Devil's Bargain. Don Pendleton

lions eating the lambs.”

      “Precisely. That’s why Alpha Deep Six was created in the first place.”

      “To bring on Armageddon.”

      “That’s one way to put it.”

      Price had listened with a neutral expression, suspected there was a lot more Geller wished to tell her, but wouldn’t. He was dangling bait, but why? She knew no institution was above corruption, and she could accept what the man said about the military-industrial conspiracy, up to a point. True, there were bad seeds in the U.S. military and intelligence communities, but she knew the rot wasn’t endemic. Still, she knew enough about the grim realities of the world to be wary once the genie of power and greed was let out of the bottle.

      “You want one example of what Alpha Deep Six has done?” Geller said. “Right before Gulf I the former Iraqi regime nearly got its hands on krytons, or nuclear weapon triggers, along with ‘skull furnaces,’ which are used to melt plutonium for nuclear bomb cores. ADS arranged the deal with the Iraqis, but again, someone got nervous at DOD, probably saw far worse than just their careers circling the bowl. Before the ship sailed out of the Delaware River it was boarded and seized. A cover-up ensued, generated by the same people who don’t want anyone to know 1.5 billion in dual-use technology was sold and delivered to Baghdad right up to the eve of Gulf I. Alpha Deep Six created that regime, kept it in power, I kid you not. You want maraging steel for making centrifuges? Alpha delivered tons of it among weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, fuel rods, light water reactors, the whole sorcerer nuke package to the Pakistanis, thus insuring their nuclear weapons program. Same thing with the North Koreans. Likewise they have kept the Khartoum government flourishing in guns and money, fomenting the unrest on the Horn of Africa, were even in the process of helping Khartoum go nuclear before their purported end. Further, they were involved in training and arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and they were instrumental in creating both the Taliban and al-Qaeda during that ten-year conflict.”

      “Busy boys.”

      “This isn’t funny, Barbara. Do you hear me laughing?”

      “And you have proof of all this?”

      “Nothing in writing. If you don’t trust my word, I can send you to sources who can back me up, men so high up in the intelligence and military communities they’re the next closest thing to talking to God. They’ll also tell you that Alpha Deep Six is responsible for creating and landing the Red Crescent in this country, that they trained, funded and armed them for what could be the biggest catastrophe to ever hit American soil. One from which this country may never recover.”

      She stiffened, braced to grab her Browning as he suddenly reached into his briefcase. She stayed on edge, even as Geller produced a CD-ROM.

      “It’s all here,” he said, placing the disk on the table.

      “All what?”

      “Dates, places, times, people, the entire alphabet, the who’s who on Alpha Deep Six and the shadow world that created them. There are decoded messages, intercepts about who they know, what they’ve done and what they are doing. Red Crescent is their creation, their vision of the gates of Hell unleashed. Do you know anything about them?”

      “Only what I’ve heard on CNN,” she lied.

      “Well, here are a few facts you won’t get from the media. Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, a few other marquee terror groups were, so to speak, read the tea leaves by ADS in the late eighties, but it took until the early nineties until they became believers in the ADS infidels and their vision of the future. Osama and his top lieutenants knew that if the United States declared all-out war against them, they would go down hard, disfigured, dismantled, captured or killed. They knew their money would be the first target. Thus Alpha mapped out a contingency plan to keep their jihad afloat, but it was only a small part to their own big event.

      “Before our government froze the first million, the major terror orgs were cleaning out their banks, transferring every asset they could get their hands on into ready cash. They began buying up diamonds from West Africa, precious gemstones from India, Myanmar, Indonesia. They invested heavily in narcotics, aligning themselves with the South American drug cartels, but most of their investing went with heroin to the east. Financially, able to remain solvent with gemstones and dope, if all else fails, they are far from bankrupt. And they would have no problem getting funds, from what we’ve learned, if the well began to dry. Every radical sheikh, imam and mullah from Algeria to Indonesia gave the Red Crescent their blessing during what we know was the Grand Islamic Council just before the outbreak of Gulf II.

      “As for Alpha, they personally recruited RC operatives, before and after their ‘demise.’ After Afghanistan and Gulf II we know there was a huge influx into RC of al-Qaeda and Taliban and the former Iraqi regime’s fedayeen who were willing to come under the new umbrella, even if it was hung over them by infidels. The Red Crescent received help principally from Jordan, Syria and Turkey. But, when Syria fell onto the radar screen for helping Iraq, our supposed allies, the Turks and Jordanians held out their hands—for a price. Now, from various methods of surveillance and intercepts of chatter between Red Crescent operatives and other terror orgs, we believe but cannot verify that somewhere in the neighborhood of one to two billion dollars—hard currency, jewels, diamonds, narcotics—is stashed in underground armed fortresses they call the Bank of Islam. We believe Alpha Deep Six marshaled a small army of fanatics to invade and wreak death and destruction on this country’s ground-transportation networks for payback, and to take all intelligence eyes off their violent resurrection, and vanishing act two.”

      Price watched Geller nod at the disk. The list of questions she could put to him was too long, an instinctive fear mounting, warning her to get out of here. He pushed the disk across the coffee table.

      “Take it.”

      Price picked up the subtle note of insistence. If she took the disk, it might confirm whatever suspicions he had that she was still actively involved in covert work. If she didn’t, the Farm and its warriors might lose out on invaluable intelligence.

      “I told you, Max, I’m retired.”

      “Really? Is that why I had to go through about six cutouts from every intelligence and law-enforcement agency we know of? Then you finally get back to me, using about four different back channels not even the almighty NSA know exist?”

      “Say I take it. What is it you expect me to do with the information?”

      “It would appear you still have friends and sources in very high places. Pass it on. You still believe in freedom, truth and justice, don’t you?”

      Clever, she thought, how he’d boxed her in. She was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. She picked up the disk.

      “The password,” Geller said, “is ‘Resurrection.’”

      ACTION, IN BOLAN’S experience, cured fear. From the warrior perspective it most certainly excised the cancer of evil. The hesitant or the paralyzed in the face of mortal danger sometimes died from the strangehold of fear. But the warrior, he knew, acted on fear, used it to motivate, propel him to new heights—in this case—to violence of action. The enormity of the task before the nation might be so daunting, funded and planned for nobody knew how long by unknown financiers—the lurking notion in his mind they had inside help from homegrown traitors—with fanatics prepared to commit suicide if only to unleash mass murder, the Executioner knew only one answer would wipe out the evil ready to consume the country, slaughter countless innocents.

      Identify and strike down the enemy, lightning fast and hard. No mercy, no hesitation, no exceptions.

      To the credit of the man on the other end of the sat phone, Bolan knew Hal Brognola was more than up to the grim job, bloody as it would prove, lives in the balance, perhaps an entire nation on the verge of collapsing into anarchy. After all, he and the big Fed had known each other since mile one of what was the genesis of the Executioner. Those days were light-years distant now, when Brognola once hunted a young soldier during his war against the Mafia, but they were of like mind, immutable in principle and commitment