The Fiery Cross Read online

  "Hallelujah!"

  "Theo knew, and we know, that the yoke of bondage can be swept away if men of goodwill work together in a common cause. He knew, and we know, that the road will not be easy. We have miles and rugged miles to go before we reach the promised land of peace and freedom, but we will endure!"

  "Praise Jesus!"

  "Theo Brown did not lay down his life in vain."

  "Amen."

  "His sacrifice will not be proved futile."

  "Hallelujah!"

  "Say 'Amen!'"

  "Amen! Amen!"

  The Reverend Little waited, sipping at a glass of water that had stood beside his notes atop the lectern. A moment passed before the restless crowd could hear him, even with assistance from the microphone.

  "It is my privilege to introduce a man who stood by Theo in his darkest hours, lending him encouragement and offering him the opportunity to be himself. Mr. Wilson Brown."

  Brown's legs were suddenly unsteady as he rose and moved to take Reverend Little's place behind the lectern. He could not keep his eyes from resting briefly on the casket as he stood before the microphone. The thought of the casket's contents struck him like a fist in the heart, recalled all the pain of loss and sadness.

  "I appreciate the Reverend Little's words," he said, and realized that he was whispering. Clearing his throat, Brown began again. "I appreciate the Reverend Little's words, but I must point out one mistake he made in introducing me. I wasn't with my son when he came up against his darkest hour. If I had been there, you might not be gathered here today. You might be going on about your lives. My son might still be going on about his business."

  Many in the crowd were weeping openly. Wilson Brown ignored the tears that filled his own eyes, speaking to them from the heart.

  "I failed my son..."

  "No, Lord."

  "...and I've come here to beg his pardon..."

  "No, sweet Jesus!"

  "...and to beg your pardon for my failure."

  "You've not failed us, brother."

  "I'm here to beg your pardon, and to promise you that Theo did not spend his life in vain. I wasn't there when he had need of me in life, but I'm here now, and I'll be here until his murderers are brought to justice."

  "Hallelujah!"

  "I'll be here until the dream my son conceived with all of you becomes reality."

  "Praise God."

  "I've got no time for anything, now, except the struggle. I've got no energy for anything outside the cause."

  "Amen."

  "If Theo's enemies believe the murder of my son can stop the movement, I'm up here to tell them that they're wrong."

  "Yes, Lord."

  "I'm serving notice on the killers now that I will not be turned around or frightened off by anything they do or say. They've done their worst to me. I've got nothing left to lose."

  "Sweet Jesus."

  "I don't know who killed my son, not yet, but I intend to know. And may the Lord above have mercy on their souls..."

  "Amen."

  "...because I have no mercy left in me."

  "That's right."

  "I'm here to tell you that my son's life stood for something."

  "Yes, Lord."

  "I may be too late to help him, but I'm here in time to see that justice isn't overlooked or swept aside. I'm here in time to see his killers brought to book, and that's exactly what I mean to do. If any of them want to try and take me out, I'm here."

  "Yes, sir."

  "I'm here."

  "Amen."

  "I'm here!"

  "Amen!"

  The crowd was on its feet as Wilson Brown retreated to his place beside the minister. He scarcely heard or understood the thunderous applause as he was ushered through a side door, through the sacristy and outside to the waiting Continental. He would ride with Reverend Little to the cemetery, following the hearse to Theo's final resting place.

  It took nearly twenty minutes for the church to clear and Theo's casket to be loaded in the hearse. The Lincoln fell in line behind the hearse, other vehicles following behind them, headlights burning in the middle of the afternoon. The church stood on the east side of town, seven miles from Mount Holly Cemetery. The procession traveled north along Van Buren and east on Main, right through the heart of Parrish. The grief and loss of Wilson Brown were on display for all the world to see.

  The procession gathered mixed reactions on the way. A group of shiftless whites on Main Street jeered and pointed, two of them extending middle fingers in mock salute. Brown wished them dead and turned away from their malice, trusting to the police escort to prevent serious incidents from marring the funeral. Farther along the route, a pair of aging black men doffed their hats and stood stiffly erect as the cortege rolled by. Most of the inhabitants they passed, however, appeared indifferent or uninformed.

