No time, no choice, Bolan realized

Sight, breathe deep, let it out. How many times had he dropped an enemy from a distance, an invisible shooter? So many killing fields, he briefly considered, since he was a Green Beret sniper in Southeast Asia.

Yesterday’s victories and spilled enemy blood to save innocent lives didn't mean a damn thing, he knew, and never guaranteed success in the present. Dwelling on the glory days—believing reputation and prior success would carry a man through the day’s trials—was best left for fools, wanna-bes and has-beens.

The future, Bolan thought, was now.

And in his hands.

Other titles available in this series:

Lethal Impact

Deadfall

Onslaught

Battle Force

Rampage

Takedown

Death’s Head

Hellground

Inferno

Ambush

Blood Strike

Killpoint

Vendetta

Stalk Line

Omega Game

Shock Tactic

Showdown

Precision Kill

Jungle Law

Dead Center

Tooth and Claw

Thermal Strike

Day of the Vulture

Flames of Wrath

High Aggression

Code of Bushido

Terror Spin

Judgment in Stone

Rage for Justice

Rebels and Hostiles

Ultimate Game

Blood Feud

Renegade Force

Retribution

Initiation

Cloud of Death

Termination Point

Hellfire Strike

Code of Conflict

Vengeance

Executive Action

Killsport

Conflagration

Storm Front

War Season

Evil Alliance

Scorched Earth

Deception

Destiny’s Hour

Power of the Lance

A Dying Evil

Deep Treachery

War Load

Sworn Enemies

Dark Truth

Breakaway

Blood and Sand

Caged

Sleepers

Strike and Retrieve

Age of War

Line of Control

Breached

Retaliation

Pressure Point

Silent Running

Stolen Arrows

Zero Option

Predator Paradise

Circle of Deception

Devil’s Bargain

Mack Bolan®

Don Pendleton

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win.

—Douglas MacArthur,

1880–1964

However much enemy blood I need to spill, whatever degree of pain is required to inflict on the vipers and jackals, I will be part of this war, without limit, without consequences. There will be no concession. There will be no compromise.

—Mack Bolan

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Jaric Muhdal was waiting for the miracle to happen.

Word of the alleged breakout had been written in Kurdish on a wadded note tossed into his lap five days ago by his Turk captor. Muhdal had been ordered to eat the missive once he’d read it. Or was it six days, a week since the encounter? And was this simply mental torture, taunting him with false hopes of escaping the hell on earth called Dyrik Prison? One last sadistic blow by his tormentors to break his spirit, and days, he believed, before he was marched out to the courtyard to be beheaded?

It was nearly impossible to track time or grasp insight into mind games played by his tormentors, he concluded as he hacked out a strand of gummy blood, wincing when his tongue ran over the craters inside his mouth. Rage building, he felt the slime ooze down over his bare chest and stomach, pool to a warm slither against exposed genitals. Time was frozen, but his hatred felt as if it could last an eternity.

How much more could he take? Daily he was hung upside down, pummeled by fists, flogged by a metal studded belt. A slice of moldy bread, a cup of tepid water a day—he was a withered sack of drooping flesh. For endless hours he sat naked and bleeding from his scalp to the soles of his feet in the blackness of a six-by-four concrete-block cell, breathing the stink of his own filth and fear; waiting for execution. Still, solitary confinement was respite from torture.

He knew plenty about deprivation, suffering, cruelty—his people, after all, had been savaged by the Turks for eighty years—but even those who believed they carried the heart of a lion could long for death under such brutal conditions.

Only they wouldn’t break him, he determined. No begging to be spared when the time came, no crack in the armor of his will. He would take what he knew about his fellow PKK freedom fighters with him to the grave. As leader, there was no other way, the warrior’s ego also dictating he stand an iron pillar, an example of unwavering defiance in the enemy’s face. With the imprisonment of Abdullah Ocalan, the disappearance of his younger brother, Osman—previous heir to power—he hadn’t climbed the ranks of the Workers Party of Kurdistan by showing mercy, either to friend or foe. Why expect anything now but the worst at the hands of a savage, hated enemy? He would die the way he had lived. At worst, he could take comfort not even his death would cripple the dream of a Kurdistan nation.

Muhdal felt the pain dig needles of fire through every nerve ending. For some strange reason, agony seared to mind images of his wife and three children, murdered many years ago by Turk soldiers, leaving him to wonder how much they had suffered before they were beheaded, their bodies dumped in a mass grave with the other villagers. The ringing in his ears, his brain jellied and throbbing, smothered by darkness, and he found himself suddenly drifting away into warm darkness. Muffled by the steel door, the screams of other prisoners, whipped and beaten down the corridor, some of them, he knew, with testicles plugged into generators, echoing the cry of anger and hatred in his heart.

Pain was good, he decided. So was hate.

So was never forgetting.

Focus, he told himself, perhaps the Turk was being truthful. Hold on.

“Hope!” Escape first, then dip his hands in more enemy blood. Perhaps freedom was on the way, but at what price? he wondered. After all, the guards, like many Turks here, he knew, were Boz Kurt, members of a secret netherworld of militants, all of whom were hardly resigned to carry out the Ankara regime’s wishes without personal gain. Their treachery and brutal ways were legendary, even by Turk standards. The Gray Wolves—or so went the mythical nonsense, he knew, fighting to pull thoughts together inside the crucible of his skull—believed the first Turk was suckled by a wolf on the Central Asian steppe. Whether or not the milk of a wild beast spawned a bloodline of ferocious warriors, Muhdal only knew all Turks were devils in human skin. As for the Boz Kurt, they weren’t only considered terrorists by Ankara, but they were also drug traffickers.

Which was why he and fifteen of his fighters had been arrested in the first place.

Revolutions required money to purchase weapons, even loyalty. Briefly he thought back eight months, the Turks catching them asleep, but the question lingered as to how the Turks had found them, slipped so easily into the gorge. Of course, he never expected a trial, a just legal system all but an alien concept in Turkey. His crimes—so the Turks claimed—ranged from murder to drug trafficking, too many, in fact, to count.

Killing the enemy, he believed, was acceptable in the eyes of Allah. So was stealing from Turk thieves and murderers, a holy decree, spoken directly to him from God in dreams, God telling him the spoils of war were to be used to gain an edge against the enemy. How could he, in all good conscience, have stood idly by anyway, watch the Turks use the southeast corner of the country to fatten their own coffers with truck caravans of heroin funneled from Afghanistan, hashish from Lebanon. And when the Ankara regime, faceless butchers who marched their killers out to Anatolia, had declared a campaign of genocide against them generations ago, and soon after the treacherous Brits reneged on their promise to give the Kurds their own country…?

The groan echoing in his ears, he gnashed chipped, broken teeth, invisible flames racing down the long furrows in his back. It hurt to breathe.

The first of several rumbles sounded from a great distance, but it was next to impossible to judge direction, much less clearly absorb sound through the chiming in his ears, windowless walls and door a barrier to whatever the source. He strained his ears, heart racing, then shuddered to his feet, hand on wall to brace himself. Tremors rippled underfoot next, the thunder pealing closer, nearly on top of his cell. This region, he knew, was notorious for earthquakes, ground splitting open without warning, hills crumbling down to consume tens of thousands within minutes. Images of being buried alive were jumping through his mind, then the bedlam beyond the darkness broke through the bells in his ears.

Muhdal laughed, hope flaming as the racket of weapons fire, the screams of men being shot in the corridor seemed to pound the door, an invisible but living force shouting freedom was mere feet and seconds away.

The murderous din, he thought, oh, but it was the singing of angels.

Freedom! Salvation! Revenge!

He made out the rattling of a key being inserted. Laughing, so giddy with relief, he wasn’t sure he could walk. But pain seemed to leak out of bruised and gashed flesh like water through a sieve right then. Waiting, he watched as the door swung out, light stabbing the dark, piercing his eyes, autofire and angry shouts blasting a wave of sense, shattering noise in his face.

Squinting, he made out the stocky figure of the Boz Kurt guard. He was shoving himself off the wall when it happened.

There was a wink of light in the doorway, a shadow rolling up behind the man, an armed wraith clad in black, from hood to boots. Muhdal looked from the bayonet fixed to the assault rifle, believed he heard tesekkurler, the hooded one thanking the guard in Turk. Then a pistol flew up in a gloved hand, the shadow jamming the muzzle against the Turk’s skull. Muhdal felt his knees buckle as the shot rang out and blood sprayed his lips.

THE UNIDENTIFIED BOGEY blipped onto the screen, dropping from the sky, out of nowhere, it seemed. By the time he calculated numbers scrolling on the digital readout—speed, distance and rate of descent—Colonel Mustafa Gobruz knew it was too late. The hell with his men assuring him there was no evidence of malfunction. Whatever the object, it was sailing a bullet straight course for the compound, less than one minute out, he figured, falling to slam right on top of their heads.

Gobruz felt the anxiety edge to panic in the room, his three-man radar team crunching numbers he already knew. “I can read!”

The colonel then barked orders to scramble all hands, man the antiaircraft batteries, shoot down the bogey on sight. But even as he punched on the Klaxon to throw the compound into full battle alert, Gobruz feared the worst, doomsday numbers ticking down now to mere seconds. The sprawling compound might survive a direct hit from a missile or a crash landing by a crippled aircraft. The dread concern, however, was for the ammunition depots, fuel bins, choppers, motor pools, every machine in close proximity to the C and C, topped out with fuel and—

One explosion, pounding through ordnance and thousands of gallons of high-octane fuel, he knew, and the base would erupt, a conflagration leaving behind a smoking crater on the east Anatolia steppe.

Gobruz, snapping up field glasses, burst out the door, stared to the southeast. Baffling, frightening questions shot through his mind as he glanced at soldiers racing up behind the big guns, searchlights scissoring white beams over black sky, barracks spilling forth more troops.

This was no accident, he knew. A deliberate attack, no question, but who was manning the craft, plunging it to the base, perhaps using it as a flying bomb? Or was it one of those unmanned drones, maybe packed with high explosives? Again, who, why? The Kurds had no access to either surface-to-surface missiles or aircraft, much less high-tech unmanned aerial vehicles. Of course, Iran, Iraq and Syria bordered the nation, often providing weapons and fighters to the Kurds, hoping the primitive rabble could create its own independent nation, thus invite them in when the Ankara government collapsed.

Gobruz glanced at the antiaircraft guns, soldiers working with a fury to bring the cannons around and on-line. He was lifting the field glasses, but discovered there was no need.

The object was coming to them, hard, fast and low.

The searchlights framed the craft’s bulk, not more than a hundred feet up and out, he saw, as it nose-dived for the cyclone fencing. It appeared a midsize cargo plane, lights out, but no transport bird he knew of carried what appeared to be missiles on its wings.

“Fire!” he shouted across the compound. “What are you waiting for?”

He heard the bark of small-arms fire—why weren’t the big guns pounding?—glimpsed the fixed-wing plane clear the fenceline.

Then the world erupted in a flash of roaring fire. Blinded by a white sea of flames, eyeballs and face scorched by superheated wind, Gobruz caught the shrieks, his men torched by incendiary explosions he was sure. He was wheeling, about to launch himself through the doorway when he felt the flames sweep over him, his own screams added to the chorus of wailing demons as he was consumed by the wave of fire.

“LIVE OR DIE, your choice!”

Muhdal watched the faceless gunman, unsure of what was even real, senses warped, swollen by the din. Peering into the bright sheen, Muhdal saw the wraith flash white teeth, dark eyes burning with either laughter or anger. He strained to listen, his savior telling him he had ten seconds to strip the Turk and dress, or the door would slam shut.

Some choice, he thought. Outside, the price for freedom sounded more to him as if the gates of hell had opened to disgorge a legion of devils, there to devour every prisoner.

Men bellowed in agony, wailing from some distance. Muhdal nearly gagged as he sniffed the sickly sweet odor of roasting flesh. Were his men being burned alive, trapped in their cells, thrashing, craving for death to extinguish their misery? Were his rescuers Turks or Kurds? What was this madness?

