They had removed her watch upon arrival at the safe house, but Helen Brognola knew that there was less than ninety minutes left. Her information had been gathered from the muffled conversation of their captors, from her internal clock that marked the passing hours faithfully, if imprecisely. It was past ten-thirty now.
The meeting had been scheduled for the stroke of midnight, Helen knew that much. She also knew that Hal would be on time, or early. He had not been late for anything in years, and he would not start now with so much at stake. But Helen wished that she could warn him, prevent him from appearing at the rendezvous. She could have saved him, given a chance, but there wouldn't be another opportunity.
She idly wondered how long they would live past midnight once the thing was done. Long enough, perhaps, to find a makeshift weapon, seek some measure of revenge against the animals who were already moving to destroy her world. If there was nothing she could do for Hal, there might be something that she could accomplish for the children, even with her death.
And death was coming.
Soon.
There had been little hope from the beginning. She had realized it when none of their abductors took precautions to disguise themselves. And having understood that she, Jeff and Eileen were not expected to survive and testify in court, the only question still remaining dealt with time. At first, she thought, it had been Hal who saved them, doggedly insisting that they each speak to him by telephone before he would consider the demands of their abductors. Later, once the snatch team got their orders from outside, their deaths had taken on the status of a planned event, the intervening hours finite.
If there was any doubt at all, the bits and pieces of a conversation gleaned by listening at the door had wiped all hope away.
"What are we waiting for? Let's get it over with."
"We're waiting 'cause we got our orders. I'll tell you when we go."
"We're wasting time."
"You're getting paid, man. Settle down."
"The cops..."
"Don't have a frigging idea where we are. Besides, another couple of hours, and they'll all be busy out at Arlington."
"The meet still set for twelve?"
"It's set. They're looking at a clean sweep."
"Then we can get this over with?"
"We're waiting for the call."
"Suppose they're late?"
"Suppose they are. You got a date or something?"
"Tell you what I wouldn't mind, and that's a piece of what we got in there."
"She's half your age, you horny bastard."
"So? I like 'em young."
"You like 'em any way that you can get 'em."
"True. So true."
"Well, you can keep it in your pants until we get that call."
"And then?"
"We'll see."
Helen kept the certain knowledge of annihilation to herself, and started looking for a weapon once again. They had already scoured the room, found nothing but the furniture itself, the chairs on which they sat, and those would stand small chance against the automatic weapons carried by their captors.
It was not the thought of death so much that frightened her. The startling concept of her own mortality had been uniquely driven home at thirty-three, when doctors had removed a pea-sized nodule from her breast. They had determined it to be benign, but in the interim she had prepared herself for painful, wasting death, and having faced her fears up close, she knew they had no power in themselves. You were alive until you died, and after that... well, she would have to wait and see.
It was the threat against her children, the apparent threat to Hal, that worried Helen now. Her husband was a man accustomed to the dark side, long conditioned to a world where murder was routine. He would protect himself as best he could, and given any opportunity at all, he would survive. It would be difficult, of course. The odds would be against him, but Helen knew what he could do. At home he seldom spoke about his job, and never brought the bloodshed with him when he left the office. But she knew that he had killed on more than one occasion, stopping men who meant to take his life, the lives of others. He was strong and as hard as nails when he was angry, though the family had seldom seen that side. She knew him as a man of grim determination, and she knew that given half a chance he would survive.
A lump formed itself in Helen's throat as, for seemingly no rhyme or reason, she remembered the skinny young law student whom she had fallen in love with. And after marriage, through births, tottering steps and painful puberty he had been at her side, her children's, wincing silently and feeling the pain as Jeff and Eileen resolutely bore the ravages of growing up. The strength they showed then was a testament to the Brognola blood.
Now someone wanted the Brognola blood...
Helen dismissed this grisly train of thought and concentrated on the here and now, her children. They were intelligent with the resilience of youth, but they were in a cage from which there might be no escape. Without their father's history of dealing with the savages, they were completely unprepared for what was happening around them.
Helen knew they would resist when it was time, but what could Jeff accomplish in the face of armed professionals?
