Three down, and one remaining. Fifteen minutes farther on, Brognola felt hope swelling in his chest as he beheld the lighted windows of the final cabin. Parked outside, a Blazer four-by-four with gun racks in the window advertised the presence of a hunter. Hal had met the cabin owner several seasons before, but he could not recall the face or name. Already certain that his family was not there, he felt compelled to ask in any case.
The face that finally responded to his knock was not familiar in the least. The cabin had undoubtedly changed hands, but still he forged ahead, inquiring if the long-haired youth in residence had seen his family, anyone at all? And at the risk of being rude, precisely when had he arrived?
The young man recognized Brognola's tension, and helped as best he could. He had arrived that evening, about the time when Hal was pushing west on Constitution Avenue, and he had marked a station wagon at the second cabin down. Since his arrival there had been no sign of hikers, male or female, on the trail outside... but, then again, he wasn't really watching for them, either.
Feeling drained, Brognola thanked him for his help and trudged back through the darkness toward the cabin, praying silently that Helen and the kids would be there when he stepped across the threshold. They would not be there, of course; he knew that now with desperate certainty. They were not visiting the neighbors, and they had not opted for a hike through darkness.
They were simply gone.
In the yard Hal Brognola stopped to look at the cabin once more, as if his stare could will some message, a clue, of his family's whereabouts. He discerned on an outside wall of the lodge a sailboat, now disused, that he had fashioned out of driftwood for his son in earlier years. Hal's mind raced to the rooms inside, silent witnesses to adolescent dreams of sparkling water and buccaneers; rooms that kept secret tender endearments and the sounds of frenetic lovemaking on soft summer nights.
But what his eyes perceived instead made him take an involuntary step backward. The orange glow from lighted windows seemed to him a feral glare, the cabin's grim facade now mocking, taunting, slavering for blood. This refuge from the concrete jungle, Hal thought, this haven of love and happy times had betrayed him, surrendered his family to unspeakable and insidious evil.
Suddenly Hal Brognola felt a loathing for the place.
Shivering, although it was still warm, he stepped inside the cabin and called their names. Then he checked each empty room. But only silence greeted him, grating on his nerves like salt ground into an open wound.
Alternatives.
He had already wasted what — an hour? — tracking down the several low-risk possibilities. For peace of mind, if nothing else, the futile exercise had been an absolute necessity. That done, he recognized the need to search for answers on the darker side.
The cabin showed no evidence of any struggle. Clearly they had been here long enough to stow their luggage, and for Helen to begin unpacking. Food was waiting in the fridge, but they had not progressed as far as starting dinner. There, between the everyday parameters of settling in and sitting down to eat, must lie the extraordinary answer to the riddle of a lifetime. And Brognola realized with perfect certainty that everything depended on his own ability to solve that riddle quickly.
If there had been an accident, an injury to any of them, they would certainly have headed back to town. And if the station wagon had perhaps refused to start, they would have called an ambulance.
Brognola knew there would have been a note, as well, but he could not afford to let the notion pass without considering it. He carried keys to Helen's car, as she had keys for the Buick, and a moment later he was in the driver's seat, breathing ragged as he prepared to test the wagon's engine.
It started first time, sparking sudden anger in Brognola, causing him to slam a fist against the steering wheel before he turned off the ignition and stalked back toward the empty cabin.
And on to other possibilities.
If they had been surprised by an intruder, Jeff would certainly resist. As tall as Hal, athletic, muscular, he would be capable of handling any normal situation that arose. But there was nothing normal in the present circumstances, nothing to reveal what might have happened to his family.
The absence of a struggle mystified Brognola, and he scanned the several explanations. Several intruders. Weapons. The advantage of surprise.
There were no bloodstains at the scene, and that was good... unless their captor was a lunatic, one of the transient monsters lately targeted by federal research projects. He had seen those maniacs' work and memories of twisted, lacerated flesh on undertakers' tables brought a sudden rush of nausea that left him dizzy, gasping.
He forced it down as he realized he had no evidence that they had come to any harm. He was well aware that roving maniacs were loners, for the most part, timid when confronted by potential victims in a group. A psycho bold enough to forcibly invade the cabin would have killed them there, for sure. It was a thought that Hal could cling to, and if not precisely comforting, at least it gave him room for hope.
There were other enemies, of course, with motives of revenge that were completely rational, but wouldn't they have waited for him here, to finish off what they had started? There would be no reason to abduct his family, not when they could have as easily positioned gunners in the trees, or inside the cabin, to eliminate him when he left his car.
And yet...
The sudden shrilling of the telephone made Hal jump. He checked his watch, surprised to find that it was one minute short of midnight. Time had slipped away from him, and he was still no closer to an answer than he had been hours earlier.
He grabbed it on the second ring and fairly shouted down the wire. "Hello?"
"I'll bet it's lonely where you are." A man's voice, gloating, evil.
"Who the hell is this?"
