"And the rest is history?"
She smiled. "I guess so. Yes."
"You must be lonely here," he said, and wondered where the hell those words had come from.
Barbara pinned him with her eyes for just a moment, and he noticed for the first time that their color was a deep, disturbing gray. "It's not so bad," she said at last. "We have a furlough system, as you know, for R and R, but at the moment I prefer my work with Mr. Kurtzman. He's a genius."
Bolan grinned. "He'd have a cow if he could hear you call him that. The 'mister,' not the genius."
"I suppose you're right." She grinned. "He makes me call him Aaron. I can't bring myself to call him Bear."
"It's just as well. Will you be backing up our little party here?"
She nodded. "Yes. All leaves are canceled as of Tuesday last. We'll be on full alert here from the time you leave until your safe return."
Or otherwise, he thought, and saw that the alternative had occurred to her as well. Her eyes were briefly downcast. When they rose to meet his again, there was a sadness in them that reached out to Bolan and touched him.
The words were forming on his tongue, demanding that he tell her she reminded him of someone, when he realized it wasn't true at all. Aside from the coincidence of sex and setting, Barbara Price bore no more natural resemblance to April Rose than any other woman Bolan might encounter on the street. Why should she, after all? Because he had expected something of the early magic to remain at Stony Man? Because, in spite of everything, his resolutions firmly made, the Executioner had hoped to find a time machine of sorts, some way of taking back the pain?
Forget it. There was no room in his world for miracles or grand delusions. A combatant who couldn't accept reality was doomed before he took the field, and Bolan knew that he would need his wits about him in the coming days. As for the woman, she was simply one more member of the staff that Kurtzman had assembled, trained to do her job and keep her mouth shut when she left the farm.
And yet…
There was a trace of magic in her eyes, a spark, perhaps, which might be kindled into open flame with some attention. If he only had the time and opportunity.
"How old are you?" he blurted, then mentally kicked himself. Dammit, had he forgotten how to talk to a woman?
"I'm old enough," she told him. The penetrating gray gaze didn't waver once from Bolan's face.
I wonder, Bolan thought. She had never killed, he could tell that much. Most likely she had never been in danger of her life, although the day might come if she remained at Stony Man.
"I'm sorry," Bolan said. "I don't know why I asked you that."
"I think you do."
"Well, then, you've got me."
"You were wondering if I could cut it," she continued. "If a 'kid' like me could really understand this game and make it work."
Which game, he almost asked, but left the words unspoken, settling for repetition of his previous apology. "I'm sorry. I was out of line."
"I disagree."
"How's that?"
"From what I understand, your life is riding on this mission. You have every right to know the quality of your support."
"I have no doubt about your competency," Bolan told her frankly. "Kurtzman tells me you're the best."
"He said that?"
It was Bolan's turn to nod. "You may have noticed that he's not exactly loose with compliments."
"I noticed. Thank you."
To the west, the Blue Ridge Mountains were devouring the sun, the shadows growing longer across the open ground of Stony Man, impenetrable darkness pooling beneath the trees.
"It's getting late. We'd better hit the chow line."
"Wait. You haven't told me yet."
"How's that?"
"Apology accepted?"
Bolan grinned. "Let's make it mutual."
The lady's smile was dazzling. "I think I'd like that," she replied, and she was gone before the Executioner could think of anything to say. He hesitated for another moment, then followed her inside.
9
The Phoenix war room occupied the northeast quarter of the ranch house basement level. Soundproof and secure against intrusion from outside, its Spartan furnishings consisted of a conference table and a score of wing chairs. Twelve of those were occupied at 4:00 p.m. on Bolan's second day at Stony Man. At the table's head sat Hal Brognola, leafing through a slim manila folder labeled CONFIDENTIAL. Aaron Kurtzman's wheelchair was positioned to Brognola's right, and Barbara Price was seated on his left. The men of Phoenix Force were ranged along the conference table's left-hand side, with Able Team's three warriors seated opposite. The Executioner sat at the far end of the table, facing Hal Brognola, with Grimaldi on his right.
