VOLATILE RELATIONS

A new era of friendship between the Syrian and US governments is threatened when American high-tech weapons go missing en route overseas. Determined to destroy the stolen arms before they can be used, Mack Bolan discovers nothing is what it seems between the Syrian regime and the loyalists–including the beautiful double agent working with him.

Getting to the weapons alive is only one of Bolan’s problems. Tracking down the enemy behind the theft–without starting a war–will put his years of experience to the test. But discretion is of the utmost importance, and the lives of millions are at stake, which makes the Executioner the only man for this mission.

Bolan froze. His nostrils flared.

The smell was unmistakable. It was human body odor, and if he was smelling that, it could only mean one thing.

There were enemy soldiers right here, right now.

Bolan ripped his knife free and slammed the blade into the dirt next to his knee. A scream welled up and blood darkened the arid soil. Bolan left his knife where it was lodged and threw himself into a forward roll.

The ground erupted around him. Half a dozen soldiers, concealed in shallow grave-like depressions, popped up all around him. The soldiers pushed themselves to their feet, their weapons and web gear trailing plumes of dirt. Weapon-mounted lights cast hazy beams in the dusty air.

Bolan’s suppressed Beretta machine-pistol was already in his fist. He pivoted on one knee, tracking the weapon lights.

The Beretta coughed out 3-round bursts as the Executioner tapped out a Morse code of death on the trigger.

Assassin’s Tripwire

Don Pendleton

And some that smile have in their hearts, I fear, millions of mischiefs.

—William Shakespeare,

Julius Caesar

The world is full of people looking to start trouble. But you can’t let yourself be overwhelmed by those who live for chaos. You have to focus on what you can affect. You deal with that, and you deal with it directly. The rest sorts itself out.

—Mack Bolan

THE

MACK BOLAN

LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quotes

The Mack Bolan Legend

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

Epilogue

Copyright

1

Mack Bolan flexed his knees as the ground rushed up to meet him. He rolled when he hit, hurrying to slap the quick release on his parachute. The black chute billowed behind him once he was free of it, carried by the high winds that had made his high-altitude, low-opening jump that much more difficult.

The man once known as the Executioner rolled and caught the chute, pulling it to his chest and folding it several times. In the moonlit darkness he would be nearly invisible, but there was nothing to be gained by leaving the chute floating around the desert where it could alert some passing patrol.

Crouching, using the night sky to silhouette any enemies who might approach, Bolan checked his gear. He wore a KA-BAR-style combat knife inverted on his web gear, which was concealed by a lightweight three-quarter-length jacket. Over his chest was slung his canvas war bag, which contained most of his munitions. Holstered in custom leather under his left arm was his action-tuned Beretta 93R, while a Desert Eagle in .44 Magnum was tucked in his waistband, in a Kydex IWB holster behind his right hip.

He’d been told his local contact would provide him with heavier weaponry on an as-needed basis. It wasn’t practical for him to drop in with much more equipment than he had, so he’d opted to max out his weight limits on loaded magazines and grenades rather than adding an assault rifle to his kit. Toting two handguns and a knife, he wasn’t exactly unarmed…but if a patrol found him out here, where there was no cover and nowhere to go, he would definitely be outgunned.

Arid scrubland, broken by hills and promontories of rock, extended in every direction. The night sky was brilliant overhead. Bolan checked his direction against the stars and faced north, as he’d been instructed. There was no telling how long he might have to wait. He settled into his crouch, prepared for the long haul, knowing that the night would grow much colder before dawn. He didn’t relish the thought of spending hours out here, but he would if there were no other choice—

Bolan froze. His nostrils flared.

He put two fingers to his left ear as if activating communications gear. The motion concealed the slow drift of his right hand to his combat knife.

“Zero one zero,” he said in a stage whisper, loud enough for anyone within ten meters to hear. “This is Space Commander Alpha One. I’ve touched down at Zulu Marker Zeta. Mortars are on standby.” It was nonsense, but it didn’t really matter what he said. Those listening would not be native English speakers. Chances were they spoke no English at all. As he wagged his left elbow, trying to draw attention to that side of his body, the fingers of his right hand curled around the rubberized handle of his knife.

He shifted his foot. Dirt and pebbles moved under the toe of his combat boot. He pretended he didn’t feel the answering movement, the barely concealed reaction to his presence.

His nose twitched again. The smell was unmistakable. It was human body odor, and if he was smelling that, it could mean only one thing.

There were enemy soldiers right here, right now.

“I’m getting ready to dig a foxhole,” Bolan told his imaginary radio contact. “Standing by in four, three—”

He ripped his knife free and slammed the blade into the dirt next to his knee. A horrifying scream welled up from the ground below. Blood darkened the arid soil. Bolan left his knife where it was lodged and threw himself into a forward roll.

The ground erupted around him. Half a dozen soldiers, concealed in shallow gravelike depressions, popped up all around him. It was like something out of a zombie movie, Bolan thought, as the soldiers pushed themselves to their feet, their weapons and web gear trailing plumes of dirt. Weapon-mounted lights cast hazy beams in the dusty air.

Bolan’s suppressed Beretta pistol was already in his fist. He pivoted on one knee, tracking the weapon lights, keenly aware of the short window in which he had to work. Only his faster reflexes and his experience saved him.

The Beretta coughed out 3-round bursts as the Executioner tapped out a Morse code of death on the trigger. He fired, rolled and fired again, changing position with each shot, staying low in the darkness to keep his enemies against the sky. The hollow metallic clatter of Kalashnikov rifles rolled over him; the shock waves of the multiple discharges hammered his eardrums as the enemy weapons ripped the earth around his body.

The Beretta’s 20-round box magazine cycled dry. Rather than dump it and attempt a reload, Bolan shifted the weapon to his left hand. He drew the Desert Eagle with his right, still avoiding enemy gunfire. The triangular snout of the .44 Magnum Israeli hand-cannon belched flame each time he pulled the trigger. He was careful not to look directly at it, doing his best to salvage his night vision.

He heard the shots before he saw the new shooter. The sound was different; it was higher, from another angle, and he threw himself backward in the dirt before he could fix the new threat’s location. The chopped AK, a Krinkov with a folding stock, cut down the last two soldiers in the circle of resistance. Bolan had swung his Desert Eagle in the direction of the approaching form but stopped himself before pulling the trigger.

The figure that came to stand over him pulled a desert scarf from mouth and nose. Bolan saw, against the night sky, long hair falling free of the square of cloth. The distinctive sound of a classic fuel-oil lighter snapping open was followed by a flare of light. In the flame, a beautiful woman with dark hair and darker eyes looked back at him.

