“When do you think Croft will give the word to move on Spokane?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” another Aryan answered.
“Hardin thinks it will be a couple of weeks yet. The scouts haven’t come back and we don’t want to go up against more than we can handle.”
“The Aryan Nation can handle anything.”
Slayne whispered into his headset, “Alpha Triad, on me.” He continued crawling. Once it was safe, he rose into a crouch. “We have a long way to go yet. We’ll double time a few miles.”
“Lead the way, Solo,” Montoya said.
“Thor? Acknowledge, damn it.”
“As he said, lead the way. The son of Odin will not fail you.”
Slayne didn’t like the sound of that. Anderson was taking the whole Thor business much too literally. But now wasn’t the time or place to bring it up. Slayne began to jog.
The gray sky cast the woods in somber shadow. Normally the wilds were alive with the warbling of birds and the chittering of squirrels but it was graveyard quiet save for the rustling of the wind.
Slayne relied on a GPS unit. From a slope south of Wallace they surveyed the town. Save for a lot of armed men— and women—it could have been any town in prewar America.
A flag flew above a church. The flag’s background was blue and red, with a gold crown atop a sword and what looked to be a horizontal Z through the middle.
“What does that stand for?” Montoya wondered.
“You’d have to ask them,” Slayne said. “Not that they would answer you. To them you’re one of the mud people.”
“The what?”
“Anyone who isn’t white. As a Hispanic you’d rate above a black but below a Jew.”
“I sure would like to waste a few of these bigots.”
The next town was Osburn. An Aryan flag flew over a church there, too. Kellogg, farther on, had half a dozen flags, but then it was twice the size of Osburn. The Warriors saw children playing and laughing, and heard someone singing.
On a normal day the sun would have been blazing the western horizon red, orange, and yellow when the Warriors reached a rise above Smelterville, but on this day there was only the perpetually gray sky. Slayne raked the town from end to end with the binoculars. He spotted four tractor-trailer rigs. One was parked on the main street. Two others were in residential areas. The last one, the one that interested him the most, was in the lot of a tun-down factory. “Gentlemen, take a gander.” He passed the binoculars to Montoya and pointed.
“How do you want to handle this?”
“We separate and go in from different directions. Stay in touch at all times. Remember not to engage hostiles unless you absolutely have to. Understood, Ricco?”
Montoya grinned. “I’m good to go, Solo.”
“And you, Thor?”
“I and Mjolnir are at your disposal.” “Then let’s do this.”
Warrior World
Compared to the other towns, Smelterville was strangely quiet. It bothered Slayne. It was always “the unforeseen that sent a combat op south. On the plus side, the few people on the streets were moving about in a leisurely fashion, and he saw no evidence of checkpoints or any Aryan militia.
Slayne came to the edge of the forest. Beyond lay a side street lined by frame homes. “Solo is in position.” “Almost to mine,”
Montoya said. Thor said nothing.
Slayne was beginning to have his doubts about the man.
Anderson had performed admirably during the firelight at the Home, but he had been acting erratically ever since the Armorer had modified his hammer. Slayne wasn’t a psychologist like Professor Trevor, but Anderson was acting more and more as if he thought he was the real Thor, and that was just plain psycho.
“This is Ricco. I’m in position.”
“The son of Odin is where he should be.”
“Use your code name from now on,” Slayne said brusquely.
He moved out from the trees. “All right, Alpha Triad. Converge on the truck. Low profile is the key phrase here.”
Slayne’s idea of a low profile was to sling the MP5 over his shoulder and stroll along as if he belonged there. An old lady sat in a rocking chair on a porch, knitting. He nodded at her and she nodded back.
From somewhere in the distance Slayne thought he heard subdued voices.
Montoya was supposed to come in from the east, Anderson from the west, and Slayne was approaching from the south. He had figured that one stranger, walking alone, was less likely to stand out and draw attention than three strangers together.
On the next street some boys were throwing a football. Slayne walked close to the curb. One or two glanced at him and went right back to their game. He was almost to the end of the block when a small dog came out of a yard and yipped at his heels. A woman called, “Here, Sweetiepie!” and the mutt scampered off.
The factory was set well back. Its parking lot had enough parking spaces to accommodate a hundred cars. The sign out front was faded. Slayne guessed that the place had closed years if not decades ago. A chain-link fence surrounded the lot but the gate was open and hanging lopsided.
The muffled voices grew louder.
As Slayne entered the parking lot, he realized why; the voices were coming from inside the factory. Some kind of meeting was going on. He made for the semi. “Alpha Triad, report.”
“This is Ricco. Almost there.”
“This is Thor. The same.”
“Hold your positions once you reach the target,” Slayne reminded them. They were to cover him from the perimeter and be ready to render aid if he needed it.
The truck was a regal mechanical beast with the words Semper Fi painted on the doors. The dust that covered it showed it had not seen recent use.
Slayne walked the length of the trailer. He looked around to verify no one was watching. Gripping the handle, he wrenched on the rear door. To his surprise, it opened right
