The photographs had worried Bolan most of all. Their mere existence proved that Hal was being closely shadowed, and together with the phone logs they presented Bolan with the picture of a tight surveillance that had obviously been conducted over several months. At first he was surprised that Hal had failed to recognize the tail, but with the new equipment readily available to governments and individuals, surveillance had become a whole new ball game in the eighties. Telephoto lenses were the least of it, he realized, and half a dozen agencies might listen in on private calls without a hint of any warning to the person being scrutinized.
The how of it was rendered insignificant by Bolan's curiosity about the who and why. If Hal was truly under government surveillance, then the Feds had not received their money's worth. The evidence against him would not stand in court, nor even bring indictments once Brognola told his side. It was the other possibility — the probability — that worried Bolan now. If the surveillance of Brognola was in fact conducted at the urging of the syndicate, then Gianelli or some other ranking mafioso would have access to the logs and photographs. And that spelled danger.
Because the photographs had captured Hal in covert conversations with a half dozen of his ranking undercover agents working on the org-crime beat. Selected mobsters, grafting politicians or affiliated businessmen who had "rolled over" on the syndicate, providing vital information on the operations of the Mafia in major cities coast-to-coast. The soldier knew a few of them by reputation, others from the supersecret Phoenix files at Stony Man, and any member of the Mafia's La Commissione would instantly appreciate the full significance of secret conversations with Brognola. Any capo worth his salt would know that Hal had never taken payoffs, never signed his name on anybody's pad and Family members or associates who huddled with him would be marked for execution as traitors.
But there was more.
Aside from Hal himself, the faces captured by surveillance cameras had been secondhand acquaintances to Bolan, for the most part. He had seen their mug shots, read their Justice files, but he had never met them face-to-face. Except for one.
Besides Brognola's, his had been the only face repeated in a string of photographs, proof positive that his connection with the man from Washington had been no mere coincidence. The pictures damned him irrefutably as Brognola's eyes inside the Mob, and it would only take a glance from Gianelli — hell, from any ranking boss — to seal his fate. The soldier felt an arctic chill engulf him as he contemplated the reward that lay in store for recognized informers, once they were identified by fellow mafiosi. He would not have wished that living hell on anyone.
And least of all on Nino Tattaglia.
The guy had been an underboss with Carlos Nazarione's family, out of Baltimore, when he was tagged by federal agents for a double homicide. His choices had been limited, and Nino had rolled over quickly, clutching at the opportunity to save himself from prison. Granted, it had been a matter of expediency, but the mobster had been going through some private changes since recruitment by Brognola's strike force. Over time, Tattaglia had been transformed from grudging mole to something else entirely, his perspectives gradually evolving from the savage state to something that approached the altruistic. He had already taken Leo Turrin's place as Hal's primary source of inside information on the Mob, and Bolan — ever cautious in his dealings with "converted" mobsters — came to realize that Nino was the rarest of all jungle predators: a leopard who could truly change his spots.
Worse yet, if they could capture Nino, if they had the capability of trailing Hal that far without his noticing, then it was possible that they — whoever in the hell they were — might breach the Phoenix Program soon. The soldier would not let himself believe that it had been exposed already; it was possible, of course, but contemplation of another Stony Man fiasco was too much for him to deal with at the moment. Able Team and the others would have to watch their own back door, while Bolan did the job that he had come to do in Wonderland.
He watched Brognola shuffle through the photographs once more, and waited till the big Fed dropped them on the coffee table.
"So?"
Brognola's gaze went from Bolan to Leo Turrin, back again. His tone was cautious, and it didn't take a genius to realize that he was having second thoughts about the presence of the woman in their midst. It had surprised the Executioner when Hal and Leo grudgingly agreed to her suggestion — her demand — that she be dealt into the game. From the expression on Brognola's face he was already having second thoughts, and Bolan understood where he was coming from. He had the most to lose if things went sour, and the lady was a wild card noncombatant, tested in the press room but completely inexperienced in combat.
Bolan put the problem out of mind and concentrated on the photographs, the evidence that Hal's most sensitive connections in the Mob had been exposed.
