CRITICAL EVACUATION

A secret meeting with antigovernment leaders ready to negotiate peace in Syria backfires when the plane carrying UN diplomats to the war-torn country is shot down. Tasked with finding—and extracting—the diplomats before word of their disappearance gets out, Mack Bolan drops into the Syrian desert.

But Bolan isn’t the only one looking for the crash site. The rebels and the Syrian military each have their own agendas, and UN officials would make valuable hostages for either side of the conflict. With the plane’s tracking device mysteriously disabled and hundreds of miles of desert to search, Bolan is in a deadly race against fighters who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their cause. The Executioner won’t stop until he leaves his enemies in the dust of their own destruction.

Bolan leaped from the Niva carrying the RPG-7.

Behind him, he heard Sabah Azmeh jump out and make a run for it, as instructed. Not that it would help, if the advancing chopper’s searchlight fell on either one of them.

Whether it was a Hind or Hoplite helicopter, neither could shrug off a direct hit from one of Bolan’s 93 mm rocket-propelled HEAT warheads. He could bring down whichever helicopter it turned out to be—if he hit it.

He’d have to do this right the first time. He hadn’t grabbed a second rocket from the Niva’s backseat, and he likely wouldn’t have time to reload the launcher anyway, if his first warhead missed its mark.

The searchlight found his ride, swept to the pilot’s right and froze on Bolan.

He recognized the stutter of a heavy machine gun and saw its muzzle flashes winking at him from the helicopter’s chin. That meant he had a Hind to deal with and would have to make a clean hit with his HEAT round when he let it fly.

First, though, Bolan had to dodge the storm of bullets streaming toward him. He hit the ground and rolled, took a beating on his shoulder from the launcher’s tube, and came up in a crouch, squinting through its sight into the searchlight’s blinding glare.

The Executioner: Syrian Rescue
Don Pendleton’s

Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Is not every war between men, war between brothers?

—Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

Borders will not keep me from hunting down those who kill their brothers and sisters for personal gain. Willing or not, those criminals are at war with The Executioner.

—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.

For Staff Sergeant Melvin Morris

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

Quotes

The Mack Bolan Legend

Dedication

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

Epilogue

Copyright

Prologue

Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria

Yaser Jenyat was sick of waiting. It was miserably hot and the dry earth underneath his buttocks was scorching. When he checked his Rolex replica, it seemed the hands were frozen. Had they moved at all since he had checked them last?

“They’ve changed plans, or itineraries,” he suggested. “Maybe someone warned them.”

“Who?” Ziad Dalila asked him.

“How should I know?” Jenyat answered. “Someone.”

“We have orders,” said Malek Hakim.

“We have obeyed them,” Jenyat shot back. “We came, we waited. No one said we have to take up residence.”

“You want to leave,” Hakim replied, “start walking.”

Jenyat tried to spit but found his mouth had suddenly gone dry. “I didn’t say that.” His voice cracked like the sunbaked soil. “We all should go, before a damned patrol turns up.”

“You know these Westerners,” Tawfiq Jandali said. “They’re slow with everything.”

Until they want to kill you, Jenyat thought. Shifting where he sat, his back against the left rear tire of their UAZ-469 off-road vehicle, his elbow grazed the AKM assault rifle standing beside him, almost toppling it before he lunged and caught it, just in time. He glanced around to see if any of the others had observed his clumsiness, but they were busy squinting at the eastern skyline, toward Iraq.

“We’ll wait another thirty minutes,” Hakim said. “If they’re not here by then, I’ll call in for advice.”

No one replied to that. It had not been a question.

Jenyat sipped warm water out of his canteen. He wished they had some shade, that someone else had drawn the so-called “plum assignment,” that he might be anyplace but here. The thoughts of glory he’d envisioned when his name was drawn had long since disappeared, evaporating like the sweat that drenched his shirt.

At least he would not be the one to fire the crucial shot. He understood the basics of the 9K338 Igla-S shoulder-mounted launcher and its 9M342 missile, but he was not competent to aim and fire it, thank Allah. If they had waited all this time only to fail at their assignment, Jenyat was relieved the shame would not be his.

“I see something,” Dalila said, passing Hakim his field glasses. “East-northeast.”

That covered half the godforsaken desert, but Hakim had barely raised the glasses to his eyes when he said, “I see it.” Several seconds later he added, “Yes. It’s them.”

Jenyat rose to his feet, surprised to feel a fleeting tremor in his legs, and reached for his rifle. He would have no use for it, if all went well, but he felt better holding it, sharing the AKM’s potential for explosive violence.

“Get ready,” Hakim ordered.

Tawfiq was even now hauling the Igla out of the UAZ-469’s cargo bay. The tube was painted olive drab, like everything else in the army. It was a little over five feet long, nose-heavy with its pistol grip and its bulbous infrared sighting gear. Already loaded, it weighed thirty-seven pounds, including the warheads. Its maximum operational range was almost four miles, with a flight ceiling of eleven and a half thousand feet.

They had been promised that the target, although capable of cruising at much higher altitudes, would be within the missile’s range. The flight would be a border hop, evading radar on both sides to keep the visit under wraps. Deniability was crucial to diplomacy among the states that labeled themselves civilized.

“Late as they are, how do we know it’s them?” he asked Hakim.

“I see the plane,” Hakim replied. “It has ‘UN’ painted behind the cockpit and on the tail.”

“Praise Allah,” Ziad Dalila said.

“Allahu akbar,” Jandali chimed in, as he hoisted the launcher to his right shoulder.

Jenyat could see the target now, and he heard the whisper of its twin engines drawing closer. He considered praying briefly, silently, but then decided it would be a waste of time.

Squinting, he watched the small white speck, distorted by the heat haze, moving into range.

* * *

“I WILL REMIND you that we must not set our hopes too high,” Sani Bankole said.

Seated across the aisle from Bankole, Roger Segrest almost asked, “what hopes?” but stopped himself. He was a pessimist by nature but had learned to hide it well during his long climb up the State Department ladder to his present post. Most of the people he dealt with daily lived for smiles and reassurances, not straight talk that would drive them all to drink.

