It was his only lifeline now, his only means of finding out precisely what had happened to his family. "I'll bet it's lonely where you are." The message had been crystal clear, and there was no escaping its significance. The bastards had his wife, his children, and Brognola had no way of knowing where or even who they were. As for the motive, he would have to wait until they called again, and pray that they would not decide to pass on him, to simply slaughter Helen, Jeff, Eileen.
The bastards wanted him, and he would make himself available, but only at a price. The safety of his family, guaranteed, for openers. Whatever happened after they were safe was secondary, less than insignificant. His own life scarcely mattered in comparison.
But if the bastards didn't call again...
The man from Justice laid his head on cradled arms and wept. For Helen. For their children. He let the moment carry him away, and when it passed, Brognola knew that there was nothing he could do but wait for yet another call, another fleeting linkup with the men who meant to tear his world apart.
He stretched out on the sofa, one hand clutched around the snub-nosed .38 that he had worn from work, unconsciously. He wore it everywhere these days, but he had not expected to be needing it this weekend. They would not be coming for him now, Brognola knew; they would not have aroused him with a call if they intended to attack in force.
His mind was wrestling with fatigue, and losing. In spite of pain, fear and tense anxiety, the man from Wonderland could feel exhaustion gaining on him, reaching out with leaden hands to pull him down. And somewhere in the endless quarter hour after he received the first communication from his enemies, Brognola slept.
And was awakened by the telephone.
He struggled up from sleep, the squat revolver searching for a target, lowering as full consciousness returned with stunning swiftness. Glancing at the mantel clock through blurry eyes, he saw that it was 4:00 a.m.
"Hello?"
"Hang on."
A man's voice, different from the first, replaced immediately by the ringing silence of an open line. He didn't need an introduction to the second caller, but he got one anyway.
"Hal?" Her voice seemed distant, almost ghostly. "This is Helen..."
2
"Helen? Are you all right? Are the kids all right?"
Before Helen Brognola had a chance to answer, one of her abductors slipped a hand across the mouthpiece and twisted the receiver from her grasp, smothering her words. She briefly thought about resisting, then dismissed the scheme as suicidal.
Hal would save them. He would know what to do.
"Awright, so listen up," the blond man in the Army-surplus jacket was demanding of her husband. "We're in charge from here on out, and you will do exactly as you're told."
He seemed to be the leader, separated by his stature and his almost military bearing from the others. She had only seen the three of them so far, but it had been enough. Their handguns and their automatic weapons compensated for the small size of the team. And, then again, how many men were necessary to secure a woman and her children? Helen knew that it would not require a SWAT team, after all.
The blond had been the first to show himself, all smiles as she responded to the gentle knocking on the cabin door. There was no reason to suspect him, or to doubt his story of a minor pileup on the access road below. She knew the cabins to the east were empty; she had seen them standing dark and cold that very afternoon, and it confirmed the young man's story of his inability to find a telephone. The Blue Ridge Mountains were not Washington, so there was no need to guard against a smiling stranger's secret motives here.
He hadn't shown the gun till he was inside, the door shut tightly behind him. Helen recognized it as a compact submachine gun Hal would know the make and model number if he saw it but she didn't have to know the weapon's nomenclature to be thoroughly acquainted with its lethal capabilities. One burst would be all it would take to rip herself, her children to shreds. She had offered no resistance when the blond man ordered her to sit, when he had hailed the rest of his team, their pastel leisure suits incongruous in such a rustic setting.
If it had not been for her concern about the children...
Helen stopped herself and nearly smiled. Eileen would have a fit if she should hear herself referred to as a child. She was a woman now, in every sense, but at the same time she would always be her mother's little girl.
Provided that they all survived this night, the day to come.
But Hal would have the answers at his fingertips. She trusted him implicitly, had placed her faith in him for more than twenty-five years without a single major disappointment. He would see them through, or...
Helen dared not follow where the thought was leading her, but her unconscious mind had grasped the message loud and clear.
He would see them safely through, or die in the attempt.
The gunmen had been swift and sure in their evacuation of the cabin. The gorillas patted down Jeff and Helen for weapons, taking longer with Eileen and snickering between themselves until the blond had snapped at them to be about their business. A panel truck, its back-door windows painted over, was waiting for them in the driveway. The three Brognolas were forced inside, and a curtain was drawn behind the driver's seat to block their view of any landmarks through the windshield. Under guard, they rode in silence for an hour and a half before the two apes fitted them with blindfolds, led them single file across a sloping, grassy lawn and then inside some kind of house. The drapes had not been opened since their blindfolds were removed, and butcher's paper had been taped across the tiny, frosted window of the bathroom they were grudgingly allowed to use.
Allowing for the stops and starts occasioned by their passage through assorted tiny mountain towns, she estimated that they could have traveled seventy or eighty miles in ninety minutes. Far enough to place them back in Washington, in Maryland, perhaps across the Pennsylvania line. They had not traveled west, across the mountains; she was reasonably sure of that. As for the rest, there had not been a single clue no airport sounds or ferry whistles, railroad crossings or calliopes to help her sketch a mental road map. Helen could not have informed her husband where they were if she had been allowed to try.
"Your weekend's over, guy," the blond leader was saying, grinning at his two companions as he spoke. "I want you back in Washington and at your desk by noon today. You got that? Good. You play it straight, we all come out of this laughing. Just save the hero bullshit for the movies, okay?"
He cradled the receiver without waiting for Brognola to reply.
"We're on," he told his two companions. "Noon it is." The pair of anthropoids exchanged lopsided smiles and settled back in matching arm chairs, weapons in their laps. If they had pooled their IQs, Helen thought, they might have come up with intelligence enough to read a comic strip, but she never doubted their ability to kill without remorse. What worried her the most right now was their apparent interest in Eileen. They had been ogling her, whispering between themselves and winking at her since the man in charge had beckoned them inside the cabin. There had been no overt moves so far, but Helen worried that they might grow restive with the passing time, decide to seek some quick diversion with her daughter. If it came to that, she wondered whether the blond would hold his men in check, or whether he would even care to try.
She pushed the lurid images away and thought of Hal, alone and doubtless distraught in their empty cabin. Helen knew that underneath the gruff exterior, her husband was a man of feeling and emotion. Any danger to his family would torment Hal; his inability to move at once, to strike against the perpetrators would grate on his nerves. He would obey the blond's command, she knew, because he had no immediate alternative. As long as there was any chance at all of a negotiation, Hal would hold himself in check. But if the talks broke down, if he perceived that she or either of the children had been harmed...