"Just shut your face and listen, huh? That's better. We'll be calling back. You be there."
And the link was broken, the mindless dial tone buzzing in his ear like some demented insect. Brognola gripped the receiver in a stranglehold, white-knuckled, trembling with fear and rage. As he returned it to the cradle, he restrained himself from ripping loose the cord and flinging the telephone across the room.
It was his only lifeline now, his only means of finding out precisely what had happened to his family. "I'll bet it's lonely where you are." The message had been crystal clear, and there was no escaping its significance. The bastards had his wife, his children, and Brognola had no way of knowing where — or even who — they were. As for the motive, he would have to wait until they called again, and pray that they would not decide to pass on him, to simply slaughter Helen, Jeff, Eileen.
The bastards wanted him, and he would make himself available, but only at a price. The safety of his family, guaranteed, for openers. Whatever happened after they were safe was secondary, less than insignificant. His own life scarcely mattered in comparison.
But if the bastards didn't call again...
The man from Justice laid his head on cradled arms and wept. For Helen. For their children. He let the moment carry him away, and when it passed, Brognola knew that there was nothing he could do but wait for yet another call, another fleeting linkup with the men who meant to tear his world apart.
He stretched out on the sofa, one hand clutched around the snub-nosed .38 that he had worn from work, unconsciously. He wore it everywhere these days, but he had not expected to be needing it this weekend. They would not be coming for him now, Brognola knew; they would not have aroused him with a call if they intended to attack in force.
His mind was wrestling with fatigue, and losing. In spite of pain, fear and tense anxiety, the man from Wonderland could feel exhaustion gaining on him, reaching out with leaden hands to pull him down. And somewhere in the endless quarter hour after he received the first communication from his enemies, Brognola slept.
And was awakened by the telephone.
He struggled up from sleep, the squat revolver searching for a target, low
ering as full consciousness returned with stunning swiftness. Glancing at the mantel clock through blurry eyes, he saw that it was 4:00 a.m.
"Hello?"
"Hang on."
A man's voice, different from the first, replaced immediately by the ringing silence of an open line. He didn't need an introduction to the second caller, but he got one anyway.
"Hal?" Her voice seemed distant, almost ghostly. "This is Helen..."
2
"Helen? Are you all right? Are the kids all right?"
Before Helen Brognola had a chance to answer, one of her abductors slipped a hand across the mouthpiece and twisted the receiver from her grasp, smothering her words. She briefly thought about resisting, then dismissed the scheme as suicidal.
Hal would save them. He would know what to do.
"Awright, so listen up," the blond man in the Army-surplus jacket was demanding of her husband. "We're in charge from here on out, and you will do exactly as you're told."
He seemed to be the leader, separated by his stature and his almost military bearing from the others. She had only seen the three of them so far, but it had been enough. Their handguns and their automatic weapons compensated for the small size of the team. And, then again, how many men were necessary to secure a woman and her children? Helen knew that it would not require a SWAT team, after all.
The blond had been the first to show himself, all smiles as she responded to the gentle knocking on the cabin door. There was no reason to suspect him, or to doubt his story of a minor pileup on the access road below. She knew the cabins to the east were empty; she had seen them standing dark and cold that very afternoon, and it confirmed the young man's story of his inability to find a telephone. The Blue Ridge Mountains were not Washington, so there was no need to guard against a smiling stranger's secret motives here.
He hadn't shown the gun till he was inside, the door shut tightly behind him. Helen recognized it as a compact submachine gun — Hal would know the make and model number if he saw it — but she didn't have to know the weapon's nomenclature to be thoroughly acquainted with its lethal capabilities. One burst would be all it would take to rip herself, her children to shreds. She had offered no resistance when the blond man ordered her to sit, when he had hailed the rest of his team, their pastel leisure suits incongruous in such a rustic setting.
If it had not been for her concern about the children...
Helen stopped herself and nearly smiled. Eileen would have a fit if she should hear herself referred to as a child. She was a woman now, in every sense, but at the same time she would always be her mother's little girl.
Provided that they all survived this night, the day to come.
But Hal would have the answers at his fingertips. She trusted him implicitly, had placed her faith in him for more than twenty-five years without a single major disappointment. He would see them through, or...
Helen dared not follow where the thought was leading her, but her unconscious mind had grasped the message loud and clear.
He would see them safely through, or die in the attempt.
The gunmen had been swift and sure in their evacuation of the cabin. The gorillas patted down Jeff and Helen for weapons, taking longer with Eileen and snickering between themselves until the blond had snapped at them to be about their business. A panel truck, its back-door windows painted over, was waiting for them in the driveway. The three Brognolas were forced inside, and a curtain was drawn behind the driver's seat to block their view of any landmarks through the windshield. Under guard, they rode in silence for an hour and a half before the two apes fitted them with blindfolds, led them single file across a sloping, grassy lawn and then inside some kind of house. The drapes had not been opened since their blindfolds were removed, and butcher's paper had been taped across the tiny, frosted window of the bathroom they were grudgingly allowed to use.
