Blood Testament te-100

by Don Pendleton

  They were alike in many ways, these unacknowledged warriors. One had shed his life in open combat, stripped of his identity by hungry flames. The other lived, fought on, but he was relegated to a kind of limbo, publicly rejected by the nation he was serving with his blood and sweat.

  And tears.

  To hell with anyone who thought the guy was nothing more than some sophisticated death machine. Brognola knew the truth, had seen the soldier grieving for his dead — and for the living who were victimized from day to day. The warrior's sacrifice of self, of family and future was no accident. His choice had been deliberate, made with eyes wide open to the facts of life and sudden death. He knew precisely what was coming to him somewhere down the road, and yet the only fear he felt, the only fear he showed, was for the innocent who suffered at the hands of human savages.

  Brognola killed the engine and spent a moment feeling for his weapons, making doubly certain that they would be there when he required them. Perspiration slicked his palms, and he wiped them on his trousers, leaving the keys in the ignition as he left the car.

  You're too damned old for this, he told himself, and instantly he answered back; not yet.

  Not while one man could make a difference in the world. Not while the lives of loved ones were at stake. The day a good man grew too old for fighting off the cannibals, he had grown too damned old to live.

  Brognola circled toward the rear of the car, his knuckles trailing on the broad expanse of the trunk lid, tapping lightly twice, not loud enough for any sound to carry past the shadows of surrounding trees. He spoke no word, received no answer from within the trunk, but knew he had been heard and understood.

  Whatever happened next, it was a free-for-all. There was no way to finally anticipate the enemy, prepare for every conceivable move. He would be forced to play the cards as they were dealt, and if he drew the ace of spades, the death card, then he still had Leo and Bolan to secure a prisoner, extract the vital information, do the best they could for Helen and his children.

  * * *

  Bolan wore the shadows like a cloak, allowed them to envelop him, insulating him from contact with the dead. There were no hostile ghosts among the fallen here, all soldiers of a common side, but he could not afford the time required for a communion with them now. He had a job to do, and it required his total concentration.

  The fifteen-second lag time had permitted him to scale the cemetery wall and strike off toward the meeting point, alert to any sign of sentries as he moved through darkness toward the killing ground. Whoever had arranged the meeting with Brognola had not invested in perimeter security, and it might cost them in the long run. If they were counting on Brognola to keep the rendezvous alone, then they were starting at a disadvantage.

  But he went in expecting treachery, convinced that Hal's opponents had no serious desire to talk with him. They were setting up an ambush. He had been convinced of it from the beginning, and the only problem still remaining was the length to which Hal's enemies had gone. How much more logical it would have been to follow him as they had clearly done for months, and fix some semblance of a workaday routine. So simple to prepare an ambush on his way to work, the drive back home, or any one of countless other stops Brognola made repeatedly throughout an average week.

  The very complication of the present scheme — abduction of his family, with its attendant risks, the hackneyed midnight meeting in a graveyard — spoke to Bolan now of some other goal. And in the final moments of their drive to Arlington, the soldier felt that he had grasped some semblance of the answer.

  Hal's opponents urgently desired his death, that much was clear. But they had never counted on his going to the meet alone. The hunters had been hoping for a pair of targets on the firing line, two victims for the price of one.

  They had anticipated Bolan's urge to help a friend. Helen and the kids were bait not only for Brognola, but for Bolan... and the suck had worked. So far.

  The Executioner did not object to playing out the prearranged scenario as long as he could add a few embellishments along the way. It might work out to everyone's advantage in the end, but his concern for Brognola's family still claimed top priority. Until they were recovered safely, or confirmed among the dead, he would proceed with the discretion of a surgeon doing delicate exploratory surgery. Once precious flesh was safe again, or finally sacrificed, he would be free to move against the dark malignancy with cleansing fire and steel.

  If he could just identify the cancer first.

