RAINING HELLFIRE

A deadly series of lightning strikes confounds experts and pits Mack Bolan against a new kind of terror that comes out of the sky. The death toll spreads as a plane loaded with innocent victims is blown apart, an office building ignites, killing hundreds, and refinery and munitions factories burst into fireballs. Whoever’s responsible leaves no fingerprint. And the strikes continue—unpredictable, undetectable and unstoppable.

Posing as the front man of a rival terrorist organization claiming responsibility for the attacks, Bolan lures the enemy—Iraq’s Republican Guard—out of the shadows. And by coaxing them to put this latest lethal incendiary weapon on the black-market auction block, traitorous old friends and reformed enemies converge…right into the center of Bolan’s crosshairs.

The wall of compressed air painfully crushed his chest

For an unknown length of time, Bolan’s universe was filled with deafening chaos, every hair on his body standing stiff, the fillings in his teeth growing uncomfortably hot.

That was when he realized that the magnetic field of lightning had to be creating eddying currents in anything made of metal.

Quickly Bolan tossed away his guns, throat mike, transceiver, spare ammo and knives. Yanking a grenade out of a pocket, he could feel how warm it was and whipped it as far away as possible. Then he tossed the remaining ones.

But the last grenade’s detonation pounded the Executioner hard, ripping apart his clothing and peppering him with hot shrapnel....

Fireburst

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims—national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil.

—Benjamin Netanyahu

International Terrorism

Terrorists have no morals or ideals, no sense of what’s right or what’s wrong. Any end justifies the means. One thing has always been crystal clear—someone has to stop them. That’s where I come in.

—Mack Bolan

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nick Pollotta for his contribution to this work.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

PROLOGUE

New York City, New York

Following a rumble of thunder, lightning flashed across the night sky, illuminating the roiling storm clouds from within like misshapen Japanese lanterns.

“God, I hate the rain,” a passenger on the jetliner growled under his breath, sliding shut the plastic cover to block his view out the window.

“Oh, sir, our aircraft is one of the safest planes in existence!” a pretty flight attendant said with a comforting smile. “We get hit by lightning two or three times every trip, and it doesn’t even damage the paint! I can assure you that there is nothing to fear.”

Completely unconcerned, the slim woman walked away to check on the other passengers.

Twenty miles ahead of the jetliner was John F. Kennedy International Airport, a glowing oasis of incandescent and halogen lights, mixing together into a whitish haze that dominated the night in open defiance of the rumbling storm.

“How’s the traffic?” the pilot asked the navigator, keeping one hand on the yoke while reaching out to tap the glass front of a fuel gauge. The needle quivered, but didn’t change position.

The curved banks of controls surrounded the three members of the cockpit crew in a rainbow of technology, while outside lightning flashed again, much closer, and then farther away.

“We’re in the pipe,” the navigator replied, infinitely adjusting the delicate controls on her radar screen. “There’s nothing in the sky closer than a klick.”

No other airplanes were visible because of the tumultuous summer storm, but the radar showed that the sky was full of flying metal, with an even dozen commercial jetliners steadily circling the busy airport, impatiently waiting for permission to land.

“This must be a slow day for Kennedy,” the copilot said, keeping both hands on the yoke.

She shrugged. “Pretty much so, yeah.”

“Bad for them, good for us,” the pilot said, unclipping a hand mike and thumbing the transmit button. “Hello, Kennedy? This is flight one-nine-four out of Oslo. Do you copy? Over.”

“This is Kennedy Tower, one-nine-four. We hear you five-by-five.” The ceiling speaker crackled. “You’re behind schedule. Should have been here an hour ago. Over.”

“We hit a headwind over the Atlantic,” the pilot replied. “Kennedy, could I please have an ETA?”

“Fifteen minutes until you can have a runway, one-nine-four. Stay on your heading and maintain—”

Suddenly, a blinding light filled the windows, and every instrument on the control boards flickered wildly.

“Say again, Kennedy. We got tickled,” the pilot said with a laugh, as the instrument readings returned to normal once more.

“Any damage?” the navigator asked, glancing up from her screen.

“Nope,” the copilot said, brushing back his thinning hair. “Just a—”

The terrible light filled the windows again, and the controls dimmed. But before they could reboot, another lightning bolt hit the aircraft, then another, and yet another, the force of the last one cracking a side window.

“What the fuck just happened?” the copilot demanded, looking around the flight deck. Nothing seemed to be damaged, but the overhead lights were dim, one of them flickering, and most of the control boards were dark and inert.

“Radar is down!” the navigator announced grimly. “The radio is dead, and ILM is off-line!”

“Maybe we blew a fuse,” the pilot said, flipping switches with both hands. “Oh, Christ, we blew every fuse!”

“What about the backup circuits?”

“Dead! Everything is dead!”

Just then, the entire airplane shook as another bolt of lightning struck.

“Left engine is gone,” the copilot announced in a strained voice. “Not dead. Gone. There’s just a hole in the wing!”

“That’s impossible!” the navigator stated furiously, twisting dials and pressing buttons. “This plane is designed to withstand any conceivable storm!”

The reply of the copilot was lost in the noise of a lightning bolt hitting them again. A spray of sparks erupted from a wall unit, and smoke trickled out from under the floor.

“Kennedy, this is one-nine-four!” the pilot said into the hand mike, but there was only silence from the overhead speaker. Tossing away the mike, he wrapped both arms around the yoke and braced his legs. “Fuck it, we’re going straight in! Kennedy will just have to figure out what happened on their own!”

The copilot tightened his seat belt. “Okay, I’ll tell the—”

This time the flash of the lightning came with the scream of ripping metal as a section of the roof broke off and sailed away in the storm. Instantly, the flight crew was hammered by a howling wind, and every loose item swirled around the compartment before vanishing into the rain.

With a wordless scream, the navigator was torn from her chair, the seat belt dangling loose. Flailing both arms, she was slammed against the ragged edge of the hole before tumbling away.

A split second later, lightning crashed in through the breech, killing both pilots, and drastically widening the hole. Lurching out of control, the aircraft flipped over sideways, the startled passengers screaming in terror. Then the lightning hit the plane several more times in rapid succession, and all of the fuel tanks simultaneously detonated.

The roiling fireball was briefly visible for several miles along the coastline of both New York and New Jersey before fading away.

Minutes passed in rainy silence. Then irregular chunks of burned metal and smoking corpses started to fall across the airport. An engine slammed into the main terminal, punching completely through to crash inside the concourse, killing people standing in line to check their bags. Next, bodies started to plummet from the sky, splattering across the tarmac, shattering windows and smashing into cars in the long-term parking lot.

As a strident siren began to howl from on top of the control tower, a dozen other planes were trying to veer away from the wreckage dropping onto the runways. Not all of them were successful, several crashing into one another in a seemingly endless chain reaction of fire, death and destruction… .

CHAPTER ONE

Colombia

Entering his tent, Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, sat on a canvas cot, eased off his body armor and grabbed a medical kit. His latest strike against Colombia’s leading cartel had resulted in minor injuries. None of his cuts were very bad, but things went septic very fast in the jungle, so even a tiny cut could soon become life threatening. When he was done, Bolan loaded a hypodermic syringe and injected himself with a double dose of strong antibiotics. Better safe than sorry. He had a long journey back to the airplane after he packed up his gear.

The soldier was just starting to make coffee when he heard a soft chime from inside his bedroll. Pulling out a laptop, he flipped up the lid, activated the decoder and established contact with a military satellite in orbit.

“Striker here,” he said.

“Anchor,” came the reply.

Tapping a button to activate the webcam, Bolan saw the screen clear into a view of a middle-aged man hunched over a desk covered with papers.

“Hi, Hal. Something wrong, or were you worried about me?”

“Not sure yet,” Hal Brognola said, running a hand through his hair.

The big Fed was one of the top cops of the nation, a fixture at the Justice Department, and the head of the clandestine Sensitive Operations Group. Almost everything he did was covert, such as his alliance with Bolan, and he reported directly to the President.

“Okay, shoot,” Bolan said, folding his bandaged hands.

Brognola frowned. “What do you know about lightning?”

“I know enough to get out of the rain when there’s thunder.”

“Then hold on to your ass, buddy. Within the past twenty-fours hours a commercial jetliner, a high-speed monorail train and fifteen individual people have been killed by lightning strikes.”

“I’ll assume the number is unusual?” Bolan asked.

“No, lots of people, places and things get zapped by lightning bolts every day. But ever since Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod, the death toll has been kept at a minimum,” Brognola said, reaching past the monitor to get a manila folder. “However, according to the black box from the aircraft, the plane was hit fifty-seven times by lightning in a five-minute period.”