The desert was suddenly very quiet. Bolan could hear the flickering of the lighter’s flame in the night wind.

“Are you…lighting a cigarette?” he asked.

“I do not smoke,” the woman said. She wore a military field jacket and fatigue pants that did little to hide the curve of her hips. The hilt of a Jordanian-military-style jambiya combat knife was visible in her belt. The tube of an RPG launcher was secured over her shoulder. “But if you see me, perhaps you will not shoot me.”

“You think so?” Bolan said.

“If you are Matt Cooper,” the woman replied. “If you are not, I may shoot you?”

Bolan almost laughed. “Yes, I’m Matthew Cooper, and no, you should not shoot me. Either you’re my contact or the operation is compromised.”

“I am Sabeen Yenni,” the woman said.

The name was the right one, the name Hal Brognola had given him only hours ago, when Bolan was preparing to board the flight to Syria.

“Your contact,” the big Fed had told him through the scrambled satellite link, “is a double agent named Sabeen Yenni. Intelligence has been aware of her for some time. She has a network of her own, or more accurately, several networks, which extend into some pretty deep, dark areas of that region. Formerly she was with an al-Qaeda women’s brigade in northern Syria, but she was co-opted by US elements and brought on board to work for us. She still claims to be a spy for the Syrian loyalists, whom she’s supposed to be selling out.”

“I’m not up on the latest in Syria,” Bolan had admitted. “Loyalists?”

“Loyal to the previous regime, Striker,” Brognola said. As head of the Sensitive Operations Group and the man to whom the Stony Man Farm counterterrorist teams answered, Brognola was also one of the few people alive who knew Bolan’s history as the vigilante called the Executioner. “Recently, there was a coup in Syria. The new regime is like a political unicorn, something we never thought would fall in our laps. They’re nominally open to normal relations with the United States. The new Leader for Life of Syria is one Basram Hahmir, who was fairly highly placed in their military before he used it to take over.”

“Funny how that works,” Bolan said.

“Hahmir is something of a golden boy to the Man right now,” Brognola revealed. “As part of the agreement through which the United States and the UN Security Council formally recognized the new Syrian government, Hahmir traveled to the United States for an extended meet and greet with various diplomats. You were overseas when it happened, and officially, it never did. We hushed it up in the American media and it’s gained no traction among the conspiracy nuts on the internet.”

“What are you talking about, Hal?”

“Hahmir,” Brognola explained. “He jumped between the President and a would-be assassin. Fortunately, the Secret Service was able to get to the few journalists on-site and preempt the story before it became…unwieldy. In a joint press conference later that day, the Man and Hahmir announced the dawn of a new era in US-Syrian relations.”

“Sounds a little too easy.”

“I thought the same thing,” Brognola said. “The Farm’s looking into it. But as you can imagine, the President and Hahmir have become fast friends. That has in turn prompted instant cooperation on the part of the United States. The Man has a personal stake in Hahmir’s regime. A Syria loyal to the United States is a tactical prize we simply can’t afford to pass up.”

“I think I can see where this is going,” Bolan said.

“Hahmir’s government will almost certainly come under attack from its former allies. Syria was no friend to the West, and now that it is, the region will destroy itself unless we do something to stop it. The United States has shipped an aid package to Syria that includes next-generation weaponry, particularly mobile missile systems.”

“There’s a ‘but’ coming,” Bolan said.

“But,” Brognola continued, “the weapons shipment has gone missing. It was stolen right out from under the Syrian authorities’ noses at the airfield. That, by itself, is suspicious enough. Hahmir is all apologies and, honestly, his regime is frantic to locate the weapons because they’re worried the loyalists might figure out how to deploy them first. His New Governmental Militia has been tearing up the countryside, torturing and strong-arming Syrian citizens.”

“Storm troopers?”

“Something like,” the big Fed told him. “The militia is the reason Hahmir took power in the first place, but it’s starting to look like Hahmir’s operatives within the military have ambitions of their own. Specifically, a vicious character named Sudhra ‘the Wolf’ Fafniyal. It’s Fafniyal’s secret police that your contact is supposed to be spying on the loyalists for.”

“Can’t tell the players without a scorecard,” Bolan said drily.

“They’re color-coded,” Brognola said. “The previous Syrian regime’s color was royal red. The loyalists wear red armbands as a result. Fafniyal’s troops wear black. Hahmir’s regular militia wears blue, if I remember correctly.”

“And this Sabeen Yenni? What color does she wear, working for us while ratting out the loyalists to Fafniyal?”

“It’s safe to say her loyalty is to herself,” Brognola admitted, “but her track record as a freedom fighter is well documented. It’s why she was approached by US Intelligence in the first place.”

“Trust, but verify,” Bolan said. “I’ve got it. I’ll just have to watch out for knives at my back.”

“And bullets. And grenades,” Brognola said.

“So where does that leave us?” the soldier asked. “Any chance of support from the Farm?”

“Able Team and Phoenix Force are otherwise engaged,” Brognola told him. “Although we do have the support of the cyberteam. We’ve been monitoring Syria with real-time satellite imagery retasked for this mission.”

“That will help,” Bolan commented.

“The Man is grateful to his new friend, but he isn’t stupid. The Farm was told to track that weaponry shipment through to its destination. Thermal imagery shows us multiple locations in remote areas of Syria where we believe the weaponry has been cached. It’s only a matter of time before the loyalists, without the benefit of US technical advisors, figure out how to deploy the missile systems. When they do they’re going to set that region on fire. We’re looking at all-out war.”

“So I go in, find the weapons and destroy them, with Sabeen Yenni to show me all the local highlights.”

“That’s the upshot, yes,” Brognola said. “But it’s more complicated than that.”

“It always is.”

“No matter what you do there, Striker,” the big Fed said, “it could touch off a war for control of Syria at the very least. The United States cannot be seen as interfering on the ground, or the resulting backlash could cause us problems almost as bad as losing a sympathetic government. Your presence in Syria isn’t sanctioned by Hahmir’s government, and we couldn’t allow them to know about it for fear of compromising you. That’s the official word. Unofficially, they know damned well we’re sending someone to track the weapons, even though everyone involved is going to play dumb. The Man has even shared some intelligence with them, as a good-faith gesture.”

“That leaves me plenty vulnerable,” Bolan said.

“There’s no other way to put a team, or even a single man, on the ground,” Brognola said. “Hahmir’s government claims it will play ball, at least off the books. But if they’re pressed, they, too, will claim they have no knowledge of your mission. They’ll treat you accordingly.”