His confusion deepened as the wraith snapped an order over his shoulder, switching to the Russian language. Another hooded shadow swept through the doorway and hurled what he assumed was water from a bucket. Muhdal took the liquid in the face and chest, then howled when he realized what doused him. The urine burned like acid, biting into countless open wounds.

“Bastards! You throw piss in my face?”

“Five seconds, or I shoot you dead!”

Was that laughter in his eyes? Muhdal wondered, the piss-thrower stepping back, kicking away the Turk’s assault rifle, then melting into the corridor where the hellish noise reached a deafening crescendo. Cursing, with a bayoneted muzzle inches from his face, Muhdal nearly shredded the blouse and pants off the body, dressed, finally squeezing into boots a size too small. No weapon in his hands, but he felt the gun in his heart, cocked and ready with murderous wrath, the pain a scalding blaze, now that urine was smothered by clothing, soaking into fabric. He was tempted to lunge for the RPK-74 light machine gun, but the hardman grabbed him by the shoulder, snarled something in Russian, shoved him through the doorway.

“Move it!” Muhdal found more black hoods swarming the halls. Some were armed with the longer, heavier version of the AK-74, banana clips holding forty-five rounds, Muhdal noting holstered side arms, commando vests, webbing studded with grenades and spare clips, com links snugged over hoods. Two big machine guns, Squad Automatic Weapons with 200 round box magazines in the hands of giants. He figured eight invaders at first count, but with shooting converging from all directions it was impossible to say. The deeper he headed down the corridor, the more he feared his immediate future. Several of the invaders were emptying weapons into the cages, mowing down prisoners behind the iron bars, rats in a barrel. They were tossing something on the bodies. As he passed strewed bodies, he found playing cards, the ace of spades with a grinning death’s-head resting on lifeless grimaces.

Muhdal wondered if they were murdering his own men, when, rounding the corner, thrust down the bisecting corridor that led to the north exit, he spotted Zeki and Balik being hustled outside by another squad of invaders manhandling the rest of his fighters for the open door, barking at them in a mix of Kurd and Russian the whole way. Whoever these hooded killers, they were professionals, he decided, wondering how they had taken down the prison so swiftly, no Turk resistance he could find anywhere. As long as they weren’t Americans—who aided and abetted the Ankara regime—he figured he could live with the indignity of a piss shower for the moment, if salvation from Dyrik was guaranteed. Still, he wouldn’t forget his shame.

Muhdal kept moving, saw several of the invaders spear bayonets through chests of downed Turks, gutting one or two like pigs, innards gushing to the floor. The vile stench was so strong now, bile wormed up his chest, hot slime rolling into his throat. And he spotted the smoke and flames leaping up through the grate in the floor of another wing, two fuel drums dumped on their sides. He picked up his pace, eager to put distance to the screams of men burning alive.

Muhdal hit the courtyard, grateful for fresh air, found the invaders ushering his men into the bellies of three Black Hawk gunships. The guard quarters had been reduced to flaming rubble, he saw, likewise the motor pool of Humvees and troop carriers, nothing but burning scrap. Forging into rotor wash, he gave the grounds and walls a quick search, spotted parachute canopies billowed out by heated wind. A look at the guard towers, he saw bodies draped over railings, the claws of four grappling hooks dug into the top edges of the wall.

Professionals, all right, he thought, aware the attack on the prison had been split down the middle between the invaders. Snipers, creeping in from the steppe, took out the guards, scaled the walls, the other half dropping square into the belly to blast and burn.

Nearing the Black Hawk, the Barking Hood on his heels urging speed, Muhdal looked to the distant northern sky. There, the sky strobed, blackness peppered to near daylight with brilliant white flashes. He knew there was a large Turk military base in that direction, thought he heard the rumbling of explosions, but the sound was muted by rotor wash.

He boarded the gunship, glanced at Balik before he was shoved to sit. He seethed, staring at the Barking Hood, another invader looking up from the green glow of a laptop monitor. White teeth flashed, a thumbs-up from the other invader, and the Barking Hood laughed.

Suddenly Muhdal felt as if he were quagmired in a nightmare, skin on fire, heart pumping with fury. Who were they? What did they want? They might have known who he was, but they didn’t know that, make no mistake, he would return the favor for dousing him in his cell.

The Barking Hood turned, stripped off the com link as the gunship lifted off. As the man tugged off the hood, Muhdal stared up at a face, purpled and cratered around the eyes and jaws from past battle souvenirs, the whole grisly picture as sharp as the edge of a razor, it could have been the skull on the ace of spades.

The big commando chuckled. “Cheer up, Moody. We’re here to help make you all rich men.”

Muhdal felt his heart lurch, jaw drop. “Americans?”

The Skull laughed. “Yeah, well, they say even the Devil can speak in all tongues.”

Speechless, anchored by fear, Muhdal wondered what horror lay in Kurd futures, staring into the Skull’s laughing eyes.

“You do believe in the Devil, don’t you, Moody? You damn well better—you’re looking at him.”

HE WAS CALLED Acheron, named for his resurrection after both the river of Greek mythology in Hades, and the demon who guarded the gates of Hell.

It was the sweetest thing, he thought, Judas bastards oblivious he was risen from the dead. Physically speaking, of course, it was impossible to breathe life into oneself, arise from ashes and dust, but the metaphor worked for him; he was alive and doing fine. Thanks to Big Brother, the old Michael Mitchell was long dead and gone, but Acheron was moving on into the night to settle that score, silence an unclean tongue.

And on national television, no less.

Acheron, he thought—he liked that, seeing himself as the living ghost of the charred bones of that skeleton body double from a forgotten covert war zone in Syria. Oh, he was back, all right, feeling good, strong, ready to grab center stage on the Josh Randall show, pull a dagger from the back of the operation of the ages.

With one final look over his shoulder, he found the Clairmont Studio lot clear of mortals, then keyed the guest door open. The kid at the gate had been easy, one shot through the forehead with the throwaway sound suppressed Walther M-6, but he had counted on the bogus Washington Post press pass to get him close enough to the booth, eliminate one problem, confiscate keys. That left two armed rental badges inside, he knew, certain his professional talent would drop a couple of overweight play babies who seemed more inclined to walk female employees to their cars after hours than patrol the premises between doughnuts and coffee. Nailing down the routine of the security detail—so much sloppiness and laziness, he stopped counting the errors of their ways thirty minutes into his first watch—his escape route was mapped out, dry run when he wasn’t surveying the studio from his high-rise apartment directly across Connecticut Avenue. This, he figured, would prove so easy it was damn near criminal.

Snicking the door closed behind, he found the hall empty, focused on the lights and the chatter of fools at the end of the corridor. Snugging the dark sunglasses tight with a forefinger, his former Company boss wouldn’t recognize him, he knew, not until he spoke the bastard’s handle. Black wig, mustache and goatee pasted on, it was a shame, he considered, that other traitors may be watching the left-wing-circle jerk tonight and never know who made the special guest appearance. Well, what was fifteen minutes of fame anyway, when there were years of glory and pleasure at the end of the golden road, beyond his return from the dead?

Marching, he unzipped the loose-fitting windbreaker, pockets weighted down with two exit goodies, twin .50-Magnum Desert Eagles, the show-stoppers. It was a bonus, he recalled, cozying up to the makeup girl at the neighborhood pub, plying her with drinks. She couldn’t have drawn the setup any better. The stage then, would be off to the right, two cameramen, ten o’clock, rentals on standby, in case an unruly guest needed the hook. It happened, he knew, or so he heard, the punk star so extreme sometimes in left-wing diatribe, even the rational of viewpoint had taken a lunge at his mustache. By God, what he wouldn’t give himself, he thought, to rip that mustache off his face, ram it down his gullet…

The coming statement would suffice.

A few paces from the studio, and he heard the loudmouth in question—LIQ—snorting at something the kid said. “With all due respect,” LIQ rebuked, “Josh, I was there. Your sources aren’t quite on the money. I’m telling you there’s a secret paramilitary infrastructure, of assassins and saboteurs working for the United States government.”

No shit, Acheron thought. And why did the talking dickheads always soften the verbal blow “with all due respect?” Politicians were the worst of flimflam artists, he thought, all their “quite frankly” and “to be quite honest with you” spelling out they lied the rest of the time. Let that be him up there, he’d tell the punk, “With all due kiss my ass, here’s the real fucking deal.”

Stow the righteous anger, he told himself. This was business.

The canister, tossed and bouncing up in the heart of the staff, led the entrance, gas spewing a cloud of noxious fumes. Their reaction was typical, expected: cries of panic flayed the air, clipboards and cue cards fell, a mad scramble of bodies ricocheted off one another. He compounded the terror, the Desert Eagle out and pealing. Two heartbeats’ worth of thunder blasting through the studio, he tagged the cameramen first, 250-grain boattails exploding through ribs, hurling them back, deadweight bowling down one of the rentals.

The act sticking to the script, he knew he was still live and in color, coast to coast. He was a star right then, and shine he would.

Another tap of the trigger, and he glimpsed a bright red cloud erupt out the back of the standing rental, bodies thrashing and hacking their way out of the tear gas. Tracking on, he dropped Rental Number Three as he staggered to his feet, a headshot, leaving no doubt. With only seconds to wrap it up, exit stage left, Acheron swung his aim stageward. The kid bleated out what sounded a plea, the star shrill next in demand his life be spared, silk-suited arms flapping. Acheron blew him out of his seat.

Rolling toward the raised platform, Acheron found the LIQ glued to his chair, hands raised. What the hell? Obviously the guy had gone soft, a civilian life of fame and small fortune dulling the edge of former killer instincts and battlefield reflex. Where he remembered the LIQ once lean and hard, Acheron saw a double decker chin, coiffed hair, pink manicured fingers, a goddamn walrus in Armani, he thought.

The former CIA assassin drew a bead between wide eyes, flipped the calling card on the table.

Fat quivered under the man’s jowl as he looked up from the ace of spades with a death’s-head. “You?”

“With all due kiss my ass—you’re a dirty rat bastard, Captain Jack.”

“Wait!”

“Waited more than ten years already,” Acheron said, and squeezed the trigger.

FRAMED IN SOFT LIGHT, they stared back, a living malevolence, it felt, mocking sleepless nights, telling him they would come for a day of reckoning.

“The rebel angels have risen from the pit.”

How could it be possible? he wondered. Another shot of whiskey, and the courage he chased kept running away, an evanescent ray of light in the shadows of his living room.

Over ten years had passed since he and several colleagues hatched the dread warning phrase they hoped none of them would ever need to pass on. Already one of them was dead, the national audience bearing witness to murder, and live on television, for God’s sake.

It was happening.

Still, Timothy Balton wanted to believe it was some grotesque prank by former colleagues, perhaps envious of his early retirement, that he carved himself a slice of peace and quiet, or maybe angry he turned away from them after a life of service and dedication to national security. Unfortunately there was this blight—off the record—on his career, haunting them all for more than a decade.

Their deaths had been confirmed—sort of. After those two covert debacles, which never came to the attention of any Senate committee on intelligence or counterterrorism, even the President of the United States kept in the dark, the rumor mill churned, casting spectres of grave doubt and fear over the headshed in the loop. The best forensics teams the NSA and the CIA could marshal stated, off the record, they couldn’t be one-hundred-percent certain the burned remains were those of Alpha Deep Six. Then there were the slush funds for black ops in secret numbered accounts, twenty million and change whisked into cyberspace following their supposed demise. Well, the horrible truth behind the vanishing act leaked out when the headshed’s cover-up was launched in dark earnest. A few crumbs of intel, however, tossed their way, here and there, by followers deemed nonessential personnel and cheated by Alpha Deep Six of their own payday only magnified the enormity of the agenda. As former head of the DOD’s Classified Military Aircraft-Classified Military Flights—CMA-CMF—he discovered, during a yearlong follow-up investigation, low- and high-tech jets, cargo planes and helicopters were vanishing from CIA, DIA and NSA bases and installations from Nevada to Afghanistan. The bodies of personnel responsible for guarding such aircraft began stacking up so fast, no witnesses, no clues, not a shred of evidence as to the identities of the assassins left behind, it struck him as if…

What? That all of them had been executed by murderous phantoms?

