Don Pendleton - Blood Testament

And while her background had prepared her to believe in miracles, tonight Helen Brognola knew that she was on her own.

"They're still inside?"

Brognola's voice was strained, almost inaudible, and he was winded from the final sprint that had delivered him to Bolan's side. They looked away, his eyes returning to the lighted windows of the safe house.

"Could be they're waiting for a call."

"From Grymdyke?"

Bolan shrugged. "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."

"If they're alive..."

"Not now."

Brognola got the message and nodded solemnly. "How do we play it?"

"You stake out the front. I'll take the rear approach."

"All right." He had begun to move when Hal reached out to place a warm hand on his shoulder. "Hey... and thanks, you know?"

He knew, damn right, and he could read the questions, the accumulated pain engraved across Brognola's face. He knew precisely what the Fed was going through, and with that knowledge came the certainty that there was nothing he could do to make it any easier.

If Hal's wife and children were still alive, against all odds, they had a chance. If someone in the crew had gotten antsy and snuffed them in the safe house in defiance of established rules, then there was still the matter of exacting vengeance. Either way it all boiled down to chance and opportunity, the factors that no soldier on the firing line could possibly control.

The drive from Alexandria had taken twenty-seven minutes, and he had been on the scene another three before Brognola showed. He would have moved without the Fed, but there were angles of attack to be computed, odds against survival to be weighed and finally discarded. Anyone who blundered blind and ignorant into an established hardset was asking to be killed, and while the Executioner had long abandoned any lasting fear of death, he did not plan to throw his life away on futile gestures, either.

If he could not readily identify the enemy or count the hostile guns inside, at least he could attempt to chart the layout of the safe house: doors and windows, rooms accessible from the exterior, the likely fields of fire inside and out.

If he could not protect the hostages, he could try at least to minimize their risks. Provided they were still alive, of course. Provided that the gunners were not primed to wipe them out at the first sign of interference. If the hostages were covered or if the safe house had been wired to self-destruct, then they were beaten going in.

Which did not abrogate the Executioner's responsibility.

No way.

He had a job to do, for his closest friend and his family... and for himself. The savages inside that safe house needed to be taught that there was no place safe on earth for animals who violated families. They needed a reminder that the abstract justice they had learned about in school was still alive and well, if not precisely obvious in day-to-day existence on the streets. There was a price to pay for every crime, a consequence for every violation of the laws men had erected to preserve a civilized society. And if the courts had fallen on hard times, if judges and DAs appeared unable to enforce those laws across the board, the job might fall to others.

To an Executioner.

He slid through the darkness like a living shadow, circling the house, keeping to the trees and hedges, using up a precious minute on his circuit of the killing ground. The house was small, a single-story number with apparent bedroom windows boarded over in the rear. The hostages would be sequestered there, but Bolan dared not go for them directly. He would have to take the gunners first, eliminate the threat before he turned to scan the house for survivors. When the savages were taken care of, when their lesson had been learned, there would be time for toting up the gains and losses.

He found a door that opened on the little combination kitchen-dining room and risked a glance through windows that had not been washed in years. There was no sign of life inside the darkened room, but he caught a hint of shadowed movement through a doorway leading to the living room beyond. If they were concentrated there, he had an opportunity to take them unaware and nail them down before they could react against the hostages.

He worked a thin stiletto along the door jamb, raised the screen door's latch and held his breath against the possibility of rusty, squeaking hinges. When the door swung back without a sound, he used one knee to hold it open, concentrating on the dead bolt that secured the kitchen door in place. It took a moment, but his pick eventually overcame the tumblers and he eased the door ajar, prepared for any challenge from the darkness, any sound that might betray an enemy within.

He stood inside the kitchen with the silver Lawgleg in his hand, the smell of dust and ancient Pinesol in his nostrils. It was time for thunder, and he left the sleek Beretta in its armpit sheath as backup to the heavy .44 AutoMag in his fist. The soldier had already milked surprise for all that it was worth; when he emerged to face the enemy, he wanted them to hear his thunder, smell the gun smoke that accompanied cleansing flames.

And it was down to seconds now, a span of heartbeats, waiting for Brognola to complete his move and find a suitable position in the front. He heard the doomsday numbers falling in his head and knew that soon he would be forced to move, regardless of Brognola's readiness. Before the gunners panicked and decided to proceed without a call. Before one of them started getting hungry and emerged to fix himself a snack.

Before it was too late for all concerned.

Outside, Brognola pressed himself against the wall surrounded by the thorny hedges that had sheltered his approach. Thick drapes were drawn across the picture window to his left, preventing any glimpses inside the safe house or learning anything of Helen and the kids. They must be still inside, he guessed; the cleanup crew would not be here unless they still had work to do.

But were the hostages alive?

It violated every regulation in the nonexistent book for gunners to eliminate their marks inside a safe house. Still, things happened in the field that could not be anticipated in an office. Not in Langley, not in Washington, not even in the White House. Circumstances altered cases, and he knew the gunners must be itchy now, aware that they were running overtime. They would be anxious to evacuate the premises, and carrying a body would be easier than shepherding a hostage any day.

The man from Justice made his mind a blank, deliberately expunging visions of his wife and children stretched out on the floor inside, already zippered into body bags or wrapped in plastic shower curtains for the ride to an incinerator or construction site where they would simply disappear. The Company was good at working disappearances, although its paid magicians usually practiced out of country. So there was all the more incentive to see the job behind them before somebody dropped a wrench into the works. If they were taken in the midst of pulling down domestic violence, if the slightest hint should find its way to the Senate oversight committees, all concerned were in the soup. They didn't need that kind of heat at Langley, and Clandestine Ops would move the earth to keep it quiet.

Brognola's mission, failing to secure Helen and the children, would be simply to ensure that all involved — survivors, anyway — were treated to a dose of grand publicity. He thought of Susan Landry, other contacts he had cultivated in the media, in Congress, and he knew that he could pull it off.

Unless he bought the farm right now.

Survival was the first priority, at least until he was convinced that he had come too late for his family. If he came too late to save them, then survival paled beside the grim priority of personal revenge.