The Executioner swept his scythe across the killing field

Surprise, shifting to full-blown panic in a heartbeat, spoiled the aim of those who threatened Bolan. He heard their bullets rattle past him, while his Browning hammered at them, mulching flesh and bone with bullets flying half a mile per second.

At the last moment two of the soldiers almost escaped.

They sprinted out of Bolan’s view, around the nose of the first APC, where he could neither track nor drop them. The Executioner was ready to dismount and follow them, when both came reeling back, twitching and jerking through a clumsy death dance.

Bolan saw the bullets rip into their bodies, heard the crack-crack-crack of a Kalashnikov and then watched Gorshani step from hiding, firing two more rounds before the dying soldiers fell.

“That’s all, I think,” he called to Bolan.

He had that right. No enemies in need of killing remained. It was time to see how many friendlies had been slain or wounded in the chaotic firefight.

And to learn if they were still friendlies at all.

Frontier Fury
The Executioner®
Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

There is justice, but we do not always see it. Discreet, smiling, it is there, at one side, a little behind injustice, which makes a big noise.

—Jules Renard

1864–1910

Justice may be late, but it’s still coming. And there will be blood.

—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

Epilogue

Prologue

Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan:

November 22, 2001

The Americans were coming—finally.

They had begun their long-distance assault six weeks before—Tomahawk cruise missiles fired from ships in the Arabian Sea; carpet-bombing from their B-1 Lancers, B-2 Spirits and B-52 Superfortresses—while tribal militians paid and organized by the Central Intelligence Agency rallied to attack the Taliban and warriors of The Base. American Marines and Special Forces had been fighting in the streets of Kandahar and Tora Bora, but they had not ventured far into the eastern countryside.

Until today.

Akram Ben Abd al-Bari heard the helicopters prowling over rocky mountaintops and knew that they had come for him. He couldn’t tell their model from a distance, but it made no difference. Where once the Soviets had hunted him with Hinds, now the Great Satan searched for him with AH-64 Apaches, Lynx, or Bell AH-1 gunships. They brought bombs and rockets, .50-caliber machine guns, 20 mm cannons, laser sights and infrared devices.

It was all the same.

The Communists had never found him, nor would the Crusaders.

It was time to flee.

Akram Ben Abd al-Bari saw no shame in running from his enemies. They were superior in numbers and technology, awash in money sucked from oil fields in his native homeland, willing to spend billions of their dollars in pursuit of what they loosely termed “justice.”

He had imposed justice upon them—or, at least, a fair down payment on the tab they owed to Allah—with a daring strike against their homeland. Now, he would retreat and find another place to hide until the next strike was delivered, and then the one after that.

War everlasting, to the bitter end.

Ra’id Ibn Rashad approached him without fear, as an old friend and valued comrade. “It is time,” he said.

Al-Bari nodded, sweeping one more glance around the cave that he had occupied since the Americans first struck, back on October 7. He would not miss the bare walls of stone or the floor that always managed to be damp even though they were surrounded by a desert.

He could settle anywhere, command his global army from a hut or an urban high-rise, issue orders from a tent or even bunker buried in the middle of the Gobi Desert, if need be.

Allah was everywhere, and he would have his victory.

“I’m ready,” al-Bari said to his oldest and most trusted friend.

“Come, then,” Rashad replied. He wore a Soviet assault rifle over one shoulder, offering its twin to al-Bari with his right hand.

Al-Bari took the rifle, smiled and nodded.

More than two decades had elapsed since he’d last fired a shot in anger, and actually killed another human being with his own two hands. The Soviets had left Afghanistan, defeated, during February 1989. Rather than pause and celebrate that victory, al-Bari moved on to face the next challenge as a commander who directed troops and martyrs in pursuit of Islam’s enemies.

It struck him that he had existed in a constant state of war since he was twenty-two years old—more than four decades now—and that unless Allah intervened with some apocalyptic stroke against his earthly foes, al-Bari would be fighting on until the day he died.

So be it.

He had known the risks when he began, had understood that there could be no turning back.

Distant explosions marked the point where pilots had discovered targets, either Taliban or innocent civilians. They would find no Afghan regulars to shoot at in the mountains hereabouts.

Vehicles waited on the unpaved mountain road below al-Bari’s cave. Their small convoy would hasten to the border, through the same Khyber Pass that Alexander the Great had used to invade the Indus Valley in 326 BC. Even then, it was well-known to traders, fugitives and bandits.

It would serve al-Bari well.

And he would live to fight again.

The infidels in Washington and London who believed that they had heard the last of him were wrong. Dead wrong.

Akram Ben Abd al-Bari was not beaten yet.

His war endured.

1

North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan: The Present

Mack Bolan leaned into the rush of icy wind, his gloved hands clutching the frame of the plane’s open doorway. Ten thousand feet below him, rivers, trees and hills resembled landmarks on a model-maker’s diorama, tiny and remote.

The pilot’s voice came to him through a small earpiece. “On my mark—five…four…three…”

He waited, didn’t bother with the thumbs-up signal or a parting word, but simply launched himself on “Go!” The lurch of falling was immediately countered as the aircraft’s slipstream caught him, whipping him away.

There was a moment during every jump when Bolan felt as if he wasn’t falling, but was rather being blown along sideways, and perhaps he’d keep going in that direction until he had learned to fly on his own power, overcoming gravity itself to soar across the landscape like an eagle. Why should he go down, when all that waited for him on the ground was blood and suffering?

That moment always passed, of course, and as the Earth’s pull reasserted its command, he started calculating where to land.

He could control it, to a point. The wind and Earth’s rotation played a part, of course, but once his parachute had opened, he could use the steering lines and toggle to control his drift and speed, guiding himself toward touchdown at the preselected site.

Wherever that was.

In an exhibition jump, the landing zone would be marked off by colored fabric, smoke bombs, lights, or something. A covert drop, by contrast, was intended not to advertise his landing for the benefit of those he’d come to find—or for the soldiers who, in spite of public statements to the contrary, might very well be guarding Bolan’s targets.

From the moment Jack Grimaldi’s plane had crossed the border into Pakistani airspace, Bolan had been on the wrong side of the law. He was a trespasser, intent on the commission of assorted felonies which could, if he was captured, land him in a prison cell for life—or, as it seemed more likely, send him to the wall before a firing squad.

What else is new? he asked himself, then concentrated on the landscape drawing closer to him by the moment.

There! That river with the hairpin turn and twin hills standing just off to the east defined his target. He would try to land inside the loop formed by the river, seeming only inches wide from where he hung in space, but something like a quarter mile across at ground level.

With any luck at all, his native contact would be waiting for him there.

And if he wasn’t?

In that case, Bolan would go on and do the job alone, somehow.

Granted, it would be impossible to read road signs, and he wouldn’t be able to carry on routine conversations, but he had his maps and GPS device, along with all the killing gear he’d requisitioned for the job at hand.

Think positively, Bolan told himself. There’s no reason your guy shouldn’t be in place, on time.

No reason except being caught, tortured for information, and replaced by shooters who would zero in on Bolan as he floated toward them from on high, the fire-selector switches on their weapons set for full-auto.

But Bolan didn’t worry about what might be. It was a rule he had adopted early in his military service, and it had served him well. Fretting over the possibility of failure would accomplish nothing, but it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A glance at the altimeter on Bolan’s right wrist told him he had reached two thousand feet. He found the rip cord, clutched it, counting silently until he knew that he had plummeted five hundred more, then gave the brisk, life-saving tug. The chute rose, deploying overhead, and Bolan felt the shoulder, chest and leg straps of his harness cut into his flesh.