Trembling, he poured another dose from the half-empty bottle. Down the hatch, hands steady moments later, enough so he felt confident he could aim and fire the Taurus PT-58 with deadly accuracy. He pulled the CD-ROM from the desk drawer. Say they did come? What then? Hand Alpha Deep Six the gathered intelligence on all secrets known about them? Give up the details, hoping they would spare his life, about their disappearance and purported resurrection, what they had allegedly initiated as part of an agenda so horrific he now considered it the evil of the ages?

Evil, he knew, that he was, albeit indirectly, responsible for loosing on the world.

He stared at the picture on his desk. Choking back tears, he wondered if he would soon join his wife and only son.

He flinched, wind howling outside, pistol up as he pivoted toward the curtained windows, something banging off the wall. Shadows, it looked, danced in the night world. Could be, he thought, just moonlight shining through scudding clouds. Wind, he knew, often gusted over the plain, stirred south from the Badlands.

He hesitated, then laid down the weapon. One more shot, he told himself, he desperately needed sleep, if only for an hour. He was thinking he should check the alarm system one more time, recon the ranch and perimeter when—

“So I understand you want divine knowledge.”

Balton froze. He felt them, no need to turn, he discovered, three shadows flickering over the wall. His hand shook as he reached for the pistol. He felt a strange urge to laugh, amazed and terrified at how easily they breached his security net, but knew they had the technology able to burn out the guts of a warning system, laser beams melting alarms and motion sensors to molten goo, no matter how complex. It was over, he knew; it was simply a question of how it would end, how soon, how much pain he would endure.

“Cramnon,” he breathed.

“Richard Cramnon’s dead, remember? I am Abbadon.”

“What?”

“I have been raised up from the dead as Abbadon. That would be ancient Hebrew for ‘destruction.’ I am the bottomless pit, consuming the damned in eternal fire. I am the abyss that vomits forth the dark angel to spread plague and death across the earth.”

“You’re insane.”

“No. I have never been more right.”

Balton felt his heart skip a beat, a rumble of cold laughter striking his back.

“Don’t look so puked out, Timothy. We just came by to say we love you.” His laughter echoed by the others, Cramnon went on, “By the way, I was real sorry to hear about your wife. Breast cancer, huh. Pity about your boy, too. Heroin, was it?” He laughed.

“You rotten son of a—”

“Drugs, modern-day scourge, I always said, the invisible foreign invasion. Hey, they say it’s a real heartbreaker, a father having to bury his own child. What do you think it was that pushed the little punk over the edge? Kid couldn’t live up to your high standards?”

Balton squeezed his eyes shut, heard Cramnon laugh beyond the roaring in his ears.

“Too much pressure from the old man, not enough love and affection? Big shot that you were at DOD, too caught up in work, family always on the backburner. Bet you hated and blamed yourself when you stared into his coffin, huh? Wonder still how such a tragedy could happen? Wish to God you could have it back to do over. Thing about that, Timothy, human beings always wish they could do it over, make it right, the old ‘if I knew then what I know now.’ Being a little more than human these days, well, I had a long chat with God while I was away. He told me, among other things, human beings would commit the same damn mistakes even if they could turn back time. Oh, yeah, I was thinking about you, asked God why even bother to create your son if the punk was going to cause you such grief. God, He tells me humans are always crying, ‘why?’ when they should ask ‘how?’As in how to fix, how to find a solution. That’s why I’m here…the disk?”

Shaking, Balton began to turn, aiming his rage toward their laughter. He hoped his body concealed the Taurus, long enough where he could at least tag one, two if he got lucky. He was in slow motion, dizzied by shock, as he faced the three of them. The one he believed was Cramnon appeared to float across the room, a tall shadow in a long black coat, rolling counterclockwise from the other two shadows peeling the other way. Pistol coming around, trigger taking up slack, he balked, shocked at how different they looked than he remembered. Where they were once clean-cut and fair-skinned, he found hair as black as a raven, flowing to their shoulders. With prominent cheekbones and hawk noses, complexions so dark or burnished by sun, black eyes that were once blue, they appeared…

Semitic?

A shot cracked from the dark. He heard a sharp grunt, pistol flying from his hand, then froze at the sight of blood jetting from the stump where his thumb was amputated. Balton slumped, clutched his hand, gagged.

“Your boy, Gulliver, I made it last two days before he gave you up.”

Balton heard his bitter chuckle, then felt tears welling as he looked at the picture. So this was how it would end, he thought, the world fading, the blood pumping out. So many mistakes, so much neglect dead-ending in too much pain and sorrow. It galled him, but Cramnon’s cruel words rang true, ground deep. They—whoever they were, he thought—said a man’s character was his destiny. Strange, he decided, he wasn’t sure what was his own true character. Way beyond guilt and regret now—again, “they” claimed not even God could change the past, and, yes, that even the Devil knew the darkest corners of human hearts, the worst pain, the most atrocious of every man’s thoughts and desires—he suddenly prayed to a divine being he hadn’t thought about since his wife died. He heard the evil thing demand the disk. Brushing it to the edge of the desk, he heard, “And the password?”

Why not? “Agrippa.”

He shut out the laughter, silently implored for a quick, merciful end he knew he didn’t deserve. He prayed for forgiveness, his own sins too many, he thought, to even recall. He glimpsed one of the shadows falling beside him, slip the disk into the computer. A metallic click. Behind, smoke blew over his head, Cramnon laughing about the irony of the password. Something about how Agrippa was an ancient sorcerer’s book, pages made of human skin, how it listed the names of every demon in Hell, how they could be summoned to earth to help the caller fulfill whatever desire and wish.

“We’re in business,” Balton heard the shadow say.

Then Cramnon asked, “You prefer it in the back?”

He straightened, offered up a last silent prayer this monstrous evil was soon, somehow, removed from the face of the earth, sent where it belonged, before it was too late.

Turning, he told Cramnon, “No.”

CHAPTER ONE

If the nation’s enemies pulled it off, Mack Bolan feared the United States of America would cease to exist as he knew it. Any number of apocalyptic nightmares charged through his mind, stoked a sense of dire urgency while inflaming a righteous anger he hadn’t felt in some time. Martial law, he knew, would prove the least of the nation’s woes. The shortlist of horrors spewed from the brewing caldron of this hell—looting, riots, interstates and highways parking lots as panicked civilians fled for the hills, murder in the streets by those left behind in the chaos and terror—was incomprehensible to rational human minds.

Unfortunately, he had walked this road many times in his War Everlasting. And he knew all about the cannibals unleashing death and destruction on free and not so free societies, consuming or oppressing the innocent, driven by whatever dark machinations churned in hearts pumping with the blood of the wicked.

Only this crisis defied any past experience Bolan had ever known.

Wedged in the doorway beside the M-60 gunner, the Black Hawk gunship sailing over the wooded countryside of Williamsburg, Bolan took in the command-and-control center. A quick head count, as the warbird descended, and he figured ten to fifteen special ops ringing the farmhouse perimeter. Four Black Hawks were grounded in the distance, fuel bladders, he found, already dropped off for quick topping out of tanks, one critical detail out of the way.

Slashed by midmorning sunshine, there were too many black sedans to bother counting—government-issue vehicles having delivered the best and brightest from the FBI, NSA, DIA and whoever else muscled their way into the game—he then noted the small armada of oversize vans in matching color. High-tech communications-surveillance-tracking centers on wheels, bristling with antennae, spouting sat dishes, they could garner intelligence at light speed. From past hands-on experience with war wagons, he knew they could mobilize and steer field operatives to the enemy’s back door before they were aware the sky was falling.

Panning on, he saw satellite dishes staggered at various intervals, fanning away from the C-and-C center, cables hooked into generators mounted in the beds of Army transport trucks or Humvees. It appeared topnotch professional on the surface, but it was an operation marshaled in a few short hours, he knew, backed with the full blessing of an anxious White House and Pentagon. And the political-military powers had damn good reason to feel the collective knot in their belly. Sometimes, though, haste, edging toward panic in this case, he thought, led to bad decisions. Warning bells told him there were too many chiefs in the act.

There was some good news, a ray of hope they could abort the enemy’s twisted dream. The FBI had grabbed four of them—two in Richmond, two in Fredericksburg—Bolan learned during his initial briefing at the Justice Department. Under interrogation, the Feds had a general idea what was unfolding, but no clear fix on enemy numbers, where and when the big event—as the opposition called it—would happen. With their arrest, a nervous logic rippled down the chain of intelligence and military command, the former capital of Virginia chosen for strategic purposes, central command planted between what were believed intended strike points. Virginia Beach south, Richmond and Washington, D.C., due north, and Baltimore a short hop up the interstate from here, if the opposition was already on the move, if the enemy even partly succeeded….

Intelligence at this point, he knew, had to be on the money if he was to root out, crush the scourge before it unleashed its murderous agenda.

And hunting down the savages was the reason why he was here.

The Black Hawk touching down, Bolan bounded out the doorway, forged into rotor wash. Closing on the front porch, he found beefed-up security nearly invisible to the naked eye. Briefly he wondered how his sudden entrance into the hunt would be received, an unknown marching in with carte blanche to call the shots. On that score, all egos needed to take a back seat, he knew, as he glimpsed blacksuited men hunkered in the woods, Stoner 63 Light Machine Guns poking through brush, figures with FBI stenciled on windbreakers, Armalite AR-18 assault rifles slung around their shoulders, Feds scurrying in and out of the intel nerve center.

His orders were clear. And a presidential directive had cut through red tape, dropped him square in charge. If anybody had problems with that, there was a number to call, a direct line to the President. The Man in the Oval Office, and Hal Brognola, the big Fed at the Justice Department who gave him his marching orders, knew the credentials he was bringing here were bogus, but they were likewise aware this was no time for interagency backbiting and grandstanding.

It was the eleventh hour, time for decisive, swift and, hopefully, preemptive action.

Or else…

The grim thought trailed away as he saw the tall FBI man materialize in the doorway, venture a few steps across the porch, then appear to balk at what he saw.

“You Special Agent Matt Cooper?”

Of course, the FBI man knew that already, the coded message radioed ahead before his Black Hawk breached their airspace. “That would be me.”

“Agent Michael James. ASAC, now that you’re here.”

“What do you have?”

“What we’ve got are definite major ‘effing’ problems.”

“How about telling me something I don’t know?”

He pulled up short, watching as ASAC James looked him up and down, the FBI man perhaps wondering more “what” he was than “who.” No question, he looked military, specifically black ops, worlds apart from any G-man, he knew. Start with the dark aviator shades, for instance, then the combat blacksuit, his tried and proved lethal duo of side arms filling out the windbreaker. There was the Beretta 93-R in shoulder holster, the mammoth .44 Magnum Desert Eagle riding his hip, for killing starters. Just above the rubber-soled combat boots, a Ka-Bar fighting knife was sheathed around his shin, just in case all else failed. Combat vest, pouches slitted to house spare clips, webbing lined with a bevy of frag, tear gas, flash-stun and incendiary grenades, and whatever else he needed for battle, urban or otherwise, was bagged in nylon in the gunship.

“Come on, we’re on the clock, Cooper.”

Inside the nerve center, trailing James, Bolan felt the air of controlled frenzy, a hornet’s nest of buzzing activity. Banks of computers, digital monitors and wall maps packing the room with inches to spare, he navigated through the web of cables strung across the floor. Above the electronic chitter and voices relaying intelligence over com links and secured sat phones, he heard James say, “We think there may be as many as six to ten cells, according to electronic intercepts, surveillance, what cooperation we’ve gotten from their own communities, informants, here and abroad, on our payroll, filling in a few particulars. In the plus column, we grabbed another of these assholes in Boston. He appears willing to talk, but I’m hearing he’s second or third tier, meaning he was on need-to-know until the last minute before the big bang. We don’t know if the cells are working in twos, threes or as independent operators, nor what their specific destinations of target.”

