Choke Point. Don Pendleton

the man continued, “you didn’t get proof of life. We know you called some people, that you got advice. Too bad you listened to your friend in the FLETC because the truth is you got bad advice. You should’ve gotten proof of life before you agreed to pay a ransom.”

      “Let my little girl go, you bastards!” Maser pleaded, his voice cracking as he whimpered, “I don’t give a damn what you do to me, but please let my girl go.”

      “Shh, don’t cry,” the man said and then he burst into a fit of laughter. He rose and said, “We’re not going to kill pretty little Natalie. She’s much, much too valuable alive and well. But we can’t really have you running around blabbing this business to anybody.”

      “Wh-what are you saying?”

      “I’m saying you’ve outlived your usefulness, Senator. It’s time for you to step down.”

      “Yeah,” the slimy one interjected. “Time to go visit that big capitol building in the sky.”

      “You can kill me if you want,” Maser said, “but it won’t do you any good because someone will be looking for me. And when they find me, they’re going to figure out who did it, and then your days of kidnapping will be over.”

      “I highly doubt it,” the one with the accent replied.

      And those were the last words Senator Charlie Maser ever heard.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Stony Man Farm, Virginia

      “The murder of a federal official, even a U.S. senator, is typically assigned to a task force within the Justice Department,” the President of the United States told Harold Brognola. “Not this time.”

      “I understand, Mr. President.”

      “I’ve instructed the deputy director of the FBI to transit information directly to your office by secure channels. Use that information to find out who’s behind the murder of Senator Maser and why.”

      “And once we know?”

      “Do whatever has to be done,” the President replied in a tone as cold as Brognola had ever heard him use.

      “I understand, sir.”

      “Good luck, Hal.”

      “Thank you, Mr. President.” The line went dead before Brognola could even wish the President a good evening, which he obviously wasn’t going to have no matter what Brognola said.

      The Stony Man chief hung up and sighed, barely able to quell the burning in his throat. The twinge from the esophageal spasms, a chronic condition he’d suffered for more years than he could remember, reminded him of the roll of antacids in his desk drawer. He popped three and then made a note in the digital recorder he’d received from his wife for Christmas to buy more.

      That task complete, Brognola proceeded from his office to the electric tram in the basement. A hundred yards later, he stepped from the small transporter into the Operations Center of the Annex, a subterranean facility that housed the most modern electronic and human resources ever assembled for one purpose: combating America’s enemies. There were hundreds...nay, thousands of those who wished to do harm to the United States. Every single day of his life since agreeing to serve as top dog for the special-operations group code-named Stony Man, Brognola had worked tirelessly to protect the liberty and peace of his nation.

      Stony Man did one thing and it did it very well, better than probably any other agency of its kind. But Brognola wasn’t so deluded to believe it was his consummate leadership skills that had held it together. Not even close. Stony Man worked for three reasons: brilliant and dedicated support staff, the finest and bravest collection of fighting men ever assembled and the ideals born from the devotion and loyalty of the man named Mack Bolan.

      It was Bolan’s War Everlasting against the scourge of organized crime, and subsequently the forces of terrorism, that spurred the founding of Stony Man. It was Brognola’s relationship with Bolan—one that had started as a federal cop in pursuit of the fugitive nut-job calling himself the Executioner—that had led to his appointment as head of Stony Man. Today, Brognola was privileged to call Mack Bolan a lifelong friend. If Brognola had his way, he would have tracked Bolan down at that moment and sought his advice.

      Brognola didn’t know exactly what the President’s intelligence people were sending, but he did have some inkling of where it was going. Maybe it was something that had to be handled by one of the teams, although he couldn’t imagine how the murder of one senator could spark a concern for international security. Still, Stony Man served at the pleasure of the Oval Office and whoever happened to occupy it, and Brognola could count on one hand the number of times the subject had been broached about whether it was necessary for their operations to continue. Every time, nixing the program had ultimately been shot down as a way to turn a very good idea into a potentially bad one. To Brognola’s knowledge, every President who’d entertained the idea had never come to regret the decision to keep Stony Man going: it was the final option.

      “Is that coffee fresh?” Brognola asked Barbara Price as he entered the conference room.

      “It is,” she said. “Would you like a cup?”

      “Depends on who made it,” he replied. “I’m not sure I could handle any of Kurtzman’s rotgut right at the moment.”

      Price raised one of her beautiful eyebrows. “You’re in luck, then. I made it.”

      Brognola nodded in gratitude and then helped himself to a large cup. “You alerted Able Team?”

      “I did,” Price said as she returned her attention to the built-in monitor in front of her, one of the many recessed into the massive conference-room table capable of seating a small army. In this case it was actually not an exaggeration. “I told them we’d be in touch as soon as we had some intelligence. And before you ask, Phoenix Force has been upgraded to standby.”

      Brognola mumbled a thanks as he sat with his cup. He rubbed at his eyes and said, “The President’s intelligence reports from Justice should be coming through at any time. I don’t know the details yet, but obviously there’s much more to this than a dead politician.”

      “Well, I thought I’d get a head start and had Bear pull Senator Maser’s dossier.”

      “Items of interest, anything perhaps out of the ordinary?”

      Price stared intently as she paged down the electronic file assembled by Stony Man’s resident computer expert and cyber-team leader, Aaron Kurtzman. “Unremarkable, to be honest. Maser was born and raised in New Hampshire. Entered his first term in office after working his way from a junior position in sales and marketing, and ending as CEO of the Biddler and Holmes Corporation.”

      “What does that firm do?”

      “What they did,” Price replied. “Past tense. They went under about three years after Maser left.”

      “Maybe that’s our angle,” Brognola said. “It’s possible he left them high and dry, and when the company went belly-up somebody went looking for payback.”

      Price shook her head. “That’s what I thought at first but it doesn’t fly. Maser left the company in the black, and actually it was extremely profitable. They went out of business due to poor investments and inadequate leadership, according to the financial statements and reports from independent audits conducted after Biddler and Holmes filed for bankruptcy.”

      She handed one of the data sheets on that particular event to Brognola so he could see for himself. “Okay, so he’d been gone and running for public office long after that so it’s not likely anybody would have connected him to the company’s demise.”

      Price nodded and then sat back in her chair and stretched. She continued, “His wife apparently comes from a wealthy family, and they’re the ones who originally backed his bid for a senate seat.”

      “So you figure whatever