  It saddened Brown to think that Theo's death, for all its coverage in the media, had had so little impact on the people he had worked — and ultimately died — to help. The residents of Chatham County were no different, he supposed, from people anywhere. They went about their daily business with their eyes fixed on tomorrow, concentrating on themselves, their families, their private needs. It was asking too much of them to care about another human being, let alone a stranger, after he was dead and gone. They seemed to have no stake in Theo's struggle, and they seemed to feel no grief at his death.

  Mount Holly Cemetery had been officially segregated for one hundred years, until the local law had been struck down in 1964, and it was still segregated now. The law provided equal rights for black and white to lie together in their last repose, but there were no Caucasians on Mount Holly's waiting list. If Theo's white friends from the church turned out to join the graveside ceremony, it would be the first time in history that Parrish whites had mourned in public the passing of a black. It was time.

  The cemetery's wrought-iron gates were standing open, ready to receive the funeral cortege. It wound along a narrow gravel drive, meandered across the graveyard's seven-acre width and back again before reaching its destination. Fifty feet to the left of the stopped hearse, a strip of garish artificial grass concealed an open grave where trestles waited to support the casket during the graveside ceremonies.

  Wilson Brown was not among the men who carried his son to his rest. Six of Theo's friends, local farmers, corded muscles rippling beneath their Sunday suits, conveyed the coffin from the hearse to the graveside, moving stolidly, head down, grief and anger mingled on their faces. Conscious of their feelings, struggling with his own, Brown followed and took his place on a metal folding chair beside the casket.

  The other seats filled up immediately, leaving several dozen mourners on their feet, a final audience for Theo to inspire. The minister stood at the head of the casket, his well-thumbed Bible clasped against his chest, eyes closed, waiting for the stragglers to arrive and quiet down.

  "To everything there is a season, Lord," he began. "A time to live, a time to die. A time to sow, a time to reap. This young man's time was not yet ripe, O Lord, but he has been cruelly cut off by those who stand outside your light and your forgiveness. Work upon their hearts, O Lord, and show to them the error of their sinful ways."

  "Amen."

  "Our brother Theo Brown has journeyed through the valley of the shadow, trusting in your promise. Lord, and fearing no man. He has earned his just reward, and we entrust his soul to you. In Jesus's name, amen."

  "Amen and hallelujah."

  Was he afraid? Wilson wondered. When they took him? In the final moments, when he knew that there was no escape, that he would surely die?

  Of course.

  His son was — no, had been— a human being, after all. A hero in his way, perhaps, but subject to the same emotions, hopes and fears as other men. What must he finally have felt, before the storm of bullets swept his life away?

  Brown had been called upon to view the body in the Chatham County Morgue. A friend of Theo's in the movement had already mad
e the technical ID, but next of kin was still required, and as the only living relative, the father had been summoned to identify and claim his son.

  One thousand years would not erase the image burned into his mind: a prostrate form on the surgeon's stainless-steel table, shrouded by a sheet, a name tag dangling from one stiff toe.

  Beneath that bloodstained sheet lay the final horror. Brown did not know how many rounds the enemy had fired at Theo; any one of half a dozen wounds could have been immediately fatal, and the coroner had counted forty-seven bullet holes, excluding the exit wounds. It took a firing squad to do that kind of damage. There had been other injuries as well. The autopsy report suggested Theo had been beaten prior to death, the evidence of trauma visible in spite of forty-seven rounds from rifles, shotguns, pistols. Several mutilated bullets had been extracted from his body for comparison in case a suspect was arrested later.

  The question of an open casket never entered Wilson's mind.

  His plan did not involve police, grand juries or the vagaries of courtroom justice. Scanning once again for the familiar face he sought, Brown suffered yet another disappointment. These people were farmers, with a scattered few from the professions — lawyers, teachers, an accountant who had quit his city job to keep the union's books. Unless Brown missed his guess, there was not an assassin in the lot.

