Radical Edge

“We have identified a series of account transfers, among other things, that helped us identify some suspicious industrial purchases of fertilizer. There were multiple indicators that Bear, on his own time, cross-checked. The pattern emerged slowly—too slowly for us to stop it before it could begin.”

“Stop what, Barb?” Bolan asked.

“Twelfth Reich’s people have hijacked an OPP tanker train,” Price said. “We believe they’ve packed it with ammonium nitrate fuel oil bombs—ANFOs—in cargo cars attached to the tankers. They’re heading for an enormous O’Connor tank field outside of Dallas, one of the largest of its type in North America. The facility is adjacent to a kind of tent city, an encampment that has risen to serve Mexican immigrants working for O’Connor. That’s the target. Twelfth Reich wants to kill those people.”

Bolan frowned. “Likely casualties?”

“Potentially thousands,” Price said.

“Why not evacuate them?”

“These are migrant workers, Striker,” Price explained, “many of them in the country illegally. We can’t prove it, of course. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has swept the area twice now, and each time, the workers return as soon as they find gaps in the security cordon. It’s just too large an area for the INS to patrol. By the time we got enough men in there to link arms and surround it, the train would have arrived. The other problem is that, even if there is no loss of life among the workers, destroying that tank field will deal a serious blow to our economy. The waivers and other incentives needed to get all this moving with OPP were delivered because the nation needs that oil, Striker. Losing that infrastructure will wound us badly.

“The train will cross the border near Piedras Negras,” Price went on. “It will then follow a route through San Antonio, Austin and Fort Worth. The terrorists could choose to blow the train themselves at any point, but Hyde and his fanatics don’t just want to destroy a train. They want that tank field. This is their ticket to al Qaeda status, as they see it. Their death blow to the hated American regime. They want to get where they’re going.”

“So we have to stop them before they get there.”

“That’s the problem,” Price said. “We can’t erect a barrier. There’s no time for that, and anything solid enough to halt the train will blow it. Blow the track itself, derail the train, and we risk creating an environmental disaster that will kill whoever’s unlucky enough to be nearby. Strike it from the air, it explodes, taking everyone aboard with it—and that’s if you can reach it. We have intelligence indicating Hyde may be in possession of antiaircraft weaponry, purchased from the Iranians.”

“Not good.”

“It’s worse. This train is one long bomb, but it’s a bomb with hostages aboard.”

“How many?”

“There’s a very special passenger car attached, near the engine,” Price said. “O’Connor, in an effort to protect its employees from the threat of kidnapping, to avoid future occurrences of its Honduras experience, has equipped the train with an armored personnel compartment. There are close to forty employees aboard, all of them O’Connor executives, returning to Dallas from an on-site conference across the border. They attended the opening of the new Mexican refinery, apparently.”

“Those people might already be dead, Barb,” Bolan said.

“They aren’t,” she replied. “The train’s security passenger car is hardened to external assault and has self-contained communications gear. We’ve verified that OPP is in contact with its employees. The terrorists can’t get in, not without damaging the train so badly they risk derailing it themselves. But those people cannot get out, either. Not with Hyde and his skinheads waiting to take them hostage the moment they do.”

“Well,” Bolan said. “Isn’t that a pretty picture.”

“It doesn’t get much more complicated,” Price admitted.

“Not with an unknown element killing our leads,” he muttered. “Jack apprised you of the situation?”

“Fully,” Price answered. “He said you recovered some .40-caliber casings on the scene before the evidence burned?”

Bolan patted himself down.

Grimaldi smiled and waved, giving Bolan the A-OK sign. “I’ve arranged for them to be couriered,” the pilot interjected.

“We’ll run them, for whatever good that will do,” Price said. “I’ll let you know.”

“So what’s the play?” Bolan asked.

“The Bureau and the Department of Homeland Security are running a joint operation outside San Antonio,” Price said. “Hal has been leaning on everyone involved, hard, to get you in on it. There’s been some resistance, but you know how these tugs-of-war usually play out.”

“Hal gets what he wants.”

“Most of the time. It doesn’t hurt to have the Man backing your play.”

“Any chance of getting some backup on this? People I can trust?”

“We’re spread thin covering potential ancillary targets,” Price said. “We believe Twelfth Reich may attempt, through satellite cells, to conduct parallel attacks while we’re occupied dealing with the train hijacking. Able and Phoenix are deployed here and abroad, for some of Hyde’s European allies may be involved. We’ve got blacksuit contingents covering other high-profile target areas. We’re just spread too thin, Striker. Except for our allies in Homeland Security and the FBI, you’re it.” Able Team and Phoenix Force were the Farm’s other field operatives.

