Ripple Effect. Don Pendleton

decide to off himself one afternoon for no apparent reason?”

      “It’s a question,” Bolan said.

      “And they got answers,” Brognola confided.

      “Which involves us…how?”

      “I guess you know the rule of thumb for suspects held since 9/11, right? Arrest a hundred, and you may get four or five who know a guy who knows a guy. Arrest a thousand, maybe you find one or two who are those guys. This guy who tried to lynch himself knows people. My guess, he got tired of sitting in his cell, ignored, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. He figured they’d be getting back to him, sooner or later, and he wanted to eliminate the chance of letting something slip.”

      “Too bad for him he couldn’t do it right,” Bolan observed.

      “Too bad for him, but maybe good for us.”

      “How so?”

      “Because he knows things,” Brognola said. “Not a major player, now, don’t get me wrong. His face isn’t on anybody’s deck of cards. They never heard of him at Langley, until three, four days ago. At least, they never really thought about him. Way down at the bottom of some list that gathered dust. No one you’d give the time of day. They might’ve turned him loose, another six months or a year, except for the attempted suicide.”

      “But now he’s in the spotlight.”

      “Sitting right there on the grill,” Brognola said. “Maybe you smell the smoke from here. And one way or another, they persuade this guy to spill his guts. Turns out, he’s been around and knows his way around. Hamas, al Qaeda, PLO—little Hasam Khaled’s got friends all over.”

      “But he’s not a major player?” Bolan asked.

      “Not even close,” Brognola replied. “But he’s the man nobody notices. Loyal to a fault, likely involved in bombings or some other shit, but mostly, he’s just there. Maybe he brings the big boys tea and sandwiches, stands guard outside the tent or tags along behind them with his AK when they take a stroll. But all the while, he hears things.”

      “Which he’s sharing with the Gitmo gang,” Bolan said.

      “Bingo. Some of it’s history, you know, like Joe Valachi telling all about the 1930s Mafia in 1961. Khaled isn’t that old, but neither are the groups he’s been involved with. What I hear, he’s talking personalities and troop deployments, plans that failed, others that hit the bull’s-eye, schisms in the ranks—the whole nine yards.”

      “That covers lots of ground,” Bolan observed.

      “Too much for us to think about. Except, maybe, one thing.”

      Bolan said nothing, waiting for it.

      “There was one name that stood out,” Brognola said. “I mean, a lot of names stood out, but this one was American.”

      “Unusual.”

      “In spades. You’ve heard about the so-called American Taliban caught in Afghanistan, and that guy with the shoe bomb that didn’t go off.”

      Bolan nodded, still waiting.

      “Well, those are the norm when al Qaeda or some rival group gets a Yank in the ranks. Disaffected young men, for the most part. They look for a cause with excitement attached. If they’re rednecks, they go for the Klan or militias. Same thing. Self-improvement through hate.”

      “But the new name is different,” Bolan said, not asking.

      “And then some,” Brognola replied. “This one worries the hell out of Langley, the Pentagon, maybe the White House. It worries the hell out of me.”

      “It’s a congressman? Senator? What?”

      “Don’t I wish. If it was, we could stake out his office, tap into his phone lines, whatever. The Bureau could do it and slap him with charges from here to next Easter. It isn’t that simple.”

      “Go on.”

      “First, the guy’s not in-country. You’ve heard of free radicals? This one’s the ultimate. Maybe we know where he is, maybe not. It’s a toss-up, and knowing’s not bagging.”

      “Okay.”

      “But he’s not just elusive. He’s skilled, see? He knows the guerrilla game inside and out, and it’s not just in theory. He’s been there, in combat, for our side and theirs. In between he was anyone’s soldier if they could afford him. Turns out, some of our enemies have oil and cash to burn.”

      “Sounds tough,” Bolan agreed.

      “He’s tough, all right.” Brognola stopped dead in the sand, sun rising at his back. “In fact, he’s you.”

      “Say what?”

      “I don’t mean you, you. But he’s like you. Special Forces. The same training, same background, plenty of real combat experience before he took a discharge and went into business for himself.”

      “Who is this guy?” Bolan asked.

      Brognola fished inside his jacket and produced a CD in a plastic case. “His file’s on here, in PDF,” the man from Justice said. “Long story somewhat short, his name is Eugene Talmadge. Born in 1967, joined the Army out of high school. Graduated to the Green Berets at twenty, with a sergeant’s stripes. Like you.”

      Bolan was less than thrilled with the comparison, but kept his mouth shut, listening.

      “Combat-wise, he served in Panama, the Noriega thing down there—”

      Bolan supplied the operation’s name. “Just Cause.”

      “That’s it. Then, he was back for Desert Storm in 1991, followed by action in Somalia and Bosnia. Peacekeeping, I believe they called it at the time. In 1995 there was an incident with one of his superiors. It’s in the file, sort of.”

      “Sort of?”

      “The way it reads, Talmadge had words with a lieutenant and teed off on him. The looey wound up close to brain-dead. Talmadge got a compromise verdict at his court-martial. Guilty of assaulting a superior, acquitted of attempted murder and some other stuff. The Army yanked his pension and he walked with a dishonorable discharge.”

      “You don’t buy the verdict,” Bolan said, not making it a question.

      “Oh, I’m sure about the verdict,” Brognola replied, “but not about the case. Transcripts are classified, but I got Aaron and his techies at the Farm to do some hacking for me, on the q.t. It turns out that Talmadge’s defense was basically eradicated from the public record.”

      “Being?”

      “Namely,” Brognola said, “that he caught this officer and gentleman trying to rape a female corporal. Apparently, when Talmadge pulled him off, the looey lost it, started swinging on him, and the rest his history.”

      “They hung him out to dry for that?”

      “Apparently,” Brognola said. “Today, they’d probably be prosecuting the lieutenant, but the atmosphere in 1995 was different. They had adultery scandals going on, reports of sexual assaults at West Point and Annapolis. I’m guessing that one more black eye was one too many.”

      “And Talmadge came out pissed.”

      “I’m guessing yes. He shopped around for jobs, but with the DD and his lack of college training, it was pretty much a hopeless case. Before starvation hit, he started doing what he’s good at, but for higher pay than Uncle Sam had ever given him.”

      “A merc,” Bolan said. It was more or less predictable, the same course followed throughout history by soldiers of all nations who were left without a service or a war to fight.

      “A merc and contract hitter,” Brognola amended. “Once again, it’s in the dossier. To summarize, we’re sure of work he did in Africa,