  And at the moment, he had desperate need of such a man.

  The minister was finished, and the members of his audience began to scatter, many pausing first to offer their condolences to Brown and shake his hand. Some men and women wept, but most were stoic in their grief, refusing to expose their sense of loss. Brown knew the feelings behind their reserve were sincere. A hardscrabble farmer learned early to hide his pain and disappointment, and in Chatham County, sudden funerals had become a way of life.

  He stood beside the casket, waiting for the final mourners to depart. A pair of diggers had appeared from out of nowhere, and as Wilson watched, they dragged the artificial grass aside, revealing Theo's open grave. The soil was dark and rich. Determined to maintain his composure, Brown closed his mind to the thought of worms.

  The coffin, with his son inside, was lowered with assistance from a pulley, straps like strips of fire hose cradling the box. Brown watched until it was out of sight. He turned away before the spade men went to work, their shovelfuls of dirt impacting on the coffin with a hollow, thumping sound. A muffled drum.

  And thirty yards away, a solitary stranger stood and watched in the shadow of a vintage monument depicting angels on the wing. Brown felt his stomach lurch, the short hairs rising on the back of his neck... and then he knew.

  As Brown approached the stranger, his legs felt numb, like the prosthetic foot he wore. Mirrored sunglasses hid the white man's eyes, and there was nothing in the least familiar about his face, but there was something in his stance, his military bearing. Yes.

  "Thank God you've come," Brown said, and gripped the tall man's outstretched hand.

  "Let's take a walk," Mack Bolan said.

  2

  They walked together through Mount Holly, past the silent stones and monuments, while Bolan studied his companion. Wilson Brown was massive, six-foot-five and so broad across the chest and shoulders that his jacket seemed in danger of ripping at the seams. The passage of time had dusted his close-cropped hair with gray, but it made him look distinguished rather than old. The only sure sign of aging was revealed in Wilson's weary eyes. He hardly limped at all, despite the artificial foot he had worn since Vietnam.

  Brown had been a young lieutenant in the U.S. Army during Bolan's maiden tour of Southeast Asia. They had hit it off all right, despite the differences in race and rank that lay between them, differences other men might not have overcome. They had been comrades in a higher calling: Bolan fresh from frontier duty in Korea, looking forward to a future as an officer and "lifer" in the military, Brown recently sidelined from a promising career in professional football. They had agreed intuitively on the need to stand and fight in Vietnam, despite the odds, despite the storm of criticism gathering at home. It was not their destiny, however, to stand and fight together. Bolan had been ordered up for duty on the DMZ, while Brown remained with his command, a recon unit fighting Charlie near Song Lai. Two months after they parted company, a claymore mine took Wilson's foot above the ankle, simultaneously shattering his alternative careers in football and the military.

  "I was looking for the face you wore in France," Brown said when they had walked for several moments in reflective silence.

  "Had to switch," the soldier told him, smiling. "That one had a bull's-eye painted on the forehead."

  "I heard that."

  "All things considered, I got lucky."

  "Hey, don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I think you're getting younger."

  "Doesn't feel that way."

  "Forget about the feelings, man. They'll nail you every time."

  Bolan tried another tack. "I didn't know you were a friend of Mr. Justice."

  "I've been helping him with little things from time to time since Monaco. I guess you might say I was paying dues. Anyway, I'm out here now, with no place else to turn."

  Leonard Justice was a federal code name, and the man behind its cover was another Bolan ally, Leo Turrin. After years of serving as an undercover agent in the Mafia, the gutsy Turrin had ascended to a desk in Washington, coordinating many of Hal Brognola's anticrime and antiterrorist campaigns. It had been a surprise, indeed, to hear a plea for help by Wilson Brown from Turrin's lips.