“You drop me into the nicest meat grinders, Hal.”

“We need you to ferret out who has done what, if you can, but under the cloak of plausible deniability,” Brognola went on. “That means we’re giving you an internationally available electronic tablet that you can use for mission data and so on. There can be no way of tracing you back to us should you end up in enemy hands. And there’s no shortage of potential enemies who might want to put you down.”

“Understood,” Bolan said. He understood, all right. It was a familiar story…as familiar as the thin ice on which he now stood.

“Striker, there’s one more thing.”

“Yeah?”

“If you do find evidence of perfidy on the part of Hahmir or elements within his government, you do have one more option.”

“And that is?” Bolan asked.

“Option Zeta,” Brognola said. “It’s a file in your dossier. Read it thoroughly and memorize the codes. You might need them.”

“Got it,” Bolan had said. “Striker, out.”

And now he was here, in Syria, with his boots—and his back—on the actual ground. He would either return the weapons systems to Hahmir’s government or he would destroy them. And along the way he would determine, if at all possible, whether the President could trust the Hahmir regime. But right now, there was the matter of the dead men who had been lying in wait under the ground.

“This is a problem,” Bolan said, indicating the bodies. He took Yenni’s hand when she offered it, and allowed her to help him to his feet. The freedom fighter draped her desert scarf around her neck, pocketed her lighter and crouched next to him.

“They are dead,” she said. “And we are alive. This is not a problem.”

“Not in the immediate sense,” he replied. “But the drop coordinates were known only to your network. These men were waiting for me. Right here.” He knelt and played the beam of his tactical flashlight over the nearest body.

“Black scarves,” Yenni said. “These are the Wolf’s men.”

“You’re supposed to be working as an operative for Fafniyal, right?”

“Yes,” Yenni replied, nodding, “but it would not matter. There is very little trust between the Wolf’s people and all others. If they find us they will kill us immediately.”

“So somebody knew about the meet,” Bolan said. “Which means our operation may be compromised before it begins.”

“Someone in the network, or with access to it, intercepted coordinates,” Yenni said. “These men were left to conceal themselves beneath the dirt. They did not know what was coming. Do you think they would have worn oxygen masks and let the sand fleas bite them for just one American?” She held up the mask the nearest corpse had worn on a rubber cord around his neck.

Bolan had to admit that she had a point, but he was still worried about the implications. There was no telling where the leak came from. The entire process was potentially porous, from Hahmir’s government—which knew that a force of some kind was to be inserted by the United States to track the missing weapons—all the way down to boots on the soil.

“Your move, then,” he told her. “I’m counting on you.”

“And I am counting on the Americans. I’ll help you to free Syria. Whether that happens now or twenty years from now does not matter. What matters is that the work is done.”

“We’ll need to bury these men,” Bolan said.

“No,” Yenni replied. “There is no time. There are frequent patrols. The gunfire will have attracted one of these.”

“Fafniyal’s people?”

“Yes,” she said. “Leave them. I will take their magazines.” She went from soldier to soldier, stripping the bodies of ammunition, adding it to her gear. She also reloaded the little Krinkov.

“Are we on foot?” Bolan asked.

“I have a truck half a kilometer east, under a camouflage net.”

Bolan patted down his web gear. The little ruggedized tablet was right where it should be. He used it to access a real-time topographical overlay of their position against a satellite map of the area. The encrypted tablet also contained the coordinates of the weapons caches. He noted the position of several icons on the screen and read through the captions.

“We should get moving to the closest target site,” he told Yenni. “Before…” He let his words trail off. He could hear something on the night wind.

“Cooper,” Yenni said. “Do you hear that?”

“Trucks.”

“It is a Fafniyal patrol. We must go quickly.”

“That’s not all,” Bolan said. “I hear a helicopter.”

“Not merely a helicopter. It is a gunship. The Wolf makes use of many Soviet surplus Hind aircraft.”

“Not good,” Bolan said. “But I think I have a plan.”

“What is your plan, Cooper?”

“We run like hell.”

2

Bolan and Yenni ran east, through the scrub and rocks, toward a defile Bolan had spotted on the topographical map.

“Where are we going?” Yenni asked. She didn’t seem winded at all, even sprinting alongside him, working harder to keep up with his long strides.

“I’ll know it when I see it,” Bolan said, casting a wary glance over his shoulder. “Slow down. Pretty soon we’re going to—”

“You are very slow. You should run faster.”

“That’s me,” he replied, not breaking stride. “Slow as molasses.” He eased the Beretta 93R from its holster, checked the selector and looked behind him once more. Somewhere high above, the whirring of the enemy helicopter was louder. He couldn’t see the Hind, if Yenni was correct. He hoped she wasn’t.

Yenni surged ahead of him by a pace, then three. He opened his mouth to warn her.

She disappeared.

Bolan dropped in behind her. The almost invisible hole she’d fallen into was nearly as deep as he was tall. He landed heavily on his combat boots, crouching in the dirt. He couldn’t see her in the darkness.

“I’m all right,” she said without prompting. “You could have warned me.”

“You could have waited,” he said.

The “hole” extended in either direction in a straight line. It was five feet wide and five feet deep. In the darkness, against the sky above, Bolan could see Yenni moving to one knee.

“What is this?” she asked.

“Leftovers,” he said. “Satellite imaging says these trenches crisscross the area for miles. Immediately after the Arab Spring unrest, when civil war first broke out, the network was dug out by the first rebel forces. From the tactical reports we received—”

“We?” Yenni asked.

“From the reports my government received,” Bolan said, ignoring her attempt to pry, “that group of rebels was wiped out before they got a chance to fall back to their trenches. Outdated tactics, used in the wrong context. There’s a right way and a wrong way to make war.”

“And so the trenches remained.”

“Yes.” Bolan took out his tablet and brought up the overlaid map grid of their location. “The last time this area was imaged from space, the leading strip of trench went on for several hundred yards. There are cross trenches branching off along its length. The entire area has been dug out.”

“We must hurry, Cooper,” Yenni said. The chopper was almost on top of them now.

“Do you have an e-tool in your pack?”

“Yes,” she said, sounding confused. “Why would you—”

“Give it to me,” Bolan said. “And your RPG. And then run that way,” he told her, pointing.

She handed over the folding entrenching tool and unslung the RPG tube. “I have only one round,” she said.

“It will have to be enough.” Bolan took the rocket-propelled grenade from her and slung the tube over his shoulder, jamming the folding e-tool as far as he could into the outer slash pocket of his jacket. He tucked the RPG round inside the coat, making the garment sag heavily. “I’m heading in the opposite direction,” he said. “Draw them off me, but don’t do too good a job. When I open up on them I want that chopper coming at me.”

