Assassin's Tripwire. Don Pendleton

surprise.

      “Eidra,” the prisoner said.

      “The name, rank and serial-number bit, eh?” Brognola said. “Okay. That’s fine. Nobody thinks they’re going to break the first time.”

      Eidra leaned forward on the table. Brognola told himself to be wary. If the man tried to head-butt him or bite him, he would be ready for that. He had seen people blinded, had seen them nearly lose noses, when victimized by similar maneuvers.

      “Eidra,” the prisoner said again. He leaned back and smiled even more smugly.

      The other guard returned with a cart containing the items necessary to get the job done. “It’s time,” Brognola said. “I just wanted to see if you had anything to say before we began.”

      Eidra shook his head, which was remarkable of itself. He crossed his arms, still defiant. And in that moment, in that second of familiarity, Brognola felt as if he’d been hit by lightning.

      “Damn,” Brognola said.

      The guards looked at each other and then at Brognola. The man from Justice wasted no time explaining, however.

      “Secure the prisoner and escort me out. Now.”

      The guards were well trained. They didn’t ask questions or delay him. They just did as he ordered, discarding the notion of conducting the interrogation and making sure he got where he needed to go. A driver behind the wheel of a For Official Use Only Chevy Malibu raced him through the streets of Wonderland, and Brognola was soon shoving open the door of his own office.

      Once behind his desk, he opened his secured, scrambled laptop and fired up his connection to Stony Man Farm. The head of the Farm’s computer team, Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, appeared on the screen through the encrypted connection.

      “Hal?” he asked. “What’s wrong? You look like somebody just shot your dog.”

      “Bear,” Brognola said, “I need you to call up the Fafniyal file right now. I need to see our highest-resolution pictures of the Wolf. The ones I was looking at when we prepared Striker’s dossier for the mission.”

      “You got it,” Kurtzman said. His fingers flew across the keys, faster than Brognola would have thought possible if he hadn’t seen it many times before. The files began appearing on Brognola’s screen, served up by the computers at the Farm.

      “No,” he said. “Next. Next. Not that one.” With each image, he asked for the next one.

      Then he saw it again.

      “That one!” Brognola said. On the screen, the Wolf was standing with his arms crossed, looking smugly at whatever his attention was focused on.

      “Hal?” Kurtzman asked.

      Brognola swore. “Bear, give me facial recognition on Eidra, the suspect in the attempted assassination in the Rose Garden.”

      “But we ran that,” Kurtzman said. “It didn’t match anything in our files or in the Intelligence databases.”

      “Not against the files. Run Eidra against Fafniyal. Give me points of similarity.”

      Kurtzman’s expression changed on the pop-up window on Brognola’s screen. He’d realized what the big Fed was after, and it had hit him as hard as it did Hal. “You’re not thinking…” he began.

      “I am,” Brognola said.

      “Give me five minutes. Maybe ten.”

      Brognola waited impatiently as the Stony Man team and computers worked their magic. He was on his third ant-acid pill, working his way through the pack in his jacket pocket, when Kurtzman came back on.

      “Well?” Brognola asked.

      “You were right. There’s a high probability that the two are siblings. And if the Wolf and this Eidra are, in fact, related…”

      “Then Striker is in big trouble,” Brognola said, “because the Wolf’s brother tried to attack the President in order to give Hahmir the chance to ‘save’ the Man.”

      “Striker’s radio-silent,” Kurtzman said. “That was your own mission parameter. We can’t reach him and he’s not going to call us.”

      “I know, damn it. Don’t you think I know? But we’ve got to find a way. We’ve got to get this information to him somehow.”

      “We’re on it,” Kurtzman said. “Farm, out.” The secure transmission ended.

      Brognola stood up and went to the window, feeling his stomach roil. He hadn’t wanted to believe it. But he was one of the few people in the Western world who’d actually seen a picture of the Wolf, not to mention the Wolf and his apparent brother. It was no wonder the connection hadn’t been made before. Now that they knew, however, they had to warn Mack Bolan.

       5

      Bolan ripped the Beretta from its shoulder holster and stroked the trigger repeatedly, spraying 3-round bursts across the surface of Khasky’s poker table. Confetti filled the air as bullets tore through the deck of cards. The fat man squealed and toppled over in his chair, dropping his machete. Seated behind the table, Khasky was never the real threat. That came from the guards. Bolan simply needed the distraction that targeting their leader would provide.