It was bound to happen sooner or later, before their small team reached its goal.
A quarter mile from Centreville, they started running into traffic, dodging in and out among old farm trucks and minivans that had seen better days. Tanner eased back, let Moseley pull ahead of him to pass a vintage Dodge Ram pickup, while he retrieved an M-33 fragmentation grenade from under his leathers, dropped its pin into his bike’s slipstream and tossed the metal egg into the Dodge’s open bed before he powered out of there, leaving the startled sixty-something driver in his wake.
Tanner was grinning as he counted down the six-second delay fuse, waiting for the storm to break.
* * *
“Grenade!” Grimaldi snapped, already easing back his pressure on the Ford’s accelerator.
“Saw it,” Bolan said, bracing himself for the explosion that was sure to come in four...three...two...
The blast’s impact was physical, even inside their car. It must have scared a good year off the pickup driver’s life, then he was back to business, swerving left, then right, trying to get his ride under control while smoke poured from its open bed, the sides bowed out over its rear fenders, its tailgate flapping in the breeze. Something had happened to the rear axle, as well, but Bolan thought the real danger was fire now, with the pickup’s gas tank likely holed by shrapnel and inviting any spark to set its fumes alight.
“And there it goes,” Grimaldi said.
The Dodge Ram’s driver gave it up, swerved toward the highway’s grassy shoulder on his right, and bailed as soon as he slowed down enough to make it practical.
“Pretty spry for an old guy,” the Stony Man pilot commented.
“Concentrate on the youngsters,” Bolan replied.
“Bikers. Ten-four.”
The Dodge Ram detonated when they were a half block past it, following the Harley-Davidsons toward Centreville. The bikes were making tracks, topping the 90 mph mark without missing a beat. Bolan reached underneath his jacket, drew the black Berretta M-9 pistol from its shoulder rig, and thumbed its ambidextrous external safety lever from the Safe to Fire position with a red dot showing on each side.
“You want to take them off the road?” Grimaldi asked.
“Find out if we can catch them, first.”
“Good point,” the pilot granted as he trod the Ford’s accelerator to the floor.
* * *
“Still coming,” Moseley called to Tanner. “They’re not stopping for collaterals.”
“Not yet,” Tanner replied. “Maybe they need some more.”
“Say where and when, Captain.”
“We’re coming to the city limits now. I want to split up, left and right, when we’re in town, and make them choose.”
“Whichever one of us they pick should stand and fight?”
“Avoid that if possible,” Tanner replied. “Clutter the streets with more collateral, then regroup on the north side and head back to meet the others. There’s a seafood place they call the Bay Shore Steam Pot on East Water Street. Whoever gets there first, wait ten minutes, no longer, then get out and warn the rest.”
“Sounds good,” Moseley said. “You just tell me when and where to turn.”
“Block and a half, up on your right. I’ll take the left, same time. And don’t be shy about the locals.”
“Never have been, never will, Captain.”
The cross streets, each with different names, came rushing at them and they swerved apart without a backward glance.
* * *
“And there they go,” Grimaldi said. “Which one you want to chase?”
“I doubt it matters,” Bolan answered. “Left’s as good as anything.”
“Easier turn, at least,” Grimaldi said, putting a crooked smile on Bolan’s face by signaling his turn. Catching the look, the flyboy said, “Hey, I obey the law. Mostly.”
As if on cue, an ancient Chevy station wagon blew up on the right-hand side road, trailing smoke, expelling four towheaded children from its tailgate, while their parents leaped for daylight up front. The biker who had fed them a grenade soon vanished in a pall of smoke, with Bolan leaning into Jack Grimaldi’s sharp, tire-squealing turn.
It couldn’t be too long before their chase started attracting lawmen, most particularly if their quarry kept scattering grenades in their wake. Another one went off just then, under the front end of a newish Kia SUV just pulling out from its curb space outside a burger joint. Both airbags inflated instantly, obscuring Bolan’s vision of the driver, while another frag grenade took out a family sedan just signaling its turn into the parking lot of a dry cleaner’s.
“Damn!” Grimaldi swore. “How many of those eggs you think he’s carrying?”
“Too many for a confrontation in the heart of town,” Bolan replied. “Smart money also says he’ll have at least one gun, either a decent pistol or an automatic subgun.”
“You want to call it, then?”
Bolan hated to pull the plug, but he didn’t intend to spark a further bloodbath in the streets of Centreville. On top of that, he heard a siren’s distant wail, either the local cops—with twelve men on the force full-time, as he recalled—or a Queen Anne’s County deputy out on routine highway patrol. He didn’t want the law drawn into this with no idea of what they’d wind up facing, so he made the only call that suited him.
“I’m calling it,” he told Grimaldi. “Let’s get out of here before SWAT hears a rumble and starts gearing up.”
“At least we didn’t pick up any shrapnel,” the pilot said.
“Small favors,” Bolan replied as Grimaldi swung down an alley and began reversing their direction back toward 313.
“I’m thinking Hal won’t like it.”
“Not one little bit,” Bolan agreed.
“You think he’ll pull us off?”
“Doubt it,” Bolan replied after considering. “Right now, we’re all he’s got.”
“I wish that didn’t carry so much weight.”
“Comes with the big bucks.”
“Yeah. I’m still waiting for those,” Grimaldi said with a grin.
“You and me both.”
When they’d cleared Centreville and started back toward Goldsboro, where the chopper waited for them on the ground, Bolan began rehearsing what he’d say to Brognola. He’d never polished up bad news before, and wouldn’t start today, but at least he still had other leads, besides the father who had not seen Walton Tanner Junior in so long most people would consider them estranged.
Another of the AWOL Rangers, Tyrone Moseley, had a brother in Newark, New Jersey, chasing a bachelor’s degree in engineering. Moseley’s file had sketched sufficient background on the kid to mark him as a “normal” student, but he was an African American whose hackles might rise at confrontation with two white government agents looking for his brother, handing back their cards without revealing much of anything.
Life in a city of a quarter million people, some still brooding over riots forty years ago and nursing grudges that might never heal. Some would be militants, the bulk of them just ordinary people conscious of the fact that they’d