“You’ll be killed.”

“Sooner or later,” Bolan said, “we all are. Now scram.”

Yenni looked as if she might ask a question, but instead she closed her mouth, turned and ran without another word. Bolan did the same, fleeing through the rough-hewn trench, increasing the distance between them. The folding e-tool and the rocket-propelled grenade battered his flanks as his coat moved against his body.

The helicopter roared past.

He looked up just in time to see the chopper cut through the rectangle of sky delineated by the trench walls. He caught only a glimpse, but there was no mistaking that silhouette. He’d seen it many times before.

It was definitely a Mil Mi-24, designated the Hind by NATO. Introduced in the early seventies by the Soviets, the Hind was called the “flying tank.” With twin turboshaft engines driving a midmounted five-blade rotor, not to mention a pair of stub wings that served as three-station weapon hardpoints, the flying beast could carry a Gryazev-Shipunov twin-barreled autocannon, AT-2 “Swatter” antitank missiles, and a rocket pod or pods bearing S-8 rockets.

He pressed himself against the wall of the trench. Voices were coming closer, and the helicopter’s buzzing was receding. Sound echoed strangely inside the old trench network, but as near as Bolan could tell, that meant the chopper was circling around the target site as the ground troops closed in.

Mack Bolan stopped running. He cocked his head to one side.

A man fell into the trench at his feet.

Bolan had time to step back before two more enemy soldiers, both wearing the black armbands of the Wolf, tumbled into the trench. The enemy gunners had obviously been running in pursuit and encountered the trench network as abruptly as Yenni had. Bolan didn’t wait for them to recover, didn’t wait for them to shout a warning. He simply swept the suppressor-equipped barrel of his Beretta across the fallen, scrambling men and stroked the trigger repeatedly.

The subsonic 9-mm rounds churned through the fallen soldiers. The men writhed and were still. Bolan, wary of a surprise attack should one of them be shamming, rifled through their web gear. He came up with three Kalashnikov rifles and half a dozen loaded magazines, which he quickly shoved into his war bag. Pausing to pop the cover from the first rifle, he ripped its bolt free and threw it as far along the trench as he could. Then he dumped the stripped rifle and checked the other two, pulling back the bolt far enough to verify that a round was chambered in each.

He had just enough time to lift the barrel as a fourth soldier dived into the trench.

This man had seen the lip of the excavation coming, or perhaps he’d heard the scuffle or the cough of Bolan’s suppressed Beretta. Either way, he leaped into the ditch as if he intended to make some war.

Bolan was happy to accommodate him.

The American soldier triggered his borrowed Kalashnikov and raked the man across the chest. The enemy gunner was dead before he finished hitting the dirt. Farther along the trench, somewhere between his current position and where Yenni had been, more soldiers were piling in from above, their weapons ready. Bolan knew he couldn’t face them all. The trench walls formed a fatal funnel that could work both for him and against him. Without the element of surprise, he would be just as vulnerable to the enemy’s guns as they were to his.

He opted for distance, moving along the passage in a low crouch, headed away from the soldiers massing between him and Yenni. He could hear gunfire behind him and to his left. At this distance it was hard to tell Yenni’s chopped AK from the full-size Kalashnikovs chattering to meet it, but he thought perhaps he could. He didn’t need her to hold out long, and in fact, he’d meant it when he’d told her he didn’t want her to do too well in drawing fire. It was essential that the Hind eventually fix on him. He just needed a little time to work.

Footsteps above his head brought him up short. Two lines of the Wolf’s uniformed patrolmen were now paralleling the trench on either side. Bolan crouched low so they couldn’t see him in the darkness. By his rough count, there were five on either side. He knew what they were after, too: they were walking the trench in order to sweep it clean. No doubt there were more doing the same thing in the opposite direction.

The Hind made a closer pass and a spotlight came alive, one attached to the Hind’s nose cannon. The bright shaft played across the arid scrub and dipped in and out of the trench, back and forth, as the chopper’s pilot walked his craft sideways along the ditch.

The patrol would see Bolan any moment now. All they had to do was point a handheld light in his direction. He raised his Kalashnikov, making sure the selector was on full automatic, and spun his body in a tight arc. The soldier blasted away at ankle level, chopping down the patrolmen, continuing his spin to raze the feet of the men at his right. Unable to process what had happened, the men simply started screaming. Bolan spared them mercy rounds with the rest of his magazine, burning half his bullets on one side, half on the other. His ears were ringing from the echoes of the gunfire as he hurried on.

Above him, the Hind abruptly stopped its gliding, sideways pattern. Either its occupants had spotted him, which was unlikely, or they had seen the muzzle flashes of his short engagement.

He nearly collided with the dirt bank as the trench ended. Judging the height of the walls around him and casting one more glance at the helicopter, he estimated the trajectory he would need.

It was time.

He slung the Kalashnikov over his shoulder, where the twin loads of both rifles and the RPG tube weighed him down. The folding e-tool he’d borrowed from Yenni snapped open from either end, forming the shovel blade and a small triangular handle. He twisted the locking collar and was grateful that the unit felt solid. He’d seen plenty of collapsible shovels that were little better than toys. Now was not the time for his tool to fail him.

Furiously, he began to dig.

The shooting at the other end of the trenches was chaotic now. The Wolf’s patrolmen seemed to be firing in all directions. That made Bolan smile. Yenni was a skilled guerilla fighter. She was giving them a run for their money.

The Hind moved heavily, pausing to hover above the ground where Bolan had done his bloody work. The spotlight played over the corpses he had left behind.

The pilot, as if reading Bolan’s thoughts, brought his nose gun up. The beam of light swept the trench, headed directly for him.

The Hind’s automatic cannon opened up.

Around Bolan, the earth itself exploded as the Hind’s shells ripped apart everything in the vicinity. The pilot wasn’t really sure of his target—or Bolan would have been a cloud of meat-laden mist already—but if the barrage kept up, it wouldn’t matter. Bolan’s life expectancy amid that hail of death was not measured in minutes, but in seconds.

He lifted the RPG tube from his shoulder, aimed and pulled the trigger.

It was an old trick the Somalis had learned, to bring down American helicopters. The back-blast from a rocket-propelled grenade launcher made it impractical to fire elevated, where the blast would hit the ground at the gunner’s feet. But dig a hole big enough to absorb that blast, and you could use a grenade launcher to take out a helicopter. The key was to strike the chopper at a point vulnerable enough to—

Bolan’s train of thought left him as he watched the RPG go wide, too wide, trailing smoke as it arced far right of the chopper. He’d been hoping to strike the Hind in the canopy. Hitting the main rotor would be ideal, but that target was too small and too far away. Only blind luck would put the round in the Hind’s relatively vulnerable tail rotor, the key to its steering and stability.

