as you may well imagine. Some of them are in the House and Senate, always grateful for those PAC donations at election time. A federal judge in New York City put a gag order on the proceedings until trial convenes—or was supposed to—day after tomorrow.”
“And they’ve lost the witness.”
“Lost and found,” Brognola said. “He’s with the Brothers of Saint Faustus at their monastery up in the Sierras.”
“California.”
“More precisely, Mariposa County. The brothers call their hangout Holy Trinity.”
“And Justice found him how?”
“He’s got a brother at the monastery,” Hal replied. “By which I mean blood brother and a full-fledged member of the order. Brother Andrew Watson, who is also Arthur’s only living kin.”
“Well, if you found him—”
“Others can,” Brognola said, nodding. “No doubt about it. We don’t know any of the hunters, but there’s no way they’re not on his trail by now.”
“Has anyone communicated with the monastery?” Bolan asked.
“Oh, sure. The honcho there—Brother Jerome, he’s called the abbot primate—took some calls and tried to plead the Fifth at first, then finally admitted that our guy has joined them as a postulant.”
“Which is...?”
“The lowest rung on the monk ladder,” Brognola said. “Informal training, getting used to how things work behind the walls, without a uniform or any formal vows. Apprenticeship, you might say, going on for weeks or months, depending on the candidate. If he sticks with it and the monks agree, he graduates to novice and receives his habit, taking on full duties. Make it through a year of that, then he’s a junior for the next three years, and finally a brother, if they vote to keep him on.”
“It doesn’t sound like Watson has four years and change to spare.”
“He may not have four days,” Brognola said. “For all we know, the shooters from Las Cruces or another crew are moving in right now. The only thing to slow them down would be the weather.”
“Weather?”
“Right. Did I mention they’ve got a blizzard moving in? Supposed to be the worst since 1890-something, in the mountains anyway.”
“So the witness has a price tag on his head—”
“Six figures, I was told.”
“—the monks won’t give him up, the shooters likely have his twenty, and a giant storm is moving in to seal the whole place off like Christmas in the Arctic.”
“That’s it in a nutshell.”
“It sounds impossible,” said Bolan.
“Well, I wouldn’t say—”
“When do I leave?”
* * *
THE NEXT FLIGHT OUT of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport took off two hours later, bound for Sacramento, California. Bolan caught a break when Brognola informed him Jack Grimaldi was in San Francisco, on some kind of surveillance gig for Stony Man. The pilot volunteered before Bolan could hint around the job’s details, although the blizzard gave him pause.
“No sweat,” he’d said after a moment. “If they’ve still got air, we’re airborne.”
Grimaldi would meet him when the flight landed in Sacramento, with a plane ready to go. He’d drop Bolan into the High Sierras, as close as he could get him to Holy Trinity, weather permitting, then he’d circle back at a prearranged time to pick up the soldier and, if all went well, Arthur Watson.
While Bolan waited for his flight to board at Reagan National, he popped a USB key Brognola had given him into his laptop. He reviewed the photographs and text describing U.S. Global Finance from its inception in the early nineties to the present day, with current assets estimated in the mid twelve figures. That was property and money on the books; no telling what was tucked away in safe deposit boxes or invested overseas.
Sheldon Page, the president, was fifty-one but could have passed for ten years younger, thanks to money, solid genes and plastic surgery. Before his present gig he’d worked for a major bank as a financial counselor, then jumped ship with his richest clients when U.S. Global started up. He was on first-name terms with several presidents south of the border, though he kept his distance—in the public eye, at least—from the leaders of their top cartels.
The CEO, Cornell Dubois, was forty-eight and twice divorced, a Harvard legacy who’d gone from graduation to the second-largest law firm in Manhattan, keeping big-time clients out of trouble with the IRS, the SEC and anybody else who sniffed around their fortunes. That experience had prepped him for the position he held at U.S. Global’s helm, leading a bicoastal life with junkets out of country when the need arose. Fluent in Spanish, French and Russian, he could wheel and deal in something like a hundred countries with the best of them.
Reginald Manson was the chief financial officer and youngest of the three at forty-six, a bachelor who played the field when there was time between his workload and his private passion, which was big-game hunting. Shooters’ magazines and websites showed him standing over carcasses—the African “big five” and other species standing on the knife’s edge of extinction—with a rifle in his hands and a smug look on his face. Before landing at U.S. Global he had worked for five top banks in various capacities, leaving each post with glowing letters of recommendation.
The fourth man Bolan met in Brognola’s files was Brad Kemper, chief of U.S. Global’s security division. He was twenty-nine, an Iraqi war vet and short-time LAPD officer, forced to resign after a series of brutality complaints climaxed with a dicey shooting, costing the city seven figures in compensatory damages. From there, he’d jumped to corporate security, working with a private military company that banked a bundle from Afghanistan and was suspected of coordinating drug shipments through Turkey to the West. That may have helped Kemper with his next move, to U.S. Global, where he’d caught the guy who hired him skimming funds—or framed him for it, as the case might be. Whichever, Kemper had replaced the tarnished chief and held his post today.
It would have been Kemper, Bolan thought, who’d fielded hunters to dispose of Arthur Watson. He would not have led the team himself, too risky, but the shooters would be dancing to his tune. If all else failed, Bolan thought Kemper might be worth a closer look, maybe through the crosshairs of a rifle’s scope.
Sacramento, California
JACK GRIMALDI WAS waiting in the terminal as promised when Bolan disembarked The pilot looked the same as ever, suntanned, just a trifle cocky in the way of men who’ve overcome the handicap of gravity and earn their living in the clouds. His grasp was firm as they shook hands. Grimaldi got right to business.
“I bagged a Cessna 207.” he told Bolan. “Not one of the old ones, but a fairly new production model.”
“Fairly new?”
“Early two thousands,” Grimaldi replied. “No worries about getting where we need to go.”
“Except the
