Maelstrom. Don Pendleton

that fu—”

      “I said, knock it off!”

      The room went silent as Schwarz and Lyons squared off on each other for nearly a full two minutes. It was finally Blancanales with his calm voice and lax demeanor who became the voice of reason.

      “Hey, we shouldn’t be fighting with each other,” he said. He pointed to Babbit and said, “She’s our enemy.”

      “Yeah,” the two men chorused.

      Blancanales turned back to Babbit and said, “What you have just seen is a test. This is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency, I would have just let him strangle you to death. Now, do you want talk to us? Or should we just skip the formalities, take you out into a public square and shoot you dead?”

      “You’re crazy! All of you are fucking crazy!” She began to scream and shout additional obscenities. “You can’t just take me out and kill me!”

      “Well, actually, we can,” Lyons said. “You see, you’re not an American. You’re a foreigner who has entered this country and committed a terrorist act. Under the new laws enacted by the Homeland Security Act, the things you and your friends did today are considered crimes against humanity and acts of war, and as such that means you are subject to the rules of war.”

      “He’s right,” Schwarz said. “You have no rights as a civilian, since you’re not a citizen of this country.”

      “In fact, you’re not even in the country legally,” Blancanales added.

      That did it.

      “Yes, I am! I am! My name is Deborah Babbit. I live in Kansas City, and I went to high school at Monroe High and I can tell you anything about my life you want. But I’m an American citizen and you can’t execute me!”

      “We couldn’t execute you anyway,” Lyons said with a shrug, and started to walk toward the door, Schwarz on his tail. “Summary execution of a POW is a violation of Geneva Convention rules.”

      Her eyes reverted to Blancanales’s who was now seated across the table and studying her with a broad grin. “Let’s start from the top.”

      CHAPTER FIVE

      Stony Man Farm, Virginia

      “So that’s the story,” Carl Lyons finished, his voice resounding through the speaker.

      Hal Brognola sat back, folded his arms and chewed thoughtfully at his unlit cigar. For a moment nobody said a word. Price and Kurtzman stared at Brognola, waiting with anxious expressions. They didn’t wait long.

      Brognola grunted and said, “All right, let me see if I heard you right. You’re saying that these Jewish terrorists aren’t really Jewish?”

      “Right,” Lyons said. “Maybe one or two originally hail from Israel, but the one we got to roll said she’s from Kansas, and the N.Y.P.D.’s computers confirmed it from her prints.”

      “Did this Babbit give you any explanation for her being an American?”

      “Nothing other than she was hired to do the job by parties unknown. They went to a secret training camp stuck in some part of the Louisiana backwater for two months. Claims she has no idea where because she was blindfolded along with the rest of her comrades and nearly beaten and starved to death during the first week.”

      “Sounds like your standard, run-of-the-mill mercenary training,” Price remarked.

      “Maybe and maybe not, but in either case it doesn’t matter,” Brognola said. “Even if we could find this camp, I don’t think it could tell us much more than Babbit has. What’s your recommendation, Carl?”

      “I say we stick with our current information. I think she’s telling the truth, and she’s already agreed to help us in return for leniency. She got into this for the money and nothing more, which she says was real good by the way.”

      “It seems strange that someone would pay them to do this,” Brognola said. “Why hire a group of Americans to dress as Jewish radicals and waste a bunch of innocent people in front of God and country?”

      “Well, they obviously want to start a street war,” Price offered. “Maybe stir hatred for Jewish radical groups.”

      “I can buy fueling the fire for a street war,” Lyons said. “I just talked to our liaison with the N.Y.P.D., and he said this incident has already started riots in three separate areas of the city. The cops are calling in everyone they can find to help out.”

      Kurtzman sighed. “Great.”

      “But that second part about stirring hatred up for Jewish groups just doesn’t wash, Barb,” Lyons continued. “In fact, Babbit told us how this one guy kept telling them they were fighting for the Jewish cause and to think how nice it would be to secure their country from the Pakistanis, the Arabs and so forth. She was adamant about what he said, and we all agree here that she’s telling the truth. She said this guy preached pure hatred of them.”

      “Like it was personal,” Price said, looking at Brognola.

      Brognola nodded. “Carl, you said something earlier about this group that I found interesting. Something about arm bands they were wearing?”

      “Yeah, the witnesses canvassed by the uniforms where the massacre took place consistently referenced arm bands with the Star of David.”

      “Wait a minute!” Kurtzman snapped his fingers. “We just received the first transmissions of the tapes from David McCarter. Those terrorists they went up against were wearing arm bands just like that.”

      Price inhaled sharply. “These two incidents are connected, then?”

      “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves yet,” Brognola said. “Although I think we’d better consider that as a possibility.”

      “What happened to Phoenix Force?”

      Price gave him a quick overview of the situation, skipping most of the minutiae. When she was finished explaining, they all agreed that the similarities and the timing were more than coincidences. There had to be a connection, and it had now become Stony Man’s number-one priority to find out what that was and to predict the group’s next action.

      “Like I said before, this Babbit’s willing to help us,” Lyons concluded. “She says she has some sketchy details of other plans this group might have. If we grant her immunity, she’ll deal.”

      “You know our policy, Carl,” Brognola replied. “We don’t ‘deal’ with terrorists.”

      “I understand that, but we may not have any other choice. If David and the rest can’t make a connection there, then we’ll have to work it from our end. She’s the one lead we have, Hal, and I want to exploit that to our advantage.”

      Lyons was right, of course, and Brognola knew it. Sometimes the rules had to be bent. That was the name of the game, and it was fortunate that Stony Man had the freedom to conduct operations as they saw fit, as long as they kept the President apprised.

      “All right,” Brognola conceded. “I’ll arrange for her to be cut loose and remanded to your custody. See where she leads you. But whatever you do, keep her alive. You’re right. She’s our only link to whoever’s behind this.”

      “Understood,” Lyons said, and he disconnected the call.

      ONCE THEY HAD concluded their call with Lyons, Price and Kurtzman began working on their intelligence, performing keyword searches and investigations into the backgrounds of Babbit’s deceased associates. It didn’t take long to figure out that most of them had ended up at the remote training camp in Louisiana after responding to an ad in a mercenary magazine. An anonymous caller took out the ad by contacting one of the magazine’s copy editors, faxing the three ambiguous lines advertising paid mercenary training, and paying for the job by money order mailed without