"Catch a few for me," Bolan said, and hung up. He tapped the pen on the pad thoughtfully. Finally he had a common denominator: Spraggue Industries. But where did that leave him? He wasn't sure. At least now he had a rock to turn over to see what squirmed out. He dialed an exchange that was redirected to Stony Man without being traceable.
"Kurtzman," the Bear's voice rumbled.
"Striker," Bolan said.
"How's it going?"
"So far, so good," Bolan said as he leaned into the telephone to allow a man in a three-piece suit wearing a party hat to pass. "I think I've got something for you to sink your teeth into this time."
"It will definitely be a change of pace, Striker. I'm beginning to feel like a researcher for People magazine with the amount of bios I've been pulling and like a researcher for National Enquirer with the way I've been searching for that damn tattoo of yours. I've even had guys checking out tattoos the bikers are into out in Oklahoma. I haven't been able to turn up anything like it."
"You'll still be doing profiles, but now we're looking for more specific things."
"Gimme."
Bolan read off the social security numbers Tallin had collected, then added the names.
"I can have these for you in a few minutes, Striker."
"Take some time with it," Bolan said. "And pay particular attention to Wayne Hermann's file."
"Any special reason?"
"Just a feeling," Bolan replied, "plus the fact that the guy worked as a security guard for Spraggue Industries."
The Bear turned thoughtful. "The same place where Hooker moonlighted."
"Right."
"Do you think we have something here?"
"Yeah. Wayne Hermann headed up the hit team that tried to take me out in New York." Bolan could hear Kurtzman tapping computer keys in the background.
"Spraggue Industries," Kurtzman mumbled more to himself than to Bolan. "Specializing in imports and exports. Got an impressive Dun and Bradstreet listing, Striker."
"Who owns it?"
More tapping sounded in Bolan's ear. "Ah." Kurtzman sounded intrigued. "There I'm running into a snag, Striker."
"No names jump out at you immediately?"
"Not that. I've got plenty of names, but this looks suspiciously like a runaround. Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. It's definitely more complicated than a normal tax evasion dodge. I think you've struck pay dirt, guy, but it's going to be a while before I can let you know anything definite."
"Just stay with it, Aaron."
"You got it. Oh, this is interesting."
Bolan waited, watching the convention people constantly shifting into different little groups centering around the vast panorama of plants, statues and fountains in the main lobby.
"Spraggue Industries apparently has a subsidiary in Cairo. But it doesn't have a listing for the owners or corporate people, either. Yeah. This is going to take a while, Striker."
"Get back to me when you can."
"Right."
Bolan broke the connection as he digested the new information. Maybe it wouldn't seem significant to Brognola or the other security teams, but Cairo was only a few heartbeats from Libya. Would the trail eventually end there? Khaddafi had made a lot of threats about terrorists in the United States. Was that promise coming to fruition? In some ways the scenario fit. The teams were definitely trained in military maneuvers, and damn well equipped.
A blond woman held the elevator doors open for him, and he smiled his thanks, moving over so that the guy behind him could get in, too. Bolan reached out and tapped the button for the twelfth floor, watching as she selected the seventh for herself.
Warning bells tripped in his mind when he noticed that the man who had entered the car at the last minute didn't punch a button. As he studied the man's reflection in the glass walls of the elevator, Bolan tried to place him. The guy was lean, no older than mid-twenties, and had short brown hair. The blue suit was pressed and tailored, not off the rack. The buttons on the jacket were moved over enough to allow the jacket to conceal a shoulder rigging. Then Bolan placed him as a member of one of the security teams fielded by the NSA.
The woman walked to the glass wall of the elevator overlooking the fountain area, an embarrassed smile on her face. "These things always make me dizzy," she said, "but I'm just not athletic enough to take the stairs."
