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CHAPTER TWO

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

“The murder of a federal official, even a U.S. senator, is typically assigned to a task force within the Justice Department,” the President of the United States told Harold Brognola. “Not this time.”

“I understand, Mr. President.”

“I’ve instructed the deputy director of the FBI to transit information directly to your office by secure channels. Use that information to find out who’s behind the murder of Senator Maser and why.”

“And once we know?”

“Do whatever has to be done,” the President replied in a tone as cold as Brognola had ever heard him use.

“I understand, sir.”

“Good luck, Hal.”

“Thank you, Mr. President.” The line went dead before Brognola could even wish the President a good evening, which he obviously wasn’t going to have no matter what Brognola said.

The Stony Man chief hung up and sighed, barely able to quell the burning in his throat. The twinge from the esophageal spasms, a chronic condition he’d suffered for more years than he could remember, reminded him of the roll of antacids in his desk drawer. He popped three and then made a note in the digital recorder he’d received from his wife for Christmas to buy more.

That task complete, Brognola proceeded from his office to the electric tram in the basement. A hundred yards later, he stepped from the small transporter into the Operations Center of the Annex, a subterranean facility that housed the most modern electronic and human resources ever assembled for one purpose: combating America’s enemies. There were hundreds...nay, thousands of those who wished to do harm to the United States. Every single day of his life since agreeing to serve as top dog for the special-operations group code-named Stony Man, Brognola had worked tirelessly to protect the liberty and peace of his nation.

Stony Man did one thing and it did it very well, better than probably any other agency of its kind. But Brognola wasn’t so deluded to believe it was his consummate leadership skills that had held it together. Not even close. Stony Man worked for three reasons: brilliant and dedicated support staff, the finest and bravest collection of fighting men ever assembled and the ideals born from the devotion and loyalty of the man named Mack Bolan.

It was Bolan’s War Everlasting against the scourge of organized crime, and subsequently the forces of terrorism, that spurred the founding of Stony Man. It was Brognola’s relationship with Bolan—one that had started as a federal cop in pursuit of the fugitive nut-job calling himself the Executioner—that had led to his appointment as head of Stony Man. Today, Brognola was privileged to call Mack Bolan a lifelong friend. If Brognola had his way, he would have tracked Bolan down at that moment and sought his advice.

Brognola didn’t know exactly what the President’s intelligence people were sending, but he did have some inkling of where it was going. Maybe it was something that had to be handled by one of the teams, although he couldn’t imagine how the murder of one senator could spark a concern for international security. Still, Stony Man served at the pleasure of the Oval Office and whoever happened to occupy it, and Brognola could count on one hand the number of times the subject had been broached about whether it was necessary for their operations to continue. Every time, nixing the program had ultimately been shot down as a way to turn a very good idea into a potentially bad one. To Brognola’s knowledge, every President who’d entertained the idea had never come to regret the decision to keep Stony Man going: it was the final option.

“Is that coffee fresh?” Brognola asked Barbara Price as he entered the conference room.

“It is,” she said. “Would you like a cup?”

“Depends on who made it,” he replied. “I’m not sure I could handle any of Kurtzman’s rotgut right at the moment.”

Price raised one of her beautiful eyebrows. “You’re in luck, then. I made it.”

Brognola nodded in gratitude and then helped himself to a large cup. “You alerted Able Team?”

“I did,” Price said as she returned her attention to the built-in monitor in front of her, one of the many recessed into the massive conference-room table capable of seating a small army. In this case it was actually not an exaggeration. “I told them we’d be in touch as soon as we had some intelligence. And before you ask, Phoenix Force has been upgraded to standby.”

Brognola mumbled a thanks as he sat with his cup. He rubbed at his eyes and said, “The President’s intelligence reports from Justice should be coming through at any time. I don’t know the details yet, but obviously there’s much more to this than a dead politician.”

“Well, I thought I’d get a head start and had Bear pull Senator Maser’s dossier.”

“Items of interest, anything perhaps out of the ordinary?”