"If this is what it seems to be," he said, "you'll need to bring some people in."
Brognola nodded wearily. "I'm way ahead of you on that," he answered. "Jesus, what a mess."
Across from Hal, hunched forward on the sofa, Susan Landry glanced from one man to the other, sudden understanding in her eyes.
"Did you say bring some people in? These men... they're all your contacts? They're informants?"
Silent moments spun between them while Brognola turned the answer over in his mind.
"It's not for publication," he informed her stonily.
"I know that, dammit."
Bolan nipped the grin before it had a chance to spread, but Turrin wasn't quick enough, and he could see the longtime undercover man begin to relax a little.
"We've been working on this thing forever," Hal confided, holding Susan with his eyes. He gestured toward the photos with a listless hand. "These people are informants, and between them they've been steering us toward heavy busts for years. The very fact that they're on film could be the end of everything. Their lives, their families..."
At mention of families, Brognola lapsed into silence, brooding. Bolan had already briefed the lady on Hal's situation, with the Fed's permission, touching on the highlights from the disappearance of his family to the raid against DeVries. The four of them were in agreement that the move against Brognola's wife and children must be linked directly to the frame at work, the confiscation of his private files. Without those documents, it might be difficult to prove that Nino and the rest were business contacts, that they worked for him and he was not in their employ. Without those files to back him up, Brognola would be forced to pit his unsupported word against the damning evidence of photographs that showed him huddled with some of the most powerful thugs in the country.
And, while he fought his private battle in the courts, the men depicted in those photographs would start to disappear. They might already have begun to vanish, and their lives could certainly be counted down in hours now if Nicky Gianelli or his counterparts of La Commissione had copies of the snapshots. There would be no need for lengthy trials with evidence like that against the Family's enemies.
"I've got some calls to make," Brognola said, and Bolan knew their minds were operating in a single channel. There might still be time to save some lives — save all their lives, with any luck.
He watched Brognola lumber from the room and turned to Leo, feeling Susan Landry's eyes upon him, watching, waiting.
"Okay, Sticker, what's the bottom line?"
Leo Turrin had been startled by the Executioner's suggestion that they bring the lady in, but Leo was accustomed to surprises, and he had recovered swiftly, going with the soldier's judgment that she might be useful somewhere down the line. She wasn't hard to look at, he could say that much for her already, and he hesitated for a heartbeat while he put his thoughts in order.
"You were right about DeVries," he told Bolan. "It was Family, for sure, but you can kiss off any solid trace to Gianelli."
"Never mind," the soldier answered. "Gianelli runs this town. If outside talent's coming in, they're coming in through him."
"I'd say that's true. We still don't have a goddamned thing — excuse me, ma'am..."
The lady graced him with a smile. "I've heard the word before," she said. "In fact, I've used the word on more than one occasion."
Already feeling foolish, Leo forged ahead. "We still don't have a thing connecting Erskine with the Families, but then again, we shouldn't hope for anything on paper. If they had him on the pad, we'd have to check his bank accounts, his safe-deposit boxes, all of that."
"We can assume he was a player," Bolan said, shrugging off the need for proof that Gianelli owned DeVries. "The Family wouldn't tag a Fed unless they had a way to cut their losses in the end."
"Exposure?"
Bolan nodded.
"I'd be looking for it somewhere down the road. Right now we need to figure out what made them punch his ticket."
Susan Landry raised a cautious hand, reminding Leo of a little girl in school, except that she was anything but little, anything but childish in her figure and her face. She was all woman, and she had a subtle way of never letting any man forget it for an instant.
"He might have been exceeding his authority."
Bolan frowned. "It's possible," he granted. "He was pushing it. He might have stepped on someone's schedule."
Susan was ahead of him.
"They might have wanted all the so-called evidence preserved for court appearances. If someone found out that DeVries was leaking it ahead of time..."
"They would have tried to plug the leak."
"Which means..."
"That they were out for all concerned, not just DeVries."
