The driver was dead and the passenger wasn’t doing much better

He hadn’t been wearing a seat belt and when the car hit the cement pylon, he’d been slammed back into his seat with such force that he appeared to have broken his back. A SAR-21 still lay in his lap, but the man couldn’t move his arms. Both his right arm and the right arm of the driver bore the distinctive question-mark tattoo with which the Executioner had become far too familiar over the past few days.

“Who sent you?” Bolan asked.

“The Malaysian,” the man said just before he sunk into unconsciousness, confirming the soldier’s suspicions. Bolan felt the pulse in the man’s neck. He doubted the man was going to make it.

Bolan could hear sirens approaching in the distance. A delay would likely result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people, so the Executioner was on his motorcycle riding toward San Francisco before the first emergency vehicle came into sight. He held his speed to a reasonable level until after he’d passed the last squad car responding to the accident, then poured it on. He felt relatively sure he wouldn’t get stopped for speeding since just about every available unit in a ten-mile area seemed to have headed for the accident site.

Death Run

The Executioner®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

He conquers who endures.

—Persius 34–62 A.D.

I will endure no matter what the odds against my success. It is the only way I know how to win.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Prologue

Losail Circuit, Doha, Qatar

Darrick Anderson rode onto the track for the first practice session of the MotoGP season, rolled on the throttle and felt the 800cc four-stroke V-four engine spin the cold rear tire like soft butter on hot bread. The adrenaline rush he always felt when he headed out on the track fueled his body for the grueling session ahead, heightening his senses and slowing his perception of time’s passing. He leaned the bike into Turn One at a leisurely 110 miles per hour and shifted his body to the opposite side of the bike in preparation for the next corner.

The bike felt good, and he was grateful to have a position, even if it was on the Free Flow Racing team. Free Flow was a newcomer to motorcycle racing’s premiere class. Like any new race team running machinery of its own design, it campaigned undeveloped and uncompetitive motorcycles. Anderson knew he’d be duking it out with the back markers instead of battling for victory at the front of the pack.

Beggars can’t be choosers, he thought. It had only been five years since he’d had the number “one” painted on the fairing of his motorcycle. Throughout his career Anderson had battled not just the world’s top motorcycle racers, but also his own addictions to alcohol and drugs. He’d usually won the on-track battles, and had three world championships to prove it, but he’d lost the battle to his addictions. His race performance became inconsistent, and at the age of twenty-five he found himself unable to find a place on a racing team in his native United States. Now Anderson had a second chance to prove himself, and he wanted to make the most of it.

No one expected Anderson to return to MotoGP racing—no one expected him to live long enough—but he’d cleaned up. He hadn’t taken a drink or snorted a line of cocaine in almost two years. He’d gotten back in shape and regained his riding abilities. When he landed the Free Flow ride, his skills were at their peak, even if his bike was underpowered and its chassis underdeveloped.

As he brought his bike up to speed and warmed up his tires, none of this mattered; he was just happy to be out on the track, tearing it up with his brother Eddie under the hot desert sun.

Eddie Anderson rose through the ranks of motorcycle racing in the United States to become the youngest person ever to win a national Superbike championship. His performance earned the young phenomenon a spot on the Ducati Marlboro MotoGP team. After winning rookie of the year in his first season, Eddie had a good chance of taking the championship this season.

Darrick circled the track, knocking a few tenths of a second off his lap times with each revolution of the fast circuit. The machine beneath him felt good, better than he’d expected. He skimmed his knees on the apron as he apexed the last corner on the track, straightened the bike and exited hard onto the front straight. He nearly jumped off his saddle when he felt a hand slap his ass. Darrick looked out of the left side of his helmet and saw Eddie passing him. Darrick could keep up with Eddie in the corners, but Eddie’s powerful bike ran away from Darrick’s as they rode down the long front straight. Eddie gained several bike lengths on Darrick before he threw his bike into Turn One.

There was a time when being passed would have thrown Darrick into spasms of rage, but seeing Eddie ride, watching him display his amazing skill and grace, made Darrick smile. He looked forward to his brother taking the number-one plate. Darrick pushed his bike to its very limits and beyond, not because he wanted to beat Eddie, but because he wanted to keep his brother in sight and watch him ride.

Darrick did a good job keeping up with his hard-charging brother, but the harder he pushed, the worse his bike behaved. The front end started to chatter under braking and continued to get worse until the bike was nearly in a tank slapper, forcing him into the paddock to have his technicians sort out the suspension. He pulled into the Free Flow pit, handed his bike to one of the technicians, peeled the top of his one-piece leathers to his waist, and went into the garage to find his team manager and explain the suspension problem. It would probably take only minor adjustments to dial out the front-end chatter and he wanted to get back out on the track before the two-hour practice session ended. He knew there was little point in trying to communicate the problem to the non-English-speaking technician.

It was early Friday morning and the paddock was quiet. The other racers were just starting to trickle out on the track, and a few teams hadn’t even completely set up in their garages yet. Within the hour the sleepy paddock would transform into a buzzing industrial worksite. It would remain so until long after the traffic jam that would inevitably followed Sunday’s race dissipated.

Darrick walked through the garage toward the office to find Jameed Botros, his team manager. He hated to complain because he didn’t want anyone to think he’d fallen back into his prima donna ways, but Botros always set him on edge. There was something wrong with the man, and with the entire Free Flow team itself.

Free Flow, a Malaysian motorcycle company that specialized in building scooters and small motorcycles for Third World markets, had begun developing larger motorcycles for the lucrative U.S. and European markets. Free Flow’s MotoGP race team was part of an effort to build brand recognition in those markets. Though the team was headquartered in Malaysia, most of the technicians and mechanics were Saudis, and none of them spoke English except Botros. Given that the Free Flow team’s primary sponsor was a Saudi oil company, it made sense that the team was composed exclusively of Saudis.

It didn’t bother Darrick that they were Saudis; what bothered him was that they were hard men who seemed out of place in the MotoGP world. They didn’t seem to like motorcycles or motorcycle racing all that much. They didn’t seem to like much else, either, especially Darrick. He’d never worked with such grim, humorless men.

Darrick walked into the office to find Botros speaking with a uniformed member of the Qatar security force. Because of the background noise from the activity in the garage, Botros and the security officer didn’t notice Darrick enter the room. Botros continued to speak to the man in Arabic. Darrick had picked up enough of the language to recognize the words package and shipment. He also made out the English names San Francisco and Mazda Raceway in the snippet of conversation he overheard. The fact that Botros was discussing the following week’s race at the Mazda Raceway near Monterey, California, with a member of the Qatar security force struck Darrick as odd, and his face betrayed his concern.

Darrick said, “Samehni,” Arabic for “pardon me,” one of the phrases he’d picked up. Botros glared at him and said nothing. Darrick switched to English and explained the front-end chatter to Botros, who promised to have a technician make the changes Darrick suggested.