Price stared intently as she paged down the electronic file assembled by Stony Man’s resident computer expert and cyber-team leader, Aaron Kurtzman. “Unremarkable, to be honest. Maser was born and raised in New Hampshire. Entered his first term in office after working his way from a junior position in sales and marketing, and ending as CEO of the Biddler and Holmes Corporation.”

“What does that firm do?”

“What they did,” Price replied. “Past tense. They went under about three years after Maser left.”

“Maybe that’s our angle,” Brognola said. “It’s possible he left them high and dry, and when the company went belly-up somebody went looking for payback.”

Price shook her head. “That’s what I thought at first but it doesn’t fly. Maser left the company in the black, and actually it was extremely profitable. They went out of business due to poor investments and inadequate leadership, according to the financial statements and reports from independent audits conducted after Biddler and Holmes filed for bankruptcy.”

She handed one of the data sheets on that particular event to Brognola so he could see for himself. “Okay, so he’d been gone and running for public office long after that so it’s not likely anybody would have connected him to the company’s demise.”

Price nodded and then sat back in her chair and stretched. She continued, “His wife apparently comes from a wealthy family, and they’re the ones who originally backed his bid for a senate seat.”

“So you figure whatever happened here has something to do with the time frame after he entered public office.”

“I think it’s our best working theory, Hal.”

“What about that? Has there been anything extraordinary about his political career?”

“I’d say about average,” she said. “He hasn’t been particularly supportive of any key legislative issues, at least none that would be hot topics of debate, so it’s likely he didn’t draw the attention of any crazies. I—”

A loud ping echoed through the conference room and Price turned her attention to her display terminal. She mumbled something Brognola didn’t make out and then began tapping at the keys with the dexterity of an experienced typist, her unfashionably short fingernails producing clacking noises. When she’d finished typing, the display at the end of the conference room lit up to show a report stamped with “confidential” and bearing the seal of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“It’s the reports from Justice that the President promised.”

Brognola squinted at the initial breakdown of the information contained within the file and then referred to a closer copy available on the terminal screen he raised out of the table. He perused the table of contents before finally pointing to one particular item: Associative Criminal Activities, Nonredacted.

“There,” Brognola said. “Pull up item fourteen, please.”

Price did and Brognola began to read in earnest. With every report of this kind, particularly if it contained sensitive or classified material, two official versions were typically circulated. To those outside the intelligence communities, there were redacted, abridged or even omitted pieces of data categorized by the Justice Department and National Security Agency with the remainder being labeled sensitive but classified, or just controlled unclassified information, which was typically reserved for official use only.

The material remaining was then considered either classified, secret or top secret and it was into one of these three categories that the kind of material Brognola now read typically fell. As the Stony Man chief absorbed the information he began to understand why such damning information wouldn’t be for dissemination to the public, or even to most individuals who didn’t possess a security clearance for it.

“Holy mother of—” Brognola began.

“My sentiments exactly,” Price interjected.

“Get Lyons on the phone. Immediately.”

* * *

WHEN CARL “Ironman” Lyons got the page from Stony Man to be on the alert, he was in the middle of climbing the Grand Tetons.

A particularly long and grueling mission that had taken him and his two compatriots into the heart of Iran, ending in a scrap from which Phoenix Force had come running to bail them out, had left the Able Team leader tired and ready for some vacation. The past three weeks had been a good rest—they’d gone to Florida for the first week, the second week Lyons had gone to northern Minnesota by himself on a fishing trip, and this week he’d reunited with his teammates, Hermann Schwarz and Rosario Blancanales, for a sprightly few days of fun and camping in the Rocky Mountains.

While Grand Teton National Park provided an excellent environment for these activities, Lyons had always been much more of an outdoorsman than his two companions, so they had opted not to join him for this climb. Instead, they stayed at the campsite to drink beers and talk of whatever exploits regarding the female species came to mind, half of them probably fiction.

