Don Pendleton: Radical Edge

“That sounds thin, Hal.”

“That’s because that’s not all there is to it,” Brognola said. “The Bureau had a special team on this, not long after the intelligence community started getting wind of Twelfth Reich as a cohesive organization. They put an undercover group on it, three trained operatives. But something went wrong. Two of them never came back. The third lived but, like his fellow agents, he lost his family. Hyde’s people are believed to be behind the arson deaths of seven civilians, all told. They staged simultaneous raids on the agents’ homes, duct-taped whoever they found inside and burned them alive.”

Bolan said nothing for a long moment. Finally, he spoke. “The survivor?”

“Beaten, maimed and left for dead,” Brognola said. “At last word, he was living in an assisted-care facility in San Diego. We believe one of the three agents was tortured badly enough to give up the other two. The corpse’s fingernails and teeth had been removed.”

“Yeah,” Bolan said. He had seen it done, seen the aftermath of such barbarity, more than once.

“After the disaster,” Brognola explained, “the investigation stalled. Any information the agents might have gathered undercover was lost with them. The survivor, Agent Russell Troy, couldn’t or wouldn’t talk about it. I’m told he was catatonic for a while. Whatever the reasons, nothing solid on Hyde or his fellow race cultists was produced. Various agencies here and abroad have tried since. Interpol would love to get their hands on Hyde, too, because we’ve traced him to several trips abroad. He is believed to be spearheading a push for renewed racist violence in Europe, and may well be the man behind three different separatist cells. We know he’s been linked to the terrorist group Ausländer Toten, half a dozen of whom were caught with the components of a Russian military surplus nuke in Berlin three weeks ago.”

“So Hyde has his claws in a lot of pies,” Bolan said. “How do we know? If we can’t get anything on him officially, where’s this intel coming from?”

“Largely through the efforts of Bear and his people,” Brognola said, referring to Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, head of Stony Man Farm’s computer team. “He’s tweaked the internet chatter algorithms we use to screen sensitive and secure or encrypted data traffic. In its infancy it was part of the old Carnivore program that most of the public has heard about. In reality, it’s worlds more advanced.”

“But what it gives you isn’t legally actionable,” Bolan said.

“No,” Brognola admitted. “Not even a little. Which is where you come in, Striker.”

“You had my attention at ‘animals.’”

“Twelfth Reich hasn’t yet publicly claimed responsibility for what is now a series of increasingly deadly terrorist attacks. Most of these have been covered up, described as gang killings or the results of failed drug deals, that sort of thing. The hope was to prevent a national panic should the extent of Twelfth Reich’s involvement at the national level—and its body count—come to light. But Bear and his team have intercepted communications from Twelfth Reich cells that tell us something big is coming. We think they’re getting ready to announce themselves publicly. There’ll be no ignoring them when they do.”

“Which means you’ll have a domestically produced al Qaeda on your hands,” Bolan surmised.

“Exactly,” Brognola said. “Imagine the damage it would do to public confidence in the government, and in Homeland Security, if we can’t stop this before it reaches that point. Twelfth Reich strikes conducted multiple times per month, even per week, with sympathetic media outlets serving as mouthpieces for the terrorists. We’ll lose control of the playing field, Striker. We’ll be on the defensive, reacting instead of intercepting. Once we start down that slope we’ve got nowhere to go but utter failure.”

“You really think it will get that bad?”

“I do. Hyde is laying the groundwork with certain talk show figures and journalists he believes are receptive to his message,” Brognola said. “Bear brought us the raw feeds, tied to his keyword sweeps across the web, but to their credit, most of the media figures contacted thus far have since reported the solicitations to the authorities. We’re sitting on them, for now. We don’t want Hyde to know that we know.”

“What do you want me to do?” Bolan asked.

“The Farm has compiled, leveraging the Bureau’s past intelligence, a priority list of targets for you. Some of them are places we think Hyde may go to ground. Others are potential targets. We’ve isolated two of the former, a pair of safe houses located very close to each other in New Mexico, as Priority Alpha. One of these is Shane Hyde’s most likely base of operations. We want you to hit them both, and we want you to find Hyde.”

“Find and eliminate?”

“No,” Brognola said. “That’s the problem. He has intelligence that could put us ahead of the terrorist networks in Europe. We need to know what’s inside his brain. We need you to take him alive.”

Bolan considered that for a moment. “That’s not going to be easy.”

“I know, Striker,” Brognola said. “There are few men I would ask even to try. But we need him breathing and able to tell us what he knows. The Man is getting a lot of pressure from agencies here and abroad. Strings were pulled to make sure we’re on point in this, which means we’re running interference with the National Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security and the FBI to keep them out of the mix.”

“They don’t like not knowing who’s handling it,” Bolan offered.

“Yes,” Brognola said. “It’s our job now, but there are plenty of people who’d like to take it from us. The Man himself was very clear about this. The President needs this problem resolved before it starts to seriously hinder his credibility with the international law-enforcement community.”

“The logical thing to do,” Bolan said, “would be to send blacksuits to each target. Simultaneously.”

“I can’t give the order not to fire on Shane Hyde to that many men,” Brognola said. “They’ll be walking in there with their hands tied behind their backs. They’ll either hold off too long and get shot up, or they’ll be too quick to fire, and a stray bullet or a miscalculated shot will take Hyde out for good. There’s also the fact that we need to do this more or less discreetly because we’re doing it extralegally. We don’t have enough hard evidence on Hyde and Twelfth Reich, not to justify an operation as decisive as this. We’ve been ordered to cut out a cancer. I need a surgeon. I need you, Striker.”

“Understood,” Bolan said. “What about support?”

“We may be able to draw a certain amount of backup from DHS or the Bureau,” Brognola said. “It will mean admitting that Justice is in charge, which will get my phone ringing. That’s nothing I’m not used to doing whenever you’re in the field. But again, discretion is called for…if not simply because the Man needs this done quickly and quietly.”

“Or he looks as if he’s not in control of the situation,” Bolan said.

“Exactly.”

“And if I don’t find Hyde at this Priority Alpha? Follow-up is going to have to be fast, Hal, if I can’t count on simultaneous containment. Frontal, hard assault will get Hyde’s attention. When word gets out that I’m rattling cages, he and his men will hunt for cover and dig in. I’ll have to run them down site to site.”

“I know,” Brognola said. “I’m transmitting files to your phone now. Jack has orders to report to your location. He’ll bring suitable transportation, something fast with decent range.”