Blood Testament

18

Darkness and the ranks of gravestones seemed to stretch away forever, lost in murky shadow. Hal Brognola felt almost as if the dead were watching him, awaiting his reaction to their presence, looking for a signal that he understood them. At once he shrugged the morbid thought away as he realized that they were not deliberately spying on his grief. The dead knew nothing of his problems and if they had known, they probably would not have cared.

Before he reached the cemetery gates, Brognola pulled his four-door to the curb beneath some overhanging trees and doused the lights. He did not kill the engine, for he wasn't stopping long. If anyone was watching, he was banking on the fact that he was early to assuage their fears. They would believe that he was killing time, or having second thoughts about his mission, dawdling before he was committed irretrievably. With any luck at all, they would not understand that he was dropping off a passenger.

Behind him on the curb side, Bolan was already EVA before the car had come to a stop. Brognola scarcely heard him opening the off-side door and closing it again. They had removed the dome light prior to setting out, eliminating any chance that Bolan's move would be betrayed to watchers in the shadows.

Finished sooner than he had anticipated, Hal remained in place and counted down the fifteen seconds that had been allowed for his delivery of Bolan to the jump-off point. It was excessive, granted, but a rolling stop would probably arouse suspicions if his enemies were staking out the rendezvous, and he was not about to gamble with the calculated odds. Not when the lives of his wife and children were at stake.

The Executioner had chosen fifteen seconds as the optimum delay. It gave him ample time to clear the vehicle and find shelter in the shadows ringing Arlington. It also granted Hal the extra time he needed to apparently examine his dilemma, making up his mind. Another moment, and he would have drawn attention to himself; a moment less, and there would have been no apparent purpose for his pulling to the curb.

One down.

The other — Leo Turrin — would be riding with him to the drop. He was sequestered in the trunk, as comfortable as Hal could make him with a blanket folded up beneath him to provide some insulation from the road. The trunk lid was open far enough to let him breathe, secured in place by taut rubber fasteners that could be easily released. There was a possibility Brognola's contacts might wish to look inside the car, to make sure he had come alone as ordered, but the chance of anyone checking the trunk was remote. If their precautions took them that far, they would find themselves confronted by an Uzi primed and ready to dismantle anyone within effective range, and they would have a second, maybe less, to flip the mental coin and cast their vote for life and death.

Whichever way it went tonight, Brognola hoped that some of them would opt for life. He had no interest in the welfare of his enemies beyond a wish to see them all eternally consumed by hellfire, but he would require at least one prisoner to provide him with the information he required. The whereabouts of Helen and the kids, for openers. And after that...

So many questions, dammit, and he wondered whether there was enough time to answer all of them before he bought the farm. He needed names and motives, evidence to make it stand in court if it should go that far — but most of all he needed those infernal names. If he could finally identify the men responsible for the abduction of his family, then justice could proceed at once. Tonight. This instant.

Gianelli was involved, of course. If Hal had nurtured any doubts about the mafioso, they had been erased by the annihilation of DeVries. And yet there was the possibility — the probability — of other hands behind the move against his family, the frame so clumsily designed that it could only be a cover for some larger plan. It was the owner of those other hands whom Hal was anxious to meet in person. Only one of them could walk away from that encounter, and if neither walked away... well, then it might be worth it anyway. The flanking move was Bolan's brainchild, and Brognola had immediately seen its wisdom. Granted that the meet at Arlington would be an ambush rather than a swap of hostages, and assuming that the enemy would want the job done right, they would have snipers among the headstones, hidden in the trees, to catch him in a cross fire once he left the car. It would be Bolan's task to pick out the snipers and pick them off before they had a chance to do their job. In the alternative, he would be left to mop the place with their remains, exacting any vengeance that he could upon the stragglers in Brognola's name.

The gates were open — they were always open — and Brognola rolled on through, the ranks of silent dead surrounding him. He sought one special monument, the meeting place, and paid no mind to all the other fallen soldiers lying head-to-heel in midnight darkness. There was enough time to greet them later if he lost it, if his adversaries carried out their strike on schedule.

