But Bolan would come, if he was able. Hal was certain of it in his heart and in his gut. The Executioner would come for friendship's sake, for Helen, Eileen, Jeff, because the guy was made that way. He could no more stand back and watch an old friend's family be sacrificed than he could voluntarily desert his private war.

Hal felt a pang of guilt at using Bolan to secure and protect his own. It was Brognola's job to keep them safe from harm, and his enlistment of Mack Bolan's help was the same as confessing that he couldn't do his job. Another man might have approached the situation differently, but Hal was hemmed in by his sense of duty. He could not provide the information that his family's abductors had demanded. Hundreds of protected witnesses and scores of undercover officers would be exposed to certain death if he revealed their names or whereabouts. If he was stripped of viable alternatives, Brognola knew he would be forced to sacrifice his family in lieu of giving up those others, violating their collective trust and ruining so many lives. If it came down to that, he would accept the loss as best he could, and learn to live with grief while he spent every waking moment on the track of bittersweet revenge.

But he was counting on the Executioner to grant him some alternative, an escape hatch from what appeared to be a hopeless situation. Bolan had a knack for turning circumstances upside down, attacking hopeless problems with unique solutions. Given any chance at all, the soldier would retrieve Brognola's family — or wreak such awesome vengeance on the enemy that Hal might find some private solace in the ashes.

Gruffly he dismissed the morbid thoughts and concentrated on the image of a family reunion. He could not afford to write his family off so early in the game, when there was still a fighting chance of their recovery. He had until six o'clock, and in that time he would be scanning the computer files for any Dino/Gino sound-alikes who fit the bill.

The operation reeked of Mob involvement, and he had already put the several groups of active terrorists out of mind. Despite their tendency toward violence and abduction, none had any use for the existing roster of protected witnesses. The rare defectors, others who were brave enough to testify in trials resulting from the recent wave of urban terror, were too well-known already, marked for death on sight. As far as undercover operatives, there had been slim success at infiltrating terrorist brigades, and Justice had no agents currently in place.

It would be syndicate or nothing, and the thought did not restore Brognola's confidence. He knew the kind of talent readily available for jobs like this and realized that any one of — what, a thousand mercenary guns? — might whack his family for the hell of it, regardless of his acquiescence to demands.

So many enemies, and every one a proved killer. He could never hope to see his family alive again without a killer of his own to even up the odds.

A killer like Mack Bolan, sure. An Executioner.

The charter flight dropped Bolan at an airport near the University of Maryland, three miles from Hyattsville. It offered him the dual advantages of light security and close proximity to Washington, his final Georgetown destination only ten miles as the crow flies. Bolan tipped the pilot from his war chest — heavily enough to keep him happy, not so heavily that it would set him talking in the local bars — and headed off in search of a rental car.

He would have saved an hour with a scheduled direct flight to Washington, but Bolan wasn't interested in taking chances with security. His luggage held enough assorted hardware to ignite a minor war, and he would be needing it if Leo's problem was as serious as it had sounded on the phone. Hal's problem, he corrected as he spied the Avis window. Either way it cut, he was needed, and the knowledge of a friend in danger left him no alternative.

He took a midsize Ford and stowed his luggage in the trunk then retrieved the Beretta 93-R with its shoulder rigging, tucking it beneath his jacket as he slid behind the wheel. A roadside turnout halfway into Hyattsville provided Bolan with an opportunity to slip on the rigging, and he felt better as he nosed the Ford back into traffic. Whatever happened next, he was prepared to answer fire with fire. No longer feeling naked, vulnerable, Bolan focused upon his mission in D.C.

There had been no time for elaboration on the telephone, no inclination for Sticker to discuss his business on an open line. The urgency was obvious, and Bolan knew it was not in Leo's nature to exaggerate. The open conversation would be enough to ruin him if anyone was tapping in. By the very nature of the risk involved he had communicated desperation, and it wasn't Leo's style to overdramatize.

The Executioner recalled another time, in Pittsfield, when the undercover Fed had sounded equally upset. On that occasion, Turrin's wife had been abducted and held hostage by a group of renegades within the Marinello Family. The hostiles had him pegged for an informer and were planning to exert the kind of leverage that never failed. But they failed disastrously by omitting Bolan from their calculations. They had not prepared themselves for hell on earth, and in the end they were unable to stand hard before the flames.

Bolan knew Hal and Leo would brief him when they met. For now, his sole objective was to arrive at the contact point. Before he flew, a call from Kennedy had netted him the address of a townhouse in Georgetown, and he stopped again in Hyattsville to phone ahead, confirm that he was on the ground and homing in. The traffic worsened mile by mile, became a snarl as Bolan crossed the line from Maryland to D.C. proper. The final run to Georgetown was a short six miles, but it took the soldier forty minutes, hitting every red light on the way.

The neighborhood was quiet, stately, home to senators, diplomats and cabinet members. Turrin's safe house, purchased in the early days of the protected witness program, was a condo overlooking the Potomac, with a striking view of Arlington across the water. Bolan found a parking space and locked the Ford, secure in the knowledge that police patrols would keep the average car thief off those cloistered streets. Avoiding the flamboyance found in certain areas of Southern California, for example, the neighborhood still exuded affluence and style. His car, big enough and new enough to pass a rough inspection, would no doubt remind the neighbors of a poor relation visiting from out of town.

He crossed the sidewalk and climbed a flight of steps with decorative hedges on either side. Another moment and he would be swallowed up, invisible to neighbors on the north and south. Behind him, at a distance of some fifty yards, the dark Potomac swept along its timeless course, conveying passengers and cargo toward the sea.

The townhouse was defensible, he saw at once, its proximity to the adjoining structures limiting the opposition's angle of attack. Determined shock troops, striking with the full advantage of surprise, could storm the place, but they would pay a price in blood before they cleared the windows. Aside from that, the first barrage would send the neighbors into shock and have them reaching for their telephones to call the police.

The uniformed response to any shooting call in Georgetown would be swift, decisive. Washington had heard enough of senators attacked while walking to and from the parking lots around the Capitol. Determined to survive with dignity, despite the proximity of reeking ghettos and a violent crime rate equal to some cities twice her size, the seat of government was going hard. The soldier wondered if it might be too late. He knocked and waited for a moment, hearing footsteps from within and standing tall before the unobtrusive spy hole mounted in the center of the door. Leo fumbled with the double lock then stood before him, grinning weakly. "Hey, long time."