"You trying to delay me, Lyons? The way you did Rickert?" Bolan was beginning to move slowly away.

"Not at all. Uh, Bolan. Some dumb cop left his car unprotected up there on the road. Keys in it and everything."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Lyons knelt beside Rickert and snapped a pair of cuffs on him. "He'll keep for a while. And now that same dumb cop is going to take a walk among the rocks, hoping to find a survivor from that car plunge off the cliff over there. Uh, happy coexistence, Bolan. This time I'm walking." Lyons turned abruptly and strode off into the darkness.

Bolan smiled tightly and moved quickly toward the road. Life wasn't all hell, he decided. Another battle had ended. Perhaps somewhere, someday, he would find a place to end the war. Flower had been wrong. Hell was not for the living, it was for the dead, even the hallowed dead. Let the dead rest in peace. Someday Mack Bolan, too, would rest. For now, he had to find his way among the living. And he would find Julian DiGeorge somewhere about that landscape, and undoubtedly many more just like him.

He would never, however, find another Death Squad. Not like the helluva bunch he'd just lost. He climbed behind the wheel of Lyons's vehicle, started the engine, and moved slowly out. His glance fell on the microphone.

"Roll Call," he said, half-aloud.

And he could have sworn he heard them checking in. Bloodbrother, Zitter, Gunsmoke, Deadeye, Boom-Boom, Flower Child, Chopper, Gadgets, and Politician. They were all in—and they were all on Mack Bolan.

—end-

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