Face Of Terror

“Who stuck the broom handle up your ass?” Jessup asked quietly and calmly.

Bolan had not entered into the conversation because, so far, his words hadn’t been needed. But now it appeared that the anger Wilkerson was exhibiting went far and above the usual interagency squabbling. It was time to nip it in the bud.

By now, the sedan had left the airport, navigated a cloverleaf entrance ramp and was on the divided highway leading into Atlanta. But as soon as Wilkerson heard Jessup’s remark about the broomstick, an angry snort shot from his nostrils. He twisted the Chevy’s wheel hard to the right, pulling it over onto the shoulder of the highway before throwing it violently into Park.

Turning, he rested one arm on the back of the bench seat that both he and Bolan occupied. “Okay, you want to know why I’m pissed off?” he said. “I’ll tell you. We—the Atlanta FBI office—already have everything under control. We don’t need your help, and we particularly don’t like having you guys thrust down our throats by whoever the bigwig friend of yours in Justice is. But you want to know the worst thing of all?” Now he looked directly at the Executioner. “It’s being told we all—even me, the SAC—have to take orders from this Cooper character who none of us has ever met or even heard of.”

Bolan surprised him by letting a friendly smile encompass his face, then saying, “I don’t blame you. I’d be mad if I was in your shoes, too. But you don’t have the whole picture of what’s going on.”

Wilkerson looked confused as his eyes locked with those of the Executioner. Bolan’s was a response he hadn’t counted on, and the look on Jessup’s face told the Executioner that it wasn’t the feedback he’d have gotten if the DEA man had had a chance to answer the accusation.

“And you have the whole picture?” Wilkerson asked in the semisurly voice Bolan had grown to expect out of the man.

“No,” the Executioner said. “If we had the whole picture, all this would be over and the bad guys would be in jail or dead. But let me say—and I say this with all due respect to you and the rest of the Atlanta FBI—while we don’t have all the pieces to this puzzle yet, we’ve got more than you guys do. So let’s work together, okay?”

There was only a trace of anger left in his voice as Wilkerson pulled the black FBI sedan back onto the divided highway. Several minutes went by in silence as they made their way into the city. Then, suddenly, Wilkerson blurted out, “Greg.”

Bolan turned in his seat. In the corner of his eye, he could see the two men in the backseat were as puzzled as he was. “What’s that mean?” Bolan asked. “Greg who?”

“Greg,” Wilkerson said again. “Short for Gregory. It’s my first name.” He glanced up into the rearview mirror and his face lifted in a genuine smile. “And I’ve only got one middle name, just like most people.”

“What is it?” Jessup asked.

“Wild horses couldn’t drag that out of me,” Wilkerson said as the outskirts of Atlanta appeared in the distance.

“I think I like the first name you gave us earlier better,” Jessup said. “Special. Has a nice ring to it.”

The look on Wilkerson’s face betrayed his confusion. “I’m not sure what you mean by that,” he said.

“Tell you what,” Jessup said. “Why don’t you start off our newfound friendship by telling us where we’re going, Special?”

Now, all of the rest of the warriors in the car got the joke and laughed.

3

They were headed to the Pilgrims’ house.

Wilkerson knew the city and took an exit off the highway onto an asphalt road that led through a rural area within the city limits. Bolan noted that every few miles the site-prep work for houses or apartments or office buildings had begun. Some plots already had the wooden forms where the concrete would be poured. Others already had their foundations in place, and some of the framing was beginning to go up.

Ten miles after turning off the highway, Wilkerson pulled up to a closed iron gate. A uniformed man stood in the guard shack, but when he recognized Wilkerson he pushed the button to open the iron. As the gate swung slowly back, Bolan looked past it to a sign implanted in the lush green grass. EasyRest Estates, it read.

Beyond the gate Wilkerson took a right-hand turn and then a left, looping back. The houses they passed were all made of rough-hewn stone, and Bolan doubted that any of them could be had for less than a half-million in the slumping housing market.

Several vehicles resembling their own sedan were parked along the street and in a driveway just ahead. Bolan also saw a van he guessed to be not only a storage area for body armor, weapons and other gear but also a rolling communications and surveillance vehicle. His suspicions were confirmed as they passed the white van and he saw the tiny nub of a periscope barely sticking out of the top.

Wilkerson had to park two houses down, in front of a neighbor’s house. As the four men walked toward the door, Jessup said, “Hey, Special. I thought you said Pilgrim wasn’t rich. This development doesn’t exactly look like a soup line for the homeless.”

Wilkerson laughed. He had become used to Jessup’s teasing now. “Don’t let the house fool you,” the FBI man said as they crossed the lawns to the Pilgrims’ front porch. “Henry Pilgrim’s wife inherited this place from her parents when they died. And everything else Pilgrim’s got—which doesn’t even come close to a million dollars—is tied up in stocks, bonds and CDs.” He reached the front porch and led the way up the steps. “They’ve got a little over two thousand bucks in a couple of checking accounts, and around ten grand in savings.”

“You checked them out?” John Sampson asked as he, Bolan and Jessup followed the FBI man up the steps to the porch.

Wilkerson didn’t turn. “Standard procedure,” he said. “Checked the credit union, too. They’re clean. Not even behind on a car payment.”

Bolan nodded. It was standard procedure. More than once, people who were deeply in debt instigated their own fake kidnappings, hoping that monetary donations would be sent to them by a sympathetic public. This didn’t appear to be one of those times.

The Executioner could hear the din and chatter inside the house before Wilkerson even opened the door. Bolan let the FBI agent hold the door for Jessup and Sampson, then took it from him and let him duck under his arm before being the last to enter the house.