Don Pendleton: Renegade Agent

"And if you come up with the wrong answer?" ( Bolan asked in a voice like blighted night.

Gadgets wiped a sleeve of his blacksuit across his forehead. "It'll blow our heads off. It's trip-rigged."

Mack Bolan's decision made itself. "All right. It goes that way sometimes. Now let's pull..."

"Sarge," Gadgets cut in. His voice was soft, but there was no weariness in it, the assurance was full and rich. "I can crack it." In Gadgets Schwarz's statement there was no tentativeness. It was a simple expression of fact.

The lighted numerals of the chronometer on Bolan's left wrist read 0132:30 A.M.

He gave Gadgets the go-ahead with a nod, said "Mark," and turned away. His respect for this fighting man seemed to resound in the silence.

He smiled calmly. Behind him there was no sound as Gadgets studied resistors, transistors, capacitors, detonator ( the components of the accesser.

The filing cabinet against the wall was locked, and Bolan did not try to force it. Little of interest would be kept on paper in a company like DonCo. Like at World Fi Cor, tortured hellground of one of Gadgets's and companions most withering super fast hits, there would be little data kept on paper here.

Hard intel would exist as a matrix of electromagnetic configurations on a storage disk in the mainframe of the firm's computer.

To turn any of that into a video display, or a paper-copy printout, a guy needed access to a terminal. For a start. Also needed: user code words, file numbers, likely a number of other cross-references and number-groups. Only then would the logic machineeabare its microchip soul to scrutiny.

If Gadgets Schwartz could get into Frederick Charon's office, into his computerized crucible there, if he could tap in to the DonCo president's personal terminal, if Charon's personal access data could somehow be divined, then Stony Man Farm would be in the equivalent position electronically of having a direct line to the man's innermost secrets. Just like that.

Those are the secrets of a man actively involved in selling out his country to the Hounds of Hell.

The drawers below the secretary's computer terminal were filled with pens, paper clips, stationery, a dictaphone, couple of unlabelled tapes, tools of a secretary's trade. The wastebasket beside the desk held a lipstick-stained butt from a mentholated filter cigarette, nothing else. It was the white leather-edged desk blotter that yielded pay-dirt. With the exception of a few weekend dates, nearly every box in the blotter's calendar insert held some sort of notation. At first glance they were hardly revelatory of DonCo's darkest corporate secret, "Semi-mon. rpts due" was penned in on the 15th; "Row pension-plan analysis" was scheduled for the 27th; a Middlesex County Commissioner had paid a courtesy call on the third; the purchasing agent for a major retail chain would be in to see about computers on the 30th.

Just what one would expect on the calendar of an efficient executive secretary along with a careful note of the boss's absences. On the Saturday a week earlier, Bolan read, "FC dep." Two days from the present, "FC ret." That was the outline. Within the pages of the leather-bound appointment diary, Bolan found chapter and verse.

On the previous Saturday, Charon had had reservations on Swissair, leaving Boston's Logan International Airport at four in the afternoon, arriving at Cointrin Airport in Geneva at 8:20 the next morning, local time. Beneath that was a memo: "European appointments by private arrangement, next eight days through Monday. No contact except per emer. procedure. Query FRANCOFILE, stand. acc. cod every." Bolan paged quickly through the next week. There was no further indication of Charon's activities or whereabouts until the page for the next Monday, little more than twenty-four hours from now. At 9:40 Monday morning, Charon was scheduled to depart Cointrin for Heathrow Airport via British Airways, arriving 10:10 London time.

Exactly one hour and twenty minutes later, Charon was supposed to hop a TWA flight back home to Logan.

On the same page of the appointment book, Bolan's penlight beam picked out the reminder, "Brunch with Sir Philip at airport, 10:25, vip lounge." For a guy headed from Switzerland to Massachusetts, London was a hell of a sidetrip for the sake of quick meal.

Bolan scanned the page again, committed every word and number to memory, then flipped the book closed and positioned it exactly where he had found it.

"Sarge!" Gadgets called softly from across the room.

Bolan's chronometer read 0139:10.

Gadgets had clipped one end of a jumper wire to the third terminal from the top of the left row. He held the other end in a steady hand. "Which one does it connect to?" Bolan asked reaching for it.

Gadgets grinned in the dimness and shook his head.

"This is my gig," he said softly.

He clipped the wire's free end to the top terminal on the right. For a split second there was no sound at all.

Then there was the click of a deadbolt being drawn back mechanically, and the soft rush of air as Gadgets exhaled his relief.

It took him no more than thirty seconds to remove the jumper, replace the faceplate, return his tools to the chest pack.

He stood up and gestured at the door, said: "We did it. You want the honors?"

Bolan turned the knob without a sound and pushed open the door to Charon's office. Subliminal quivers tickled him.

He smelled the snarl, the drooling, guttural, teeth bared snarl a heartbeat before his flashlight picked out the two blood-red eyes. Bolan's mind whistled, howled, he had only time enough to set himself for the attack.

The satanic eyes rose up toward him and hit him full in the chest. Bolan went down but with both hands gripping the Doberman's shoulders. Fetid canine breath expelled into his face. Slavering jaws barked like a mad dog's at Bolan's throat. Teeth snapped shut on nothing but air, though they came so close that Bolan felt the animal's clammy muzzle brush his face. Hot anticipatory dog saliva soaked through the neck of the black suit.

Bolan got his left arm around as he lay on the floor and clamped the dog's head against his chest to mobilize the slashing carnivorous teeth.

Eighty pounds of steel-wire hound-muscle writhed and struggled to break the hold. The dog's forefoot caught Bolan in the chest, hard enough to take his breath away. A hind paw scrambled for purchase, narrowly missing Bolan's groin. Bolan held all the tighter, pulling the animal's head bone-to-bone against his chest. Then he squeezed with one arm only, at maximum strength.

Fleet fingers from his free hand found the familiar shape of pistol grip. Bolan drew, lay the muzzle against the twisting animal's haunch, pulled the trigger.

There was no recoil, no sound beyond a quick soft gasp. The dog's maddened snarl turned to a weak growl. He made one final feeble effort to jerk free, then lay still.

Bolan got to his feet. The fight had taken fewer than ten seconds. Gadgets Schwarz stood over the dog, his own pistol drawn.

The weapons were identical: Beemanst Webley Hurricane air pistols. The gun had only the most superficial relationship to the BB rifles that Mick Bolan roamed the woods with near Pittsfield in his youth. The B/W Hurricane was powered by a piston-charged compression chamber that produced 60 pounds of potential energy, enough to spit a .22 slug at better than 400 feet per second. True, this was significantly less energy and velocity than a traditional .22 pistol, but the airgun in the right hands was a potently lethal-and silent-machine.

The Hurricanes that Bolan and Gadgets carried on this softprobe were not designed for killing. Stony Man armorer Andrzej Konzaki had modified them to shoot not slugs, but darts containing a powerful and fast-acting tranquilizer. Originally the guns were to be used only as a last resort, if confronted by a security officer.