An air of silent expectation hung in the room. Only Barbara Price seemed nervous, sitting in at Kurtzman's personal request for her first combat briefing. Bolan and the other warriors were accustomed to the waiting, but a certain edginess was evident in several of the battle-hardened faces. Of them all, Grimaldi seemed the most relaxed. He hadn't been invited to the meet, and while the others knew that he would never exercise the option, he was free to walk away from the impending mission.
Brognola cleared his throat and put the ball in play. "Except for Jack, you each know parts of this already. What we're looking at now is the overall, with a proposed solution." He hesitated while he put his thoughts in order, then he forged ahead. "Twelve days ago we got a squeal from contacts in the Contra movement that a VIP from their side had been bagged by Sandinistas on a border crossing. They were hot to go in after him, but Washington persuaded them to put the matter in our hands, preserve deniability… you know the drill. The bad news is our Latin clients blew five days before they tipped us off. When Able reached their man, he had been undergoing stiff interrogation for at least a week."
"That's bad," McCarter said.
"It's not the worst," Brognola told them. "An American was running the interrogation for Ortega's team."
"A mercenary?" Katzenelenbogen asked.
"That's negative. We have a positive ID on Pommeroy, James G., a sergeant in the Special Forces, stationed in Honduras. He had two days left on furlough when the Ironman pulled his tags."
If Lyons felt the others watching him, he gave no sign. His face was grim, impassive, as he listened to Brognola, waiting to hear something he didn't already know.
"What kind of background do we have on Pommeroy?" Bolan asked.
"The usual. He was a model trooper in the middle of his second tour. No indication of subversive tendencies or sympathy with any Third World revolutionary movements. All concerned are stunned, unquote."
"There's more," Grimaldi said, and when he spoke, it didn't come out sounding like a question.
"Yes. While Able was involved in Nicaragua, Phoenix Force was hunting terrorists — suspected Sandinistas — in the Costa Rican highlands. They made contact Tuesday morning, just in time to see the targets make connections with an Anglo pilot. His description and the name on his fatigues are both consistent with another Special Forces trooper — Baker, Thomas A., already listed AWOL on a weekend pass. They had to smoke him."
"Calvin smoked him," Gary Manning said, enjoying the discomfort of his comrade.
"Dammit, how did I know he was going to crash the plane?"
"Whatever." There was tension in Hal's voice, and suddenly the banter died away. "Costa Rican rural guards recovered the remains, and we now have a firm ID from dental records. Here's your man."
Brognola pulled a glossy eight-by-ten out of the file and handed it to Katzenelenbogen. The Israeli glowered at the photo for a moment, then nodded. "Yes."
The black-and-white was passed around the table. In a moment, Bolan found himself confronted by a smiling, almost boyish face, the eyes obscure behind dark glasses. Dead now. Smiling from the grave.
"Baker's seaplane was reported stolen in Miami eighteen months ago," Brognola said. "God knows who's had it in the meantime. It was painted, with a h
alf-assed stab at altering the numbers."
"Can we link the two?" McCarter asked.
"Affirmative. They knew each other, but were not considered special friends by anyone who's still alive and talking. That's the public version, anyhow. We must assume that someone's covering."
"No other unexpected MIAs?" Pol asked.
Brognola frowned and shuffled through the papers in his open file. "We do have one more trooper unaccounted for, but I'll be damned if I can see a similarity. A Special Forces heavy weapons man named Charbonneau, Paul J. He turned up missing on a night patrol three weeks ago, and no one's seen or heard from him since then. The other members of his team report he broke formation for a nature call and never made it back. They beat the bushes for an hour or so, then packed it in and filed an MIA report. The CO organized a more extensive search and came up just as empty. At the moment, Charbonneau is listed as a possible deserter."
"Something stinks," Grimaldi said.
"I smell it, too," the man from Wonderland agreed. "But there's been nothing we could put a finger on, besides the fact that all three men were Special Forces."
"Let's stick to what we do know," Katz suggested.