Besides, he didn’t have to spell it out. Segrest was confident that everyone aboard the Let L 410 was wise enough to know the truth—namely, that Syria was in the toilet, circling the drain. The country had been bad enough, a nest of terrorists, before its latest civil war erupted, pitting a despotic government against hundreds of rival “liberation” forces. Toss in Hezbollah, the Kurds and ISIS, among other players, and what did you have?

A goddamned recipe for disaster.

Still, there was an outside chance he and the other passengers on this plane might accomplish something, he supposed. Stranger things had happened in the strange world of diplomacy, but they were few and far between.

One of the pilots spoke up on the intercom. “We’ve crossed the border, gentlemen.”

Segrest couldn’t have told the difference, peering out his window at the trackless wasteland below. All deserts looked the same to him: bleak, unforgiving, dangerous.

He idly wondered what their lodgings would be like in Deir ez-Zor. They’d be stuck in the Syrian city for three or four days, unless the talks broke down immediately—as they might, considering the endless grievances both sides advanced.

Make that all sides, Segrest thought. It might have been a relatively simple matter if the only people at the table had been government officials and the rebels who opposed them. Oil, politics and religion changed that, of course, dragging in Lebanon, Iraq, Israel and Jordan, not to mention Russia and his own employer, the United States. They hadn’t heard from China yet, or Egypt, but he wouldn’t be surprised if both of them weighed in before the year was out.

Diplomacy, my ass, he thought, only half listening to their putative spokesman from the United Nations. It was a damned chess game, with better than a dozen players making moves.

“But if we have patience—” Bankole was on a roll, but now the cockpit intercom cut through his platitudes.

“We have a target lock! Fasten your seat belts, gentlemen. Evasive action, starting now!”

Segrest looked out the window, didn’t see a damned thing but the pale blue sky they occupied and the broiling desert. “Target lock” meant someone had “painted” them with infrared to guide a rocket or a burst of antiaircraft fire, but who in the hell—

The Let L 410 shuddered, riding a blast of thunder from the clear sky. The explosion didn’t breach the cabin, but oxygen masks automatically dropped from the ceiling, dangling like weird wilted flowers in front of their faces. Segrest fumbled with his seat belt, fastening it on the third try, as the turboprop nosed over and began to fall.

Even the pilot sounded panicked. “Crash positions, gentlemen! We’re going down.”

1

Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria

The Jeep Wrangler was twenty-plus years old and showed it, mangy rust spots peeking through its faded paint, a long crack stretching across the lower left-hand quadrant of its dusty windshield. The canvas roof rattled and flapped. Its seats were sprung, their stuffing visible where seams had split, and underneath a set of worn-out rubber mats, passengers could watch the desert rolling past below, if they were so inclined.

Mack Bolan didn’t care about the Jeep’s appearance or its comfort. Before accepting it, he’d checked the tires—not new by any means, but serviceable—and the 4.2-liter engine, testing out the four-wheel drive, until he was more or less convinced that it would take him where he had to go and bring him back again.

Maybe.

A lot of that depended on terrain, of course, and any obstacles—human or otherwise—they met along the way. So far, they had been making fairly decent time.

The man riding in the shotgun seat was a slender Syrian with a patchy beard, wearing a checkered keffiyeh and faded desert camouflage, the sleeves rolled up, pants cuffs tucked into well-worn combat boots. He had a pistol and a wicked dagger in the waistband of his trousers, hidden by the loose tail of his four-pocket BDU shirt.

The heavy hardware rode behind them, on the Wrangler’s floorboard and backseat.

They had left Highway 7 ten miles north of Al Mayadin, angling northeastward on a road that wasn’t marked on any map, barely a shadow of a line on Google Earth. No one had ever bothered paving it or even laying gravel down. Why waste the time and energy, when desert winds and shifting sand could cover and conceal it within minutes?

“We are in bandit country now,” Sabah Azmeh observed.

“I’m more concerned about the army and irregulars,” Bolan replied.

“They’re bandits, too. They just have newer clothes and weapons.”

That was true enough. Deir ez-Zor Governorate harbored armed forces of various factions in Syria’s long civil war. Bolan was hoping to avoid them all and complete his mission with a minimum of static, but he knew that notion wasn’t realistic; hence, the hardware in the back.

Beyond armed opposition, there was still the desert to contend with—over ten thousand square miles of nothing but sand, stone, scorpions and cobras. Water was scarce, cover likewise, and the only ally he had was riding in the Wrangler’s shotgun seat.

Azmeh spat out a curse and pointed off to Bolan’s left, toward a plume of beige dust rising in the still, hot air. One vehicle, at least, and it was headed their way. “If they’re hostile, we’ll deal with it,” said Bolan. “Grab the rifles.”

Azmeh twisted in his seat and rummaged underneath a tatty blanket covering a portion of their mobile arsenal. He fished out two AKMS assault rifles, their metal stocks folded, both with forty-round box magazines in place, loaded with 7.62×39 mm rounds.

“It’s too bad,” Azmeh said.

“Too bad,” Bolan agreed.

But the encounter was unavoidable.

* * *

“YOU SEE IT?” Youssef Sadek asked his driver.

“It’s hard to miss,” Sami Karam replied.

“Get after them.”

Karam changed course to chase the distant rooster tail of dust, downshifting first, then bringing the GAZ Sadko cargo truck up to speed. Their men in the back would be cursing by now, maybe craning their necks for a glimpse of whatever had drawn them off course.

Karam knew the drill: stop and search anyone they found drifting around in the desert, unless they were Syrian regulars. Karam and his men were Hezbollah fighters, and their party had long sided with the Syrian government.

“One vehicle, I think,” Sadek observed, talking to help himself relax. It was a trait Karam had noticed in the past but did not share.

“Perhaps one,” he replied, to keep from being rude.

“Not large,” Sadek said. “Maybe a UAZ.”

“Maybe,” Karam agreed, scanning the desert that still lay between them and their quarry.

“You can overtake them, eh?”

“I hope so.”

The GAZ Sadko had a 4.67-liter V8 engine, generating 130 horsepower, but the truck could only do so much off-road, on rough terrain, without falling apart or pitching the soldiers out of its open bed like popcorn bursting from a pot with no lid.

Karam fought the steering wheel and grappled with the gearshift, sharp eyes twitching from his target—which was definitely fleeing now—to the ground in front of him, watching out for hidden obstacles. The last thing he needed was to crash against a boulder or tip into a wadi that he’d overlooked.