  In the wake of Nam and half a dozen VA hospitals, where doctors had tried in vain to put his life back on its tracks, the former football lineman had fallen back on self-pity and a quest for easy cash. He had found the latter as a numbers runner — later banker — for the late Arnesto Castiglione, Mafia boss of the Eastern Seaboard. In those days, "Arnie Farmer" had been a moving force behind the outfit's hunt for Mack Bolan as they sought to repay in spades the damage the one-man army had inflicted on their operation in Pittsfield, Southern California, Arizona and Miami. Learning that the black he took for granted was an old acquaintance of the Executioner, Castiglione had offered Wilson Brown a deal: one half of all the money then on Bolan's head if he would plant a Judas kiss upon the soldier's cheeks. Their paths had crossed in Monaco, where Brown rediscovered pride and his priorities in time to help the warrior wriggle through a sticky ambush. Bolan had last seen Wilson Brown bobbing in the surf beside a pier, a firefight raging overhead, and he had wished the big man well. There had been rumbles later about the former lineman "going straight," enlisting as a football talent scout and putting his experience to work for others, but there had been no suggestion of a double life involving covert work for Justice.

  One more small surprise in a world of surprises, and Bolan had long ago learned to take nothing for granted. The only thing a warrior at the front could properly expect was the unexpected.

  "I'm sorry about your son, Lieutenant."

  "Not your fault." The dark man managed to approximate a smile. "And you can drop the rank, okay? I've been out of uniform longer than most lifers have been in."

  "Okay."

  "How much did Justice tell you?"

  "Bits and pieces."

  "Mmm. I guess I'd better fill you in." They paused beneath the cover of a weeping willow. The few remaining cars and mourners from the funeral cortege were more than a hundred yards away. "You know that Theo was a union man, with NFU?"

  "I heard."

  The National Farmers' Union was a new — and some said radical — development on the labor scene. From what he knew of Wilson's son, the Executioner was not surprised that Theo had emerged to lead the fledgling group in Arkansas.

  "I don't know what you've heard about the NFU. There's lots of bullshit circulating, all about so-called Red involvement, how the union is a front for civil rights groups, how the organizers advocate a socialized economy. I checked ii out when Theo got involved, and most of what you hear is cr
ap. The propaganda mills are working overtime, like in the sixties with those sex-and-segregation stories. You remember?"

  "Vaguely."

  "Hell, you ain't that young."

  The soldier grinned. "You're right."

  "Okay. So, once I put my mind to rest that Theo wasn't tying up with Communists and whatnot, I got interested in running down the propaganda to its source. It took a while, with all the bullshit cover names they use these days, but eventually everything led me back to Freedom Press, a local publisher in Little Rock."

  "Go on."

  "I'll let you have three guesses who owns Freedom Press, and the first two don't count."

  "I give up."

  "Jerome Freeman."

  "The Aryan Vanguard? That Freeman?"

  Brown nodded. "You know him?"

  "I've heard some. He's new on the scene."

  "New and big. What I hear, since he merged with the Knights he's the number one redneck around, with a nationwide network behind him. In public he sounds like Bill Buckley, with traces of old vintage Wallace for flavor. In private, away from the press, he makes Hitler sound liberal."

  "Who are the Knights?" Bolan asked.

  "A new Klan splinter group," Brown replied. "They call themselves the Teutonic Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, but I haven't seen a German in the bunch. The self-proclaimed Grand Wizard is a peckerwood named Mason Ritter. He's done time in Alabama for possession of explosives with intent, and now he's Freeman's shadow. You can't get a razor blade between the Vanguard and the Knights these days."

  "A publisher needs backing."

  "Freeman's got it, don't you worry. Bankers, landlords, anybody with a stake in keeping family farmers down or driving them completely off the land. The union is a nightmare come to life for all of them."

  "Was Theo making headway?"

  "Some. It's hard, you know. Besides the racial thing, so many of the locals have been beaten down financially they don't know who to trust. Last time a so-called organizer worked the area, he ripped off the farmers for close to thirty thousand bucks in dues and fees before he disappeared. They've got long memories around these parts."