billowing around it like a pocket of fog.
Hans Regens, who had driven all the way to Frankfurt to pick them up, was still driving.
Tanya was next to him in the front seat. In the back seat, another figure presumably the big American sergeant she had told him about in her communication. The unusual man who had helped her escape. A most independent being, by all accounts, Frightening. Morganslicht frowned. He did not know this American, and he did not like him. It was perhaps necessary to have dealings with such people to get what the group needed, but they were dangerous and should eventually be eliminated. Especially men of such a scale and skills as this one. He had killed Klaus.
Of course, Klaus had not been a very stable person. During the torturing of the two agents, he had not in fact been able to stop. Then it had been up to Thomas to show the proper way to mutilate the enemy, to extend the sport with skill, not lust.
But Klaus was dead and they were without enough weapons.
So they would use this dumb American as much as possible, then kill him. But slowly, maybe more slowly even than with those two damned agents. For demonstration purposes.
The car braked to a halt and the two front car doors opened at once. The driver, Hans, climbed out first, rubbing his neck to shake off the drowsiness of seven straight hours of driving. 'The car needs a tune-up,' he said, and walked off to get some hot coffee. Tanya slid out next, offering a lingering look at her twin brother.
'Sergeant Grendal,' Tanya called out, 'we are here.'
No response.
'Sergeant Grendal,' the woman repeated loudly. Still no response.
She pulled open the back door and ducked into the car, shaking Bolan by the shoulders. He appeared to open his eyes with a start, looking at hir with a confused expression, then he yawned in her face. 'Pardon me,' he smiled brazenly.
'We are here, Sergeant,' she said.
Thomas Morganslicht watched anxiously as the big man in army uniform leaned out of the car and unfolded to his full height. It was a disturbing sight. The man seemed on the surface to be indolent, perhaps doltish, a typical problem for the army: he was a maverick, obviously with some flaw within him, some indecisiveness of character no doubt.
And yet.
And yet behind that veneer of easy confidence and untroubled directness lurked another force altogether.
He could feel it on this chill mountain morning.
It was a darkness. It was something disarmingly strong.
It was a visible danger emanating from this big man. Morganslicht did not like it at all.
9
Jack Grimaldi dipped the small helicopter down for a closer look at what the commotion was about.
He checked his map for bearings, decided he was about ten kilometers past Fussen, about ten from Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The Bavarian Alps stood like Prussian guards between the German and Austrian borders, looming impassibly high in the distance. He hoped he could locate Striker's signal soon. He had little desire to fight the treacherous, twisting air currents that swirled around those mountains. Except that Jack Grimaldi would do anything for Mack Bolan, and death be damned.
The Bell dropped five hundred feet in seconds, the better for him to get a closer look at the two men fighting in an open field. One of the men stopped just as he was about to throw a punch into the face of the smaller man and looked up at the helicopter. The smaller man did not bother to look up. He took advantage of the distraction to dig a sharp blow into his opponent's hefty stomach. The bigger man doubled over, clutching his middle, allowing the other to club him across the face with both hands clasped together. Jack decided it was nothing but a personal matter, certainly nothing to do with the Sarge or his mission. Just as he was about to pull away, he saw the reason for the fight. A beautiful, buxom girl ran out from behind a bush and hugged the smaller man, covering his face with grateful kisses. As the bigger man writhed on the grass, the happy couple looked up at Jack and waved a thanks. He grinned and waved back, swinging the chopper back up into his surveillance pattern.
It was nice to see the good guys win sometimes, he grinned. Which was exactly why an ex-contract pilot for the Mafia was out combing the hills and valleys of southern Germany with a map and a radio receiver tuned to a highly refined frequency, sent out by a tiny transmitter designed and built by one Herman 'Gadgets'' Schwarz, the resident Thomas Alva Edison of Stony Man Farm.
Grimaldi had been following the transmission since Bolan had activated it inside the Saab.
Jack had kept the chopper at its maximum distance of eight kilometers so as not to tip off Bolan's new buddies... But he had lost them somewhere here in the mountains. Apowerful jamming signal had cut him off completely. 'Stay hard, Sarge,' Grimaldi had said aloud. 'But stay alive.' Then a faint but distant beep-beep sounded in his headphones. He maneuvered the chopper until he found the strongest signal. The doctor finds the pulse, he thought happily. And so he manhandled the throttle for maximum speed.
10
Bolan did not move. Not an inch. Not a breath. He kept his hands in plain sight and studied Thomas Morganslicht's shouting, contorted face.
Nope, he'd never met this man before; a quick sortie through his photographic memory had revealed that much and no more.
So the big guy stayed cool, looked appropriately confused, waited for an explanation of why that 9mm Luger was waving menacingly in his face.
'Thomas!' Tanya snapped, stepping toward him. 'Was ist loss hier?
'Yeah, buddy,' Bolan asked. 'What is the matter?'
Thomas Morganslicht looked at the two dozen or so of his faithful who had gathered around to investigate his hollering, and he could see the mixture of curiosity and doubt in their bovine expressions. He knew that the amount of their loyalty was based on the sum of their collective experiences of fear, and therefore he aimed to unsettle them all with a shrill threat or two in the direction of the American.
Thomas holstered his Luger and laughed. It sounded like a stick scraping cement. 'Just a little test of courage, Sergeant Grendal,' he said, wiping the chill sweat from his forehead. 'Like you have in your American universities. Fraternity, uh.' He turned to his sister. 'Wie heist das?'
'Initiation.'
'Ja. Initiation.'
He smiled.
Tanya looked at her brother with concern, but forced a hearty laugh. Several of the gathered group chuckled amiably and began to disperse. Rudi the bear did neither. He had been staring at Bolan with something more than contempt, perhaps even more than hate.
Occasionally one of his thick cracked lips would curl up into a half-snarl, displaying his repulsive teeth and gums. He tapped the hunk of wood methodically against his leg. Bolan glanced around the hardsite as if he were taking in some charming scenery.
By the time his eyes had swung back to the front porch of Thomas's cabin, he had estimated the personnel strength at about thirty, mostly armed with East German copies of the Soviet Makarov pistol. He had also determined that the hostages were being held in the locked garage a few cabins down, where two armed men stood guard. He had also noted the dried blood on the end of Rudi's log.
'Perhaps we should step inside?' Tanya urged her brother. 'We have much to discuss.'