She worried most about Eileen and what she might be forced to suffer once the signal for their execution had been given. Two of their abductors — the gorillas, Gino and Carmine — had been ogling her from the beginning. If they were unleashed with time to kill before they finished it...
She closed her mind to the disgusting, painful images and concentrated on discovering a means of self-defense. A gun would be ideal, of course, but there was little chance — no chance — that she could get her hands on any of the hardware carried by their kidnappers. She would stay alert in case they dropped their guard, but in the meantime they were down to bare survival with the tools at hand. Provided they could find the necessary tools to start with.
Helen forced herself to study her surroundings carefully, alert for anything she might have missed. A simple bedroom with adjoining bath, the furniture comprised a queen-sized bed devoid of sheets and blankets, with a pair of mismatched wooden, straight-backed chairs. The empty closet had been stripped of hangers, anything that could have been converted to a weapon. In the tiny bathroom, drinking "glasses" made of styrofoam were something less than lethal.
Still, there would be something. There was always something.
Bathrooms meant hot water. They could let it run till it was scalding, fill the little cups, and somehow lure one or both of the gorillas into range before the water cooled. A dash of liquid fire across the eyes, and if they weren't all shot to death immediately, there was just a chance that one of them could seize a weapon, turn it on their captors...
She shook her head, disgusted with the fantasy that had attempted to seduce her. It was ludicrous, attacking armed professionals with little cups of water. They would all be killed at once unless the gunners were delayed by laughter, forced to catch their breath before they opened fire. It was a foolish plan. Worse yet, the thought of running water had awakened stirrings in her bladder, forcing Helen's full attention from the problem of the moment into confrontation with the routine problems of biology.
The plastic seat was cold, and Helen warmed it with herself, examining the stark surroundings for potential weapons, noting that the shower curtain had been left in place, its plastic curtain hooks completely useless to her now. Assuming she could get the curtain off its rod... She froze, humiliated by the knowledge that the answer had been there before her all the time. The rod. A hollow shaft of lightweight metal held in place by tension, it could be dismantled by a child. It would not weigh enough to make a decent fighting staff, but if they flattened one end, mashed it down and twisted it somehow, they might produce a clumsy sort of lance. If it was driven into unsuspecting, unprotected flesh with adequate velocity and force... There was another rod inside the closet, Helen realized, and that one was a hefty wooden cudgel mounted into brackets that facilitated its removal in the interests of space. No tools would be required, and in a few more moments they would have a staff, a spear — the makings of a mini-arsenal.
She flushed the toilet and tugged up her slacks — immediately conscious of another weapon close at hand. Before the tank refilled itself, she found the shutoff valve and closed it tight. She raised the heavy lid, aware that it could do some damage if the slab of porcelain was smashed against a human skull, and laid it carefully across the sink. She studied the assembly of tubes and floats and wires that had released mankind from midnight rambles to a reeking privy in the yard, and knew that it could serve her now in other ways.
She broke three fingernails and cut her fingers twice before she finished disassembling the mechanism, salvaging the slender float arm and an eight-inch metal slat that had been previously connected to the flush handle. Either one was stiff and sharp enough to savage unprotected eyes and throats at need, assuming she got close enough to try. Without a wrench to loosen pipes beneath the sink and give herself a bludgeon worthy of the name, it was the best she could do.
But she could not do everything alone.
They had four weapons now, albeit primitive and flimsy in the face of submachine guns. She would need the full cooperation of her children if they were to have a chance at all.
The risks were staggering, but there was finally no alternative. Inaction was a form of suicide, she realized, and once their deaths were finally decreed, the end would come in seconds for herself, for Jeff. But not, perhaps, for young Eileen. The leader might not have the interest or the energy to finally restrain Gino and Carmine once the killing started. When it came right down to it, the leader might enjoy a little stolen sex himself.
If there had been a chance, however slight, of their survival, Helen might have counseled Eileen to submit, to save herself by any means and confront the ordeal another day, when she was safe and sound and out of there. But they were doomed; she knew that much with numbing certainty. And knowing that, she saw no need to make it easy for their would-be murderers.
