tall man dressed in black, faces and hands painted with combat cosmetics to match.
“Hold up, there!” Grundy shouted at them. “Don’t—”
Before he could complete the thought, a burst of automatic fire blazed from the stranger’s weapon, toppling one of Grundy’s troopers from the porch. At the same instant, as if propelled by his weapon’s recoil, the trespasser sprang backward, slammed the door with his free hand and disappeared.
The others started pouring fire into the bungalow, as fast as they could pull the triggers on their AR-15 carbines. Bullets drilled the wall, blew out the windows, rattled the vibrating door in its frame. Grundy imagined his belongings in there, shot to hell, but he was focused on the stranger.
“Cease-fire, dammit!” Rushing among them, he grabbed first one rifleman and then another, wrestling them off target, shouting in their faces to be heard above the small-arms racket. “Hold your fire! I want that bastard breathing!”
“Too late, Major,” one of them replied. The youngster grinned and giggled.
“Oh, you think so?” Grundy shoved him toward the bullet-scarred front door. “So, get in there and check it out.”
The skinhead hesitated, then put on his war face, nodded once and rushed the door. He didn’t think to try the knob, but kicked it open, Grundy waving others in behind him as he rushed the living room.
There was no body in the living room, no blood to indicate that any of his men had scored a hit with their wild firing through the wall and windows. They fanned out, checking the corners, even though they offered no concealment for a man-sized target.
Stalling.
Grundy led them to the bedroom door, which he knew he had left ajar. The trespasser had closed it, and two bullet holes marked the painted surface, as if peepholes had been carelessly installed, off center and at different levels.
“Nowhere else for him to go,” one of the soldiers said. They moved in closer, ringed the door with scowls and steel.
Grundy was trembling, but he couldn’t order one of them to go ahead of him this time. What would they think, if he sent someone else to check his sleeping quarters, maybe check under the bed for bogeymen.
Clutching his piece one-handed, Grundy turned the knob and shoved the door back with sufficient force to make it strike the wall, crouching as it swung open. Reinforcements crowded close behind him, leaning in to aim above his head and shoulders. If they fired, he would be deafened, but he didn’t mind the company just then.
The empty room made nonsense of their melodrama. Grundy rushed the closet, threw it open to reveal his extra uniforms, but no intruder hiding there. As he turned back to face the room, two of his men were peering underneath the cot from different sides and making faces at each other.
“Nothing,” one of them declared.
“The window’s unlocked, Major.”
Grundy saw it closed, the way he’d left it, but the corporal was right. The latch was open now. He always kept it locked from force of habit. Someone else had opened it, used it as an escape hatch. Leaning closer, he saw scuff marks on the wall, probably from boots.
“Outside!” he shouted. “Make a sweep! We have to find out where he went and stop him. If he gets away…”
He meant to say, We’ll never know who sent him, but his soldiers were already rushing out, not waiting for the why and wherefore of it. Orders were enough for them, these fine young savages. They lived for action, didn’t give a damn why they were fighting, as long as someone tagged the mission with a rousing call for race and honor.
They were children, but they weren’t afraid of dirty work.
He followed them outside, eyes sweeping Camp Yahweh for any sign of the intruder or companions who had thus far managed to avoid detection. Were there others, lurking in the shadows? Were they Feds or mercenaries? Members of some rival nationalist movement or some leftist private army?
There was only one way to find out.
He had to capture one alive and make him squeal.
“Stay sharp!” he ordered his assembled soldiers. “Cover every corner of the camp. We need—”
Across the compound, at the motor pool, an engine growled and headlights blazed. Before Grundy could snap out a fresh command, one of their jeeps was off and racing toward the gate.
THE JEEP was military surplus, which required no key. Bolan needed a ram to breach the gate, and speed to give him an advantage on Camp Yahweh’s infantry. A mile would do it, if he got that far. He could discard the stolen wheels, then, and proceed on foot to reach his own.
But first, he had to make it out of camp alive.
About the time that his pursuers finished ransacking the CP hut, he slid into the driver’s seat, reviewed the world’s simplest controls and gunned the jeep to life. There was no point in running dark, since they could see him by the light of leaping flames in any case, so Bolan used the high beams as offensive weapons, blinding any troops who stood directly in his path.
There weren’t that many of them. Most had rushed to join their CO at his quarters, or else fanned out to police the camp’s perimeter. Of the dependents in Camp Yahweh, the wives and children of the “Master Race” commandos, Bolan had seen nothing yet and hoped to keep it that way. They were not civilians in the strictest sense, having withdrawn from civilized society to live a racist pipe dream fraught with danger, but he didn’t want them in his line of fire, if it could be avoided.
Wherever they were hiding, none of them emerged as Bolan made his short run toward the gate. He gunned the jeep to its top speed, aimed at the double gates a hundred yards downrange. Two guards were stationed there, and by the time he’d covered half the distance to his target, others were arriving, racing to assist their comrades.
Others still were firing from behind him, peppering the jeep with semiauto fire that struck like ringing hammer blows. A hollow thunk told Bolan that one round had drilled the gas can mounted on the tailgate, but he knew he had fuel enough to get where he was going, and the gunmen would need tracer rounds to set the sloshing gasoline on fire.
Racing across the open camp, he swerved the jeep from side to side, ducking as low as possible while still maintaining visibility across the dashboard. By the time he’d covered fifty yards, the windshield was a pile of pebbled safety glass in Bolan’s lap and strewed around his feet. Sparks flew from glancing bullet strikes, while solid hits drilled through the fenders, flaking paint in perfect circles.
Thirty yards.
The soldiers on the gate were firing at him now, so Bolan aimed his autocarbine through the empty windshield frame and held down the trigger, sweeping its muzzle back and forth in short arcs, left and right. The Colt Commando’s 30-round magazine emptied in less than three seconds, but it lasted long enough to sweep the resistance from the gate and scatter bodies in Bolan’s path. One thumped beneath the tires before the Jeep hit the chain-link gates and powered through.
Behind him, gunfire stuttered on for several seconds, but Bolan quickly killed the headlights and robbed them of their target. It was open country for another hundred yards or so, before he hit tall grass approaching spotty woods. Beyond that point, he had to risk the low beams as he sought a winding path around and through the trees.
Pursuit was possible, since Bolan hadn’t taken time to disable the other vehicles in camp, but it would take some time to organize, and he would see the headlights coming. By the time they found the abandoned jeep, Bolan would’ve found his way on foot back to the rental car he’d stashed a mile due north of Camp Yahweh.
If any of them followed Bolan that far, it would be their last mistake.
He found a place to park, then changed his mind and pushed the vehicle into a ravine with water rippling somewhere near the bottom. There was no point making its retrieval easy on the enemy, he thought. At that point, leaving empty-handed, any