Allowing for the stops and starts occasioned by their passage through assorted tiny mountain towns, she estimated that they could have traveled seventy or eighty miles in ninety minutes. Far enough to place them back in Washington, in Maryland, perhaps across the Pennsylvania line. They had not traveled west, across the mountains; she was reasonably sure of that. As for the rest, there had not been a single clue — no airport sounds or ferry whistles, railroad crossings or calliopes — to help her sketch a mental road map. Helen could not have informed her husband where they were if she had been allowed to try.
"Your weekend's over, guy," the blond leader was saying, grinning at his two companions as he spoke. "I want you back in Washington and at your desk by noon today. You got that? Good. You play it straight, we all come out of this laughing. Just save the hero bullshit for the movies, okay?"
He cradled the receiver without waiting for Brognola to reply.
"We're on," he told his two companions. "Noon it is." The pair of anthropoids exchanged lopsided smiles and settled back in matching arm chairs, weapons in their laps. If they had pooled their IQs, Helen thought, they might have come up with intelligence enough to read a comic strip, but she never doubted their ability to kill without remorse. What worried her the most right now was their apparent interest in Eileen. They had been ogling her, whispering between themselves and winking at her since the man in charge had beckoned them inside the cabin. There had been no overt moves so far, but Helen worried that they might grow restive with the passing time, decide to seek some quick diversion with her daughter. If it came to that, she wondered whether the blond would hold his men in check, or whether he would even care to try.
She pushed the lurid images away and thought of Hal, alone and doubtless distraught in their empty cabin. Helen knew that underneath the gruff exterior, her husband was a man of feeling and emotion. Any danger to his family would torment Hal; his inability to move at once, to strike against the perpetrators would grate on his nerves. He would obey the blond's command, she knew, because he had no immediate alternative. As long as there was any chance at all of a negotiation, Hal would hold himself in check. But if the talks broke down, if he perceived that she or either of the children had been harmed...
What would he do?
What could he do?
They were alone, and each of them would have to watch for opportunities as they arose. A chance to summon help, alert the outside world to their predicament. An opportunity to seize a weapon and... And what?
When Hal was working with the Marshal's Service years before, he had instructed Helen in the use of simple firearms, and the automatic weapons of their captors could not be so very different. The problem, then, would not be capability; it would be opportunity, together with the risks involved. If she was able to secure a weapon, train it on her captors, would she have the nerve to kill? And would the very effort doom her children?
No matter.
For the moment, they were waiting on a call to Washington, eight hours down the road. They would be safe until that time, she told herself, because their captors would need evidence that they were still alive. Hal wouldn't buy the bland assurances of faceless men; he would demand to speak with one or all of them before he made another move.
Eight hours, then. And after that?
She couldn't see that far, and speculation was a waste of time. She would be needing all her energy, her wits, to watch and wait for the slightest opportunity that might present itself. Secure that she would recognize the moment when it came, she settled back to wait. And thought of Hal.
* * *
The voice on the phone came back to haunt Brognola.
"I want you back in Washington and at your desk at noon today."
No problem there. It was an easy drive, and while most offices were closed on Saturday, there was a weekend crew at Justice, handling the calls that never seemed to stop at five o'clock on Friday afternoon. His presence might occasion some surprise, but it was not unheard of for the boss to work on Saturday.
"Just save the hero bullshit for the movies, okay?"
The warning was unn
ecessary. Ignorant of their identity, their numbers and their whereabouts, Brognola had no way of striking at his enemies. Two men, at least. There had been different voices on the phone each time, but he was in the dark regarding any other substantial clues. Incoming calls, if dialed direct, would prove impossible to trace, and he could not conceive of the abductors asking for assistance from an operator. Worse, the futile effort would require assistance from the Bureau, with its agents and computers. He was not prepared to make his problem public yet, not with the three lives dearest to him riding on the line. Perhaps after he had been in touch with the abductors again, determined what they wanted from him, he would take the chance.
And, then again, perhaps he wouldn't.
He would not do anything to risk his wife and children, certainly, but if an opportunity arose once they were free — or if he should suspect that they had been disposed of by the bastards who had carried them away — there might be something he could do to even up the score. It had been years since he had dropped the hammer on a human target, but you never really lost the touch. It was like swimming, pedaling a bike, or reaching for your woman in the middle of the night. A reflex, backed by years of practical experience, indelibly imprinted upon the brain.
And he would kill with relish if the members of his family were harmed. He would pursue the bastards tirelessly, relentlessly, until he had an opportunity to watch the spark of life wink out behind their eyes, extinguished by his hand.
If it should come to that.
But first he had to sleep.
It was incongruous, but Hal would need his strength, his faculties at noon when the abductors called him back in Washington. Four hours to go, five at the outside, before he had to leave again. Enough time to replenish his fading energy reserve, provided he could sleep at all.
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