Incoming calls, if dialed direct, would prove impossible to trace, and he could not conceive of the abductors asking for assistance from an operator. Worse, the futile effort would require assistance from the Bureau, with its agents and computers. He was not prepared to make his problem public yet, not with the three lives dearest to him riding on the line. Perhaps after he had been in touch with the abductors again, determined what they wanted from him, he would take the chance.

And, then again, perhaps he wouldn't.

He would not do anything to risk his wife and children, certainly, but if an opportunity arose once they were free — or if he should suspect that they had been disposed of by the bastards who had carried them away — there might be something he could do to even up the score. It had been years since he had dropped the hammer on a human target, but you never really lost the touch. It was like swimming, pedaling a bike, or reaching for your woman in the middle of the night. A reflex, backed by years of practical experience, indelibly imprinted upon the brain.

And he would kill with relish if the members of his family were harmed. He would pursue the bastards tirelessly, relentlessly, until he had an opportunity to watch the spark of life wink out behind their eyes, extinguished by his hand.

If it should come to that.

But first he had to sleep.

It was incongruous, but Hal would need his strength, his faculties at noon when the abductors called him back in Washington. Four hours to go, five at the outside, before he had to leave again. Enough time to replenish his fading energy reserve, provided he could sleep at all.

The empty rooms around him seemed to whisper Helen's name, to ring with laughter from the children in their younger days. Aware that he might never see his family alive again, Brognola welcomed lighter memories, of birthdays, high school proms and graduations, weekends at the lake-shore.