James stopped by a bank of monitors tied into fax machines, sat phones. “Another sliver of sunlight—two more were snatched at Penn Station, while you were in the air. They were minutes from boarding the Number 90 and 93 trains. Two carry-ons per scumbag, four bags, all loaded with Semtex, the payload just inside Amtrak’s fifty-pound limit. Military explosive. Begs the question how the hell they got their hands on it, where and from who in the first place. First-class tickets, one way, of course, they were booked two cars down from the driver’s seat. That much wallop, we figure at least two cars trashed and gone up in flames, complete derailment, the works rolling up, one car after…”

“I’ve got the picture.”

“Okay. We are on ThreatCon Delta, terrorist alert severe. If you could ratchet it up a notch the country would be under martial law. You can well imagine the panic already out there among John and Jane Q. Citizen, what with the media jamming mikes and cameras in the face of anybody who looks official. All local and state law enforcement have been scrambled to aid and assist the National Guard, the Army, Special Forces, Delta in the shutdowns, searches, sealing off perimeters of all terminals and depots, starting with the major cities, particularly the Eastern Seaboard, the West Coast. If we don’t chop them off at the knees, and soon, well—”

“Airports?”

“Security personnel and procedures have been quadrupled, but we’re reading this as a whole different ballgame than using jumbo jets as flying bombs. Just the same, the skies are swarming with every fighter jet we can put in the air. Incoming international air traffic, especially executive jets, will be intercepted and escorted to landing. No compliance, bye-bye, that’s straight from the White House. Same thing with ships, large, small, pleasure or commercial. The Coast Guard and the Navy have formed a steel wall, up and down both shorelines, likewise the Gulf.”

Was it enough? Bolan wondered. It was a task so monumental it boggled the mind. No amount of manpower, no matter how skilled or determined, could one-hundred-percent guarantee a few of the opposition didn’t slip through the net. Then there were trains, buses, already rolling, loaded with unsuspecting passengers, potential conflagrations on wheels that could detonate any moment. He looked at the monitors, saw numbers scrolling as fast as personnel could scoop up sheafs of printed paper. Digital maps of Chicago, New York, Seattle, Los Angeles, Miami were yielding the locations of train and bus terminals, points of travel, layovers and final destinations, all flashing up in red.

“So far, we’ve sealed off and stopped all departures from Seattle’s King Street Station. We’re working on Union Station in D.C. now,” James said. “You have Metrorail, the VRE, MARC, and that’s just Washington to worry about. The list is near endless as far as manpower is concerned, covering all bases. We’re stopping trains and buses that are in transit—as we can get to them—board, clear them out, search all luggage, but it’s going to take time, something we don’t have. We’ve just alerted the Chicago Transit Authority. They are under presidential directive to shut down Union Station on Canal Street, but as you might know, Chicago is considered the railway center of the country. God only knows how many trains we’re looking at, arriving or leaving in or within a hundred miles around the compass of Chicago alone. You’re talking over two hundred trains, rolling anywhere along some twenty-four thousand miles of track at any given time. I don’t even have the numbers crunched yet on how many Greyhound, Trailways and charter and tour-bus terminals and depots we have that may be in their crosshairs. There’s more,” he said, and paused. “The headsheds are thinking there could even be eighteen-wheelers, vans, U-Haul trucks out there, cab and limo drivers…you get the picture? If this thing blows up in our faces, the entire transportation network of the United States is shut down, end of story. Even if they set off one, two trains or buses, and you’ve got wreckage and dead bodies all over the highways and tracks. I don’t even want to hazard a guess as to the chaos that would break out.”

“I want everything you have in ten minutes.”

“You’ve got it.”

“I’m thinking we might be able to narrow our problems down in short order.”

“How so?” James asked.

“Where are the prisoners?”

James grunted, jerked a nod to the deep corner of the room where an armed guard stood. “In the cellar. Problem is, we’ve already lost two of the four.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m afraid the show’s already started without you. I have to warn you, Cooper, it’s messy down there. His name is Moctaw, or that’s what he calls himself.”

“What is he?”

“I don’t know, but he was dumped in my lap, damn near a suitcase load of official DOD papers telling me I was to step aside—that is if I wanted to finish my career with the FBI. There was nothing I could do.”

A sordid picture of what he was about to find downstairs already in mind, Bolan followed James across the room, the FBI man barking for the guard to step aside and open the door.

“I’ll leave you to introduce yourself,” James said, wheeled, then marched back for the nerve center.

Peering into the gloomy shadows below, he caught a whiff of the miasma, an invisible blow to his senses. It was a sickening mix of blood, cooked flesh, loosed body waste. He heard the sharp grunts, then a scream echoed up from the pit. He slipped off his shades, braced for the horror he knew was down there, waiting.

Then Mack Bolan, also known as the Executioner, began his descent.

HER NAME WAS Barbara Price, and it was rare when she left her post at Stony Man Farm. She was, after all, mission controller for the Justice Department’s ultra-covert Sensitive Operations Group, her time and expertise on demand nearly around the clock. It was both her present role in covert operations at the Farm, however, and her past employment at the National Security Agency that now found her moments away from rendezvousing with a former colleague.

She watched the numbers on the doors fall, striding down the hallway, looked at a couple pass her by through sunglasses, her low-heeled slip-ons padding over wall-to-wall carpet. She couldn’t shake the feeling something felt wrong about this setup. She hadn’t survived, nor claimed her current position with the Sensitive Operations Group, by taking anything in the spook world at face value.

Since being informed by cutouts she often used to gather intelligence that Max Geller sounded desperate in his attempts to reach her, a dark nagging had hounded her for days. She hadn’t seen, heard from or thought about the man in years, and there he was, hunting her down for undeclared reasons, popping up on the radar screen, out of nowhere.

Finally she returned his call through a series of back channels she arranged. It was the worst of times to leave the Farm, Able Team and Phoenix Force in the trenches, with Mack Bolan, the Farm’s lone-wolf operative and a man she was, on occasion, intimate with, in the field. But Geller claimed to have critical information about what the Stony Man warriors were up against, likewise alluding to a threat so grave to national security the entire world could be changed forever. No, he didn’t dare speak on any line, no matter how secure. They had to meet.

She had run it past Hal Brognola, the big Fed at the Justice Department who was director of the Farm and liaison to the President. He had given her three hours’ leave, but she was to call the time and place for the meet, give him the particulars before she set out. The chopper had ferried her from the Shenandoah Valley to Reagan National, where the Justice Department maintained a small hangar, kept its own vehicles on-site for quick personal access, instead of using “invented” credit cards for rentals. From there in the GMC, a short drive to the hotel in Crystal City, where the feeling she was being followed intensified. It was nothing she could put her finger on, though. Crystal City swarmed with the work force that early-morning hour, a lone blond woman sure to grab the attention of men. Taking extra precautions, just the same, she sat in the hotel lot for fifteen minutes, her instincts flaring so bad she almost called off the meet. A short drive around Crystal City, then she parked in an underground garage, wondered if she was being paranoid. Follow through, she decided. She’d come this far, maybe Geller had something worth hearing. She was grateful, just the same, that the Browning Hi-Power with 13-shot clip was shouldered beneath the windbreaker, two backup clips leathered on her right side.

She found the door to the room where he’d registered under James Wilcox. It had been years since she had worked with the man, both of them gathering signals intelligence and human intelligence for the NSA in a classified program that often involved her directing wet work. Geller was the best at what he did. Tagged the Sphinx, he still was, she knew, the NSA’s best code breaker.

She knocked, waited, glanced both ways down the empty hall, removed her sunglasses. The door opened so quickly that she wondered if he had X-ray eyes or had been standing on the foyer, waiting, listening.

“Thanks for coming.”

The whiskey fumes swarmed her senses, the first red flag warning her again this felt all wrong. He wasn’t the slim, sharply dressed, well-groomed man she remembered. He had aged terribly, gained weight, lost hair. But it was the eyes, sunken with dark circles, unable to focus on her, brimmed with so much anxiety she could smell the fear in the sweat soaked into the collar of his sports shirt. She almost turned, walked away, but he beckoned her to enter.

She did.

“AND JUST WHO the fuck might you be?”

Bolan looked at the ghoul, said, “I was just about to ask you the same thing.”

The soldier found it was every bit as messy down there as James warned, and then some. Bolan felt a ball of cold anger lodge in his belly at what he saw in the bastard’s torture chamber. It was gruesome devil’s work to the extreme, and he couldn’t even begin to tally how many laws the butcher had broken. He was fairly certain, though, whichever agency the man pledged allegiance to had given him the green light to do whatever it took to break the prisoners, that he was backed and covered by superiors who would, most likely, wash their hands of this horror show. Yes, Bolan knew the argument—extreme times demanding extreme measures and so forth—but torture in his mind only reduced a man to the same soulless animal level as the enemy. It sickened him to know Moctaw worked for the same government he did. Then again, it occurred to him Moctaw had bulled ahead, aware someone else was on the way to take the reins, the butcher running some personal agenda. Gain information, or threaten the prisoners about talking to the Feds? Every instinct Bolan had earned over the years—fighting every ilk of backstabbing homegrown traitor—warned him something didn’t jibe with the man or his methods. Something else lurked behind the mask, he was sure. Any front Moctaw would put on that this was all done in the name of national security was a ruse. Whom was he protecting? What was he hiding? Or was this simply an extreme solution to the dilemma of fighting terrorism on American soil?

Bolan looked at the prisoners. Naked, they were strapped to thick wooden chairs, which were bolted down to the concrete floor. There were two bodies, a dark hole between their eyes. The soldier figured they were the lucky ones. The other two prisoners had some sort of steel vise holding their heads erect, clamps fastened to their eyebrows, their eyes bulging with terror, flicking around like pinballs at their tormentor. Whoever this Moctaw was, Bolan saw he was good with the Gestapo tactics. The black bag, opened on the table, had been emptied of a series of shiny surgical instruments, one of which was a bloody pair of shears. Tourniquets, Bolan saw, were wound around the wrists and ankles of the dead men, all of their fingers and toes strewed in the blood still pooling on the floor. At some point, the bastard had castrated his first two victims, genitals adding to the gory mess at the stumps of their feet. It was obvious where the cigar in the butcher’s hand would have gone next. One glance at Moctaw, and Bolan pegged him as little more than a thug. Six-six at least, the muscled Goliath swelled out the black leather apron, blood speckling his craggy features, red drops still falling from a dark mane of disheveled hair. In the tight confines of mildewed brick the stench alone was damn near enough to make even a battle-hardened soldier like Bolan gag. Then he saw the series of oozing burn holes running up the torsos, necks, cheeks, the bastard working his way up, letting them know they were seconds away from having their eyes seared out.

Bolan produced his credentials, thrust them in Moctaw’s face. The butcher grunted, unimpressed, or disappointed, the soldier couldn’t tell. “Your fun’s over.”

“Special Agent Matt Cooper, uh-huh. I heard about you.”

“Then you heard I’m in charge. That’s straight from the White House. You’re out of it.”

“Out of it? This one here,” he snarled, shoving the glowing end of the cigar toward the prisoner at the far end, “was just about to talk.”

“I’ll handle it from here.”

“You’ll handle it? What—you going to bring them some cookies and milk? Sweet-talk ’em? Maybe offer them some all-expenses-paid deal if they sing?”

Bolan stepped around the table, saw the Beretta 92-F within easy reach of the butcher. “Give me the cigar.”

It was a dangerous moment, Bolan watching as Moctaw wrestled with some decision, the soldier braced for the butcher to make a grab for the weapon. Moctaw bared his teeth, dumped the cigar on the table.

“It’s your party, G-boy. I hope you’re not just some six-pack of asskick, all show, no go, since you’re the man of the hour now. Maybe you don’t know it, but this country’s entire transportation system is on the verge of being shut down, I’m talking 9/11 five, maybe ten times over, depending on how many of these scumbags are out there. This is no time for ‘pretty please.’”

Bolan made his own decision right then, picked up the cigar. “I’m aware of what’s at stake.”

“Really? These Red Crescent terrorists pull off their big event, shit, we’re going to need Iraqi oil revenue ourselves to help put it all back together. This country will never be the same, they light up even one train or a couple of Greyhounds.”

“Besides your gift for stating the obvious, exactly what have you learned?”