The one thing worse than meeting unexpected adversaries in the desert would be getting stranded there, long miles from any help. The Sadko had no radio, of course, and while Karam was carrying a cell phone, picking up a signal here would be impossible.

So, no mistakes, then.

“Faster!” Sadek urged him, as if simply saying it would make the truck perform beyond its capabilities.

Karam said nothing, concentrating on the smaller vehicle ahead of them. The gap was closing, though not fast enough to please his agitated passenger. Sadek enjoyed killing—well, who didn’t?—but he sometimes rushed into a fight without considering the possibility of failure.

Closer now, Karam could see that they were following an ancient Jeep, not an official army vehicle. That still left many possibilities, given the Governorate’s state of near chaos. For all Karam knew, they might even now be wasting time and fuel, chasing a party of their so-called friends: the Badr Corps or the Promised Day Brigade—they were too numerous to count on any given day.

Focus on what you know, he thought.

Four passengers at most inside the Jeep, which meant they were outnumbered more than two to one by Karam and his men. Fair odds, but you could never truly judge an enemy until you joined him in battle.

And if you had misjudged him…

Karam had to be prepared when they made contact. Wedged between his left knee and the driver’s door, his AK-47 was already locked and loaded. He could bail out of the truck, firing, or run down anyone who tried to flee the Jeep on foot.

Beyond that, all Karam could do was clutch the steering wheel and pray.

* * *

“THEY’RE GAINING ON US,” Azmeh said.

Bolan could see that in his rearview, and he didn’t care to comment on the obvious. Instead, he asked, “So, any thoughts on who they are?”

“The truck is standard issue,” Azmeh said. “But no flag or insignia. Not army or police, then, but beyond that—anyone.”

That helped a little. Bolan drew a private line at killing cops, regardless of what side they served or how corrupt they were.

The problem now: assuming that he couldn’t lose the truck pursuing them, where could they stand and fight?

The flat, featureless desert offered no concealment, nothing in the way of cover if he stopped to shoot it out. Bolan could see heads bobbing in the truck’s bed, men with rifles who would likely have no qualms about eliminating him. At the moment, Bolan didn’t know who was pursuing them. They might be Syrians or Lebanese, Jordanians or Kurds, Iraqis or Iranians, Sunnis or Shi’ites.

And it made no difference. He had to take them out.

The hardware Bolan had on hand was standard issue, for convenience. His pistol, like Azmeh’s, was the same Browning Hi-Power carried by Syrian army officers. The other arms were Russian, from their matched AKMs to a Dragunov SVD sniper rifle, an RPK light machine gun, an RPG-7 grenade launcher with a mix of warheads, and a case of F1 hand grenades known in the Motherland as limonka for their supposed resemblance to lemons.

First thing, Bolan scratched the long-range weapons off his mental list. His Dragunov was loaded, packing ten rounds in a detachable box magazine, but the rifle was meant for solitary, unsuspecting targets at a distance. He could use it to stop the truck, sure, if he took the driver out or maybe cracked the engine block, but would leave shooters scampering around the desert, no fit job for the Dragunov’s PSO-1 telescopic sight.

It would be down and dirty, then, a bloody scramble with their vehicles as the only cover, in a firefight where the Jeep was nearly as important as their own flesh and blood. If they lost their transportation, their mission was a washout.

Trapped in Syria on foot, they were as good as dead.

Bolan checked the Jeep’s fuel gauge: three-quarters full, two hundred fifty miles or so before the tank would run dry. They had spare cans of gasoline in back, but those were vulnerable to incoming fire, the first thing that a random burst might ventilate. Besides, he couldn’t hope to ditch the truck simply by outpacing it. For starters, it would have a larger gas tank—maybe two, three times the size of the Jeep’s—and even with its greater weight it could outlast the Wrangler in the long run.

No, they’d have to fight. The only questions now were when and where.

“Be ready when I give the word,” he warned Azmeh. “Don’t hesitate.”

“I will not.”

Bolan stood on the accelerator, racing over rocky ground that sent jolts through his spine, still looking for a place to make a stand.

* * *

“WHY ARE YOU slowing down?” Sadek demanded.

“I’m trying not to wreck the truck,” Karam replied, tight-lipped.

“We cannot let them get away!” Sadek spat back at him.

Karam had no answer for that, but Sadek felt the truck accelerate a little in response to his tirade. A little, yes, but not enough to suit him.

They had spent the past two days patrolling empty landscapes, wasting time and fuel. Returning to his captain empty-handed made Sadek feel like a fool. It marked him, he was sure, as someone who could not perform to expectations. Someone who should not advance to a higher rank. He hated feeling like a failure, even though the purpose of jihad was serving Allah, not one’s self. Another flaw in Sadek’s character, but one he’d learned to live with over time.

He turned to peer at his men through the cab’s rear window. They were rocking with the truck, clinging to their weapons and their bench seats. Some, the younger ones, were smiling, happy to be hunting, while the more experienced among them were expressionless. The veterans had been through this before, with variations: travelers detained and questioned, then released if they identified themselves as allies, executed if they failed to prove their allegiance. Each enemy eliminated was another victory, however insignificant it seemed.

And this quarry was running. That proved something to Sadek.

He would not allow them to escape.

“Enough of this,” he snarled, lifting his AK-47 from between his knees. He twisted in his seat and eased the rifle through his open window, sling around his right arm to prevent it from falling if his sweaty hands slipped.

“Youssef…” Karam warned.

“We have to stop them,” Sadek said as he tried to aim, a rush of hot air in his face, making him squint.

His first short burst was wasted, rattling off to the far right of the fleeing Jeep. Cursing, Sadek tried to correct his aim, but it was difficult, the door’s sun-heated metal nearly blistering his bare arms while the jolting of the truck made the Kalashnikov’s adjustable iron sights vibrate erratically.

He fired again, four rounds on full-auto, and imagined that he saw one punch a divot in the old Jeep’s fender. An improvement, but he had to do better if he meant to stop them.

Another rifle fired somewhere above him, making Sadek flinch. One of his men had followed his example, shooting at the Jeep. A flash of irritation stung him, then he realized it did not matter who managed to stop the vehicle, as long as it was done. A second rifle rattling overhead made Sadek smile.