Suddenly alert, Bolan sat up straight. “That’s not possible, Hal.”

“Bet your ass it’s not,” Brognola growled, opening the folder, to spread out some papers. “Yet it did happen. That’s been confirmed. What’s even worse, those fifteen people killed by lightning were all experts in advance electronics, specializing in—”

“Lightning?”

“Close. Tesla coils.”

“Same thing.”

“Near enough,” Brognola admitted.

“All right, going with the idea that these weren’t simply outrageous coincidences, what are we talking about, artificial lightning bolts from some sort of machine hidden inside the storm clouds?”

“Could be. Unless somebody has discovered a way to invoke a lightning strike, and then we’re all in for a shitstorm of trouble.”

“You got that right,” Bolan replied, rubbing his unshaved chin. “What does a lightning bolt generate, a billion volts or so?”

“Right.”

“Any of the people hit happen to survive?” Bolan asked.

“No way in hell. After the second strike, they were greasy smoke. The third lightning bolt made holes in the ground over a yard deep. Add the rain, and it’ll take weeks to identify most of the remains. The FBI forensic lab was able to scrape some residue off nearby lampposts and store windows to try to run a match on the DNA, but no joy yet.”

“Which means there must have been some eyewitnesses.”

“Check. We managed to identify a few of the people killed. One was Professor Albert Goldman, the foremost expert in lightning storms in the world, another was Dr. David Thomas, an electrical engineer who had designed a radical new antilightning safeguard that would, he hoped, harness the power to channel into the power grid of a major city, and another was Dr. Kathleen Summer. She is…sorry, she was the woman who invented the Tesla antitank trap for the Pentagon ten years ago.”

With each name, a picture scrolled across the bottom of the screen, along with a shot of the person’s charred remains. Bolan snorted. Charred? They were damn near vaporized.

“Hal, how many people get killed by lightning in the U.S. in an average year?”

“About ninety.”

“So fifteen are burned in a single day?” Bolan shook his head. “Good call, Hal. Clearly, somebody has found a way to control lightning strikes, and they’ve already removed most of the leading scientists in the field to forestall any attempts to analyze their equipment.”

“Unfortunately, that was my guess, too.” Brognola sighed, the picture distorted for a moment with a burst of static. “We won’t know what these people want until they attack again.”

“Were any of these scientists connected to one another? Went to the same school, had the same bookie, were they all heading toward a summit conference on weather—anything like that?”

“Nope, I checked, and then double-checked everything,” Brognola stated, pushing the folder aside. “They had absolutely nothing in common aside from their field of expertise. Maybe when we identify the rest of the victims, some sort of pattern will emerge. But until then—”

“We’re in the dark until these people start making demands,” Bolan added. “And by then it may be too late to track them down.”

“Agreed. All we can do is stay sharp, and be ready to move the instant something is learned.”

“Okay, if I’m going to be chasing clouds, then I’ll need some help on this,” Bolan said. “Any chance of getting Able Team or Phoenix Force?” The two teams were the other field operatives of the Sensitive Operations Group, based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia.

“Sorry, they’re both out of contact at the moment.”

“Okay,” Bolan stated. “If the Stony Man teams are unavailable, I have some people I can call in.”

“Expect trouble?”

“Just prepared for it. You know me.”

Brognola chuckled. “Yeah, I do. All right, stay in touch, and watch your ass.”

Turning off the laptop, Bolan grabbed his gear and loaded it into the speedboat. He started the outboard motor and headed out. He had a long way to travel, and speed was of the essence.

In the distance, thunder softly rumbled.

He only hoped it wasn’t already too late.

CHAPTER TWO

Bern, Switzerland

A thick blanket of glistening snow covered the jagged mountains surrounding the valley, puffy white clouds drifting lazily along the granite tors and snowcapped peaks.

Joyful singing could be heard coming from both the church and the synagogue. A frozen lake reflected the majestic Alps, the image slightly distorted by the laughing people skating arm in arm. Numerous people in snowmobiles scooted along the gentle hills, and a deadly serious snowball fight was raging out of control at the elementary school.

The town of Bern was a combination of the old and the very old. A stone tower attached to city hall boasted a gigantic clock with human-size figures that came out and performed a robotic dance every hour on the hour. There was an artesian well in the town square where people still drew water, even though they had modern plumbing, and there was the jingle of bells as teams of horses pulled colorful sleighs along the snowy streets.

Every wooden building was decorated with ornate carvings, every brick structure painted with highly stylized hex symbols of good luck and prosperity. The satellite dishes were concealed in the nearby woods, the cables laid under the ground so that they wouldn’t mar the appearance of a classic Swiss village, and the fully functional Second World War antiaircraft cannons were well-hidden inside concrete bunkers designed to resemble stone cottages. As with just about everything else in the mountainous country, nothing was precisely what it seemed to be at first glance.

Just down the block from the town square was a crowd of people in heavy parkas and gloves. Standing politely behind the bright yellow “danger” tape, they talked in hushed whispers and took endless pictures with their cell phones.

On the other side of the barrier, gray smoke rose from the mounds of hot ashes and burned timbers that used to be a small bookstore. The firefighters had gone home hours earlier, and the chief constable of the village had trundled back to the station to write a report on the incident.

Suddenly, there was the roar of an engine, and a shiny Harley-Davidson motorcycle charged across the new bridge spanning the frozen lake. Revving the twin-V88 engine to maximum, the driver banked low around a corner, both wheels slipping in the ice under the snow in spite of the winter spikes. Cursing vehemently, the driver fought for control of the bike, and managed to right the Harley before jouncing over a frosty granite curb. For a split second, man and machine were airborne, then they came down hard, skittering along the slippery sidewalk until coming to a ragged halt at the danger tape.

Many people in the crowd frowned at the rude arrival of the outsider, but said nothing, merely moving aside to give the stranger a better view of the wreckage. Sitting on the purring motorcycle, the driver did nothing for several minutes but stare at the gaping black hole in the ground only a few yards away.

Turning off the Harley, the man kicked down the stand and walked to the edge of the pit, still trying to comprehend what he was seeing.

“Impossible,” he muttered, lifting his visor. “This is impossible!”

Just then, cries of surprise rose from the skaters on the lake as a BMW snowmobile rocketed across the frozen expanse. Narrowly missing the scattering villagers, the big machine zoomed straight up the bank onto the snowy street and across the village green.

At breakneck speed, the driver dodged the well and several children and slammed through a snowman, reducing it back into its basic component. Blinded by the explosion of flakes, the driver zigzagged down the street, nearly clipping several parked cars and another snowman before crashing into the granite cornerstone of the local bank. Stone chips went flying, the fender crumpled, and the engine sputtered into silence. However, the driver managed to stay in the seat just long enough to ride out the recoil before hopping off and yanking open a rear compartment to haul out a bulky toolbox.

The driver was clearly a woman, and wearing the incongruous outfit of a ball gown and a thick puffy winter jacket. Satin slippers jutted from a pocket, and she was wearing heavy black snow boots.

“Damn it, Della, it took you long enough to get here,” the driver of the motorcycle said, removing his helmet.

“Shut up, Zander. I live farther away than you do,” Della Gotterstein countered, striding toward what remained of the bookstore. “How bad is the damage?”

“Total,” Zander Meyers stated.

She scowled. “Bah, that is not possible.”

“See for yourself!” Meyers said, making a sweeping gesture.

Pushing her way through the rapidly thinning crowd, Gotterstein halted at the danger tape to stare down into the charred hole.

“Good God,” she whispered, setting down the toolbox to remove her own helmet. A wealth of golden hair cascaded to her trim waist.

“Told you,” Meyers said, running a hand over his thick hair, the expensive toupee shifting ever so slightly.

“How in the… I mean…what could…” She glanced around at the surrounding building, then swallowed hard. “Is this an echo?”

Meyers frowned at that. Echo was code for a terrorist attack. “To be honest, I have no goddamn idea.”

Displeased, Gotterstein pursed her lips at the blasphemy, but held her tongue. The man was an electronic genius, and that was all that mattered at the moment. His ridiculous belief in evolution was his own private affair.

As the last of the crowd politely departed, Meyers and Gotterstein ducked under the tape to walk carefully into the smoky crater. Only stacks of ash remained from the thousands of burned books, but there were also several puddles of congealed plastic, as well as a lot of melted wiring, and what might have been fried circuit boards. They were in such poor condition it was hard to tell.

“What do you think?” Meyers asked hopefully.

“Are you expecting a miracle?” Gotterstein retorted angrily, kicking over a bookcase. Underneath was a smashed keyboard. “Neither of us can repair this. There’s nothing left of the bank’s mainframe. It does not exist anymore!”

