Shock Waves(40)

"I'll let it simmer until dark," he said. "I should be in before they're ready for the main event."

"I could arrange to have some people in the neighborhood," Brognola offered.

"Up to you. Make sure you've got a net before you start j to saw the limb off, eh?"

The man from Justice snorted.

"You're the one to talk. Say, listen...on this other thing..."

"I'll bring them with me if I can," the soldier told him.

"Hell, I know that. Don't you think I know that?" Hal's distress was coming through as irritation now. "But if you can't... I mean, it doesn't have a thing to do with you."

The warrior's frown was carved in stone.

"It has to do with all of us," he answered grimly.

Silence.

Then Brognola said, "I guess it does."

The Executioner prepared to disengage.

"I've got some other calls to make before I move," he told his friend. "Do what you have to do."

"I'll see you, huh?"

"I wouldn't be surprised."

The dial tone filled his ear, and Bolan eased the telephone receiver back into its cradle, fishing in his pocket for another coin. He concentrated on his mission, the preparations for his coming strike, but there was no way to evade the nagging dread that came with Hal Brognola's message.

Bolan knew the odds too well to cherish hope. If Sally had not been discovered, she was still in mortal danger, more so as the time slipped past, the numbers counting down to zero hour.

For the moment, he was certain only that she was in there, somewhere, and in peril. Trapped inside the dragon's lair, with Dave Eritrea, with Sticker — all of them within his field of fire, precise locations unknown until he was inside.

Until it was too late.

But he had other calls to make before the doomsday clock ran down, and he was out of numbers. The Executioner could not afford a tardy entrance to Minelli's coronation, any more than he could be late to his own damn funeral.

And Bolan knew the two events might well turn out to be one and the same.

* * *

Brognola held the cartridges in one hand, rattling them absentmindedly, his thoughts a world away. His .38 revolver, open, empty, filled his other fist. The bedside telephone rebuked him with its stony silence.

"Dammit."

And he knew he should be doing something, but the specifics of the thing eluded him.

It should have been a simple job for Flasher, in and out, disguised as Patriarcca's window dressing, with a full report through channels when she had the time. From all appearances, she had discovered something that refused to wait, its urgency compelling her to risk her cover — and her life — to get a message out.

And he had missed her, for the sake of being in New York and closer to the action.

"Dammit!"

It had been a simple in and out, except that somehow everything had suddenly become balled up along the way. Eritrea had disappeared from what had passed for a safehouse and the Executioner arrived to track him down and bring him back, alive or otherwise. Tattaglia was in the middle of it and heading up the Maryland contingent at the sit-down, likely to be caught in the Minelli-Bolan crossfire when it broke. And when it broke, there would be no safe havens in the hellgrounds, not for friend or foe.

But it was Flasher who preyed on Hal Brognola's mind the most. He felt responsible — all right, he was responsible, goddamn it — for the danger she was in. He called the shots, he chose the jobs, and in the end if things went sour, he would have to bear the heat.

Except that he would be sitting in his hotel room, safe and sound, while agents in the field were dying.

"If she's damaged, there's only so much you can do to make it right.'

Bolan's words came back to him and he was right, of : course. Brognola's temperament and years of going at least loosely by the book prevented him from pulling out the stops and wreaking vengeance on the animals he tracked from day to day. He could investigate them to his heart's content and bust them if he found them dirty. He could kill them, on occasion, if they tried to kill him first, although he never really got the feel for it. And where was Justice, really, once the lawyers with their Latin phrases and the judges in their funeral robes were done?

"There's only so much you can do..."

But there were no such limitations on the Executioner. His j options were wide open, and he was free to make the penalty approximate the crime.

"To make it right."

Some things could never be made right, of course. Some crimes could only be avenged, and with a fury that eclipsed the savage act itself. Some human animals could only understand apocalyptic retribution for their crimes against humanity.

More than once, Brognola had observed the Executioner in frenzy mode, imposing his revenge on the cannibals, and the images were branded on his soul. Miami. Boston. Jersey and Detroit. The blood-and-thunder aftermath of his betrayal in Virginia, April Rose's death.