It went against the grain to simply watch her life, the lives of both her children slip away. A fighter as long as she could remember, the lady knew that she would go down fighting. Before she let the gunners take Eileen and foul her with their touch, she was prepared to die, prepared to kill.
Soon now. At midnight or a little after. When the gunners got their orders on the telephone.
She called the children and showed them what she had already done, and set about dismantling the shower rod. The closet would be next, and they would take it one thing at a time, while time remained.
A maximum of sixty minutes now, and Helen felt a tightness in her chest as she began to count her life, her children's lives, in measured heartbeats. They had one chance in a hundred thousand of surviving, but she could not let that single opportunity slip by without attempting to secure it. By midnight she would know if she was capable of killing physically; the mental qualms had long since disappeared.
And she would need the grim resolve that had already settled on her shoulders, worming deep into her heart and mind with tentacles of ice. She was relying on the threat against her children to provide her with the killer instinct she would need to do the job.
By midnight.
By the witching hour.
Sixty minutes minimum, and counting down.
A lifetime.
"Time to go."
Brognola checked his watch and nodded, startled by the hour. Saturday was damn near gone, and Sunday morning promised little in the way of respite from the empty ache he felt inside.
"Okay."
He finished wiping down the Smith & Wesson .38 and stowed it in a holster riding on his hip. The Bulldog .44 from Charter Arms was snug beneath his arm in horizontal rigging that would shave a heartbeat off his draw, and both were loaded with the lethal Glaser "safety slugs" designed for heavy stopping power. Copper-jacketed projectiles filled with Number 12 shot suspended in liquid Teflon, the bullets were designed to exit from the muzzle at terrific speeds, exploding savagely on impact with a human target. And if impact from the Glasers failed to drop your man, there was the grim fringe benefit of creeping poison, Teflon working through the veins until it reached the heart, occluding vital passages and valves, arresting life.
More Glasers went into his pockets, rattling softly as he hoisted off the bar stool, following the others. Leo was already waiting for them by the door, one arm pressed tight against his side, securing the Uzi that he carried beneath his trench coat. He was tight-lipped, somber, but his hands were steady, and Brognola had no fear that he would fade when it was in the fan.
Mack Bolan wore his nightsuit underneath a bulky topcoat, weapons visible as bulges to Brognola's eye. A casual observer wouldn't notice, and in any case they would not be encountering a crowd at Arlington this time of night. The Unknown Soldier would be keeping any secrets to himself, and as for their intended contacts... well, they would be seeing Bolan's hardware right up close and personal. With any luck at all, it just might be the last thing that the bastards ever saw.
Provided that they kept the date, of course.
In spite of their precautions, there was a possibility that the contact team might smell a rat, take off without completing the connection. Hal would never know until it was too late, and he would have to live with his decision. But in the meantime he was banking on their plan, betting everything that they would keep the rendezvous.
No matter that it was a trap. That much was obvious from the beginning. Anyone possessed of the ability to follow him for months on end and photograph his meetings with a number of important undercover operatives had no need to negotiate for secret witness lists. The snapshots and phone logs were persuasive evidence that Justice had been penetrated weeks before the move against his family. If further evidence was needed, it would be found in the fact that Justice staffers hadn't yet identified the undercover agents. Someone on the other side was miles ahead of federal investigators when it came to cracking Hal Brognola's private org-crime network.
From day one his work on SOG was strictly need-to-know. No more than half a dozen people in the government had access to his files, the true identities of agents in the field. Brognola had designed the system to be foolproof... or as nearly so as he could make it, short of absolute — and unattainable — infallibility. The files that had been confiscated from his office would contribute little to the enemy, but from the photographic evidence, they needed little more in any case.
That left him with the question of a motive, and the man from Justice finally admitted to himself that he was getting nowhere in his effort to deduce the "why" behind his family's abduction. If the goal had been to simply put him on the spot, the shooters could have found a simpler way without resorting to assaults upon his wife and children. Privately convinced that he was meant to die this night, Hal still believed that there was more behind the plot than cut-and-dried assassination.