Parachutes had come a long way from the mushroom shapes depicted in films such as Flying Tigers and Twelve O’clock High. They were lozenge-shaped now, more or less, with individual cells, designed for maximum maneuverability. In Bolan’s case, the nylon parachute was colored sky-blue, in the hope that any unintended watchers on the ground below might overlook him.

But it wouldn’t help if they had been forewarned of his arrival.

Weighted by the weapons, ammunition and explosives that he carried, in addition to his rations and survival gear, the Executioner started to accelerate once more and used the right-hand brake to manage it.

The river with its hairpin loop was more than just a line drawn on the landscape now. Bolan could see the sun glint off its running water. He had to steer well clear of landing in its depths and being swept away.

He was a strong swimmer, but there was only so much muscle could accomplish when the current seized a parachute and dragged a jumper over jagged rocks, through rapids and somersaulting over waterfalls. It took only one solid blow to snap a neck or bring unconsciousness and allow the river to flood a pair of helpless lungs.

One thousand feet, and Bolan saw a vehicle below him. Only one, and there appeared to be a single figure standing on the driver’s side.

So far, so good—unless the lookout was reporting back to shooters waiting out of sight.

Bolan would have a chance to fight, if so, but he had no illusions that the odds would favor him in such a circumstance.

He didn’t touch the safety on his AK-47, chosen for deniability if he was caught or killed in Pakistan, like all the other gear he carried. At a thousand feet, he still had time.

But it was swiftly running out.

HUSSEIN GORSHANI watched the stranger plunge toward Earth, while the aircraft that had delivered him turned back and hurried toward the sanctuary of Afghanistan. Most of the Pakistan air force’s twenty-seven front-line squadrons were deployed along the border shared with India, far to the south and east, so the plane managed to escape without pursuit.

Leaving one of its occupants behind, falling through space.

Gorshani wondered—not for the first time, by any means—if he had lost his mind. Meeting the stranger and assisting him was certainly a crime under his nation’s laws. It might not rank as treason, technically, since spokesmen for the government proclaimed themselves allies with the United States in fighting terrorism, but Gorshani knew his private enterprise would not be cheerfully rewarded by the state police or army.

And, once they discovered that he drew a covert paycheck from the CIA, he would most certainly be killed. The best that he could hope for, in that case, would be a clean death without torture, but he realized that notion verged on fantasy.

The state would want to know how long he’d been employed by the Americans, what he had told them, who his contacts were, and where they could be found. And since Gorshani’s sense of honor would not let him answer any such questions, naturally, pressure would be applied.

He knew what that meant, and it gave him nightmares.

Gorshani almost missed the parachute, expecting some dramatic color bright against the washed-out sky, but it was blue, and made him strain his eyes. Even when he had spotted it, the soldier slung beneath it still looked like an insect zigzagging through empty air.

Gorshani took his eyes off the stranger long enough to sweep the road behind him and the open landscape to either side. He knew that he hadn’t been followed from Gilgit. He’d have seen vehicles trailing him, or helicopters in the air. But he knew there were ways of finding men and tracking them that he did not pretend to understand—from satellites, highflying aircraft, even with devices planted in his ancient car.

He’d searched the vehicle before leaving his home, of course, but it was always possible that he’d missed something. New technology didn’t require a large device, and he possessed none of the scanners that would locate hidden bugs or trackers by their emanations of magnetic energy.

He had a pistol tucked under his belt, beneath his Windbreaker, for self-defense. It was a Czech CZ-75, purchased at one of the province’s countless illegal gun markets, along with the AKMS folding-stock rifle concealed in the trunk of his car.

If the army or state police found him, however, the best thing Gorshani could do for himself was to whip out the pistol and fire a 9 mm bullet through his own brain. Spare himself the agony of interrogation that would last days, or even weeks, until the torturers were satisfied that they knew all his smallest secrets.

Or, he could fight to defend the stranger and himself. Try to flee and escape. Depending on the Yankee soldier’s skill, they might just have a chance.

Gorshani saw a subtle glint of sunlight on the nylon parachute, but still had trouble making out its shape against the blue background of sky. No doubt, it was designed that way on purpose, and he hoped that any unseen watchers in the neighborhood would likewise be deceived.

There was no trade route through this portion of the North-West Frontier Province, but some peasants brought their goats and sheep to graze along the hills in spring and summer. None had been in evidence when he made his approach, but still Gorshani watched for them, prepared to warn them off with threats if necessary while his business was accomplished.

Glancing upward, squinting in the sunlight, he supposed the stranger had to be five or six hundred feet above the ground. What would it feel like, falling from the sky like that? he wondered.

Better than plunging from a helicopter during an interrogation, he supposed, a trick the state police had learned from both the CIA and KGB. It was a technique that produced no answers from its chosen subject, but the prisoners who watched one plummet to his death often became quite talkative as a result.

Two hundred feet, Gorshani guessed, and now he could begin to make out details of the stranger: boots, a smudge of face behind goggles, weapons secured by straps and holsters, and he was wearing sand-colored camouflage fatigues.

One man against the State—or two, if Gorshani counted himself.

Of course, he and this stranger weren’t really opposing the government based in Islamabad, simply conducting an end run around its two-faced policy of protecting fugitive terrorists while pretending not to know they existed.

It was a policy that shamed Gorshani’s government, his nation—and, by extension, himself. As a patriot and loyal Muslim, he had determined to work against that policy through any means at his disposal. And if that put him at odds with certain politicians or their lackeys, then, so be it.

He was not the traitor in this case.

Clenching his fists, hearing his pulse pound in his ears, Gorshani stood and watched the stranger, his new ally, fall to Earth.

“THERE, SIR! To the west! I see it!”

Second Lieutenant Tarik Naseer turned in the direction indicated by his havildar—the Pakistan army’s equivalent to a sergeant—and saw a speck descending toward the ground. Naseer raised his field glasses to focus on the falling object.

“Yes!” he said, well pleased. “It is a parachute. One man alone.”

“We’ve lost the plane, sir,” said Havildar Qasim Zohra.

“No matter,” Naseer said. “We’ll have the man himself. Before we’re finished with him, he will tell us where he came from and whatever else we wish to know.”

The second lieutenant turned and shouted to his soldiers—ten of them standing beside their Russian-made BTR-70 armored personnel carrier.

“Forward with me!” he called. “We go to capture an intruder!”

That said, Naseer took his seat in the open Scorpion Jeep. Havildar Zohra took the wheel and put the Jeep in motion, rolling over open ground toward the area where it seemed likely their target would touch down.

Scanning ahead through his binoculars, Naseer saw that a one-man welcoming committee waited for the parachutist, staring up at the descending jumper from the shadow of a dusty old Mahindra Bolero SUV.

The watcher had not seen them yet. Naseer hoped he could close the gap in time to nab the men without a fight, but there was still a river in his path, its only bridge offset a half mile to his right.

Naseer could try to ford the river in his Jeep, trailed by the APC, but either vehicle could easily bog down, perhaps even be swept away if he misjudged the current. He knew that trying to explain that to headquarters would not be good for his career!

Another possibility was to remain on this side of the river and attempt to kill their targets without questioning the men. The BTR-70 had a 7.62 mm machine gun mounted atop its main cabin, and his soldiers carried AK-107 assault rifles. Their concentrated fire should drop both targets, or at least disable the Mahindra SUV, but Naseer would be held responsible if anything went wrong.

