"Just tell me where and when."
"Relax, old man. Don't be too eager. You've got chores to do before it gets that far."
"What kind of chores?"
"We need some information from you. You've got sources and it's time to share."
"Be more specific."
"Names and places ought to do for openers, okay? Protected witnesses, your people under cover, shit like that."
The pit was opening beneath his feet. He had to stall. "I don't have access to that kind of information."
Sudden anger. "Bullshit, man! You set the system up yourself. I've done my homework, see?"
"You didn't study long enough. I've been suspended, as of ten o'clock this morning. They only let me in the office to retrieve some personal belongings."
"What the hell..."
A hand was clapped across the mouthpiece, muffling a heated conversation, and the man from Justice knew that he had scored. Whatever the apparent link between his dual calamities, the gunners who had snatched his family appeared to have been kept in ignorance. That could be good or bad, Brognola realized, depending on their boiling point and how he handled things from here on out.
Another moment, and the sullen voice was back, the tension evident in every spoken word. "You'd better not be shitting me, old man."
"I'm not about to play that kind of game with all I have to lose."
"I find out that you're jerking me, you're gonna have a triple funeral to arrange, and then we're coming after you."
"It's straight," Brognola told him. "If you don't believe me, check it out yourself."
"I just might do that."
There was a momentary silence while the gunner pondered fresh alternatives, another way to work his scam. When he resumed, his tone was thoughtful, introspective.
"What the hell, your problem, right? We want that information. It's your price for momma and the kids." Stall the bastard.
"It's extremely difficult ..."
"That's tough."
"...to get the list you want. If you could pin it down to one or two specific names..."
The names might offer him a starting place, a point of reference toward unveiling his opponents. If the opposition wanted a specific witness, he would have a fair idea of who had let the contract in the first place. Given that, he would possess a pressure point.
The gunner thought about it for a moment, or pretended to, before he spoke again. "No good. It's all or nothing, man."
"I'll need some time."
"You've got six hours, starting now. You'll get a call at... let's say 6:15. Be home, or you can kiss it all goodbye."
"Hold on!" Brognola's heart was hammering in his rib cage. He could scarcely form the words. "How do I know my wife and children are alive?"
"You don't."
"Not good enough."
"Hey, listen, man..."
"You listen, man," Brognola snapped. "In case you missed the point, I'm not in this thing for my health. The minute that I don't believe my family's safe, we've got no deal at all." He waited for a silent heartbeat, letting that sink in. "Now, do you put them on the line or shall I pull the plug right now?"
"You're bluffing."
"Try me."
Another hesitation, and Brognola half imagined he could see the gunner fuming, weighing odds and options, struggling to a decision that would let him save some face. His voice was taut with anger when he spoke again.
"Hold on, goddammit!"
As he waited, Hal Brognola switched the telephone receiver to his other hand and wiped his sweaty palm against his slacks. The risk had been a calculated one, but he was dealing with an unknown quantity. It had been possible that his demand, his very tone, would spark a homicidal fury in the caller, push him into acting out his anger and frustration on the hostages. If it had come to that, Brognola would have been compelled to live with precious blood upon his hands, devoting every moment of his remaining life to the annihilation of the animals who had been hired to destroy his world.
But it had worked, at least so far. His reckless gamble had paid off — or would, if he could hear the voices of his family. As long as they survived, he had a reason to play along with their abductors. And the moment that he doubted their survival, as he had informed their captor, then he would have nothing left to lose.
There was a muffled rustling as the other telephone was lifted, passed from hand to hand. Something broke inside him at the sound of Helen's voice as she pronounced his name.
"Hal? Are you there?"
* * *
"I'm here."
She heard his pain and longed to reach for him, to clasp his big hands tightly in her own and make him smile. For now, though, it would have to be enough to hear his voice and answer when he spoke to her.
"Are you all right? The kids?"
"We're fine." The lie caught in her throat. "We miss you."
"Jesus, Helen..."
"Hal, be careful."
Even as she spoke, the blond was reaching out to twist the telephone receiver from her trembling hands. His face was livid as he snarled into the mouthpiece.
"There, you satisfied?"
From where she sat, Hal's answer was inaudible, but Helen could guess the content from the furious expression on her captor's face.
"Forget it, Jack. You've wasted too much time already with this bullshit."
Another momentary silence as he listened, and his face had grown so dark that Helen thought he might be on the verge of apoplexy.
"Shit!" He held the telephone away and swiveled toward the nearest ape, on station at the bedroom door. "Bring out the others, Gino."
"Huh?"
"I said bring out the frigging others. Are you deaf, or what?"
"I hear you, man."
"Then move your ass."
The thug looked sullen as he moved to do his boss's bidding, reemerging in a moment with Eileen and Jeff. He herded them in the direction of the telephone and waited, watching, as they each communicated with their father in the fleeting time allotted. Jeff went first, projecting grim bravado, glaring at the blond with hatred in his eyes while listening to Hal. Eileen, in turn, could barely speak at all. Fresh tears were glistening on her cheeks, and she avoided looking at her captors, whispering for Hal to please take care and watch himself. She was her father's daughter, after all, and she would not allow herself to break while he was listening.
