When they had decently disposed of the amenities, Brognola followed Kurtzman to the war room, leaving Turrin on his own to scout out sandwiches and coffee in the mess.
"How goes it?" asked the man from Wonderland.
"It goes," the Bear replied.
"You have the information I requested?"
"That's affirmative. I was afraid we'd come up empty — lean, at best — but it appears we tapped the mother lode."
Brognola read the answer on his comrade's face and forced himself to ask the question anyway.
"Is it as bad as I expected?"
"Nope. It's worse."
* * *
"We've got Grimaldi on the scope," Aaron Kurtzman announced. "Anybody want to do the honors?"
Leo Turrin snuffed his cigarette and pushed his chair back. "Sure. Why not?"
In fact, he'd grown tired of waiting even prior to their arrival at the Farm. Brognola had been playing sphinx again, refusing to discuss his suppositions on the case at hand, and Turrin knew that the big Fed would only talk when he was good and ready — which in this case meant when everyone was present and accounted for. Grimaldi's touchdown put them one step closer to the show-and-tell, and Leo thought the guy deserved a welcome for his trouble at the very least.
Grimaldi's aircraft was a light, twin-engine Cessna. Leo sat beside a young, athletic-looking «farmhand» as they motored out to meet the pilot, and he knew enough to skip the conversation. Staffers at the complex were close-mouthed, even grim, around outsiders, and it didn't matter if they saw you once a week for months on end. Unless you were assigned to Stony Man Farm full-time, or answered to the names of Bolan or Brognola, you were merely passing through, a «stranger» to be treated with the proper blend of courtesy and caution.
Grimaldi let the ground crew handle fuel and any necessary servicing, a tribute to his faith in those around him. He was smiling as he crossed the tarmac, wringing Leo's hand and nodding absently in the direction of their silent driver.
"What's the shake-up, Leo?"
"Damned if I know. Hal's been suffering from an attack of lockjaw since last night. He wants to lay it out all at once for everybody."
Grimaldi's face lighted up. "So, Striker's coming in?"
"We're looking for him noonish."
"And I take it he'll be needing wings."
"I wish I knew."
They rode back to the house in silence. Kurtzman met them in the entryway and shook Grimaldi's hand. "You made good time."
"That's motivation for you. Where's the boss?"
"He's running down some loose ends in the war room. We'll be going down to join him after Striker shows. You hungry?"
"I could eat."
They followed Kurtzman to the dining room, and Turrin sat across from Jack, content with coffee while the pilot wolfed down two thick sandwiches and chased them with a frosty mug of beer.
"Not bad," Grimaldi told the Bear when he was finished. "You should open up a chain. The price is right."
"Tell that to John Q. Public, will you?"
"I'd be glad to. Where's he living nowadays?"
Their banter was designed to ease the tension, but it failed to work on Leo. He'd been absorbing the Brognola vibes since Striker bought the mission to Manhattan, and the late addition of Silvestri as a wild card seemed to be the final straw. Hal was preoccupied with doom and gloom just now, a situation that evoked bad memories for Leo, images of other cases where the odds had seemed impossible.
It would be better, he decided, when they knew the worst. However bad a situation got, it never held a candle to the terrors of imagination run amok. When problems were defined and quantified, their limitations measured, you were that much closer to attaining a solution.
Right.
And that was easily said, considering the fact that Turrin wouldn't be compelled to solve the problem either way. It would be Striker on the firing line, perhaps alone, when everything began to fall apart and all their boardroom theories turned to shit. It would be Striker carrying the ball on their behalf and taking all the lumps along the way.
Like always.
Leo wondered why he did it, and the answer came across at once, as plain as day.
Because he could. The possibility and the necessity were one, combined in Bolan's sense of duty. He could no more pass a dangerous situation by than he could voluntarily stop breathing. One recourse would be as fatal as the other to a man of Bolan's temperament and dedication.
Striker was a solid-gold original, and no mistake.