And if he simply shot the two men without first interrogating them, how would he then identify the parachutist, much less learn what brought him to the North-West Frontier Province?

No.

If possible, he needed to procure both men alive. Failing in that, at least the jumper had to be captured and interrogated.

That decided, Naseer made his choice.

“The bridge,” he told Zohra. “As fast as you can reach it!”

“Yes, sir!”

Zohra never disputed orders, though he might suggest alternatives if he believed Naseer—twelve years his junior, and with only eight months as an officer—had made the wrong decision. In this case, however, it was clear they only had one way to cross the river and approach their targets.

Which, unfortunately, gave the enemy more time to spot them and escape.

But first, the watcher had to meet his comrade, who was still at least two hundred feet from contact with the ground.

Naseer picked up the compact two-way radio that lay between the driver’s seat and his, half-swiveled in his seat as he thumbed down the button to transmit, and called out to the APC behind him.

“Lance Naik Shirazi!”

“Yes, sir!” the APC’s gunner replied.

“Prepare to fire, at my command. Take no action without direct orders.”

“Yes, sir!”

Behind Naseer’s Jeep, the young crewman—ranked on par with a lance corporal—rose through a hatch atop the APC’s cabin and readied the vehicle’s machine gun, clearing its belt, jacking a round into its chamber.

Naseer still hoped he would not have to kill the strangers, but he would disable their SUV if they tried to escape. Short bursts aimed at the tires, perhaps, or at the fuel tank.

Though the risk of blowing up the vehicle existed, bullets rarely started gasoline fires in such cases. It happened much more frequently in films than in real life.

Naseer clenched his fists as Zohra swung the Jeep away from their targets, accelerating toward the bridge that now seemed more distant than before. Each yard they traveled in the opposite direction felt like a concession to the enemy, as if they were retreating, rather than advancing by the only route available.

He mouthed a silent prayer—Don’t let them see us—but would Allah hear him and respond? He couldn’t help but wonder if such a trivial request, offered in haste, would even concern Him.

Naseer tried again: for Your great glory and the safety of our nation, let us stop them!

Better, but he could not let the matter shift his focus any further from the mission set before him.

It had been a bland, routine patrol in search of rebels, finding none, until Naseer had heard the distant droning of an aircraft far above their heads. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, all at once, like the infuriating whine of a mosquito buzzing past his ear, while he lay hoping merely for a good night’s sleep.

Even with his binoculars, the plane proved difficult to locate, flying at an altitude of two miles, maybe higher. When the parachutist separated from it, Naseer barely glimpsed him, and the jumper’s terminal velocity—around three feet per second, if Naseer recalled his jump-school training accurately—made the falling object difficult to track through field glasses.

The sky-blue parachute, clearly, had also been selected to fool watchers on the ground. More evidence that Naseer needed to interrogate the jumper.

But he had to catch him, first.

“Faster!” he told Zohra.

“Yes, sir!”

The Jeep surged forward, pressing Naseer back into his seat.

He watched the SUV and hoped its driver would not notice them.

Hoped that they would not be too late.

BOLAN TOUCHED DOWN within fifty feet of the waiting vehicle, flexing his knees without pitching a full shoulder roll. Before his contact had covered half the intervening distance, the Executioner was stripping off the chute’s harness, hauling on the suspension lines and reeling in the nylon canopy.

“I’ll help you,” the Pakistani said, fumbling for a set of lines, snaring them on his second try.

“We ought to bury it,” Bolan replied—then glanced across the river toward a pair of speeding military vehicles and added, “But I guess we won’t have time.”

His contact turned to stare in the direction Bolan faced, and blurted out what sounded like a curse.

“Leave it,” Bolan ordered. “We need to go right now.”

They dropped the tangled lines, leaving the parachute a plaything of the breeze, and ran back toward the SUV. Bolan was faster, got there first, ignored the shotgun seat and climbed into the rear.

The Pakistani threw himself into the driver’s seat and reached for the ignition key as Bolan asked him, “Do you have a weapon?”

Reaching for his hip, where Bolan had observed a pistol’s bulge beneath the Windbreaker, the man reconsidered. “Underneath the hatch in back,” he said. “A rifle.”

Bolan found it, recognized an older model of the AKSM he was carrying and passed it forward. His companion dropped it on the empty shotgun seat and put the SUV in motion, fat tires churning dirt and gravel in their wake as he accelerated from a standing start.

How long before the soldiers reached the bridge, then doubled back along the route to overtake them? Bolan made the calculation in his head and guessed that they had five minutes to put more ground between themselves and their pursuers now, before the race turned into life or death.

Five minutes wasn’t much.

He doubted it would be enough.

“Where are we going?” Bolan asked his driver.

“North, eventually. If we are not killed or captured.”

“Let’s avoid that, all right?”

“I will do my best.”

And Bolan wondered whether that was good enough.

His plans hadn’t included taking on the Pakistan army—which, with some 700,000 personnel and another half million in reserve, outnumbered that of the United States. However, since the rulers in Islamabad permitted terrorists to hide in Pakistan and operate with virtual impunity from Pakistani soil, he had anticipated opposition from the military.

And he’d come prepared.

Bolan’s AKMS assault rifle came equipped with a stubby GP-25 40 mm under-the-barrel grenade launcher, and he carried a variety of munitions to feed it. His 75-round drum magazine gave him extended firepower for the Kalashnikov, backed up for closer work by a Belgian FN Five-seveN semiauto pistol, chambered for the high-powered 5.7 mm cartridge tailored for long range and superior penetration, with a 20-round box magazine and no external safety. His hand grenades were Russian RGD-5s, with 110 grams of TNT and liners scored to fling 350 lethal fragments over a killing radius of sixty feet.

With that gear, and his companion’s AKMS rifle, Bolan was up against a light machine gun with a range around 860 yards, and ten or twelve Kalashnikov assault weapons, likely firing 5.56 mm NATO rounds, with an effective range of 650 yards. Put all that hardware together, and his pursuers could lay down a blistering screen of some eleven thousand rounds per minute.

In theory.

In fact, however, none of the APC’s soldiers could fire while their vehicle was rolling in hot pursuit. That left the APC’s machine gunner and the Jeep’s shotgun rider, for a maximum of two weapons engaged, and the APC’s weapon had a 210-yard advantage over anything the Jeep’s rider was carrying.

Say five hundred rounds per minute for the 7.62 mm MG, and allowing for spoilage of aim, as the eight-wheeled, 11.5-ton BTR-70 pitched and rumbled on its way at top speed, and they might be all right.

Might be.

The safer plan was to remain outside the machine gunner’s 860-yard effective range, thus rendering his task that much more difficult, but that was down to Bolan’s driver—whom he’d never seen in action previously, and whose vintage SUV was subject to the same foibles as any other man-made vehicle.

Call it a race for life, then.

He was barely on the ground in Pakistan, and Bolan’s mission already hung in the balance.

They should be able to outrun the APC, with its factory-standard top speed of fifty miles per hour, but bullets were faster, and that still left the Jeep on their tail.

No matter how well his driver managed to perform, Bolan would have to derail the soldiers in the Jeep—and hope they hadn’t radioed ahead for reinforcements to establish roadblocks on the highway leading northward.

