couldn’t pass the physical.” He glared down at his jacket. “This is from a goddamn thrift store.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of. Hell, I probably couldn’t pass it either now.” That was a bald-faced lie; even today, Bolan could run any recruit into the ground if he had to—and just about any fully trained soldier, too. But this wasn’t about bragging rights. This was about making some kind of connection, no matter how small.

“Story of my life,” the man said. “Didn’t finish high school, figured why would I need it, I’m going into the Army. Only they didn’t want me, either. Now I’m just fucked.”

“So, go back to school. Get your GED, go to tech school. You seem able, you seem smart—except regarding what you came here to do, that is.”

“Oh yeah? What do you know? You don’t know anything about me!” The man’s voice rose again and he clamped down on his emotions with an effort.

“Okay, I’m sorry. That was unnecessary,” Bolan said, both hands up now.

“I’ve been looking for a job for eighteen months !” the man seethed, lowering his head again. “No one wants to hire me, not even as a busboy. I’m broke, been living on the streets for the past two weeks. I don’t know anyone here and I have no family. I’m...just...”

“Alone,” Bolan finished. “I get it. You feel like no one in the world cares about you, no one knows you exist. That if you were to die tomorrow, and disappear from this earth, no one would notice, no one would care, right?”

“Yeah...yeah,” he agreed, lifting his head to spear Bolan with his gaze. “That’s exactly how I feel.”

“And if you have to feel that way every day, then by God you’re going to make these people all around notice you, one way or the other, right?”

“Damn straight! For once they’ll have to notice me! They won’t be able to look away, to speed up as they walk past me! They won’t have a choice anymore!”

The man was hunched over the table now, his shoulders shaking as he sobbed into his jacket. Bolan noticed a couple of bystanders looking as if they wanted to help, but he waved them off with a small shake of his head.

He sat there silently, waiting until the man’s quiet cries had died down. “What’s your name?”

“It doesn’t matter—nothing matters!” he replied.

“Yes, it does,” Bolan said. “Right here, right now, you matter. You have the power to make the choice that determines what happens here in the next few minutes. Either you leave that gun in your pocket, eat the rest of the sandwich in front of you and start living the rest of your life, or you pull the gun out and start shooting these people around you who don’t know you and never will. They’ve never done anything to hurt you, but you will impact their lives in ways they will never understand, but spend the rest of their lives trying to—at least those who survive will. But in the end, you won’t be remembered in the way you want—you’ll just end up as another statistic in a year filled with them, then pushed off the television and the front page as someone else does something that makes everyone forget about you all over again—forever.”

The man’s eyes had grown wide as Bolan talked. But his hand had stayed on the table. The Executioner leaned forward a bit, pinning him with the full weight of his ice-blue stare.