Don Pendleton: Blood Testament

She pushed the lurid images away and thought of Hal, alone and doubtless distraught in their empty cabin. Helen knew that underneath the gruff exterior, her husband was a man of feeling and emotion. Any danger to his family would torment Hal; his inability to move at once, to strike against the perpetrators would grate on his nerves. He would obey the blond's command, she knew, because he had no immediate alternative. As long as there was any chance at all of a negotiation, Hal would hold himself in check. But if the talks broke down, if he perceived that she or either of the children had been harmed...

What would he do?

What could he do?

They were alone, and each of them would have to watch for opportunities as they arose. A chance to summon help, alert the outside world to their predicament. An opportunity to seize a weapon and... And what?

When Hal was working with the Marshal's Service years before, he had instructed Helen in the use of simple firearms, and the automatic weapons of their captors could not be so very different. The problem, then, would not be capability; it would be opportunity, together with the risks involved. If she was able to secure a weapon, train it on her captors, would she have the nerve to kill? And would the very effort doom her children?

No matter.

For the moment, they were waiting on a call to Washington, eight hours down the road. They would be safe until that time, she told herself, because their captors would need evidence that they were still alive. Hal wouldn't buy the bland assurances of faceless men; he would demand to speak with one or all of them before he made another move.

Eight hours, then. And after that?

She couldn't see that far, and speculation was a waste of time. She would be needing all her energy, her wits, to watch and wait for the slightest opportunity that might present itself. Secure that she would recognize the moment when it came, she settled back to wait. And thought of Hal.

The voice on the phone came back to haunt Brognola.

"I want you back in Washington and at your desk at noon today."

No problem there. It was an easy drive, and while most offices were closed on Saturday, there was a weekend crew at Justice, handling the calls that never seemed to stop at five o'clock on Friday afternoon. His presence might occasion some surprise, but it was not unheard of for the boss to work on Saturday.

"Just save the hero bullshit for the movies, okay?"

The warning was unnecessary. Ignorant of their identity, their numbers and their whereabouts, Brognola had no way of striking at his enemies. Two men, at least. There had been different voices on the phone each time, but he was in the dark regarding any other substantial clues. Incoming calls, if dialed direct, would prove impossible to trace, and he could not conceive of the abductors asking for assistance from an operator. Worse, the futile effort would require assistance from the Bureau, with its agents and computers. He was not prepared to make his problem public yet, not with the three lives dearest to him riding on the line. Perhaps after he had been in touch with the abductors again, determined what they wanted from him, he would take the chance.

And, then again, perhaps he wouldn't.

He would not do anything to risk his wife and children, certainly, but if an opportunity arose once they were free — or if he should suspect that they had been disposed of by the bastards who had carried them away — there might be something he could do to even up the score. It had been years since he had dropped the hammer on a human target, but you never really lost the touch. It was like swimming, pedaling a bike, or reaching for your woman in the middle of the night. A reflex, backed by years of practical experience, indelibly imprinted upon the brain.

And he would kill with relish if the members of his family were harmed. He would pursue the bastards tirelessly, relentlessly, until he had an opportunity to watch the spark of life wink out behind their eyes, extinguished by his hand.

If it should come to that.

But first he had to sleep.

It was incongruous, but Hal would need his strength, his faculties at noon when the abductors called him back in Washington. Four hours to go, five at the outside, before he had to leave again. Enough time to replenish his fading energy reserve, provided he could sleep at all.

The empty rooms around him seemed to whisper Helen's name, to ring with laughter from the children in their younger days. Aware that he might never see his family alive again, Brognola welcomed lighter memories, of birthdays, high school proms and graduations, weekends at the lake-shore.

Weekends...

Somewhere in the midst of a dream of courting Helen, he was suddenly awakened by the shrilling telephone. Immediately terrified that he had somehow overslept, had missed the noontime rendezvous, Brognola checked his watch and found that it was barely 6:00 a.m. Outside, the pearly light of dawn was filtering through ground fog that had twined itself around the trees.

He fumbled for the receiver, brought it to his ear.

"Brognola."

"Chatsworth, here."

He recognized the voice of his direct liaison with the Oval Office, puzzled by the hour and the call itself. No one had ever phoned him at the cabin, and Chatsworth rarely called at all these days, since the debacle with the CIA at Stony Man.

"What is it?"

"Sorry for the wake-up call." But Chatsworth's tone informed Brognola that he wasn't sorry in the least. "The Man desires your presence. Ten o'clock all right with you?"

It hadn't really been a question, and Brognola didn't bother with an answer.

"What's the flap?" he asked.

"I couldn't say."

Or wouldn't. Either one might be the truth. Brognola never really knew how much the President confided in his aide.

"Okay. I'll see you then."

He replaced the receiver swiftly, beating Chatsworth to the punch by maybe half a second, satisfied with the petty victory. The two of them would scarcely pass for friends, Brognola viewing Chatsworth as a combination hatchet man and gopher, Chatsworth doubtless viewing him as something of a bureaucratic drone. But they were not required to love each other. Chatsworth was a fact of life at least until the next election, and Brognola frankly didn't give a damn about the guy this morning. He had other things in mind.

The summons back to Wonderland eliminated any thought of sleep. In any case, his nerves were strung too tightly now for relaxation to become reality. The drive would do him good, providing him with time to think, uninterrupted, and devise a course of action for the retrieval of his family.

For now the presidential summons was an inconvenience, threatening to blow his schedule and prevent him from receiving what could be the most important phone call of his life. Brognola was determined to be at his desk by noon, no matter if he had to fake a coronary and leave the Oval Office on a stretcher. He doubted it would come to that. The President was busy seven days a week, and he could scarcely spare two hours for a confab with the man from Justice.

Still, the summons on a Saturday was strange. He wondered if the President had somehow learned of his predicament, then decided that it was impossible and instantly vowed to preserve the secret. Theoretically possessed of sweeping powers, there was nothing that America's Chief Executive could do to help him at the present time. If federal officers were mobilized before he knew what the abductors had in mind, Brognola ran the risk of losing everything. A hasty move against the enemy would doom his family, and he was not about to waste their lives in pursuit of reckless vengeance.

There would be enough time to even up the score when they were safe.