The travelers had doomed themselves by running, even if they were not enemies. His men were hunting, and they wanted blood. So did Sadek, if he was honest with himself.

Now, if Karam would only hold the truck steady enough for him to aim…

* * *

A BULLET STRUCK the Wrangler’s right wing mirror, ripping it away. Sabah Azmeh slumped lower in his seat, half turned to watch the truck behind them slowly gaining ground. Two riflemen were aiming across the truck cab’s roof, a third man leaning from the passenger’s window, rifle in hand.

How had he come to this?

The answer mocked him: he had volunteered.

“I’ll try to slow them down,” Azmeh told the tall American who called himself Matt Cooper.

“Good luck,” Cooper replied, seeming to mean it.

Given how much they were swerving to avoid incoming fire, Azmeh couldn’t crawl into the rear. The best he could do was aim his AKMS through the hazy back window, hold steady when he fired, and hope the hot brass spewing from his weapon did not fall down Cooper’s collar, burning him and maybe causing him to crash the Jeep.

Azmeh braced one elbow on the low back of his seat to help steady his weapon, which was switched to semiautomatic. He didn’t think he could stop the truck, much less take out its occupants, but if he slowed them down a bit, perhaps Cooper could think of something.

Azmeh’s first shot drilled through the window’s yellowed plastic and flew on, hopefully to strike the truck. Azmeh would have loved to drill its radiator, stranding their assailants and leaving them to simmer through the afternoon and freeze overnight.

That mental picture cheered him, and he fired twice more before an enemy bullet pierced the Jeep’s window. Azmeh flinched and ducked as it struck the roll bar and shattered, spraying the seats with shrapnel. Something stung his left arm.

“Full-auto now, I think,” he said to Cooper.

“Your call,” the American replied, and somehow found a way to wring more speed out of the Wrangler’s howling engine.

* * *

AT LEAST THREE RIFLEMEN were firing at them now, by Bolan’s count. He couldn’t see them well, between the dust, his wobbling mirrors and the Wrangler’s canvas top, but they were gaining, and their prospects for a hit seemed better than Azmeh’s. Bolan was locked out of the action, doing what he could to dodge incoming fire without rolling the Jeep. He hoped there were no wadis hiding out there, waiting to derail them in the next few hundred yards.

Azmeh squeezed off another burst, then muttered something to himself. Before Azmeh fired again, Bolan called out, raising his voice over the wind. “I want to try something. Fasten your seat belt.”

Azmeh didn’t question him. He had to know that they were running out of time and options now. If Bolan couldn’t pull off a surprise for their pursuers, they were toast.

He heard the seat belt click and said, “Okay, hang on!”

Cranking the Wrangler’s wheel hard to the left, he whipped the Jeep’s rear end through a long, sliding one hundred eighty-degree turnaround. The knobby tires spewed sand and gravel, raising clouds of dust.

Before it settled, Bolan scooped up his Kalashnikov and bailed out of the Jeep, leaving Azmeh to follow him as they went to meet their enemies.

Whatever happened next would be on Bolan’s terms.

2

Washington, DC

“How much do you know about the Syrian civil war?” Hal Brognola had asked Bolan, thirty-odd hours earlier.

“The basics,” Bolan had replied. “The president’s been hanging on for what, twelve years?”

“Fourteen and counting,” Brognola replied.

“He came up through the army, he’s a critic of the West, not much regard for human rights. The Arab Spring surprised him, like it did other leaders in the region. Where they folded, he’s clung to power, with accusations of atrocities against the rebels and civilians. He’s got the army and police, supported by Iran and outside Shi’ite groups. The opposition is a shaky coalition—Kurds, the Muslim Brotherhood, Sufis opposed to Shi’ites, take your pick.”

Brognola nodded. “So, you know the diplomatic picture, more or less.”

“Broad strokes,” Bolan said.

“Okay, well you won’t have heard about the new initiative. It’s strictly classified—which, given the UN’s Swiss cheese security, means only ten or fifteen thousand people know about it. Long story short, a couple of people from State have been talking to Syrian opposition leaders and an undersecretary from UNESCWA. In case that doesn’t ring a bell, it’s the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia, concerned with all things Middle Eastern.”

“Talking? That’s the secret?”

“Nope. The secret bit is where they were supposed to hold their latest talks. In Syria, at Ar-Raqqah, east of the capital. They planned to slip in from Iraq, under the radar, have their sit-down, offer the rebels whatever they need to get rid of the president and restore civil order.”

“Not the UN’s usual approach.”

“Not even close,” Hal said. “And that’s why it was on the QT, more or less.”

“When you say ‘was’…”

“They tried it, yesterday, but something happened. No one’s sure exactly what that was. We’ve lost track of the UN flight from Baghdad—radio silence, no SOS to indicate that they were going down.”

“What about the beacons?”

“There were two on board, as usual,” Brognola said. “A distress radio beacon and an underwater locator retrofitted to the standard flight recorder. So far, neither one of them is functioning.”

“That seems unusual.”

“Extremely,” Brognola agreed. “One of the guys from State was also wearing an emergency locator transmitter, but he would have had to turn it on himself. So far, nothing. Could be it slipped his mind, or maybe he’s no longer with us.”

Bolan saw where this was going. “And you need someone to take a look,” he said, not asking.

“Right.”

“What have you got from satellite surveillance, so far?”

“Squat. Before we knew the plane was missing, a haboob blew in from the Sahara, dumping tons of sand all along the projected flight path. If the plane went down, it’s hidden from us now.”

“That isn’t much to go on,” Bolan said.

“Not much, but we need to try. Aside from our guys and the UN delegates, there were people from the opposition on the plane. They’ve been to Washington, been seen around the White House. If the Syrian army or their playmates bag the drop-ins, it’s a black eye for the States and the United Nations. Makes it look like we were setting up an end run to resolve the civil war.”

“We were,” Bolan observed.

“Which doesn’t mean the world’s supposed to know it,” Brognola reminded him.

Deniability. One of the oldest games in politics, diplomacy and war.

“Anything else I should know?” asked Bolan.