  Smart money went on Gianelli as the front man, but there would be someone else behind him. The hint about Lee Farnsworth's old connections back at CIA had set the soldier thinking, but there was no time at present to assess the information. Bolan needed more, and now, three minutes from zero hour, he found it.

  Sentry number one was huddled in the shadow of an oak tree, shifting nervously from foot to foot, the silenced Ingram MAC-10 submachine gun scarcely visible on rigging underneath his arm. His hands were empty for the moment, and he checked his watch compulsively at fifteen-second intervals.

  Two minutes, thirty seconds, and the guy quit dancing, glanced around him at the darkness, finally deciding he was safe from observation. Bolan heard the zipper whisper open, watched him struggle with reluctant underwear shorts and listened to the raindrop patter of his urine as it hit the tree trunk. The soldier waited until he zippered up before he moved like silent death and closed one hand across the gunner's mouth and nose.

  He twisted, raised the slim stiletto, pressed its needle point against the juncture of the sentry's skull and spine. He found the opening that Chinese call "the wind gate," penetrated, stirring briskly as he reached the brain. The sentry stiffened, loafers drumming briefly on the turf, and then became a lifeless weight in Bolan's arms.

  He eased the dead man to a prone position, riffled through his pockets briefly, but found them empty. It was the identifying mark of a professional, discarding any traces of ID before a stand. He knew that if he searched the body further, he would find the clothing free of labels. The fingerprints might even have been surgically removed.

  No matter. Bolan's interest in the sentry was distinctly limited, and he was satisfied with having cut the hostile odds a fraction, evening the score. There would be other gunmen waiting in the darkness, more professionals prepared to kill on order, and it would be Bolan's task to find as many of them as he could before Brognola sprang the trap.

  Two minutes left.

  Already he could hear Hal's car approaching in the middle distance, closing on the designated meeting place. Already he could see the Unknown Soldier's tomb, illuminated in the darkness like a guiding beacon.

  Two minutes, and the sentry's death had taught him something else about their enemies. The gunner was not Gianelli's, and he had not been recruited off the streets with promises of easy cash for half an hour's wet work. He was — had been — a trained professional, a killer, and he had not drawn his paycheck from the Mob. That left a single, grim alternative, and Bolan bore it with him as he left the recent dead behind, moved out in search of other targets.

  He was hunting now, alert to any sign or sound of human prey, aware that every gunner taken out before the battle increased the odds in favor of survival. For the Executioner. For Hal Brognola and his family and for Leo.

  They needed every edge available, for Bolan had miscalculated in his reckoning of the potential force arrayed against them. Now he realized their enemy was anything but short on triggermen and hardware. He could field an army on a moment's notice, with no questions asked, no explanations offered. He could murder with impunity — or at the very least, with little cause for apprehension that he would be brought to book.

  The risks were greater than he had anticipated, most especially for Hal Brognola, who had everything to lose. It might be physically impossible to bag a prisoner as Brognola had desired.

  Indeed, they might be lucky if they got out of Arlington alive.

  * * *

  The s
mell of oil and rubber in the trunk assailed Leo Turrin's nostrils, but he didn't mind. The spare had been removed to give him room, and with the blanket that Brognola had provided as a sort of mattress, he was scarcely bruised at all. The Uzi reeked of cosmoline, but he drew comfort from the old familiar smell.

  If Hal and Bolan were correct in their prediction of an ambush, Leo was a sitting duck inside the trunk. A single burst of automatic fire could turn his hiding place into a coffin; any spark produced by ricochets might set the fuel tank off beneath him, broiling him alive before he had a chance to pop the lid and make his break. It was a risk that had been weighed and analyzed before he had agreed to ride shotgun for Brognola — not that there had ever been the slightest doubt that he would come along. His closest friends were wagering their lives tonight, and he could no more take a sideline seat than he could voluntarily stop breathing.

  Leo owed it to them both, for all the times Bolan or Brognola had been there to pull his fat out of the fire. But if his life had never been at risk, if he had never walked the razor's edge with only these two friends to steady him and keep him on track, he would have volunteered in any case. For friendship's sake.

