He tapped the desk top impatiently.

"Personally I hope these assassins are stuck with PPSH-41 submachine guns that Iran manufactured for Russia during World War Two. Not a very impressive 9mm weapon, and Iran has stacks of them."

Brognola was clutching at straws, partly to placate April's concern as they considered the conflict to come.

But that concern was only made the worse by Hal's talk of weapon smuggling. It was incredible to April that there were Americans who would willingly participate in the illegal importation of arms into the country, especially guns to be used against the security and stability of the state.

People involved in the international flow of weaponry were jackals. She had researched the stories of the past few years about disgruntled secret agents turning to the highest bidder. She knew that score. Certainly where Libya was involved, so was a whole network of Westerners who saw profit in chaos, and they were rapacious animals. They were also diseased with greed. They would be their own undoing. It was hardly worth pursuing them before they choked on their own poisons.

"Will they smuggle everything in? Ammunition, grenades, launchers?" she asked.

"There's no other way they can secure that stuff," Hal replied, in a ruminative mood again. "But I'm not going to worry about that part of it. The treachery of officials and merchants within the country will take another mission altogether.

"My chief concern is that Striker has sufficient back-up from the people already at Nazarour's place. God knows what sort of characters the general's got lined up there, but unless they are all one hundred percent behind our man, he could conceivably be overwhelmed by force of numbers.

"Nazarour's little army has got to stand behind Striker. Otherwise Yazid's mob has the advantage, even if Yazid comes rushing in with rusty old UAR Carl Gustavs stolen from the ruins of the last Mid-East war...." The weary man chuckled humorlessly at his own personal picture of Third World incompetence.

"You're tired," April said. "Take a break. I'll stand in for you."

Brognola turned in his chair to stare at the phone.

Waiting for it to ring, to tell him whether Bolan was at Potomac yet, to tell him that everything was on track.

No, he would not leave this desk, under any circumstances. There was a small window facing east over the desk. He would see the dawn, sitting here.

He would see Mack Bolan wind up another mission.

Or he would see Mack Bolan fail. And die. For such a thing could happen. This was Bolan's third mile and the numbers would always be getting chancier.

Memories of Washington's 14th Street bridge, the 737 in collision with it in the winter of 1982, the awful travesty of human destiny that plunged the airline passengers into the icy twilight waters of the Potomac, haunted Brognola as he thought of the locale of this latest mission, this new taunting of death.

There was a feeling in his gut that one of these days, one of these missions, Mack was going to get really hurt. His star had shone lucky for a long time now, backed by Mack's extraordinary skills and by a courage that eliminated all fear of death, as if he was, in a way, dead already. But that star might dim at any time. It was as if he could follow Striker's story only with an increasing certainty that, soon, something was going to put out the light.

"Christ Almighty," blurted Hal, still glaring at the phone. "Let me be! I'll hold the fort."

April Rose's nerve snapped at the harshness of his tone. Her modellike poise seemed to disintegrate as she leaned toward Brognola's impassive face and said scornfully at him, "Stop acting like a fool, sir. You'll do yourself harm and you'll jeopardize Mack..."

"And you stop, Stony Man Two, right now," said Hal, each syllable like a gunshot. "You speak above your station."

"For heaven's sake..."

"Quiet! I am White House liaison on the Phoenix Project." His patience had gone. "Frankly I have been concerned for some time about the hazards involved in your emotions toward Colonel Phoenix, and you force me to raise the issue."

"Sir, in matters of the heart..."

"The heart be damned! Listen to what I'm saying!" shouted Brognola. He didn't aim to hurt. His intention was to define and deploy. "It is you who are endangering our enterprise. Your feelings for Mack put the long-term outcome at risk for the sake of a short-term, panicky response."

April's eyes were misting. Her superior's commanding manner and sudden thrust of criticism had cornered her. But she was not fainthearted, ever. She was a veteran of the Justice Department's Sensitive Operations Group and she had been rated expert at rocketry systems skills, .38 revolver use, electronic surveillance. This statuesque beauty was no blushing flower. Her rebound strategy right now was a defense based on subtle but vigorous attack.

"You know you cannot question my integrity, Hal," she said, standing tall again. "I don't panic. If there is a problem in all this waiting — in this suspense — it is your own stubbornness. You're hard as stone, and you cannot hear the heartbeat."

"Meaning?"

"When was the last time you spent an evening with Margaret? When did you last see either Catherine or Michelle?"

A wry smile forced its way onto Brognola's lips. The mention of his wife, so dear to him, and his two grown daughters now had him at the disadvantage. He hadn't been home to share time with his wife for days and days, since well before Mack began mopping up in Minneapolis. His daughters, fine women both of them, one now in Ohio, the other married in New York, had by necessity become voices at the end of the telephone. Hal slowly rubbed his brow with a stubby hand.

"You think I'd be a more helpful person to us all if I put in an appearance at home occasionally, is that it?" he sighed.

"More or less," April replied, smiling slightly. "You do need a break, Hal. For the sake of your own family and for Stony Man."

"I'm thirty years older than you are, young lady. What do you know about an old man's needs? I never mention my family, they are my secret. But you're right. This tension is getting to me. We all need a support system...."

He looked at her sheepishly, his eyes now twinkling with humor. "Will you forgive me for yelling at you, Miss Rose?"

"I cracked and I'm the one who's sorry," said April, turning slightly to face the wall covered in charts, a map of the world and a map of the U.S. "It's just that I can't bear it when Mack is at the mercy of those who aid and abet terrorism. I do have personal feelings for him, yes, and I have done ever since he saved my life in Tennessee.''

Brognola nodded. It was an incredible time back then and he would never forget it. The episode April referred to was when the USJD had given Striker one week to hit six areas and finish off that particular bloody mile. In those days, of course, April was a fervent pacifist, and accepting an assignment as driver of the War Wagon was as aggressive as she would get. Until the Mob got its hands on her in Nashville and Bolan had to blaze his way to her rescue. Since then she had become a new woman.

"If there are people helping a hit team to operate in this country," she continued, "then I want us to take out those people now."

"Sure, April, I know," agreed Brognola, his respect for this strong woman confirmed by everything she said. "It's bad enough that we have a hit team in the country at all — definitely an event of the late seventies and eighties. It would have been unheard of at any other time. Makes me feel like an old man….

"But the truth is, we don't have any information on who their accomplices are. Yet. I'm reasonably certain that there are no pro-Iranian gunrunners and arms dealers among the new amateurs at that business. I mean any of those out-of-work Special Forces vets hanging around for some action in Fayetteville or Hawaii. It's my opinion that the supply route is through a different sort of organization altogether."