Blood Testament te-100

by Don Pendleton

  "Get in there and close the door."

  He didn't have to tell her twice, and she was poetry in motion as she raced across the room, all fluid lines and luscious curves. He thought about securing the closet door when she was inside, then put it out of mind. The woman wasn't going anywhere, and every second counted now. He turned to Grymdyke, backing off a pace and letting Milo stare into the Beretta's unblinking eye.

  "So, what's the story, man?" There was bravado in the voice, a tremor underneath it that the naked man could not successfully suppress. "I haven't got much cash on hand, but what I've got is yours."

  The soldier let him see a frosty smile.

  "I met a couple of your friends at Arlington tonight," he said by way of introduction.

  There was a flicker of surprise behind the narrow eyes... and something else. His manhood had already started to wilt, and it folded up like last week's roses.

  "That right?"

  "They didn't have a lot of time to talk, but they referred me on to you. I'm looking for some information."

  "Try the Yellow Pages."

  "Fine."

  He leveled the Beretta, finger tightening around the trigger, totally committed in that instant to the image of his target's brains upon the satin pillow case, his grim determination telegraphed to Grymdyke through the weapon's muzzle.

  "Hey! Hold on a second."

  "Why?"

  "You wanted information, right?"

  "So, talk."

  "You haven't told me what you're after, man."

  "Wrong answer."

  "Wait!"

  The voice was edged with panic, and Bolan knew that he believed. The spook had seen his death in Bolan's eyes and didn't like the view.

  "You don't give anything away," he muttered, when his voice had reached a semblance of normality. "I'd guess you're looking for a matched set, am I right?"

  "Go on."

  "Three pieces, very fragile. While they last."

  "You'd better hope they last."

  "Don't worry. I'm waiting for a call."

  "Stop waiting."

  "Yeah, okay. I read you. If you wouldn't mind my asking..."

  "No survivors," Bolan told him flatly. "Yet."

  It took a moment for the spook to swallow something that was threatening to choke him, but when his voice returned it was strong and firm, with just the bare suggestion of a tremor underneath the velvet-coated steel.

  "You've got some balls."

  The sleek Beretta's muzzle dipped six inches off target.

  "So do you."

  The color faded from Grymdyke's cheeks, but he was not surrendering. Not yet.

  "I'm not just waiting for a call, you know. I've got to make one, if you get my drift."

  The soldier read him loud and clear. And if the agent wasn't lying to save his skin, it meant that there was still a chance that Bolan had arrived in time.

  "How long?"

  "One-thirty."

  Bolan didn't have to check his watch. If Grymdyke spoke the truth, Brognola's family had a short half hour left to live. Beyond the deadline, if he didn't call, the cleanup crew on site would automatically dispose of any hostages.

  "How far?"

  The agent thought about it long enough to know his life depended on the answer, its sincerity.

  "We've got a safe house just outside of Sleepy Hollow. Maybe twenty minutes north, with traffic." Grymdyke rattled off an address, which the soldier memorized.

  It was more like twenty-five without, but Bolan didn't quibble.

  "One more question."

  "Let me guess. You're looking for the sponsor, right?"

  The soldier's eyes responded with a mute affirmative.

  "It's Family business, guy. You're biting off a mouthful here."

  "I'm interested in Gianelli's hot line to the Company."

  He saw the agent flinch, was satisfied with the reaction.

  "Hey, you know that much, you know I can't go into it."

  "All right."

  He was a microsecond from the final squeeze when Grymdyke raised both hands, palms outward, as if flesh could turn the parabellum round aside.

  "Goddammit, wait!" His chest was heaving like a man experiencing cardiac arrest. "The bastard's not worth dying for."

  "I'm listening."

  "The sponsor's Cameron Cartwright, get it? He's the honcho at Clandestine Ops."

  "What's his connection with the Family?"

  "Who knows? Directions to the crapper in that place are need-to-know. I didn't ask, he didn't offer, get it?"

  "Yeah."

  It added up in Bolan's mind. If Cartwright had been managing the move against Brognola, he would not enlighten his subordinates beyond the bare essentials necessary for completion of their individual assignments. They would not be privy to his motives, his associations, the potential payoffs of his scheme. In retrospect, it was unusual for Grymdyke to be conscious of the Mafia connection, but his background with Clandestine Operations, his propensity for wet work had undoubtedly familiarized the man with CIA connections to the syndicate.

  But time was running out, and Bolan had to disengage. He might be able to prevent the worst, but only if he moved without delay. The problem lay in leaving Grymdyke, knowing that the man could not be trusted under any circumstances. He would call ahead, alert the gunners, ruin everything. If Bolan ripped the phones out, wasting precious time, he only had to run next door or cross the street. If he was able.

  All of this flashed through Mack Bolan's mind, and in that instant he observed the sidelong glance that Grymdyke cast in the direction of a nightstand on his left. The single glance told Bolan everything he had to know, and he could not afford to let the opportunity escape.

  He drifted toward the open window, lowering the Beretta carelessly, aware that Grymdyke would be waiting for an opening. The guy would read his move as overconfidence, the kind of error that could get a soldier killed at times like this. He saw the muscles bunch in Grymdyke's shoulders, in his thighs, as he prepared to make his move.