The recognition hit her like a fist above the heart, and Leo watched her slump back on the sofa, going pale. The brush with sudden death had strung out her nerves already, but the acceptance of the fact that she had been a target of the gunners would be something else again. There was a world of difference between coincidental intervention in another's tragedy and having someone sentence you to death.
"You'd better keep out of sight until this all blows over," Bolan told her gently. "If the Family was planning on a double funeral, they'll be looking for you now."
"Where does it end?"
"With Gianelli," Bolan told her, "or whoever else is running down the frame on Hal. It ends when we've recovered everyone and everything that's missing."
"All right."
The lady seemed resolved to living under siege, but Leo thought he could still see signs of strain around her mouth, her eyes. And she had reason, certainly. If Gianelli had his hunters looking for her on the streets, she had a perfect right to worry. It was a threat that might have put some stony soldiers on the verge of tears, but she was holding like a champ, at least externally. And in the business she had chosen, it was the exteriors that counted. You could dazzle them with footwork, and if they didn't see you sweat, they might — just might — be duped into a serious miscalculation when they tried to take you out.
The no-sweat factor had been Turrin's own salvation on a number of occasions, but he couldn't bring himself to handle grim nostalgia at the moment. Here and now was bad enough, and if he wanted here and now to hang around a while, it needed all of his attention.
Careless soldiers rarely lived to rake their pensions in, and Turrin had survived the hell of Southeast Asia, years of burrowing within the Mob, by taking care of details, trusting in his instincts and responding when they flashed a warning signal to his brain. Right now he knew that they were all in danger — not just Hal, his family, or the woman from the media. The net was closing fast, and if they couldn't find a loophole, couldn't cut themselves a new way out, they would be snared. Irrevocably. Irretrievably.
They would be dead unless they found a handle on the situation soon. Perhaps, if Bolan and Brognola were successful at their midnight meeting with the enemy...
A flicker on the edge of vision brought his head around, and Leo found Brognola standing in the doorway to the den. The guy had aged a decade since his family disappeared, but he was looking even older now, his shoulders slumped, dark rings beneath his melancholy eyes. A silent moment passed while everyone regarded him with curiosity, and when he spoke at last they had to strain to catch his words.
"Too late," he said, and for a moment Leo thought that he was going to drop it there. "Somebody rigged a charge to Nino's car this afternoon, between the time he reached his office and the time he started home for dinner. They tell me there was goop enough to take out half a city block. He's gone."
The cab ride back from Hal Brognola's to the condo parking lot where she had parked her Honda gave Susan Landry time to think. About her life, her work and the possibility of her own violent death by the hand of some Mob hitman. She was no stranger to the rough assignments: street crime, underworld investigations, brushfire wars. But in the past she had drawn solace from her status as a paid professional observer. She had been outside the action for the most part, looking in. On the occasions where it had been necessary for the Executioner to save her bacon, she had stumbled into situations where her life was jeopardized. In Cleveland. In the Farnsworth business. And, she had believed at first, in her encounter with DeVries.
The knowledge that she might have been deliberately selected as a target, that another man or group of men had casually decreed her death, was chilling. Susan wondered how professional combatants lived with that forbidding knowledge day to day — and in a sudden flash of understanding it became clear to her. Mack Bolan had been living with a contract on his head since he had first thrown down a gauntlet for the Mafia at Pittsfield, in the first days of his private war. He had been living in the cross-hairs ever since.
It was the dedication of the man that gave her pause, and Susan wondered how she would perform now that she had been declared a moving target. Her immediate reaction was an overwhelming urge to run and hide. But she could not exist in darkness, could not ply her trade without some access to the streets.
And she had promised Bolan she would help. That was the worst of it. She was committed for the grim duration of his Washington campaign, and there was every likelihood that they would all be killed before the sun came up on Monday morning. It would be a miracle if they survived the weekend and despite her Catholic background, it had been some time since Susan Landry put her faith in miracles.
She owed the soldier her assistance in the search for Hal Brognola's wife and family. She knew that he had compromised himself, risked much to have the others take her in, accept her in their council. She was not their equal — she did not delude herself on that score for an instant — but there might be things that she could do. Her contacts with the CIA, for instance. And some leads at Justice that were temporarily closed to Hal.