It would be tragic if they had to throw the guy away.
* * *
Brognola finished reading through the file a second time and closed it gently, almost reverently, before he sat back in his chair and removed the cellophane from a fat cigar.
"You've read all this?" he asked Kurtzman rhetorically. "Okay, what to do you think?"
"It's not my choice."
"I know that, dammit. All I'm asking for is input here."
Brognola thought that Kurtzman looked incongruous, his massive torso rising from the wheelchair. When he shrugged, it seemed that he was on the verge of rising to his feet, as if the past few years had been some kind of ghoulish put-on.
"I suppose, if it was me, I'd say we have to go ahead."
"You mean, he has to go ahead."
"That's what I mean."
"Goddammit."
"Think about the options, Hal."
"I have."
The «options» were delay, procrastination, inactivity. There would be other contacts, other meetings, and they might not have a handle on the players next time. If they didn't follow the trail while it was fresh, they ran a risk of losing out entirely.
"What's the time?" Brognola asked. He'd already checked his watch, but hoped it might be fast, allowing him a bit more time in which to think.
"I show eleven forty-five," Kurtzman said.
"Damn."
"He's got a choice, remember? If he doesn't think that he can pull it off…"
"He'll try it anyway. You know that, same as I do."
"So? His choice."
The Bear was playing devil's advocate, and Brognola was in no mood for philosophical discussions.
"Where's the choice?" he asked. "The guy hasn't walked away from trouble since he learned to tie his shoes. He'll take the job, regardless… if it's offered."
"If?"
"We could delay response." The words were bitter in his mouth. "Put Able Team or Phoenix on the case when they wrap up their present missions. That way, anyhow, we'd shave the odds."
"You think so? Putting three men — maybe eight men — on the ground instead of one? Why don't we drop a coin and send in the Marines?"
"That's not a bad idea." Brognola scowled. "If it was thirty years ago, or even twenty, there's a chance the President would do exactly that. Gunboat diplomacy, and no apologies for taking care of business. Now we've got to turn the other cheek and keep one eye on world opinion every time some piss-ant, third-rate power takes a shot. Some days I wonder if we're even holding ground."
"And other days?"
"Hell, then I know we're losing."
Kurtzman wheeled himself around and headed for the war room's elevator. "I'll go up and dust the welcome mat. You want me to direct the gang downstairs when everybody's in?"
"No, thanks. I'm right behind you."
"Okay."
Brognola listened to the elevator doors and spread one hand across the flat manila file in front of him. It wasn't thick, but it was loaded all the same, and it could blow up in his face if it was handled carelessly. Retaliation was a two-way street, and the United States had been engaged in skirmishing with Teheran for about a dozen years. Neither side had scored a clear-cut victory as yet, and that was bad enough, considering the obvious discrepancies in population, size and military strength. Brognola didn't want to be the man responsible for one more grand snafu. And yet if he did nothing…
The big Fed stuck the unlighted
cigar into a corner of his mouth and pushed his chair back, shambling toward the elevator. As an option, inactivity didn't exist. It was surrender, plain and simple. If you let the savages walk over you, they kept on going. There would be no sudden change of heart, no magic revelation to the error of their ways. Negotiation merely bought time for the enemy.
A pair of Kurtzman's staffers concentrated on their printouts as Brognola exited the elevator and crossed the computer room. It wouldn't be long now, he thought, familiar faces staring back at his from their positions at the conference table, while he dealt the cards of life and death.
Disgusted with a world that always seemed to stack the deck against him, Hal Brognola wondered how much longer he could play the game.
* * *
The drive had been a gift from Bolan to himself. He needed time to think, and driving from New York to Stony Man Farm, due west of Wonderland, had given him the perfect opportunity to sort his various impressions of the Greenwich Village strike.