  And when you got right down to basics, there was nothing else.

  The bond of fellow warriors in an endless, losing battle, holding out against the overwhelming enemy until their luck and life at last ran out. They struck against the savages wherever and whenever possible. In the meantime they looked out for one another, for the families that waited, never really safe, behind the lines.

  Because the goddamned battle lines were everywhere these days, and it could just as easily be Angelina out there in the darkness — had been Angelina, back in Pittsfield — and Leo knew that he could count on Hal or Bolan, if the world rolled over on him one day soon. They wouldn't let the wife and kids go hungry, wouldn't let them want for anything or fall into the hands of enemies.

  A soldier watched his buddy's back, and that was it. No need to ask for help or offer thanks to any of the living when the smoke had cleared. Tomorrow it could be someone else's world in jeopardy, and yesterday's potential victim would be riding with the cavalry again.

  Inside the trunk he heard Brognola kill the engine. He felt Hal shifting in the driver's seat, imagined him as he went through the ritual of double-checking weapons, getting ready to go EVA against an unknown enemy. His door slammed, sent a tremor through the car and Leo felt himself begin to sweat.

  Hal drummed his knuckles on the trunk, the sound reverberating hollowly, and Leo grimaced, feeling like a mouse inside a kettle drum. He heard Brognola's footsteps gradually receding on the pavement, finally lost, and Turrin wrapped one hand around the tight rubber bands that held down the trunk lid.

  He had been told to wait for contact while Brognola scouted the territory, waiting for the enemy to show himself. If Hal and Bolan were mistaken, if the hostiles were sincere about exchanging Helen and the kids for information, it would go no farther; Hal had lists of phony names and numbers that would have the bastards chasing their tails for a month. But if the others were correct in their assumption of an ambush, if the gunners opened up on Hal from who knows where, it would be Leo's job to spring the trap and cover Hal's retreat, while Bolan flanked the enemy and hit them where they lived.

  It had all sounded fine on paper in Brognola's living room. But it was dark outside, and there were God knew how many hiding places in the cemetery, any shadow adequate for lurking snipers who could drop Hal in his tracks. Snipers who could riddle Leo as he tried to scramble from the trunk, all knees and elbows in the crucial instant when surprise evaporated.

  Leo was a goddamned sitting duck and didn't like the feeling, but at least he wasn't out there in the open with the cross-hairs planted on his face already. He found the Uzi's safety catch and eased it off, prepared to come out firing and to make the most of his advantage while it lasted.

  If they didn't kill him first.

  If someone didn't stitch the car with armor-piercing rounds and leave him leaking like a bag of mangled groceries in the trunk, or light him up with tracers in a flash of detonating fuel.

  Too many ifs.

  And it was too damned late, in any case. He was committed now whichever way it played. There was time to think of Bolan, wonder if the soldier was all right, if he had run afoul of roving sentries in the darkness. Then the sound of voices drifted to him from the outer darkness.

  He could recognize Brognola's voice, but could not make out any of the words. The other voice was unfamiliar, and he didn't have a prayer of understanding anything the stranger said. He was about to ease the trunk lid open wider when the voices were eclipsed by sudden gunfire, the staccato yapping of an automatic pistol, answered by the booming echo of Brognola's Bulldog .44.

  He ripped the taut elastic free and kicked the lid back, rolling clear before the enemy could swing around and bring him under fire. Already homing on the sound of gunshots, moving in a combat crouch, he held the Uzi primed and ready, eager for a target to present itself.

  The shit was in the fan, and there was no safe way around it now that battle had been joined. As other weapons chimed in from the darkness, muzzle-flashes winking from the shadows, Turrin drew small consolation from the fact that they were fighting in a graveyard. If they lost it here, at least he would not have to travel far. With any luck, there might be room for one more soldier in the hallowed ground of Arlington.