“Other than the fact that time is of the essence?” Brognola removed a flash drive from an inside pocket of his jacket, handing it to Bolan. “Files on the missing personnel. Same password as usual.”

Bolan nodded and pocketed the device.

“So, as I said, time’s critical, and we’re already behind the game. You have a seven-thirty reservation from Dulles out to London Heathrow, where we have a seat waiting on a flight to Baghdad. You’ll be met there, with arrangements for the crossing into Syria.”

“Equipment?”

“Waiting for you at the other end. Top quality. Deniable, of course.”

“Of course. Special instructions?”

“There’s a chance you’ll be too late. I’d call it fifty-fifty, given all that’s going on in eastern Syria. In which case—”

“It’s a rescue mission,” Bolan finished for him.

Brognola nodded grimly. “That’s the best case scenario.”

* * *

ONCE HE’D CHECKED IN and cleared security at Dulles, Bolan found a seat at his gate and opened his laptop to review the files on the USB key.

There wasn’t that much to them. But running down the list gave Bolan a feel for those who had been aboard the UN flight, matching names to photographs and fleshing out the details of their lives.

The head honcho on the flight was Sani Bankole, forty-seven-year-old from Nigeria. He had joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at twenty-one and worked his way up from there to his current UN post as deputy undersecretary-general for UNESCWA. His rank carried diplomatic immunity, which, Bolan thought, would mean precisely nothing in the devil’s mix of Syria.

Bankole’s number two was Tareq Eleyan, a thirty-six-year-old Jordanian. Most likely, he had been assigned to translate and to offer insight on the mind-set of his country’s neighbors to the north. Roger Segrest led the US team. Age fifty-two, he was one of four deputy secretaries from the State Department’s Executive Secretariat. That job normally involved liaison between State and the White House or the National Security Council, but it seemed Segrest was branching out. His backup, barely half Segrest’s age, was Dale Walton, a relative fledgling with eight years at State. He had a master’s from Columbia in Middle Eastern history and politics, and he was fluent in Arabic. Beyond that, there was nothing else of interest in Walton’s dossier.

The mission’s wild cards came from Syria. Muhammad Qabbani was an old-looking forty, highly placed in the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces. That group, as Bolan knew, was constantly in flux, but Qabbani managed a delicate tightrope act within it, working to alleviate dissension in the ranks, mediating personality clashes between spokesmen for such disparate partners as the Muslim Brotherhood, the Kurdish National Council and the al-Nusra Front, affiliated with al-Qaeda. Qabbani’s second was Rafic Al Din. He’d been imprisoned by the regime for joining demonstrations in the Arab Spring, then caught a break when amnesty was briefly offered in a bid to pacify the West. He’d joined the Free Syrian Army, and the rest of his file was a blank, presumably involving covert work that wasn’t on the record.

Bolan didn’t care for wild cards, but he’d worked with many in the past—sometimes successfully, sometimes not so much. His present mission, if he found the diplomats at all, would not allow him time to argue or cajole the targets into playing ball with him, accepting orders from a man they’d never met before and never would again. He’d have to pull rank, seize control—a problem in itself.

Bolan’s experience with other members of the diplomatic breed enabled him to profile these men with fair precision. Even in this extremity, they’d be suspicious of outsiders turning up out of the blue and giving orders. There could be resistance, possibly defiance from the men he’d been assigned to save.

Closing the laptop, Bolan made a private resolution not to fail.

It was a do-or-die assignment. Fifty-fifty. Right.

* * *

Baghdad International Airport

THE AIRPORT’S SINGLE terminal was crowded as Bolan deplaned, shouldering his carry-on. Greeters were lined up with signs on the far side of passport control, and Bolan recognized his contact from Brognola’s flash drive. Sabah Azmeh was holding a piece of white cardboard with “COOPER” written across it.

“That’s me,” Bolan said, as he approached the smaller man. Azmeh wore a blue blazer over khakis and well-worn loafers.

“Mr. Cooper, excellent!” He beamed, but there were still formalities to be observed. “A journey of a thousand miles begins with but a single step,” he added.

“Not all who wander are lost,” Bolan replied, completing the exchange.

“Indeed.” Still smiling, Azmeh pumped his hand three times, then let it go. His grip was strong and dry. “Do you have other luggage?”

“Just this,” Bolan answered, hoisting his lone bag.

“Perfect. A man who travels light, yes? We’ll find our vehicle outside and then perhaps collect some heavy baggage.”

They headed out to the parking lot and got into the Wrangler. Once they were on the move, with Azmeh driving, Bolan asked him, “Was there any problem with the hardware?”

“No, no. Nothing whatsoever. Weapons and explosives are as common in Baghdad today as vegetables. Perhaps more so.”

Bad news for residents whose only goal was to get on with normal life, but good for Bolan when he’d traveled halfway round the world unarmed. He’d grown accustomed to flying unarmed, but working the streets of a city like Baghdad without hardware made him feel naked.

On their way to meet the weapons’ dealer, Bolan filled out Azmeh’s sketchy dossier from Stony Man. His guide was twenty-eight, a Syrian expatriate who’d lost his parents and three younger siblings to a chemical attack at Ghouta in August 2013. Prior to that, the Syrian police had killed his older brother, leaving Azmeh as the sole survivor of his family. Despite those losses, he seemed fairly cheerful—or he’d learned to fake it. Instead of joining rebel forces to unseat the regime, Azmeh still hoped his homeland might achieve stability without more slaughter. To that end, he’d signed on as a native asset of the CIA and volunteered for Bolan’s mission when it came around.

Bolan was cautious, hoped that Azmeh wasn’t lying to him, and that no one from the Company was playing games behind the scenes, pursuing some agenda they had kept from Brognola. When they’d stocked up on hardware, clothing for the field, and everything they needed to survive the desert, it was time to roll. Bolan got behind the wheel, following Azmeh’s directions as they headed westward to Syria. Checkpoints at the border would have stopped them dead, but that was where the Jeep paid off, churning cross-country through the open desert toward the invisible line between countries.

3

Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria

Bolan hit the ground running, clutching his AKMS, using the Jeep’s roiling dust cloud as cover. He tracked the charging truck by sound at first, then saw it looming through the gritty haze.