Moctaw hesitated, then picked up one of four small square black boxes from the table. The clips-on gave Bolan a good idea of what they were, then Moctaw confirmed it, saying, “These are satellite-relay pagers. Far as we know, only the Russians and the Israelis, and maybe the Chinese and North Koreans, have this sort of technology.”

“And the NSA and the CIA.”

Moctaw hesitated. “Right. There are no markings, no serial numbers on these. I couldn’t tell you where they came from. They house computer chips that can tie into military communications satellites. Punch in your personal code, hooks you into the principal user, you can beep or be beeped, send or be sent a vibrating signal anywhere from three to five thousand miles. That’s how they knew to move.”

“Which means whoever’s running the operation is still out there.”

“That would be a good assumption. We’ve learned they were communicating by courier when they set up shop, or used P.O. boxes. Basic, keep it simple. For the most part they stayed off the phone, e-mail, Internet, but a couple of them got antsy, even made some overseas calls back home to their loved ones to say goodbye and they were on their way to Paradise. Not real smart. We were able to intercept—”

“I know all that.”

Moctaw scowled, then continued, “The usual bogus passports, only they come to America as Europeans, dyed hair, clean-shaved, perfect English. Never know they were camel jockeys. Two of them,” he said, nodding at the corpses, “were Iraqis, former fedayeen, to be exact. Made a point of letting me know they were going to blow up some buses and trains, jihad for Gulf II, standard Muslim-fanatic tirade. The two still breathing are Moroccan, recruited, they tell me, in Casablanca by Red Crescent about a year ago.” Moctaw pulled the Greyhound tickets from his bag, slapped them on the table. “Four one-way tickets. Two heading north, Port Authority. The other two were westbound, final stop Houston. I’ve got their ordnance upstairs. Three hundred pounds of Semtex between them, wired and ready to be activated by radio remote.”

Bolan looked at the tickets. “Richmond,” he said, noting the gate numbers and times of departure. Checking his watch, he found they were due to leave in an hour, give or take. It stood to reason they had been en route to link up with another cell, in Richmond or beyond. He stuffed the tickets into a pocket.

“You have a plan, or are you here to profile, Cooper?”

“What are their names?” Bolan asked, produced a lighter, then put the flame to the end of the cigar.

“I was calling them Ali Baba, one through four.”

Bolan puffed on the cigar until the tip glowed. “I could have you arrested.”

“Not if you’re about to do what I think you are.”

“I still might cuff and stuff you.”

“You could try.”

“Telling me whoever you work for has clout.”

“This thing isn’t being run by the White House. You could have the President arrest me himself, and I’d be out and free in less than an hour. And, no, I won’t tell you who I work for. You do your own homework.”

Bolan blew smoke in Moctaw’s face. There was no time for the hassle of arresting the man, get mired in a pissing contest. Besides, the more he heard from Moctaw, the more the bells and whistles rang and blew louder. If he let the man remain at large, he decided, he might end up using him to churn the waters.

Bolan turned his attention to the prisoners. Sometimes, he knew, the threat of torture, especially if a man faced permanent mutilation, worked better than the act itself. One look at the terror bugging out the eyes, bodies quaking, limbs straining to break their bounds, and he knew Moctaw had brought them to the breaking point. They just needed another shove.

The Executioner showed them the glowing tip, then puffed, working the eye to cherry red, let the smoke drift over their faces, choking them. “What are your names?”

“Khariq…”

“Mah…moud…”

“You have two choices,” Bolan said. “Tell me everything you know about your end of the operation. If you do that, and we find you’re just foot soldiers, no previous track record of terrorism, no blood on your hands, there’s a chance you eventually will be sent home to your families. I have the power to be able to make your freedom happen.”

“Cooper, you do not have—”

“Shut up,” the Executioner growled over his shoulder. He put menace in his eyes and voice that would have even made Moctaw flinch, he believed, leaning closer to their faces, holding the end of the cigar inches from a bulging orb. He saw tears break from the eye as it felt the heat. “One eye at a time.” He flicked his lighter, waved the flame around. “While I work on your eyes, I’ll put this to your balls. This is not good cop-bad cop.”

“We talk…we talk….”

And they did. Bolan stepped back, listening as they babbled so fast he had to slow them down, one at a time. They were to meet three more Red Crescent operatives in Richmond. Bolan got a description of both their attire and the duffel bags with custom designs. Two would be attached to each half of the four-man cell, then they would split off at other depots along the way. The lone operative out was the question mark; they didn’t know what his role was. Bolan figured the odd terrorist out for the cell leader. Then the clincher. Enough explosives were going to be left behind in lockers it would be enough to bring down the building.

The Executioner had a critical call to make, but decided to do it in the air while choppering to Richmond. He ground the cigar out on the table. “I’ll have James take these prisoners off your hands. He’ll take their passports and secure the ordnance.”

“That’s it? I’m dismissed?”

“No. For your sake you better hope I never lay eyes on you again.”

Moctaw made some spitting noise, an expression hardening his face Bolan read as “We’ll see.” The Executioner put the ghoul out of mind, bounding up the steps. The doomsday clock, he feared, was ticking down to maybe a handful of minutes.

CHAPTER TWO

Barbara Price took the couch. Her back to the wall, she could watch the foyer, the main hall leading to the bedroom, alert to any sound the two of them weren’t alone. The Stony Man mission controller caught Geller throwing her a funny look, then the code breaker shrugged, claimed the chair he obviously arranged for his guest directly across the coffee table. Before he turned around his laptop and aluminum briefcase, Price spotted the Beretta 92-F resting on folders stamped Classified. That a lifelong deskbound super-cryptographer—who, to her knowledge, had never heard a shot fired in anger—would arm himself, tossed more fuel onto the fire of nagging suspicion. Was he afraid for his own life, trailed by shadow gunmen ready to silence him, aware of his meeting a former NSA mission controller to which he was prepared to divulge classified intelligence? If that was the case, she knew she had just been tossed into the equation.

Aware it could go to hell at any moment, she watched her former colleague pour a drink from the bottle of Dewar’s, the cigarettes a new vice, ashtray overflowing with gnawed butts. Impatient, she waited while he swallowed his tranquilizer, topped up another round, fired up a cigarette with a silver lighter. Clearly, whatever was eating Geller, the booze and chain-smoking weren’t calming the storm. Professional that he was, though, she was grateful he skipped any trip down memory lane, awkward questions about what she’d been doing since leaving the agency. Or did he suspect something in regard to her missing years? she wondered. Was this a fishing expedition? If so, why? She might have worked for the most supersecret, high-tech, intelligence-gathering, black-ops group on the planet, but there was one absolute truth she knew existed in all the covert world. Only death—or the threat of death—ever truly kept a secret. And the longer she sat in Geller’s sweat and agitation, the more disturbed she grew.

If he didn’t know about the existence of Stony Man Farm outright, did he think he knew something about the Sensitive Operations Group? Then again, he could be clueless. She told herself to keep an open mind but proceed with all due caution. Truth number two—only those individuals with iron principles, she knew, feet planted in a solid base of integrity, never really changed, no matter how many years down the road. Max Geller, in her mind, had always been a question mark, and he had changed, for the worse, she suspected. Genius he might be, but she was aware of his duplicitous streak. Word around the agency had been that Geller was responsible for the careers of several promising cryptographers ending abruptly as he backstabbed his way up the pecking order. Now, like then, Price kept up her guard.

Down to business, rifling through a Classified packet, Geller fanned out six eight-by-eleven black-and-white pictures, rattled off each name. “Alpha Deep Six. What do you know about them?”

“Deep-cover black ops. I heard they were the best wet work specialists the CIA and the NSA ever cut loose,” Price told him. “Beyond that, I confess to having very little idea what they were actually involved in—other than rumor.”

“Such as?”

“They went renegade. And I heard they were dead.”

“What do you know about ‘slush funds’?”

“Ready cash for black ops.”

Geller worked on his smoke, bit his lip, appeared to dredge up the courage to continue or choose his words carefully. “Numbered accounts. They were created by the Department of Defense, which—very few people know—own entire banks, just to keep these slush funds secret from both the public and Congress. Manhattan, Switzerland, Frankfurt, Qatar, Tokyo, the numbers special ops could access in these banks were—are—staggering, so I’ve heard. In order to bypass normal channels, à la DOD going before a Senate subcommittee with its hand out, the slush funds were originally dollars siphoned from inflated military contracts. They were created for special or black ops to purchase arms, large and small, buy informants, even create and mobilize small paramilitary armies in whichever country our side felt should be working with a little more fervor toward our own interests— ‘them’ doing what ‘we’ want—but that’s not all the money was used for. Anyway, I’ll get to that.

“Okay, altogether, between the CIA and the agency, the slush funds totaled about twenty million, U.S. value, with a conversion system in place to switch to whatever currency was required. Of course, there were firewalls built into the system. An operative could only withdraw up to a hundred thousand in any six-month period, and the directors had to know in advance how much, and what it was being used for. Each time a withdrawal was made, access codes were changed in an attempt to circumvent repeated withdrawals or outright theft. They failed, miserably.”

Geller had a way of lapsing into stretched silences that struck Price as dramatic, irritating, but she waited him out.

“Alpha Deep Six found a hacker. Before DOD, the CIA or the NSA knew it, they cleaned out the bank. It was a theft so embarrassing that only a few people knew about it, and they were sworn to secrecy, mind you, under the penalty of termination—and I don’t mean a pink slip on your desk at the end of the day’s business. Conventional wisdom at the time thought this heist was supposed to be Alpha’s retirement fund, but it turned out they had no intention of whiling away their golden years on a beach in Tahiti. Shortly after the cyber-heist, they were allegedly killed, supposedly in a doublecross by field commanders who knew about the heist ahead of time—and what they were intending to do following the electronic bank job.”

Geller shook his head. “Who knows, maybe a few of them grew a patriotic conscience, I couldn’t say. Those in charge of handling ADS, I do know, ran for cover, basically denied everything, but the firestorm was already sweeping through the ranks on both sides of the tracks, bodies of CIA and NSA agents who had them smelled out turning up all over the globe, even here at home. As for Alpha, allegedly their remains were found in burned-out compounds, one outside Damascus, one in northern Sudan, during two ostensibly botched raids on Muslim terrorist strongholds. And the hacker? He was found in a Zurich hotel suite, two months later, sans legs and arms, and a few other body parts, one of which was shoved in his mouth. Supposedly what remained of Alpha Deep Six was identified by CIA and NSA forensics teams. Question is, how could they use DNA testing on dust?”

Price had a feeling where Geller was headed. “A cover-up.”

“So one would gather.”

“You keep saying ‘allegedly,’ ‘supposedly.’ You’re not implying…”

Geller took a deep drag from his smoke. “Alpha Deep Six is back from the dead.”

Price narrowed her gaze at Geller. “How’s that?”

“Their violent demise was carefully orchestrated, and by their own hand. They knew the end was coming, so they arranged their deaths, and their resurrections. I’m surprised you never heard even a rumor about this.”

Price saw another red flag. Geller, she sensed, was doing an end run before getting to the point. Was he acting? Digging to try to discover what she knew about Alpha Deep Six? She decided it best to listen, no matter how much Geller blathered on, danced before dropping whatever his bomb.

“Well?”

“If I did,” she said, “I shrugged them off as wild gossip by lower-tier operatives with more time and imagination on their hands than substantive work to perform. Geller, what does all this have to do with the current threat to our nation’s transportation network by Red Crescent terrorists?”

“I’m getting there, bear with me. By the way, is the smoke bothering you?”

“I’ll manage.”

Another shot down the hatch. He glanced at the bottle, showed Price a weak smile. “Oh, please, forgive me my bad manners. Would you care for something to drink?”

“No. Go on.”

He smoked, coughed, drank, then laid the ace of spades with death’s-head on the coffee table. “That was their calling card back then, a mock tribute to their victims, or a warning to future casualties,” Geller said. “This was taken by NSA operatives last night from the crime scene at Clairmont Studios. They were there before the D.C. police arrived. Advance knowledge, but, I’m assuming, not until the play was in motion, the signature card left behind expressly for them, a middle finger to the agency and everyone else in the intelligence community, but I really couldn’t say.”

