sale of a military or intelligence secret in times of peace can have only one result: to push a precariously balanced world that much closer to war and holocaust.
It was a direct subversion of a carefully created and mutually acceptable system of checks and balances, a subversion that could turn tension into violence.
Bolan had learned again and again that too often the right weapon in the wrong hand added up to bloodshed.
It was the terrorists who pulled the triggers. But it was the Frederick Charons and the Sir Philip Drummonds of the world who put the guns in the jackals hands.
Bolan got out a cigarette and lit a match one-handed. He hoped the smoke would clear the sour taste from his mouth.
Voorhis appeared at the corner of the hallway. 'Communication from Washington, Colonel. Follow me, please.' The room into which Voorhis led him contained a wooden desk with a chair and nothing else. In the exact center of the desk was a telephone.
Voorhis nodded in its direction and went out, shutting the door behind him.
Bolan picked up the handset. For several seconds there was a hash of electronic squeals and bursts of static, indicating that a scrambler was interfacing with the line. Then a deep familiar voice said, 'Striker.'
'Go ahead, Hal.'
The satellite-transmitted voice of head fed Harold Brognola was thin and tinny, but the anxiety in its tone came through five-by. 'What happened?'
'You've already checked that out, Hal,' Bolan said patiently.
'Sure. An accident, they said.'
'That's what it was. It happens that way in real life sometimes, Hal, no matter how clean you lay it out. I'll be all right. Give it time.'
'Sure, Striker,' Brognola said quickly. 'With Frederick Donald Charon and Sir Philip Drummond neutralized, you're on R and R as of right now.' Brognola paused, and the static rose up to fill the silence. But the message in Brognola's tone was as clear as if he had gone on talking. Mack Bolan had not lived this long by betting his life on other men, unless he felt he knew them damned well. But he had bet his life on Hal Brognola more than once, because that man he knew like his own brother. Right now, that knowledge told the wounded warrior what Brognola had not: Time had just run out. R and R was bullshit.
'Something has broken, hasn't it, Hal?'
'What about Charon?' Brognola asked, evading the question.
'He's agreed to talk. The computer boys are debriefing him right now. Aaron should have everything he needs to tap into the DonCo mainframe. The station here will send via scrambled telex within the hour.'
'Aaron is standing by,' Brognola said. 'And he ought to be able to find enough bloody fingerprints in Charon's data banks to put the guy on ice for a long time. That's one leak plugged.' Brognola sighed. 'And two more are probably springing open as we're talking.'
'We'll plug them as we find them, Hal,' Bolan replied evenly. This man who had pledged his being to the good fight had long ago accepted the basic facts of life. Sure, the terrorist campaigns comprised a war of containment, a constant battle to beat down the brush fires of armed aggression whenever and wherever they flared. But it was spontaneous combustion, and it would go on forever, or until men no longer tried to dominate other men through intimidation, repression, terror. It was war everlasting, war that might never be won.
But Bolan knew it was worth the fight.
'Something else has broken, Hal,' Bolan repeated. 'I want to know what it is.' Static crackled again, long enough to allow Bolan to get a cigarette lit.
This hesitation was characteristic of the Justice Department Fed. Hal Brognola was no by-the-book bureaucrat by any means, but a lifetime in government service molds a man, for sure, and he had never been entirely comfortable with Mack Bolan's free-lance status. As early as the Miami blitz against the Cosa Nostra, Brognola had extended a clandestine olive branch, what amounted to an official hunting license with the condition that the Executioner answer to, and take orders from, Justice. Bolan had refused. He wanted no sanction; in fact, he plainly acknowledged that by every rule of society he was an outlaw. The cop in Hal Brognola knew this as well.
But the patriot in him knew that Bolan was getting results. The Mafia was falling over like so many ducks in a carnival shooting gallery, and the nation Brognola was sworn to protect was growing stronger daily for the Executioner's efforts.
In the end, Brognola and Bolan struck a compromise. The new war against terrorism was too broad, too awesome, and too great a threat to the future of this globe. No one man could take it on alone, but if one man existed who could spearhead the campaign, that man was Mack Bolan. When the complete backing of the Sensitive Operations Group of the Department of Justice were offered, Bolan accepted.
With conditions.
The Stony Man Farm command complex, nestled in the shadow of Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains, was Bolan's domain. The Stony Man team — April Rose, Aaron Kurtzman, Able Team, Phoenix Force, and all the rest of them — were his people, personally hand-picked, answerable to no one but him. Bolan would operate as he always had.
With responsibility. And with direct and effective action. Yeah, effective it had been.
From the jungles of Panama and the high-mountain country of eastern Turkey, to the Algerian desert and beyond, the terrorist cadres had gotten a taste of something the Mafia had grown to know and hate.
It was called the Bolan Effect. And it worked.
Hal Brognola thanked God that it was working for their side. If all Bolan required in exchange was a free hand, he'd damn well have it.
'What do you remember about Frank Edwards?' Brognola said. Edwards had been a back-burner project of the Stony Team for some time, and Bolan was familiar with the broad outlines of the man's dossier.
'Ex-CIA,' Bolan said. 'Suspected of freelancing for various Arab radical factions in the Middle East. He's also been fingered as having worked in an advisory capacity for Amin in Uganda and Khaddafi in Libya, training and tradecraft, if I remember correctly.'
'You do, Striker,' Brognola confirmed. 'Add to that gun-running, we believe he's been acting as the middleman in the illegal shipment of American armament ultimately destined for terrorist hands. But he's beyond our official reach, and even if he weren't, we couldn't put him on trial, because we'd have to make top-secret intelligence public in order to present the evidence against him.'
'But we would like to see him take a fall.'
'He's got to take a fall, Striker,' Brognola said. 'New intelligence has just come in on the guy, and if I read it right, he's got his finger in a far bigger pie than we ever suspected. Not only that, but it ties in with Charon. Edwards has to be interdicted, and now...'
Bolan ground out his cigarette butt on the concrete floor of the barren underground room. 'Take it from the top, Hal.'
'Right. We're telexing you Edwards's updated dossier and a data package, but here's the bare bones of it. Edwards's personal staff, the half dozen or so he employs for security, communications, liaison with his terrorist clients, and other 'housekeeping' duties, are all Americans. They're either ex-Special Forces, or ex-Agency, like him.'
Like him, for sure. Another nest of treasonous vipers, men in whose lexicon words like 'loyalty' and 'patriotism' had been replaced by 'power-lust' and 'self-interest.' Yeah, Edwards needed to take a fall, and Bolan would be more than happy to give him the push.
'More than six months ago, we infiltrated one of our people into Edwards's organization. Because Edwards is a highly trained operative himself and still maintains a vast network of clandestine contacts within the international intelligence community, we had to make it look absolutely authentic. Only three people knew the truth: the agent, myself, and the commander in chief. That'll give you an idea how badly we want Edwards. Following orders, the agent sold some factual but outdated information to a KGB counter-intel operator, was caught, and was cashiered of course. As far as the agency knows — and her files support this — she was drummed out after a long and valued career because she turned rotten. Even her closest colleagues believe it. It had to be that way, because we believe it's possible that Edwards may even have a pipeline into the agency. It worked. Within a week the