“Sadly, I concur.” Meyers sighed as a light snow began to fall. The flakes vanished with a hiss as they landed on the broken timbers and smashed bricks.

“Billions of euros lost,” Gotterstein said, glancing at the sky. “Are you sure this was not an echo?”

“According to the preliminary report from the fire department, this was caused by lightning,” Meyers said, turning up his collar.

“Bah, impossible!” the woman scoffed. “The Swiss banking consortium had us install every safeguard known to modern science. No amount of lightning could have done this!”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes! It would take hundreds of bolts to smash through all of our shielding, antistatic defenses and Faraday cages!”

“So maybe there were hundreds of bolts.”

“Are you insane?”

“Then how do you explain it?”

“I…I cannot.”

“Let’s check the garage,” Meyers said, starting back toward the street.

The snowy town seemed deserted as the man and woman crossed the street to an old barn. The side door was painted to resemble wood, but up close it was clearly welded steel. Unlocking the door, they stepped inside and waited. After a few moments, the ceiling lights automatically flickered into life.

Proceeding along a bare concrete tunnel, they passed several massive cannon emplacements and ammunition bunkers. The air of the disguised fortress was stale, and the dust on the floor showed that no one had been inside the building for years.

At the end of the tunnel, they each inserted a special key into a pair of slots and turned them in unison. There was a low hum, and the wall broke apart to reveal a computer workstation.

Sitting alongside each other, Meyers and Gotterstein both ran a systems check, then started furiously typing for several minutes. Slowly, the room began to warm as the wall vents started sending out waves of heat.

Situated around them on the walls, a dozen plasma screens strobed into operation and began scrolling complex electrical schematics, data flow charts and endless lines of binary code.

“Dead?” Meyers asked without looking up from his work.

“Dead,” Gotterstein muttered, brushing back a curl from her face. “But essentially undamaged.”

“Excellent!”

“Agreed. The links are burned out. Those line fuses we installed last year apparently did the trick. The computer is off-line, but there has been no loss of memory, function or data. We can get this up and running in a couple of hours, and nobody will be the wiser that every bank in Switzerland temporarily lost all of their financial records.”

“I concur,” Meyers said, leaning back in his chair. Then he grinned widely. “Score one for the good guys, eh?”

“Praise Jesus!” She laughed.

Trying not to roll his eyes at the religious nonsense, Meyers said nothing. The woman was an expert at writing code and fixing hardware, a rare combination these days. Her only flaw was a ridiculous belief in supernatural mumbo-jumbo.

“I’ll call my wife and let her know I’ll be late for dinner,” Meyers said, rummaging in a pocket of his heavy coat.

“Late for dinner tomorrow,” Gotterstein countered, extracting her own cell phone. “I’ll call our contact at FINMA and give him a preliminary report.” She referred to the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority, which oversaw Swiss banking.

“Be sure to tell him what a difficult job it is, but we’re more than capable of handling the repairs.”

Glancing sideways, Gotterstein stroked a finger behind her ear, then displayed it to the man to show that it was bone-dry.

Chuckling, Meyers hit speed dial. As the connection was made, the whole fortress shook as thunder boomed directly overhead, the noise echoing among the cannons and bunkers.

“Thunder snow.” Gotterstein laughed, both thumbs tapping on the miniature keyboard of her phone. “God, that takes me back to my youth. Haven’t heard it in years.”

“Me neither,” he said with a worried expression as the thunder sounded again. Louder, longer and much closer.

“Della, let’s get out here,” Meyers said, quickly standing. “If the primary computer across the street actually was burned out of existence by lightning, then perhaps—”

Just then, he was interrupted by a terrible crackling noise as a lightning bolt crashed onto the barrel of an antiaircraft cannon. The surge of power arced off the melting breech to reach down the tunnel and hit the control station. Still holding their cell phones, both Meyers and Gotterstein died instantly, without even knowing what had just happened.

Another bolt arrived, igniting the corpses, exploding the controls and flashing along the wiring. The power surge failed to reach the main CPU buried safely deep underground. But a third bolt hit, followed by a fourth, fifth, sixth… . The bombardment went on and on, arcing finally across the gap in the line fuses and burning out the main servers.

Instantly, every file was erased. But the attack continued, bolt after bolt, until the mainframe was on fire, the CPU a charred husk and all of the primary circuits melting.

Halogen gas hissed from the ceiling to try to extinguish the blaze, but the lightning flowed along the swirling fumes to spread along the fire-suppression system and reach into every room of the fortress. Almost immediately, a dozen of the bunkers full of high-explosive shells were reached, the combined reverberations echoing along the mountains and hills for a hundred miles.

Along the Amazon

MOTORING ALONG THE AMAZON River, Bolan landed at a trading post several miles downstream and caught a tramp steamer. A few hours later he reached Beln where a rental plane was waiting. Checking over the plane to make sure that it hadn’t been tampered with in any way, Bolan took off and landed in Brasilia, the capital of Brazil, by early afternoon.

Changing his clothes in the plane, Bolan then proceeded to the security station. Customs inspectors in Brazil were far less stringent than in America, especially since his diplomatic passport made Bolan legally untouchable, and his hunting permits were all in order. Over the years, he had found a dozen different ways to move military ordnance across borders. In third-world nations a simple bribe often did the trick. Brazil wasn’t in that class anymore, and was rapidly on the way to becoming the first of the new superpowers. He would have to be more discreet. However, posing as a diplomatic aide for a politically neutral country like Finland, always facilitated Bolan’s ease of entry, or a quick exit.

“I did not know that Finland had an embassy in our country,” the inspector said in halting English.

“As a courtesy, I will refrain from mentioning that to the ambassador,” Bolan said with a dignified sniff.

On the floor were several bags, an arsenal of ammunition and hunting rifles nestled inside soft gray foam.

“No, no! I only meant that I… Here is your passport, sir,” the inspector said quickly to cover the gaff.

Slowly accepting the passport, Bolan tucked it away inside his white linen suit, then stared at the minor airport official in disdain, turned and walked away. So far, so good.

However, Bolan noted that the security cameras in the ceiling tracked his every step through the concourse, so he stayed rigidly in character until renting a car and driving away.

To throw off any possible tail, Bolan drove to an expensive hotel and switched to a different car from another rental agency. Then he did it again, exchanging the luxury car for an inconspicuous van.

Now far less noticeable, Bolan traveled to a storage-locker facility outside town, and paid for three adjoining units. As he unlocked the doors, he noticed a group of men playing a game of soccer in the grassy field across the street. They seemed a little old not to be working at this time of day, so Bolan watched them for a while. Located in remote locations, storage units were a favorite target for street gangs. However, the men played hard, and when they broke for beer, Bolan continued unloading the van.

In the first and third units, he installed a proximity sensor rigged to call his cell phone if the units were activated by an intruder. In the middle unit, he stashed the steamer bags, arming himself with a shoulder holster and Beretta. He left the body armor behind, but did don a thick undershirt of ballistic cloth. The resilient material would stop most shrapnel and small-caliber bullets. The impact would still break his bones, but he wouldn’t die immediately. That wasn’t much, but where he was going next it was all that he could risk wearing.

Driving back toward town, Bolan got a text message from Brognola about the lightning strikes in Bern. Temporarily, the ten largest banks in the world had no way to record a money transfer. The soldier knew that could have only a single purpose. The terrorists were preparing to sell the weapon. He scowled at that. First, they killed every expert in the field, then they made it impossible for the banks to reveal any details about a purchase.

Bolan noted sourly, maneuvering through heavy traffic, that these were Swiss banks, financial institutions world famous for never telling anybody anything at all.

Reaching the outskirts of the city, Bolan was immediately snared in rush-hour traffic. Exercising extreme patience, he spent the next two hours crawling along, dodging taxicabs, pedestrians, trucks and work crews, while listening to the radio for any news about recent attacks until he finally reached the Grand Imperial Casino and Resort.

Dominating the downtown area, the Grand Imperial rose from the surrounding office buildings and apartment blocks like a queen standing among hobos. The entire twenty stories glittered with neon lights in every possible color of the spectrum.

Music played from hidden speakers in the neatly trimmed hedges; a water fountain that looked suspiciously similar to the famous one in the Bellagio Casino in Las Vegas sprayed high columns of water in perfect time to the music. But then, William “The Gorgon” Kirkland wasn’t known for being low-key, or overly concerned with the niceties of the law. His redeeming feature was a fanatical devotion to justice. Kirkland and Bolan went back a long way.