Couldn’t or wouldn’t? Price wondered. Whichever it was, though, if he was being truthful about the death’s-head ace of spades, then the agency knew about their meeting.

“Alpha is back, and they’re letting their former employers know their heads are on the chopping block. Do you watch the Josh Randall show?”

“I heard about the murders,” Price answered. “I know a former CIA paramilitary operative with more ego than good sense had his head blown off last night.”

“Live and in color, before a national audience. Now, if you watch the replay carefully there’s no mistaking, despite the hokey disguise, the killer was this one,” he said, stabbing a picture, third man in line.

Price looked at the grizzled face, bald dome, eyes hidden by shades, but she was struck by the ridges of bone hung over the sunglasses like some birth defect or grotesque plastic surgery. She looked at the other members of Alpha Deep Six, Geller remarking how the group apparently had no race problems, equal-opportunity brigands, two of them black. Price read their cold, pitiless eyes. She knew the type, men blinded to all but their own animal instincts and passions.

Sociopaths.

“Michael Mitchell was the shooter. He vanished without a trace, dumped two grenades on his way out of the studio to seal his exit. Like the others, he can kill, and is a veritable ghost in the night. Three tours of duty in Vietnam, like Richard Cramnon and Ryan Ramses, they were Special Forces. The stories about their roots are too many, too atrocious to bother repeating. They say you have to be a borderline psychopath to want to have done three tours in Vietnam to begin with. The others—Delta, Marine recon—saw action in Panama, Gulf I. The word is they maybe even had a hand in smuggling out a few top Iraqi officials and some WMD into Syria during Gulf II. All of them, no wife, no kids, no ties. With no past, no roots, no one who cares for them or they care about, they could have futures that would never exist be created to further the interests of certain parties who were reading the future of the world, and decades ago. They were the perfect deniable expendables. They were chosen to become the perfect assassination machines.”

“I suppose it wouldn’t do me any good to ask how you know all of this?”

Geller snorted, as if she’d asked a stupid question. “You know as well as I do how it works. In our business, information is bought or bartered. If not, you beg, borrow or steal. In Alpha’s case they had more extreme methods. Last night was payback on the Josh Randall show, a grandstand moment for Alpha to announce they’ve risen from the grave. The word I get from my sources is the late Captain Jack got cold feet at the last minute way back when over the real agenda behind the staged deaths of ADS. Either way, you could say he signed his own death warrant, promoting himself all over the cable talk shows, shooting off his mouth about things he had no business revealing for civilian consumption. I’m thinking if Acheron didn’t get him, the CIA or the NSA eventually would have yanked his ticket.”

“Acheron?”

She watched as Geller looked away, focused attention on the bottle, his hand trembling as he filled the glass. There was enough of a flicker in his eyes that told her Geller wished he could kick himself. He’d slipped. Accident, though, or act?

“It’s believed they have chosen handles—from Greek mythology, ancient Hebrew, various playwrights and mystics—all in reference to Hell, the gates of Hell, eternal damnation, beasts from the pit who unleash death and destruction on the earth. It’s gathered that’s their warped idea of dark humor.” He waved a hand. “I know, you want me to get to the point.”

She shrugged, no hurry, not willing to concede she was on any clock. Geller bobbed his head, sucked down another shot, Price watching as some intense, near fanatic fire lit his eyes.

“Bottom line, these men not only helped create the global arms race, they were the global arms race. They were the original shadow merchants of death, the negotiators for the United States military-industrial complex, the real movers and shakers who sold far more than just fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. Allow me to run some numbers by you. Out of the 169 countries on Earth, fifty are presently at war.”

“And you’re telling me Alpha Deep Six is responsible for all these conflicts?”

“The United States is the number-one arms exporter to Third World countries, but that’s a drop in the bucket compared to where the rest of the hardware goes. Someone has to do the legwork, make the deals happen with countries with leaders most rational, civilized people find detestable but who are willing to spend the cash. Are you aware 130 billion in weapons and military assistance has been shipped to 125 countries in the past decade alone by the United States, and the numbers are going up every year? America’s yearly arms export sales eclipse the GNP of Russia. It’s easy enough to verify, if you care to.”

“The enemy is us?”

Geller ignored the remark, working on his smoke with renewed fury. “I always believed you were something of the altruistic sort, a lady of principle. I admired that in you when we worked together, but I always admire the virtue in others I know I can never possess.”

“Careful, Max. Whatever you’ve heard about flattery does not apply here.”

“Sure, sorry.” He took a moment with his smoke. “You want to know how much of an upside-down world we live in? Just look at what the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund say about loans they are practically forced by the United States to make to African dictators, what the international community has called ‘the crocodile rulers.’ Broken down to basics the price of one helicopter equals twelve thousand school-teachers in Africa, a one-million-dollar modern tank the equivalent of a thousand classrooms for thirty thousand children. In terms of comparing the gross discrepancy between arms to food, the numbers are beyond astronomical. In a perfect world I suppose there wouldn’t be this immoral madness, but it’s a madness that is man-made. I’m telling you this nation is involved in the deliberate worldwide proliferation of arms. You see, what the voting public does not know is that the military-industrial complex of this country—or rather a shadow group that have knighted themselves the inheritors of the Earth—is seeking to create wars, unleash whole campaigns of genocide, perhaps even drive the human race into World War III. Three reasons. One, the military contractors need to keep the plants running, or, simply put, there would be a lot of people out of work, likewise some heavy brass at the Pentagon. Two, since Vietnam, there are certain circles within the intelligence and military communities who saw the creation of future conflicts around the globe as a means to justify their existence, gain personal glory in history, albeit a shadow note.”

“And they would get rich in the process.”

“Obscenely rich. Three, by 2020 it’s believed by our top scientists there will be fifteen to eighteen billion mouths on this planet to feed. Simply stated, these powers want the strong—themselves—to survive, whatever masses crawl out of the rubble and the ashes of a holocaust to serve them. They believe if something isn’t done to contain the swelling numbers on this planet, there’ll be mass starvation, natural resources depleted, nations swept up in anarchy with the collapse of the global economy. Plague, famine, pestilence, death, they’re seeking to accelerate what they see as the natural process of evolution to weed out the weak before they devour the strong.”

“The lions eating the lambs.”

“Precisely. That’s why Alpha Deep Six was created in the first place.”

“To bring on Armageddon.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

Price had listened with a neutral expression, suspected there was a lot more Geller wished to tell her, but wouldn’t. He was dangling bait, but why? She knew no institution was above corruption, and she could accept what the man said about the military-industrial conspiracy, up to a point. True, there were bad seeds in the U.S. military and intelligence communities, but she knew the rot wasn’t endemic. Still, she knew enough about the grim realities of the world to be wary once the genie of power and greed was let out of the bottle.

“You want one example of what Alpha Deep Six has done?” Geller said. “Right before Gulf I the former Iraqi regime nearly got its hands on krytons, or nuclear weapon triggers, along with ‘skull furnaces,’ which are used to melt plutonium for nuclear bomb cores. ADS arranged the deal with the Iraqis, but again, someone got nervous at DOD, probably saw far worse than just their careers circling the bowl. Before the ship sailed out of the Delaware River it was boarded and seized. A cover-up ensued, generated by the same people who don’t want anyone to know 1.5 billion in dual-use technology was sold and delivered to Baghdad right up to the eve of Gulf I. Alpha Deep Six created that regime, kept it in power, I kid you not. You want maraging steel for making centrifuges? Alpha delivered tons of it among weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, fuel rods, light water reactors, the whole sorcerer nuke package to the Pakistanis, thus insuring their nuclear weapons program. Same thing with the North Koreans. Likewise they have kept the Khartoum government flourishing in guns and money, fomenting the unrest on the Horn of Africa, were even in the process of helping Khartoum go nuclear before their purported end. Further, they were involved in training and arming the mujahideen in Afghanistan, and they were instrumental in creating both the Taliban and al-Qaeda during that ten-year conflict.”

“Busy boys.”

“This isn’t funny, Barbara. Do you hear me laughing?”

“And you have proof of all this?”

“Nothing in writing. If you don’t trust my word, I can send you to sources who can back me up, men so high up in the intelligence and military communities they’re the next closest thing to talking to God. They’ll also tell you that Alpha Deep Six is responsible for creating and landing the Red Crescent in this country, that they trained, funded and armed them for what could be the biggest catastrophe to ever hit American soil. One from which this country may never recover.”

She stiffened, braced to grab her Browning as he suddenly reached into his briefcase. She stayed on edge, even as Geller produced a CD-ROM.

“It’s all here,” he said, placing the disk on the table.

“All what?”

“Dates, places, times, people, the entire alphabet, the who’s who on Alpha Deep Six and the shadow world that created them. There are decoded messages, intercepts about who they know, what they’ve done and what they are doing. Red Crescent is their creation, their vision of the gates of Hell unleashed. Do you know anything about them?”

“Only what I’ve heard on CNN,” she lied.

“Well, here are a few facts you won’t get from the media. Al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, a few other marquee terror groups were, so to speak, read the tea leaves by ADS in the late eighties, but it took until the early nineties until they became believers in the ADS infidels and their vision of the future. Osama and his top lieutenants knew that if the United States declared all-out war against them, they would go down hard, disfigured, dismantled, captured or killed. They knew their money would be the first target. Thus Alpha mapped out a contingency plan to keep their jihad afloat, but it was only a small part to their own big event.

“Before our government froze the first million, the major terror orgs were cleaning out their banks, transferring every asset they could get their hands on into ready cash. They began buying up diamonds from West Africa, precious gemstones from India, Myanmar, Indonesia. They invested heavily in narcotics, aligning themselves with the South American drug cartels, but most of their investing went with heroin to the east. Financially, able to remain solvent with gemstones and dope, if all else fails, they are far from bankrupt. And they would have no problem getting funds, from what we’ve learned, if the well began to dry. Every radical sheikh, imam and mullah from Algeria to Indonesia gave the Red Crescent their blessing during what we know was the Grand Islamic Council just before the outbreak of Gulf II.

“As for Alpha, they personally recruited RC operatives, before and after their ‘demise.’ After Afghanistan and Gulf II we know there was a huge influx into RC of al-Qaeda and Taliban and the former Iraqi regime’s fedayeen who were willing to come under the new umbrella, even if it was hung over them by infidels. The Red Crescent received help principally from Jordan, Syria and Turkey. But, when Syria fell onto the radar screen for helping Iraq, our supposed allies, the Turks and Jordanians held out their hands—for a price. Now, from various methods of surveillance and intercepts of chatter between Red Crescent operatives and other terror orgs, we believe but cannot verify that somewhere in the neighborhood of one to two billion dollars—hard currency, jewels, diamonds, narcotics—is stashed in underground armed fortresses they call the Bank of Islam. We believe Alpha Deep Six marshaled a small army of fanatics to invade and wreak death and destruction on this country’s ground-transportation networks for payback, and to take all intelligence eyes off their violent resurrection, and vanishing act two.”

Price watched Geller nod at the disk. The list of questions she could put to him was too long, an instinctive fear mounting, warning her to get out of here. He pushed the disk across the coffee table.

“Take it.”

Price picked up the subtle note of insistence. If she took the disk, it might confirm whatever suspicions he had that she was still actively involved in covert work. If she didn’t, the Farm and its warriors might lose out on invaluable intelligence.

“I told you, Max, I’m retired.”

“Really? Is that why I had to go through about six cutouts from every intelligence and law-enforcement agency we know of? Then you finally get back to me, using about four different back channels not even the almighty NSA know exist?”

“Say I take it. What is it you expect me to do with the information?”

“It would appear you still have friends and sources in very high places. Pass it on. You still believe in freedom, truth and justice, don’t you?”

Clever, she thought, how he’d boxed her in. She was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. She picked up the disk.

“The password,” Geller said, “is ‘Resurrection.’”

