Bolan spread his hands and offered her a weary smile. "My story in a nutshell."

Dr. Kent appeared incredulous. "You can't be serious. I help the sick, the injured. You kill people for a living. Any effort to compare the two activities is, well, ridiculous, that's all."

"Not really. Every time you clean a wound with antiseptic, you're killing germs. When you remove a limb that can't be saved, or cut a tumor out, you're acting in the interests of your patient... but you're also taking life."

"There's no comparison. To kill a human being..."

"May be absolutely necessary," Bolan finished for her, weary of the old debate and anxious for a change of subject. "All men have the right to kill in self-defense, or to protect their loved ones. I believe we have a duty to use force, if it will help prevent atrocities." He saw the skepticism in her eyes and gave it one last try. "If you could travel back in time and murder Hitler, thereby saving countless people from destruction, would you do it?"

"Certainly."

"If you observed a rape in progress, would you pull a trigger to protect the victim?"

Something like a shadow fell across her face, and there was a surprising gruffness to her voice as she responded. "I believe so, yes."

"And if you knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that John Q. Public has committed murder, that police can never touch him, and that he will escape, scot-free, to kill again unless you take him out yourself? What then?"

Uneasy, she turned away from him. "It's hypothetical. I couldn't answer that."

"I can. There's nothing hypothetical about the syndicate, the terrorists, the animals that prey on people after dark in every major city, coast to coast. You read the papers, Doctor. It's a jungle out there."

"So, we all pitch in and act like animals?"

The soldier shook his head. "Not even close. We use our human senses, our intelligence, our strength, and stop the animals before they eat us alive."

"You've obviously given this a lot of thought," she said. "I happen to believe there's too much violence in the world already."

"Granted. But you don't eliminate the problem by ignoring it or forming a discussion group. You'd know that if you'd ever tried to talk a rapist or a killer into reconsidering his crime beforehand."

The shadow had returned to haunt her eyes, and now Rebecca Kent was looking at him strangely, looking through him, with her thoughts a thousand miles away. When she regained her voice, it was as distant as her gaze. "I don't presume to judge you, Mr. Bolan, but I can't believe you'll save the world by killing everyone who disagrees with you."

"If that was the plan of action, Doctor, you'd be dead already. We're not talking philosophical agreement here. It's raw survival, plain and simple."

She got up, restless, tried the telephone again, then sat back down. "Still dead," she said by way of explanation.

Bolan was not startled by the news. He would have bet that all the lines in town were dead, and they would stay that way until somebody on the outside had their fill of listening to busy signals and reported something wrong in Santa Rosa. Depending on the timing of that call, it might be hours more before a lineman started checking out the wires and found the point where they had been brought down by insulated cutters or a well-placed charge of buckshot. Hours more, perhaps, to fix the break, and only then would anyone begin to think about what might be happening in town.

Rivera would be finished with his work by then. Whatever he might have in mind for Santa Rosa, he would have time to spare before the outside world had an inkling of what was happening. The soldier wondered what would happen when the drug lord showed himself, how citizens of Santa Rosa would react. The constable would be outgunned, but he might rouse the townspeople, given half a chance, and offer some resistance to the occupying army. Individuals might take up arms against Rivera, in defense of homes and families. The dealer's mercenaries would have modern, paramilitary weapons and an old familiarity with murder on their side. In combat situations, Bolan knew, the numbers only mattered if the quality of troops on either side was roughly equal. Half a dozen seasoned veterans could stop an untrained army in its tracks, defeat them with a small assist from Fate.

Unless the inexperienced militia should get lucky.

In his youth, the Executioner had seen the plot spun out a hundred times on movie screens and television. Farmers, simple people, laying down their plows and taking up their guns against the bandits who were threatening their homes. It didn't matter if the heavies rode on horseback or on motorcycles, in a Model T or in the turret of a Panzer tank: the story was the same. In films, the good guys won because it made a better story, and you needed heroes if you meant to keep on selling popcorn at the matinees. In life, however, it was something else again.

In Vietnam and afterward, the Executioner had learned that there was never any guarantee of happy endings. In a real-life close encounter with the Reaper, you were satisfied if you could walk away, and never mind the hypothetical about what had been gained or lost. The winners were the living, and the losers got a toe tag for their trouble. A few days in the ground, and they would all look pretty much the same.

But it still mattered, damn it. Any way you stood the rule book on its ear, a few hard basics always read the same. Like good and evil, right and wrong. The fact that certain crimes against humanity could simply not be left unpunished, if humanity itself was to retain its meaning. Certain enemies were simply wrong, and you opposed them not because of politics or artificial border lines, but rather out of a concern for all mankind, a recognition that their evil, left unchecked, would constitute a danger to the species. Hitler had been such an enemy, but he was not alone, by any means. You did not have to look in chancellories or throne rooms for an enemy these days. Some of them rode in limousines, but others took the bus and bore a strange resemblance to the boy next door. You took them where you found them, and when you found them, you were ready for them, or they served you up for dinner like a sacrificial lamb.

The sound of wailing sirens cut the noonday heat like razors ripping parchment, drawing closer. Bolan fought a minor wave of dizziness before he regained his balance, then followed Dr. Kent along a narrow corridor to the waiting room.

"Grant got the county sheriff," she suggested, trying to sound hopeful as they peered through separate windows.

"Maybe."

"What else could it be?"

The soldier didn't answer, waiting for the sounds to take on substance, for the source to show itself. It might have been the county sheriff, but there was an alternative that came to mind.

It might be Doomsday.

For the Executioner.

For Santa Rosa.