Face Of Terror. Don Pendleton

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.