Darrick retired to his motor home to freshen up while the bike was being prepared. When he returned to the garage for the last part of the morning practice session, a particularly humorless technician, a Saudi Darrick hadn’t met before, had his bike running and ready to go out on track. With his heavily scarred face, the man looked more like an escapee from a harsh prison than a trained motorcycle mechanic. “Your motorcycle is ready, sir,” the man said.

Astonished to hear the brutish man speak English, Darrick thanked him, then donned his helmet and gloves and rode out of the garage. He got out on track just as Eddie flew by at full throttle. Darrick knew he should let his tires warm up a bit, but he couldn’t resist the urge to chase his brother. He accelerated hard down the front straight, sat up to get into position for the first turn, and grabbed a handful of brake. Instead of pushing the brake pads into the discs, the brake lever went soft and pulled all the way back to the clip-on handlebar. A mist of brake fluid shot up inside his helmet, numbing his lips and stinging his eyes. His brake line had come loose from the reservoir on the handlebar. Riding nearly two hundred miles per hour into Turn One, he had no brakes.

Darrick leaned the bike into the turn and the front wheel lost traction, throwing the motorcycle to the pavement, shattering Darrick’s collarbone. He skidded off the track alongside the motorcycle and hit the gravel at the outside apex of the turn. In most crashes his protective gear would save him from serious injury, but no gear on Earth would help him if he hit the wall at that speed.

He tried to slow himself, but when he saw the clip-on handlebar of the motorcycle dig into the gravel and launch the machine skyward, he knew it no longer mattered. The bike flew twenty feet in the air and Darrick watched as it started to come down at him. He tried to roll onto his side even though he knew it would make him go airborne and flop around like a rag doll in a tornado. As he expected, his broken shoulder caught in the gravel and flipped him over, launching him feet first into the air. Before he could make an entire revolution, which would have jammed his head into the gravel and snapped his neck, the motorcycle came down across his chest. Man and machine hit the wall as one, crushing the life from Darrick’s body. His last thought before impact was that he was never going to see his brother win the MotoGP championship.

1

Mack Bolan crouched behind the cargo container in the Doha Industrial Area, watching the Qatar security force officer walk past on his rounds. Bolan had timed the man’s route and knew he had just short of thirty minutes to examine the shipping containers that had been transferred from the Pakistani container ship Hammam.

The previous night the soldier had slipped aboard the ship while it was anchored in the Doha Port and located the containers identified as his targets. He hadn’t had time to examine the containers, which were covered in blue tarps. However, he managed to place an electronic tracking device under one of the tarps before he had to clear off the ship.

That morning, he’d followed the trucks hauling the ship’s cargo to the warehouse. He’d located the cargo containers with a hand-held tracking unit disguised as a cellular phone and followed the signal to the corner of the warehouse. The crates were still covered with blue tarps.

When the security officer left the warehouse, the Executioner unfastened the tie-downs securing the blue tarp and pulled the back corner aside, revealing a rear hatch locked down tight by a high-security hardened steel padlock with a hardened steel shackle. It would take more than his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle to blast through that lock, but it didn’t matter. He couldn’t use a gun in the warehouse without alerting the guard, not even his sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R.

Bolan pulled the blue tarp back to reveal a red-and-yellow paint scheme. A painting of a blue racing motorcycle adorned the side of the container. He pulled the tarp farther back to reveal the words Free Flow Racing emblazoned on the bike’s fairing. It wasn’t what the soldier expected to see. According to the intel he’d received from Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, these containers held the ten kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium that disappeared in Pakistan the previous week. That was enough of the dense substance to build a nuclear bomb capable of destroying an entire city.

The president of the United States had ordered Hal Brognola, Director of the Justice Department’s Special Operations Group, to get the plutonium back. Because sources indicated that the material had gone to Qatar, getting it back would be a delicate task, given the close relationship between Qatar and the United States. Qatar, an independent emirate that jutted into the Persian Gulf—or Arab Gulf, as the locals called it—was one of the few remaining countries in the Middle East that welcomed U.S. military bases. Though the tiny emirate was politically stable thanks to its oil wealth, Qatar’s relatively moderate policies—it had been the first Arab nation to allow women to vote—made it a target for fanatical Islamic fundamentalists. The emir didn’t want to agitate the region’s radical factions by allowing the U.S. military to conduct an overt operation to retrieve the stolen plutonium so the Man asked Brognola to send in a discrete force. The big Fed assigned the task to the force of one known as the Executioner.

Because plutonium 239 is extremely toxic when inhaled or ingested—absorbing only a few micrograms causes cancer—destroying the ship would have been the equivalent of setting off a massive dirty bomb in the Doha Port, killing thousands of innocent Qatarians. Bolan had to find the material himself. He knew his job wouldn’t be easy. Though one of the most toxic substances ever created, plutonium 239 emits very little gamma radiation, making it virtually undetectable.

Because it ignites at room temperature when exposed to oxygen, plutonium 239 needs to be transported in a self-cooling container. Kurtzman discovered that a German firm had recently built an unusual type B container—a ductile iron cask with plumbing for coolant, a shock absorbing outer casing, and a nickel-lined interior coated with a synthetic resin that sealed in all radiation—that was small enough to fit in the back of a cargo van. The container had been shipped to a client in Pakistan. The only possible use for such a container would be the transport of nuclear material. When Kurtzman investigated the client, supposedly a Chinese energy research company, it turned out to be nothing more than a post office box in Grand Cayman.

The same source that alerted U.S. intelligence to the theft of the plutonium believed the material had been transported to the Port of Karachi, where it would be shipped to Qatar. The Bear’s team hit their computers and tracked every cargo shipment leaving Pakistan for Qatar. The manifest of one vessel, the container ship Hammam, contained anomalies that caught the attention of Stony Man’s cyberdetectives, convincing Kurtzman that this was their ship. Now Bolan stood before the containers that the team had identified.

The Executioner didn’t hear anything behind him but suddenly sensed the pair of eyes boring into him from behind. Instinctively, he threw himself forward and rolled over on his shoulder to see the security officer lining him up in the sights of a Heckler & Koch MP-5. Bolan flattened himself against the concrete floor and felt the initial volley of bullets skim over the top of his head. As the security guard fired, the muzzle rise made his trajectory climb, giving Bolan room to scramble behind the container.

If he’d been going up against an outlaw or terrorist, Bolan would have simply killed the man shooting at him. But the Executioner didn’t want to kill law enforcement officers, whether they were U.S. cops or members of Qatar’s national security force. He’d have to find another way out of this predicament, one that didn’t involve using his own guns.

He pushed his foot into the blue canvas and gained a foothold on one of the metal support ribs that ran the length of the cargo container. With a kick, he propelled himself high enough to grab the top of the container, and with the grace of a gymnast, he swung himself onto the top of the container. Because the security officer had still been firing his weapon, he hadn’t heard Bolan land atop the container.