  And when it came, the spook was quicker, more adept than Bolan had expected. He had been rehearsing, planning for a moment such as this when he would have an opportunity to test himself. He reached the drawer and ripped it open in a single fluid motion, dipped inside and drew the long-slide .45, already tracking into target acquisition in perhaps a second and a half.

  It very nearly saved his life.

  The 93-R whispered once, and Bolan knew immediately that it was not a mortal wound. The parabellum round ripped into Grymdyke's ribcage, spun him sideways and the .45 exploded in his fist. Somewhere behind him Bolan heard the slug hit plaster, and a little yelping scream escaped the confines of the closet.

  Bolan fired again, impacting on a pallid cheek and boring through to find the brain. His target folded, lifeless fingers loosening around the .45, lifeblood already forming pools among the folds of shiny satin underneath.

  A backward glance informed him that the woman was safe and sound. The single round from Grymdyke's .45 had missed her closet sanctuary by at least a yard, and she was snuffling now, awaiting further gunplay in the sheltered darkness of her cubicle.

  He left her to it, picking up the beside telephone and dialing information for the number of the hospital where Hal had taken Leo. When he raised the nurse on duty in emergency he had Brognola paged and waited, cursing to himself, while several moments passed in wasted silence. Finally he recognized the big Fed's voice and let him have the Sleepy Hollow address, waiting while Brognola gave it back verbatim.

  "Twenty minutes," Bolan told him, glancing at his watch. "We're on a deadline."

  "Dammit, that's not long enough."

  "You're wasting time."

  He cradled the receiver, going out the same way he had come, descending swiftly, pushing off the trellis halfway down and sprinting back in the direction of the gate and his rental car. He had precisely eighteen minutes left when he slid in behind the wheel.

  And
Hal was right: it wasn't long enough. He didn't have a hope in hell of reaching Sleepy Hollow, tracking down the address and attempting any sort of rescue by a half-past one. It was a washout, doomed to failure from the outset — but if Bolan had no hope, he also had no viable alternative. But he had to try, and only when he saw the mortal evidence of failure lying at his feet would he be free to seek revenge.

  Against the Gianelli family for openers. Against the honcho at Clandestine Ops who put the ball in play and caused so much unbridled havoc in the lives of decent folk. The bastard would be sorry he had started with Brognola, sorry he was ever born, before the Executioner was finished with him. He would plead for death, accept it as a blessing when it came.

  Mack Bolan was surprised by the intensity of hate that welled up inside him. How long since he had braced himself to kill from righteous anger? Had it been Detroit? Miami? Pittsfield? Had it been so long since he allowed himself to feel? The question nagged at him taunting, and for an instant he wondered whether he had grown inured to suffering, immune to pain.

  And in that instant, he immediately knew the answer. He had not forgotten how to feel. Pain had been a part of Bolan's war from the beginning, from the moment when he stood before a row of graves in Massachusetts, saying his farewells to home and family. He had survived the pain and learned to cope when lesser men might easily have sought escape through drunkenness or death. He had survived to turn that pain around and forge from it a weapon to destroy his enemies. With each new wound he suffered, each new loss, the soldier braced himself to wreak vengeance on the savages arrayed against him. In a world of dog-eat-dog, it was the swiftest, most ferocious hound who led the pack. It might already be too late to salvage anything from Sleepy Hollow. Bolan would not write Brognola's wife and children off, but neither would he count on miracles. If they were dead before he reached them, if the nightmare become reality, there still might be a chance for him to overtake the cleanup crew. From there, he had a date with Nicky Gianelli, and another with the honcho from Clandestine Ops.

  There would be nothing he could say to Hal. The man from Justice had not asked for any promises, aware that they were impossible to keep. His sorrow would be boundless, and eradication of the animals responsible would not assuage his grief.

  But it would help the Executioner.

  His private pain was forged from equal parts of loss and anger now, with anger grappling for the upper hand. And it would help him to watch a bullet rip through Nicky Gianelli's face. To lock his fingers tight around the throat of Cameron Cartwright, squeezing out the breath of life until the man's tongue protruded and his eyes rolled blindly back into his head. It would be good to kill again.

  Relax, Bolan told himself. The anger, he knew, could get him killed if he allowed it to control his actions. If he reached the safe house before the occupants departed, he would be outmanned, outgunned, and he would need his wits about him if he hoped to see another sunrise.

  Relax, he told himself again.

  Forget about the intervening miles and concentrate on distance covered, time remaining. Bolan knew the folly of defeatist thinking, realized the fatal error of giving up before the battle had been joined. If anger ruled his mind, he would be little better than a bullet fired at random, free to ricochet around the battlefield until it spent its force and fell to earth in vain. He needed something more along the order of a guided missile now, a death machine complete with built-in homing instinct that would let him find the necessary targets, root them out and burn them down with surgical precision. Forget about an old friend's family on the line, he counseled himself, and concentrate on picking off the savages. Make it count. And if the final sacrifice was necessary, take as many of the bastards with you as you could.

