Don Pendleton: Ripple Effect

Cocoa Beach, Florida

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, walked along a quiet, nearly vacant beach at sunrise. It was nearly vacant, since a beach bum and his lady had apparently camped out the night before, somehow avoiding the nocturnal beach patrol to plant their sleeping bags above the high-tide water-line. They were engrossed in each other as he passed, ignoring him, waking to yet another day of—what?

Good luck, he hoped, and wished them well.

A small crab scuttled out of Bolan’s path, chasing the white Atlantic surf as it retreated. In his short-sleeved shirt, Bolan was conscious of a chill wind off the ocean, but he trusted that the sun would warm him soon enough.

Right now, the chill felt good, a respite from the heat he knew was coming, guaranteed.

It was a rare day when he could escape the heat.

He’d spent the past two nights at the Wakulla Inn, taking a unit with a kitchen and more bedrooms than he needed, just to have the space. Two days of beachfront R and R had tanned him, while meandering along the main drag, two blocks from his pad, briefly immersed him in the tourist scene. He’d poked around Ron Jon’s and other surf shops, happily admiring the bikinis, scowling at the baby sharks and alligators slaughtered into knickknacks for the Yankee set.

And life went on.

But not for long.

That morning, he was meeting Hal Brognola, their connection arranged on Sunday evening via sat phone linkup from Stony Man Farm. Bolan hadn’t asked why Hal wanted to meet in Florida, instead of someplace close to Washington. It simply wasn’t done.

As luck would have it, he’d been passing through Atlanta with some time and narcotraffickers to kill, when Hal had buzzed him to request a face-to-face. They met in person six or seven times a year, on average, but usually in proximity to Wonderland, D.C., where the big Fed held down a desk at the Justice Department, six blocks from the White House.

Bolan had never seen Hal’s office. It would be a no-win situation, all around, since he had been America’s most-wanted fugitive—until his death, some years ago, in New York City. Now, with a new face and several identities to spare, he did the same things that he’d done before, but with the covert blessing of his Uncle Sam.

He felt relaxed, ready to roll on whatever assignment Brognola might have for him. He didn’t try to second-guess the man from Justice, having learned from long experience that it would be a futile exercise. Brognola would present the facts and arguments for intervention. Bolan had the option of refusing any job that went against his grain, in which case it would pass to other hands, but he had never exercised that right.

One reason: he and Hal were well attuned to life, society and the preventive maintenance required to keep America the beautiful from turning into something else entirely. Bolan respected the Constitution and the laws that guaranteed all citizens their civil rights, but there were times when something happened to the system and it didn’t work as planned.

Sometimes corruption was to blame, or loopholes in the law that might take years to plug, while predators took full advantage of the gaps to victimize the innocent and weak. At other times, the system’s built-in safeguards made the wheels of justice turn too slowly, costing lives and human misery before a verdict could be rendered, then appealed, then reaffirmed by higher courts.

Brognola found some of the targets for him. Bolan found some others on his own. Financing from the nerve center of operations came from covert budgetary pigeonholes, while Bolan’s pocket money often emanated from the predators themselves. He had no qualms about relieving drug dealers or loan sharks of their blood money, and if the scumbags suffered catastrophic injuries while he was taking out a loan, what of it?

There were always more scumbags in waiting, never any shortage in the world that Bolan had observed.

Downrange, he saw a solitary figure striding toward him, hands in pockets, a fedora planted squarely on its head. He couldn’t swear it was Brognola, but odds against a stranger showing up at the appointed time, in that getup, were next to nil.

Brognola called to him from fifty feet away. “Would you believe I’m on vacation?”

“Not a chance,” Bolan replied.

“Okay, you’re right. Let’s take a walk.”

They walked and talked. The basic pleasantries were brief, whatever passed for personal emotion understood between these battle-hardened warriors and beyond the reach of words. Despite a friendship so deep-seated that both took it rightfully for granted, they had business to discuss.

“Vacation,” Brognola mused. “Sure, I’ve heard of that.”

“You ought to try it,” Bolan said.

“Maybe next year. And look who’s talking.”

“I’ve just had two days.”

“That’s two in how damned long?”

“Who’s counting?” Bolan asked him.

“Right. Okay. So, what I’ve got is something sticky. It’s a problem that I can’t turn loose.”

“I’m listening.”

“What do you know about Guantanamo?”

“It’s ninety miles that way,” Bolan said, with a thumb jerk toward his shoulder. “Cuba. Big Marine base, captured from the Spanish back when Teddy Roosevelt was still a rough-rider. Maintained as U.S. territory since the Castro revolution, more or less to spite Fidel.”

“What else?” Brognola urged.

“Detention blocks for terrorists and terror suspects taken in Afghanistan, Iraq and who-knows-where.”

“Camp X-ray,” Brognola confirmed. “It’s part of why we’re here.”

“They need another sentry?” Bolan asked.

“I doubt it. Sentries they have plenty of. Also interrogators.” Bolan caught a faint tone of distaste in the big Fed’s voice, covered reasonably well. Both of them recognized that sometimes information had to be gathered swiftly, forcefully. And neither of them liked it one damned bit.

“Interrogators?” he reminded Brognola when silence stretched between them for the better part of a minute.

“Right. A few days back, one of the inmates tried to hang himself and botched it. They revived him, and decided he was worth a closer look. Why now, I’m guessing was the rationale. Why would this nobody, who claims he’s innocent, decide to off himself one afternoon for no apparent reason?”

“It’s a question,” Bolan said.

“And they got answers,” Brognola confided.

“Which involves us…how?”

“I guess you know the rule of thumb for suspects held since 9/11, right? Arrest a hundred, and you may get four or five who know a guy who knows a guy. Arrest a thousand, maybe you find one or two who are those guys. This guy who tried to lynch himself knows people. My guess, he got tired of sitting in his cell, ignored, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. He figured they’d be getting back to him, sooner or later, and he wanted to eliminate the chance of letting something slip.”

“Too bad for him he couldn’t do it right,” Bolan observed.

“Too bad for him, but maybe good for us.”

“How so?”

“Because he knows things,” Brognola said. “Not a major player, now, don’t get me wrong. His face isn’t on anybody’s deck of cards. They never heard of him at Langley, until three, four days ago. At least, they never really thought about him. Way down at the bottom of some list that gathered dust. No one you’d give the time of day. They might’ve turned him loose, another six months or a year, except for the attempted suicide.”

“But now he’s in the spotlight.”

“Sitting right there on the grill,” Brognola said. “Maybe you smell the smoke from here. And one way or another, they persuade this guy to spill his guts. Turns out, he’s been around and knows his way around. Hamas, al Qaeda, PLO—little Hasam Khaled’s got friends all over.”