Stopping at the front portico, Bolan tossed the van’s keys to a hesitant valet, whose demeanor changed instantly when the soldier flashed him a U.S. one-hundred bill for a tip, and strolled inside.

“Welcome to Grand Imperial, sir!” a showgirl said, flashing perfect teeth. She was dressed in nylons and sequins, feathers and a headdress, but her breasts were completely bare, aside from a light dusting of gold.

Smiling politely, Bolan shook her hand and went inside. The lobby was filled with slot machines, both the old-fashioned mechanical ones with an actual lever, the classic “one-armed bandit,” plus the new computerized versions with a swipe for your credit card, and a cushioned seat where you could relax and comfortably lose every penny you had in the world.

The main room was enormous and overly decorated with oil paintings, mirrors, ferns, chandeliers and velvet ropes. Just as in every other casino in existence, the crowd was excited but quiet, the general murmur of the patrons barely discernable over the chiming of the slot machines, ringing bells and the calls of the dealers. Most of it was in Portuguese, the language of Brazil. However, Bolan understood some of the more familiar phrases.

“Twenty-one, a winner!”

“Craps, sir, you lose.”

“New player!”

“Fresh deck!”

“Next!”

An endless parade of feathered showgirls in outrageous outfits strolled along, offering free drinks to everybody. Lubricant for the opening of hesitant wallets. Along one wall were several small auditoriums with glass windows in front, soundproof, of course. Customers could see the show, but not hear what was being said, which lured them inside like sheep to the shearing. On one stage, a magician was sawing a topless woman in two, while in the next, fifty topless women were dancing in some bizarre version of the French cancan, and a third stage held a stand-up comic talking into a mike, the audience silently throwing back their heads with laughter.

Just then, a casino guard started to walk his way. The man held a radio in his hand to call for help in case of trouble, but his belt held a stun gun, pepper spray, handcuffs and a police baton. All of which weren’t necessary, since he looked more than capable of benchpressing a fully loaded Cadillac Eldorado.

“I’m sorry, sir, but weapons are not permitted on the casino floor,” the guard said in perfect English.

“Good to know,” Bolan replied, impressed that the guard could tell he was armed. Most guards wouldn’t have been able to do that. Clearly, he had been trained by an expert. “Now, please call the Gorgon, and tell him to haul ass down here, pronto.”

The guard scowled. “Who was that again, sir?”

“Just ask Security, and tell them somebody has a message for the Gorgon.”

“We have nobody here by that name, sir,” the guard said, as four more guards come out of the crowd. Their faces were smiling, but their body language told an entirely different story.

“Just do it. Bill Kirkland and I are old friends,” Bolan said calmly, keeping his hands by his side. A gunfight with unarmed men in the middle of a crowd was absolutely the very last thing he wanted here.

As the guards formed a tight wall around Bolan, the first one made the call. Almost instantly, there was a response.

“The Gorgon?” a voice crackled over the radio. “Nobody has ever had the balls to call me that except for… Mack, is that you?”

“None other, Bill,” Bolan said toward the radio. “Nice to see you’re doing so well.”

“What was that?” William Kirkland crackled over the radio. “Sergeant Padestro! Please give Mr… .Smith the radio and return to your usual duties.”

The cadre of guards visibly relaxed as the first passed over the radio. Then they departed without a backward glance.

“Your staff is well-trained,” Bolan said, thumbing the transmit button, while turning toward the video camera in the ceiling.

“Damn well should be. Did it myself,” Kirkland told him. “Man, I never thought to see you again, old buddy. Head for the private elevator near that statue of Pegasus and come on up! I’ll have the chef slap a couple of T-bones on the grill, and we’ll start toasting the fact that we’re not dead yet.”

“Sounds good, but I’m here to collect on a debt.”

There was a brief silence.

“Are you serious?”

“Absolutely.”

“Be right down.” Kirkland sighed, and the radio went dead.

Going over to the marble statue of the famous winged horse, Bolan gave the radio to a passing security guard. He had to wait only a few minutes before the gold-tinted doors to a private elevator opened and a large man walked out wearing an expensive three-piece suit.

Born and raised in the Scottish Highlands, former NATO Special Agent William “The Gorgon” Kirkland stood over six feet tall and appeared more than ready to repel Roman legionaries from his beloved homeland.

Painfully clean-shaven, with a dimple in his lantern jaw, Kirkland had a suit of military body armor slung over a shoulder and was carrying a black nylon equipment bag that clanked with every step.

“Bill,” Bolan said in greeting.

“Prick,” Kirkland muttered in reply, then broke into a broad smile. “Damn, it’s good to you again. Even under these circumstances.”

“Same here.” Bolan chuckled. This close, he could catch glimpses of military tattoos under the other man’s silk collar, and hidden up both sleeves. Having patched bulletholes in his friend, Bolan knew that Kirkland was covered with enough tattoos, some of them extremely unsuitable for public display, that he could have been an exhibit in one of his casino’s sideshows.

“Okay, who do we kill?” Kirkland asked, shifting the body armor to a more comfortable position.

“As ever, the soul of tact.” Bolan laughed, offering a hand.

“Why change perfection?” Kirkland grinned as they shook.

A passing waitress paused for a moment to smile openly at the two huge men, then sighed and walked away, but put a little more motion into her hind quarters than was normal.

“I think she likes you,” Kirkland noted.

“I think she knows you own the place.”

“Cynic.”

“Dreamer.”

“But hey, it came true!” Kirkland gestured grandly with his free arm. “I own a casino! Welcome to Wild Bill’s Old West Palladium of Honest Cards, Easy Women and Cold Beer!”

“Now called the Grand Imperial.”

“A minor name change, I assure you.”

“Love to hear the story,” Bolan said, checking his watch, “but we’re short on time. Are you ready to travel?”

“Money, guns and passports, right here,” Kirkland said, jiggling the equipment bag.

“Now why would a respectable citizen like yourself have need of more than one passport?” Bolan asked, suppressing a grin.

“Believe it or not, there are a couple of countries where William ‘The Gorgon’ Kirkland wouldn’t be greeted with open arms.”

“More like ‘open fire’?”

“It has been known to happen,” Kirkland said with a shrug. “Okay, where to first, Sarge?”

Bolan noted the change in address. “I have some supplies stored just outside of town, then I’ve arranged a very expensive off-the-grid flight to Miami,” Bolan said as he began walking around the statue. “We need to pick up an expert in advanced electronics.”

“Sure, not a problem. I know a guy… Wait, did you say Miami?” Kirkland asked, stopping in his tracks. “Oh, no, you wouldn’t to do that to me.”

Bolan said nothing.

“Damn it, Sarge, you are a prick,” Kirkland growled, angrily starting forward once more. “Fine, okay, she can come! But if that crazy bitch ever mentions what happened in Hong Kong, I’ll take her over my knee for a bare-bottom spanking that’ll have her eating off a fireplace mantel for a week!”

“I’d love to see that,” Bolan said. “Because immediately afterward, Heather would rip out your beating heart and shove it up your ass.”

Kirkland grinned in memory. “Yeah, she’s something special, all right.”

“One of the best knife fighters I’ve ever seen.”

“And I have the scars to prove it!”

“Me, too.”

As the men exited the casino, Bolan saw that the staff had already brought around a Rolls-Royce, and a liveried chauffeur was holding open the rear door.

“Not today, James, I’ll be slumming it with this hobo for a while,” Kirkland said in passing. “Don’t do anything on the Duesy until I get back.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” James said in heavily accented English. “Any idea when that might be?”

“None whatsoever.”

“Very good, sir,” James said, closing the door to the Rolls. “Then I shall continue the modifications on the Lamborghini until your return.”

“Good man.”

“You own a Duesenberg?” Bolan asked, giving the ticket for the van to a valet.

Casting a brief glance at Kirkland, the teenager bolted toward the parking garage as if his pants were on fire.

“I have a few,” Kirkland boasted, then added, “Won the new one in a poker game. Okay, she’s a total wreck, but Jimmy and I will get it running again. He’s a wizard at remanufacturing antique parts.”

“Nice to have a hobby,” Bolan said cautiously, then felt compelled to add, “Bill, maybe you shouldn’t come along on this. It could get rough.”

“Rougher than Afghanistan, Beirut or the Congo?”

“Maybe,” Bolan admitted, “and you’ve been pushing papers for a long time.”

In a blur, Kirkland pulled a Webley .455 revolver from inside his jacket, only to see that Bolan had a Beretta out and ready.

“You were saying?” Kirkland asked coolly.

“Never mind,” Bolan replied, holstering the weapon.

Just then, the van arrived. Bolan unlocked the rear doors and Kirkland stowed his equipment inside.