  It was the only way to wage a war, and Bolan knew enough of living on the edge to realize that death was never far away. If this was all the time remaining to him here tonight, then he would use that time to best advantage, running up a score against the enemy before they took him down.

  And he would teach them all a thing or two about the costs of everlasting war while he was at it. Offer them a lesson in the grim reality of suffering.

  He stood on the accelerator, felt the car grudgingly respond, its engine laboring. Another fifteen minutes, and he wondered if Brognola had the slightest chance of showing up before the roof fell in. For once, he almost hoped that Hal would be late.

  The man should not be forced to watch his family die.

  There would be ample opportunity for him to witness death before the sun rose over Washington again. This one time, though, if there was any mercy in the universe, the soldier hoped Brognola might be spared.

  But it was not a night for mercy.

  It was a night for blood.

  22

  "He's late!"

  "Take it easy. We've got time."

  "He should've called by now."

  "I'll give him ten more minutes."

  "Dammit, Blake, the man said half-past one."

  "And I said give him ten, so just relax."

  The quarreling voices were distinct enough that Helen had been able to identify the speakers. Blake would be the blond one, the leader of the team, and he was standing firm against his two accomplices — for the moment. Their contact — someone calling with instructions? orders? — had already overrun his deadline, and the two gorillas were becoming restive, anxious to be on about their business.

  Helen knew only too well what that business was, and she kept the dark suspicion to herself. The only call their captors might anticipate would deal with their release... or execution. She cherished no illusions of eleventh-hour stays, no last reprieve. The call, when it was finally made, would seal their fates, and any small delay could only provide an inkling of hope.

  Whatever came they were prepared to fight and die with something close to dignity. Her Catholic background had prepared her to believe in miracles, but Helen recognized the odds against success. They would be facing automatic weapons in the hands of trained professionals, their only armament consisting of a wooden staff, a shower rod-cum-javelin, and the internal hardware from a toilet tank. No point in calculating odds; the melancholy end result would only weaken her resolve, and at the moment Helen needed every ounce of strength that she possessed.

  She was determined to resist, if not in hopes of breaking free, then merely for resistance as an end unto itself. She would not let herself or her children be methodically eliminated like a string of brainless sheep marched off to slaughter. If they could strike one blow, or kill one of their enemies, they would have left some mark behind, a sign of their humanity, their will to live. Surrender at the final instant was unthinkable, a crime against Hal's memory and their life together.

  No sounds came from the other room, and Helen stood back from the door, her children's eyes upon her as she turned to face them. They were waiting, tense, expectant, and the tears in Eileen's eyes were tears of anger mixed with fear. Jeff's face had aged impossibly, and Helen cursed their captors for the theft of innocence from both her children.

  Were they innocent? Was anybody innocent today? In a society conditioned to accept a toll of sixty murders each and every day, six violent rapes per hour, was there even such a thing as innocence? Could children weaned on television news and splatter movies ever grasp the concept of a life immune to fear? It did not matter in the end. They were her children. And as far as she was concerned, they would always be innocent.

  For bringing fear and grief into their lives, she owed the gunners any pain that she would finally be able to inflict. For snuffing out their lives, she owed the bastards more — and knew that she would never have the strength, the opportunity, to pay her debt in full.

  If Hal was with her now...

  God, no.

  If Hal was with her, then the bastards would have all of it, her family and life itself wrapped up in one large bundle, ready for disposal. While he lived, while he was able to pursue their captors and make them scurry
for their lives, then justice was a living breathing possibility.

  And Hal was still alive. She sensed it, knew instinctively that his survival was the reason for her captors' agitation, the delay in their receipt of final orders. A meeting had been set for Arlington at midnight; Helen knew that much from listening to one-sided conversations on the telephone. Whatever had transpired, her man had walked away from it intact. If he was dead the gunners would have heard the news by now. The three of them would have been dead by now.

  Which meant they still had time.

  The leader, Blake, had said ten minutes. Gino and the one called Carmine were reluctant, but they both had gone along... from fear, uncertainty, whatever.

  It was incredible, this measuring of life in minutes, knowing that you would be dead by, say, 1:45. Unless Blake stalled his comrades one more time. Unless a call came through.

  "Be ready," Helen told her children in a whisper. "We take the first one through the door."

  "Right on." Jeff's knuckles whitened where he gripped the wooden closet rod, converted to a makeshift fighting staff.

  "I'm ready." Armed with metal slats extracted from the toilet tank, Eileen looked very soft and frail, a princess dressed in blue jeans and a checkered flannel shirt.

  "All right."

  The shower rod was cool and slick in Helen's hands, its tip already bent and flattened into something like a clumsy spear point. She would not be winning any prizes for originality or manual dexterity, but it would have to do. If she could reach soft flesh, perhaps a vital spot...

  It was enough to fight. The killing, if she got that far, would be a bonus. No, a miracle.

  And while her background had prepared her to believe in miracles, tonight Helen Brognola knew that she was on her own.

  * * *

  "They're still inside?"

  Brognola's voice was strained, almost inaudible, and he was winded from the final sprint that had delivered him to Bolan's side. They looked away, his eyes returning to the lighted windows of the safe house.