The rocket-propelled grenade exploded, obliterating the tail rotor.

Bolan would have smiled if he hadn’t anticipated what would happen next. The chopper, already listing in his direction, started to spin. As it rotated, faster and faster, its massive fuselage looming in the night sky, it began to lose altitude.

And now the Hind was coming right for him.

Bolan ran in the opposite direction. There was no time for subtlety and no time for unnecessary weight. He dropped the RPG tube and shed his extra rifles as he went, sprinting for all he was worth along the tunnel. He needed to get out of the dug ditch, or get far enough that flames from the exploding chopper wouldn’t be funneled right to him. If he paused to try to scramble up over the lip of the trench, he might not make it in time. Worse, he might become a target for any of the Wolf’s men still operative at ground level.

The few gunshots he could still hear in the distance were drowned by the electric death whine of the Hind as it spiraled to the ground.

It was going to strike the trench right behind him.

This was going to hurt.

He felt the chopper more than he heard it. The impact reverberated through his body, enveloping him in a cloud of heat and sound and pain that crushed the air from his lungs and rattled the bones of his rib cage. The darkness briefly came alive in the light of the fireball that was the Hind. For that instant, night was day.

The blood-soaked floor of the trench rushed up to smash Bolan in the face.

Then there was nothing.

3

Al Tabkah, Syria

Faces.

Bolan saw faces. They were the faces of every woman he had ever loved, every man he had ever fought beside, every innocent to whom he’d extended his protection. He remembered them all. Each and every face was etched on his brain, indelibly printed in his memories.

So many had died. Some of them had simply vanished, lost to him. Some had perished as he’d held them. Some had been tortured, reduced to gibbering wrecks for whom a bullet was the only kindness.

The litany of the dead, the rolls of the fallen, were never far from his mind. But in the heat and light and pain of the explosion, something had brought the memories flooding into the forefront of his brain.

Bolan’s eyes snapped open, his head jerking forward.

A palm against his chest stopped him. He looked down, then to his left. The surprisingly slender palm belonged to Yenni, who was driving the truck with her left hand. The Toyota Hilux bore the scars and dust of driving many miles across the Syrian terrain—or wherever it had driven from to get here. The dirt road on which they traveled was pocked and scarred with ruts of all sizes. A city, such as it was, began to open up around them.

“You were restless in your sleep,” Yenni said.

“A dream.”

“You had many dreams,” she replied.

Bolan changed the subject. “Where are we? What happened?”

“Your plan was not a good one,” Yenni said. “You should have told me you intended to have the helicopter fall on you. I would have spoken against it.”

“That wasn’t exactly… What I mean to say is—”

“So you did not intend for the helicopter to fall on you. This was an accident?”

“Not exactly,” Bolan said. “It’s complicated.”

Yenni took a pack of gum from inside her jacket, unwrapped it with one hand and popped the square of pink bubble gum into her mouth. She gestured with the pack to Bolan.

“I’m trying to quit,” he said.

She chewed, shaking her head. At no time did she slow the truck, which continued to raise a furious dust cloud behind them. The streets began to grow more congested, but Yenni was undeterred. “To answer your question,” she said, “the helicopter fell on you.”

“What?” Bolan said. “We’ve established that pretty thoroughly.”

“You asked what happened.”

“After the helicopter.”

“Which fell on you,” Yenni continued. “A horrible plan.”

Bolan told himself not to sigh. “Right,” he said. “So stipulated.”

She looked at him with a slight frown, as if she didn’t know the word, then went on anyway. “Your wounds were not severe. I am concerned you may have a concussion, however. The windows of your eyes are not quite the same size.”

“The windows of my…” Bolan realized she meant his pupils. Leaning forward, he examined them in the rear-view mirror. If one was slightly blown, he couldn’t really tell. His head felt a bit thick, but that was normal after absorbing an explosion. “I feel fine,” he said. “Although I could really use some coffee.”

“Here, there are many Star-pokes,” Yenni said and laughed at her own joke.

“That’s not actually what they’re called.”

“We have none of the others, either,” she stated. “We are in Al Tabkah. There is an arms bazaar here that will have the weapons you require. Had you not dropped a Hind gunship on the Wolf’s patrol, we might have scavenged more than enough arms from the enemy soldiers.”

“I’m particular about my hardware,” Bolan said. “Besides, we need serious explosives if we’re going to be ready to neutralize the missing weapons systems. A couple of rounds from my Beretta won’t do it. And I think it’s time we moved on, philosophically speaking, when it comes to the Hind.”

Yenni blew a big pink bubble, popped it and pulled it back into her mouth. “We should buy you a helmet,” she said. “Your head is not as thick as it looks, I think.”

Bolan made no reply. The air outside was surprisingly cool despite the time of day and the bright sun beating down. Al Tabkah was typical of Syrian towns in that multiple layers of architecture sprawled among one another. Soviet housing blocks and French flats, relics of the 1970s, reared their heads above modern twentieth-century prefabricated concrete and old Ottoman and French Colonial structures. No building was untouched by concrete rubble and holes from artillery or small-arms fire.

Yenni was eyeing him curiously, spending too much time staring at him and not enough—as far as he was concerned—watching the road. She reached behind her seat with one hand and offered him a dented metal canteen. Bolan thought it looked like 1980s Soviet-era issue. He uncapped it and took a swallow, surprised to find the water cool and delicious.

“Drink well,” she said. “You look dry, Cooper. Death can sneak up on a dry man.”

“Death has been sneaking after me for a while,” he answered. “We’re old friends.”

“I’m not surprised.” She took the canteen when he handed it back, drank some water herself, then stowed it away again. “We are almost to the bazaar. The man we want is named Khasky. He is well-known in Al Tabkah, with many allies. Do not antagonize him.”

“I’ll do my best,” Bolan said.

Traffic picked up as Yenni navigated the streets. There was no real order to the pedestrians, bicycles and motor vehicles they passed, or which surged around them at break-neck speeds. People walked wherever they pleased and seemed to trust that the motorbike and truck drivers would shoot behind or in front of them. At least once, Bolan saw a rust-eaten sedan snap the mirror from an equally aged flatbed truck. The sedan’s driver kept going. The truck driver didn’t even bother to waste an angry gesture from his open window.