When the shooting stopped, Bolan raised his head just enough to catch a glimpse of the officer. The greasepaint on the soldier’s face made him hard to see in the dark warehouse, but his blacksuit wasn’t providing much camouflage against the blue tarp. Bolan watched the officer creep toward the wall, where he could see behind the container. When he looked up, he’d see Bolan on top of it. The soldier grabbed an M-84 flashbang grenade from the vest he wore over his blacksuit, pulled the pin and lobbed the grenade over the edge of the container toward the officer.

The man spotted the motion and fired at Bolan. He only got off one round before the flashbang detonated, but that round struck the soldier square in the chest. He wore a vest containing an experimental lightweight armor that John “Cowboy” Kissinger had developed back at Stony Man Farm. The weapons specialist claimed this thin, flexible armor could stop anything up to and including a standard 7.62 mm round, though he wasn’t sure about high-velocity armor-piercing rounds. Fortunately it was capable of stopping the 9 mm round from the officer’s machine pistol, though the bullet struck the Executioner with enough force to knock him over the edge of the container.

Still in midair when the flashbang went off, Bolan covered his ears, closed his eyes and let out a shriek to equalize the pressure in his lungs. He landed on his feet, his legs pumping as soon as they hit the ground. The security officer would recover from the flashbang, but not before Bolan slipped back into the vent through which he’d entered the building.

Doha was a quiet city, and if the shots that the officer fired didn’t bring nearly all eight thousand men of the Qatar security force to the warehouse, the flashbang’s explosion certainly would.

The Executioner moved the grate covering the vent pipe aside, slid inside, replaced the grate and climbed up the pipe. When he got to the top of the vent, he crawled through the rectangular vent pipe that ran along the roof toward a blower fan until he reached the hole he’d cut in the bottom of the pipe. There was only about eighteen inches between the pipe and the roof of the warehouse so he had to snake his way out of the pipe. He could see flashing blue lights from the security force vehicles driving toward the front of the warehouse. Bolan ran to the back edge of the roof where he’d left the rope he’d used to climb up and clipped his descender to the rope. He let himself down the side of the building as fast as he could without breaking any bones. Upon hitting the ground, he ran toward the hole he’d cut in the security fence on his way into the warehouse facility. He was in his Range Rover and driving back toward his hotel before the security officers even discovered he’d left the building.

Bolan was grateful that he hadn’t injured any of the officers who kept the peace in the tiny emirate. Qatar’s security force had a reputation for being good cops, honest and reasonable men who had never been charged with a human rights violation.

He hadn’t been so lucky; he was pretty sure he’d broken a rib when he took the round from the officer’s MP-5, but he’d survive. He hadn’t located the plutonium, but at least he had a lead: Free Flow Racing. He knew that the Losail circuit in Doha would be hosting Grand Prix motorcycle races that weekend. He wouldn’t be able to get back in the warehouse after the fiasco that had just occurred, but at least he knew where to look.

First, he’d have to find a reason to be at the race. He drove back to his hotel and dialed the secure number for Stony Man Farm on his cell phone. It took a few moments for the signal to travel its circuitous but untraceable route before he heard Kurtzman on the line. “What’s up, Striker?” Kurtzman asked, using Bolan’s Stony Man code name.

“I need to be someone else,” Bolan replied.

“Anyone in particular?”

“I’d kind of like to try an average Joe, but maybe another time. Right now I need to be a salesman.”

POSING AS MATT COOPER, Bolan presented his credentials to the paddock guard. Overnight Kurtzman had created a background for Cooper, an American sales rep for the racing fuels division of CCP Petroleum, a Russian company created from the ashes of the failed Yukos Oil. Cooper’s assignment was to get MotoGP racing teams to use CCP racing fuel. To create the character of Cooper, Bolan, who spoke decent Russian, spent the night studying the recent history of Grand Prix motorcycle racing.

The Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) formed the MotoGP class, motorcycle racing’s most prestigious racing series, for the 2002 season. Originally FIM had dictated that 990 cc four-strokes raced in the class. When those motorcycles became so powerful that their performance outpaced the limits of tire technology, the FIM lowered the displacement limit to 800 cc for the 2007 racing season.

Darrick Anderson, an American rider, dominated the first three seasons of MotoGP, but problems with alcohol and other drugs had destroyed his career. He’d disappeared for several years, but this year he was back. Bolan had Darrick’s name at the top of the list of people he planned to interview, since Darrick was Free Flow Racing’s top rider.

Posing as Cooper’s assistant at CCP’s American branch, Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller, had arranged meetings with representatives from several MotoGP teams. Most top teams were already supported by major oil companies so the story was that CCP targeted smaller teams. Since MotoGP teams didn’t get any smaller than Free Flow Racing, it only made sense that Cooper would meet with them first. Price set up a meeting with Team Free Flow Racing’s general manager Jameed Botros.

Bolan arrived at the Free Flow Racing garage complex in the Losail paddock fifteen minutes before his scheduled meeting with Mr. Botros but found the area deserted. The doors were open, so he let himself inside, hoping to find out where everyone was, but the garages were empty. The Executioner walked toward a wall covered with television monitors and realized why the complex was empty. From several different angles the monitors showed Darrick Anderson’s lifeless body being loaded onto a helicopter. Bolan could tell things didn’t look good for Mr. Anderson.

He looked around the building and saw several containers identical to the ones he’d seen in the warehouse the previous night. He activated the GPS locator in his cell phone and saw that the container he wanted had to be either in the very back of the garage complex or behind it. He made his way to the rear of the complex without finding the container.

He punched a button that opened one of the overhead doors in the back wall and went outside, where he found the container he’d tagged with the homing device still secured to the bed of a truck trailer. He examined it and saw that the seals applied to the container in Pakistan still hadn’t been broken.

Bolan turned around and found himself face-to-face with a man dressed as a member of the Qatar security force, though the dagger in his hand was not standard-issue for the force. Bolan hadn’t heard the man approach because of the noise generated by the barely muffled motorcycle engines that permeated the entire Losail facility. The officer lunged at Bolan with the dagger, its tip contacting Bolan’s rib cage just below his left armpit. Because the Executioner had moved back the moment he saw the blade coming at him, the dagger barely penetrated his skin.

Bolan brought his left elbow down on the attacker’s arm, snapping both the radius and ulna bones in his forearm. The man fell beneath the force of the blow. Bolan reached around with his right hand and caught the knife as it fell from the attacker’s disabled hand. The man lunged forward and in an instinctive reaction Bolan sliced upward with the knife, catching the man several inches below the navel and cutting all the way up to his rib cage.

The man staggered backward and fell, clutching his midsection in a failed attempt to hold in the intestines that poured from his eviscerated abdomen. Bolan knew this man most likely was not a cop. Cops didn’t try to assassinate strangers with daggers, especially Qatar’s security force officers. He was certain that the man he’d just gutted was a criminal posing as a security officer.

Bolan pulled his Beretta from his shoulder holster and asked the man, who was dying too slowly to avoid intense suffering, “Do you speak English?” He received no answer. The man had entered a state of shock and wasn’t able to respond. Bolan estimated he would be dead within minutes.

He holstered the Beretta and began searching the body for some identification but stopped when he heard movement behind him. He spun around just in time to see a steel pipe swinging toward his temple. Then the lights went out.