Lyons had just pulled himself up and over a huge rock, swinging his muscled legs into an anchoring position and getting his angle before negotiating it with the rest of his body. Lyons stopped to mop sweat from his brow with a bandanna he’d secured around his neck and tucked into the neoprene shirt he wore. He surveyed the shimmering horizon, realizing it was just about time to think about going back. He’d promised his friends he’d return before dark and if he didn’t make good on it, chances were they would get concerned and come looking for him.

The vibration of his secured satellite data phone, the invention of Kurtzman’s electronics team, signaled for his attention. He snatched it from his belt and barked, “Go for Lyons.”

“Carl, it’s Barb. Are you with the others?”

“Not at present. What’s up?”

“We just received an intelligence report compiled from several multijurisdictional investigations conducted into the death of New Hampshire Senator Charlie Maser.”

“And?”

“We’re sending a chopper to get all three of you now,” Price replied. “I’m afraid R and R is canceled.”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“It’s not,” Brognola’s voice boomed in Lyons’s ears. “We’ll be able to better brief you on the details once you get here.”

“We’re coming to the Farm?”

“Yes, although it’s entirely too lengthy and difficult to explain now,” Price said. “Just get here as soon as you can.”

“We’re on our way,” Lyons said and signed off with the standard catchphrase, “out here.”

Lyons returned the phone to his belt, took a deep breath and sighed. He’d hoped for another couple of days to recuperate but he could tell just from the tension in the voices of Price and Brognola that something had gone very wrong. Lyons couldn’t even recall having heard the name Charlie Maser before, not that he kept a running tally on every elected official in Wonderland. For sure, there were some who were much more visible than others and needed to get some attention from Stony Man Farm, in Lyons’s humble opinion. But it wasn’t really in his job description to make those kinds of determinations—he preferred to be pointed at the threat and let loose to deal with it.

The hit-and-git mentality defined the collective psyche of Able Team. They were America’s urban commandos, three berserkers trained to bring justice by fire to American streets and keep its citizens safe. This mode of operation was not only the one that Lyons preferred, but also the one in which he felt most comfortable. Lyons wondered if he’d ever live long enough to retire. What the hell would he do with his life when he didn’t have something desperate to pursue, some terrorist or crime lord to take down?

He’d only completed about a third of the distance to the camp before he heard the whip-whap of chopper blades, spotting the light from the setting sun reflecting in red-orange tints off the body of the helicopter before the whole shape came into view. The chopper dipped low and Lyons saw the familiar form of Blancanales as he reached out and gestured to some point nearby, probably a clearing beyond a copse of trees. Lyons waved his understanding and then broke into a jog so they wouldn’t have long to wait for him.

Within a few minutes he emerged from the line of evergreen trees to find the chopper waiting for him. It was the dead of summer but even the nighttime air was significantly cool. The rotor wash whipped at Lyons’s blond hair, which had started to become increasingly tinged with hints of gray over the years—probably a bit prematurely given the nature of his job—although not anywhere near the blanched white of Rosario Blancanales.

Blancanales, a husky man with muscular forearms and dark eyes, smiled at his friend and offered Lyons a hand. The Able Team leader nodded his thanks as he gripped his friend’s hand and hopped aboard a chopper belonging to the U.S. Forest Service. In a moment, the blades increased in pitch and the chopper lifted smoothly from the green-brown terrain of Jackson Hole Valley.

Seated on a bench with his back to the rear wall of the fuselage was the other Able Team member. Hermann Schwarz was not only the team’s resident electronics and computer expert, a talent that had earned him the “Gadgets” nickname, but he also possessed a wicked sense of humor. Schwarz was actually one of the most fearless men Lyons had ever met, not reticent to start cutting up even in the middle of a firefight. He was wiry but strong, not scrawny in the least, with wavy brown hair and a thick mustache.

“How was your stroll?” he asked Lyons over the thunderous noise of the chopper.

“I wasn’t strolling,” Lyons replied. “I was climbing.”

“You’re one of those mountaineering snobs, aren’t you?” Schwarz deadpanned.