They were entering the oldest quarter of the city. The bazaar Yenni had mentioned was covered with cloth tarps that stretched from the nearest buildings to create an on-again, off-again fabric roof, offering some protection against direct sunlight. There were many gaps in the canopy, which followed as little plan as the traffic.

The surrounding structures were a mixture of ramshackle stone huts and a handful of more modern concrete blocks. There were plenty of rubble piles, and an equal number of craters and gaping holes in the buildings. Bolan thought he could pick out individual mortar and artillery scores amid the pockmarks from small-arms fire. None of the damage seemed recent.

Yenni parked the truck in a nearby alley. The narrow passageway smelled of garbage and urine and was littered with debris. Wrapping her scarf more tightly around her face, she beckoned for him to follow. Bolan made sure his weapons were concealed beneath his jacket and jogged along after her.

He still felt slightly lightheaded. She might be right; he might have a mild concussion. The thought did not worry him overmuch. His body was a mass of scar tissue from previous dances with fate. There was no reason today should be any different.

The crowd was thick at the bazaar’s perimeter, but thinned as Yenni led him on toward the rear of the canopied space.

Smells, both exotic and mundane, enticing and foul, assailed his nostrils. A booth of sorts offered what he thought might be Turkish coffee…or something more narcotic in nature, judging from the glazed faces of the men within the enclosure. Other stalls featured dry goods and foodstuffs. Some slightly more illicit booths were offering everything from knockoff designer sunglasses to what Bolan thought might be stolen cell phones.

The crowd was predominantly male, although he saw several women wearing black abayas—long, loose-fitting robes. Their heads and faces were covered, showing only their eyes. The men generally opted for head scarves and the didashah, a loose, one-piece robe. There were also several men wearing a variety of fatigues and other paramilitary garb.

What surprised Bolan was that he saw no military-police patrols. None of Hahmir’s regular army and none of the Wolf’s men were in evidence. He had gotten the impression, from his intelligence briefing, that the new Syrian government was busily asserting its authority over those areas in its control.

That might mean Al Tabkah was a pocket of loyalist resistance, dominated by fighters who supported the previous regime. The farther they traveled without evidence of government presence, the more likely that seemed.

Bolan was mildly surprised when they stopped not at a booth but at the door of a stone building that faced the bazaar at the far end. The female guerilla fighter rapped on the rough-hewn wooden door with her knuckles, waited, then rapped again. Finally, the door opened. A man in a white robe and red-checkered head scarf, with a Skorpion machine pistol hanging from his right shoulder on a leather strap, glared at them both.

Yenni spoke a few words Bolan could not understand. Her tone was urgent, her pace quick. The guard—for that was most certainly what he was, and Bolan had met the type countless times—squinted at them. He hesitated, but finally stepped back, gesturing impatiently for them to follow.

Bolan entered the building behind Yenni. The guard slammed the door shut behind them and waved with his Skorpion toward the narrow hallway ahead. The cloying smell of hashish was almost overpowering. At the guard’s glowering encouragement, they made their way down a narrow stone-walled hallway and through a beaded curtain.

The room they entered was vast. Bolan scanned the ceiling and walls and, from the marks on them, assumed this chamber had been made by removing interior walls. At an immense octagonal poker table, of all things, a fat man in a bright white robe and matching head scarf sprawled on a brown leather recliner. The poker table was gray with age and matched the enormous man’s skin.

The fat man smiled. Three of his teeth were gold. His face was covered in a few days of stubble and a sheen of perspiration. He wore multiple gold and gem-studded rings on his thick fingers. On the table before him, he was shuffling an oversize deck of playing cards. Bolan did not let the motion draw his eyes. The man cut the deck, shuffled and riffled the cards in a practiced motion. He wore a diamond-studded gold watch on one thick wrist. A hookah stood on a shabby ottoman next to him, while a plate of dates sat on the poker table amid several greasy paper wrappers. Bolan assumed these were from whatever passed for take-out food in this place.

The pearl grip of a revolver jutted from the fat man’s armpit. He wore his shoulder holster over his robe. A pair of designer sunglasses, probably counterfeit, was perched on his forehead.

The guard with the Skorpion was joined by two others. One of the newcomers held a machete. The other had no weapon visible, but he was easily the biggest of the three, with hands that looked as if they could crack walnuts. Unlike the man at the poker table, nothing about the big guard looked soft or fat.

“How curious,” the fat man said in excellent English, “that you would bring a stranger, a Westerner, here to this place, Yenni.”

“Khasky,” Yenni said, offering a slight bow from the waist. “We have money. We come to buy weapons.”

Khasky squinted at them. He had one lazy eye. Bolan was careful to make no sudden movements. This man was a predator. There was no mistaking the hollow look in his eyes. He would order their deaths the second he thought it would profit him.

“What is it you require?” he asked.

Yenni glanced at Bolan. “Heavy weapons,” he said. “An assault rifle and grenade launcher combination. Explosives, preferably Semtex or something similar. Light enough to be portable, powerful enough to be effective. Detonators. Loaded magazines for the rifle. Grenade rounds for the launcher.”

“Hmm,” Khasky said. “You sound like a man who is preparing for war. What war do you fight here, American? And what makes you think I will help you fight it?”

“We have money,” Yenni interjected. “You sell weapons.” Her tone seemed to say this should be the end of any debate on the matter. Bolan would have grinned if he was not keenly aware of the iron in Khasky’s eyes.

“I do not think you understand.” Khasky’s gold-toothed grin grew wider. From under the table he produced an ancient tape recorder.

“What is this?” Yenni asked. Bolan shot her a glance. It was best not to ask more questions than necessary when you had a blade at your throat, figurative or otherwise.

“I have conducted business here for a long time,” Khasky said. “Things were much better before Hahmir took over. My profits are down. My people suffer. The Wolf’s patrols do not come near Al Tabkah. They know better now. But this did not come without a price. Many of my best fighters died.”

Bolan risked a reply this time. “That has nothing to do with us,” he said.

“Does it not?” Khasky asked. He pressed the play button on the tape recorder with one fat finger.

“…American interference,” said a distorted voice. “Highest alert. The Americans seek the weapons.” The voice continued, but was too garbled to understand. The words had been in English but with a heavy accent. That was curious.

“We do not know who sent this,” Khasky said. “We recorded it from the radio. Now you, Yenni, bring me an American.”

“He is Canadian,” she said.

“And I am king of this land,” Khasky replied. His evil grin never wavered. “No. He is an American. He is an American come to find Hahmir’s American weapons. And this will not do. For if Hahmir and the Wolf secure these weapons, those who believe as I do will suffer more. And my control of Al Tabkah may be broken. I cannot allow this.”

