Choke Point. Don Pendleton

don’t mind fresh air. I just prefer the finer things in life.”

      “Such as?” Blancanales asked, unable to resist bantering with his two friends.

      “Swimming pools surrounded by beautiful women sunning themselves in bathing suits.”

      Lyons shook his head and jerked a thumb at Schwarz. “You believe this guy? Surrounded by all of this natural beauty and he’s pining away for a Marriott.”

      “It’s sad,” Blancanales said with a mock despondence. “He never wants to rough it.”

      “Any hotel that doesn’t carry your bags in for you is roughing it,” Schwarz replied.

      “Pathetic,” Carl Lyons said. “Simply pathetic.”

      * * *

      “WE’VE UNCOVERED a horrific situation,” Barbara Price announced.

      “Barb’s correct,” Brognola said. “I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything quite this bad before. Not on our own turf.”

      “What the hell’s going on?” Lyons asked.

      “Senator Maser was being extorted for a ransom payment to free his daughter,” Price began. “Near as we can gather, his daughter had been kidnapped by parties unknown, who then contacted Maser and demanded a half-million dollars.”

      Schwarz let go with a whistle. “Holy cripes. So he delivered the money and you think the kidnappers killed him.”

      “It’s not clear what happened since there was really no evidence in the area where Maser’s body was found,” Brognola replied.

      “Local police are convinced Maser was killed somewhere else and dumped in a shallow marsh site near one of the many coves in Chesapeake country,” Price continued. “Apparently, a duck hunter spotted his body and called police, who in turn called the FBI when they discovered the deceased was a U.S. senator.

      “There isn’t much physical evidence but the police eventually found Senator Maser’s abandoned vehicle off a secondary road. There were tracks but nothing distinctive enough to allow them to make a positive identification. It’s believed the vehicle was a pickup truck and that’s where Maser had gone to make the exchange. Rain was apparently the chief culprit in dispersing any other hard physical evidence the police might have collected.”

      “So what’s all the excitement?” Blancanales asked easily.

      “We’ve discovered that Senator Maser isn’t the first one to have been the victim of this kind of thing,” Brognola said. “Although this is the first death that’s resulted from it.”

      “You mean there have been other politicians whose kids got snapped?”

      Price nodded with a frown. “Unfortunately, yes. But apparently authorities were never alerted because the kidnappers always returned the kids unharmed. The kid would get snatched, the kidnappers would call with a ransom, the official would cough up the money and the kid would make it home in one piece.”

      “Exactly how many kids are we talking here?” Blancanales asked, shifting in his chair uneasily.

      Price looked at Brognola, who nodded, and they could see her swallow hard before she exchanged glances in turn with each of them. Finally she replied, “Hundreds.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      “What?” Lyons stiffened in his chair. “How the hell could that be?”

      “Easy, Ironman,” Blancanales said, putting a friendly but firm hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Let’s hear this out before we start jumping to conclusions.”

      Lyons looked hard at Blancanales at first, but then his expression cooled some and he relaxed in his seat.

      “Go on, Barb,” Blancanales urged.

      “There’s no question this organization has been operating for some time,” Price said. “They’ve built a reputation as a secret society, dubbed by many of their victims as the Red Brood.”

      “That’s a lovely name,” Schwarz said with a snort.

      “Do we know any more than that?” Lyons asked.

      It was Brognola who replied. “We do. And that’s why we’ve called you back here. We believe there’s a better than off chance the group that hit Maser is just part of a larger organization, a slaver outfit that’s been kidnapping kids all over the country. Boys, girls, blacks, whites, Hispanics...the list is nearly endless.”

      “And they’ve chosen to expose themselves now?”

      “It looks like these operators actually ended up stepping outside of the parameters of their original orders,” Price said. “We think they got greedy and stole the money. What they didn’t count on was that Senator Maser kept a journal of everything he did—the phone calls and the money and the drive they took him on. Local authorities found the journal he left behind in his SUV. They believe, although can’t prove, that the location of the vehicle is likely where he was killed.”

      “So where do we start?” Blancanales asked.

      “Charlie Maser had a close friend, Congressman Thomas Acres of Florida,” Price replied. “Nine hours ago, Acres got a call at his private residence outside of Georgetown and was told his son had been taken from the private school he attends. They gave Acres instructions to put together a half-million-dollar ransom and told him they would contact him with delivery instructions.”

      “How did they make the connection?” Schwarz asked.

      “The FBI has had a wiretap on Acres for some days,” Price said. “Completely coincidental but as soon as they heard this they contacted their highers, who immediately flagged it and in turn routed it to the investigative team assigned to Maser’s case.”

      “Your mission is to follow Acres to the delivery point and attempt to apprehend the kidnappers,” Brognola said.

      “And if they won’t come quietly?”

      “Terminate with extreme prejudice.”

      Lyons nodded. “Now that I can understand.”

      * * *

      IT TOOK THE THREE MEN of Able Team less than a minute to figure out that Thomas Acres, Republican congressman from the great state of Florida, was being tailed.

      According to Stony Man’s intelligence, the route the kidnappers gave Acres was identical to the one Maser had driven—a fact that had come straight from the deceased senator’s journal—although the destination turned out to be quite different. Instead of turning south once in Maryland and following the Chesapeake Bay route, Acres had been instructed to head straight into the heart of downtown Baltimore.

      They were in a late-model Dodge Charger, just one of the many vehicles in the Stony Man fleet, with untraceable Washington plates. Any cops who ran those plates would be politely informed that, while domestic, they belonged to the U.S. Diplomatic Corps and as such the occupants of the vehicle were immune from detainment or search. It wasn’t an uncommon thing in this part of the country, especially so close to the nation’s capital, and was typically enough to send the police off to look for juicier prey.

      The tail on Acres turned out to be a Chevy van with New York plates. Blancanales had suggested contacting Stony Man to run the vehicle registration but Lyons dismissed the idea.

      “Better to stay back and see where this goes,” Lyons said as he withdrew the Colt Anaconda from shoulder leather and double-checked the load.

      While his partners chose semiautomatics, Lyons preferred a wheel gun. He had plenty of experience with semiautos and no problem using them in a pinch, but in the end he felt more at home with the knockdown power of the .44 Magnum loads. John “Cowboy” Kissinger, resident gunsmith for the entire Stony Man arsenal, had once asked Lyons to try a .44 Desert