"That's it," the blond announced as he reclaimed the phone. "You wanna talk to anybody else, call Dial-a-Prayer. And keep the number handy while you're at it, guy. You try an' fuck me over on this deal, your little family's gonna need some prayers."
He banged the telephone receiver down and spent a moment glaring at the silent instrument, as if it might be thinking of another way to challenge his authority. When he was satisfied that he had finally achieved the final word, he turned again to Gino.
"I'm goin' out a while, to see some people, eh? Get Carmine in here an' the two of you keep both eyes open. I don't want no fuck-ups while I'm gone."
The ape looked bored.
"Bring back some burgers, will ya?''
"Yeah, don't worry. Just remember what I said. No fuck-ups."
"Stop worrying, for Chrissake."
"I get paid to worry."
After he had gone, the import of his words hit home to Helen. He had called his two companions by their given names, uncaring that she might have heard him. That presented her with two alternatives: the names were either aliases, which struck her somehow as unlikely, or the blond had no concern that she would later be in a position to identify his comrades. And with sudden, chilling certainty, she realized that there was only one way, to ensure her silence.
He did not intend to let them live.
When he was finished with her husband — sooner, if he could persuade Hal to proceed without the reassurance of a phone call — they would be eliminated. Having served their purpose, they became disposable.
The prospect of a violent death had ha
unted Helen's dreams for years, but in relation to her husband, sometimes to her children. Hal had placed himself in killing situations countless times, and all his reassurances had failed to put her mind at ease, although she had become adept at hiding what she felt. In later years, as she had watched their children grow, the fears had broadened to encompass Jeff and Eileen. There were so many terrors in the world outside her home, which ranged from lethal accidents and drunken drivers to the random, senseless violence now pervasive in America. A child, especially a girl-child, was constantly at risk.
But Helen had harbored no concerns about herself until this moment, realizing now that she was marked to die. It was the rough equivalent, she thought, of having a physician look you in the eye and solemnly inform you that your tests were positive, the lump was malignant and your hours were numbered. But an illness could be treated, life extended artificially through chemotherapy and, in the last extremity, by hardware. In her present circumstance, there was no treatment to prescribe, no possibility of a remission.
It would take a miracle to save them now, and Helen's faith would not admit the possibility of intervention from an outside source. If there were any miracles, they would be manufactured by her husband... and she wondered for the first time in their married life if Hal was equal to the task.
For Jeff's sake, for Eileen's, she hoped that he could pull it off. There was so much of life in store for each of them, so much ahead, if they were only given half a chance.
If not, there might be something she could do herself, provided that an opportunity arose. And if all else failed, she knew she would be forced to try.
It was a mother's instinct to defend her young at any cost. While life remained they had a chance, and she would not surrender meekly to the fate these bastards had in store. Whatever else they wanted from her family, they would have to take by force.
* * *
Brognola didn't waste a moment cleaning out his desk. The photographs of Helen and the kids were stowed inside his briefcase when he left the office, as were certain documents selected from the jumbled ruin of his files, but the rest was standard issue, items he could say goodbye to without regret. If he returned at some point in the future, everything would be there, and if not...
He found that job security, pension, carried little weight where the survival of his loved ones was concerned. If he was finally suspended, fired — if he was ultimately jailed on manufactured evidence — Brognola knew that he could live with it, provided that his wife and children were protected, safe. If they were harmed in any way, if he could find the sons of bitches who had damaged any one of them, the charges filed against him would extend beyond the fine points of corruption and into homicide.
If he could find the sons of bitches.
And he was working on a lead already, something he had picked up on the telephone. When he demanded evidence that Helen and the kids were safe, the caller had relied on someone else to fetch them, and he had called the second man by name. Though muffled, the name had sounded very much like Dino, Gino — something on those lines. It wasn't much — there had to be at least ten million guys with either of those names — but at least it was a start. He could tap into the computer, run a list of names, cross-indexed to the orgcrime files, and see what filtered out.
At least he would be doing something while he waited on the call from Leo, telling him that Striker was in town. There was a possibility that Bolan would not come. If he was caught up in a campaign, if Turrin couldn't reach him, if the enemy had finally tagged him in that endless, lethal game of hide and seek... God knew the soldier had sufficient problems of his own without Brognola heaping another burden on his shoulders.
But Bolan would come, if he was able. Hal was certain of it in his heart and in his gut. The Executioner would come for friendship's sake, for Helen, Eileen, Jeff, because the guy was made that way. He could no more stand back and watch an old friend's family be sacrificed than he could voluntarily desert his private war.
Hal felt a pang of guilt at using Bolan to secure and protect his own. It was Brognola's job to keep them safe from harm, and his enlistment of Mack Bolan's help was the same as confessing that he couldn't do his job. Another man might have approached the situation differently, but Hal was hemmed in by his sense of duty. He could not provide the information that his family's abductors had demanded. Hundreds of protected witnesses and scores of undercover officers would be exposed to certain death if he revealed their names or whereabouts. If he was stripped of viable alternatives, Brognola knew he would be forced to sacrifice his family in lieu of giving up those others, violating their collective trust and ruining so many lives. If it came down to that, he would accept the loss as best he could, and learn to live with grief while he spent every waking moment on the track of bittersweet revenge.