The Persian Gulf

The Executioner knew he was on a boat the moment he regained consciousness. From the sound of the muffled diesel engines and the carpeted floor on which he lay, he guessed he was on some sort of pleasure craft. The musty smell of the carpet told him it was an older boat. He heard at least two people conversing in Arabic, but otherwise he deduced very little information about his current situation. What felt like duct tape covered his eyes and mouth. His hands were bound behind his back and his feet were tied together tight, presumably with the same material.

His head hurt almost as much as his broken rib, but the soldier suffered in silence. He didn’t want his captors to know he was awake. Though he didn’t speak Arabic, he’d picked up some phrases here and there and was able to glean some information about his captors, most importantly that they were Saudis, not Qatarians.

They were angry Saudis. Apparently the man that Bolan had sent to visit Allah back at the racetrack had been one of their brethren. This virtually eliminated the possibility that he’d killed a law enforcement officer, since Bolan knew Qatar didn’t hire Saudis for its police force. Qatar had a dark side when it came to its discrimination against immigrants, especially Saudis, because of the poor relationship Qatar had with its giant neighbor to the west. The two countries had only recently settled a border dispute that had simmered for almost two decades.

Bolan could hear the sound of other boats over the angry conversation between the Saudis. Because he couldn’t hear the telltale industrial noise of the Doha Port, he guessed that he was either in the Doha Harbor or the Old Harbor area. As he listened, the sound of the other boats grew more distant, which meant they were leaving the harbor and heading out to open water. Bolan didn’t know how long he’d been out, but he guessed that it was no longer than an hour, and probably less.

Bolan lay immobile until the Saudis began to kick at him, gently prodding him at first, but getting progressively harder.

“Wake up!” one of the men shouted in English.

Bolan felt the duct tape rip away from his eyes, taking half his eyebrows with it.

“You’re not dead yet!” The man ripped the tape away from Bolan’s mouth with the same force he’d used to remove it from his eyes.

Bolan looked around the cabin of what seemed to be a sport fishing boat and estimated the craft to be thirty-five to forty feet in length. Looking out the cabin windows, he saw land on the starboard side, which meant that they were heading south.

In addition to the man who’d waxed the soldier’s eyebrows with duct tape, two other men sat on a threadbare lounge, looking down at him. An AK-74 rested on each of their laps. The scar-faced thug who’d removed the duct tape wore the desert-camo uniform of a Qatar security force officer, but the AKSU-74 machine pistol slung around his neck and shoulder indicated he was an imposter—the well-funded Qatarian forces carried top-shelf European weapons, not twenty-year-old Russian sub machine guns.

The man whose patchwork face looked like it had been launched through a dozen windshields, grabbed Bolan and hoisted him up onto a stool by the galley counter. The two goons took a roll of duct tape and taped Bolan’s ankles to the stool’s pedestal, then gave his wrists another round of tape, tightening up the soldier’s bonds. This put him in an awkward position; it took all his effort to remain upright on the stool, leaving him completely vulnerable.

“So tell me Mr. Cooper,” the scarred man said in heavily accented English, “Why are you such a curious gas peddler? What were you doing with this?” He held up the satellite tracking device the soldier had attached to the shipping container. Before Bolan could say anything, the man backhanded him across his face, nearly knocking him off the stool. He felt his nasal cavity fill with blood.

When Bolan righted himself on the stool, the man put the barrel of his AKSU against the soldier’s forehead. Unable to move his hands, Bolan realized that his war everlasting might finally be about to reach its end. The Saudi slowly squeezed the trigger. The Russian Kalashnikovs weren’t known for their clean trigger breaks and time seemed to stop as Bolan watched the man slowly squeeze. Though it was barely perceptible, he saw the man’s finger tense up as the sear hit the breaking point.

Instead of the muzzle blast he expected, Bolan only heard the firing pin click on an empty chamber. All three men laughed.

“You should be so lucky,” the man said. “Death is preferable to the fate my boss has in store for you. We have to keep you alive for two more days. When my boss comes, he’ll send you to hell long before you have the good fortune to die.”

“Who’s your boss?” Bolan asked.

Instead of replying, the man smashed the machine pistol into the side of Bolan’s head, once again knocking him unconscious.

2

Jameed Botros hated racing. He hated motorcycles and he hated the people who rode them. He had never cared for any form of Western decadence, but being in the center of one of the West’s biggest and gaudiest spectacles was almost too much for him to bear. The only thing that kept him going was the fact that he hated the Western world even more than he hated motorcycle racing. And if all went as planned, this would be a very short racing season.

So far everything had been going as planned, until that damned gasoline sales rep had showed up and started nosing around. Somehow he had known which container held the plutonium. If he knew, surely others knew, which meant that they would have to get their equipment to America fast, and once there, they would have to alter all their plans.

Botros’ boss, Musa bin Osman, Free Flow’s vice president in charge of all racing activities, had chastised him for killing the American racer. Botros knew he might well have met a worse fate than Darrick Anderson’s had he not convinced his superior that the American had overheard him discussing the plan with Nasir, his compatriot who was posing as a member of the Qatar security force.

Nasir had the troublesome sales rep trapped aboard a fishing boat. Botros had wanted to kill the big stranger immediately, but bin Osman wanted to interrogate him before killing him. He wanted to know exactly what this man knew, or thought he’d known, about their operation. He wanted to find out who the big man really worked for, how he and his employers learned of the plutonium, and how much they knew about Team Free Flow’s planned activities in the U.S. As bin Osman wanted to question the man himself, but he couldn’t arrive until Sunday, the day of the race, Botros and his men had been forced to keep the interloper alive.

Botros thought the Malaysian businessman was making a mistake by keeping the man alive. The big American was clearly a man to be reckoned with. He had dispatched with one of Botros’ best men as if squashing an ant. Bin Osman is weak, he thought. He is as much a slave to his own vices as any Westerner. In this case, bin Osman’s vice was the thrill he received from torturing a human being to death. Botros had watched him do it on several occasions, and the pleasure bin Osman received from the act seemed almost of a sexual nature. Botros found his boss’s behavior disgusting, but he didn’t dare call him on it lest bin Osman decide that Botros himself might make a fitting subject on which to practice his fetish.

Botros had come close to finding out what it would be like to be tortured at the hands of his superior after he had killed Darrick Anderson, but he had placated bin Osman. Of course he had lied to the man; he had been looking for an excuse to kill the decadent young American since he first met him. Anderson, a drug addict, alcoholic and whoremonger, represented everything he hated about Westerners. Anderson claimed to have reformed, but Botros knew he only pretended to have given up his vices in order to attain a job racing motorcycles. He was still a weak American, a slave to his vices, and Botros knew that at the first opportunity he would return to his hedonistic ways. Botros had made a promise to Allah that he would kill Anderson at the first possible opportunity. Bin Osman, being a slave to his own vices, could not have understood why Botros had to do what he did.