The Unknown Soldier had been waiting for him, patiently, secure within his stony anonymity. Brognola felt a kinship with the nameless dead, and wondered if his mind was slipping as he killed the headlights once again, allowed the car to coast the final twenty yards.

But no. The kinship did exist. He felt it in his gut, and wondered if the Executioner could feel it as he moved through the darkness, rigged out for doomsday and prepared for death. Lord knew that Bolan had much more in common with the unknown dead than Hal could ever have.

They were alike in many ways, these unacknowledged warriors. One had shed his life in open combat, stripped of his identity by hungry flames. The other lived, fought on, but he was relegated to a kind of limbo, publicly rejected by the nation he was serving with his blood and sweat.

And tears.

To hell with anyone who thought the guy was nothing more than some sophisticated death machine. Brognola knew the truth, had seen the soldier grieving for his dead — and for the living who were victimized from day to day. The warrior's sacrifice of self, of family and future was no accident. His choice had been deliberate, made with eyes wide open to the facts of life and sudden death. He knew precisely what was coming to him somewhere down the road, and yet the only fear he felt, the only fear he showed, was for the innocent who suffered at the hands of human savages.

Brognola killed the engine and spent a moment feeling for his weapons, making doubly certain that they would be there when he required them. Perspiration slicked his palms, and he wiped them on his trousers, leaving the keys in the ignition as he left the car.

You're too damned old for this, he told himself, and instantly he answered back; not yet.

Not while one man could make a difference in the world. Not while the lives of loved ones were at stake. The day a good man grew too old for fighting off the cannibals, he had grown too damned old to live.

Brognola circled toward the rear of the car, his knuckles trailing on the broad expanse of the trunk lid, tapping lightly twice, not loud enough for any sound to carry past the shadows of surrounding trees. He spoke no word, received no answer from within the trunk, but knew he had been heard and understood.

Whatever happened next, it was a free-for-all. There was no way to finally anticipate the enemy, prepare for every conceivable move. He would be forced to play the cards as they were dealt, and if he drew the ace of spades, the death card, then he still had Leo and Bolan to secure a prisoner, extract the vital information, do the best they could for Helen and his children.

Bolan wore the shadows like a cloak, allowed them to envelop him, insulating him from contact with the dead. There were no hostile ghosts among the fallen here, all soldiers of a common side, but he could not afford the time required for a communion with them now. He had a job to do, and it required his total concentration.

The fifteen-second lag time had permitted him to scale the cemetery wall and strike off toward the meeting point, alert to any sign of sentries as he moved through darkness toward the killing ground. Whoever had arranged the meeting with Brognola had not invested in perimeter security, and it might cost them in the long run. If they were counting on Brognola to keep the rendezvous alone, then they were starting at a disadvantage.

But he went in expecting treachery, convinced that Hal's opponents had no serious desire to talk with him. They were setting up an ambush. He had been convinced of it from the beginning, and the only problem still remaining was the length to which Hal's enemies had gone. How much more logical it would have been to follow him as they had clearly done for months, and fix some semblance of a workaday routine. So simple to prepare an ambush on his way to work, the drive back home, or any one of countless other stops Brognola made repeatedly throughout an average week.

The very complication of the present scheme — abduction of his family, with its attendant risks, the hackneyed midnight meeting in a graveyard — spoke to Bolan now of some other goal. And in the final moments of their drive to Arlington, the soldier felt that he had grasped some semblance of the answer.

Hal's opponents urgently desired his death, that much was clear. But they had never counted on his going to the meet alone. The hunters had been hoping for a pair of targets on the firing line, two victims for the price of one.

They had anticipated Bolan's urge to help a friend. Helen and the kids were bait not only for Brognola, but for Bolan... and the suck had worked. So far.

The Executioner did not object to playing out the prearranged scenario as long as he could add a few embellishments along the way. It might work out to everyone's advantage in the end, but his concern for Brognola's family still claimed top priority. Until they were recovered safely, or confirmed among the dead, he would proceed with the discretion of a surgeon doing delicate exploratory surgery. Once precious flesh was safe again, or finally sacrificed, he would be free to move against the dark malignancy with cleansing fire and steel.

