Dual Action. Don Pendleton
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have to ask?”
“Ohio? That’s impossible.”
“Is it?”
“The Feds suspect us, naturally. They would be total morons if they didn’t,” Walgren said. “But they need evidence. They come with warrants, not like this. Some joker with a painted face, running around at midnight, blowing things to hell. Give me a break.”
“Black ops, remember? Christ, we’ve talked enough about it from day one.”
“They pull that shit in other countries, Barry. Black ops in the States means bugs and wiretaps, stings, entrapment, setting up an ambush when they have the chance.”
“All right,” James said. “Who else is there?”
Walgren echoed his aide’s own words. “You have to ask? Think Yiddish. Try Mossad, maybe the JDL.”
James thought about it for a moment. “I don’t think so, Curt.”
“Why not?”
“Mossad might bomb your car or shoot you on the street, but this is too high profile for an operation in the States. Also, they’d never send a single man to pull a deal like this. Same thing for Jewish Defense League, assuming they had any talent on this scale.”
“So, it’s a mystery? We let it go at that?”
“Nobody’s saying let it go. We just have to be careful now, with so much going on. The last thing we need, with the big day so close, is some kind of high-profile vendetta,” James said in caution.
“Play it cool, you’re saying.”
“Right.”
“Roll with the punch.”
“Until we know who threw it, anyway.”
“And then?”
James shrugged. “We choose the time and place for payback. Make it count.”
“You always were conservative,” Walgren said.
“That’s why I get the big bucks, right?”
Walgren could only smile at that. “We’ll think about it, Barry. In the meantime, get that shyster on the line, will you? Make sure he’s earning every goddamned cent we pay him.”
“Right. Will do.” James rose and stiffened to attention, clicked his heels and snapped off a straight-arm salute. “Hail victory!”
Walgren responded from his chair, halfheartedly. When James was gone, he rose and crossed the room, pushed through another door into his private sleeping chamber. There he sat, relaxed as best he could, as he addressed his mirror image.
“So, you heard all that?”
“I always hear,” his reflection said.
“Barry wants to cool it. See what happens.”
“What do we want?”
“Waiting sucks,” Walgren said. “It’s cowardly. It sends the wrong message.”
“Make an example, then.”
“Of who?”
“It’s whom.”
“All right. Of whom?”
“Identity is less important than impact,” the mirror image answered. “In a totally corrupt society, who are the innocents?”
“No one.”
“Precisely. All except the faithful are complicit in the crime.”
“All guilty should be punished,” Walgren said.
“In time. Until that day…”
“A choice.”
“Our choice.”
“A demonstration.”
“An example.”
“Good.”
The choice would be a challenge, with so many enemies around them. Still, Curt Walgren knew whatever choice he made would be the proper one. He was inspired, at times like these, with a perception and intelligence beyond his normal limits.
In such moments, he knew how the old-time prophets felt, spreading the word of Yahweh to a world that didn’t care and wouldn’t listen. A reckoning would follow, and the unbelievers would be punished for their doubts, their mockery. Walgren would supervise their punishment himself, and he would glory in it.
But until that day…
There was a demonstration to arrange, and he had to also make concerted efforts to identify the enemy responsible for the attack upon Camp Yahweh.
It was not a crippling blow, would not defeat them or postpone the great day that was coming, but it still required an answer. James was wrong about the wait-and-see approach, which only signaled weakness to an enemy and thus encouraged him to strike again. Retaliation was the answer, and a larger demonstration to society at large.
A warning of the wrath that was to come.
One man against a small army.
Who had such skill and daring? Walgren wondered. His worst enemies were Jews, the schemers after world dominion, but it seemed incredible to him that the U.S. could produce such fighters. Israel had been forced to breed them, train them from the cradle upward, but Americans were soft by definition, their pampered minorities all the more so. They lacked discipline, determination, and the will to sacrifice.
The man who had rampaged through Camp Yahweh might be an Aryan, given the courage and ability he had displayed. Who was he? Why had he chosen this, of all times, to attack the Aryan Resistance Movement?
James was right. It had to be Ohio.
Dammit!
“Never mind,” his mirror image said. As always, the reflected face could read his thoughts, almost before they formed inside his head. “We’ll make it right.”
“We have to,” Walgren echoed.
“And we will.”
“Identify the enemy.”
“Identify and locate.”
“Locate and destroy.”
“In Yahweh’s name.”
“Amen!”
4
Bolan drove through the night and predawn hours to reach his next target in Russellville, Missouri, a few miles southwest of Jefferson City. It was the last target Bolan could reach that day, without a plane ride, and he hoped to make it count.
The man he wanted, Vernon Upshaw, was a former high school English social studies teacher, driven from his job when he began insinuating Nazi propaganda into daily lesson plans. Around the time he told a class of freshmen that the Holocaust was a colossal hoax created in the postwar years by Communists and the “Jews Media,” the school board cut him loose and his appeals had been rejected by the courts. Since then, Upshaw had turned his questionable talents to production of theAryan Resistance Movement’s monthly newsletter and sundry other publications, printed in the basement of a house that he’d inherited from relatives.
Bolan had the address, and dawn seemed like a good time for a pop quiz with the former teacher. If he passed, and didn’t raise a fuss, maybe Upshaw would live to foul another day.
Maybe.
The house was small, situated in a neighborhood that had outlived its glory days. The people Bolan saw leaving for early shifts at work were mostly Hispanic or black, a circumstance that had to have rankled Upshaw. He was caught in the classic bigot’s dilemma: live with nonwhite neighbors, or risk selling his Aryan homestead