But at least bin Osman shared Botros’ hatred of Westerners. The Malaysian hadn’t always been such a devout believer in Wahhabism, the ultraconservative form of Islam embraced by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, but his years of dealing with the West had converted him. As a young man, bin Osman had suckled at the teat of Western decadence, attending the finest universities in England and America, denying himself no pleasures of the flesh in the process.

But after a series of failed business ventures, the Malaysian had finally been made to see the need for jihad to cleanse the world of the social disease that was Western culture. At last bin Osman understood that the only way to bring that about was to have a world governed by Sharia law.

When the Malaysian allied himself with al Qaeda, he proved to be one of the most capable operatives the organization ever had. Now he was about to execute what would be not just a blow against the decadent West, but a death blow to Arab leaders who weakened Sharia with Western concepts. When bin Osman’s plan came to fruition, there would be no so-called “moderate” Islamic states left, and the entire world would be subject to the strictest interpretations of Sharia.

Bin Osman may have still had his vices, but he also had the power to make Botros’ desire a reality. He’d obtained the plutonium, he had the resources to make a bomb, and he had the connections needed to carry out the plan once they got to America. Botros may have hated the man, but he needed him more than he hated him.

WHEN BOLAN regained consciousness, he had no idea where he was. He could tell he was still on a boat, but the boat wasn’t moving. It took a few moments for him to remember Scarface striking him. He had no idea what time it was, but the stiffness in his shoulders and legs told him he’d been out for a long time. He raised his head to look around and almost lost consciousness again. He realized he must have received a concussion from his captor’s blow.

Through sheer force of will, the soldier made himself sit up and try to focus on his surroundings. He saw that he was in the lower bunk of a small stateroom. His hands were still bound behind his back and his ankles were still bound together, but at least they hadn’t put duct tape over his eyes and mouth again.

He worked his way to the edge of the bunk, swung his legs over the edge, and stood, balancing on his tied-together legs as if they were a single limb. The small room had a sliding pocket door that probably led to the hallway between the main stateroom and the steps leading up to the galley. He looked out over the top bunk. From the angle of the light coming through the small rectangular window above the bunk, he could see that the sun was just starting to rise over the Persian Gulf. That meant that he’d been unconscious all night.

He looked around for anything he could use to help him escape from his bonds and spotted a nail that was working itself loose from the wood frame of the top bunk. The head of the nail rose just barely high enough above the wood for the Executioner to see a faint shadow around its edge. It might be enough.

Bolan put his mouth over the nail and worked it loose from the wood with his teeth. When he finally got it in his mouth, he bent down and spit it onto the mattress of the lower bunk, right where he estimated his hands might rest. Then he lay down on top of the bunk and felt the nail with his right hand. He grabbed the nail with his fingers and worked it around until the point was aimed at his wrists. Then with the heel of his hand he maneuvered the point of the nail under the edge of the duct tape. He pushed on the nail and felt the tape give just a little bit. He repeated the process and pushed the nail through a bit more of the tape. He repeated the maneuver over and over throughout the day, stopping only when he heard one of his captors coming to check on him. By the time night fell, he’d worked through almost an inch of the tape, not quite enough to break his hands free. He kept at it and by the time he worked his hands free, the sky was beginning to lighten again in the east.

When Bolan regained feeling in his extremities, he tested the sliding door to see if it made noise. It did, but its squeaks weren’t any louder than the rest of the creaking emitted from the old boat as it rode the waves and he slid it open as quietly as possible. He stuck his head out the door and scanned the boat. To his right he saw the door to what must have been the forward stateroom. To his left he saw the steps leading up to the galley, and across from his stateroom he saw the open door to the bathroom.

He could hear loud snoring coming from the forward stateroom. Odds were that was where his lead captor slept, and the soldier wanted to keep him alive for questioning.

Softer snoring wafted from the salon area beyond the galley. Bolan crept up into the galley and looked over the counter to see one man sleeping on the lounge and another curled up on a smaller settee. The man on the lounge had been one of the men who had kicked him earlier; he didn’t recognize the man on the settee. He couldn’t see anyone out on the deck, but he heard movement on the flybridge above the cabin.

The Executioner knew he needed a weapon. He’d have to get one without alerting the man on the bridge or the man sleeping in the forward stateroom.

He looked around and saw a wooden block on the galley counter that held several knives. He pulled out a chef’s knife, but the blade was so dull that the handle would have made a better weapon. The second knife he pulled out was a boning knife with a razor-sharp blade.

Bolan crept into the salon. The man sleeping on the lounge stirred and Bolan was forced to quickly slit his throat. The man died silently. Knowing what was at stake, Bolan had dispatched the second man in similar fashion.

The Executioner grabbed the second man’s AK-74 and slung it over his shoulder, but kept his hand on the knife as he made his way to the ladder leading up to the flybridge. He crept up the ladder and peeked over the top. No one was at the helm, but the other man who had kicked him when he was first taken captive sat on a bench alongside the helm, looking toward land through a pair of binoculars. Bolan managed to get up on the flybridge and creep close to the helm before the man started to put down the binoculars.

Bolan rushed toward the man and before he could put down the binoculars and snatch his gun, the soldier plunged the knife blade into the side of the man’s chest, just below the armpit. The seven-inch blade severed the man’s main artery and he bled out before his heart beat five times.

A pool of the man’s blood covered the floor of the flybridge and drops followed the soldier down the ladder to the deck, where they mixed with the water that had splashed on deck during the night. Inside the salon, pools of blood covered the upholstery of the lounge and settee, dripping off and soaking into the carpet below. Bolan walked past the bodies and went to the master stateroom. He threw the door open and fired the AK into the ceiling above the bed. Shards of fiberglass rained down on the leader’s sleeping form.

The man lunged as Bolan had expected. What he didn’t expect was that he would have a Glock pistol in his hand. The scarred man swung the weapon around toward the soldier, but before he could get the muzzle pointed in Bolan’s direction, Bolan fired off several rounds into the man’s face. In a split second his scars vanished, along with the rest of his features. And any hope the Executioner had of interrogating the man disappeared with his face.

3

Monterey, California

“There’s no way in hell that Darrick’s crash was an accident,” Eddie Anderson told Matt Cooper, the sales rep for a Russian oil company. Anderson didn’t question why a gasoline salesman was asking him about his late brother—he’d told everyone he talked to that he thought that his brother had been murdered. Most people wrote it off as the petulant outbursts of a young man in the throes of grief. But grief and anger didn’t hamper his on-track performance; if anything, they enhanced it. Anderson won the race in Qatar by a huge margin, beating his teammate—the current champion, a hotheaded Spaniard named Daniel Asnorossa—by seven seconds.

Asnorossa earned his championship the previous year mostly because Anderson had crashed several times and had failed to finish three races while Asnorossa finished every race among the top five riders. Anderson won four races—three more than Asnorossa—and earned the rookie-of-the-year award. He’d been hired as Asnorossa’s backup rider, but this year everyone treated the upstart American like the team’s top rider.