But he was counting on the Executioner to grant him some alternative, an escape hatch from what appeared to be a hopeless situation. Bolan had a knack for turning circumstances upside down, attacking hopeless problems with unique solutions. Given any chance at all, the soldier would retrieve Brognola's family — or wreak such awesome vengeance on the enemy that Hal might find some private solace in the ashes.
Gruffly he dismissed the morbid thoughts and concentrated on the image of a family reunion. He could not afford to write his family off so early in the game, when there was still a fighting chance of their recovery. He had until six o'clock, and in that time he would be scanning the computer files for any Dino/Gino sound-alikes who fit the bill.
The operation reeked of Mob involvement, and he had already put the several groups of active terrorists out of mind. Despite their tendency toward violence and abduction, none had any use for the existing roster of protected witnesses. The rare defectors, others who were brave enough to testify in trials resulting from the recent wave of urban terror, were too well-known already, marked for death on sight. As far as undercover operatives, there had been slim success at infiltrating terrorist brigades, and Justice had no agents currently in place.
It would be syndicate or nothing, and the thought did not restore Brognola's confidence. He knew the kind of talent readily available for jobs like this and realized that any one of — what, a thousand mercenary guns? — might whack his family for the hell of it, regardless of his acquiescence to demands.
So many enemies, and every one a proved killer. He could never hope to see his family alive again without a killer of his own to even up the odds.
A killer like Mack Bolan, sure. An Executioner.
7
The charter flight dropped Bolan at an airport near the University of Maryland, three miles from Hyattsville. It offered him the dual advantages of light security and close proximity to Washington, his final Georgetown destination only ten miles as the crow flies. Bolan tipped the pilot from his war chest — heavily enough to keep him happy, not so heavily that it would set him talking in the local bars — and headed off in search of a rental car.
He would have saved an hour with a scheduled direct flight to Washington, but Bolan wasn't interested in taking chances with security. His luggage held enough assorted hardware to ignite a minor war, and he would be needing it if Leo's problem was as serious as it had sounded on the phone. Hal's problem, he corrected as he spied the Avis window. Either way it cut, he was needed, and the knowledge of a friend in danger left him no alternative.
He took a midsize Ford and stowed his luggage in the trunk then retrieved the Beretta 93-R with its shoulder rigging, tucking it beneath his jacket as he slid behind the wheel. A roadside turnout halfway into Hyattsville provided Bolan with an opportunity to slip on the rigging, and he felt better as he nosed the Ford back into traffic. Whatever happened next, he was prepared to answer fire with fire. No longer feeling naked, vulnerable, Bolan focused upon his mission in D.C.
There had been no time for elaboration on the telephone, no inclination for Sticker to discuss his business on an open line. The urgency was obvious, and Bolan knew it wa
s not in Leo's nature to exaggerate. The open conversation would be enough to ruin him if anyone was tapping in. By the very nature of the risk involved he had communicated desperation, and it wasn't Leo's style to overdramatize.
The Executioner recalled another time, in Pittsfield, when the undercover Fed had sounded equally upset. On that occasion, Turrin's wife had been abducted and held hostage by a group of renegades within the Marinello Family. The hostiles had him pegged for an informer and were planning to exert the kind of leverage that never failed. But they failed disastrously by omitting Bolan from their calculations. They had not prepared themselves for hell on earth, and in the end they were unable to stand hard before the flames.
Bolan knew Hal and Leo would brief him when they met. For now, his sole objective was to arrive at the contact point. Before he flew, a call from Kennedy had netted him the address of a townhouse in Georgetown, and he stopped again in Hyattsville to phone ahead, confirm that he was on the ground and homing in. The traffic worsened mile by mile, became a snarl as Bolan crossed the line from Maryland to D.C. proper. The final run to Georgetown was a short six miles, but it took the soldier forty minutes, hitting every red light on the way.
The neighborhood was quiet, stately, home to senators, diplomats and cabinet members. Turrin's safe house, purchased in the early days of the protected witness program, was a condo overlooking the Potomac, with a striking view of Arlington across the water. Bolan found a parking space and locked the Ford, secure in the knowledge that police patrols would keep the average car thief off those cloistered streets. Avoiding the flamboyance found in certain areas of Southern California, for example, the neighborhood still exuded affluence and style. His car, big enough and new enough to pass a rough inspection, would no doubt remind the neighbors of a poor relation visiting from out of town.
He crossed the sidewalk and climbed a flight of steps with decorative hedges on either side. Another moment and he would be swallowed up, invisible to neighbors on the north and south. Behind him, at a distance of some fifty yards, the dark Potomac swept along its timeless course, conveying passengers and cargo toward the sea.
Blood Testament te-100 Page 6