One thing at a time, Bolan thought, as he focused on the military vehicles behind him. The Jeep had just crossed the river bridge and was accelerating after them, its shotgun rider hanging on for dear life as his driver put the pedal to the floor. Another moment and the APC was after them, its turret gunner rocking helplessly behind his MG, still too far away to sight and fire.

How long could Bolan’s driver hold that slim advantage? Were his tires in decent shape? Had he maintained his engine? Was the gas tank full?

Too many questions.

Bolan crawled over the SUV’s backseat, onto the rear deck in the hatchback section. He would play tail gunner when the enemy closed in behind them.

And with any luck, he just might live to fight another day.

2

Shenandoah National Park, Virginia: Two days earlier

Skyline Drive was aptly named. It ran along the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains for 105 miles, from Front Royal at the northern terminus to Rockfish Gap at the southern end. Because its full length was within a national park, visitors paid an entry fee of fifteen dollars per car or ten dollars per motorcycle, thus obtaining a seven-day pass.

Mack Bolan could have saved his money by displaying an ID card he’d received from Hal Brognola through a drop box, which identified the bearer—“Michael Belasko,” with a nonexistent address and a photo that could pass for Bolan’s likeness—as an employee of the National Park Service, but he’d figured why bother?

He didn’t need to see the ranger in the ticket booth look worried, wondering if he’d done something wrong, or if something critical was happening inside the park and he had missed the memo.

Anyway, the fifteen bucks made Bolan feel that he was giving something back.

Built between 1931 and 1939, at the nadir of the Great Depression, Skyline Drive was convoluted and tortuous. Scenes of epic beauty dazzled drivers all the way, but caution was required on the winding turns where bicycles and black bears shared the relatively narrow highway. Park police enforced a strict 35 mph speed limit, and Bolan didn’t want to risk a speeding rap.

Rolling through Mary Rock Tunnel, 670 feet of pitch darkness, with his headlights on high beams, Bolan wondered where Brognola planned to send him this time. There had been no warning on the telephone—there never was—and Bolan had been left, as usual, to speculate in vain.

One thing he knew beyond a shadow of a doubt—it wouldn’t be a social call.

Somewhere, somehow, someone had stepped across a line, and Bolan would be sent to reel them back or punch their ticket for one long, last ride.

He could refuse the job, of course. That flexibility was built in from the start. But in reality, he’d only turned thumbs-down on a few assignments in the time he’d worked with Brognola and the assembled team at Stony Man Farm.

The Farm was named for Stony Man Mountain, the fourth highest in the park at 4,010 feet, but it wasn’t actually on the mountain. It did not appear on any map available for public scrutiny, and while it was a working farm—in more ways than one—its crops were not marketed under the Stony Man name.

Trespassing was rigorously—sometimes fatally—discouraged.

Roughly half the time, when Bolan visited the Farm, he flew in and out. Stony Man had its own airstrip and helipads, complete with stinger missiles and hidden batteries of antiaircraft guns to deal with any drop-ins who ignored the radio commands to steer clear of restricted airspace.

It had only happened once, to Bolan’s knowledge, with a careless pilot running short of fuel halfway between Pittsburgh and Winston-Salem. In that case, the guns and rockets hadn’t fired, but several days of house arrest and chemically induced amnesia left the interloper scrambling to explain how he had missed his scheduled wedding.

The groom did not live happily ever after with his bride…but at least he lived.

Some others who had trespassed at the Farm with sinister intent were not so fortunate.

Bolan cleared the tunnel and killed his headlights, braking just beyond the next curve for a line of deer crossing the road. A nine-point buck was last across, pausing to stare at Bolan for a moment through the tinted windshield of his rental car.

Bolan wondered if the deer spent their whole lives inside the park’s 306 square miles, or if they sometimes strayed outside. With hunting season on the way, he wished them luck.

So many predators, so little time.

BOLAN DIDN’T try to spot the guards staked out along his route of travel from the gate to the farmhouse that served as Stony Man’s HQ. He was expected, so went unchallenged by the Farm’s team of “blacksuits.”

At any given time, Stony Man’s security staff included active-duty members of the U.S. military who dressed as farmhands but were armed.

Brognola was waiting on the farmhouse porch with Barbara Price—the Farm’s mission controller—when Bolan got there, slowing into his approach. A stocky farmhand with a military buzz cut waited two steps down, to spirit Bolan’s rental car away and out of sight once he had cleared the driver’s seat.

“Good trip?” Brognola asked, as Bolan climbed the porch steps and shook his hand.

“Normal,” Bolan replied.

It was the standard small-talk introduction to his latest job. He hadn’t flown across country from San Jose to Washington, then driven south from there to Stony Man, to talk about the Shenandoah scenery.

“Okay,” Brognola said. “We may as well get to it, then.”

But first, they had to reach the War Room, situated in the farmhouse basement, theoretically secured against direct hits with conventional munitions. That remained untested, and if all of them were lucky, it would stay that way.

They rode the elevator down and disembarked into a corridor that led them to their destination, through a coded secure access door. Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman was waiting for them in the War Room. He was seated in the wheelchair that had kept him mobile since a bullet clipped his spinal cord, during an armed assault on Stony Man.

Bolan shook hands with Kurtzman, then moved around the conference table to take a seat to Brognola’s left, while Barbara took the right-hand side. Kurtzman remained at the keyboard that controlled the War Room’s lights and AV apparatus for events such as the current mission briefing.

“Akram Ben Abd al-Bari.” Brognola managed the pronunciation flawlessly, smiling grimly as he said, “You recognize the name, of course.”

“It rings a bell,” Bolan replied.

Brognola didn’t need to tell those present that al-Bari had been among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives since 2001, with a four million dollar price tag on his head, dead or alive. Although the names on that dishonor roll were not officially prioritized, only al-Bari’s boss—known in the trade as O.B.L.—rated a higher bounty. Both had managed to evade manhunters during the Afghanistan invasion and remained at large, with open warrants naming some four thousand murder victims from the 9/11 raids and other terrorist events dating from 1993.

Behind Brognola, Kurtzman displayed revolving photos of al-Bari on the large screen. Like the human monster’s reputation, the images were several times larger than life-size. Bolan had seen them all before, including the grainy captures from the latest video that had been aired last month on CNN and BBC, promising hell on Earth for the American Crusaders and their lackeys.

“Also among the missing,” Brognola announced, “Ra’id Ibn Rashad, his number two.”

More photos appeared on the big wall-mounted screen. Rashad’s brown, bearded face was seldom seen on Western television, and while he didn’t rank among the Ten Most Wanted, he was close. One million dollars waited for the bounty hunter who could bring him in alive, or prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was dead.

Delivering his hands would do it.

Or his head.

“Big fish,” Bolan said, “but they’re still not in the net—are they?”

“No, you’re right,” Brognola said. “But now we have a good idea of where to drop our line.”

“That sounds familiar.”

There’d been countless leads on al-Bari, Rashad, and O.B.L. himself, over the years. One thing the tips all had in common was that none of them had panned out. Agents and mercs had died on some of those wild-goose chases. But most had simply ended in frustration, time and money wasted in pursuit of shadows.

“Sure it does,” Brognola said. “Except…”

Another photo came up on the screen. This one revealed al-Bari and Rashad in conversation, over plates of food Bolan couldn’t identify. The angle of the shot made him suspect it had been snapped clandestinely.

“That’s new?” he asked.

“Taken ten days ago,” Brognola said.

“Location?”

“Somewhere in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. We don’t have exact coordinates.”