Never mind disabling the vehicle. The only way to stop or divert it, this close to impact, would be to nail the driver. Bolan stood his ground just long enough to aim a short burst at the dirt-streaked windshield, then he leaped and rolled aside before the hurtling juggernaut could crush him. He scrambled to his feet and fired another burst into the driver’s door as it swept past him. The driver lurched and slumped, but Bolan couldn’t tell how badly he was wounded, if at all.

Regardless, the truck was slowing down. Bolan dove back toward the Jeep, his only standing cover. Better for the Wrangler to absorb a few more rounds than for him to take a hit at such close range.

And guns were blazing now, no fewer than six or seven from the truck bed. To Bolan’s left, Azmeh had joined the fight. As the dust began to settle, Bolan saw his adversaries jumping from the truck and scrambling for the cover of their own vehicle, firing wild bursts as they ran.

The truck was rolling on without them, slower by the moment. Finally, its motor hitched and stalled, most likely from a lack of gas while it was running in third gear. That meant no driver managing the clutch and stick shift. Bolan hoped he’d killed the stranger, but he wasn’t taking it for granted.

He counted eight men on the ground, plus a shotgun rider in the cab. Make it ten if the driver was still fit for action.

When the truck died, it provided solid, stationary cover for his enemies. They couldn’t rush him safely over the thirty yards of open ground between them, but they could snipe around the tailgate, across its hood, or wriggle underneath and try to sight him from a worm’s-eye view.

The Jeep was taking hits now; time was on the opposition’s side. Still, nothing had come close to nailing Bolan—yet.

If the enemy had a working radio, how long until reinforcements could arrive?

Azmeh was scuttling backward to the Jeep now, trading fire with hidden opponents. Their bullets kicked up spurts of dust and sand around his feet as he retreated. Bolan saw trouble coming, but he didn’t want to call out and distract his comrade in the midst of battle.

Azmeh ran into the Wrangler’s left-rear fender, grunting from the impact as he lost his balance and went down. The tumble saved him, as a well-aimed burst cut empty air where he’d been standing a second earlier. The bullets smacked into plastic fuel cans instead.

Bolan returned fire, pinning down the rifleman, while Azmeh rolled and crawled behind the Jeep. He wasn’t safe, just covered for the moment.

Meanwhile, they were both pinned down.

* * *

“YOU MISSED HIM!” Sadek snarled, kicking one of Haaz Gemayel’s legs where they protruded from beneath the truck. “What’s wrong with you?”

Gemayel scooted backward, rising to his knees. He glared at Sadek, index finger on the trigger of his AK-47. “He fell down! That’s not my fault, and I don’t see you helping.”

“I didn’t have a clear shot,” Sadek answered.

“Then get down here with the rest of us,” Gemayel sneered before he ducked back under the truck.

That one was trouble, Sadek thought, a lazy bastard who defied authority when he believed he could get away with it. Why he had volunteered to fight in Syria remained a mystery.

Sadek had already lost one man. Sami Karam was dead or dying in the cab, struck by bullets through the windshield and another burst that had raked his door when Karam had failed to run his killer down. Sadek had bailed when the truck stalled, taking a moment to confirm that Karam wasn’t moving before abandoning him.

At a time like this, if someone was not fit to fight, what good were they?

Sadek himself had yet to fire a shot since exiting the cab, but that was his prerogative as leader of the team. He had been chosen to command and supervise, not do the dirty work himself. Of course, he’d killed before and would not hesitate to jump in if he had a clear shot at the enemy, but was it wise to risk a leader’s life unnecessarily?

Sadek heard bullets strike the truck like hailstones, clanging into sheet metal. Someone cried out in pain under the chassis, a pair of legs thrashed briefly, then their owner started worming backward in fits and starts. Sadek was set to scold Bashar Alama when he emerged, face awash in blood, an ugly gash from a bullet graze above one eye.

“Youssef?” the wounded soldier asked. “Is that you? I can’t see you.”

Sadek fumbled for a handkerchief in his pocket, then pressed it into Alama’s hand. “Wipe off your face,” he said. “It’s just a scratch. Each man must do his part.”

“I will, but—”

“Be strong!” Sadek urged him, moving on before he had to answer any questions or fake a show of sympathy.

For his own sake, and for the estimation of his men, Sadek knew that he had to join the fight. But how? Rushing into the no-man’s land between his truck and the old Jeep would be suicide, and he had never cherished dreams of martyrdom. For all he knew, one of his men might shoot him in the back before their common enemies could cut him down.

So, what else could he do?

He reached the front of the truck, where one of his young soldiers crouched and peered around the fender, straining for a glimpse of the enemy. Sadek tried to remember his name but drew a blank.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Nothing,” the young man replied. “They’ve gone to ground.”

“We need to draw them out.”

“Good luck with that,” the soldier answered.

Sadek considered striking him for insolence, but then decided he had pushed his luck as far as it would go with these inexperienced, poorly trained guerrillas. Discipline was clearly fading in the ranks, the longer Syria’s insurgency dragged on.

Sadek needed to make a grand, dramatic gesture to assert himself, to regain whatever measure of respect his men had felt for him before the shooting started and their nerve ran out. But what could he—

Of course!

There was an RPG-29 launcher lying behind his seat in the cab, with three rockets ready for loading. All he had to do was reach in, retrieve the ordnance while avoiding Karam’s corpse, load the launcher, then take out his foes.

One step at a time, Sadek thought, as he returned to the door he had left hanging open. The Vampir and its ammo were in easy reach.

* * *

SABAH AZMEH SWITCHED out his empty AKMS magazine and snapped a full one in its place. His hip throbbed from his collision with the Jeep, a stupid, clumsy slip that made him feel like a fool even though it saved his life.

His jacket smelled strange, and he realized that gasoline had splashed on to his sleeve after he fell, one of their fuel cans punctured by the slugs that might have killed him otherwise. The stench stung Azmeh’s nostrils and made his eyes water, but all that he could do was scoop up dirt in his free hand and rub it into his wet sleeve. He glanced at Cooper and found the tall American scowling at their predicament. Whatever he had planned, turning around to face the truck and stopping there, it was not working out. Unless he had hatched another scheme…

Cooper shifted, then walked over to the passenger door, keeping low. A burst of hostile fire drilled the Wrangler’s bodywork, one slug caroming off the door near Cooper’s head. He did not flinch as he leaned inside and rummaged through duffel bags. When he backed out, he was holding two grenades.