Bolan missed Anderson’s victory. He hadn’t been able to get to the track before the entire MotoGP circus packed up and shipped off to the United States for the following weekend’s race at Laguna Seca. After searching his captors’ bodies, which turned up nothing but fake Qatar security force IDs, along with paddock passes for the Losail circuit, he’d ditched them in the Persian Gulf.

He hadn’t been able to steam into one of Doha’s heavily patrolled harbors in a blood-soaked boat registered to God knows who, especially with his light skin that immediately identified him as a Westerner. Qatarians didn’t trust foreigners, and he would have been sure to attract attention of the official variety. He waited until nightfall, then abandoned the boat and swam to a relatively deserted beach. In the meantime he avoided attention by doing what anyone aboard a sport fishing boat would do when out on the water—he fished. There was nothing else he could do because the Arabs had taken all of his electronic equipment, including his cell phone, along with all of his weapons and ID.

After hitting shore he made his way back to his hotel room, where he was finally able to contact Stony Man Farm on a secure line. By the time he’d contacted Kurtzman, it was too late to stop the plane carrying the Team Free Flow equipment, which had already been offloaded and was en route to the Mazda Raceway.

By the time Hal Brognola could organize a raid on the Laguna Seca paddock, the plutonium would almost certainly have been removed from the container. Bolan only hoped it hadn’t already been used to make a bomb.

While Stony Man’s top pilot, Jack Grimaldi, flew Bolan to the Monterey Peninsula Airport, Kurtzman sent Bolan new information regarding the Free Flow Racing organization. Apparently things weren’t going so well for the Malaysian scooter manufacturer. The costs of developing a full-sized motorcycle for the U.S. and European markets exceeded everyone’s expectations and Free Flow was in a state of chaos, with a revolving roster of top executives, none of whom seem to survive even a year within the organization.

The one person who seemed to float above the turmoil was Musa bin Osman, Free Flow’s vice president in charge of racing. That was in part because the racing organization was one of the few departments at Free Flow earning money, thanks to the generous sponsorship of a Saudi oil company. That was where things got interesting. The oil company was suspected of being a front for laundering money for several al Qaeda affiliates. The deeper Kurtzman dug, the more terrorist ties he discovered. Musa bin Osman had studied under the suspected mastermind behind the 2005 Bali bombings and many other terrorist attacks. He seemed to have close ties with Jemaah Islamiyah, the most active al Qaeda affiliate group in Malaysia.

Bolan knew that his Matt Cooper identity had likely been compromised, at least as far as the Team Free Flow organization was concerned, but it was still his quickest way to gain access to the racing paddock so he continued to play the role of a fuel sales rep for a Russian oil company. He had Barbara Price try to make an appointment to meet with Jameed Botros before he’d even landed at Monterey, but the earliest he could see the Saudi would be Thursday. In the meantime he scoped out the area around Laguna Seca.

To keep up appearances, he met with a couple of reps from satellite race teams—teams that leased the previous year’s factory race bikes. Such teams had some factory support—some more than others—but mostly they fended for themselves and were hungry for any sponsorship. By Thursday Cooper had tentative agreements with two teams. More importantly, he’d picked up on an undercurrent of mistrust between Team Free Flow and the other MotoGP organizations.

On Thursday Bolan rode the BMW R1200GS he’d rented in San Francisco to the Free Flow garage to keep his appointment with Botros. The entire San Francisco area became an orgy of motorcycle activity during the week of the big race, and there was no better way for the soldier to blend in than to ride a motorcycle. Plus motorcycles were far more effective at slicing through the dense traffic that descended on the area for the race.

He’d chosen the BMW because it was one of the most agile motorcycles ever built. The big bike was too heavy for serious off-road work. But in the hands of a physically large rider like Bolan, it could scoot down some pretty rough trails if it had to. Bolan had ridden just about every motorcycle built since he began his vigilante war against the Mafia many years ago, and he’d also received training from some of the world’s best on- and off-road motorcycle racers over the years, so he knew how to muscle a big bike over rough terrain.

The Executioner knew damned well that he was being set up, that if this meeting wasn’t a trap, at the very least it would be the prelude to a trap. Botros and his crew might not try to kill him in the garage complex. They might keep a low profile at the track and attack Bolan somewhere off site. Or they might just try to kill him in their garages. But the soldier had made a commitment to recover the stolen plutonium before the terrorists had the chance to use it, and getting closer to the Team Free Flow crew, the only people who knew for sure where the plutonium was located, was the best way he could think of to find it.

Bolan knew that someone could try to kill him at any moment. The soldier had no way of knowing where or when that attempt would take place so he’d have to rely on years of experience and instincts honed to an almost preternatural degree to survive the next few days. That, and the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle on his hip and the Beretta 93-R machine pistol he carried in the shoulder rig beneath his jacket.

Bolan parked the BMW near the Team Free Flow garages just in time to see Eddie Anderson being escorted from the building complex by a couple of Middle Eastern-looking men. One could have been Scarface’s brother, or at least his cousin. The Arabs weren’t having an easy time of it. Most successful motorcycle racers were built like jockeys, and Anderson was no exception; he stood maybe five-four in his racing boots and couldn’t have weighed much, but he was giving the two Arabs as good as he got.

“Get your damned hands off of me!” Anderson told Scarface’s cousin. “I know he was murdered and I know you guys did it!” The man tried to push Anderson to the ground but the wiry little rider ducked and grabbed the man’s wrist, flipped his arm around behind his back, and pushed him face first into the tarmac. The other Arab grabbed Anderson before he could pounce on the fallen man and flung him into Bolan.

“Are you all right?” Bolan asked. Without answering, Anderson spun around to face the two men from the Free Flow garage. The man on the ground got up, his face scraped up from hitting the rough pavement. The two contemplated attacking Anderson, but when they saw Bolan, a look of recognition crossed their faces and they scurried back into the garage.

“Those bastards killed Darrick,” Anderson said. “They killed my brother.”

“Are you sure about that?” Bolan asked.

“There’s no way in hell that Darrick’s crash was an accident. There’s no way that brake line came loose without someone disconnecting it. No way. Those sons of bitches killed my brother and I can prove it.”

“How can you prove it?” Bolan asked. Anderson looked up at Bolan, suspicion in his eyes. “This is not a good place to talk,” Bolan said. “Can I buy you a drink later?”

“I don’t drink.” After watching alcohol and drugs destroy Darrick’s career, Eddie avoided the culture of hedonism that swirled around the racing circuit with an almost fanatical zeal, focusing on riding with the concentration of a Buddhist monk. The offer only increased his mistrust of the large stranger. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting.” He rushed off before Bolan could question him further.

Bolan had no doubt that Eddie was lying about the meeting, but he couldn’t fault the kid for not trusting him, especially if what he said about his brother was true. Bolan made a note to speak further with the young man, but for now the soldier did have a meeting, one he couldn’t afford to miss.