ACTION, IN BOLAN’S experience, cured fear. From the warrior perspective it most certainly excised the cancer of evil. The hesitant or the paralyzed in the face of mortal danger sometimes died from the strangehold of fear. But the warrior, he knew, acted on fear, used it to motivate, propel him to new heights—in this case—to violence of action. The enormity of the task before the nation might be so daunting, funded and planned for nobody knew how long by unknown financiers—the lurking notion in his mind they had inside help from homegrown traitors—with fanatics prepared to commit suicide if only to unleash mass murder, the Executioner knew only one answer would wipe out the evil ready to consume the country, slaughter countless innocents.

Identify and strike down the enemy, lightning fast and hard. No mercy, no hesitation, no exceptions.

To the credit of the man on the other end of the sat phone, Bolan knew Hal Brognola was more than up to the grim job, bloody as it would prove, lives in the balance, perhaps an entire nation on the verge of collapsing into anarchy. After all, he and the big Fed had known each other since mile one of what was the genesis of the Executioner. Those days were light-years distant now, when Brognola once hunted a young soldier during his war against the Mafia, but they were of like mind, immutable in principle and commitment when it came to solving the problem of dealing with the enemies of national security.

No sooner was Bolan in the air, the Black Hawk soaring now over I-64 at top speed, than he had raised Brognola at his Justice Department office. A quick sitrep, Bolan printing out the grid map of the blocks surrounding the Greyhound terminal in Richmond, and Brognola filled him in.

“They what?” Bolan said, forced to nearly shout above the rotor wash pounding through the fuselage.

There had been a few minutes’ lag time between them, during which Brognola had contacted the FBI SAC in Richmond. Bolan now feared the problems had just begun to compound, as he listened to Brognola.

“The order came straight from the Office of Homeland Security, who received their orders from the President and who just passed it on to this office. Before your intro to this butcher—Moctaw—and believe me, the President will hear about this, and I will move mountains to find out who this son of a bitch is—it was already believed the bastards intended to pack lockers with plastic explosives before they boarded their respective buses. Every terminal from Miami to Maine, New York to Los Angeles, is being locked down by local and federal authorities. Buses are being emptied of passengers, luggage searched, same thing with all trains, national and local rail service. It’s a logistical nightmare, I’m sure you can imagine, but we tackle the major cities first, take it from there—and hope.”

Bolan didn’t like it, FBI agents already inside the Richmond terminal, forcing open lockers, their presence alerting the Red Crescent operatives there the game was over for them. But the soldier knew he couldn’t be everywhere at once. The threat was so grave, so public now, no telling how far and wide or how many operatives were out there, human resources stretched so thin as it stood….

“The descriptions you passed on, Striker, match up. They’re being watched as we speak.”

“Pull those agents back, Hal, discreetly. Don’t let them approach those three. If that happens…”

“Understood. The bastards might panic and just go ahead and light up whatever they have. I’ve alerted Special Agent Wilkinson you will be landing shortly and that you are in charge.”

Bolan moved into the cockpit hatchway. The interstate in both directions was gridlocked, he found, a vast parking lot east to west, the state police having erected checkpoints, roadblocks, staggered every other exit. With national alert, all civilians were ordered to stay home, get off all buses and trains at the next stop if they were traveling, but Bolan wondered if it was too little too late.

The skyline of Richmond looming ahead, Bolan spotted the Black Hawks soaring above the city, ready to report to him any suspicious vehicles, specifically buses that might have pulled out of the terminal before the FBI descended.

“There’s a stadium, directly across from the terminal,” Bolan told the flight crew, both of which were Farm blacksuits. “Set it down in the lot.”

When they copied, Bolan went and opened one of three war bags. He opted against going in loaded to the gills, even though once he was spotted by the terrorists, they would know he wasn’t any late-arriving passenger.

The Executioner decided to march right through the front door, mark the position of Red Crescent operatives from agents inside. He hoped to do it quickly, with as little mess as possible. There would be panic, chaos, of course, but a hard charge into the terminal, wielding the HK MP-5, could prove disastrous. One clean quick head shot each, then, with the Beretta would have to do it.

Bolan stood by the door gunner. Roughly two hundred feet below lay the interstate, groups of civilians standing outside their cars. Arguments appeared to break out in pockets, stranded motorists flailing their arms. It didn’t take a mind reader, he knew, to imagine those thoughts swarming with panic and terror. Then, recalling the omen of ASAC James, he looked at the smattering of eighteen-wheelers, spotted a U-Haul, several cabs.

And he wondered.

One crisis, one terrorist at a time, he told himself.

“Striker?”

Bolan caught the grim note ratchet up in Brognola’s voice.

“Nail these bastards, Striker.”

“Count on it.”

“Get back to me when it’s done there.”

Not “if,” he thought, but “when.” There was no other option, no margin for a half victory, the soldier aware that if one rolling bomb was right then on the highway…

The thought was echoed by Brognola.

“If only one of them is out there, Hal,” the Executioner vowed, “then I’ll make damn sure he is on a highway to Hell.”

BEYOND GRATEFUL for fresh air, Price felt relief as she slipped away from Geller, no dramatic goodbyes or promises to get in touch. So why did that bother her? On the way out the door, she expected the man to press her for some callback, update him on whatever progress he believed she might deliver.

Nothing.

She wondered if she was being unduly paranoid, scanning the bowels of the garage, an itch going down her spine, her heart racing. It was empty of human or vehicular traffic, no sound anywhere—too quiet, too still—her surveillance working down the gauntlet of parked vehicles as she hastened her strides. She spotted her GMC, backed in against the wall, and she was anxious to get in and drive off. She wanted to play back the entire meeting with Geller, hash over all the questions he left hanging, but the nagging instinct was back, stronger than ever, warning her to get out of the garage.

She reached her vehicle, hesitated, looking over her shoulder. Keying open the door, she heard a thud, scoured the garage, unable to determine where the sound originated, but aware someone had just stepped out of a vehicle. Was that a shadow at the far end? she wondered, opening her door. Two shadows, easing in her direction, trying to move, swift and silent?

Hopping in, she shut the door, slipped the key into the ignition. Staring down the garage, she saw the dancing silhouettes, but no bodies. It was almost, she determined, as if they were using cars for concealment. And the shadows were indeed, she saw, advancing her way.

She was about to twist the key when she spotted it out of the corner of her eye.

Price froze at the sight of the signature card on the shotgun seat, then she glimpsed the shadow rise up in the rearview mirror, the weapon aimed at the back of her head.

Silently she cursed Geller, heard the ghoul chuckle as she threw her shoulder into the door.

CHAPTER THREE

“All passengers inside the terminal are asked to remain seated or standing where you are. Those passengers at boarding gates are asked to step back to the center of the terminal. Passengers are asked to leave or place all bags on the ground. This includes purses, or any item that can be carried.”

And Qasi Alzhad saw the dream vanishing before his eyes, felt the slow fuse of anger sizzle toward simmering wrath. Silently he cursed the sudden injustice of it all, the seat trembling beneath him from fury, ears ringing, sweat breaking out beneath the bill of his cap. Glancing at the other two in the row of seats ahead and to his right, he found them, eyes wide and darting around the terminal, cornered animals perhaps, but still dangerous enough, he knew, despite the falling net. Contingency plan locked in place, though, the three of them were ready to martyr themselves, even if they couldn’t fulfill their final role in the big event. So it was written during their correspondence by hand-delivered mail.

So it was spoken by God.

It was easy enough, he thought, to read between the lines of the voice issuing commands over the loudspeaker, telling passengers to remain calm, exit buses, leave carry-ons behind, apologies once again for the delays. Something had indeed gone terribly wrong, the glory of jihad about to be derailed, he feared, and when they were so close. The logical conclusion was that one of the cells had been captured, talked, betrayed the operation.

It was a gross miscalculation, he now discovered, killing time in the terminal, waiting for the others to arrive before he packed the locker with what the letter—delivered two days ago by courier to his motel room near Richmond’s airport—called divine retribution. Two of them stood at the ticket-information counter, he saw, huddled with Greyhound employees, three more breaking open lockers with small drills, working with methodical grim purpose. No FBI stenciled on the backs of windbreakers, but he noted bulges beneath their shoulders betraying concealed side arms, earpieces the glaring tip-off the building was about to come under siege by American law enforcement. Yes, perhaps they were surrounded, outgunned, he thought, but before the infidels began searching baggage and they were staring down weapons, he would take decisive action.

The run to Chicago would never bear sweet fruit, but there was hope yet. Or was there? he wondered, catching the eye of a windbreaker by the lockers. The infidel looked away, watching him without watching, he sensed. Was the FBI man—if that’s what he was—taking special interest in the three of them? Perhaps, he thought, their attire and nylon bags were more errors in planning, marking them, pearls in a sea of infidel swine. He knew next to nothing about the Great Satan’s Arena Football League, but their jackets, caps and bags were emblazoned with individual team emblems, meant to identify them to their brothers-in-jihad. Instinct for survival long since honed in Iraq, twice over, he knew all the signals warning when the end was coming.

The babble of infidels swarming his ears, he shut his eyes. And the past drifted back to him from a dark corner of bitter memory. Beyond the rage and hatred he forced himself to lapse into a soothing trance, wishing to use visions of years waded through in anger and grief to fuel the fires of courage and resolve.

In the beginning it seemed the impossible dream, but the miracle of bringing holy war to the land of the Great Satan had already been mapped out by Syrian sympathizers, well in advance of his fleeing Baghdad the second time around. Before that moment of hope in Damascus, more than a decade since what the enemy called Gulf I, there was unimaginable horror, the foreign devils destroying all that he cherished in his heart. The death and destruction he had witnessed on the way back home from Kuwait had been terrifying enough, the American vultures slaughtering thousands of his Republican Guard brothers on that highway. The unholy ones, he recalled, dropped their bombs, safe in their flying cocoons of death, thousands of feet above the column of vehicles, decimating their numbers, a cowardly act, to be sure, but the worst was yet to come. With his own eyes he had seen many of his brothers burned alive, trapped in the wreckage of tanks, transport trucks, luxury cars rightfully taken from the treacherous, self-indulgent, obscenely rich Kuwaitis.

He could still hear their screams of agony, the stench of cooking flesh something he could so vividly remember. Somehow—call it divine intervention, or a special destiny reserved for him by God—he had escaped the conflagration, wounded, crawling off into the desert, praying all the way back to Baghdad that someday he would return the favor to those faceless cowards who murdered from the skies. He discovered the enemy had robbed him of what life he hoped to return to, a blow so cruel it would have been better to have burned alive on the highway of death. The murder of his wife and two sons, massacred along with many innocent Iraqis during a bombing run on the city, had been grief enough to bear. Only the dagger, he discovered, plunged deeper, twisted harder. Shuddering, he saw in his mind’s eye his daughter—or what remained of her. He found it especially tormenting he couldn’t even recall what she had looked like in all her innocent, youthful beauty, then or now. On his return and discovery, it had taken several weeks of agonizing before he made the decision, praying for the answer, the strength to do the thing he most dreaded. Certain it was God’s will he finally acted. And how couldn’t he? How, as a loving father and true believer of the Islamic faith, could he stand idly by, allow her to suffer her horror and shame of living on like that? How could he, in all clean conscience and purity of soul, let a child languish in perpetual horror and pain, no arms, no eyes, half of her face sheared away to the bone from a coward’s bomb? Small comfort she never saw it coming, but…

He jolted, eyelids flying open, the crack of the pistol swept away to the deep caverns of memory. Oh, but there was now fuel, determination enough to proceed, the fearless holy warrior, carrying out the will of God.

Let there be vengeance. Let there be blood. Let the horror descend, the wrath of God, on the enemy.

He found commotion in all bays beyond the doors on both sides, passengers ushered from buses, large gaggles herded near the gates, Greyhound employees and armed security guards trying to soothe nerves, hands waving down the battery of questions. A quick tally of the anticipated body count, and he figured that between the three of them they could bring the building down while consuming, at the pitiful minimum, three, four hundred in God’s divine retribution.

He looked to the others, held their stares. He didn’t know these men, the names or their Arab country of origin. That the three of them were of like mind and spirit, nurtured the hearts of lions, was enough to succeed in Pyrrhic victory. No choice, no turning back. How it had all been arranged, though, was a miracle by itself, their destinies about to be fulfilled, divine warriors blessed by God. Tactics changed, naturally, to circumvent the enemy’s high-tech counter surveillance, but the ends of retribution always justified the means.

