Thunder Down Under. Don Pendleton

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.

      “But I don’t think you want to do that. I think you were sitting here, psyching yourself up in an attempt to go through with it. But deep down, I don’t think you truly want to do this.” He pushed the basket a bit farther across the table. “Go on, eat.”

      The man looked down at the sandwich, then up at him again, and said something under his breath.

      “I didn’t quite catch that,” Bolan replied.

      “My name’s Bob,” the young man replied. With a shuddering sigh, he reached for the sandwich and dug in with huge bites, wolfing it down like he was starving.

      Only when both of his hands were occupied did Bolan signal to the pair of uniformed Philadelphia police officers who had arrived a minute ago and were standing as inconspicuously as they could at the end of the aisle.

      “Bob,” he said, removing a card from his jacket pocket, “you’re going to have to go with these officers now.”

      Bob looked up with a start at the police. “What? What do you mean?”

      “Listen to me.” Bolan held his gaze again. “You have to surrender your weapon and go with them. When you get the chance—” he held out the card “—call this number on the back. Don’t call a lawyer, don’t call anyone else, just call this number, and the person who answers will take care of things for you. It’s going to be all right.”

      “O-okay.” Bob nodded, a smear of po-boy sauce hanging on the corner of his mouth.

      “Sir, I’m going to ask you to stand up and put your hands on the table,” one of the officers instructed him.

      Bob looked at Bolan, who nodded. “Go ahead. Things will work out, I promise.”

      “Sir, we’ll need you to stick around for a few minutes to get a statement,” the second cop said to him.

      “Unfortunately, Officers, I have an appointment that requires my attention,” Bolan said as he handed them a similar card. “But if you contact the people at this number, they will be sure to straighten this all out.”

      “But we need your name at least,” the cop protested.

      “No, you don’t,” the soldier said over his shoulder as he headed for the door. “I’m just a concerned citizen who happened to be in the right place at the right time, that’s all.”