As Bolan got behind the wheel, Kirkland climbed in the passenger side and closed the door. “Okay, we’re alone now,” he said, pulling out the Webley to start loading the empty revolver. “Start talking.”

“How much do you know about lightning?” Bolan asked, pulling away from the curb to merge into the busy stream of traffic.

CHAPTER THREE

Mumbai, India

A hard cold rain pelted the sprawling expanse of the eastern metropolis. Thunder constantly rumbled, and sheet lightning flashed from cloud to cloud, occasionally hitting the ground in a blazing display of nature unbridled.

Glistening skyscrapers of glass and steel dominated the vast landscape of gated homes, stores and tar-paper shacks. Freight trains moved slowly along the complex network of railroads, and the mighty Ganges River was high, threatening at any moment to overflow its banks and flood the city.

Washed clean by the unrelenting downpour, the downtown streets were nearly empty of merchants and tourists, unusual for the teeming city. The day’s accumulation of trash was gone, flushed into the wide drains, and the traffic was reduced to taxicabs, trolley cars and the mandatory army of unstoppable bike messengers. Only the street people remained.

Music came from a hundred locations: tea shops, taverns, restaurants, discotheques, open apartment windows and electronics stores blaring their latest acquisitions to the world. In the hills, a wedding party continued full-force, undampened by the weather, a cadre of eunuchs dressed as women dancing in front of the house to wish the new couple good luck. Down by the busy docks, a Bollywood crew was frantically trying to film a sequel to an unexpectedly popular science fiction movie.

A gantry rose high above the crew, technicians, stunt men and government safety inspectors checking the rig attached to the hero. The maze of wires were all painted dark green so that a computer could easily remove them in the lab.

“Are we ready?” the director said into a hand mike, the words booming out of amplifiers safe inside canvas tents. “Okay then, we go on three…two…one!”

Backflipping through a store window, the dashingly handsome hero launched into the air using his high-tech battlesuit. Instantly, a woman screamed, a dozen prop cars exploded into wild flames, and a hundred bearded assassins opened fired on rooftops with Russian machine guns and Chinese assault weapons. Easily smashing his way through them, the hero scooped up the woman in his arms and launched into the sky, circling around a billboard promoting a local jeans company.

“Cut! Great job!” the director said. “Everybody to second marks, and we’ll do the big fight scene!”

Standing on the sixteenth floor of the Chandra Building, the executive director of RAW scowled at the dimly heard commands. “Everybody to the second marks.” If the hero didn’t win the first time, then just do it again and again until he did. No problem. If only it was that simple in real life, the man thought.

In the room behind him, the top agents for RAW were sitting around a large conference desk reviewing Most Secret reports. If their conclusion matched his, then the entire world was in more danger than he could possibly imagine.

The agency was called RAW, the Research Analysis Wing, and was the external intelligence agency for India. Officially located in New Delhi, the covert agency actually operated out of Mumbai, posing as a legitimate business constructing desalination plants to make sea water drinkable. Which they did, but only as a sideline. Reporting only to the prime minister, the organization had stopped hundreds of terrorist attacks since its creation, and often joined forces with the Americans to eliminate terrorist training camps in Pakistan. RAW helped the Mossad capture Nazi war criminals, assisted Ukraine Intelligence to kill former KGB agents and joined forces with NATO in stopping human trafficking, as well as its usual duties of protecting the nation. But this new threat…

Watching the water trickle down the bulletproof window, the executive director briefly thought back to the warm summer rains of his childhood, playing in the mud puddles and sailing folded paperboats. Ah, youth. However, with the new information they had just obtained, it would seem as if those days were long gone, as antiquated as a coin-operated payphone.

“Sir, are you sure this HUMINT is hard?” the agent muttered, rifling through the sheath of documents.

“Yes, the human intelligence has been confirmed from two different sources,” the executive director replied curtly, folding both hands behind his back.

“Then he’s back,” another agent stated, crumpling a sheet of paper in his fist.

With a scowl, the executive director turned away from the window. “So it would appear,” he growled. “What’s more—”

Suddenly, the unbreakable window vaporized into superheated plasma as it was hit by a lightning bolt, then a second came through the opening and the executive director exploded, his steaming internal organs blown across the conference table. The agents hastily dove for the floor, but a split second later it detonated into blackened splinters. Scrambling for the door, the agents got only halfway there before there was a flash of light, terrible pain and then an endless eternity of soothing darkness.

Again and again, lightning ravaged the office building, blowing out windows on every story and setting countless fires.

Meanwhile, the movie cameras continued rolling down on the dockyard. However, they were no longer pointed at the actors, but at the bizarre flurry of violent activity that was slowly destroying the entire Chandra Building.

Baghdad, Iraq

IT WAS A SURPRISINGLY COOL DAY in the desert, barely out of the nineties. There was no wind worth mentioning, and the sky was a deep azure-blue.

A trail of dust rose from behind a low swell in the hard-packed ground, and moments later a speeding Hummer came into view, jouncing and bouncing along the cracked pavement of the new road.

There had been a lot of new roads poured since the invasion and the subsequent fall of Saddam Hussein. Mostly because the loyalists, terrorists and others kept blowing them up with roadside bombs buried in the loose sand. The crazy Americans called them IEDs, improvised explosive devices. But everybody else in the world simply called them bombs.

For this day’s mission, the three members of Project Ophiuchus were dressed in loose civilian clothing, black combat boots, sunglasses and kaffiyehs, the latter worn more to disguise their features from orbiting spy satellites than to keep the sand out of their mouths. The desert was merely a part of life, neither good or bad, just something to be endured or ignored.

“Almost there,” Lieutenant Fahada Nasser said, shifting gears as the Hummer raced around a bomb crater. The sand was sprinkled with broken pieces of exploded machines, black ants feasting on any organic remains.

Although rather short, the lieutenant had a womanly figure that she did her best to hide under loose uniforms. But her eyes were a dark violet, described as “oddly mysterious” by Interpol in her wanted poster.

Her long black hair was tightly bound into a ponytail, and a jagged scar circled her neck where a Mossad agent had tried to slit her throat and failed. She was armed with a 9 mm Tariq pistol, which was partially hidden under an open jacket. But lying on the floor was an XM-25 grenade launcher, and her pockets bulged with extra shells.

“I used to live here, too,” Major Zafar Armanjani replied, adjusting the red-and-black kaffiyeh covering the lower half of his face.

A tall man, Armanjani carried himself with a quiet sense of authority that gave other soldiers the urge to salute for no logical reason. Possessing the wide chest and thick arms of a professional weight lifter, Armanjani also had a strangely smooth face with tiny scars along the eyes and ears—the telltale marks of cheap plastic surgery. His only concession to vanity was a small silver scorpion hung around his neck as a good-luck charm. Tucked into a shoulder holster was a 13 mm Tariq Magnum pistol, and handcuffed to his wrist was an expensive leather briefcase.

In the rear seat, Sergeant Benjamin Hassan grunted, not because he had anything specific to say, but because he was grimly determined to be a part of every important conversation. The trouble was, Hassan couldn’t really tell the important ones from the casual, so he chimed into every conversation just in case.

Abnormally wide, Hassan resembled a gorilla more than a man, the thick black hair covering his body only adding to the image. However, his face was closely shaved, a small nick on a lip showing his haste that morning. As befitting his role of a hired bodyguard, the sergeant was openly armed with two 9 mm Tariq pistols, one on each hip, and a machete. But resting on the seat nearby was an Atchisson autoshotgun, a big drum of 12-gauge cartridges inserted into the lower receiver.

Glancing sideways, Nasser and Armanjani exchanged a knowing look about the sergeant, then dismissed the matter. Ever since he had been kicked in the head by a camel as a child, Hassan wasn’t able to understand many things that other people easily could. Normally, that would have been a serious detriment for a soldier. But his amazing marksmanship, brute strength and animal ferocity in battle more than made up for the minor inconvenience of his scrambled intelligence.

As the Hummer rumbled across a new wooden bridge, the major remembered how once it had been a beautiful concrete bridge decorated with a row of bronze statues of Saddam Hussein and equipped with steel hooks for hanging minor criminals. But that was all gone now.

Not so very long ago, the Republican Guard had ruled this desert like the sultans of legend, obeying only the commands of their leader. Then the Americans came, endless waves of them, like a never-ending sandstorm.

Most of the army had broken rank and run away, stripping off their uniforms to try to hide among the civilians. But the clever Americans had established checkpoints along the roads, and simply arrested everybody not wearing shoes.

Realizing the futility of the trick, Armanjani had done the opposite, killed a lowly private and switched clothing. Then he attempted to attack a platoon of American soldiers with the safety still engaged on his rifle. He was arrested, searched and laughingly dismissed as a harmless conscript.