That stood to reason. If the Pentagon could put their finger on al-Bari and Rashad, they likely would have plastered him with smart bombs and cruise missiles, then apologized to the Islamabad authorities at leisure—if at all.

Bolan could see where this was going.

“Someone has to go in and confirm it,” he said, not asking.

“Right. And take whatever action may be feasible, once confirmation is achieved.”

“Presumably with someone who can speak the language.”

“Absolutely,” Brognola agreed.

“Okay,” Bolan said. “Let me hear the rest of it.”

THE REMAINING DETAILS were quickly delivered. “Someone” had located al-Bari’s hidey-hole in northwest Pakistan, where he shared lodgings with Rashad and other members of al Qaeda. Some of them were only passing through—dodging pursuers, picking up their orders or delivering reports—but there appeared to be a constant staff of four or five top aides in residence, plus bodyguards.

How many guards?

No one could say, with any certainty.

After the briefing, Bolan went up to his usual room. Brognola, or someone acting on his orders, had prepared a CD-ROM containing biographical material on Bolan’s two main targets and his Pakistani contact, plus a summary of known al Qaeda actions since the group was organized in 1988. Born out of battle with the Soviets in Afghanistan, al Qaeda—“The Base,” in Arabic—was a fluid band of Sunni Muslim militants, founded by one Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. A bomb blast killed Azzam and his two sons a year later, in November 1989, outside a mosque in Peshawar. Suspects named in different media reports included the Mossad, the CIA, and O.B.L. himself. Officially, the case remained unsolved.

The rest was history. With O.B.L. in charge, warriors of al Qaeda rolled on to murder thousands, from New York and Washington to London and Madrid, Djerba and Casablanca, Istanbul and Aden, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Jakarta and Bali. The world was their battleground. Their stated goals: destruction of Israel, eradication of all foreign influence from Muslim nations, and establishment of a new Islamic caliphate.

In practice, that meant killing anyone who disagreed with them on any point of doctrine, or who was perceived to aid the group’s enemies. Bolan had faced al Qaeda members in the past and managed to survive, but this would be his first crack at the group’s top-level leadership.

Which brought him to the men themselves.

According to Brognola’s file, Akram Ben Abd al-Bari had been born in Cairo, in September 1951. His father was a pharmacist and teacher, from a long line of physicians and scholars active in radical politics. Al-Bari joined the Muslim Brotherhood at age fourteen, went on to study medicine and served in the Egyptian army as a surgeon, married and had two daughters. By 1980 he was rising through the ranks of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which merged with al Qaeda in 1998. Three years later, when American smart bombs leveled Taliban headquarters at Gardez, Afghanistan, al-Bari’s wife and daughters died in the rubble.

Al-Bari escaped and channeled his grief into rage.

Ra’id Ibn Rashad was another Egyptian, younger than al-Bari. Conflicting CIA reports claimed he was born in April 1960 or November 1963, but neither date was relevant to Bolan. Rashad was a suspect in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, but he’d dodged indictment in that case and fled to Sudan with other members of al-Bari’s Egyptian Islamic Jihad, later following his mentor into a merger with al Qaeda. FBI reports named Rashad as a guiding force behind two U.S. embassy bombings in 1988, which claimed 223 lives in Kenya and Tanzania, leaving another 4,085 wounded. Rashad had missed a spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, but made the Bureau’s roster of Most Wanted Terrorists when that program was created after 9/11.

Neither target was a combat soldier, though Rashad had done his share of training in assorted desert camps. They weren’t guerrilla fighters in the normal sense, but both had proved themselves die-hard survivors, living on the run for over a decade, while the combined military and intelligence networks of the United States and Great Britain tried to hunt them down.

That told Bolan that they were determined and had a very strong support system. He wondered, now, if either man suspected that their hideout had been blown. Beyond the knowledge that their deaths obsessed some operatives in Washington and London, did al-Bari or Rashad know that specific plans were in the works to kill them?

Bolan had no way of knowing for certain if Brognola’s information was correct, but the team at Stony Man Farm had never let him down before. Yet Bolan knew that every operation was a fluid, living thing.

At least until the final shots were fired.

Al-Bari and Rashad might know they’d been exposed, or they might simply crave a change of scene and slip away before he got to Pakistan. In which case, Bolan might be able to pick up their trail—or he might not.

Some of the burden rested on his native contact, one Hussein Gorshani. Brognola’s dossier said that Gorshani would turn thirty-four the following month. He owned a small repair shop in Islamabad, specializing in electronics, and had roughly quadrupled the country’s average per capita income of $2,900 over the past ten years. He also drew a modest paycheck from the CIA, which was a story in itself.

Pakistan is a self-proclaimed Islamic republic, and while about ninety-seven percent of its people subscribed to the faith, some Muslims were more equal than others. Hussein Gorshani belonged to the Shia minority, outnumbered four-or five-to-one by hostile Sunnis. Still, Gorshani’s dossier claimed that religious persecution had not sparked his decision to work for Langley. Rather, that had come about by slow degrees, as Gorshani observed his nation’s leaders drifting ever closer to covert support for O.B.L. and al Qaeda.

Gorshani had served four years in Pakistan’s army, rising to the rank of havildar, or sergeant. As a native of the North-West Frontier Province, he had served most of his time there, on border patrols with the paramilitary Frontier Corps. He was also trilingual, rated as fluent in Pashto, Urdu and English.

An all-around Renaissance man.

There were, however, two things that Brognola’s dossier could not reveal about Hussein Gorshani. First, despite his military training, there was nothing to suggest he’d ever fired a shot in anger at another human being. When the crunch came—and it would—could Bolan trust Gorshani to pull the trigger on one of his own countrymen?

The second question was more basic, but equally vital.

Could Bolan trust Gorshani at all?

Turncoats, double and triple agents were a dime a dozen in the murky realm of cloak-and-dagger operations. Every nation had its clique of spies, and the U.S. had more than most. Each and every spy network on Earth used bribery and blackmail to recruit from opposition groups, as well as from civilian populations.

Who could absolutely guarantee that Bolan’s contact wasn’t secretly working for Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau, its Federal Investigation Agency, or some military outfit under the umbrella of Islamabad’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence?

Answer: no one.

It was a risk that Bolan ran each time he set foot onto foreign soil, relying on a local contact. He had beat the odds so far, but that just meant that he was overdue to roll snake eyes.

Bolan’s less-than-comforting thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a cautious rapping on his door.

“OH, GOOD. You’re decent,” Barbara Price observed, as Bolan stood aside to let her in.

“Depends on who you ask,” he said.

“I guess it would.” She nodded toward the open laptop with Gorshani’s mug shot on the monitor’s screen. “We’re pretty sure he’s clean,” she said, as if reading his mind.

“And he’s the only game in town,” Bolan replied.

“That, too.”

“He’s not the one who blew the whistle on al-Bari and Rashad, though.”

“No,” she said, “he’s not. Langley won’t part with that name. They’ve supposedly got someone deep on the inside.”

“So, he could do the job himself,” Bolan suggested.

“That was Hal’s first thought, but Langley doesn’t want to lose him. After all, someone’s bound to replace al-Bari and Rashad after you take them out. As long as Mr. X is still in place, the Company can track al Qaeda’s leadership.”

“The greater good,” Bolan said.

“Right. But I’d still be happier if Langley wasn’t in the mix at all.”

Some people blamed the CIA for al Qaeda’s existence, noting that the Agency had funneled arms to O.B.L. and others in Afghanistan to help them slaughter Russians, back when O.B.L. was still a “patriot” and “friend” of the United States. In fact, some claimed al Qaeda didn’t exist at all, but had been fabricated by the CIA to keep those covert dollars pouring in.

