Lyons turned to Gadgets. "Get Grimaldi here. Now."

15

July 13, 2004 hours, Minneapolis, Minnesota

J. Courtney Cain was a man who loved to talk. Usually it was not necessary for others to be willing to talk; it was enough that they should simply listen. However, in this case, he wanted his prisoner to talk and found her refusal to do so very frustrating.

Cain mechanically slapped his swagger stick against his right leg as he stared at Toni Blancanales. The stick tapped against carefully pressed fatigues, which Cain thought made him look very military. Unfortunately, at five-foot two, with long hair combed back to cover a bald spot, he looked more comic than military, a deficiency he found difficult to ignore when he saw the mockery in his prisoner's dark eyes.

"I am not entirely stupid..." J. Courtney began.

He stopped when he noticed the quirk at the corner of Toni's lips. He regretted his choice of phrase. The swagger stick whistled, Toni's head was jerked to one side. Soon an angry welt began to form on one cheek, just under the right eye. It joined three similar welts on the left side of her face. She struggled briefly against the ropes that held her to a wooden chair. Then her head dropped.

Cain tried again. As he spoke he paced back and forth in front of Toni, waving his stick and speaking as if he were addressing a class.

"First, Atlanta gets pounded during a raid. They lose half their force. Then Boston gets mauled during a raid and the rest of Atlanta's HIT trainees get wiped.

"It doesn't take much brains to figure that there's some sort of a force after us. Now I'm told that our trainees have been massacred in Kansas. That leaves me with the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that we may be next, here in Minneapolis. So, you can see that I was already on the alert. And when I do a sweep of the area, what do I find? I find that a lady investigator has us under surveillance."

He paused and brought his pockmarked face close to Toni's.

"Now, do you understand that I will go to any length necessary to find out what we're up against?"

The tip of the swagger stick slammed viciously into her solar plexus, leaving her gagging and gasping for air. Cain waited patiently the seven minutes it took for Toni to recover control of her breathing and pay attention to his questions.

"Why were you watching this building?"

"Screw off," she spat.

The swagger stick dug into her solar plexus with such force that she lost consciousness. Cain swore. He had not intended to lose time having to wait until she recovered. The woman was so damn maddening. But, he knew he would eventually get the information he wanted. The Nazis who taught him the techniques were experts with years of practice.

He left her alone for a while. When he returned, he could tell right away that she was faking. He wandered in as if he did not know better and started to tap her head very lightly with his swagger stick. She held out amazingly well, pretending not to feel the light taps, but Cain knew better. By now it would feel like she was being hit with a battering ram. Her head would feel as if it were being battered inside a bass drum. He could see the neck muscles tighten with each tap. Finally she began to scream.

"Now," he said with satisfaction. "Now, you will tell me what I want to know."

She was weeping uncontrollably. She nodded her head.

"Who will be coming?"

"Able Team."

"When?"

"They... they would be here by now."

That shook Cain. He would have thought he had more time. Surely it took longer than that to get to Minneapolis from Kansas City. Something was wrong.

"How many strong is Able Team?"

"Three."

He swung the stick onto the same spot on her head. She screamed.

"How many?"

"Only three. They should be studying this place right now."

It suddenly made sense. First send a spy. Then send three scouts. After that, bring in the main body of killers to wipe the place out. Of course, the scouts could easily arrive long before the main body. They did not have to wait until one fight was finished before moving on. Cain turned and sprinted from the soundproof interrogation room. He ran up to the communications room and strode in there.

"Get me our patrol leaders," Cain told the radioman.

The radio operator handed the unit commander a microphone.

"You're on both walkie-talkie channels," he told his commander.

"This is Cain."

He waited for two voices to acknowledge before continuing. "There should be three men out there scouting us. Locate them, but leave them alone. Don't move in until the main force moves in to attack. Take the scouts only if they spot you. Have you got that?"

Two voices acknowledged.

Cain left the radio room and decided to do a tour of interior defenses before returning to the interrogation room. When whoever it was attacked, they were going to get hit back much harder than they had ever been hit before. Cain was grinning like a death's head as he made his rounds of the old warehouse that had become the HIT headquarters.

"That's the building, according to the intel from the Bear," Lyons said.

It was a warehouse — old, brick and ugly. All three stories were living and training quarters for a Harassment Initiation Team. WAR had separate, more respectable offices farther uptown.

Pol grabbed the walkie-talkie out of Gadgets's hand.

"Let me try that," Pol demanded. "Little sister? Come in little sister."

There was no more response than for the fifty or more times that Gadgets had tried it. Pol handed it back.

"We're being watched," Lyons told his two team members. "Fade."

"I want to talk to someone from that joint," Pol said. His voice held an edge of steel that was usually completely hidden.

"We fade. Carefully." Lyons ordered.

"I'm going to grab one of those killers," Pol insisted. "Toni left word with the office that she has the place under surveillance and has her walkie-talkie with her. They've got her."

Lyons clamped a grip of steel on Politician's upper arm.

"We leave," he said sternly.

They strolled in silence until well clear of the area.

"I don't know why we were allowed to walk out of that ambush," Lyons said. "But we don't have much time. Let's pick up the heavy-duty artillery and make a sweep. We'll start with the soldiers covering the ambushers, then take the ambushers and then move in on the building. That's playing it by the book, but it stinks."

"Why werewe allowed to walk?" Gadgets insisted.

"Maybe Toni didn't tell them anything," Pol said. His voice was a whisper.

"You know better than that," Lyons said.

"The drugs they have these days..." Gadgets added, trying to soften the cruel reality of Lyons's words.

The terror fighters were back at the van that Toni had left at the airport for them. It belonged to Able Group, the company owned by Schwarz and Blancanales, and managed by Toni Blancanales. The company specialized in industrial security. The van was one of its quick-response vehicles.

"I still smell something wrong," Lyons said as he fastened a web belt around his waist.

As soon as J. Courtney Cain left the interrogation room, Toni began working on the knots that held her. The goons who had tied her up were much more interested in letting their hands wander than in checking what they were doing. Toni had been able to tense her muscles and twist her arms. Now she relaxed and worked with the slack. It took time, time that she did not know whether she had. She had run into trouble before. Twice the big man, Mack Bolan, had come to her aid. She had learned from him and learned well. So she fought one battle at a time with total concentration, not allowing the uncertainty of the next minutes to rob her of her effectiveness.