Devil's Bargain. Don Pendleton

mobilize and steer field operatives to the enemy’s back door before they were aware the sky was falling.

      Panning on, he saw satellite dishes staggered at various intervals, fanning away from the C-and-C center, cables hooked into generators mounted in the beds of Army transport trucks or Humvees. It appeared topnotch professional on the surface, but it was an operation marshaled in a few short hours, he knew, backed with the full blessing of an anxious White House and Pentagon. And the political-military powers had damn good reason to feel the collective knot in their belly. Sometimes, though, haste, edging toward panic in this case, he thought, led to bad decisions. Warning bells told him there were too many chiefs in the act.

      There was some good news, a ray of hope they could abort the enemy’s twisted dream. The FBI had grabbed four of them—two in Richmond, two in Fredericksburg—Bolan learned during his initial briefing at the Justice Department. Under interrogation, the Feds had a general idea what was unfolding, but no clear fix on enemy numbers, where and when the big event—as the opposition called it—would happen. With their arrest, a nervous logic rippled down the chain of intelligence and military command, the former capital of Virginia chosen for strategic purposes, central command planted between what were believed intended strike points. Virginia Beach south, Richmond and Washington, D.C., due north, and Baltimore a short hop up the interstate from here, if the opposition was already on the move, if the enemy even partly succeeded….

      Intelligence at this point, he knew, had to be on the money if he was to root out, crush the scourge before it unleashed its murderous agenda.

      And hunting down the savages was the reason why he was here.

      The Black Hawk touching down, Bolan bounded out the doorway, forged into rotor wash. Closing on the front porch, he found beefed-up security nearly invisible to the naked eye. Briefly he wondered how his sudden entrance into the hunt would be received, an unknown marching in with carte blanche to call the shots. On that score, all egos needed to take a back seat, he knew, as he glimpsed blacksuited men hunkered in the woods, Stoner 63 Light Machine Guns poking through brush, figures with FBI stenciled on windbreakers, Armalite AR-18 assault rifles slung around their shoulders, Feds scurrying in and out of the intel nerve center.

      His orders were clear. And a presidential directive had cut through red tape, dropped him square in charge. If anybody had problems with that, there was a number to call, a direct line to the President. The Man in the Oval Office, and Hal Brognola, the big Fed at the Justice Department who gave him his marching orders, knew the credentials he was bringing here were bogus, but they were likewise aware this was no time for interagency backbiting and grandstanding.

      It was the eleventh hour, time for decisive, swift and, hopefully, preemptive action.

      Or else…

      The grim thought trailed away as he saw the tall FBI man materialize in the doorway, venture a few steps across the porch, then appear to balk at what he saw.

      “You Special Agent Matt Cooper?”

      Of course, the FBI man knew that already, the coded message radioed ahead before his Black Hawk breached their airspace. “That would be me.”

      “Agent Michael James. ASAC, now that you’re here.”

      “What do you have?”

      “What we’ve got are definite major ‘effing’ problems.”

      “How about telling me something I don’t know?”

      He pulled up short, watching as ASAC James looked him up and down, the FBI man perhaps wondering more “what” he was than “who.” No question, he looked military, specifically black ops, worlds apart from any G-man, he knew. Start with the dark aviator shades, for instance, then the combat blacksuit, his tried and proved lethal duo of side arms filling out the windbreaker. There was the Beretta 93-R in shoulder holster, the mammoth .44 Magnum Desert Eagle riding his hip, for killing starters. Just above the rubber-soled combat boots, a Ka-Bar fighting knife was sheathed around his shin, just in case all else failed. Combat vest, pouches slitted to house spare clips, webbing lined with a bevy of frag, tear gas, flash-stun and incendiary grenades, and whatever else he needed for battle, urban or otherwise, was bagged in nylon in the gunship.

      “Come on, we’re on the clock, Cooper.”

      Inside the nerve center, trailing James, Bolan felt the air of controlled frenzy, a hornet’s nest of buzzing activity. Banks of computers, digital monitors and wall maps packing the room with inches to spare, he navigated through the web of cables strung across the floor. Above the electronic chitter and voices relaying intelligence over com links and secured sat phones, he heard James say, “We think there may be as many as six to ten cells, according to electronic intercepts, surveillance, what cooperation we’ve gotten from their own communities, informants, here and abroad, on our payroll, filling in a few particulars. In the plus column, we grabbed another of these assholes in Boston. He appears willing to talk, but I’m hearing he’s second or third tier, meaning he was on need-to-know until the last minute before the big bang. We don’t know if the cells are working in twos, threes or as independent operators, nor what their specific destinations of target.”

      James stopped by a bank of monitors tied into fax machines, sat phones. “Another sliver of sunlight—two more were snatched at Penn Station, while you were in the air. They were minutes from boarding the Number 90 and 93 trains. Two carry-ons per scumbag, four bags, all loaded with Semtex, the payload just inside Amtrak’s fifty-pound limit. Military explosive. Begs the question how the hell they got their hands on it, where and from who in the first place. First-class tickets, one way, of course, they were booked two cars down from the driver’s seat. That much wallop, we figure at least two cars trashed and gone up in flames, complete derailment, the works rolling up, one car after…”

      “I’ve got the picture.”

      “Okay. We are on ThreatCon Delta, terrorist alert severe. If you could ratchet it up a notch the country would be under martial law. You can well imagine the panic already out there among John and Jane Q. Citizen, what with the media jamming mikes and cameras in the face of anybody who looks official. All local and state law enforcement have been scrambled to aid and assist the National Guard, the Army, Special Forces, Delta in the shutdowns, searches, sealing off perimeters of all terminals and depots, starting with the major cities, particularly the Eastern Seaboard, the West Coast. If we don’t chop them off at the knees, and soon, well—”

      “Airports?”

      “Security personnel and procedures have been quadrupled, but we’re reading this as a whole different ballgame than using jumbo jets as flying bombs. Just the same, the skies are swarming with every fighter jet we can put in the air. Incoming international air traffic, especially executive jets, will be intercepted and escorted to landing. No compliance, bye-bye, that’s straight from the White House. Same thing with ships, large, small, pleasure or commercial. The Coast Guard and the Navy have formed a steel wall, up and down both shorelines, likewise the Gulf.”

      Was it enough? Bolan wondered. It was a task so monumental it boggled the mind. No amount of manpower, no matter how skilled or determined, could one-hundred-percent guarantee a few of the opposition didn’t slip through the net. Then there were trains, buses, already rolling, loaded with unsuspecting passengers, potential conflagrations on wheels that could detonate any moment. He looked at the monitors, saw numbers scrolling as fast as personnel could scoop up sheafs of printed paper. Digital maps of Chicago, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami were yielding the locations of train and bus terminals, points of travel, layovers and final destinations, all flashing up in red.

      “So far, we’ve sealed off and stopped all departures from Seattle’s King Street Station. We’re working on Union Station in D.C. now,” James said. “You have Metrorail, the VRE, MARC, and that’s just Washington to worry about. The list is near endless as far as manpower is concerned, covering all bases. We’re stopping trains and buses that are in transit—as we can get to them—board, clear them out, search all luggage, but it’s going to take time, something we don’t have. We’ve just alerted the Chicago Transit Authority. They are under presidential directive to