Don Pendleton - Radical Edge

Bolan couldn’t, and never had, faulted any man or woman for not following the path he himself had chosen. Lesser men and women might wrongly conclude that this wasn’t a choice at all; that circumstance, and tragedy, had forced Bolan to do what he did, to fight as he fought. That, of course, was ridiculous. Most men, confronted with the deaths of those they loved, grieved and absorbed the tragedy, soldiered on as best they could in the most benign sense of the word.

The men and women of Stony Man Farm weren’t truly the exception, for deep down, Bolan believed every man and woman had the potential, and the desire, to fight for what he or she valued most. It was simply that the counterterrorists with whom Bolan worked were exceptional, and that was the best way to describe them.

He snapped open the replacement satellite phone that Grimaldi had loaned him. A brief update bar appeared and, when it finished scrolling, the phone’s screen indicated that its new code assignment was STRYKR2. Grimaldi and Price had wasted no time getting him back up and running.

As Bolan watched, the send-receive icon started to blink. Data files began coming in, automatically shunted to a folder on the phone’s desktop, the wallpaper of which was still a graphic of Grimaldi’s choosing: a buxom woman in a red-white-and-blue bathing suit. Despite the grim scenario he faced, Bolan found himself smiling. Some things, he reflected, never changed. Jack Grimaldi was a constant in the universe.

Bolan supposed he was, too.

There were worse things to be.

The data files contained everything the Farm had managed to gather so far on the OPP hijacking. A complete map of the route the train was supposed to take, as well as an overlay indicating the route the Twelfth Reich terrorists intended to use, was included. Bolan called up several photographs taken of the migrant work camp, some of which were overhead shots, obviously taken by satellite. Others were news photographs taken when the camp was first established. Scans of those articles and wire releases were included.

While Grimaldi flew them to the target zone, Bolan read through each file. He never missed an opportunity to familiarize himself with data the Farm supplied. The war he fought wasn’t merely a conflict of guns and explosives, of tooth and claw and steel and fire. It was just as much a game of intelligence. There was no way to tell when a discrete piece of data might provide a crucial, missing puzzle piece; no way to predict when a seemingly unimportant bit of information would help him achieve his short- and long-term combat goals. Whenever possible, he assimilated, and committed to memory, as much of the Farm’s analysis and data as he could.

The schematics for the train and, more importantly, the armored passenger unit, were included. These were of specific interest because of the challenge they represented. He would have to find a way to free the hostages, but depending on the battlefield conditions he faced, would have to do that without killing the very people he was trying to save.

The plans had been sent by OPP. Barbara Price had appended notes to the files, adding that the management of the petroleum prospecting company was apoplectic over this latest turn of events. Bolan thought it bitterly ironic that the very precautions OPP had tried to take to safeguard its personnel—at great expense in customizing an already state-of-the-art train—had made it possible for the hostage situation to come about.

Standard procedure, were the hostages under the direct sway of the terrorists, would be to treat them as already dead, or at least potentially so. As harsh as that might seem to the uninitiated, it actually increased the array of options available for counterterror response. An operation planned with that cold, hard fact as its premise could focus on the most expedient method for neutralizing the terrorists, taking into account the possible rescue of innocents. Once the threat was resolved, any hostages rescued alive would be a bonus.

In the case of the OPP train, the hostages were confirmed alive and likely to remain so. While Hyde and his skinhead scum were doubtless angry to be cut off from their victims, the presence of the OPP employees was serving the same purpose from the terrorists’ perspective. In point of fact, the reality of the train’s passenger compartment served Hyde better than if he had guns to the hostages’ heads. Force response to the hijacking had to take into account the fact that the employees were thus far unharmed and could be released if the train was taken intact. Any action that might damage the train and kill the hostages would be deemed unacceptable…unless and until the conscious, deliberate decision was made to sacrifice those men and women.

Bolan would do whatever was in his power to prevent that from happening. Innocents didn’t die on his watch; not if he could help it. That didn’t mean that bystanders and allies, friends and loved ones, the innocent and the guilty alike, hadn’t died before him and beside him.

He had learned hard lessons; he had made hard choices. More would lie before him before the mission was done.

His thoughts returned to the assault on the second safe house. Knowing who they faced, or why—that was the most challenging aspect of the current hunt. Quantified, defined problems, even big ones, were easy enough to solve, either with force, intelligence, or both. The unknown…that couldn’t be resolved until it was faced, and rarely could it be faced until it was defined.

So. That was the question.

Who did he face, and why?

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