8

"What changed your mind about that call?"

Rebecca forced herself to meet her patient's eyes. "I haven't changed my mind. Not yet. It's just that... well, I'd like to try and understand you, why you do these things."

"Somebody has to do them."

"No." She shook her head emphatically. "I don't believe that. We have courts and laws to deal with criminals."

Mack Bolan smiled, without a trace of rancor. "Sure. And look how well they've done so far."

"We can't revert to vigilantism."

"I'm no vigilante. I'm in pest control."

"That's very glib, but we're discussing murder."

"Execution," he corrected her.

"The only legal executions are performed by order of the court, in manners prescribed by law."

"The law can't cope with syndicated crime," he said. "These savages have been evading laws and buying off the courts for something like a century, and that's just here, in the United States. In Sicily it dates back to the middle ages."

"Everyone has rights. The Constitution guarantees..."

"These so-called people threw their rights away," he interrupted her, "the minute that they started selling drugs to children, torching crowded tenements for the insurance, selling teenage runaways like cattle to the pimps in half a dozen countries. They convict themselves by every word they utter, every move they make. Their lives are one long guilty plea."

"And you're the self-appointed judge."

He shook his head. "I'm not their judge, Doc. I'm their judgment."

He was exasperating, so committed to his cause that everything she said was turned against her, twisted to become an argument on his behalf. And still she made no move to call Grant Vickers and report her wounded patient. She wondered if it might be something in herself that stayed her hand. Was she remembering the rage, the urge to kill that possessed her for a time, just after...

"This can't be much of a life," she said, determined to distract herself.

"It's not, but I get by."

She was amazed by Bolan's lone of resignation. "You've just been shot. You're stranded in a strange place, being hunted like an animal. I wouldn't call that getting by."

"I'm still alive," he told her. "What else is there?"

"Peace and quiet," she responded. "Home and family. A life without the guns and killing."

"Peace and quiet are expensive," Bolan said. "Somebody has to pay the tab. Besides my family's all gone."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," he countered. "The responsibility for that one's been assessed, the tab collected. It's old business."

"So, you're fighting for your family? For revenge?"

"In the beginning," he admitted. "But it didn't take me long to realize the savages were everywhere. My family's loss has been repeated every day, in every major city, since the mob got organized. If they're not bad enough, you've got the terrorists of various persuasions, racist groups and half-baked 'revolutionaries' killing for a cause that changes every hour, on the hour. Faces change, the propaganda varies, but they're all the same at heart. All savages."

"You're taking on the world."

"Not quite. I still believe that the majority of people would prefer to lead their lives without the threat of being raped or robbed or murdered. Live and let live. But before we get to that point, certain people have to die."

"And so you kill them, just like that?"

He thought about it, finally nodded. "Just like that."

"Because they're evil?"

"No. Because they're predators, and while they live, they have to feed. Unfortunately you and I are on the menu."

She was startled by a sudden frantic rapping on the door, and realized that she hadn't opened up the clinic. So distracted was she by her wounded patient that she had ignored the time.

The pounding was repeated, a percussion beat of desperation. She was halfway to the door when something made her hesitate and glance at Bolan.

"My guns," he snapped. "Where are they?"

The doctor shook her head. "I won't have killing here."

"You may not have a choice."

"Lie still. I'll handle it."

But she was trembling as she crossed the waiting room, caught up in Bolan's story, frightened by the thought of gunmen waiting on her porch. Would they have bothered to knock? Frozen with one hand upon the latch, she nudged the blinds aside and risked a peek, expecting burly ruffians with weapons drawn and poised to fire. Instead she saw Rick Stancell, slumped beneath his father's weight, supporting Bud with difficulty, smeared with blood that must have been the older man's. She hit the latch and threw the door back, stepping out to help Rick guide his father through the doorway.

"Rick, what happened?"

"Someone beat him up." The adolescent's voice was taut with grief and rage. "I found him like this, back at the garage."

"This way."

Without a second thought, she led her latest patient toward the tiny operating room. She thought of Bolan just before they crossed the threshold, almost steered the Stancell's back to one of her examination rooms.... and then she saw that Bolan had removed himself. The IV tube was clipped against its standing rack, where he had left it, and his bloody skinsuit lay folded on the counter, but the man himself was nowhere to be seen.

She and Rick helped Bud onto the table, then the boy backed off to let her do her work. A brief examination was enough to show Rebecca that she could not deal with Stancell's injuries in Santa Rosa. Both his hands were crushed, he almost certainly had broken ribs, and bleeding from the ears suggested damage to his skull. A neurosurgeon would be needed if her worst suspicions were confirmed, and there might be internal damage to Bud Stancell's lungs or other vital organs, suffered when his ribs were broken.

"I can clean him up and give him something for the pain," she told the young man, "but he needs treatment in a hospital as soon as possible. I'll make the call to the Grundys."

Amos Grundy was the chief of the volunteer fire department. His brother, Thane, had gone to paramedic's school in Tucson. They owned an ambulance, which they had purchased with the aid of county funds, and now monopolized the trade in patients being hustled off to hospital. They ran a decent service, Amos driving like a demon while his brother sat in back and tended to their passenger, and they had never lost a patient. Yet.

She snared the telephone receiver, raised it to her ear and waited for the dial tone. Nothing. She drummed the switch hook with impatient fingers, waiting, but to no avail. The line was dead.

From Bolan's hiding place inside a pantry room adjacent to the surgery, he could observe Rebecca Kent and eavesdrop on her conversation with the late arrivals. He was watching, listening, when she replaced the telephone receiver without dialing, turning with a frown to face the boy.

"The lines are crossed or something," she informed him. "Can you run on down to the Grundys? It would save us time."

"I'm gone," the boy replied, already suiting words to action as he raced out through the nearest exit, pounding out of sight beyond the windows.

Bolan stepped out of his hiding place, still woozy from the loss of blood and local anesthetic he had received. "You have that problem often?" he inquired.

The doctor almost jumped, then shook her head, returning to her battered patient on the operating table. "Once or twice," she said. "It's not unheard of."

"You assume it's a coincidence?"

"What else?"

He did not answer her directly, moving to stand beside the table. Dressed in Jockey shorts and bandages, he felt no chill. It was already hot outside, and Santa Rosa's clinic did not have the benefit of modern air-conditioning. An old swamp cooler labored on the roof, providing circulation for the rooms, but it would never be accused of freezing anyone to death.