Armanjani grinned at that memory. The fools! A wise man fought like the scorpion, not the beetle. The beetle attacked dung, while the scorpion watched and waited in cool shadow as the hot sun made his enemies weak. Then he pounced and feasted.

Before the war, the Iraqi army had been equipped with the most modern of weapons that could be purchased either legally or on the black market—Russian AK-47 assault rifles, RPG-7 grenade launchers, T-72 battle tanks, Gazelle gunships and BM-25 multiple-rocket launchers. However, it had all proved useless against the laser-guided missiles, smart bombs and robot drones of the hated Americans. Within only a few hours, the armored might of the Iraqi army had been obliterated, most of the battle tanks and MRLs destroyed without firing a single shot.

But revenge was coming soon, the major thought smugly as the Hummer passed the burned-out shell of a Gazelle attack gunship. Everything of any value had been removed, leaving only the fire-blackened frame and twisted landing rails.

“I hate the sight of those,” Nasser said in a husky voice. “They always remind me of a carcass the beetles have devoured.”

“You’re getting better at that,” Armanjani said, looking out the window. “If I did not personally know better, I would swear that you were a man.”

“Fuck you, too, sir,” Nasser replied in a deep gravelly rumble.

“Much better,” Armanjani stated. “Just remember to scratch your balls every now and then. Not under your damn breasts.”

“My new bra itches.”

“Too bad. The people we are dealing with do not like women, except as a vessel for their pleasure.”

“Vessel. As in a toilet.” Her voice was neutral, but her hands went white on the steering wheel. “Yes, I have met such men before.”

“Just don’t let them take you a prisoner and find out personally,” he warned.

“I will have your back, cousin,” Hassan growled, cradling the massive Atchisson autoshotgun.

Just then, the loose sand shifted on top of a nearby sand dune, and a lone figure in a tan ghillie suit stood, the loose material falling away.

As Nasser stopped the Hummer, the major made a complex gesture in the air.

With a nod, the armed figure went back into the hole, vanishing like a scorpion from the noon heat.

“Mark that spot,” Armanjani commanded, as the Hummer started forward once more.

“He is already dead,” Hassan replied, staring directly into the blazing sun.

“Not yet, my friend,” Armanjani advised. “First we must talk with his masters.”

Hassan only nodded in reply, his gloved hands tightening slightly on the deadly Atchisson.

“Do you really think that we can deal with al Qaeda?” Nasser asked in her real voice. It was soft and gentle, almost girlish, as if she were a child wearing the clothing of an adult. “They’re animals! Not soldiers.”

“We can deal with them,” the major said. “And do not speak again until we are far away from here. These people have a very low opinion of women.”

“They’re fools.”

“True. But rich fools who hate the same enemy that we do. Let us hope they will deal honestly, and we will drive away from here millionaires!”

“Billionaires,” Hassan corrected hesitantly.

“Not after the split, no,” the major said, checking the clip in the 13 mm Magnum pistol.

Settling back into the seat, Hassan grunted in grudging acceptance at that. Then he asked, “Why can we not simply sell our device directly to the Saudis? They are the real masters of the Middle East.”

“Because their prince wishes to pretend that he is not a criminal, and thus keep the Americans from bombing his palace,” Armanjani answered curtly. “As they did to Saddam and so many others.”

“Bah, the Saudis are fools,” Nasser snorted. “All men are fools!”

“Most women, too,” Armanjani added with a chuckle.

Obscured by her kaffiyeh, Nasser’s expression was unreadable, but the skin around her sunglasses crinkled as her cheeks rose in what might have been a smile.

A few miles later, they reached an intersection and took a left turn. There were no street signs or mile markers. It resembled ten thousand other such intersections, ordinary and easily forgettable.

“Get hard,” Armanjani commanded. “We are here to deal, but I trust these back-doors Muslims less than a UN negotiator.”

As they crested a low hill, a shimmering expanse of blue appeared in the distance. Soon, they were driving along the shore of a small lake. In the middle was an artificial island with a white marble palace of domes, towers and spirals.

Once, this had been a minor palace owned by President Hussein, a paradise on earth. Now it was a burned-out hovel, barely able to stand against the evening breeze. Weeds filled the gardens, every window was broken and vile graffiti covered the outer walls in garish neon colors.

Parking the vehicle a safe distance away, Armanjani and the others exited the Hummer and did a quick recon around the palace before venturing through the sagging front doors. Their footfalls echoed off the bare walls as they walked into the shadowy mansion.

With their weapons at the ready, they eased across the spacious foyer, keeping apart from one another to prevent unseen snipers from getting a group shot. It was dark inside, the only light coming from a stained-glass skylight that had somehow escaped intact.

The palace had been stripped bare, everything of value removed, sometimes forcibly. Even marble columns and the electrical outlets had been yanked from the walls. The walls and ceiling were pockmarked with countless bullet holes, delicately carved doors had been reduced to jagged splinters, and there were dank piles in the corners that looked suspiciously like human waste.

Removing his sunglasses, Armanjani frowned in disapproval. This was sad. Saddam Hussein had been a father to his nation. A stern father, yes, but that was how you raised children—with the closed hand and the open heart. He simply couldn’t understand the raw hatred his fellow countrymen harbored for their fallen leader. Our father is dead, can we not at least honor him in the grave? the major wondered.

Proceeding along the main corridor, the three people swept past a library, steam room, billiard room, armory and movie theater before reaching the living room.

Laid out in overlapping circular patterns, the cavernous room rose and fell in random patterns, giving it a rather unearthly feel. All of the furniture and artwork was gone, of course, and the waterfall had been turned off, leaving only the mosaic on the bottom of the basin. Some of the tiles had been removed, but it was still easily recognizable as President Hussein with several busty American movie stars clustered around him. He was in full military uniform, with a scimitar and a gold crown, while they were clothed in diaphanous veils.

Splintery wooden bridges crossed over empty swimming pools, and curved niches lined the walls where there had previously been antique suits of armor from around the world. What might have once been a throne occupied a central location, but it had been used for target practice so much that that was only a theory.

Moving to the pile of riddled lumber in the center of the room, Armanjani and his people looked up to see five men in nondescript military uniforms on the second-story balcony. A decorative banister of iron lace edged the platform, and there were rows of raised seats for spectators to look down into the living room as if it were a sports arena.

All of the men were heavily armed with assault rifles, pistols and knives. One man actually had a Russian RPG strapped across his back, while an elderly man with a bushy beard was carrying a battered leather briefcase.

“You’re late,” the man with the briefcase stated loudly.

Instantly, Armanjani and his people swung up their weapons and clicked off the safeties.

“That is not the correct greeting,” the major stated, leveling the Tariq.

With a sneer, the old man waved that aside. “Bah, foolish games.”

“Then we go,” the major declared, backing away.

“Nicholas!” another man on the balcony said quickly.

There was a pause.

“Tesla,” Armanjani replied in the countersign.

However, the members of al Qaeda and Ophiuchus didn’t ease their stance or lower their weapons.

“Well?” Armanjani demanded impatiently, shaking the briefcase to make the handcuff chain jingle.

“We have seen the reports,” the old man said, stroking his beard. “Each target was hit exactly as you said it would be.”

“Most impressive,” another of the men replied in a throaty growl.

“Then are you ready to do business?” Armanjani asked, lowering the pistol and tucking it into the holster.

“Yes and no,” the old man replied.

“Meaning?”

“Your price is too high,” a third man stated with a scowl. “Much, much too high!”

“The price is fair,” the major replied, obviously annoyed. “Besides, this is not the marketplace, and we are not tourists!”

A fourth man laughed. “Everything is negotiable.”

The major scowled. “Not this. The price is fair. Do you wish me to put it into an auction and have you bid against the Chinese and the Russians?”

At those words, the men on the balcony shifted their stances slightly, and Armanjani knew that he had just made a deadly mistake by admitting that he was in charge and not merely an emissary.

“I see a red dog,” Nasser whispered.

“Agreed,” Hassan muttered softly.

“So be it, red dog.” Major Armanjani drew and fired the pistol in a single move.

The old man with the briefcase threw back his head as the 13 mm Magnum round smashed through his teeth, and then out the top of his head. A geyser of pink brains splattering across the bullet holes and graffiti.

“Kill them!” a second man bellowed, turning to run away.

“No, get the briefcase!” another countered, pulling an electronic device from a pocket and pressing the button on top.

When nothing happened, Hassan shouted a war cry and cut loose with the Atchisson. The autoshotgun discharged the entire magazine of double-O buckshot cartridges in a continuous roar, and sparks flew as a hundred pellets ricocheted off the iron railing. However, all of the remaining men vanished in the deafening maelstrom, their bloody bodies thrown backward to smack into the raised seats.