If he could just identify the cancer first.

Smart money went on Gianelli as the front man, but there would be someone else behind him. The hint about Lee Farnsworth's old connections back at CIA had set the soldier thinking, but there was no time at present to assess the information. Bolan needed more, and now, three minutes from zero hour, he found it.

Sentry number one was huddled in the shadow of an oak tree, shifting nervously from foot to foot, the silenced Ingram MAC-10 submachine gun scarcely visible on rigging underneath his arm. His hands were empty for the moment, and he checked his watch compulsively at fifteen-second intervals.

Two minutes, thirty seconds, and the guy quit dancing, glanced around him at the darkness, finally deciding he was safe from observation. Bolan heard the zipper whisper open, watched him struggle with reluctant underwear shorts and listened to the raindrop patter of his urine as it hit the tree trunk. The soldier waited until he zippered up before he moved like silent death and closed one hand across the gunner's mouth and nose.

He twisted, raised the slim stiletto, pressed its needle point against the juncture of the sentry's skull and spine. He found the opening that Chinese call "the wind gate," penetrated, stirring briskly as he reached the brain. The sentry stiffened, loafers drumming briefly on the turf, and then became a lifeless weight in Bolan's arms.

He eased the dead man to a prone position, riffled through his pockets briefly, but found them empty. It was the identifying mark of a professional, discarding any traces of ID before a stand. He knew that if he searched the body further, he would find the clothing free of labels. The fingerprints might even have been surgically removed.

No matter. Bolan's interest in the sentry was distinctly limited, and he was satisfied with having cut the hostile odds a fraction, evening the score. There would be other gunmen waiting in the darkness, more professionals prepared to kill on order, and it would be Bolan's task to find as many of them as he could before Brognola sprang the trap.

Two minutes left.

Already he could hear Hal's car approaching in the middle distance, closing on the designated meeting place. Already he could see the Unknown Soldier's tomb, illuminated in the darkness like a guiding beacon.

Two minutes, and the sentry's death had taught him something else about their enemies. The gunner was not Gianelli's, and he had not been recruited off the streets with promises of easy cash for half an hour's wet work. He was — had been — a trained professional, a killer, and he had not drawn his paycheck from the Mob. That left a single, grim alternative, and Bolan bore it with him as he left the recent dead behind, moved out in search of other targets.

He was hunting now, alert to any sign or sound of human prey, aware that every gunner taken out before the battle increased the odds in favor of survival. For the Executioner. For Hal Brognola and his family and for Leo.

They needed every edge available, for Bolan had miscalculated in his reckoning of the potential force arrayed against them. Now he realized their enemy was anything but short on triggermen and hardware. He could field an army on a moment's notice, with no questions asked, no explanations offered. He could murder with impunity — or at the very least, with little cause for apprehension that he would be brought to book.

The risks were greater than he had anticipated, most especially for Hal Brognola, who had everything to lose. It might be physically impossible to bag a prisoner as Brognola had desired.

Indeed, they might be lucky if they got out of Arlington alive.

The smell of oil and rubber in the trunk assailed Leo Turrin's nostrils, but he didn't mind. The spare had been removed to give him room, and with the blanket that Brognola had provided as a sort of mattress, he was scarcely bruised at all. The Uzi reeked of cosmoline, but he drew comfort from the old familiar smell.

If Hal and Bolan were correct in their prediction of an ambush, Leo was a sitting duck inside the trunk. A single burst of automatic fire could turn his hiding place into a coffin; any spark produced by ricochets might set the fuel tank off beneath him, broiling him alive before he had a chance to pop the lid and make his break. It was a risk that had been weighed and analyzed before he had agreed to ride shotgun for Brognola — not that there had ever been the slightest doubt that he would come along. His closest friends were wagering their lives tonight, and he could no more take a sideline seat than he could voluntarily stop breathing.

