Don Pendleton - Blood Testament

But he could not be sure until he was inside. Until he saw them for himself.

For now his target was the door, ten feet away. It was secured with double locks and opened on the living room — or so he had surmised without an opportunity to case the floor plans. The gunners would be concentrated there, and he would stand a sixty-forty chance of being riddled on the threshold if he moved too soon. It all came down to Bolan now, and while he waited, Hal prepared himself to do or die.

The Bulldog .44 had been reloaded after Arlington, and now its weight was reassuring in his fist, a tangible extension of his rage. The snubby .38 was in his other hand, a lighter weapon, every bit as deadly with its load of Glaser Safety Slugs. He would be forced to kick the door — the Glasers wouldn't penetrate — but with the anger and frustration churning in his stomach, Hal was certain that it wouldn't be a problem.

Getting in was easy. Getting out alive was something else again.

The animals inside were not the authors of his pain. They were performing under orders like attack dogs on the leash, and he would not be satisfied until he found their trainer, looked the bastard squarely in the eye and pushed a bullet through his guts. A Glaser, if he still had any left when he was finished here. If not... well, he would have to improvise.

Fifteen seconds later he had worked his way along the wall until he reached the porch, ignoring thorns that snagged his trench coat, plowing bloody furrows on his hands and wrists. The pain was nothing. His mind was on the mission... and what lay beyond.

Ten seconds, and he stood before the silent door with guns in hand, his pulse a numbing drumbeat in his ears. If Bolan was on schedule, he would be inside by now. If he had been delayed... then what? Then nothing, dammit. Hal was going in regardless, holding to the schedule that they had agreed upon.

He had not come this far, endured this much, to stall and blow the only fleeting chance that he might ever have. If there was any chance at all it lay within, and Hal was grabbing for it, reaching out to catch the lifeline that could save him yet — or, failing contact, that could pitch him into outer darkness, save him from the burning ache that had resided in his stomach since he walked into the empty cabin... how long ago?

It seemed like forever.

Whatever life was left for him lay inside, and he was only seconds away from a close encounter with his destiny.

Ten minutes come and gone without a call. Blake Lindsay checked his watch once more and muttered something unintelligible as he retrieved his mini-Uzi from the couch beside him.

Grymdyke must be fucking crazy to ignore the schedule as he had. It was unheard of leaving agents in the field without their orders, hanging on with hostages in tow and no idea of what was happening outside. Blake didn't give a damn about the drop at Arlington, whichever way it went, but he had been assured by Grymdyke — his control — that there would be a call no later than 1:30. It was now 1:43, and he could think of no excuse for stalling Gino and Carmine any longer. They were itching to be out of there, and he could not restrain them any longer. It was time to leave.

Another minute wouldn't hurt, he thought, and then decided against it. If Grymdyke had intended to make contact, he would certainly have called by now. His negligence was inexcusable, and Lindsay meant to take it up with his superiors unless he had a change of heart and dealt with Milo on his own.

It would be satisfying, but there were the realities of life within the Company to be considered. Protocol and channels, all that kind of bureaucratic bullshit. He had Grymdyke dead to rights, but there were ways and means of dealing with a drone who couldn't pull his weight. It wasn't like the old days when you took some bastard on an outing to the Everglades and left him there. Perhaps in Third World fields of operation, if you covered up your tracks, but these domestic jobs required a different level of finesse.

They weren't supposed to handle any jobs inside the United States, of course, but there was worlds of room between "supposed to" and reality. No bunch of Senate snoopers could prevent the Company from doing what it was designed to do: protecting the security of the United States. If they believed that all the enemies were on the outside, that the boys from Justice had domestic radicals in hand, well, they could think again. These days the FBI was busting more subversives in its own damned locker room than in the streets, and Lindsay was acquainted with the dangers that had long been overlooked, deliberately ignored.

He didn't know the rationale behind this thing with Hal Brognola — didn't need or want to know the motivation. It was adequate for him that someone up the ladder had identified a threat and chosen him to deal with it. The bastard must be dirty, or the Company would never have selected him for termination. As for rubbing out the wife and kiddies, well, like some renowned American had said, nits make lice. A traitor's brats would grow up pissing on America, bet your ass, and you could never nip the problem soon enough. If you could solve your problem with a swift preemptive strike, you never had to fret about the bastards sneaking up behind you later on.

Whatever Grymdyke might be up to, he had blown it, and it would be Lindsay's job to save the play. If Milo couldn't do his job, that didn't mean the operation had to fall apart. The Company was full of men who pulled their weight, and there was still room for advancement.

The thought of seeing Grymdyke busted — even terminated — for his failure to perform was satisfying. The idea of moving up to take his place beside the honchos at Clandestine Ops was something else entirely, something Lindsay had been playing with for longer than he could remember. Power came with rank, and if he played his cards right, starting now...

That was the problem. Starting now.

Disposal of the hostages had top priority. They had to go, and Lindsay didn't want to waste another minute with them at the safe house. They had been here too long already, and his scalp was tingling the way it did when danger was approaching, as it had before the ambush in Angola, or before the roof fell in around him in Nicaragua.

Time to move before the tingling got any worse. A few more moments, and it wouldn't matter; anyone who traced them could surround an empty house and blast away until the cows came home for all he cared.

He stood up, knee joints popping like two muffled pistol shots, and he suppressed a smile as his two accomplices jumped. They had been advertised as top professionals, but that was mafiosi for you. Stick a gun in some pathetic bastard's hand and let him drop some bozo on the street, they started calling him a soldier, like he'd been through Benning or the CIA academy. The average button man was long on muscle, short on brains, and these two most emphatically were no exceptions to the rule.

"It's time," he told them, reading the relief on both their faces. "Gino, bring them out."

"Awright."

A few more minutes and they would all be in the car and tooling out of there, en route to an abandoned auto graveyard that the Company maintained for such emergencies. The place had not done active business in a dozen years, but it maintained a working crusher and a furnace more than adequate to finish off the job. Brognola's wife and children would not simply disappear; they would have ceased, quite literally, to exist.

A few more minutes, and he had it made.

The only problem, if it was a problem, would be taking out the two torpedoes while their backs were turned. That made five bodies for the crusher, and Lindsay knew that he could do it standing on his head.