"Right." Brognola spent another moment staring at the file in front of him. When he resumed, his voice was strained, low-keyed. "The Oval Office has uncovered evidence of a conspiracy involving members of the army general staff and CIA covert operations. It's designed to foment border incidents between the Sandinista government and neighbor states, ideally stirring up a situation where the Pentagon will have to intervene with combat troops. Potentially we're looking at another Bay of Pigs."
"It sounds more like another Vietnam," McCarter growled.
Brognola's frown carved lines around his mouth and eyes. "The White House is determined to prevent the situation from advancing to that point. No effort will be spared to stop this operation cold before it gets completely out of hand."
"Where do we start?" Schwarz asked.
Carl Lyons made a sour face. "The top, where else?"
Brognola shook his head in an emphatic negative. "The names in Washington and Langley aren't important," he informed them. "They'll be dealt with by the President. You'll be concerned with operations in the field, which mustn't be allowed to pass beyond their present state."
"What do we have," Encizo asked, "besides two dead men and an MIA?"
Brognola riffled through his file again and came up with two flimsy sheets of paper. "The man on site appears to be a brigadier," he said. "McNerney, Michael John. A thirty-five-year man, enlisted out of high school just in time for the Korean War. He saw the worst of it at Pork Chop Hill and came out with a battlefield commission. Doug MacArthur was impressed enough to take a personal interest, and McNerney was a major by the time the cease-fire rolled around. It's all uphill from there until the early 1960s. He was stationed briefly in Berlin around the time the wall was going up, but he was reprimanded under JFK's administration for permitting distribution of extremist literature on base. He was whipping up some of these leaflets on his own, importing others from the Birchers, Minutemen, you name it."
"Was he busted?" Bolan asked.
Brognola shook his head. "They wrote it up as reassignment. After Dallas, when things started heating up in Vietnam, he got the nod for a position under General Westmoreland. Decorated twice for valor under fire. He's not your average rear-echelon CO. The final pullout — or the sellout, as he called it — shook McNerney up so bad he started writing to the White House, begging for another chance to win the war. Instead, he got another reassignment — to Honduras. If it was designed to force him out, it didn't work. At fifty-four, he's hanging tough. McNerney was involved in planning the Grenada operation, and before that we have indications of a covert link with the CIA in the Allende overthrow. Our boy's been busy… and we now have reason to believe that he's been working overtime."
"I can't imagine Special Forces troopers dealing with a brigadier directly," Bolan offered. "Not in something of this magnitude."
"Agreed. There has to be a buffer, some chain of command. Unfortunately we have no idea which officers are working with McNerney on the side. We might be looking at a handful, or the whole damned shooting match. As for the line troops… well, who knows?"
"How long has this been going on?" asked Hermann Schwarz.
"The Nicaraguan phase is relatively recent, but the ranking members go back twenty years or more together. Some of them were tied in with the Bay of Pigs in '61."
"And no one caught a whiff of it before?" Grimaldi asked. "That's unbelievable."
"Not really. Think about what's happened in the meantime, Jack. The missile crisis. Dallas. The Dominican Republic. Vietnam and Watergate. Beirut. Grenada and Iran. The OPEC squeeze. Khaddafi and his cast of thousands. We've been through five presidents in twenty years, and they've had better things to do than look for traitors in their own damned government."
"Okay," Grimaldi said, "I get your drift."
"We're fortunate to know this much, but I can guarantee it's not enough." He scanned the table, steely-eyed. "You all know well enough from personal experience how one or two bad apples can disrupt an operation."
"Roger that," Blancanales said. "How do we play it?"
"Striker will be going back on active duty," Hal replied. Beside him, Barbara Price appeared confused until she saw the others turn toward Bolan. "We've prepared a jacket for him that should cover all the bases — combat record, decorations, recent disaffection with the trends in foreign policy."
"How solid is the cover?" Bolan asked.
"It ought to hold. We've got the joint chiefs backing us on this one, and your opposition shouldn't be too choosy. They've been coming up shorthanded lately."