As Hassan reloaded the Atchisson, Armanjani quickly unlocked the handcuff from his wrist, and Nasser turned to aim the XM-25 at a suspiciously intact door.

A split second later, it slammed open and out rushed a dozen men brandishing AK-47 assault rifles. Instantly, she fired and the 25 mm shell exploded inside the chest of the lead man, his body parts smacking into his comrades and sending them tumbling in all directions. Then Nasser fired twice more, the 25 mm shells exploding on the floor, and blowing the scrambling men into screaming hamburger.

“Should we try for their briefcase, sir?” Hassan asked, sweeping the room for any further enemies.

“Ignore it, that’s a trap,” Armanjani answered, opening his briefcase to extract a bandolier of military canisters.

Draping it across his chest, the major yanked free a canister of white phosphorous, pulled the pin, flipped off the safety lever and threw the bomb down a dark hallway.

The canister bounced out of sight, then erupted into a writhing fireball that filled the hallway. Several human torches stumbled out of the flames screaming insanely and waving their arms.

Ignoring the walking corpses, Nasser fired shells down two other hallways. The HE charges detonated thunderously, shaking chunks of plaster off the walls, but invoking no additional death screams.

“Find the rest of them!” Armanjani snarled, moving to the cover of a bridge while firing random shots from the Tariq.

Nasser and Hassan followed his example, hammering the room with high-explosive death. Doors exploded off gilded frames, a chandelier crashed into a pool, a bridge collapsed, and then a false wall fell over, revealing a group of men loading a linked belt of ammunition into the breech of a.50-caliber machine gun.

Shooting as they moved, Armanjani and the others scattered. Half a heartbeat later, the machine gun sputtered into operation, the hammering stream of heavy-caliber combat rounds chewing a path of destruction across the room, across the pools, bridges and finishing the annihilation of the throne.

Ducking behind the waterfall, Hassan cried out as he caught some shrapnel.

Safe behind a concrete column supporting the balcony, Armanjani slapped a fresh clip into his handgun. “Green dog,” he said.

Squatting under a bridge, Nasser nodded and shifted the XM-25 into a new position.

As the stream of .50-caliber rounds moved away from his position, Armanjani stepped into view and emptied the Tariq at the group of men. One of them fell clutching his throat, but the rest answered back with a volley from a variety of handguns, machine pistols and assault rifles. With a strangled cry, the major spun around and dropped.

“We got him!” a man cried, and the others stopped shooting to cheer in victory.

Fools, Nasser thought, swinging up the XM-25 to fire three shells at the domed skylight.

The bulletproof display of stained glass loudly shattered under the trip-hammer detonations of the 25 mm rounds, and a colorful rain of broken shards plummeted downward. The deluge hit the floor in front of the hidden machine gun, and noisily smashed into smaller pieces. The cheering stopped as the members of al Qaeda screamed and clawed at their bleeding faces.

Immediately, Armanjani started throwing more canisters of phosphorous while Nasser reloaded and Hassan cut loose with the Atchisson. In only seconds, the cries of pain ceased, and there was only the crackle of the chemical flames cooking the tattered corpses.

Moving fast, the major and the others charged down the main hallway just before the stacked belts of .50-caliber ammunition started cooking off, a stuttering barrage of wild bullets zinging everywhere.

Only seconds later, the personal ammunition carried by the terrorists did the same thing, exploding inside their guns and pockets. Bloody chunks of raw flesh were blown around in a ghastly abandonment.

“Black dog!” Armanjani yelled, scrambling up a steep flight of curved stairs.

Reloading as they ran, the three members of Ophiuchus ignored the second floor and continued to the third. Briefly, they ran across the exposed span of another bridge, and then directly into the private sleeping quarters of the former president of Iraq.

Easing their steps, the three of them slipped past the rows of barren guest quarters to reach the master bedroom and proceeded directly to the small linen closet.

While the others warily stood guard, Armanjani pushed open the door and fumbled along the top shelf. Unless his memory was wrong, it had to be here somewhere. It had to! In the distance, more ammunition detonated, and the machine gun briefly sputtered into action.

Finding the hidden switch, the major pressed it three times, and a section of the wall moved aside to reveal a steel pole. Grabbing the pole, he slid down into the darkness.

The descent took a lot longer than he remembered, and it seemed impossibly long before Armanjani hit the floor of the sub-basement. Landing in a crouch, he instantly stepped aside. A moment later, Nasser arrived, closely followed by Hassan.

As the sergeant landed, they heard three fast clicks, and the entire length of the pole suddenly jutted razor-sharp blades. With a gasp, Hassan jerked his hands clear.

“I told you to move fast,” Armanjani reminded him harshly.

“Yes, sir, you did,” Sgt. Hassan panted, rubbing his undamaged palms, but unable to remove his eyes from the shimmering display of edged blades. There was a single drop of red blood on one, and he checked to find a finger nicked. That had been close.

Going to an open passageway, Nasser eased into the darkness, only to reappear a minute later.

“Clear,” she announced.

Assuming the lead, Armanjani surged forward, making sure that he never removed his hand from the left wall. The antiradiation maze twisted and turned countless times through total darkness before there was a distant haze of light that grew steadily brighter.

Stepping into bright sunlight, the three people quickly scanned the ruins of a large greenhouse, but they seemed to be alone. The plastic windows, designed to withstand the worst possible sandstorm, were intact, but sandblasted dead-white, so that it was impossible to see what lay outside. Dust hung heavy in the air, and they stirred up small clouds shuffling past the rows of empty shelves and ornate pots. Dead plants lay underfoot, and their boots softly crunched on the desiccated foliage.

“Sir, why did we not simply go back out the front door?” Hassan asked in a terse whisper.

“Didn’t you see the man on the balcony activate a remote control?” Nasser demanded impatiently. “What else could it have been but an antipersonnel device?”

“And where would you place such a thing?” Armanjani asked, peeking around an ornate column to check the next wing of the huge greenhouse.

“Front door, the exact way we got in,” Hassan replied tightly. “Sorry, sir.”

“Not to worry, old friend,” Armanjani said, glancing at the hulking goliath. “That’s why we’re here.”

Continuing on through the dusty buildings, the trio finally reached the last structure. Creeping along the sandy floor, they dimly heard voices discussing the battle.

“What do you think happened?”

“We’ll find out soon enough.”

“Give them another few minutes?”

“Let me finish this cigar first, eh?”

“Fair enough. Got one for me?”

“Of course!”

Rising in unison, the members of Ophiuchus aimed at the unseen enemy on the other side of the white plastic and fired in unison. The plastic windowpanes splintered under the furious assault, and several men screamed in pain, then went silent.

Kicking open the flimsy door, Armanjani moved out of the greenhouse with the others in flanking positions. A dozen bodies were sprawled on the sand, a few of the men still alive and choking on their own blood.

Parked nearby were a pair of Cadillac SUVs, the engines softly purring. The closest vehicle was missing all of the tinted windows along one side, and a corpse, missing most of his face, was slumped over the steering wheel. The second SUV was undamaged, the driver’s door open, the man running for his life along the bank of the lake.

Taking careful aim, Armanjani stroked the trigger of his gun, and the fleeing man flipped over sideways to splash into the water.

With Nasser standing guard, Hassan used his 9 mm Tariq to shoot everybody on the ground twice in the face just to make sure they were dead.

Yanking open the door to the intact SUV, Armanjani wasn’t surprised to find an old man huddled on the floor in the rear compartment.

“Please don’t hurt me!” he begged, tears flowing down his cheeks.

Blowing the man away, Armanjani hauled out the body, then removed the corpse’s white kaffiyeh to mop the fresh blood off the leather seats.

“Think there are any more hidden about?” Hassan asked, reloading the pistol.

“No, they were overconfident,” Nasser said with a sneer as if that was the worst crime it was possible to commit.

Checking the trunk of the first Cadillac, the major found only the shipping case for the .50-caliber machine gun and some spare belts of ammunition. Useless. However, the other SUV contained extra fuel, military rations and a small arsenal of handguns, assault rifles and ammunition. But there was no money. The major stiffened in rage. Obviously, al Qaeda had never planned on paying for the weapon, even if a deal could have been reached. How could he have been so foolish as to trust them?

Slamming the hatch closed, Armanjani glanced across the lake to see that the abandoned palace was on fire, red flames licking out the shattered windows to slowly expand along the balconies.

“That secret exit was why you chose this palace for the meeting. Am I right, sir?” Nasser asked unexpectedly.