  19

  Brognola had been waiting for the voice, but when it came to him from out of the gloom he was startled all the same. He lurched around, embarrassed, hoping that the darkness had concealed his momentary fear. He concentrated on the voice and willed his hands to cease their trembling.

  "You're alone?"

  "As ordered."

  Hardmen liked that tone of deference. He kept his fingers crossed that it might lead the contact to relax his guard.

  "I ought to check the car."

  "Feel free."

  The shadow had a human shape now, drifting nearer, pausing less than fifty feet away. His contact hesitated, thinking on it, and Brognola flexed the fingers of his gun hand. Waiting.

  The shadow had made up its mind.

  "Forget it. Hell, we trust each other, right?"

  Brognola did not answer. He was working on the voice, trying to remember where and when he might have heard it in the past. It was familiar and yet...

  "You brought the list?"

  Brognola slipped his left hand in the pocket of his trench coat, and the shadow tensed, prepared for treachery. He tried to gauge the man's reaction time, encumbered by a greatcoat as he was, his hands apparently encased in gloves. If he was a professional the extra layers of clothing might not count for anything, but then again...

  He had the empty sheets of paper in his hand and now he held them up, allowed the shadow just a glimpse before his arm fell back against his side.

  "All right. I told them you were good for it. Some of them had their doubts, but I was on your side."

  "I'm touched."

  "Hey, don't go bitter on me, friend. We're in this thing together."

  "Not quite."

  "Well, damn, I'm sorry you feel that way."

  The shadow was advancing slowly, one hand edging toward his open coat, a movement so relaxed, so casual that Hal might easily have missed it if he had not been on edge, expecting the betrayal to begin at any moment. He saw the cross-hand draw before his enemy was even close, his own reaction taking him away and low, outside the first instinctive line of fire. The Bulldog .44 was in his hand before his belly hit the pavement, teeth clenched tight to keep the precious air from being driven from his lungs on impact.

  And it was the shadow's turn to jump this time. The guy was dragging out an automatic from beneath his arm, sidestepping in a last-ditch bid to save himself. But he was far too late. Brognola braced the Bulldog in both hands, squeezing off in double-action as his human target tried to bring the automatic into rough alignment with his fa
ce. A blind man could have made the shot at something under forty feet, and in the instant that he fired, Brognola's night eyes were performing perfectly.

  Round one punched through the target's primly buttoned vest and rocked him on his heels, the automatic booming in reflexive fire. He was already going over backward when Brognola's second round ripped through his armpit, flattening to mutilate one lung before it came to rest behind a shoulder blade.

  Hal was scrambling to his feet when the surrounding darkness exploded in his face. Converging streams of automatic fire erupted from the shadows, tracking, searching for him, driving him to the ground again. Aware that Bolan had been right, deriving little in the way of consolation from that knowledge now, he scuttled crablike on his belly for the cover of the Unknown Soldier's monument. Around him bullets screamed and whined on impact with the pavement, snapping overhead as hidden gunners tried to find the range and elevation.

  An enemy round traced liquid fire across his buttocks and another whispered past his head. Scrambling for his life, Brognola felt like some enormous lizard struggling to cross the highway, caught by traffic in the middle of the noonday rush. Another moment and the whispering death would overtake him.

  But he had taken one of them, and he wasn't finished yet. He was alive and fighting.

  The monument was looming over him, and Hal was braced to make a final rush for cover when the gunner showed himself, a slender shape detaching from the deeper shadow of the Unknown Soldier's tomb, an errant shaft of moonlight glinting off the silenced Ingram in his fist. Brognola fired instinctively, the Bulldog rising as he cranked off three in rapid-fire, the big rounds ripping in from groin to solar plexus, their explosive impact devastating at a range of less than fifteen feet.

  The gunner sat down hard, his back against the smooth face of the monument, and Hal was scrambling past him even as the shadow gunners realized that he was still alive, that it had been their comrade slouched in death against the tomb. He snatched the Ingram from lifeless fingers and slid into cover as reactive fire began to eat the night around him, seeking flesh and finding only darkness.