They were loyalists. Whoever had tipped them off—possibly the same person who had told the Wolf’s men to expect an incursion in Bolan’s drop zone—wanted to make sure Bolan didn’t find those weapons. Was it the Wolf himself, pursuing his own agenda? Was it some other force? Was Hahmir hiding the weapons and claiming they were stolen, in order to deceive his newfound Western allies? There was no way to tell yet.

Before he could learn more, Bolan was going to have to survive the next thirty seconds.

Khasky drew a machete from under the table, where it had probably been in a sheath affixed beneath.

“Khasky, this is a mistake,” Yenni said. “We will pay you double.”

“Kill them,” the fat man told his guards.

4

Hal Brognola watched his .45-caliber Glock disappear into the metal tray and reappear on the other side of the blast-reinforced Plexiglas. The stone-faced attendant logged the weapon into his computer, nodding the big Fed through the door at the other end of the chamber. That door was tempered steel and opened on hydraulic pistons. Brognola ducked his head to clear the upper edge, mindful of the teeth that meshed with slots in the floor, then waited for the door to close behind him.

The hardened black site, a stone’s throw from the Potomac in the subbasement of a nondescript government building, employed a level of security that made Guantánamo Bay look like a summer camp. No weapons were allowed except those wielded by the staff. Potential recruits were drawn from the same pool of men who eventually became the blacksuits of Stony Man Farm. The counter-terrorism facility, hidden in plain sight in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, used them for its day-to-day operations and to occasionally assist Mack Bolan or the action teams when needed. The blacksuits were seasoned police officers and military personnel, extremely capable. Looking at these guards, Brognola did not have to remind himself that he was dealing with equally capable professionals. They moved like panthers and they carried their M4 rifles with easy familiarity.

The public would go apoplectic if people knew that a “black prison” was operating right in Wonderland, a cab ride away from the Capitol. Still, sites like these were necessary. As much as Brognola hated to skirt the Constitution, he was forced to do so on a regular basis. The nation’s enemies didn’t follow the rules, nor could he afford to have his hands bound by idealism. There were times when it was necessary to go the black-bag route.

Today, for instance, there was the ugly business of interrogating the man who’d tried to kill the President.

Brognola carried in his hands the complete dossier Intelligence had compiled on the man, who’d given only one name: Eidra. Calling it that—complete—oversold the case. They knew very little on Eidra himself. His prints weren’t in the database, and while they could run his DNA, it would take weeks to get a match. Interpol had nothing on him, nor did the Farm’s supersecret compiled files. The worst part was that every time Brognola stared at the man, he felt as if he was missing something. It was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind, as if he’d walked into a room to get something and then forgotten what he’d come to find.

The guards walked him down several long corridors, which switched back on themselves and were, he swore, deliberately designed to be confusing. The halls were a uniform battleship gray, the doors steel with barred, inset windows. The bars protected bullet-resistant Plexiglas. Specifically, they prevented prisoners from kicking the square and popping the pane of high-tech Plexi straight out of the door. Each window was coated with a translucent film that prevented prisoners from seeing out and observers from seeing in…unless they wore a pair of specially coated sunglasses that somehow defeated the film. Brognola had been briefed on how the tricky little optics effect worked and had concluded he did not care. The guards with him were wearing those shades, which looked like the type of thing a snowboarder might wear. It didn’t make them seem any friendlier.

Brognola drew a deep breath and wished he hadn’t more or less given up actually smoking cigars. These days he chewed them more often than not…when he wasn’t chewing antacids to counteract the stress of his job. Today was worse than usual, because he had to steel himself for some of the most brutal work a man in his position was likely to supervise.

It wasn’t called torture.

And, honestly, it wasn’t torture, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t intensely uncomfortable for the subject. Brognola didn’t like it and didn’t enjoy watching it, but again, some things were necessary.

And once more, there was that nasty little voice nagging at him. What was it? What was he missing? He looked at the file again as he walked, shuffling through the photos of Eidra, the description of his arrest and the appended analysis of the security flaw that had allowed him to get so close to the President.

In theory, security at the meet and greet with Hahmir had been as tight as Wonderland got. There should have been no way for a random national to penetrate the concentric rings of the security cordon, but Eidra did. He’d posed as a member of the press. When it came time for the dog-and-pony show after the President and Hahmir had done a lot of talking for the television cameras, Eidra had stepped forward.

On the table next to the media dais had been a cup of those stupid pens politicians used to sign bills one letter at a time. One of the Man’s people had scheduled a ceremony to sign some piece of legislation or other after the main diplomatic fanfare was over. Eidra had moved up to the microphone cluster, sidestepped as if he’d tripped and then dived for the pens, coming up with one in his fist like some kind of dagger.

He’d been within three steps of the podium on which the President stood. Eidra had covered that distance in fractions of a second, diving for the Man as if he would bury that pen in his neck.

Hahmir had stepped in front of the President.

The Syrian leader had taken a stab to the shoulder before the Secret Service tackled Eidra. Still more operatives hustled all the dignitaries to separate armored safe rooms. The place had been utter chaos for the next hour, as the finger pointing and speculation began. That was when the talk of Hahmir-as-hero had started. The idea stuck, and by the time the President and Hahmir had called their joint press conference later that day, the two of them were pretty chummy.

Hahmir’s wound was superficial and, as part of covering up the whole incident in the press, the Syrian leader had agreed not to speak of it. Much as the media loved a hero story, it would be far too ugly if word got out that an unauthorized individual had gotten so close to the President and visiting foreign dignitaries. It was that much worse that it all happened on White House property. And while the President was not stupid, he very much wanted to believe that Hahmir’s good faith was genuine.

Which left only the mystery of Eidra.

A lone nut sneaking into the media pool was not so far-fetched. Eidra need not be anything or anyone more sinister than a crazy person. After all, there was no shortage of nuts who wanted to take a poke at the President.

But Eidra, at least at first glance, appeared anything but nuts…and their attempts to investigate his background had met with enough obstacles that Brognola was becoming very suspicious. Eidra was a ghost. Someone didn’t disappear that effectively unless a skilled cybertechnology team was backing him up, and that meant the involvement of some government or terrorist organization.

Except for speaking his name, Eidra had not uttered another word. He’d given them nothing to go on. They didn’t know his nationality and they weren’t sure of the derivation of Eidra itself. So far, while imprisoned, he had eaten mechanically when food was put in front of him, slept when he was allowed to sleep, and made absolutely no comment, protest or action of any kind with regard to his incarceration.

