One or two cars on the road in each direction, letting everybody in, nobody out. It would be safe to assume that the roadblocks would not be swamped with cars. Communication via radio might be another story; if there was a marshal's office or a tow truck operator with a CB, isolating the town would be more difficult. A Mayday message might be broadcast to surrounding towns before the hunters could complete their sweep. There might be opportunities to reach the county sheriff, or the state police.

His mind was drifting, and the warrior brought it roughly back to here and now. His first priority was the location of a medic. Failing that, he had to get inside the pharmacy, stock up on some essentials, and get out again before he was discovered. Bolan had no cash and no prescriptions for the items that he needed; neither could he wait for normal business hours if he planned to make his getaway with minimal endangerment of innocent civilians.

Medical attention, wheels, escape. They were his top priorities, but Bolan liked to hedge his bets. The service station wasn't open, but its pay phone was in working order and he was relieved to find that he could dial the operator without depositing a coin. The nasal voice verified his "Michael Beeler" credit card and took the Southern California number, asking him to hold.

The calling card was perfectly legitimate, aside from the employment of an alias to cover Bolan's tracks. The billings were dispatched each month to a post-office box in Los Angeles, from which they were routinely forwarded to yet another box in San Diego. No one ever called upon the L.A. box, and no one ever would. The semiannual rent was paid by mail, and it existed only for the purpose of receiving monthly bills. A snoopy sort could hang around the post office for months on end and never see a soul approach Box 2035.

The number Bolan had requested was another cutout, shunting calls from a studio apartment in San Ysidro to Johnny Bolan's home and headquarters at Strongbase One, in San Diego.