Qasi Alzhad unzipped one of the two bags, granting him easy access to the Ingram MAC-10.

It was time.

He rose with his brothers, aware, too, he would see them shortly in Paradise.

KHELID AMNAN LAUGHED. For him it was over, but the brilliance of foresight would preempt the problem. He wouldn’t be denied.

They were swarming the terminal from every possible entrance, he saw, FBI or SWAT or whoever, armed with submachine guns, full body armor and helmets, creating a ruckus as they began searching carry-ons down the line. Other armed enemy began surging into both men’s and women’s restrooms to clear them out. The building was sealed, then, locked down. So be it. The more, he believed the Americans said, the merrier.

Fear not, he told himself. Let them come, let them search his bags. He was prepared, expected them, in fact, to have arrived well before now.

Close to two hours, and no bus arrived or departed, repeated messages over the loudspeaker regretting all delays, instructing all passengers to remain calm, stand where they were. Since the first announcement the knot in his gut warned him he wouldn’t leave Washington, never make it to the Port Authority, the dry run and reconnaissance in vain. A lesser man, he decided, would have felt defeat, but initiative shielded him against failure.

He ignored the strange looks several infidels threw him, chuckling again. They looked confused, fear bordering terror, questions hurled between them, but he would soon enough shed light on their ignorance. There was some irony in the moment, he thought, unable to decide what it was, but there was most certainly truth and justice ready to be delivered by his hand. He was a holy warrior, an instrument of the will of God, after all, there to fulfill the promise he’d made to fellow Iraqis he’d left behind in his homeland of Syria. They would remember what he had done here. Someday soon they would sing his praises, glorify his martyrdom. From Karachi to Casablanca, they would pen his name in stories, splash his heroics all over Arab satellite television, his face wreathed on banners as they marched the streets, torching American flags and effigies of the Great Satan President. But this was about far more than a few dozen fedayeen and Iraqi officials smuggled over the border, seeking safe haven in his country, crying out for personal revenge. And more than his own glory.

Then he fathomed his mood, a bolt of lightning between the eyes, telling him why he felt so strong, amused even. The American barbarian law enforcement, representative now of those occupiers of Arab land, those destroyers and oppressors of all Muslim peoples, he saw, were marching toward his departure gate. Just a few more moments, he told himself, reflecting on the source of his sense of invincibility.

“Sir? Are these your bags?”

Amnan lost the smile, but enjoyed the cold touch of the small box in his coat pocket as he wrapped his hand around it. “Yes, they are, sir,” he told the FBI man in perfect English, thumbed the switch to the On position, forced confusion and anxiety onto his face as he glanced at the armed phalanx around the gate. He listened to the angry bleat of infidels demanding to know why they were searching their bags, one of them snarling something about a police state. Amnan watched, riding out the moment, his heart thundering in his ears. Without asking, the FBI man unzipped his bag—and froze.

“What the—?”

It was a moment carved into all eternity, the sweet second he had been searching for, perhaps since even before birth to the end of his nineteen years. Confusion and horror etched on his face, the FBI man appeared torn between pulling away the T-shirt emblazoned with Osama’s face, sweeping the submachine gun his way or shout a warning.

Amnan allowed the infidel to snatch up the T-shirt, discover what lay beneath. It was reckless impulse, he knew, pulling out the detonator box, displaying it for a heartbeat, risk a barrage of bullets that would tear into him, defeat the moment. He skipped any jihad eulogy or war cry and thumbed the button.

He believed he was still smiling as the explosion lifted him off his feet, hurling him into the air. He was blinded by the light from the blast, deafened by the roar, but not until he thought he glimpsed bodies sailing through the firestorm, caught the evanescence of their screams.

FROM THE ENEMY’S twisted perspective, the Executioner knew bombs on wheels was the next logical phase in their unholy war. Make no mistake, trains and buses were soft targets, he thought, but they had long since drawn the grim concern of every intelligence and federal law-enforcement agency in the nation. Airport security might have been nailed down, all bases covered as well as humanly possible, but the task—between available human resources, public outcry over inconvenience and government funding—would prove so monumental it was next to impossible to protect America’s ground-transportation network. Consider the enormity of checking every bag or purse, he thought, running a metal detector over each passenger, choked webs of stalled, impatient travelers. Consider the vast nationwide system of countless trains, subways, buses. Consider every moving company, every eighteen-wheeler or van, cab or car on the road, in the cities, at any given time. Unless the country locked itself down, declared martial law….

Well, all it would take to perhaps push America to the edge of a police state, he knew, was one or two rolling bombs lighting up an interstate, a major highway or taking down an entire terminal or depot, a few hundred bodies buried under the rubble. Every overt and covert intelligence agency may know about Red Crescent, that it was created from the shattered or disgruntled remnants of al-Qaeda and a host of other known terrorist organizations impatient to unleash another 9/11 on America….

They were here, and it was happening, as Bolan heard the shooting inside the terminal.

Blueprints of the Richmond facility and perimeter committed to memory, having handed out the orders to Brognola’s people along with descriptions of the three operatives, the Executioner gathered steam, closing on the Norfolk bay. Beretta 93-R leading his charge, he shouldered his way through passengers bolting for the lot. It was just as he feared, the RC operatives panicking at the sight of agents inside the terminal, now going for broke. There wasn’t a second to spare on “what ifs,” the inside of the terminal Bolan’s turf to nail it down—or get blown into a thousand grisly pieces if they lit up the terminal.

Clinging to hope, propelled up the side of the bus by racing adrenaline and dire urgency, the Executioner spotted the first terrorist and drew target acquisition. Just inside the door, the enemy swept the MAC-10 around the terminal, the doomsday bag bouncing off his shoulder, screams rising to ear-piercing decibels as he fired on with indiscriminate bursts. For whatever reason—perhaps due to his murderous outburst—Bolan found a clean field of fire behind the savage. No chance of an innocent victim taking a projectile, tumbling on after a fatal exit wound to the head, so Bolan went to grim work.

The Red Crescent operative whirled, ready to barrel through the door, when Bolan squeezed the trigger. The 9 mm subsonic round blasted through glass, cored smack between the would-be martyr’s eyes, a dark cloud of blood and brain matter jetting out the back of his shattered skull, the Dallas Stars cap flying. Lurching back, the Red Crescent butcher then wobbled, eyes bulging in shock, nerve spasms shooting through his arms, the package of mass murder slipping off his shoulder. The Executioner advanced, pumped two more rounds into the enemy’s forehead, dropped him.

One down, the soldier thought as he threw wide the door and waded into the bedlam. He was aware the doomsday clock had ticked down to zero, that quite possibly he was marching to his own death.

PRICE THOUGHT the bastard laughed as she hit the ground on her shoulders, rolling up between two SUVs one row down, her sunglasses flying. Digging out the Browning Hi-Power, she thumbed off the safety, sprung to her feet. Mitchell-Acheron, she found, hadn’t budged, the killer grinning, laughing to himself. Was he winking at her, blowing a kiss with his weapon? It occurred to her this psychopath could have already killed her, but given his track record she wasn’t taking any chances. And she was certain he hadn’t come here alone. There would be time enough later to track down Geller, make him spill the truth—whatever it took—why he’d set her up, assuming, of course, she made it out of the garage alive.

He was still enjoying his belly ripper when she framed the laughing face in her sights, squeezed the trigger. Even before the first 9 mm round blasted out the window he was gone, melting to the seat, anticipating her preemptive strike. A combination of adrenaline and fear coursing through her veins, she cracked out two more rounds, ventilating the far window, shuffling for deeper cover. Hunched, she searched the garage, thrusting the weapon around each corner as she surged down the line of parked vehicles, in the direction of the exit ramp. If there were in fact more gunmen on the prowl, then she had to believe they had all escape routes covered. No choice, she knew, other than a fighting evacuation.

She stopped, listened to the silence. Popping up, she saw the back passenger door open, the bald dome emerge. She capped off two more rounds, Acheron ducking as bullets tattooed metal. If she could draw him deeper into the garage, then double back for the GMC…

Two peals of thunder, and she saw the GMC’s tires flatten out, Acheron’s laughter flung away by the booming reverberation of gunfire. Worst case, she could hope the attendant or some civic-minded individual heard the racket of weapons fire, dialed 911. Then what? Was the bastard crazy enough to commit suicide by cop, if it came down to that?

“Might as well come to Daddy, Babs,” Acheron called. “I promise I’ll break it to you gently. Max—I know you didn’t have to worry about that sorry little sack of shit hurting anything. Me, well, you’re looking at a man-size pre-dic-a-ment. What the hell, consider me your incubus, baby-cakes.”

Where was the psycho freak now? she wondered. He moved like a ghost, there one second, gone the next, laughing as he taunted her, circling her, she was certain.

Keep moving, then.

She was darting across open ground, saw the exit sign that marked the service stairs when she spotted two more gunmen in black. Without warning, they opened fire with MP-5 subguns, chasing her to cover, ricochets screaming off the concrete behind her, spanging metal. Running on, she flinched as twin streams of subgun fire blew out a line of SUV windows behind her, glass slashing her back, bullets drumming metal. Shooting only to chase her? she wondered. Forcing her to run toward the service stairs? They had her out in the open seconds ago, dead to rights, could have dropped her easily. No, they wanted her prisoner, she decided. But why? If that was the case, they had given her something of an edge.

She was free to shoot to kill. No problem, she would live or die by that.

A pall of silence descended behind her as she stopped, peered around the corner of a Jaguar. It was as if they had vanished, no sight or sound of them. They were close; she could feel them, probably moving to outflank her. She looked to the service stairs, maybe a dozen yards or so away, but it might as well have been the dark side of Jupiter. She looked back, glimpsed a shadow about six cars down, the Browning jumping in her hand as she rode the recoil, blasting out two rounds, vandalizing a Mercedes.

Price was ready to bolt for the service stairs, looking back at the gap she would have to sprint across, when three more of them materialized, black leather trench coats flowing behind them as they marched through the door, MP-5s leading the way. She peered at the tall dark one in the middle, wondering where she’d seen him before. Then it hit her. Despite the long black hair, swarthy complexion, figure some plastic surgery, it was Cramnon.

And they had a hostage, she saw, tossing still more critical mass into the equation. The woman was honey-blond, slim, the one on Cramnon’s right flank holding her to his chest, hand over her mouth, muffling her cries. Had they snatched what could pass as her twin on purpose, or was it just a fluke?

“I know who you are, cupcake,” Cramnon said. “Make it easy on yourself. Hey, I promise, Babs, I won’t let my men savage you. I’m a gentleman when it comes to the fairer sex.”

She was torn between watching her six, Cramnon and his goons, when she heard the woman scream. A short burst of subgun fire, and Price saw the victim flung to the ground from the burst up her back.

Oh, God, Price thought, squeezing her eyes shut for a dangerous second, sickened at the sight of cold-blooded murder, as she slumped back against her SUV cover. The sound of Cramnon’s laughter echoed through the garage, as she heard the monster warn her he still had a few more victims on tap.

THE EXECUTIONER KNEW he couldn’t spare a second indulging anger or grief over the carnage he found inside the terminal. He discovered two of Brognola’s people were down by the lockers, blood pooling around their skulls. The killer opted for head shots, bypassing body armor.

“Clear the building! I want a perimeter, no less than three blocks out!” Bolan shouted at the Justice agent kneeling beside the bodies of fallen comrades. “You copy?”

The agent looked at Bolan, eyes burning with rage, nodded past him. “I heard you. The last son of a bitch went in the men’s room!”

“Get out of here!” Bolan said, then wheeled, got his bearings as he marched for the men’s room. A quick sweep of the terminal, and he figured ten, fifteen civilians cut down. Where they weren’t surging out the nearest door, a stampede of flailing bodies, the soldier found walking wounded limping for exits, the air pierced by screams and shouts of terror and panic. The last one? he thought, then spied the heap near the westbound gates, the New York Dragons cap beside his tattered carcass with doomsday bags. Two helmeted, armored FBI agents toed the body, secured the ordnance. That left Grand Rapids Rampage, he knew.

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