Don Pendleton - Blood Testament

The fifteen-second lag time had permitted him to scale the cemetery wall and strike off toward the meeting point, alert to any sign of sentries as he moved through darkness toward the killing ground. Whoever had arranged the meeting with Brognola had not invested in perimeter security, and it might cost them in the long run. If they were counting on Brognola to keep the rendezvous alone, then they were starting at a disadvantage.

But he went in expecting treachery, convinced that Hal's opponents had no serious desire to talk with him. They were setting up an ambush. He had been convinced of it from the beginning, and the only problem still remaining was the length to which Hal's enemies had gone. How much more logical it would have been to follow him as they had clearly done for months, and fix some semblance of a workaday routine. So simple to prepare an ambush on his way to work, the drive back home, or any one of countless other stops Brognola made repeatedly throughout an average week.

The very complication of the present scheme — abduction of his family, with its attendant risks, the hackneyed midnight meeting in a graveyard — spoke to Bolan now of some other goal. And in the final moments of their drive to Arlington, the soldier felt that he had grasped some semblance of the answer.

Hal's opponents urgently desired his death, that much was clear. But they had never counted on his going to the meet alone. The hunters had been hoping for a pair of targets on the firing line, two victims for the price of one.

They had anticipated Bolan's urge to help a friend. Helen and the kids were bait not only for Brognola, but for Bolan... and the suck had worked. So far.

The Executioner did not object to playing out the prearranged scenario as long as he could add a few embellishments along the way. It might work out to everyone's advantage in the end, but his concern for Brognola's family still claimed top priority. Until they were recovered safely, or confirmed among the dead, he would proceed with the discretion of a surgeon doing delicate exploratory surgery. Once precious flesh was safe again, or finally sacrificed, he would be free to move against the dark malignancy with cleansing fire and steel.

If he could just identify the cancer first.

Smart money went on Gianelli as the front man, but there would be someone else behind him. The hint about Lee Farnsworth's old connections back at CIA had set the soldier thinking, but there was no time at present to assess the information. Bolan needed more, and now, three minutes from zero hour, he found it.

Sentry number one was huddled in the shadow of an oak tree, shifting nervously from foot to foot, the silenced Ingram MAC-10 submachine gun scarcely visible on rigging underneath his arm. His hands were empty for the moment, and he checked his watch compulsively at fifteen-second intervals.

Two minutes, thirty seconds, and the guy quit dancing, glanced around him at the darkness, finally deciding he was safe from observation. Bolan heard the zipper whisper open, watched him struggle with reluctant underwear shorts and listened to the raindrop patter of his urine as it hit the tree trunk. The soldier waited until he zippered up before he moved like silent death and closed one hand across the gunner's mouth and nose.

He twisted, raised the slim stiletto, pressed its needle point against the juncture of the sentry's skull and spine. He found the opening that Chinese call "the wind gate," penetrated, stirring briskly as he reached the brain. The sentry stiffened, loafers drumming briefly on the turf, and then became a lifeless weight in Bolan's arms.

He eased the dead man to a prone position, riffled through his pockets briefly, but found them empty. It was the identifying mark of a professional, discarding any traces of ID before a stand. He knew that if he searched the body further, he would find the clothing free of labels. The fingerprints might even have been surgically removed.

No matter. Bolan's interest in the sentry was distinctly limited, and he was satisfied with having cut the hostile odds a fraction, evening the score. There would be other gunmen waiting in the darkness, more professionals prepared to kill on order, and it would be Bolan's task to find as many of them as he could before Brognola sprang the trap.

Two minutes left.

Already he could hear Hal's car approaching in the middle distance, closing on the designated meeting place. Already he could see the Unknown Soldier's tomb, illuminated in the darkness like a guiding beacon.

Two minutes, and the sentry's death had taught him something else about their enemies. The gunner was not Gianelli's, and he had not been recruited off the streets with promises of easy cash for half an hour's wet work. He was — had been — a trained professional, a killer, and he had not drawn his paycheck from the Mob. That left a single, grim alternative, and Bolan bore it with him as he left the recent dead behind, moved out in search of other targets.

He was hunting now, alert to any sign or sound of human prey, aware that every gunner taken out before the battle increased the odds in favor of survival. For the Executioner. For Hal Brognola and his family and for Leo.

They needed every edge available, for Bolan had miscalculated in his reckoning of the potential force arrayed against them. Now he realized their enemy was anything but short on triggermen and hardware. He could field an army on a moment's notice, with no questions asked, no explanations offered. He could murder with impunity — or at the very least, with little cause for apprehension that he would be brought to book.

The risks were greater than he had anticipated, most especially for Hal Brognola, who had everything to lose. It might be physically impossible to bag a prisoner as Brognola had desired.

Indeed, they might be lucky if they got out of Arlington alive.

The smell of oil and rubber in the trunk assailed Leo Turrin's nostrils, but he didn't mind. The spare had been removed to give him room, and with the blanket that Brognola had provided as a sort of mattress, he was scarcely bruised at all. The Uzi reeked of cosmoline, but he drew comfort from the old familiar smell.

If Hal and Bolan were correct in their prediction of an ambush, Leo was a sitting duck inside the trunk. A single burst of automatic fire could turn his hiding place into a coffin; any spark produced by ricochets might set the fuel tank off beneath him, broiling him alive before he had a chance to pop the lid and make his break. It was a risk that had been weighed and analyzed before he had agreed to ride shotgun for Brognola — not that there had ever been the slightest doubt that he would come along. His closest friends were wagering their lives tonight, and he could no more take a sideline seat than he could voluntarily stop breathing.

Leo owed it to them both, for all the times Bolan or Brognola had been there to pull his fat out of the fire. But if his life had never been at risk, if he had never walked the razor's edge with only these two friends to steady him and keep him on track, he would have volunteered in any case. For friendship's sake.

And when you got right down to basics, there was nothing else.

The bond of fellow warriors in an endless, losing battle, holding out against the overwhelming enemy until their luck and life at last ran out. They struck against the savages wherever and whenever possible. In the meantime they looked out for one another, for the families that waited, never really safe, behind the lines.

Because the goddamned battle lines were everywhere these days, and it could just as easily be Angelina out there in the darkness — had been Angelina, back in Pittsfield — and Leo knew that he could count on Hal or Bolan, if the world rolled over on him one day soon. They wouldn't let the wife and kids go hungry, wouldn't let them want for anything or fall into the hands of enemies.