Face Of Terror

The time frames concerning some of these crimes simply didn’t add up. If it was the same men perpetrating all of these crimes, they had kidnapped another girl in Boston, and fifteen minutes later robbed a bank in Wilmer, Minnesota.

Not even Jack Grimaldi could get you from Massachusetts to the southern Minnesota town of Wilmer that fast.

Other bank robberies had gone down during the periods that these camo-clad men had had their kidnap victims in custody and still alive. The parents of the girl from Boston, as well as those of a young man from Albuquerque, had spoken to their children.

So who was keeping an eye on them while the others went running around the country robbing banks? Now the furrows on Bolan’s forehead deepened even further. There had to be at least two factions of this gang or terrorist cell using the same MO. Were they together in this, or separate? Together. They had to be.

The similarities were simply too many to be coincidence.

The Executioner closed the file again as Grimaldi spoke into his microphone, gaining clearance for their landing in Atlanta. The Learjet began its descent, and a few minutes later they were taxiing toward an aluminum-sided hangar reserved for private aircraft.

“Jack, you mind taking care of the paperwork?” the Executioner said as a dark black Chevrolet sedan made its way toward them. It had so many antennae extending up from the hood and trunk that it could only have been a police vehicle of some kind.

“No problem,” Grimaldi said. “I’ll stay here with the plane.”

Bolan opened the cargo door and began removing black nylon cases that, in addition to clothes, held weapons, ammunition, extra magazines and other equipment. Bolan, Jessup and John Sampson lifted their luggage and walked to where the black sedan had parked next to the hangars. The door opened, and a man wearing an expensive suit, a white shirt and black sunglasses stepped out. He wore his black hair in a short flattop cut, and his hairline was just beginning to recede.

“You Cooper?” he asked Bolan in short, clipped syllables. It was obvious that he wasn’t glad to be where he was, doing what he was doing, as he got out of the sedan and walked to the rear of the car, inserting a key into the trunk.

“I am,” Bolan told him. He pointed to Jessup and started to say, “This is Rick—”

“Jessup,” the FBI agent interrupted. “DEA. And the guy with the Santa Claus hair and beard must be the linguistics specialist your man at Justice told us about when he called down earlier.”

By now the bags were in the trunk and the four men found seats in the sedan. The FBI man took the wheel again, Bolan rode shotgun and Sampson and Jessup got into the back. “You haven’t told us your name yet,” Bolan said.

“I’m Special Agent Wilkerson, in charge of the Atlanta office,” came the reply in the same clipped tone.

“Ah, the special agent in charge has come to greet us himself,” Jessup said from the backseat.

Bolan felt his jaw tighten slightly. The competition between the DEA and FBI was legendary. He just hoped Jessup and Wilkerson didn’t let it get out of hand.

If they did, the Executioner would have to come down on them both, hard and fast. Such rivalries did nothing but get in the way on a mission like this.

Before Wilkerson could reply, Jessup went on. “We’re a pretty informal group, you’ll find,” he said.

Wilkerson threw the automobile into Drive and started toward an exit.

The DEA man continued talking. “What’s your first name, Wilkerson?”

“Special,” Wilkerson said with even more venom in his words than he’d already shown.

“Cute,” Jessup said. “Very cute. So I suppose that would mean you’ve got three middle names? Agent, In and Charge?

“That’s right, DEA man,” Wilkerson said.

“Mind if I ask you one more question?” Jessup said.

“Go right ahead.”

“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.

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