“We take what we can get,” Bolan replied.

“Speaking of that,” she said, and reached for Bolan’s hand. But before going any further, Price paused and said, “Listen, this is serious. About Gorshani.”

“I know.”

“We’ve checked him out as far as possible, same as we always do—but this is Pakistan.”

“Meaning they’ve elevated subterfuge to art-form status?” Bolan said.

“Meaning it’s a bloody can of worms. The North-West Frontier Province makes Medellín look like Utopia. They stopped publishing casualty figures in 2004, when the tally became too embarrassing. And it’s not just the government versus rebels. Every village has at least one illegal arms dealer. In the cities, you can’t walk a block without tripping over Kalashnikovs and RPGs. They’ve logged more than twelve thousand arrests for gun-related crimes over the past three years, and that’s barely scratching the surface.”

“Sounds like Dodge City,” Bolan said.

“Dodge City on angel dust,” she replied, “with unlimited ammo and a side order of religious fanaticism. On top of which, if you can make it past the bandits and militias, we suspect the government is covering your targets.”

“If I didn’t know better,” he said, “I’d think you wanted me to pull the plug.”

“Who says I don’t?”

“Sounds to me like a conflict of interest.”

“You want it straight? I’ve been against this from the start, but I was overruled. Okay. I’m a team player. But it stinks.”

“A chance to cut the snake’s head off,” he said. “Or close, at least.”

“That’s how they’re selling it. But why can’t the Agency’s man come up with coordinates for an air strike? You want to tell me he can snap a photo of the targets, but he can’t jot down the longitude and latitude? Come on!”

“My guess would be he doesn’t want to go up with the others.”

“And are you supposed to recognize him, when you get there? What’s he gonna do, whip out his CIA decoder ring before you drop the hammer on him? And he’ll still be working as an asset undercover, after that? Somebody’s blowing smoke.”

“Maybe,” Bolan said. “But I can’t see through it till I’m on the ground.”

“I knew you’d say that,” she replied.

“What else can you predict?” he asked.

“A long night for the two of us,” she said, and offered Bolan a slow smile as she led him to the bed.

3

North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan: The Present

Fleeing over open ground meant there was nothing to obstruct the enemy’s sight line or spoil their aim. All Bolan and his contact had going for them now was speed, and the Executioner hoped his driver was equipped to make the most of it.

Crouched on the SUV’s rear deck, Bolan was crowded by a spare tire on his right—the driver’s left—but he had room enough to fight. And room enough to die in, if the APC’s machine gunner was capable of holding steady on a target at the far end of his killing range.

But not just yet.

The Jeep was Bolan’s first concern, though. With only two men inside, and the driver fully occupied with his appointed task, the Executioner had the advantage. At most, the driver might fire pistol shots, but, then again, aiming would be difficult unless he dropped the Jeep’s windshield.

That left the passenger, whom Bolan took to be the officer in charge of the patrol. He couldn’t read the soldier’s face at four hundred yards, much less determine his rank, but the man was holding some kind of rifle, biding his time.

Bolan thought he’d give the lead pursuers something to think about, and began firing from a seated position. With elbows braced on knees, it was the best position next to prone for steady shooting, but that was, of course, from solid ground. Each time his driver swerved or hit a pothole in the pavement, Bolan lurched along with the whole SUV.

His first shot, therefore, may have been a miss. He saw the two Jeep-riders duck their heads, but saw no evidence of impact on their vehicle. The Jeep held steady, barreling along in hot pursuit.

For number two, still set on semiautomatic fire, Bolan aimed at the center of the Jeep’s windshield and squeezed the trigger. This time, it was nearly on the mark but high and slightly to the left, missing the rearview mirror by an inch or so.

Still, Bolan got the physical reaction that he’d wanted, smiling as the Jeep swerved wildly for a moment, slowing at the same time, while its driver tried to choose between the gas and brake pedal, guts or survival.

Bolan saw the shotgun rider turn and shout something at his wheelman. Whatever he’d said convinced the driver to accelerate despite incoming fire.

Behind the Jeep, the eight-wheeled APC was giving all it had to stay in the race. Its twin Russian-made ZMZ-49–05 V-8 engines strained to hit and hold the vehicle’s top speed, around fifty miles per hour. That was good time for patrolling or advancing on a line of rioters, but in a car chase it was almost bound to lose.

Almost.

Bolan observed the shotgun rider in the Jeep half-standing, lining up a rifle shot over the windshield’s upper edge. It wasn’t likely he would score the first time out, but there was always the threat of a lucky shot.

Bolan thumbed the fire-selector switch on his AKMS from single shot to 3-round bursts, then braced the black fiberglass-reinforced polyamide snug against his shoulder. A trained shooter brought the weapon to his face, not vice versa, and Bolan was one of the best. But even so, he couldn’t abrogate the laws of physics.

His first 3-round burst was aimed at the grille, but went low and outside. Not low enough to shred the left front tire, but knocking shiny divots in the fender just above it.

Correcting for the second try, he saw two rounds ricochet from the Jeep’s dusty hood, one scarring the windshield, the other long gone. As for the third round, Bolan couldn’t guess where it had wound up.

The chase car’s driver swerved again, but brought it back on track this time without a warning from his passenger. The officer had fallen back into his seat when Bolan fired, ducking and covering as best he could while riding in an open vehicle, but now he rose again, aiming his rifle toward the SUV.

It’s coming, Bolan thought, and ducked beneath the SUV’s tailgate. Between the wind rush and the growling engine of the SUV, Bolan had trouble hearing any shots fired from behind him. He didn’t know, therefore, how many times the Pakistani officer had missed before a bullet drilled the tailgate, inches from his sweaty face.

From there, it punched through the backseat, missed Hussein Gorshani’s elbow by a whisper and buried itself in the dashboard.

“They’re shooting at us!” his driver cried.

Bolan didn’t bother answering the obvious. His mind was searching for a way to get the shooters off his back—or send them all to hell.

HUSSEIN GORSHANI cursed in Pashto, gripping the SUV’s wheel with a white-knuckled mixture of fury and fear. The soldiers had damaged his car and were trying to kill him. His hatred for them, in that moment, was boundless.

Never mind that he was technically in the wrong, and that they were only doing their jobs. The gunfire was a product of Gorshani fleeing, and his passenger had started it by firing at the Jeep first.

For all the good that did.

Evasive driving might have helped, but they were speeding down a narrow road, poorly maintained, and he was more likely to spoil his ally’s aim than the enemy’s.

Gorshani had anticipated danger when his CIA contact proposed the operation, but he’d thought they would move toward it gradually, conferring and learning to trust one another before they plunged into hot water.

Now, it seemed, he was at war not only with the hidden leaders of al Qaeda, but also with the soldiers of his homeland.

Traitor, said a small voice in his head.

Gorshani had once been a soldier himself, had ridden in a Talha APC through hostile territory in the North-West Frontier Province of his birth. He had never been in battle—though his APC had twice come under sniper fire. It had been strange, sitting in a metal box, listening to bullets ping against the armored sides.

Gorshani wished he had some of that armor now, but knew he’d have to settle for the SUV’s superior acceleration. He knew his vehicle could literally drive rings around the BTR-70—not that it would be a wise thing to attempt—and Gorshani was confident he could outrun the Jeep if his tail gunner failed to disable it.