It wasn’t natural. Brognola was no stranger to conducting interviews and interrogations from within the deepest, darkest government holes imaginable. When a man dropped off the world and into a place like this, he went through predictable phases. Sure, those phases didn’t happen in the same order with everyone, and they weren’t always of the same duration, but you could count on some degree of defiance, bargaining, despair… There were a few other shifts, but what they all had in common was that the prisoners reacted. They made noise. They demanded to see someone in authority, perhaps to speak with their own governments. They pleaded. Sometimes they cried. To just sit, stand or eat without making any comment at all… It wasn’t natural.

It all added up to a picture Brognola didn’t like. That was why he’d come here today. He wanted answers. He wouldn’t be able to sleep until he got them. The President seemed to think the matter was over, with Eidra imprisoned and the Syrians now nominal allies. But the moment the weapons shipment had gone missing, Brognola knew there was more to it all than this simple narrative.

Finally, they arrived at the door to Eidra’s cell. They were on the lowest level of the black site here. That was fitting, Brognola supposed. No one had ever escaped from this place. No one ever would. That was because the men who guarded it would kill Eidra, Brognola and even themselves if that was what it took to keep Wonderland secure from the monsters lurking behind these locked doors.

“Open it,” said the man from Justice.

The guards nodded. At Brognola’s order, they opened Eidra’s cell door. The interior was much like any cell in any prison across America, with one exception: this one had a cot, a stainless-steel toilet with no seat and a steel table with two steel chairs. The table and chairs were cemented to the floor. No amount of time and effort would set them free, not without power tools. The reason the cell boasted a table and chairs was because here, in the black prison, every cell was also an interrogation room.

“Do you want him chained?” one of the guards asked. Eidra, sitting on his bunk, didn’t look up.

“No,” Brognola said. He supposed he was being macho, proving to himself that a spindly punk like Eidra couldn’t take him barehanded. Brognola might be aging and he might spend his days riding a desk, but he’d be damned if he was going to shrink in fear behind these stevedores while a scarecrow like Eidra stared him down. The prisoner could not possibly weigh more than a hundred and thirty pounds. He was one of the thinnest men, for his height, that Brognola had ever seen.

“I’ll get the bucket,” one of the guards said. He let himself out of the cell. Brognola nodded to the other one, then sat down at the table. The remaining guard went to the bunk, clamped one beefy hand on Eidra’s shoulder and guided him up and over to the interrogation table. Eidra sat across from Brognola without prompting.

“You heard?” the big Fed said. “The bucket is for you. We’re going to waterboard you. ‘Enhanced interrogation,’ they call it. It’s going to feel like you’re drowning. You won’t be. You’ll stay alive and awake for as long as we keep you that way. And you’ll get to feel every excruciating moment of it, for as long as we say you do.”

Eidra looked up at Brognola and actually met his eyes. Then the corners of his mouth turned up. He smiled. Brognola did his best to hide his surprise.

“Eidra,” the prisoner said.

“The name, rank and serial-number bit, eh?” Brognola said. “Okay. That’s fine. Nobody thinks they’re going to break the first time.”

Eidra leaned forward on the table. Brognola told himself to be wary. If the man tried to head-butt him or bite him, he would be ready for that. He had seen people blinded, had seen them nearly lose noses, when victimized by similar maneuvers.

“Eidra,” the prisoner said again. He leaned back and smiled even more smugly.

The other guard returned with a cart containing the items necessary to get the job done. “It’s time,” Brognola said. “I just wanted to see if you had anything to say before we began.”

Eidra shook his head, which was remarkable of itself. He crossed his arms, still defiant. And in that moment, in that second of familiarity, Brognola felt as if he’d been hit by lightning.

“Damn,” Brognola said.

The guards looked at each other and then at Brognola. The man from Justice wasted no time explaining, however.

“Secure the prisoner and escort me out. Now.”

The guards were well trained. They didn’t ask questions or delay him. They just did as he ordered, discarding the notion of conducting the interrogation and making sure he got where he needed to go. A driver behind the wheel of a For Official Use Only Chevy Malibu raced him through the streets of Wonderland, and Brognola was soon shoving open the door of his own office.

Once behind his desk, he opened his secured, scrambled laptop and fired up his connection to Stony Man Farm. The head of the Farm’s computer team, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, appeared on the screen through the encrypted connection.

“Hal?” he asked. “What’s wrong? You look like somebody just shot your dog.”

“Bear,” Brognola said, “I need you to call up the Fafniyal file right now. I need to see our highest-resolution pictures of the Wolf. The ones I was looking at when we prepared Striker’s dossier for the mission.”

“You got it,” Kurtzman said. His fingers flew across the keys, faster than Brognola would have thought possible if he hadn’t seen it many times before. The files began appearing on Brognola’s screen, served up by the computers at the Farm.

“No,” he said. “Next. Next. Not that one.” With each image, he asked for the next one.

Then he saw it again.

“That one!” Brognola said. On the screen, the Wolf was standing with his arms crossed, looking smugly at whatever his attention was focused on.

“Hal?” Kurtzman asked.

Brognola swore. “Bear, give me facial recognition on Eidra, the suspect in the attempted assassination in the Rose Garden.”

“But we ran that,” Kurtzman said. “It didn’t match anything in our files or in the Intelligence databases.”

“Not against the files. Run Eidra against Fafniyal. Give me points of similarity.”

Kurtzman’s expression changed on the pop-up window on Brognola’s screen. He’d realized what the big Fed was after, and it had hit him as hard as it did Hal. “You’re not thinking…” he began.

“I am,” Brognola said.

“Give me five minutes. Maybe ten.”

Brognola waited impatiently as the Stony Man team and computers worked their magic. He was on his third ant-acid pill, working his way through the pack in his jacket pocket, when Kurtzman came back on.

“Well?” Brognola asked.

“You were right. There’s a high probability that the two are siblings. And if the Wolf and this Eidra are, in fact, related…”

“Then Striker is in big trouble,” Brognola said, “because the Wolf’s brother tried to attack the President in order to give Hahmir the chance to ‘save’ the Man.”

“Striker’s radio-silent,” Kurtzman said. “That was your own mission parameter. We can’t reach him and he’s not going to call us.”

“I know, damn it. Don’t you think I know? But we’ve got to find a way. We’ve got to get this information to him somehow.”

“We’re on it,” Kurtzman said. “Farm, out.” The secure transmission ended.

Brognola stood up and went to the window, feeling his stomach roil. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. But he was one of the few people in the Western world who’d actually seen a picture of the Wolf, not to mention the Wolf and his apparent brother. It was no wonder the connection hadn’t been made before. Now that they knew, however, they had to warn Mack Bolan.

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