Bolan nodded, satisfied. He had gone into other missions with as much at stake and less behind him in the past. If worse came down to worst, he would revert to instinct, play the rest of it by ear.
"That leaves the rest to us outside," Politician interjected.
"Not exactly," Hal replied. "We've got a special job for you. There are some indications that the local Contra hierarchy may be tied in with McNerney. We need someone on the inside to confirm, if possible, and mark the players if it's true."
"Plan B," Carl Lyons said, chuckling and his laughter was immediately joined by Gadgets Schwarz. Pol glowered at his fellow Able warriors and shot them both the finger as they shared a private joke at his expense.
"I ought to let you jokers handle it," he growled.
"No hablo español, señor," Schwarz answered, dabbing at his teary eyes.
"I've got your español right here."
"All right." Brognola raised an open hand to still the spreading laughter. "Now the rest of you will be on-site, but undercover, in Tegucigalpa. Keep the profiles low until we need you. If the opposition hits on Striker, we're in business. If they pass, we'll have to see what Pol comes up with on the other end."
"And if we miss on both ends?" Gary Manning's tone was cautious, falling somewhere short of outright skepticism.
"Then we'll be forced to wait until they make their move," Brognola said. "If it goes that way, we could lose it in the stretch."
"What's my end of the action?" Jack Grimaldi asked.
"You weren't expected," Hal replied. "We're looking at a crowd scene as it is."
"Give me a break," Grimaldi said. "One body, more or less, won't make a difference."
"So, stay home."
"Goddamn it…"
"I could use a lift," the Executioner suggested, interrupting Jack before the argument could hit its stride.
"We've taken care of that," Brognola answered, eyes still fixed upon Grimaldi. "You'll be traveling by military transport with the regular replacements."
"It'll need a pilot."
"I believe they have a few on staff these days."
"He might be useful," Bolan said.
"Hell, yes," Grimaldi said, beaming. "You never know."
"All r
ight, all right." Brognola raised his hands in mock surrender. "I'll arrange it. Anybody else have problems with the way things stand?" When no one answered, Hal seemed satisfied. "Okay, let's wrap this up. You're outbound first thing in the morning. I suggest you take advantage of the time remaining for some R and R."
They left the war room in single file, with Bolan bringing up the rear. He hesitated briefly for a word with Hal. "Jack won't be any problem."
"Christ, I hope not. I don't want to read about a one-man air strike on Managua in my morning paper."
Bolan smiled. "Except as absolutely necessary."
"Right." Brognola found the smile contagious and matched it with his own a moment later. "Right," he said again. "But I don't want him going near Havana."
Bolan had his supper early, dining alone in the mess hall. Afterward he spent an hour wandering around the grounds, across the fields and through the trees that ringed the farmhouse, sheltering it from the weather and from prying eyes. He tried to concentrate on the mission, but his mind kept drifting back to other days, other battlegrounds and the origin of Stony Man itself.
America had been besieged by terrorists when Bolan had launched his bloody "last-mile" blitz against the Mafia. It was a six-day razzle-dazzle aimed at mopping up the largest fragments of a broken syndicate, presumably delaying its revival for a year or two and giving federal prosecutors time to win indictments on a number of the highly placed survivors. In retrospect, Bolan knew his optimism had been premature. The Mafia was down, all right, but it was far from out, and there were times when Bolan worried if he might have been mistaken, changing tacks the way he had before the job was finished.
When those doubts arose, the soldier told himself that it would never have been finished, not if he had blitzed a different family every day, year-round, for fifty years. The Mafia was like a cancer, spreading, changing, virtually before the surgeon's eyes. The savages who filled its ranks were like malignant cells, regenerating constantly, a hundred born for every one destroyed. And Bolan knew the Mob was here to stay until such time as every man and woman in the nation recognized its danger, finally demanding its destruction. While John Q. Citizen continued patronizing prostitutes and bookies, buying stolen goods at "discount" prices, renting bootleg videocassettes and lining up for pornographic movies, there would always be a syndicate. It was free enterprise in action, the immutable law of supply and demand. And it was well beyond Mack Bolan's reach.
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