Unless a bullet found him, first.

The near-miss had unnerved him, driving home the point—if any emphasis was needed—that Hussein Gorshani was a mortal man. He could be killed or mutilated by a bullet in a heartbeat, leaving his comrade adrift as the SUV swerved, stalled and died.

Not yet, he thought, and glanced at his rifle on the passenger’s seat to his right. If need be, he would stop the car and fight, go out with the American in what was sometimes called a blaze of glory.

Checking his rearview mirror, he could see the nearest chase car gaining ground. The tall American rose and blocked Gorshani’s view, squeezed off another burst of automatic fire, then dropped back out of sight.

The Jeep reacted with a wide swing to Gorshani’s left, then roared back into line behind his SUV. It seemed unstoppable, a monster in its own right that could not be killed.

Ridiculous!

It was a man-made object, just as vulnerable as Gorshani’s car to damage caused by road hazards or bullets. Granted, it had probably been built for driving over worse ground than the SUV, and yet…

An idea flashed into Gorshani’s mind. He called out to his crouching passenger, “I want to lead them off the road.”

“What for?” the American asked. “The Jeep and APC are built for it.”

“The vehicles,” Gorshani said, “but maybe not the men.”

“Can this rig take it?”

“We shall see.”

Just as Gorshani spoke, another rifle bullet struck the SUV a glancing blow and whined off into space. The tall American responded with another 3-round burst and shouted to Gorshani, “Go for it!”

Gorshani gripped the steering wheel, swept anxious eyes along the roadside, left and right, then made his choice. If he chose left, the river would eventually block him. But on his right, the open grassland beckoned.

Done.

He cranked the wheel and stood on the accelerator, slumping in his seat to let his slack body absorb the impact of rough ground beneath his tires and shock absorbers. Ten yards into it, his teeth were clacking and he felt a sudden urge to urinate that almost made him laugh aloud.

I should have gone before the chase, he thought, and then he did laugh.

“What’s so funny?” his passenger asked.

“Nothing!” Gorshani answered, as the Bolero slammed into a low ridge of soil and briefly went airborne. Its landing jarred him, nearly making him release the steering wheel. But he hung on and brought the vehicle under control.

A quick glance at the rearview mirror showed the Jeep careening after him, and the APC charging along behind.

SECOND LIEUTENANT Tarik Naseer braced himself—legs rigid, one hand pressed against the Jeep’s dashboard, teeth clenched to keep them from snapping together and chipping.

He had fastened his seat belt when they first struck off in pursuit of their targets, then had unlatched it so that he could stand and fire his AKMS over the Jeep’s windshield frame. But as the Jeep left the pavement and sped across rough open ground, he regretted that choice.

Naseer had ordered his driver to follow the SUV when it left the roadway, but now he was trapped in his seat—or rather at risk of being thrown from it. He needed one hand braced against the dash to keep from pitching forward and striking his head on the windshield, while his other hand clutched the Kalashnikov. He could not reach his seat belt and secure it without losing one grip or the other, and the options were unacceptable.

“Watch out!” the driver cried just as he hit yet another deep rut in the earth. The Jeep bounced twice before settling, each leap unseating the lieutenant. For an instant his heart was in his throat. He was terrified of being thrown completely from the vehicle.

He wondered if Qasim Zohra would even notice, should his passenger be catapulted into space. The driver was completely focused on his target, leaning forward in his seat as if such posture might increase the Jeep’s acceleration.

Naseer considered exactly what could happen if he fell out of the Jeep. Would his neck snap on impact with the ground? If he was pitched over the Jeep’s rear deck, somehow, would he be crushed beneath the APC, or could its driver stop in time?

Another vicious jolt, causing Naseer to mouth a curse. The men he was pursuing would have faced enough trouble, had they simply surrendered on the spot. But now…

The driver barked another warning, ducked low in his seat, just as Naseer saw the rear gunner in the SUV rise to fire another burst. Two of the bullets struck the Jeep’s windshield this time, spraying Naseer with shards of broken glass.

Enough!

Releasing his grip on the dashboard, Naseer raised his rifle and aimed through the gap in the shattered windshield. Just as he squeezed the trigger, Zohra hit another deep hole with the Jeep and nearly spilled Naseer out of his seat. His burst of autofire was wasted, with the last round clanging off the windshield’s upper frame.

A bitter curse escaped his lips, and the second lieutenant swung around toward Zohra, shouting, “At this rate, you will kill us before he does!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Zohra replied. “Shall I slow down?”

Naseer considered it for half a second, glancing back toward the oncoming APC, then said, “Do not slow down. But hold the Jeep steady, so I can aim!”

Even as Naseer spoke the words, they seemed ridiculous to him, a feeling mirrored on his driver’s face. Zohra could not control the contours of the landscape, any more than he could turn the Jeep into a hovercraft and make it fly.

Another short burst from the SUV came in on target, rattling off the Jeep’s curved hood. Naseer ducked, felt a bullet cleave the air beside his face and heard his driver yelp in pain.

“Zohra?”

“It’s nothing, sir. A scratch.”

Naseer saw blood soaking through the short sleeve of Zohra’s summer uniform. It seemed more than a simple scratch to him, but Zohra still clung to the steering wheel with both hands, while his right foot held down the accelerator pedal.

“Nothing, sir, I promise!” he repeated.

At a loss for words of comfort, Naseer barked, “Well, hold us steady, then! I’ll pay them back in kind!”

He raised the AKMS to his shoulder once again, finding his mark, letting his index finger rest against the curved trigger. At the last instant, Naseer hesitated, more than half expecting another jolt to pitch him left or right, forward or back.

When nothing happened, he fired hastily, jerking the trigger, rather than applying steady pressure as he’d been instructed as a young recruit. The AKMS rattled in his ear and spewed out shiny brass, but Naseer would have been surprised if he had hit anything.

Another curse, before he braced himself, aiming. Naseer saw his opponent’s lean face over open sights, already aiming back at him with what appeared to be—

The world exploded suddenly, without a hint of warning, and Tarik Naseer spun into crimson darkness.

THE GP-25 GRENADE launcher was nicknamed Kostyor—“bonfire,” in Russian. The under-the-barrel model attached to Bolan’s AKMS rifle measured about 12.5 inches long and weighed 3.3 pounds with an empty chamber. Breech-loading of a caseless 40 mm VOG-25 fragmentation grenade added half a pound to the deadly package, including 48 grams of high explosives.

Other grenades were readily available for the GP-25, including a bouncing frag round designated as the VOG-25P, Gvozd rounds filled with CS gas, baton rounds, and GRD smoke grenades designed for use at 50, 100 and 200 meters. Since Bolan’s target was a moving vehicle, he chose the basic impact round for maximum effect.

Bolan slipped his left thumb through a hole provided in the launcher’s stubby pistol grip, steadied his aim as best he could and sent the HE round downrange as one of his pursuers was about to try another autoburst. The Executioner’s grenade got there first, slamming into the Jeep’s grille and detonating on impact.

The result exceeded Bolan’s hopes.

He’d thought that it would trash the Jeep’s engine, shake up the driver and his passenger, granting Hussein Gorshani time to leave them in the dust before the APC caught up. Instead, the Jeep itself seemed to explode, hood airborne on a ball of fire, before it flipped through a clumsy forward somersault.

“Allah be praised!” Gorshani cried, catching the action in his rearview mirror.

Bolan didn’t care who got the credit, and he knew that they weren’t out of danger yet.