A sudden explosion ripped through the building and shook the elevator shaft. Bolan realized at once that it had come from the upper stories. He reached for the Desert Eagle just as the man standing next to the control box hit the Stop button. Then the guy slipped his hand under his jacket and came away with a snub-nosed .38.
The woman screamed and whirled away from the glass wall just as the window shattered and the cage was filled with bullets. Bolan dived for the guy, gripping him in a stranglehold by the tie and propelling him toward the broken glass wall of the elevator. He used the weight of the heavy .44 to knock the revolver away, then pitched the man out of the cage. The fountain area was clear of any pedestrians and was four stories down. The Executioner dropped to a prone position, the .44 extended in front of him.
Scanning the floors on the opposite side of the atrium, Bolan found the shooter one flight down, partially hidden behind a row of potted plants that dangled over the railing. The Executioner squeezed off two shots as the man was bringing his rifle to his shoulder. The flat-nose silhouette slugs impacted in the shooter's upper right chest, spinning him around and sending the rifle flying. The third round from the big Magnum took off the top of the assassin's skull as the man tried to stand up.
The woman was crying hysterically and cringed from Bolan as he tried to reassure her. He switched on the elevator's power again and pulled the microsized walkie-talkie from his belt. "Hal," he called over the command channel that linked him with Brognola.
"Striker? Where the hell are you?"
"Coming your way," Bolan said. Pale cracklings tunneled through the walkie-talkie speaker, slightly louder than the autofire the Executioner could pick up with his own hearing. The elevator stopped at the seventh floor, and he helped the woman from the car after making sure none of the bullets had touched her. Then he punched the button for the eleventh floor, knowing whatever forces were engaged with the security teams upstairs would be covering the elevators if at all possible. "How many players have you counted on their side?"
"I don't know. Hell, half of their guys used to be our guys before the explosion."
Bolan swore. He was sure the figures Brognola had named were exaggerated, but how far did the organization reach into their ranks? There was no way to tell at the present. "Where are you, Hal?"
"With Gorbachev."
"Has he been hurt?"
"Not yet. But every man in this room is wondering who's on his side and who isn't. Bowen dropped a Russian agent in the hallway who had a bead on me."
"Look for me," Bolan said as he put the walkie-talkie away. He drew the Beretta with his left hand and slipped the safety off. When the elevator cleared the tenth floor, he moved to one side of the entrance and waited for the doors to open.
The corridor was filled with curious and panicked people, but no one carrying weapons. Bolan moved out in an easy run, holding the Desert Eagle across his chest to move into instant target acquisition, keeping the 93-R to guard his back.
He swung the door open on the stairwell, expecting to come under fire. Nothing. He raced up the steps only to find that the doors opening onto the restricted eleventh floor were locked. He fired two rounds from the .44 into the lock, and sparks flashed from the brass-colored metal. He loaded a fresh clip into the Desert Eagle and kicked the door open.
Acrid smoke, cut with some kind of gas that irritated the sinus membranes and throat, spilled from the hallway. Rapid poppings of 5.56 mm ammunition punctured the roiling artificial fog.
A man wearing a gas mask stepped forward and took shape against the smoke.
Bolan leveled the .44 as the man raised his M-16. A double onslaught of 240-grain skullbust
ers ripped through the gas mask and exploded out the back of the man's head. Before the man's body hit the carpeted floor, another goggled face materialized in the thick smoke above a blossoming flower of muzzle-flashes.
Throwing himself forward, Bolan fired as he fell, watching in grim satisfaction when the goggled face jerked back into the darkness of the smoke as if seized by an invisible giant hand.
There were more bodies in the hallway. Some were wearing gas masks, and some he was able to recognize from the airport and the security briefing earlier in the morning. Russian and American blood stained the expensive carpet, and the man in Bolan mourned the loss of comrades in arms while the soldier in him kept his feet moving, pursuing the hellground.