He caught the Holland Tunnel from Manhattan to New Jersey, following the Pulaski Skyway through Newark and southward, picking up U.S. Highway I at Elizabeth. Bolan stopped for breakfast at Trenton, purchasing coffee and pastry from a roadside shop, parking his car in a turnout that offered a view of the Delaware River. The trees were alive with birds, and he wound up feeding them the best part of his breakfast, grateful for the company and the distraction they provided.
Any way he looked at the Iranian connection, it spelled trouble. Granted, there was nothing new about Grisanti's Family shopping in the Golden Crescent, but as far as Bolan knew, the deals had all been cut on Middle Eastern turf, without suppliers visiting America, and there had been no solid evidence of terrorist connections. Now, if instinct served him, it appeared the picture might be changing for the worse.
From Trenton Bolan motored south on Interstate 95, skirting Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, finally plunging into the snarled heart of Washington, D.C. Emerging from Wonderland, he caught westbound Interstate 66 through Arlington and into Gainsville. There he veered southeasterly on U.S. Highway 211, holding his course well into the Blue Ridge Mountains, picking up Skyline Drive east of Sperryville.
The final approach to Stony Man Farm inevitably filled Bolan with a sense of awe. He knew the region's history, including four long years of bloody civil war, but Bolan marveled chiefly at the landscape. Virgin forest lined the road on either side, protected from human trespass as part of the Shenandoah National Park. Five miles south of the U.S. 211 intersection, the rugged profile of Stony Man Mountain loomed to an altitude of four thousand feet, following Skyline Drive with an inscrutable gaze. Pioneers gave the man-mountain its name, and Civil War combatants bled before the silent watcher, dying for the high ground. Lately Bolan liked to think that Stony Man would voice approval, if he could, of the establishment that shared his name.
Stony Man Farm sprawled over some 160 acres, much of it in trees, and where the property hadn't been fenced, it was protected by an interlocking screen of sensors and security devices. Barring failure of the installation's several generators all at once, it was impossible for human beings to approach the Farm unseen. Since its establishment, the base had suffered one attack and thirty-seven false alarms, the latter incidents involving hikers gone astray. The innocent were guided back to Skyline Drive and pointed toward the nearest town, occasionally offered rides to speed them on their way. They never reached the airstrip or the buildings that comprised the installation's heart.
Television cameras monitored the gate at Stony Man, and Bolan rolled his window down as he approached the entrance, leaning out to give the monitors a full-face view. The gate could only be unlocked by staffers at the house; there was no way to spring the locks by hand or override commands with a remote control, since buried cables made the linkup with the base command post. High explosives or a heavily armored vehicle would do the job, of course, but either method would alert the Farm's defenders, and a hot reception would be guaranteed for the intruders.
Bolan waited briefly while his photograph was analyzed by the computer, confirmation sought and rapidly secured on the registration of his vehicle. He would be covered, even so, until he reached the house and passed a personal inspection, ruling out the possibility of hostile forces slipping in a «face» to breach the Farm's defenses.
Rolling in through trees that had been thinned in places to provide the guards with fields of fire, he concentrated on the topic of his meeting with Brognola. The big Fed had played it cagey on the telephone, and Bolan wondered whether that was due to strategy or simple lack of concrete information. Either way they had a problem on their hands, and they would have to find a viable solution soon.
He parked beside the house and left his keys inside the car. A member of the staff would stow the vehicle and bring his bags inside when he or she had time. Four men were waiting for him on the porch, and Bolan asked himself how many men could count on friends as true as these.
Brognola was the first to shake his hand, and Bolan worked his way along the line from there, with words and smiles for Leo Turrin, Jack Grimaldi and the Bear. These men were special, and each had risked his life for Bolan in the past. The war had taken Kurtzman's legs, but he'd never once complained or tried to wangle easy duty for himself. Across the board these members of the team were family, pledged to carry on the everlasting war while strength remained.
