CIA says they’ve got eyes on him, up high. Nothing since the MPs came by, except his normal mornings at a local coffee shop and shopping one time at the Farmer’s Market.”
“Good old country living.”
“If you like that kind of thing.”
“I could get used to it,” Grimaldi said.
Bolan had trouble picturing the flyboy settling down, particularly at the outset of another mission. They were rolling north on Maryland Route 313, from where Grimaldi’s chopper had touched down at a private airstrip outside Goldsboro. The Stony Man pilot was at the wheel of a Ford sedan from Dollar Rent-a-Car, holding the four-door Focus at a solid 80 miles per hour, not a cop in sight. They had the rural home of Walton Tanner Senior spotted on the Ford’s GPS unit, no neighbors nearby and no idea what they’d be walking into when they got there.
Figure it would be a bitter pill for Walton Sr. to ingest, learning his son had left the Rangers to become a terrorist in hiding. He’d have questions that the MPs couldn’t answer on their first pass, and he wouldn’t know anything about the Rangers who’d gone down fighting while his son and five fellow deserters had slipped away to parts unknown. Perhaps he knew more than he’d told the CID first time around, and might be more forthcoming when he saw the Homeland Security ID cards Bolan and Grimaldi had obtained from Stony Man’s documents mill.
Or maybe not. Maybe he didn’t know a thing about his son’s activities or his companions who’d declared war on America.
Still, it was worth a try. In fact, coupled with Tyrone Moseley’s brother in New Jersey and Menendez’s fiancée in Roanoke, it could be the only game in town.
“Looks like the place,” Grimaldi said. “White clapboard siding on your right, Jeep Wrangler in the carport.”
“Got it.” Bolan scanned the verdant countryside surrounding Tanner’s place, looking for watchers, spotting none so far, although it wouldn’t take much to conceal a man or two amid the smooth alders, dogwoods, red mulberry and blackjack oaks.
Pursuant to their cover, they pulled in and parked. Before they’d cleared the Ford, a slender man with grizzled hair was on the porch to greet them, hands empty, eyes wary as he checked them out.
“More CID?” he asked before they had a chance to speak.
“Homeland Security,” Bolan corrected him, approaching with credentials on display.
“Both of you?” Tanner asked suspiciously.
“Yes, sir,” Grimaldi said, palming his own ID from Stony Man.
“I guess things have ticked up a notch since I had visitors last time.”
“Yes, sir,” said Bolan. “I’m afraid so.”
They’d decided to be candid with him, more or less, running the plan past Brognola while they were airborne and receiving his okay. They would recount the failed arrest attempt, in the hope of jarring something loose from Walton Sr.’s memory this time around. And failing that, if the former Marine had contact with his son he wasn’t copping to, maybe he’d keep the covert channel open, try to talk him backward from the point of no return.
Inside a modest living room, they sat on well-worn furniture, declining Tanner’s offer of coffee or “something stronger,” undefined. Their host went for a double dash of Early Times bourbon and settled on a 1980s vintage couch, saying, “All right. You’d better let me have it straight, then.”
“Six special agents from the CID caught up with him yesterday morning, early,” Bolan answered.
“And the other men he runs with now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Where at?”
“North Carolina, on the coast.”
“But they aren’t here to see me now.”
“No, sir. They walked into a trap. They won’t be seeing anyone again.”
“So, it’s murder, then.”
“Murder at least,” Bolan agreed. “And likely treason.”
“Jesus, Lord.”
“It’s bad,” Bolan replied. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, I’ve had naught to do with him since they were out here grilling me,” Tanner replied. “Don’t take my word for it. I gather someone has been covering my phone and watching what I do from time to time.”
“A safe bet,” Bolan said.
“In fact, you ought to know I haven’t seen or spoken to my boy in going on six years.”
“Homeland Security,” Bolan stated, “hopes that something may have slipped your mind.”
“I wish it had,” Tanner replied. “I’m getting on in years and drink a bit. No point denying what’s so obvious. But no, sir. Nothing slips my mind. Not birthdays of the living or the dead, not groceries. Nothing.”
“Okay,” Bolan replied. “We had to ask.”
“Of course you did. And now I’ll ask you one,” Tanner said.
“Feel free. I’ll answer if I can,” Bolan told him.
“Now that you’ve eyeballed me, are you planning on leaving people here to watch me, backing on the taps and drones and whatever your people have eavesdropping on me as it is? Seems like a waste of time. My tax money at work, and all.”
Grimaldi chimed in, saying, “We came alone, sir.”
“Oh?”
“That’s right,” Bolan confirmed, feeling the short hairs bristling on his nape.
“No guys sitting on motorbikes among the trees, black visors on their helmets, covering their faces?”
“No, sir.”
Tanner quaffed his bourbon and reached out for the bottle, asking both of them at once, “So who in hell are those guys parked across the street right now?”
* * *
“Your old man look the same as you remember him?” Tyrone Moseley inquired.
“It’s been five or six years,” Tanner Jr. answered.
“Yeah, but you don’t forget your daddy, though.”
They sat astride a pair of matching Harley-Davidson Street 750s, both fitted with stolen license plates acquired from looting a supply house outside Baltimore. Both bikes were painted black, matching their leathers, helmets and their deeply tinted face shields. Underneath their jackets, they wore sidearms, knives, plus other weapons of offense and defense ready for deployment on a moment’s notice, if they were observed.
“More CID sniffing around, you think?” Moseley inquired.
“You’re full of questions, brother. How in hell would I know?”
“Well, for one thing, they’re coming outside.”
“Shit! We need to haul ass out of here.”
“Won’t be quiet.”
“Screw quiet,” Tanner snarled. “These 750s can outrun that Focus on the best day it ever had.”
“Or we could take ’em out.”
“That, too. Let’s try to lose them first, if we can swing it.”
“Roger that, Captain.”
They kicked their Harley-Davidsons to life as one, plowed through a screen of trees that should have hidden them but obviously hadn’t managed it, accelerating with a double roar like dirty thunder as they hit the pavement, rolling south on 313 and angling for the cutoff that would take them into Centreville. More