“There’s still the APC,” he said. “I won’t crack that with 40 mm frag grenades.”

“I can outrun them,” Gorshani said.

“Now’s the time to do it, then,” Bolan answered.

In response, the SUV seemed to discover extra power somewhere underneath its hood. The truck surged forward, despite the rough ground underneath its tires. Thin carpet on the rear deck failed to cushion Bolan’s spine and buttocks against heavy pounding.

He was lucky to have hit the Jeep at all, much less to stop it cold the way he had. Now Bolan saw the APC pull up beside the Jeep’s wreckage and brake.

“They’re stopping,” he informed Gorshani. “Now’s the time to give it everything you’ve got.”

“I shall!” the Pakistani said, but their speed did not increase—it seemed the SUV had no more left to give. But still, every moment that the APC stayed where it was lengthened their lead.

“They’ve got someone up and moving,” Bolan said. “He’s in the vehicle. They’re coming!”

Bolan did the math in his head. Say the SUV was traveling at sixty miles per hour, pulling steadily away. The APC would soon accelerate to its top speed of fifty miles per hour. It could never catch Gorshani’s ride at that speed, all things being equal.

But they weren’t equal.

The APC was built for travel over this type of terrain. Gorshani’s SUV, despite its four-wheel-drive capacity, could not compete with the military vehicle in the long run.

And there was still the APC’s machine gunner to reckon with. His PKM machine gun had a muzzle velocity of 2,500 feet per second, with a maximum range of 1,000 meters. It could rip through a belt of 650 rounds in 60 seconds and land a fair number of bullets on target at 200 meters.

The bottom line: if something happened to the SUV, or if the gunner in the APC got lucky, they were dead.

It would require a daring move to prevent either one of those events, and while that kind of play was Bolan’s stock-in-trade, he didn’t know whether Gorshani had the nerve to pull it off.

Fleeing from adversaries in a high-speed chase was one thing. Meeting them head-on was something else completely.

“They’re gaining on us,” Bolan said.

Gorshani muttered something Bolan took to be a curse, then said, “It won’t go any faster.”

“I don’t want you to,” Bolan replied.

“What, then?” Gorshani’s eyes, reflected in the rearview mirror, held a hint of desperation.

“Slow down,” Bolan told him. “Let them catch us.”

THE EXECUTIONER knew he couldn’t penetrate the BTR-70’s armor with anything in his mobile arsenal. His 40 mm frag grenades would merely glance off the APC’s nose to explode in midair—no threat to the soldiers inside. But he still had one chance.

“Slow down?” Gorshani questioned, from the driver’s seat.

“And stop, when I give you the word,” Bolan said.

The mirror-eyes met his again, for a heartbeat, then shifted away.

“As you wish.”

Bolan fed the GP-25 another fragmentation round, as Gorshani raised his foot from the accelerator, letting the SUV decelerate without using the brakes. Behind them, the APC was gaining steadily, a juggernaut that seemed intent on running them down.

But that wasn’t how it was done. Bolan knew his adversaries wouldn’t ram Gorshani’s vehicle if they had any other choice.

And they also had a machine gunner, who likely craved an opportunity to see some action.

A gunner who could only fire his weapon if he first revealed himself.

Bolan was ready when the hatch opened, a soldier’s head and shoulders rising into view behind the pintle-mounted PKM. The Executioner fired his 40 mm round, then shouted at Gorshani, “Stop! Stop now!”

The SUV slid to a halt and Bolan rolled over the tailgate, conscious of the HE detonation eighty yards in front of him. He didn’t see the nearly headless soldier topple backward, dropping through the hatch and almost landing in the driver’s lap. Success was measured by the fact that no one riddled him with bullets as he charged the APC.

That vehicle slowed for a moment, lurching. It was just enough of a delay for Bolan to sprint across the intervening distance and launch into a leap from ten feet out.

The APC was nine feet tall, from ground level to the apex of its turret, but the fenders were about waist-high. Bolan’s leap put him there, but it was not his final destination. Taking full advantage of the shock his 40 mm round had caused, he scrambled upward, toward the open hatch.

And as he reached it, Bolan held an RGD-5 frag grenade in his left hand. He yanked its safety pin at the last instant, dropped the bomb through the open hatch, then crouched and found a handhold on the turret’s flank.

The grenade had a four-second fuse, granting zero time for anyone inside the APC to pick it up and throw it back. The blast reminded Bolan of a cherry bomb inside an oil drum, multiplied to the tenth power. Smoke and screams poured from the open hatch, as the APC lurched to a halt.

Bolan waited, knowing that one of two things had to happen next. The soldiers who could move would spill out through the APC’s exit doors, or someone would lurch forward to take over from the mangled driver.

In the latter event, he would feed them another grenade. If they bailed—

Bolan heard the rear doors open, soldiers cursing as they scrambled from the smoky, blood-spattered interior. Their boots crunched on sand, losing traction as the men stumbled out.

The BTR-70 had room inside it for a three-man crew, plus seven passengers. Bolan had killed one of the crew with his first shot, and guessed the other two were dead or dying from the RGD-5’s blast. How many others had been hit by shrapnel from the frag grenade? And how many of those were still fit to fight?

He strode across the flat top of the APC and caught the soldiers as they tried to organize—four men armed with Kalashnikovs, two of them with bloodstains showing on their desert-camo uniforms.

Their blood, or someone else’s?

Bolan didn’t care.

His AKMS raked the four men from left to right, then back again, making them dance as bullets ripped through flesh and fabric, dropping them before they could return fire. Bolan waited for another moment, covering the exit hatch. When no one else emerged, he readied himself for the nine-foot drop, prepared to check out the interior. Just as he flexed his knees to jump, he heard a scraping sound behind him.

One of the shell-shocked soldiers had been strong and smart enough to flank him. Now, unless Bolan could spin and drop at the same time, fire from the hip and nail the man who meant to kill him—

Halfway through his turn, Bolan flinched at the report of a Kalashnikov on autofire. Already braced to take the bullets that he knew were coming, the big American blinked, surprised to see his would-be slayer sprawled across the APC’s gun turret, facedown in a spreading pool of blood.

“He’s dead, I think,” Gorshani called up to him from the ground.

“I’d say you’re right,” Bolan replied. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

4

Mount Khakwani, North-West Frontier Province

The messenger’s name was Harata Bhutani. At thirty-four, he was the youngest man permitted access to the leaders of al Qaeda in hiding. All of the command staff’s other aides were ten or twelve years older—and, of course, they all were men.

Akram Ben Abd al-Bari would not trust a woman—even his own mother, were she living—with the knowledge of his whereabouts, much less his current plans. To him and those around him, granting any power to a woman reeked of sacrilege.

Bhutani drove his battered motorcycle up a narrow, winding mountain road that was, at least in theory, wide enough for a small sedan. He didn’t like to think about what might occur if two cars traveling in opposite directions met each other on the road. There was no room to pass, much less to turn around, and driving in reverse, he thought, would have been tantamount to suicide.

It’s not my problem, he consoled himself. Bhutani did not own a car and never would. He had a driver’s license, chiefly for delivery of martyrs to the towns where they would detonate the vests of high explosives hidden underneath their robes. On such occasions the car was always provided by his masters, and then discarded after it had served its purpose.

The small bike that he rode now, with its imported Chinese engine, cost 37,000 rupees in a showroom—about 575 U.S. dollars. Bhutani had only paid roughly half of that, considering its age, but it had served him well.

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