He spent a good half hour in the mess with Jack and Leo, eating charbroiled burgers while they spoke in generalities about the recent New York set. Grimaldi filled them in on Arizona, where a dirty job had been wrapped up with three men dead and four in jail, awaiting trial on counts of Murder One. It felt like old times in the trenches, but they knew the gathering wasn't intended as a sort of class reunion. There was brutal work ahead, and while it was a safe bet Leo would be staying home, Grimaldi's presence smacked of foreign shores, a mission that demanded wings.
When Bolan finished with his lunch, they caught the elevator to the war room, riding down in silence, each man busy with his private thoughts. The Executioner examined his sensations, searching for a trace of apprehension, but he had to settle for a burning curiosity. Whatever was decided in their conference, whether he accepted or declined the mission, he was bent on knowing why a pair of terrorists had traveled halfway around the world to huddle with the second-largest group of mafiosi in New York. He owed himself that much at least.
Brognola and the Bear were waiting for them in the war room, huddled at the far end of the conference table, speaking softly as they entered. Kurtzman heard them coming, and he flashed a smile that came off looking strained. When they had settled into empty chairs, Brognola spent a moment scanning faces, saving Bolan's for the last.
"I think we've broken the Silvestri riddle," he declared. "We know the guy was moving smack for Don Grisanti in New York and parts of Jersey. We've confirmed his contacts were a pair of hard-core Shiite terrorists, although we still don't have their names. It didn't click until we played a hunch last night and Aaron scored the touchdown with his magic modem."
"Piece of cake," the Bear put in without enthusiasm.
"That, it wasn't," Brognola replied. "We got damned lucky with the information, but you may not think so, once you've heard the punch line."
Bolan held Brognola's gaze, unblinking. Several seconds passed before Grimaldi got impatient. "Do we have to guess, or what?" he asked the room at large.
"We're looking at the absolute worst-case scenario," Brognola said. "A transatlantic terrorist connection with the old-line Syndicate. New York, for starters. If it spreads, the sky's the limit."
Bolan raised an eyebrow. "And the roots?" he asked.
Brognola tried to catch the frown in time, but failed. "They're planted in the Bekaa Valley."
Chapter Five
The name produced a sudden rush of adrenaline, but Bolan concealed the effects, easing back in his chair and waiting for the others to respond. Kurtzman had already known the p
unch line, and Leo took it silently, a stern frown carving dark parentheses around his mouth. Grimaldi was the only member of the team who voiced his agitation.
"What?" The pilot seemed astonished, or perhaps angry. "The Bekaa Valley? Jeez, you must be kidding, right?"
Brognola's hands were folded on the conference table, giving him the aspect of a man at prayer. "I wish I were."
Grimaldi wouldn't let it go. "The Bekaa is a frigging nightmare, folks, in case you haven't heard. Why not try something easier, like climbing Everest with a blindfold on and both hands tied behind your back?"
"Nobody said it would be easy, Jack."
"Well, that's a consolation. But did anybody mention that it just might be impossible?"
"Let's hear the story."
Bolan's voice cut through Grimaldi's agitation, stifling the pilot's protest. Strangely Brognola didn't appear relieved. Instead he dropped his eyes to focus on the slim manila file in front of him. It took a moment for the Fed to put his thoughts in order, then his eyes came up again and locked on Bolan's as he spoke to the assembled warriors.
"We've confirmed through Aaron's contacts that the two Iranians you iced were hard-core Shiite terrorists. There's no mistake on that score. The Silvestri angle threw us off because we hated to believe the worst… but, what the hell, it's all there is."
"A new alliance?"
"Maybe not so new. We should have seen it coming, I suppose. A large minority of native Lebanese are Shiite Muslims, so Iran's got a captive audience right there. They've got their own militia, and they've been waging civil war against other factions, off and on for thirty years. Ike sent Marines in 1958 to help a Christian president hang on, but congress didn't like the smell of things and he was forced to bring them home again. They muddled through a while without us, but the war's been going strong since the late seventies, with no end in sight."
"Whatever happened to peace on earth?" Grimaldi asked.
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