Killing Ground. Don Pendleton

is how I think they put it.”

      Brognola nodded. At the end of the main hall was a staircase. As they took the steps down, he said, “In any event, since this shift they’ve been catching all the breaks while we keep running into setbacks. It plays in nicely with their calls for autonomy, but the President and Joint Chiefs think it’s all a little too convenient. I’m inclined to agree.”

      “Same here,” Price said.

      Once they reached the basement, it was a short walk down to the mouth of a large underground passageway. There was a small electric rail car parked just inside the opening. Brognola took the wheel. Price rode shotgun.

      “So I’m guessing it’s up to us to see if there’s something hinky going on,” she said as the car started down the tunnel.

      “Correct. The bottom line is this,” Brognola said. “If the ANA is legitimately trouncing the Taliban, we want to know how they’re doing it. Just as important, we want to make sure they’re doing it on their own.”

      “You think maybe they’ve cut a deal elsewhere?”

      “That’s what we need to find out,” Brognola said. “I’ve thought through a game plan, but I’d like your input before we run it past the cybercrew.”

      “No problem,” Price responded, “That’s what a mission controller’s for.”

      ONCE ALL THE FALLEN BRANCHES were loaded into the pickup, one of the blacksuits drove from the orchards to the Annex, a large outbuilding located on the far east perimeter of the estate next to a stand of young poplars that had been equally pummeled by the storm. Inside the building, limbs and twigs from the latter trees were being fed into the growling maw of an industrial wood chipper and turned into mulch, one of the by-products that was presented to the outside world as proof of Stony Man Farm’s agricultural reason for being. The various enterprises did, in fact, cover a portion of the Farm’s sizable overhead, but the site had a more far-reaching agenda. There in the Annex, one floor beneath the thick concrete slab upon which the wood chipper carried out its noisy duties, Price and Brognola had just emerged from the underground tunnel and were making their way to the Computer Room, nerve center for America’s best-kept secret in the covert war against those intent, one way or another, on bringing the country to its knees.

      “That sounds like the way to go,” Price said, once Brognola had laid out his strategy for dealing with the situation in Afghanistan. “We’re going to have our hands full, though.”

      “Fortunately, that’s something we’re used to,” Brognola replied as he opened the door for his colleague.

      “I’ll apprise Striker while you brief the others.”

      “Sounds like a plan.”

      The Computer Room was a vast brightly lit chamber with workstations positioned here and there, a far wall lined with large flat-screen monitors that flashed an ever-changing patchwork of display maps, news feeds and images from aerial sat cams. Three-quarters of the Stony Man cybernetic crew—Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, Huntington Wethers and Carmen Delahunt—were on duty, laboring intently at their consoles to provide needed INTEL and logistical backup for SOG commando teams on assignment both at home and abroad. One by one, however, they took note of Price and Brognola’s arrival and quickly shifted their attention.

      Price exchanged a brief greeting with the others, then ex cused herself and moved to a corner alcove, where she dialed out on a secured phone line routed through enough code scramblers to sidestep any possible attempt to intercept the call. Brognola, meanwhile, unbuttoned his trench coat and raided the liner pocket for a twenty-dollar Padron, one of two dozen such hand-rolled cigars presented to him by Phoenix Force leader David McCarter upon that unit’s successful return from a mission three weeks ago in Nicaragua. There had been a time, years ago, when Brognola would have lit up and shrugged off the gibes of those who took exception to the pungent smoke, but times had changed and the big Fed now contented himself with rolling the cigar between his fingers as he spoke or chewing on it.

      “Where’s Akira?” he queried, glancing at a vacant station normally commandeered by the cybercrew’s youngest member, Akira Tokaido.

      “Catnap in the lounge,” answered Delahunt, a fiery redhead in her late forties who’d come to Stony Man by way of the FBI. “We started a union while you were out and decided we deserve a little shut-eye when the brain cells overheat.”

      Brognola rolled with the wisecrack. “Fine by me,” he said. “As long as you do it in shifts. Just don’t start asking for maid service and mints on your pillows.”

      “Fair enough.”

      Wethers, a one-time Berkeley cybernetics professor with neither the knack nor patience for small talk, cleared his throat, eager to steer focus back to more pressing concerns.

      “Something came up at the briefing, I take it,” he said to Brognola. “Does it have to do with Striker and the Taliban?”

      Brognola nodded, shedding his trench coat and draping it over the back of Tokaido’s chair.

      SOG’s two commando units, Able Team and Phoenix Force, invariably handled missions as a group, but Bolan’s preference, as it had been when he first set out for Afghanistan, was to work alone, knowing the crew back in Virginia would cover his back. Brognola intended to do all he could to see that the Farm held up its end of the bargain. He quickly passed along news of the Safed Koh ambush, concluding with the update Price had received earlier from Bolan.

      “We’ve had no luck rounding up anyone who left the attack site,” he said. “The feeling is they’ve managed to slip back into Pakistan, most likely with O’Brien’s body.”

      “By Pakistan I take it you mean the tribal region,” Delahunt said.

      “That’s always been our premise, and there’s nothing here to suggest otherwise,” Brognola said. “The ambushers we were able to recover are with Army Intelligence at Bagram. They’re going through personal effects while the bodies are autopsied to see if there’s some dietary tip-off as to where they might have been holed up.”

      “Dietary tip-off?” Kurtzman asked. “That’s a new one on me.”

      “Different tribes, different crops,” Brognola said. “If any of them have undigested food in their system, it could be as good as finding fingerprints in a homicide case.”

      “‘Alimentary, my dear Watson,’” Delahunt said, invoking a Sherlock Holmesian British accent. When Wethers shot her a stern glance, she told him, “C’mon, Hunt, a little levity won’t grind things to a halt, okay?”

      “Does that make it another one of our ‘union perks’?”

      Delahunt laughed. “Hey, what do you know, Hunt made a funny.”

      “Okay, people,” Brognola interceded. “Can we get back to the task at hand? Following up on this ambush is just our first step. There’s a wider picture we need to be looking at, as well.”

      Brognola paced before his colleagues as he quickly reiterated what he’d told Price earlier regarding concerns about the ease with which the Afghan National Army had been striking lopsided blows against the Taliban while the joint U.S.-NATO effort was being stymied at every turn. When he stressed how the ANA’s solo triumphs coincided with growing calls for Western pullouts, all three members of the cyberteam agreed on the need to look for another explanation besides a run of good luck on the part of the home team.

      Kurtzman, the crew’s wheelchair-bound leader, was the first to respond after Brognola had completed the briefing. “I’ll start culling sat-cam databases for signs of Taliban movement along the border,” he said.

      “Good,” Brognola said. “Also see what you can do about getting one of the orbitals to make a few extra passes over that whole stretch of mountains. BASIC would probably be your best bet, but use my name and pull in markers with the National Reconnaissance Office or some of the private firms