Each F1 “lemon,” Azmeh knew, weighed a shade under one and a half pounds. A strong man could pitch one forty-five yards, remaining outside the grenade’s estimated thirty-yard kill zone. But could Cooper drop one behind the stalled truck while under fire?

“How can I help you?” Azmeh asked, worried that Cooper might suggest he make the throw himself.

“Give me some cover,” Cooper said. “I’ll tell you when.”

“Done.”

Kneeling, one shoulder against the Jeep’s sun-heated fender, Azmeh held his carbine ready, muzzle pointed at the pale blue sky, his finger on the trigger. Full automatic fire would empty his fresh magazine in four seconds flat, unless he controlled it. He’d go with short bursts to frighten his opponents and keep them from dropping Cooper in his tracks.

He waited, barely breathing, and had started feeling dizzy when the tall American said, “Now!”

* * *

BOLAN PULLED THE GRENADE’S pin and dropped the spoon as he began to move. He had about four seconds until detonation.

The opposition cut loose when he broke from cover, arm cocked for the pitch, an overhand fastball.

A bullet sliced at Bolan’s sleeve, missing flesh and bone, as he dove back to cover in the Wrangler’s shadow. There had been no time for him to follow the grenade in flight. He had to hope it did sufficient damage over there to let him make a second throw.

Bolan counted to three, then he heard the blast, followed by screams. No way for him to judge the damage without seeing it firsthand, but he knew pain when he heard it and the gargling sound of voices choked with blood.

How many dead or wounded out of the eight or ten they’d started with?

Still not enough.

Bolan switched the second F1 to his right hand and walked past Azmeh, staying low. “Good job on the first round. Time for number two.”

His guide nodded. “I’m ready.”

“On my ‘go.’”

Another nod.

Bolan could tell fewer Kalashnikovs were on the job, but counting them by sound was hopeless. He would have a better feel for how many opponents he’d taken out when he stepped out into the open a second time.

He reached the Wrangler’s rear end just as someone shot the spare tire into tatters on its tailgate mount. The Jeep already stank of leaking gasoline, its bodywork had turned into a sieve, and Bolan had his doubts about the old vehicle carrying them any farther on his desert mission. When the left-rear tire began to hiss, Bolan knew their ride was done.

It didn’t matter, though. Survival was the first priority.

He glanced at Azmeh, rising from his crouch as he said, “Go!”

Azmeh was quicker this time, firing through the Wrangler—in one open window, out the other—at their adversaries. Bolan had the F1’s pin free as he came around the tailgate, right arm drawing back—and saw one of the opposition sprinting out from cover, rushing toward him with the long tube of an RPG launcher across his shoulder.

“Watch it!” Bolan called to Azmeh, as he made his pitch and dove facedown into the dirt.

* * *

SADEK HAD STRUGGLED with the RPG-29 launcher, loading it from the rear with a TBG-29V thermobaric antipersonnel round as he sat on the hot, hard soil, praying that he got it right and was not about to kill himself, along with all the other men from his patrol.

Sadek was not a genius with technology, far from it. He could field strip, load and fire a fair variety of weapons, and he learned quickly when new ones fell into his hands. But he could not have said what thermobaric meant or how it worked, in scientific terms. He had seen its effects on vehicles and human flesh, a grisly sight replete with screams of agony from living targets as they fried and died. Sadek wished that upon his enemies today, after they had resisted and embarrassed him.

He would be satisfied, feel good about himself again, when they had been reduced to blackened, shriveled husks upon the desert sand.

And he would be a hero then—if he could only find the will to rise and make his move.

That was the hard part, breaking cover under fire and facing down the enemy. Sadek was not a fan of open warfare, but he’d sworn an oath to Allah and his outcast people, which demanded sacrifice.

So be it.

Shouldering the RPG, he took a moment to adjust its 2.7×1P38 optical sight. There would be precious little time for aiming once Sadek had shown himself, but he would do his best and hope that it was good enough.

He had not told the others what he planned to do, preferring to surprise them after some had treated him with disrespect. Let those who questioned his authority be startled and amazed when he saved them. Anyone who challenged him from that point on would face Sadek’s enduring wrath.

Or maybe they would laugh at him for failing, after he was dead. But then, it wouldn’t matter.

Allah promised a reward for soldiers slain while serving Him. If these were to be Sadek’s last moments, he would step willingly toward the open gates of Paradise.

Sadek lurched to his feet, struggling with the extra forty pounds balanced on one shoulder, then broke into a loping run. The moment he was visible, his enemies would do their best to kill him. Whether they succeeded was in Allah’s hands. Sadek’s job was to hold on long enough to aim and fire the thermobaric rocket, sending them to hell.

One of his soldiers shouted something after him, but Sadek didn’t catch it. Gaining speed, be broke around the front end of the truck and angled toward the bullet-riddled Jeep, in time to see one of his enemies coming out to meet him. The man was not firing at him, did not even have a gun in hand, but his right arm was cocked back…

Sadek understood too late. He knelt and tried to aim his RPG, just as an ovoid object dropped in front of him and wobbled forward, trailing wisps of smoke. A scream of rage had nearly reached his lips when the grenade exploded, switching off the lights in Sadek’s world.

* * *

MACK BOLAN HIT the deck and rode out the explosion, heard the shrapnel buzzing overhead and off into the desert’s dry infinity. When he opened his eyes, the runner with the RPG was gone—or, rather, most of him was gone. The F1 had exploded virtually in his lap, steel fragments ripping through his torso like a blender’s blades and shredding him before he fell.

Dying, the guy had still managed to fire his launcher, but the rocket had been aimed skyward as shrapnel and the F1’s shock wave had blown him backward. Whatever kind of round he’d loaded, it flew high and wide, arcing a quarter-mile into the clear blue, then descending several hundred yards behind the Jeep, where it erupted into oily flame on barren ground.

Bolan leaped to his feet and jerked his AKMS off its shoulder sling, charging the truck. His objective now was to catch the remainder of the team off balance as they ducked rounds from Azmeh’s carbine and recovered from the explosion of his other frag grenade.

