Why was it still there?

He should have been miles away by now!

She slowed to a walk, clutching tortured sides in crossed arms and struggling for breath, and when she reached the vehicle she crumbled to the ground and wailed, 'Well, damn it, just damn it!'

A gruff voice from the darkness commanded, 'Off your tail, and on your feet, partner.'

Yeah, sure, it was her guy — in one piece but slightly frayed here and there — a tail burnt off his coat and blood on his hands, but, God, what a big, beautiful bastard he was.

'What kept you, Captain Tortoise?' she panted. 'That was a hell of a long two minutes!'

He picked her up and carried her into the van, placed her on the bunk, and tenderly inspected her parts.

'Damn it, Toby,' he said solemnly. 'Just damn it.'

'I'm all present and accounted for, sir. Aren't I?'

'You sure are,' he said.

Yes, she sure was. But the warrior wasn't.

'Captain Tearful!' she cried in genuine surprise and flowing concern, viewing his face clearly for the first time since the reunion — and she pulled the man's head onto her breast and held him there.

'Go ahead,' she crooned. 'Let it out, let it go.'

'Can't,' he muttered in a choked voice. 'Guess I'm just not man enough yet.'

Even so, it was cosmic magic — of a different sort. And Toby the Lady Fed had never felt more a woman.

23

Promised

Toby drove while Bolan changed into combat rig. They talked through the opening between cab and van.

'How were things in 1492?' she inquired with forced lightness.

'Enlightening,' he replied. 'And ominous.'

'Well, how about giving a girl some ominous enlightenment.'

'If I tell you at all, Toby, I have to tell it all. I don't know how to color it.'

She cast a dark glance over her shoulder. 'I've never asked you for colors.'

He cinched up the black suit and gave it to her straight. 'Crazy Sal sentenced Georgette to fifty days in the chamber.'

'The chamber? What's that?'

'The guy back there claims he doesn't know any more than that. And maybe he doesn't. If it's what I think.'

'Okay, what do you think it is?'

'Let me tell you the other first. The guy at 1492 is a big international money front for the Detroit mob. He handles literally hundreds of millions of dollars a year — some of it mere trading paper, but quite a bit in cool black cash. The entire movement is half legit, half business as usual for the boys. And that last half covers all the sins. If you have the cannibal instinct, you know, you can eat a lot of people in the legitimate business world.'

'And God knows,' Toby sniffed, 'even the straight ones are cannibal enough.'

'What a difference, though,' Bolan said. 'Sure big money carries all sorts of filth with it regardless of who's handling it, but these mob people have their own distinctive flair for hot rape. And their own cute games. Like 1492, case in point. This guy isn't satisifed to simply influence the bouncing bucks with free sex. He likes to capture them with a club. The club, of course, being that same free sex, only it turns out to be expensive as hell. You were right about the party girl jet set, A street-corner hooker is Saint Joan by comparison with these kids. The 1492 girls are cannibals of a different stripe, and the power they carry between their thighs is awesome to contemplate — when you know the international figures they're playing hotsy with. Of course, the mob can't afford to let that kind of power become independent or competitive. They need to own these girls, own their very souls.'

'You're talking about industrial blackmail.'

'With a variation or two, yeah. Political blackmail, also. Which is why 1492 handles soul recruiting the way it does. They take the girls with a club, too. Corrupt them with terror and shame and everything else they can lay on them, then send them into the jungle to bring home some hard-to-get stocks, or a new company, or whatever else is hot in the marketplaces at the moment — maybe even a small, but developing, nation here and there.'

'I know the routine,' Toby reported, tight-lipped. 'What's that chamber?'

Bolan replied, 'Only my gut knows for sure. I believe I can tell you this much. Georgette has been held up as some sort of object lesson to new recruits. They parade the new souls through this 'chamber' to show what could happen to them if they ever develop cute ideas about not playing ball with their new masters.'

Toby shuddered. She whispered, 'Oh, my God.'

Bolan said, 'Yeah. A chamber of horrors. Have you ever seen a turkey, Toby?'

'I've heard of them,' she replied shakily. 'Are you saying that Georgette... ?'

'You said no colors,' Bolan muttered. 'And that's what my gut is telling me about Georgette.'

'Oh, my God.'

'Yeah.' He buckled on the automag and tested the action.

'Did you say for fifty days?'

'That's the story.'

'But how could they ... ?' Toby shuddered again. 'How could anyone take it that long?'

'Let's hope she couldn't, Toby. Pray that she's long dead.'

'My God, my God.'

He slithered into the Beretta rig, sprung her twice, checked the clip, secured Whispering Death.

'Where are we going?'

'You know the place.'

'I do?'

He raised the lid of a munitions chest and began selecting weapons for the hunt.

'Do I?' she repeated.

'You said it held some secrets. I believe it does.'

'You can't hit that place again so soon!' Toby cried. 'It would be crazy suicide!'

'Maybe so. But there's more than one route to suicide, Toby. I can't walk away from this one.'

'But not if she's dead already! It would be senseless, wasteful!'

Bolan closed the chest and drummed his fingers on the lid.

Toby pulled the war wagon to the curb and turned to him with a tortured gaze.

He asked her quietly, 'Are you ready to write her off, Toby?'

She just stared at him.

He said, 'There are ways of keeping people alive … through almost anything. These people have turkey doctors who — '

'Oh, shut up!' Toby screamed.

'Did you ever read the Nuremberg reports on the surgical techniques used by the Nazi lunatics? Do you know what a skilled surgeon without a soul can do to a living body — and keep it living? Have you ever — ?'

'Shut up! Just shut up!'

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