Don Pendleton - Day of Mourning

Someone had breached Stony Man Farm's security.

And there was Konzaki.

Bolan sensed that the lives of all his Stony Man allies were already on the line.

But Hal was right.

You do not turn down a request from the Man.

Bolan was airlifted from Stony Man Farm knowing that there would be no room for miscalculation or fumbling on this coming night that was about to cloak the nation's capital.

It was a jungle out there, Washington, D.C., or no.

And the Executioner was back in town.

The familiar low skyline of D.C. was bathed in dusk as Grimaldi piloted the bubble-front Hughes helicopter with Mack Bolan aboard.

No city in America is more drenched in history and legend than Washington.

Bolan knew this city, and he knew something of its history.

This land had been a blazed hellground. The British captured and sacked the city in 1814. It wasn't until the twentieth century that Washington was transformed from an unkempt village into the city of today: a hellground of another kind.

Wonderland on the Potomac, Hal called it.

With the reality of the ghetto only a stone's throw from the power brokers who steered the course of the nation, the city was a study in contrasts. The Washington Monument obelisk, the Lincoln Memorial and the Jefferson Memorial, shrines to the visionaries of equality, were set against some of the worst poverty Bolan had ever seen.

Bolan wore a two-piece suit of subdued blue and a sky-blue shirt and red tie for his meeting with the president.

On his left shoulder, under the suit jacket, the Beretta 93-R pistol nestled in a concealed shoulder speed rig.

Bolan's Beretta had been modified with a new sound suppressor and a flash-hider for night firing. The gun was designed for fast killing. Konzaki had devised a forehand grip that folded down to provide controlled two-handed firing. The 93-R saw action on nearly every Bolan mission.

Another debt to Konzaki.

He also toted a black leather briefcase that contained additional items he liked to have close at hand, including Big Thunder, the impressive stainless-steel .44 AutoMag.

The chopper began descending.

"Coming in," called Grimaldi above the steady throbbing of the rotor.

If Grimaldi felt exhausted, as he had to be, he wasn't showing it. Bolan at least had caught some shut-eye on the flight to Stony Man from down south.

The eighteen acres of White House grounds were a maze of lengthening shadows on the south side of Pennsylvania Avenue. Grimaldi touched down smoothly on a grassy area in back of the executive mansion.

The White House.

More living history.

The British had razed it in 1814 and when the present three-story structure of simple, stately design was rebuilt, the scorched Virginia freestone of the home of every president since Adams had been painted over a stark white, and it had been the White House ever since.

Bolan dropped from the chopper's door before the chopper even settled. The Executioner left his briefcase with the pilot.

History is being made right now, thought Bolan as he hustled at a slow jog from beneath the whirling blades of the helicopter. The Phoenix program spanned more than one administration, but combat specialist John Phoenix had never been called to this house.

Grimaldi cut the chopper's engine and waited.

Bolan approached three husky guys clad almost identically in conservative suits. They met him near an entrance to the building. Bolan made two of these White House staffers as armed Secret Service agents.

"This way, Colonel, please," said the third man.

They escorted Bolan into a hallway of sedate oak paneling and thick red carpet.

Hal Brognola and another man, whom Bolan recognized as Farnsworth, the CFB chief, stood waiting a few paces to the side of the closed heavy oak door of the Oval Office, the president's inner sanctum.

The two Secret Service agents fell back. The other staffer strode to the door of the president's office, knocked politely, then opened the door and stuck his head inside.

Brognola's permanently five-o'clock-shadowed face wore a tight glower that only barely brightened when he saw Bolan.

Stony Man's gruff White House liaison greeted Bolan with a firm handshake.

"Colonel Phoenix, thanks for getting here so fast." Hal introduced the man standing beside him. "This is Lee Farnsworth, Central Foreign Bureau."

Farnsworth was a strapping, blond-haired man in his early forties who had the physical, conditioning of a man twenty years younger. Sharp eyes that had seen it all were set in a serious, granite face.

Bolan considered what he knew about the guy and the operation he headed.

The CFB was the Defense Department's special unit for intelligence-gathering and covert operations. It was set up to supplement the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon intended the unit to operate around the world.

Bolan knew that the agency had been formed in 1980 during the planning of the raid to free the American hostages in Iran when the Pentagon was dissatisfied with the intelligence data it was getting from the CIA.

Much like the Phoenix operation, the CFB conducted clandestine operations without "presidential finding," the legal authorization required by Congress. Bolan also knew that the Senate and House Intelligence committees had not been advised of the unit's existence, as required by law.

The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is the Pentagon's regular intelligence unit, were unaware of the CFB's activities.

The bureau had deployed personnel around the world using false identification to collect intelligence.

Bolan respected Lee Farnsworth and what his agency had accomplished. He knew of at least one coup stage-managed by the CFB in which the U.S. had gained a new ally where one was badly needed.

If Farnsworth's estimation of Phoenix was mutual, he did nothing to show it. He glanced away as if Bolan was not there.

The White House staffer stepped into the hallway from the Oval Office and approached the waiting three.

"The president will see you now, gentlemen."

The two Secret Service men intercepted them at the office door. One of the Feds held a metal-detector device that beeped when he fanned Bolan with it.

"We check all our weapons or the meeting's off," clipped Farnsworth.

"Strict security regulation to protect the Man," Brognola said to Bolan. "Lee and I have already turned ours over."

Bolan didn't like it, but he handed over the Beretta. Then he, Farnsworth and Brognola stepped into the president's tomb of an office where heavy drapes were drawn against the day's last light.

The door closed behind them, leaving them in private with the man who strode forward to greet them.

Bolan had never met any of the presidents he had served under as Colonel John Phoenix. A good soldier must remain apolitical, was Bolan's philosophy.

The president shook hands with each man in turn. Up close, the chief executive showed a strain not discernible in the media pictures Bolan had seen. The president looked tired and edgy.

"You have my word, gentlemen, that this meeting is strictly off the record, any record," the Man told them. "This meeting has never taken place. I'm in Louisville, and you are not here. Please be seated. Let us attend to this business as expediently as possible."

The four men seated themselves in a loose circle of wing chairs just off from the president's desk.

"Mr. President," began Lee Farnsworth, "Stony Man has screwed up a mission that the CFB spent over a year setting up. It's happened before, too."

"Let's have specifics," growled Brognola. "What mission of yours have we supposedly screwed up?"

"The Dragon," said Farnsworth.

The president glanced at Hal and Bolan.