Before they killed her.
A chill had wormed its way beneath her scalp, but the woman kept herself from trembling with thoughts of Bolan. If the soldier's plans worked out, there would be no more Nicky Gianelli for her to expose, no renegades at Langley, no more threat to Hal Brognola's family.
If Bolan's plans worked out.
And if they didn't, then she would be honoring his last request for an obituary, dammit, putting heart and soul into the lines that summarized a valiant life. She couldn't do him justice on the printed page, but she would do her best, and Susan knew that Bolan would have counted that as fair enough.
But she was hoping that she would not have to write those lines. Not yet. Not here and now. Not while there was so damned much left to say.
17
They had removed her watch upon arrival at the safe house, but Helen Brognola knew that there was less than ninety minutes left. Her information had been gathered from the muffled conversation of their captors, from her internal clock that marked the passing hours faithfully, if imprecisely. It was past ten-thirty now.
The meeting had been scheduled for the stroke of midnight, Helen knew that much. She also knew that Hal would be on time, or early. He had not been late for anything in years, and he would not start now with so much at stake. But Helen wished that she could warn him, prevent him from appearing at the rendezvous. She could have saved him, given a chance, but there wouldn't be another opportunity.
She idly wondered how long they would live past midnight once the thing was done. Long enough, perhaps, to find a makeshift weapon, seek some measure of revenge against the animals who were already moving to destroy her world. If there was nothing she could do for Hal, there might be something that she could accomplish for the children, even with her death.
And death was coming.
Soon.
There had been little hope from the beginning. She had realized it when none of their abductors took precautions to disguise themselves. And having understood that she, Jeff and Eileen were not expected to survive and testify in court, the only question still remaining dealt with time. At first, she thought, it had been Hal who saved them, doggedly insisting that they each speak to him by telephone before he would consider the demands of their abductors. Later, once the snatch team got their orders from outside, their deaths had taken on the status of a planned event, the intervening hours finite.
If there was any doubt at all, the bits and pieces of a conversation gleaned by listening at the door had wiped all hope away.
"What are we waiting for? Let's get it over with."
"We're waiting 'cause we got our orders. I'll tell you when we go."
"We're wasting time."
"You're getting paid, man. Settle down."
"The cops..."
"Don't have a frigging idea where we are. Besides, another couple of hours, and they'll all be busy out at Arlington."
"The meet still set for twelve?"
"It's set. They're looking at a clean sweep."
"Then we can get this over with?"
"We're waiting for the call."
"Suppose they're late?"
"Suppose they are. You got a date or something?"
"Tell you what I wouldn't mind, and that's a piece of what we got in there."
"She's half your age, you horny bastard."
"So? I like 'em young."
"You like 'em any way that you can get 'em."
"True. So true."
"Well, you can keep it in your pants until we get that call."
"And then?"
"We'll see."
Helen kept the certain knowledge of annihilation to herself, and started looking for a weapon once again. They had already scoured the room, found nothing but the furniture itself, the chairs on which they sat, and those would stand small chance against the automatic weapons carried by their captors.
It was not the thought of death so much that frightened her. The startling concept of her own mortality had been uniquely driven home at thirty-three, when doctors had removed a pea-sized nodule from her breast. They had determined it to be benign, but in the interim she had prepared herself for painful, wasting death, and having faced her fears up close, she knew they had no power in themselves. You were alive until you died, and after that... well, she would have to wait and see.
It was the threat against her children, the apparent threat to Hal, that worried Helen now. Her husband was a man accustomed to the dark side, long conditioned to a world where murder was routine. He would protect himself as best he could, and given any opportunity at all, he would survive. It would be difficult, of course. The odds would be against him, but Helen knew what he could do. At home he seldom spoke about his job, and never brought the bloodshed with him when he left the office. But she knew that he had killed on more than one occasion, stopping men who meant to take his life, the lives of others. He was strong and as hard as nails when he was angry, though the family had seldom seen that side. She knew him as a man of grim determination, and she knew that given half a chance he would survive.
A lump formed itself in Helen's throat as, for seemingly no rhyme or reason, she remembered the skinny young law student whom she had fallen in love with. And after marriage, through births, tottering steps and painful puberty he had been at her side, her children's, wincing silently and feeling the pain as Jeff and Eileen resolutely bore the ravages of growing up. The strength they showed then was a testament to the Brognola blood.
Now someone wanted the Brognola blood...
Helen dismissed this grisly train of thought and concentrated on the here and now, her children. They were intelligent with the resilience of youth, but they were in a cage from which there might be no escape. Without their father's history of dealing with the savages, they were completely unprepared for what was happening around them.
Helen knew they would resist when it was time, but what could Jeff accomplish in the face of armed professionals?
She worried most about Eileen and what she might be forced to suffer once the signal for their execution had been given. Two of their abductors — the gorillas, Gino and Carmine — had been ogling her from the beginning. If they were unleashed with time to kill before they finished it...
She closed her mind to the disgusting, painful images and concentrated on discovering a means of self-defense. A gun would be ideal, of course, but there was little chance — no chance — that she could get her hands on any of the hardware carried by their kidnappers. She would stay alert in case they dropped their guard, but in the meantime they were down to bare survival with the tools at hand. Provided they could find the necessary tools to start with.
Helen forced herself to study her surroundings carefully, alert for anything she might have missed. A simple bedroom with adjoining bath, the furniture comprised a queen-sized bed devoid of sheets and blankets, with a pair of mismatched wooden, straight-backed chairs. The empty closet had been stripped of hangers, anything that could have been converted to a weapon. In the tiny bathroom, drinking "glasses" made of styrofoam were something less than lethal.
Still, there would be something. There was always something.
Bathrooms meant hot water. They could let it run till it was scalding, fill the little cups, and somehow lure one or both of the gorillas into range before the water cooled. A dash of liquid fire across the eyes, and if they weren't all shot to death immediately, there was just a chance that one of them could seize a weapon, turn it on their captors...