Free The Alpha Deception by Jon Land Page B

return that a nondescript white van double-parked in front of the townhouse. Two men climbed out and moved up to the entrance. Blaine saw one of them pull the steel grating back while the other worked the door with a skeleton key. Took thirty seconds. Too long. They were dressed in dark blue overalls which looked innocuously like uniforms from the gas or electric company. No one would question them.
    At last they had the door open and were moving inside. McCracken waited until the two men were out of sight before drawing close enough to the van to assure himself only the driver remained inside. His elbow was propped into the night air on the open window sill. Blaine came up along the side stealthily, grabbed the exposed arm and yanked it brutally toward him and down.
    The driver’s head struck the door frame hard. By the time he registered the pain, Blaine had him by the throat, squeezing just hard enough.
    “One chance,” he told the man. “Who do you report to?”
    “Don’t know,” the man rasped, straggling to force the syllables out. “Upstairs, they’re in charge.”
    McCracken squeezed harder on the driver’s carotid artery until the man was unconscious. Then he made his way to the front door and pressed his shoulders to the left of the frame. Any second now one of the sanitation crew would return to the van for body bags or, more likely, a crate to remove the corpses. He saw a shadow sliding down the stairs inside and shrank further against the building, not even a flicker of his outline visible.
    The sanitation man barely had time to open the door before Blaine was on him, hand ramming his face and forcing it backward as he hurled himself inside. He slammed the man hard against the wall, making sure he was out before letting him slump. The final team member was upstairs. The answers would come from him.
    After closing the front door, he climbed the stairs and entered the room in silence. The third team member, his back to Blaine, was working on the bodies. Blaine grasped him from behind in a hold that shut off his wind.
    He dragged the man to the nearest upright chair and plopped him down in it, easing up on the pressure enough for the man to breathe. He switched his position to the side so he could meet the man’s eyes and let him see the determination in his own.
    “I’m going to give you a chance not to die,” Blaine said, maintaining a tight grip. “But only one chance.”
    The man regarded him with eyes bulging in terror, proclaiming innocence as well as fear.
    “Which branch were they working for?” Blaine demanded.
    The man caught his breath and seemed surprised by it. “I’ve got a phone number, just a phone number.”
    “I’m listening.”
    “585-6740.”
    “Area code?”
    “Local exchange. New York City.”
    “Very convenient.”
    He tied the men up and left them in the van. He was functioning on automatic now, trying not to think about T.C.
    From the townhouse, Blaine’s next stop was a phone box three blocks down. He needed to learn the address attached to 585-6740 and required only a touchtone phone to obtain it. He still had friends in the CIA who owed him favors, and they repaid their debt partially by keeping him constantly updated on changes in coding and procedures concerning the acquisition of information over lines. He dialed a number in Langley, Virginia, which linked him with the Company data base. Next he pressed out his request code, waited for a beep, and then punched in the number in question as if he were dialing it normally.
    “Hotel National,” a mechanical, synthesized voice told him after twenty seconds. “42nd Street and Seventh Avenue, New York City.”
    Blaine replaced the receiver.
    At midnight Times Square was alive with people, though not nearly as many as the old mythology would have it. Most were simply strolling through the night, looking for nothing more than a bright light to walk toward and then by. The Square offered this, plenty of food stops,