“Understood,” Bolan said. “When do we go?”

“As soon as you signal Jack you’re ready to fly.”

“Then I’m ready to fly.” He looked at Grimaldi, stuck up one finger and rotated his hand in the universal “spinning rotors” sign.

“Striker…” Price said.

“Yeah?”

“You’re sure you’re up to this.” It wasn’t a question. The concern in her voice was obvious even through the scrambled, filtered and reprocessed connection.

“I’ll manage,” Bolan said. More quietly, he added, “Like I always do. I’ll see you soon.”

There was a pause. Finally, Price said, “Good hunting, Striker. Again. Out.”

Bolan, forcing himself to move without grimacing, pulled a pack from the locker bolted to the floor nearby. He unzipped the gear bag inside and began rifling through it. Grimaldi made a mock show of tapping his foot impatiently as Bolan shrugged out of his web gear, changed out the stiff, bloody and scorched shirt of his blacksuit, and donned his equipment. Then Bolan began to check through his weaponry, only to find it had been cleaned and reloaded. He looked at his friend curiously.

“You were asleep for a while,” Grimaldi said. “I had to keep busy.”

“Idle hands,” Bolan repeated. He smiled. “Thanks, Jack.” He made a cursory review of both of his pistols and the FN P-90, including removing the slide of the Beretta and checking its custom suppressor. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Grimaldi; this was simply long-ingrained habit, the result of years of trusting his life to the weapons he carried. One of the most basic rules of such weaponry was that you never simply trusted a weapon handed to you; you always checked it, for yourself, to make sure.

Grimaldi returned to the cockpit and began the process of firing up the chopper. He restored the in-flight connection, allowing them to speak to each other over the noise of the machine.

Once they were in the air, Bolan closed his eyes, breathed deeply and focused on his limbs. His hands and forearms were still numb, but rapidly warming. The ache that would pervade them could be blunted with painkillers, but these would fog his judgment and reaction time. He would have to err on the side of more pain, more awareness. He accepted as much and shrugged the thought from his mind. There was no point in dwelling on what couldn’t be changed.

Starting with his feet and moving up his legs, he tensed and then relaxed his muscles. As his focus moved up his torso, he rolled his shoulders, working the kinks out, feeling the tightness give way. Years of combat had left him a patchwork of scars and potential recurring stress injuries. The human body simply wasn’t built for the kind of punishment Bolan put himself through. If he allowed himself to dwell on it, he supposed he would have to chalk it up to effort of will. He was, after all, extremely well motivated. What he did, what he asked the men and women of Stony Man Farm to do with him, and what they did of their own will and motivation, wasn’t normal. That of itself was a shame, for a country as great as the United States deserved a citizenry whose every member thought superhuman effort preserving freedom was the norm.

Bolan couldn’t, and never had, faulted any man or woman for not following the path he himself had chosen. Lesser men and women might wrongly conclude that this wasn’t a choice at all; that circumstance, and tragedy, had forced Bolan to do what he did, to fight as he fought. That, of course, was ridiculous. Most men, confronted with the deaths of those they loved, grieved and absorbed the tragedy, soldiered on as best they could in the most benign sense of the word.

The men and women of Stony Man Farm weren’t truly the exception, for deep down, Bolan believed every man and woman had the potential, and the desire, to fight for what he or she valued most. It was simply that the counterterrorists with whom Bolan worked were exceptional, and that was the best way to describe them.

He snapped open the replacement satellite phone that Grimaldi had loaned him. A brief update bar appeared and, when it finished scrolling, the phone’s screen indicated that its new code assignment was STRYKR2. Grimaldi and Price had wasted no time getting him back up and running.

As Bolan watched, the send-receive icon started to blink. Data files began coming in, automatically shunted to a folder on the phone’s desktop, the wallpaper of which was still a graphic of Grimaldi’s choosing: a buxom woman in a red-white-and-blue bathing suit. Despite the grim scenario he faced, Bolan found himself smiling. Some things, he reflected, never changed. Jack Grimaldi was a constant in the universe.

Bolan supposed he was, too.

There were worse things to be.

The data files contained everything the Farm had managed to gather so far on the OPP hijacking. A complete map of the route the train was supposed to take, as well as an overlay indicating the route the Twelfth Reich terrorists intended to use, was included. Bolan called up several photographs taken of the migrant work camp, some of which were overhead shots, obviously taken by satellite. Others were news photographs taken when the camp was first established. Scans of those articles and wire releases were included.