Yenni said, offering a slight bow from the waist. “We have money. We come to buy weapons.”
Khasky squinted at them. He had one lazy eye. Bolan was careful to make no sudden movements. This man was a predator. There was no mistaking the hollow look in his eyes. He would order their deaths the second he thought it would profit him.
“What is it you require?” he asked.
Yenni glanced at Bolan. “Heavy weapons,” he said. “An assault rifle and grenade launcher combination. Explosives, preferably Semtex or something similar. Light enough to be portable, powerful enough to be effective. Detonators. Loaded magazines for the rifle. Grenade rounds for the launcher.”
“Hmm,” Khasky said. “You sound like a man who is preparing for war. What war do you fight here, American? And what makes you think I will help you fight it?”
“We have money,” Yenni interjected. “You sell weapons.” Her tone seemed to say this should be the end of any debate on the matter. Bolan would have grinned if he was not keenly aware of the iron in Khasky’s eyes.
“I do not think you understand.” Khasky’s gold-toothed grin grew wider. From under the table he produced an ancient tape recorder.
“What is this?” Yenni asked. Bolan shot her a glance. It was best not to ask more questions than necessary when you had a blade at your throat, figurative or otherwise.
“I have conducted business here for a long time,” Khasky said. “Things were much better before Hahmir took over. My profits are down. My people suffer. The Wolf’s patrols do not come near Al Tabkah. They know better now. But this did not come without a price. Many of my best fighters died.”
Bolan risked a reply this time. “That has nothing to do with us,” he said.
“Does it not?” Khasky asked. He pressed the play button on the tape recorder with one fat finger.
“…American interference,” said a distorted voice. “Highest alert. The Americans seek the weapons.” The voice continued, but was too garbled to understand. The words had been in English but with a heavy accent. That was curious.
“We do not know who sent this,” Khasky said. “We recorded it from the radio. Now you, Yenni, bring me an American.”
“He is Canadian,” she said.
“And I am king of this land,” Khasky replied. His evil grin never wavered. “No. He is an American. He is an American come to find Hahmir’s American weapons. And this will not do. For if Hahmir and the Wolf secure these weapons, those who believe as I do will suffer more. And my control of Al Tabkah may be broken. I cannot allow this.”
They were loyalists. Whoever had tipped them off—possibly the same person who had told the Wolf’s men to expect an incursion in Bolan’s drop zone—wanted to make sure Bolan didn’t find those weapons. Was it the Wolf himself, pursuing his own agenda? Was it some other force? Was Hahmir hiding the weapons and claiming they were stolen, in order to deceive his newfound Western allies? There was no way to tell yet.
Before he could learn more, Bolan was going to have to survive the next thirty seconds.
Khasky drew a machete from under the table, where it had probably been in a sheath affixed beneath.
“Khasky, this is a mistake,” Yenni said. “We will pay you double.”
“Kill them,” the fat man told his guards.
Hal Brognola watched his .45-caliber Glock disappear into the metal tray and reappear on the other side of the blast-reinforced Plexiglas. The stone-faced attendant logged the weapon into his computer, nodding the big Fed through the door at the other end of the chamber. That door was tempered steel and opened on hydraulic pistons. Brognola ducked his head to clear the upper edge, mindful of the teeth that meshed with slots in the floor, then waited for the door to close behind him.
The hardened black site, a stone’s throw from the Potomac in the subbasement of a nondescript government building, employed a level of security that made Guantánamo Bay look like a summer camp. No weapons were allowed except those wielded by the staff. Potential recruits were drawn from the same pool of men who eventually became the blacksuits of Stony Man Farm. The counter-terrorism facility, hidden in plain sight in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, used them for its day-to-day operations and to occasionally assist Mack Bolan or the action teams when needed. The blacksuits were seasoned police officers and military personnel, extremely capable. Looking at these guards, Brognola did not have to remind himself that he was dealing with equally capable professionals. They moved like panthers and they carried their M4 rifles with easy familiarity.
The public would go apoplectic if people knew that a “black prison” was operating right in Wonderland, a cab ride away from the Capitol. Still, sites like these were necessary. As much as Brognola hated to skirt the Constitution, he was forced to do so on a regular basis. The nation’s enemies didn’t follow the rules, nor could he afford to have his hands bound by idealism. There were times when it was necessary to go the black-bag route.
Today, for instance, there was the ugly business of interrogating the man who’d tried to kill the President.
Brognola carried in his hands the complete dossier Intelligence had compiled on the man, who’d given only one name: Eidra. Calling it that—complete—oversold the case. They knew very little on Eidra himself. His prints weren’t in the database, and while they could run his DNA, it would take weeks to get a match. Interpol had nothing on him, nor did the Farm’s supersecret compiled files. The worst part was that every time Brognola stared at the man, he felt as if he was missing something. It was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind, as if he’d walked into a room to get something and then forgotten what he’d come to find.
The guards walked him down several long corridors, which switched back on themselves and were, he swore, deliberately designed to be confusing. The halls were a uniform battleship gray, the doors steel with barred, inset windows. The bars protected bullet-resistant Plexiglas. Specifically, they prevented prisoners from kicking the square and popping the pane of high-tech Plexi straight out of the door. Each window was coated with a translucent film that prevented prisoners from seeing out and observers from seeing in…unless they wore a pair of specially coated sunglasses that somehow defeated the film. Brognola had been briefed on how the tricky little optics effect worked and had concluded he did not care. The guards with him were wearing those shades, which looked like the type of thing a snowboarder might wear. It didn’t make them seem any friendlier.
Brognola drew a deep breath and wished he hadn’t more or less given up actually smoking cigars. These days he chewed them more often than not…when he wasn’t chewing antacids to counteract the stress of his job. Today was worse than usual, because he had to steel himself for some of the most brutal work a man in his position was likely to supervise.
It wasn’t called torture.
And, honestly, it wasn’t torture, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t intensely uncomfortable for the subject. Brognola didn’t like it and didn’t enjoy watching
