Bolan frowned. "The old days are supposed to be dead and buried, guy."
Blancanales nodded, losing the grin. "So are you, buddy, so are you."
"How do you read this action, Pol?" Bolan asked, changing the subject.
Blancanales shrugged. His face in the dim dashboard light was genuinely puzzled.
"No reading, Sarge. Not yet, anyway. It just won't compute. It's beyond me."
For another few moments they drove along in silence, each warrior preoccupied with his own private thoughts and concerns. Each sought some personal answer, some private point of recognition in the puzzle that ensnared them.
Neither found it.
3
Long miles lay between the deadly poppy fields of his recent mission in Turkey and the rainy streets of St. Paul, Minnesota, but Mack Bolan, the man now known as Colonel John Phoenix, had early learned to take his hellgrounds and his enemies where he found them. And that could be anywhere.
It was all one struggle, sure. All part of the same universal conflict, and you didn't need a program to tell the players apart if you could only get a handle on the game.
There were, of course, no living losers in the game.
Bolan had returned only hours earlier from the Turkish hellground, anxious for a brief respite from his war everlasting. The targets had been opium and the men who grew it. The method: total destruction. Executioner style.
And yes, Bolan had been more than happy to find the brief sanctuary of his Phoenix base, located on Stony Man Farm in the lovely Blue Ridge mountain country of Virginia. He could find peace there, or at least the illusion of peace.
But there would be no real peace at Stony Man Farm for Mack Bolan. Not on this return trip from the universal hellground.