They had brainstormed through the evening, getting nowhere as they wrestled with the scattered pieces of the puzzle. Someone had been working through DeVries, and from the evidence of his elimination, Hal was betting that the someone had been Nicky Gianelli. Whether Gianelli had been in the set alone was something else entirely, and Brognola had no way of finding out the answer, not until his family was safe and sound, his full authority at Justice reconfirmed.
If he survived the meet at Arlington, there would be enough time to think about the job, about pursuing Gianelli to the corners of the earth. It might require a lifetime, but Brognola would not rest until the D.C. capo had been killed or locked away forever.
If he survived...
It was the top priority now. He would be useless to his family if it went sour at the meet, if he did not live long enough to pluck them from captivity with Bolan's help. Hal cherished no illusions that he might be able to complete the job alone. If not for Bolan's help, if not for Leo's selfless offer of assistance, he would have been walking into Arlington alone, condemned to die.
With two guns beneath his coat and two friends at his back, he had a chance to pull it off, salvage something from the rubble. They were looking at a doublecross in Arlington; he knew that much before they ever left the house, but his opponents would not field an army in such close proximity to Washington. They would be waiting for a single man, convinced that he would follow orders and come alone. Three gunners, maybe four would be enough to do the job. He would be very much surprised if they were faced with greater numbers, and the hardware they were packing should be adequate to do the job.
Bolan had agreed that there was more than mere assassination in the wind, but he had kept his speculations to himself. Whatever happened, he would be on hand to stand with Hal against his enemies. As always.
Brognola sometimes wondered where he would have been, what course he would have taken, if the Executioner had never crossed his path. If Bolan's father had been wise enough to bypass dealings with the loan sharks up in Pittsfield, or if Striker's plane had gone down while en route from Vietnam to the United States and graveside ceremonies for his murdered family. What might have been, if there had been no holy war to suck Hal in and change his life forever, leading him to heights and depths that had been unimaginable in his other life?
It didn't matter now. Bolan's everlasting war was grim reality, and Hal had signed on voluntarily, his eyes wide open to the risks involved. From grudging admiration of the soldier's talents he had passed to something more like hero worship tempered with a veteran's knowledge that no single man is impervious to death. He sided with the Executioner because the guy was doing something, fighting in a world where action had been voted out of style, where wait-and-see was everything. He had enlisted in the soldier's fight because he finally had no choice, and Bolan's exit from the Phoenix Program had not dimmed Brognola's admiration for the man, nor his commitment to the everlasting war.
The war was coming home for Hal Brognola now, in ways that he had never seriously contemplated, but it did not change his mind. The move against his family might finally destroy him, but as long as he survived, he would continue striking back against the enemy with everything he had.
He understood Mack Bolan now as he had never understood the man before. He felt the pain that finally transcended human suffering, becoming simultaneously more and less than simple pain. If he should fail to rescue Helen and the kids, Brognola knew that wound would never heal while he survived. And at the same time, he was conscious of the fact that it would not impair his own ability to single out his enemies for retribution. Private suffering did wonders for a soldier's visual acuity. Brognola could see clearly now: his duty, the potential consequences — everything except the outcome of his rendezvous with death at Arlington.
For that he would be forced to wait, and if his luck ran out there would be Bolan, running on against the savages, a doomsday engine programmed for destruction of the enemy. It gave Brognola peace of mind to know that one man's death could not abort the holy war.
He needed peace of mind tonight and strength to see him through the early morning darkness. Whatever daylight might reveal — success or grim disaster — he would face it and move on. While life and strength remained he would continue fighting, from his post at Justice or outside the fold. If necessary he would wage his battle from a prison cell.
And when they finally brought him down, he would be braced to take as many of the bastards with him as he could. It was the only way Brognola knew to play the game, and he had learned it from a master.
Time to go, and death was waiting for him in a graveyard full of heroes. If the shadow overtook him there, he would be satisfied to rest among them for a while, secure in the knowledge that an Executioner remained to carry on the fight. It was the best that he could do in terms of hope, and it would have to do for now. For Arlington and his fate.