Death Gamble. Don Pendleton
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I assure you,” Brognola said, smiling. “The whole place is geared toward the creation and testing of the Nightwind. It’s a top-tier R&D facility, but you won’t find any little green men getting autopsies.”
“So what do we know about Dade’s disappearance?” Bolan asked.
Brognola took a deep breath and exhaled. “He works for Sentinel Industries, one of the nation’s biggest defense contractors. Guy’s a genius when it comes to turning lasers into weapons, but he was a security disaster waiting to happen. The Man briefed me earlier today, and what he said wasn’t encouraging. Dade snorts coke by the ton and buys hookers by the baker’s dozen. In his free time, he gambles like hell.”
Bolan’s brow furrowed. “He got any big debts from it?”
Brognola shook his head. “Dade comes from one of the richest oil families in Texas. He doesn’t care about money. It’s all in the thrill. We’re still running the traps on him, but we’re starting to hear some murmurs of possible ties to organized crime.”
Bolan felt anger burn hot under his skin. Instinct and experience told him this situation should never have escalated to this level. “His handlers knew all this, but he kept his security clearance. That’s bull, Hal.”
Bolan knew by Brognola’s scowl that the big Fed agreed. “Like I said, Striker, the guy comes from a lot of money. He gets into trouble, he gets bailed out. The people at Sentinel have tried to fire him twice. He has two uncles who are senators, one chairs the intelligence committee, the other the defense appropriations committee. Any time the company leans on Dade, he calls his uncles and they drop the hammer on the company. At least that was the pattern. Recently Dade screwed up so bad that not even his high-powered uncles had enough chits to save him.”
“What happened?”
“He makes weekly pilgrimages to Las Vegas. While he’s there, he stays in a top-notch hotel and parties. A preliminary audit of the company’s books shows he did at least some of it with Sentinel’s money. Money out of the Nightwind program funds.”
“Which means he did it with taxpayer cash,” Bolan said.
Brognola shrugged and shot Bolan a cynical smile. “We’ve used the money in worse ways. Anyway, about two months ago, he’s there for another wild weekend and bam!” Brognola slammed the table with his open palm for emphasis. “One of the hookers overdoses on cocaine and dies. Dade panics, refuses to let the guards call the police. When he finally relents, he gets busted for obstruction, possession and involuntary manslaughter. Within weeks, a grand jury indicts him and the press is off to the races with the story.”
“And,” Bolan said, “because it’s the local prosecutor and not one from Dade’s home state, the authorities plan to make it stick.”
Picking up his foam cup of coffee, Brognola nodded and leaned back in his chair. Staring into the cup, he swirled its contents and resumed speaking. “You bet they plan to make it stick. A couple of days later, one of his uncles calls the prosecutor, hat in hand, and asks him to reduce the charges. Maybe even consider dropping them. The senator told him the damage to national security and the state’s economy would far outweigh the benefits. The prosecutor told him to take his good old boy politics and shove ’em.”
It was Bolan’s turn to smile. “Good for him.”
“My thoughts exactly. And with a criminal investigation brewing, Sentinel’s board of directors finally stopped sitting on its hands and began taking steps to fire the bastard. That was about a week ago.”
“And now he’s gone. One hell of a coincidence,” Bolan replied.
“No coincidence. Whoever took Dade wanted to make it look like a hit rather than a kidnapping. They burned what appears to be his corpse and that of a woman who was in the house when the hit took place. Police identified her with dental records. She was a hooker from Las Vegas.”
“What about the man?”
Brognola shrugged. “His head was destroyed with a close-range shotgun blast, so we have no dental records. DNA samples taken from cigarette butts indicate Dade had been in the room. But DNA taken from the man’s corpse didn’t match up.”
“So it was a plant,” Bolan stated.
“Right. Whoever did it had to know we’d identify the guy as a ringer in short order. But it did buy them enough time for the trail to go cold.”
“Does Dade’s family know?” Bolan asked.
“Negative. We’re not telling them or the media yet. It helps our cause for whoever did this to think we bought into the ruse.”
“What else do we know?”
Brognola let out a big sigh and vigorously rubbed his eyes with balled fists. The man was notorious for depriving himself of sleep, and his red, watery eyes indicated that was the case this day.
“We’re getting leads from all over, Striker, but the biggest noise seems to be coming from Sierra Leone. Using tail numbers, flight records and eyewitness reports, we tracked a private plane that left Oregon several hours after the kidnapping and high-tailed it to Mexico. The crew apparently ditched the plane there and took another flight to Colombia, where they switched over to Soviet military surplus cargo planes. A couple of DEA informants there saw the whole thing. We found one of the planes in Sierra Leone several hours ago.”
“How do you know Dade was on the flight?”
“A forensics team scoured the thing from stem to stern. We found some of Dade’s hair on the craft. So he, or at least his body, was on the plane at some point,” Brognola replied.
“I assume the Stony Man cyberteam nailed down the plane’s owner.”
“They did,” Brognola said. Rising from his chair, he retrieved a battered leather valise, opened it and rummaged inside for a moment. Extracting a folder from the bag, he made his way to Bolan and fanned through the contents as he went. Setting a photograph in front of the man, Brognola gave him time to study it while he returned to his own seat.
Scanning the photo, Bolan saw a black man with a shaved head and soulless eyes. The man wore jeans and a tattered camouflage shirt, and carried an AK-47 and a battered hand ax. Bolan committed the image to memory.
Brognola withdrew a sheet of paper from the folder and began reciting its contents. “His name is David Sheffield. He’s the son of a British university professor and a Sierra Leonean woman who met back in the 1960s before the country got its independence from the British. Dad split for England in the 1970s, leaving his son and wife to fend for themselves. As a teenager, Sheffield joined the army and actually turned out to be a decent soldier. Then in 1991, he deserted the state’s army and joined the Revolutionary United Front, figuring the long-term payout was better. Like most of those guys, he took on a new name—Talisman.”
“I guess the names killer and rapist already were taken,” Bolan added sarcastically.
“Right. He’s a real sweetie. Recently, he’s distanced himself from the rebel movement but continues to deal in diamonds, guns and fuel. I guess he thinks that makes him a businessman instead of a killer.”
“I don’t know, Hal,” Bolan said. “The evidence is there, but this just makes no damn sense.”
Brognola set down the dossier and nodded. “Agreed. In and of itself the operation is just too big for Talisman to handle. The guy is strictly small-time. Like you said, terrorizing women and children is more his speed. But the facts don’t lie.”
“Maybe Talisman’s working with someone else,” Bolan suggested.
“That’s the working theory. We just have no idea who.”
Bolan took one last nip at the coffee, wrinkled his face and pushed the cup away. “I take it Aaron and the team are trying to fill in the gaps?” Aaron Kurtzman was the computer wizard who fronted the Farm’s cyberteam.
“Right.