Bolan paused at the corner of the hallway, pulling on a gas mask that he'd taken from one of the bodies. His eyes watered from the earlier exposure to the gas, blurring his vision. He breathed gently, trying to relax his pain-racked lungs. A fit of coughing almost doubled him over, but he forced himself to press forward.
He seized an abandoned M-16 on his way to the next wing and checked its magazine just before he checked the hallway. The weapon was almost fully charged. Two gas-masked figures waited for him across the hall from Gorbachev's suite.
The Russian president's rooms were spacious, rivaling the penthouse in its luxuries. The door to the suite now hung haphazardly from one hinge, and a body lay spilled halfway into the hall.
Bolan jerked his walkie-talkie free. "Hal?"
"Yeah."
"How are you doing?"
"We're holding up, Striker. The backup teams are on their way."
"Get the president ready. I've got two guys waiting out here. I'm going to take them out, then we've got an eleven-story hike down to ground level. I don't want to chance the elevators."
"Agreed."
The warrior put the walkie-talkie away and swung into the hallway, the M-16 at waist-level. The two guys tried to get out of the line of fire, but a blistering figure eight punched them against the wall behind them.
Bolan threw down the empty weapon and drew the Desert Eagle. He flicked on the walkie-talkie. "It's me, Hal. I'm coming through." He pushed the broken door to one side and stood covering the exit. Nothing moved in the hallway, and the smoke seemed to be gradually dissipating through the hotel's ventilation system.
Brognola led the way out, fisting a .38 long-barreled Colt revolver. The head Fed took up a position just outside the door and waved the remainder of the security team out of the suite. Gorbachev followed last, almost covered in the human armor of his security people.
"Are you all right, sir?" Bolan asked as the Russian president drew even with him.
"Yes, thank you," he replied in his thick accent.
Bolan watched the man's eyes widen at the carnage left behind by the lifting smoke. He took off the gas mask so that Gorbachev could see his face. "Please don't stop. We need to get you out of this building as soon as possible."
"So many are dead."
"Yes, sir. But we have to leave."
"Yes, of course."
"Belasko."
Bolan turned to face Alexi Kuryakin, Gorbachev's chief of security. The man was squat and swarthy, powerfully built, deadly in a miniature sort of way like the Uzi he held across his broad chest.
"Where do we go from here?"
"Down," Bolan replied, "just as soon as we figure out how many of us are left."
The Russian nodded and snapped his fingers at one of his men. A compact radio was produced, and he barked orders into it. Different voices began answering.
Bolan glanced around and found the heads of the NSA teams and Greg Bowen, the section chief for the CIA force. "Call your guys," he ordered, "and get me some status reports quick." He saw resentment flare briefly in Bowen's eyes and felt like an outsider. Yeah. Hell, he was an outsider here despite the presidential invitation. The argument he had presented at the meeting this morning had been ignored by the men he was surrounded by. Now evidence of what he had been saying was lying dead at their feet.
Once the different security heads had their figures, Bolan broke into the channel, his words translated for the Russian contingent.
"We're bringing the president down and out," the Executioner said. "Keep everyone away from the stairwell on the south side. That's the one we'll be using. Don't let anyone use those doors. We're going to be securing them as we go. We'll coordinate the movements on this frequency. I want all local law-enforcement people kept away from us. I want no contact with anyone outside of our group. And you people who are presently separated from us had better stay away, as well."
The Russian translator finished a heartbeat after he did.
Bolan turned to Greg Bowen. "You did recon work for the Marines for a few years?"
Bowen nodded.
"Good. You're going to be working point with me."
Bowen nodded again and recovered an M-16 from the floor, stripping a nearby body of extra cartridges. Bolan moved across the hallway and did the same.
"Hal, I want you and Kuryakin on the president, and move only when I say." He snapped a fresh clip into the assault rifle.
"When we clear the area, Hal," Bolan continued, "I want Justice to do a thorough mop-up here. I want to know every man's personal history since the day he was born, and I want to know where those weapons came from."