THE ABRASIVE YOUNG American racer reminded Jameed Botros of his older brother, and as with the older Anderson, Botros felt it his duty to Allah to kill the man. People believed that Eddie Anderson differed from his brother, that he was not a slave to the vices that had destroyed Darrick’s career, but Botros knew the younger man deceived those around him. He was first and foremost an American, and like all Americans he was weak. Botros had wanted to kill him the minute he laid eyes on him during the winter tire tests.

Now he might have a reason, but first he would have to clear it with bin Osman. Botros had gotten away with making a unilateral decision regarding the older Anderson brother; he dared not move against the younger brother without express permission from his superior. Botros had to present the Malaysian with a good reason why Eddie Anderson should be killed, and that is exactly what the impetuous youngster was giving him.

“You killed him!” the young rider shouted at Botros. Botros just smiled, knowing that when he reported Anderson’s behavior to his supervisor, he would receive permission to eliminate the boy. “I know you killed him, and I can prove it!”

Anderson lunged toward Botros, but before he reached the Saudi, three sets of hands grabbed him and slammed him down on his back. Botros looked down at the face. The rage that twisted Anderson’s features made him appear much older than his twenty-one years. “I am sure you are mistaken,” Botros said. “It makes no sense that we would kill your brother.”

“I don’t give a shit if it makes sense or not! I know you did it!”

“Your brother’s death was an accident. A tragic accident. His brakes failed.”

“His brakes didn’t fail. You loosened the brake lines and I can prove it!”

Botros had had enough of this foolish American. “Throw him out,” he ordered his men in Arabic. For a small man, Anderson put up an impressive fight, but he was outnumbered four to one and after a drawn-out struggle, they ultimately ejected him from the garage complex. Before he was out the door Botros was in his office, calling bin Osman.

“We had an unexpected visitor this morning,” Botros told his supervisor.

“Who might that be?” bin Osman asked.

“Eddie Anderson.”

“Ah, the grieving brother.”

“It would be more correct to call him the raging brother,” Botros said. “He practically attacked me.”

“Does he know?”

“He does. He even knows how we did it. He says he has proof, though how that is possible I don’t know.”

Bin Osman paused for a moment. “This young man could disrupt our plans.”

“Do you want my men to take care of him?” Botros asked.

Again bin Osman paused. “No, we cannot draw unwanted attention to ourselves. He is too high-profile. Our plan must succeed. For that to happen, we have to be free to operate without the authorities investigating us, so we cannot engage in any activity that might attract such scrutiny. I know how we can deal with this.”

“How?” Botros asked.

“You cannot give the authorities information you do not possess,” bin Osman told Botros. “Just have faith that I will handle the problem. Unlike the way your men failed to handle our problem in Qatar last week.”

Bin Osman hit a sore spot with the Saudi. The Malaysian had been enraged when the American gasoline peddler had escaped from the boat, but Botros had managed to calm him somewhat by reminding him that they still had the plutonium.

Getting the plutonium into the United States had been ridiculously easy. Team Free Flow had smuggled it into the country with all its other racing equipment. No customs inspector could ever hope to understand the esoteric collection of hardware and data-acquisitions electronic equipment used by a modern MotoGP racing team. It had been relatively simple to disguise the components needed to make a nuclear weapon among the racing equipment, even the Type B container used to transport the plutonium.

“When do you want us to move the material to the lab?” Botros asked, changing the subject.

“We’ll be ready for it on Saturday, so plan to move it tomorrow night. But at the moment don’t you have an appointment with the American?”

“Yes, he should be here soon. Do you want us to take care of him?”

“Like you took care of him last week? I think not. You and your men are to take no more risks, especially at the racetrack. I will take care of Mr. Cooper. Besides, I wish to meet a person who could dispatch five of your best men with such ease. Arrange for him to meet with me when I get to San Francisco tonight.”

4

“I’m sorry I missed you last week Mr. Cooper,” Botros told the Executioner after he sat down in the cramped office area set up in the back of the garage complex, “but it couldn’t be avoided, as you know.” Botros gave Bolan an artificially sweetened smile. “A terrible tragedy, and a blow to our organization,” he said, referring to Darrick Anderson’s death at Losail.

Bolan thought the man didn’t seem terribly upset, especially given that the team’s second rider, an aging Brazilian, was a perennial back marker who hadn’t won a race in over a decade. Any chance of the team scoring points had died with Darrick Anderson, along with the attendant publicity his star power would have generated. Darrick’s notoriety guaranteed television exposure whenever he was on a racetrack, even if he was only battling for eighth place. The only time the Brazilian racer ever appeared on a television screen was when he was getting lapped by the front runners.

In addition to his apparent indifference to the team’s professional loss, Botros seemed not to have experienced a personal loss, either. In the close-knit fraternity of motorcycle racing, a racer getting killed devastated all the teams, especially the dead racer’s team. It seemed as if the other teams grieved Darrick’s loss more than Team Free Flow. Eddie’s theory about his older brother’s death could very well be true. Bolan knew firsthand that Team Free Flow was affiliated with people who were more than capable of murder.

“I tried to contact you several times over the weekend to reschedule,” Botros said, “but I couldn’t reach you. I assumed you were indisposed.”

“I was fishing,” Bolan said. Botros’ smile wavered momentarily at Bolan’s reply, but returned more sickly sweet than ever.

“Well, Mr. Cooper, I hope you won’t disappear on a fishing expedition this week. Musa bin Osman, Free Flow’s vice president of racing, is flying in from Kuala Lumpur. He will be in San Francisco this evening and would very much like to meet with you. Our recent difficulties have been problematic for him. Free Flow’s CEO is starting to question the expenses of racing, especially after the unfortunate incident last week. Getting sponsorship from your company would help smooth over the situation.”

“You don’t think this will create friction with Arexpo?” Bolan asked, referring to Team Free Flow’s primary sponsor.

“Arexpo is an oil exploration company, not a refining company. They do not provide us with fuel. We purchase that,” Botros said, referring to an Italian fuel company. “Of course we would have to analyze your fuel at the factory, then conduct extensive testing before we could come to an agreement. You really must discuss these details with my superior.”

Bolan arranged to meet with bin Osman that night.

FOLLOWING THE MEETING, Bolan rode over to the Ducati garages in search of Eddie Anderson. Perhaps his supposed proof of his brother’s murder might help him find the missing plutonium. It was a long shot, but right now it was the best shot Bolan had. No one at the Ducati garages had seen Eddie. The soldier overheard Daniel Asnorossa remark to his crew chief in Spanish, “Maybe he’s off getting drunk, like his older brother.”

Bolan walked around behind the garage area to where the riders’ motor homes were parked. When practice got underway the following day, security in the area would tighten up, and by race day he knew he wouldn’t get near the motor homes without an official escort, but this early in the week the area was practically deserted and security was lax. Only about half a dozen truly driven riders like Anderson and Asnorossa had shown up this early; everyone else would drift in later that night or early the next morning.

