Arlington National Cemetery
The game ended where it began, among the honored dead. There would be no grand military funerals for six ex-Rangers who had fallen on the way, disgraced and dishonorably discharged now—not that it mattered to them anymore.
Mack Bolan walked with Hal Brognola past the ranks of white headstones, deciding on the spot that he would stay away from cemeteries for a while. Their meeting place had been Brognola’s choice, however, and he hadn’t felt like arguing about it on the phone.
“Jack’s doing well,” the big Fed said. “The medics think he’ll be out in another day or two, as soon as they’re convinced that his concussion won’t flare up after he’s released.”
“A hard head comes in handy,” Bolan quipped.
“Sometimes. No flying for a couple weeks, but that’s all right. He needs the down time, anyway.”
“No sign of any manifestos in the media,” Bolan observed.
“And there won’t be any. As far as any of the news hawks know, Darby and company were just a bunch of guys with PTSD from their duty postings, roped into a crazy scheme by Darby. What do the shrinks call it? Folie à deux?”
“That means ‘madness of two,’” Bolan answered. “With five, it ought to be folie à cinq, but medics also call it folie en famille, assuming all five crazies should be in one family.”
“Hey, look at you, spouting French,” Brognola said. “Now that I think of it, I guess they were a family of sorts.”
“Gone wrong,” Bolan amended.
“Well, it’s over now,” Brognola said. “We’re leaking items that connect them to the bomb in Central Park and at Richmond’s Black History Museum. They’re good for it, and no one’s left to contradict us anyhow.”
“And the gas leak, before?”
“We’re sticking to that story. Switching now just muddies everything and leads to more questions.”
“It would,” Bolan concurred.
Brognola gazed across the rows of pristine markers as he asked, “Do you suppose they got it at the end?”
“Got what?”
“That all they’d done was throw their lives away, and proud careers?”
“Playing the high table, he called it,” Bolan answered.
“Who?”
“Darby.”
“I’d call those sucker’s odds,” Brognola said.
“Depends on how you look at it, I guess.”
“Those offers,” Brognola said. “You weren’t even tempted, right?”
“They only had four billion,” Bolan told him. “I was holding out for five.”
Brognola smiled at that. “Maybe there’ll be a bonus in your Christmas stocking.”
“Right.” Changing the subject, Bolan said, “So you, back in the field. I didn’t think you missed it.”
“I felt it was an emergency. And, looking back, I don’t. I think a desk suits me just fine.”
“Large and in charge.”
“Not sure how large I feel right now. It almost got away from us.”
“But didn’t,” Bolan reassured him. “That’s what matters.”
“Same thing the Man said, more or less.”
“Well, there you are.”
“Where are you headed now?” Brognola asked.
“A little down time. You know how to reach me.”
“That I do. Stay frosty, eh?”
“Name of the game.”
Bolan stood watching as his old friend moved off toward Arlington’s Visitor Welcome Center and parking facility.
When the big Fed was out of sight, the Executioner turned back, retraced his steps and came once more to stand before the Tomb of the Unknowns. The guard was changing and he watched them going through their paces, step by slow and measured step.
Bolan decided, not for the first time, that he had much in common with the unknown soldiers buried there. Shorn of his birth name, with his face altered and every written trace of him eradicated from official files, how much was left of him?
Not much—only the things he did, the missions he took on for Hal Brognola and the team at Stony Man Farm, guarding the country that was everything to him. To that cause he had pledged his life and risked it countless times, at home and at the far-flung corners of the world.
And so he would continue, as long as strength and breath remained to him. The unknown soldier knew the stakes he played for at his own high table, and he knew someday the cards would eventually turn against him.
But not this day.
* * * * *