It was the hint of Company involvement that disturbed her most. They had discussed it briefly, after Hal had poured a drink and downed it straight, when they were finished grieving for Nino Tattaglia, a man she had never known outside of glossy photographs. From the expressions on their faces Susan gathered that there had been more than business between them, but she had not dared to ask. It had been Bolan who first broached the subject of the CIA's involvement — or its possible involvement — in abducting Hal Brognola's family. The smaller man, who had been simply introduced to her as Leo, had his reservations, opting to believe that Nicky Gianelli had sufficient troops and wherewithal to snatch three people on his own, without assistance from the federal government. It took Brognola to command Turrin's attention with his mention of "reliable reports" that some of Farnsworth's cronies might be working with the syndicate toward some end that was not as yet entirely clear.
Ignoring the sporadic stabs at conversation from her cabbie, Susan concentrated on her private thoughts, replaying portions of the conversation from Brognola's den. "So, what's the hook up with the Company?"
"They've been hooked up for over twenty years."
"You're reaching. All that stuff about Fidel..."
"So, now it's not Fidel. Now it's Baby Doc, or the Sandinistas, or it's just some of the good old boys who need some reassurance that their tracks are covered."
"All of this for old times' sake?"
"Goddammit, I don't know. But if my source is right about Lee Farnsworth's crowd still hanging on at Langley, you can pick your motives by the dozen."
"Ifyour source is right, okay. So, how reliable's this Mr. X? How highly is he placed?"
"He's at the top. They don't come any higher." Hal Brognola's eyes had bored into her own, and something passed between them. Susan knew that he was handing her the story of a lifetime, and she knew that most — or all — of it would never see the light of day. She had already sworn herself to secrecy, the price of being granted entry to their huddle in the first place, and she would not break her word to Bolan. The man meant more to her than that, although her feelings were demonstrably irrational, perhaps insane.
She would attempt to use her contacts in the Company to learn if any of Lee Farnsworth's bosom friends were still around, still in position to conduct a covert operation of the sort that had embroiled Brognola's family. If she could unearth any solid evidence, then she could...
What?
Crank out a series that would cinch her for the Pulitzer?
Produce a book that would expose the inner workings of the secret government?
Susan Landry was committed to a course of action diametrically opposed to every instinct. Rather than exposing crime, corruption and the rest of it, she was collaborating with a wanted criminal — a murderer, no less — and helping to select his future targets. Rather than attempting to exonerate Brognola through the media, by showing up the shoddy frame for what it was, she was involved in dark guerrilla warfare with the Mob — and possibly with renegades inside the very government that both of them were seeking to protect.
The secret witness angle was a story in itself, but once again she knew that it was out of bounds. Already one of Hal's important contacts had been murdered, and before he reached the others on his list, they might be dead, as well. She could accomplish nothing positive by publishing their names while they survived. But as for those who had been sacrificed...
The germ of an idea had taken root in Susan's mind and it was growing rapidly. There just might be a story, after all, provided she could get the facts to back it up. A story of the men and women who had given everything they had to strike a blow against the savages, and who were paying for it now in blood. If she could write that story — from the viewpoint, say, of an informant who had been found out and executed by the mob — there was a chance that she could turn another spotlight on the syndicate, give Gianelli and his cohorts reason to remember her.
Before they killed her.
A chill had wormed its way beneath her scalp, but the woman kept herself from trembling with thoughts of Bolan. If the soldier's plans worked out, there would be no more Nicky Gianelli for her to expose, no renegades at Langley, no more threat to Hal Brognola's family.
If Bolan's plans worked out.
And if they didn't, then she would be honoring his last request for an obituary, dammit, putting heart and soul into the lines that summarized a valiant life. She couldn't do him justice on the printed page, but she would do her best, and Susan knew that Bolan would have counted that as fair enough.
But she was hoping that she would not have to write those lines. Not yet. Not here and now. Not while there was so damned much left to say.