He found Anderson’s motor home with the door wide open. The latch had been broken, and there were signs of some sort of struggle having taken place within the vehicle. Cushions had been knocked off the sofa and a broken cup and saucer lay on the floor in the kitchen area. A burner was still on under a stainless steel espresso pot on the stove and finely ground coffee was spread all over the counter and floor. Small drops of blood mixed with the coffee grounds and left a trail leading out the door. Bolan looked out the window above the stove and saw three men trying to stuff a struggling figure into the back of a Chevrolet Impala.

The Executioner exited the motor home and in several long strides he was almost to the car. The sight of the big man charging them momentarily distracted the kidnappers. Anderson took advantage of their paralysis, driving his knee into one of their crotches so hard he felt soft tissue rupturing in the man’s groin. He may not have been a physically large man, but what mass he had consisted of strong bones wrapped in corded muscles, the result of constant training, years of wrestling the most powerful motorcycles on Earth around racetracks and good genetics. The wounded man collapsed to the ground, only to be replaced by two others, the driver and the front-seat passenger.

Bolan reached the melee at the moment the driver stepped out of the car and pointed an AK-47 his way. He had no time to draw his own weapon but from the angle at which the man held the rifle against his hip the soldier could see that the shooter’s aim was high. The Executioner dived into the grass beneath the stream of bullets, sliding into the shooter’s legs and knocking him back into the car. Bolan leapt to his feet, grabbing the hot rifle barrel on his way up and wrenching it away from the shooter’s hands.

Meanwhile, Eddie Anderson fought like a demonic howler monkey against the two would-be kidnappers, but they were proving too much for him. Bolan raised the gun barrel over his head and brought the wooden stock down square in the shooter’s face. When he pulled the stock from the man’s face, which no longer bore any resemblance to a human face, he spun around and slammed the gore-covered rifle butt into the temple of one of the men attacking Anderson. The man fell to the ground.

Anderson had the other attacker on the ground, his knees pinning the man’s arms and his fist pumping into the man’s face. Anderson looked as if he might beat the man to death, but the fellow whose scrotum he had ruptured rose up and pulled him off the man before he could deliver the killing blow. The man Anderson had been beating struggled to his feet, blood spraying from a deep gash near his left cheekbone. He reached behind his back. Bolan knew he was going for a weapon so he swung the rifle stock around again and caught him right across his right temple, hitting him so hard that a geyser of blood erupted from the left side of his head. His eyes rolled back and he fell to the ground.

Bolan flipped the rifle around as he spun to see the remaining kidnapper holding Anderson in front of him, a 9 mm Glock 17 pressed to Anderson’s right temple. Bolan put the hooded post of the front sight on the portion of the kidnapper’s head that was the farthest away from Anderson. Though he had no idea how well sighted in the AK was, at this short range the executioner could see the gun barrel was pointed past Anderson’s head. He gave the trigger a short squeeze, firing off just one round even though the selector was on full auto.

That round did the business. The man flew back and dropped, his torso falling against the back seat through the open door. Anderson whirled around, ready to fight some more, but there was no one left to fight. The four would-be kidnappers all lay dead at their feet.

The dead man looked Asian, possibly Filipino, judging by what was left of their faces. Laguna Seca was still relatively empty and so far no one had arrived on the scene, but Bolan could tell the gunshots had attracted attention because of the sirens he heard coming their way. He looked inside the car and pulled out a magazine. Bolan knew it would be filled with blow-in subscription cards, so he shook it until four cards fell out. He dipped each of the kidnapper’s right-hand index fingers in blood and made fingerprint imprints on the card stock. He had the cards in the vest pocket of his sport jacket before the police arrived.

Four squad cars skidded to a stop on the grass. “You’re no gas salesman, are you?” Anderson asked the soldier.

“I’m a sales representative for the manufacturer of quality racing fuels,” Bolan said, “but I had some combat training when I was in the military.”

“Whatever,” Anderson said. “I don’t care. I’m just glad you came along when you did. Thank you.”

BOTH ANDERSON AND BOLAN spent the next several hours at the Monterey Police Department describing what had happened. Since Bolan wasn’t suspected of anything besides being a good Samaritan who stopped the kidnapping of a celebrity, they allowed him to ride his motorcycle to the precinct. This enabled him to stash his weapons before he went through the metal detector at the security checkpoint in the precinct’s entrance. Bolan’s credentials as Matt Cooper were impeccable, and even though his brutal slaying of the attackers raised suspicions, his reactions were justifiable, and they’d had a beneficial result for the department. Having one of the world’s top motorcycle racers kidnapped under their noses would have been a tremendous embarrassment to the force. Bolan was allowed to leave before Anderson, who remained behind because he wanted to tell the police his theories about his brother’s murder. After the attempted kidnapping, the authorities were much more interested in what had happened to Darrick Anderson. So was the Executioner, but at the moment he had other matters to attend to.

As soon as he was back at his hotel, Bolan scanned the fingerprints he’d pulled from the corpses on his portable scanner and sent them to Stony Man Farm. He wanted to find out who he’d just killed.

Within half an hour Aaron Kurtzman was on the phone with that information. “You were right about their being Filipinos, Striker,” Kurtzman said. “These were some particularly badass Filipinos, too, known members of Jemaah Islamiah.”

“So what’s the connection between these guys and Team Free Flow?”

Kurtzman paused, obviously reading through the information he’d uncovered in the short time since Bolan had sent him the fingerprints. “It all seems to point back to Musa bin Osman.”

“Speak of the devil,” Bolan said. “I have an appointment with him in three hours.”

“There’s something else you should know,” Kurtzman said. “The men you killed also had strong ties to the BNG.”

Bolan knew the BNG—the Bahala Na Gang—was one of the most powerful Filipino street gangs. Originally formed by inmates in the notorious jails of the Philippines in the early 1940s, the BNG eventually spread its operations around the globe. Originally Bahala Na meant “God willing,” in Tagalog, but in recent generations the term had come to mean a more fatalistic “whatever.” Fatalism defined the BNG, and fatality followed it from the Philippines to North America, where the organization had evolved into an especially violent criminal syndicate. The BNG was strong in the San Francisco area.

“I didn’t have time to examine the bodies before the police arrived,” Bolan said. “I didn’t see any question marks.” Each member of the BNG tattooed a question mark symbol somewhere on his body. “So these guys are hooked up with al Qaeda now?”

“At least the four men you killed today were,” Kurtzman said. “It might be more accurate to say that Jemaah Islamiah is hooked up with the BNG. My guess is that they’re just hiring the BNG for muscle.”

“That would be my guess, too,” the Executioner said.

“But they’re good muscle,” Kurtzman replied. “Watch your back tonight, Striker.”

“How’d they get into the paddock?”

Kurtzman took a moment to answer, meaning he was once again looking through the reports he and his team had generated. “Says here that they were posing as reporters for City Rider, a San Francisco-based motorcycle magazine.”

“Has our little altercation at the track this morning attracted any attention?”

“Attention? It’s being broadcast on every major news channel nonstop. You couldn’t have attracted more attention. All the major newshounds are already on the scene. I don’t know what’s going to be harder for you—finding the plutonium or dodging those nitwits.”

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