Leo owed it to them both, for all the times Bolan or Brognola had been there to pull his fat out of the fire. But if his life had never been at risk, if he had never walked the razor's edge with only these two friends to steady him and keep him on track, he would have volunteered in any case. For friendship's sake.

And when you got right down to basics, there was nothing else.

The bond of fellow warriors in an endless, losing battle, holding out against the overwhelming enemy until their luck and life at last ran out. They struck against the savages wherever and whenever possible. In the meantime they looked out for one another, for the families that waited, never really safe, behind the lines.

Because the goddamned battle lines were everywhere these days, and it could just as easily be Angelina out there in the darkness — had been Angelina, back in Pittsfield — and Leo knew that he could count on Hal or Bolan, if the world rolled over on him one day soon. They wouldn't let the wife and kids go hungry, wouldn't let them want for anything or fall into the hands of enemies.

A soldier watched his buddy's back, and that was it. No need to ask for help or offer thanks to any of the living when the smoke had cleared. Tomorrow it could be someone else's world in jeopardy, and yesterday's potential victim would be riding with the cavalry again.

Inside the trunk he heard Brognola kill the engine. He felt Hal shifting in the driver's seat, imagined him as he went through the ritual of double-checking weapons, getting ready to go EVA against an unknown enemy. His door slammed, sent a tremor through the car and Leo felt himself begin to sweat.

Hal drummed his knuckles on the trunk, the sound reverberating hollowly, and Leo grimaced, feeling like a mouse inside a kettle drum. He heard Brognola's footsteps gradually receding on the pavement, finally lost, and Turrin wrapped one hand around the tight rubber bands that held down the trunk lid.

He had been told to wait for contact while Brognola scouted the territory, waiting for the enemy to show himself. If Hal and Bolan were mistaken, if the hostiles were sincere about exchanging Helen and the kids for information, it would go no farther; Hal had lists of phony names and numbers that would have the bastards chasing their tails for a month. But if the others were correct in their assumption of an ambush, if the gunners opened up on Hal from who knows where, it would be Leo's job to spring the trap and cover Hal's retreat, while Bolan flanked the enemy and hit them where they lived.

It had all sounded fine on paper in Brognola's living room. But it was dark outside, and there were God knew how many hiding places in the cemetery, any shadow adequate for lurking snipers who could drop Hal in his tracks. Snipers who could riddle Leo as he tried to scramble from the trunk, all knees and elbows in the crucial instant when surprise evaporated.

Leo was a goddamned sitting duck and didn't like the feeling, but at least he wasn't out there in the open with the cross-hairs planted on his face already. He found the Uzi's safety catch and eased it off, prepared to come out firing and to make the most of his advantage while it lasted.

If they didn't kill him first.

If someone didn't stitch the car with armor-piercing rounds and leave him leaking like a bag of mangled groceries in the trunk, or light him up with tracers in a flash of detonating fuel.

Too many ifs.

And it was too damned late, in any case. He was committed now whichever way it played. There was time to think of Bolan, wonder if the soldier was all right, if he had run afoul of roving sentries in the darkness. Then the sound of voices drifted to him from the outer darkness.

He could recognize Brognola's voice, but could not make out any of the words. The other voice was unfamiliar, and he didn't have a prayer of understanding anything the stranger said. He was about to ease the trunk lid open wider when the voices were eclipsed by sudden gunfire, the staccato yapping of an automatic pistol, answered by the booming echo of Brognola's Bulldog .44.

He ripped the taut elastic free and kicked the lid back, rolling clear before the enemy could swing around and bring him under fire. Already homing on the sound of gunshots, moving in a combat crouch, he held the Uzi primed and ready, eager for a target to present itself.

The shit was in the fan, and there was no safe way around it now that battle had been joined. As other weapons chimed in from the darkness, muzzle-flashes winking from the shadows, Turrin drew small consolation from the fact that they were fighting in a graveyard. If they lost it here, at least he would not have to travel far. With any luck, there might be room for one more soldier in the hallowed ground of Arlington.