He charged around the truck’s front end, firing before he had a clear target in sight. His enemies, some of them wounded, hadn’t seen him coming, but they did their best—which wasn’t good enough.

When all of the men were down and out, he called to Azmeh, then stood up and waved. The Arab came across to join him, cautiously eyeing the scattered dead, as if he thought they might be faking it.

When he was satisfied, Azmeh told Bolan, “They’ve destroyed the Jeep.”

No big surprise there.

“Let’s check out the truck,” Bolan said.

He walked around and dragged the body out of the bloody driver’s seat. He used the dead man’s keffiyeh to mop up the blood, discarded it and slid behind the wheel.

It took a moment for the engine to turn over, but Bolan got it running on the second try. It sounded all right—no strange noises beneath the hood, no red lights on the dashboard. Bolan left it running as he climbed down from the cab and circled the truck with Azmeh, checking out the tires, peering underneath in search of leaks. The truck had taken hits, beginning with its windshield, and the right side was scarred with shiny shrapnel wounds, but nothing Bolan saw or heard gave any indication that the vehicle wouldn’t go the distance.

“Better move our gear,” he said, already heading toward the Jeep.

Bolan’s mobile arsenal was still intact, tucked down against the rear floorboard. The transfer only took a moment, then he climbed back into the driver’s seat, with Azmeh beside him.

He still didn’t know exactly where they were going, other than the general direction, but they wouldn’t have to walk.

At least, not yet.

4

Deir ez-Zor Governorate

Roger Segrest squinted at the blinding sun through his aviators, wishing he’d been smart enough to bring along a hat when he was packing for the trip to Syria. Of course, he’d planned on spending nearly all his time indoors, with air-conditioning, and hadn’t given any thought at all to being shot out of the sky over a freaking desert in the middle of nowhere.

Next time, you’ll know, he thought, and nearly laughed aloud. Just smiling hurt, with lips so dry and cracked. Another vital thing he’d forgotten: lip balm. And, of course, sunscreen.

The funny part was that there might not be a next time. He could die out here, from thirst, exposure, snakebite, take your pick. Rescuers, if they ever came, might find him mummified, a desiccated husk with insects living in his empty skull after they ate his shriveled brain. Maybe his friends at State would stick him in the Diplomacy Center Museum, assuming it ever got built. His wife could help them with the plaque.

Thinking of rescue troubled him and made him angry. They’d only been ninety minutes out of Baghdad when the plane went down, but here it was, day two, and still no help in sight. The worry came from knowing that all planes these days had emergency locator beacons on board, airliners usually packing more than one. The anger—most of it, at least—was currently directed at himself.

Segrest had been outfitted with a homing beacon of his own before he’d left DC. He’d put it in his suitcase, which had seemed like the best place for safekeeping until a rocket had ripped the guts out of their plane and left the baggage scattered God knew where.

Of course, the beacon hadn’t been turned on. Why would it be?

“Stupid,” Segrest muttered to himself.

“How’s that, sir?” Walton asked him, standing at his elbow.

“Nothing, Dale. Forget it.”

“Do you want some water?”

Did he ever! Segrest checked his wristwatch and shook his head. “Too early.”

“I just thought—”

“No. Thank you.”

After pulling the dead and wounded clear, doing what little could be done for the copilot, they had sorted through their supplies and rationed the bottled water found in the wreck. It just made sense, not knowing when they’d be picked up.

Or if, he added silently.

The pilot had been killed on impact; his sidekick had a broken leg, an ugly compound fracture; and the flight attendant had gone flying when the rocket hit, slamming his skull against one of the overhead luggage containers. He’d drifted in and out of consciousness for a few hours, then he’d succumbed to his head injury.

And then, the goddamned storm had hit them out of nowhere. Tareq Eleyan had called it a haboob, and hearing that it was a fact of life in Syria had done nothing to lighten Segrest’s mood while the dust and sand buried them, forcing them to dig out of the shattered plane a second time after they’d taken refuge there.

Segrest was worried about rescue, but that wasn’t all. Someone had shot them down, either for sport or with intent. In either case, the shooter was still out there, likely to come looking for his prize and bringing friends along to pick over the wreckage. Segrest wished he knew who’d done it, what their motive was, and what he should expect when they showed up.

Not if, but when.

Trouble was coming. He could smell it on the breeze that kissed his blistered skin.

* * *

THE TRAITOR HAD a headache, a holdover from the crash that seemed beyond the reach of simple aspirin. He did not mind, particularly—life was mostly pain and disappointment, after all—but it annoyed him slightly, since he had been waiting for the rocket strike, strapped in when no one else had seat belts fastened, only to be struck a glancing blow from his own briefcase tumbling from the overhead compartment.

Irony. The spice of life.

He sat in the shade of the Let L 410’s left wing, or what remained of it. At least three quarters of it had been sheared off on impact; it was still better than nothing, though the shade provided only minimal relief from the pervasive desert heat. But, then, what was discomfort when he’d been prepared to sacrifice his life?

There had been no schedule for the strike, no real way to prepare himself beyond keeping his seat belt fastened and pretending airplanes made him edgy.

Which, in this case, had been true.

He had been waiting for the blast, then plummeting to earth, uncertain whether he would die in the explosion or the crash. Imagining a midair detonation had been worse—well, nearly worse—than the reality when it occurred, but no one could suspect that he’d been waiting for it. His surprise had been absolutely genuine. His screams as they descended had been heartfelt.

But here he was, essentially unharmed besides the purpling bump on his forehead and the dull ache just behind his left eye socket. He was thirsty, like the rest of them, but that would pass when his comrades arrived and took the others into custody. He would be treated as a hero of the struggle then.

So, what was keeping them?

Another problem: since he didn’t know exactly where the plane had been before the rocket strike, and he couldn’t calculate how far they’d traveled afterward, he could not estimate the time required for his comrades to overtake them.

Truth be told, he wasn’t even sure who would be coming for him; he had not been entrusted with that information, nor did he require it to complete his mission. After being shot out of the sky, his twofold task was simple.

First, deactivate the aircraft’s homing beacons, following instructions he’d been given prior to takeoff. One had been eliminated by the rocket’s blast; the other had been easy enough to disable in the chaos after touchdown.

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