"You'll have it," Brognola promised.
Bolan took his friend's hand and shook it. "Good luck, Hal."
"Yeah. Good luck to both of us."
10
For a moment Kettwig stared down at the sleeping man in silence and remembered the boy he had helped raise. Reluctantly he reached out to shake the man's shoulder, wishing he could let Ris sleep. But he couldn't. His presence was demanded by some of the people who helped support the movement and were wanting reassurance that everything was going as planned.
Even as his fingers touched the younger man's flesh, Ris became a blur of motion. Before Kettwig had the chance to blink, he found himself staring down the barrel of a SIG-Sauer.
"What are you doing here?" Ris asked as he lowered his weapons.
"We have an audience within the next hour," Kettwig explained as he limped toward the closet built into the wall. "You need to speak to some people, to give them reassurances. Some things have happened while you slept that will have to be explained."
"What things?"
Kettwig glanced over his shoulder, noting that Ris had sat up. The young man looked strained, tired. The general had noticed that the dinner he had sent Ris hadn't been touched. One of the first things that would be attended to before the meeting would be a proper breakfast. "The attempt on the Russian president failed."
"As it was supposed to."
"True, but the attack didn't take out as many of the Russian security team as we had planned. Nor was the decision made for the Russians to leave Washington."
"They are staying for the meetings?"
"Yes." Kettwig watched in satisfaction as Ris took in the news and started mulling over the variables and possibilities.
"We still have our links to the Star Wars program and its Russian equivalent?"
"Yes. Our satellite will be positioned perfectly by tomorrow morning to coincide with the White House greeting. I'm told we can effectively jam both systems at the same time."
Ris pushed himself off the bed. "Who's getting nervous?" Ris asked.
"I didn't say anyone was getting nervous," Kettwig replied as he pulled a black suit from the closet. "But a meeting has been called."
"Who will be there?"
"The representatives from Russia, Libya and East Germany. Maybe a few of the others."
"And what will they want to hear?"
"That everything is going according to plan."
"We are setting out to destroy a world," he said. "What kind of tolerances do they believe such an endeavor should be allowed?"
Kettwig never ceased to be amazed at the character changes Ris was capable of. H
ow many different personalities had his father psychologically embedded into the boy's psyche as he was growing up? Politician, warrior, child, they were all there in full doses, and Ris succeeded in controlling them when he needed to, presenting each face in turn just as he had been trained to. It was this ability that would help elevate him in stature above the survivors of the war they were determined to bring about — that and the army that was ready to follow him. Kettwig felt sure as he watched the younger man dress and saw the fire glinting in the mad blue eyes that a new Germany would rise from the ashes of the old just as Ris's father had promised. Already Ris had persuaded powerful men to join forces with him.
Total chaos would rule the globe for a while, Kettwig knew, and a dark part of him considered the conquest hungrily. Once the final split was made between the United States and Russia, once the final straw of suspicion and distrust was added to the back of detente, then it would be time to trigger the satellite jamming system and show both countries that the other had started a nuclear attack. There would be instant retaliation.
It would take years for the balance of world power to shift again, and Kettwig knew he wouldn't live to see it. But he could position people around Ris, could protect their future by careful selection of allies as the struggle took place. There would be a new Germany, one not divided by a damn wall, where the German people could live in pride again. It was what he and Ris's father had spent most of their lives planning.
"I've got a few notes together in my office," Kettwig said. "We'll have something to eat and we'll talk with the representatives. We only need their cooperation a little while longer, then it will be survival of the fittest."
"What about our contacts in America?" Ris asked as he shrugged into a shoulder holster. "Our agents in the hierarchy of the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Guard? Are they in need of reassuring as well?"
Kettwig smiled in spite of the pain gnawing at his leg. "They are of German blood, however thinned. They are waiting, biding their time like jackals until the lion is brought down. They will be there when we need them." Ris's face softened. "Has there been any word of Helene?"
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