Don Pendleton - Blood Testament

"That's easily said."

"We didn't walk in here to make a human sacrifice. If that was it, you could have shot yourself before we left the house."

"Don't rub it in."

"Can you stand up on that?"

"I'd damn well better."

Bolan had the wounded warrior halfway to his feet when Hal Brognola's voice arrested both of them.

"Goddammit! Here! I know this guy!"

The others were beside him in a moment, Bolan serving as a crutch for Leo, who favored his belted, bloodied leg. Brognola grimaced at the sight.

"Are you okay?"

Leo's smile was forced. "I'm canceling my polka lesson for tonight. You make this dude?"

The question brought him back to the immediate priority.

"It's been a year or so," he told them both. "The name was Smith or Jones or some such throwaway. He worked for Milo Grymdyke."

"Ah."

The sound escaped from Turrin almost as a whisper, and Brognola couldn't tell if it had been inspired by pain or recognition.

"So, who's Grymdyke?" Bolan asked.

Brognola fielded it. "He's CIA. Clandestine Ops. I don't know what he's doing now, but he was handling the foreign wet work back when Farnsworth was around."

"I'd say he's gone domestic," Bolan offered, tight-lipped.

"Yeah."

"Where do I find him?"

"This one's mine," Brognola snapped. "I'll handle Grymdyke."

"Leo needs a doctor. Now."

"All right. I'll drop you at your car and you can run him by emergency receiving."

"Put it on the other foot. If Grymdyke gives his sponsors up, there won't be any time to waste."

"Time's all I've got," Brognola answered bitterly. "We blew it."

"Did we?"

"Look around you, dammit! Do you notice any walking wounded here? Somebody's waiting for a callback, and the frigging telephone is never going to ring." He felt the tears beginning in his voice and bit them back. "It's over, all except for mopping up."

"And if it's not? If there's a chance, however slim?" The soldier didn't waste his breath on phony reassurances. "I'll step aside if you say you can handle it alone."

The tears were in his eyes now, blinding him.

"God damn it."

"Let's get Leo in the car."

Brognola took his wounded comrade's other arm around his shoulders, helped him back to the sedan. When he was safely stowed in back, Hal slid behind the wheel with Bolan riding shotgun on his right.

"You handle it," he said when they were rolling, and the taste of shame was bitter on his tongue. "I'm out."

"The hell you are. I've never seen you quit before."

"You've never seen me throw it all away before."

"So is this where you write them off?"

"You're acting like I have an option." They were rolling toward a stoplight and he punched on through the red, ignoring horns and screeching brakes on either side. "I fucked it up, or else we all did. Either way, it's done."

"You're wrong. There's still a chance, and if we blew it, then the play's not over till you make things right."

Brognola made a sour face. He knew that things would never be quite right again.

And Bolan would not let him rest.

"Where can I get in touch with Grymdyke?"

"Last I heard he had a place in Alexandria, not far from Langley."

He was startled to recall the address with crystal clarity, the sort of trivia a tortured mind can vomit up in times of desperation. Hal repeated it for Bolan, listened as the soldier played it back.

"That's him. Assuming that he hasn't moved."

Assuming that the front man he had wasted back at Arlington had not been working on his own.

Assuming any one of half a dozen different scenarios that might make chasing Milo Grymdyke a colossal waste of time.

But they had time now, he remembered. There was no more need for haste. They had already crossed the deadline, fumbled in the end zone, trashed the play beyond repair. It didn't matter if he had to follow Grymdyke to Afghanistan and back. Brognola had the kind of time that men alone possess, free time in such abundance that it gradually crushes them beneath its weight.

He could not make himself believe that there was any hope. It would accomplish nothing, holding on to phantoms while the living still required assistance. Leo's blood was soaking through the seat, and Hal could not ignore the sacrifice his friend had made in the attempt to win his wife and children back.

He concentrated on the next light, and the next one after that, intent on dropping Bolan at his car before proceeding on with Leo to emergency. There would be police and questions to be answered, once the doctors got a look at Leo's leg, but that was fine. Hal had the time for questions now and there might even be some answers waiting for him.

God knew there was nothing else ahead of him but empty nights and hollow days, beset with memories of faces he would never see and voices he would never hear again except in dreams.

In nightmares.

He could hear them now, and they were whispering embittered accusations, carping on his failure. They had every right and he did nothing to evade them, taking all of it inside and nurturing his shame.

He had a single reason left to live, and that lay in the hope that Bolan might allow some stragglers to survive. There was a chance that one or two of Hal's tormentors might escape the cleansing fire, and he would have a reason to continue living while they lived, committed to extermination of the animals who had already torn his world apart.

When they were finished he would have to find another motive for survival, or surrender to the darkness that surrounded him already. For now, it was enough to concentrate on traffic, on the winking lights and on his pain.

He had sufficient time for any tasks that still remained unfinished, and there would be pain enough, he knew, to see him through his days.

Cameron Cartwright set the telephone receiver in its cradle, swallowing an urge to rip it free and fling it through the nearest open window. Years of playing cloak-and-dagger had prepared him to control his own emotions, and no hint of strain showed through the passive poker face. For all the outward evidence he might have just received a bulletin about the next week's weather. An astute observer might have marked the concentration lines that formed between the salt-and-pepper eyebrows, indicating that the man from the CIA was lost in thought. But none would have surmised the sharp anxiety, the brooding anger that was building inside of him.

When Cartwright lost control — say, once a decade — he was careful to surround himself with solitude before the fact. It was incongruous, this preparation for a tantrum with meticulous attention to detail, but perfectionism was his trademark, and he could not let it go this late in life. Routine was part and parcel of his life, although clandestine warriors theoretically abhorred the semblance of a pattern in their daily lives. It had been years since Cartwright worked the field, and if he seemed to have gone soft with age, with his advancement up the ladder of the Agency's command, there was a frame of steel still hidden underneath the middle-aged upholstery.

He was adept at dealing with disaster, fielding crises that might break a lesser man, but there were limits even so. His shoulders might be broad, but he was growing tired of carrying the world upon them, bearing burdens that should rightfully have fallen onto others.

Nicky Gianelli was a constant thorn in Cartwright's side, the more so since he had conceived his master stratagem for dropping Bolan and Brognola with a single stroke. No matter that the two of them were strictly Nicky's problem, he had asked for help — demanded help — and there had been no graceful way for Cameron to disengage. As long as Gianelli had those files he would be in the driver's seat, and Cartwright's only hope was to survive the bumpy ride with life and limb intact.