“Knowing where to fight is half the battle,” Armanjani replied, holstering his weapon. “All right, let’s go.”

As Hassan got behind the wheel, Nasser took the passenger seat and Armanjani climbed into the rear, carefully avoiding the damp patch of sticky leather.

Taking a minute to familiarize himself with the controls of the new vehicle, Hassan then turned on the air conditioner and slowly drove away, following the double set of tire tracks in the sand.

“What now, sir?” he asked, turning onto the access road and accelerating. A wide dust cloud rose behind the speeding vehicle that soon obscured the view of the burning palace.

“We return to base and try to find more reasonable customers,” Armanjani replied, removing his sunglasses and tucking them into a pocket.

Nasser scowled. “Sir, what if we can’t find any reasonable customers, just more dogs like these fat fools?”

“Then we create some,” the major said, pulling out a cell phone to start thumbing a text message.

CHAPTER FOUR

Washington, D.C.

Tugging his necktie loose, Hal Brognola used the heels of his palms to rub his eyes, and then poured himself yet another cup of strong black coffee from an insulated carafe. Only a few drops came out, so he rose from behind the desk and crossed the office to start making a fresh pot.

The office was orderly and neat, the walls decorated with pictures of his wife and children and law-enforcement certificates. His suit jacket was hung across the back of a chair, and an old police-issue .38 revolver was holstered at the small of his back. The grip was worn from decades of use in the field, and long hours at the shooting range every weekend. It had been a while since Brognola had drawn a weapon, but he knew that when the need arose there would be no advance warning.

The big Fed returned to his desk with a fresh cup of coffee. Tapping some keys on a keyboard, Brognola reviewed the fact sheet he had been assembling for Mack Bolan and the President on lightning. The voltage and wattage widely varied, but generally they were around a hundred-million volts, which was more than enough to kill a bull elephant, much less a human being. The earth was hit by roughly 50,000 lightning bolts a year, and an average 3,000 people died every year from being struck.

Single-strike, multistrike, forked, chain, sheet, sprite, elves, trolls, Brognola hadn’t heard of half of the forms of lightning bolts he’d researched, and he had been startled to discover the old joke about a bolt from the blue was horrifyingly true. Blue lightning could arc in from five miles away. The sky would be perfectly clear, the wind calm, and a split second later you were a pile of ash in the grass.

“Good night, Chief!” his secretary, Kelly, called out from the other side of the office door. “See you tomorrow!”

“Drive safely!” Brognola answered back, casting a nervous glance out the window at the cloudy sky. It wasn’t raining in D.C. yet, but it would soon, at which point all bets were off.

On top of everything else, the list of possible targets hit by these snake charmers, as they used to call people who claimed to be able to make it rain, was getting longer all the time, and the death toll was rising faster than Brognola could keep track of. At first, it was mostly meteorologists and weather scientists. Now, it was financial experts, bank computers and underworld informers. Obviously, the snake charmers were systematically clearing the way for when they came out of the shadows.

“That’s when the blood will really hit the fan,” Brognola said softly, starting to drink from his mug, only to find it empty once more.

Suddenly, an alarm began beeping. A new icon was spinning on the monitor. He double-clicked, and it expanded into a view of the President of the United States sitting at his desk in the Oval Office.

“Good evening, Hal,” the President said, pulling his hand back from a keyboard. Then he frowned. “Although, to be honest, I don’t think that it’s going to be very good for either of us now.”

“What has happened, sir?” Brognola asked.

“First, allow me to apologize,” the President said, running both hands through his black hair. “I didn’t believe in your theory of terrorists using lightning, but now…”

“What was hit?”

Tapping some keys, the President sighed. “See for yourself, my friend.”

The view of the Oval Office reduced to a small rectangle in the corner, the rest of the screen shifting to an outside view of military base in the desert. Dark, jagged mountains filled the horizon.

“Five-Star, this is Fireball Forward!” a colonel shouted into a handmike while trying to hold his cap on top of his head against a stiff wind.

In the background were rows of Buffaloes and Hummers, a score of 4x6 trucks, a dozen Abrams tanks and two Black Hawk gunships. The Hummers were equipped with light machine guns, while the much bulkier Buffaloes were actually armed with .50-caliber machine guns. A burst from those would flip over a Hummer, but not even shake the road dust off an armored Buffalo.

“This is Five-Star,” a voice stated. “Go ahead Fireball, we read you loud and clear!”

Brognola grunted at that. Five-Star was the code this month for the Pentagon.

“Five-Star, we’ve found the enemy camp,” the colonel shouted, the wind kicking up dust clouds. Soldiers were running for cover as the buffeted trucks rocked slightly. “But we had to take cover—there is a major sandstorm coming this way!”

Just then, lightning flashed across the sky, painfully bright even on the laptop monitor, and the picture scrambled for a few seconds from the accompanying electromagnetic burst.

Leaning forward, Brognola held his breath. Please guys, start running, he silently urged.

“Say again, Fireball?” the Pentagon demanded.

“Sandstorm!” the colonel bellowed as, in the background, the horizon rose like a wave at sea.

Billowing and churning, the stormfront swept toward the army battalion. In only a matter of seconds it engulfed the makeshift base and visibility was reduced to only a few feet.

A deafening howl dominated the picture as dozens of soldiers were slammed to the ground, and every loose item was sent hurtling about into the turbulent brown air. Then lightning flashed, and a truck exploded, the concussion slamming other trucks aside and sending a dozen men flying away into the building storm.

“Say again, Fireball, where is your location?” the Pentagon operator demanded, the volume bar sliding all the way to maximum. “Do you need assistance?”

The colonel said something about northern mountains when the lightning appeared again, going straight into the open hatch of an Abrams tank. The armored machine seemed to bulge outward for a moment before erupting, the hellish corona of shrapnel, corpses and broken machinery spraying outward to decimate a group of soldiers and flip over both of the Black Hawks.

“Get in those caves,” Brognola whispered, both hands clenched into fists.

Again and again, the lightning lanced out, destroying one tank after another, then the bolts began walking along the ground, leaving behind rivers of steaming lava. Screaming soldiers burst into flames, their weapons discharging, grenades mercifully ending their ghastly torment.

Feeling physically ill, Brognola wanted to look away, but forced himself to watch, filing away every detail of the savage attack. It lasted less than five minutes, then the lightning abruptly stopped, and there was only the howling wind. The dry sand quickly covering the tattered remains of what had once been a full battalion of men and women.

“Fireball, respond!” the Pentagon demanded. “Is there anybody still alive? Hello, is anybody there?” But the only response was the howling wind and the crackle of countless small fires.

The view froze and shrank, as the President returned.

“When did this happen?” Brognola asked, flexing his hands.

“Twenty minutes ago,” the President stated grimly, sitting back in his chair. “Search and Rescue teams are already on the way, but there’s little hope of finding anybody alive.”

“After that? I would hardly think so,” Brognola replied, fighting a rising wave of helplessness. An entire battalion destroyed in five minutes. Five minutes!

“Have you made any progress on finding these people? Or at least what they want?” the President asked. “These attacks are coming more and more often, and at bigger targets. Soon they’ll start on cities, and then…” His voice trailed off, his face a mask of repressed fury. “We have got to do something!”

“Our best man is in the field, sir,” Brognola said. “But Striker hasn’t reported anything so far.”

“Nothing at all?”

“There’s not much to go on yet, sir. It’s all happening so damn fast! These snake charmers…I mean…”

The President held up a palm. “I understand the reference, Hal. It helps to give the enemy a name, that makes them less intimidating.”

Brognola scowled. “Anyway, sir, these snake charmers have obviously planned out every detail far in advance, including all of our possible responses.”

“Are there any preventive actions we can take?”

“Not at the moment. This isn’t some fanatic with a truckload of dynamite,” Brognola continued. “These are cool, calculating professionals. Right now, we’re still just trying to catch up!”

“Accepted,” the President said. “Granting the assumption that we fail to ascertain their ultimate goals, what happens then?”

Unexpectedly, thunder rumbled overhead.

“They win,” Brognola stated in brutal honesty, as a soft rain began to patter against the window panes.

Miami, Florida

THE SUN WAS WARM ON THEIR faces as Bolan and Kirkland strolled along the boardwalk, the air full of the smell of saltwater mixing with delicious aromas wafting from nearby Cuban and French restaurants.

A steady stream of cars zoomed along the shorefront highway while crystal-blue waves crested on a smooth white shore. Colorful beach umbrellas dotted the sand like psychedelic mushrooms, the small circles of shadow mostly empty, aside from the very young or the very old. The dichotomy of beachlife encapsulated.

There were numerous families playing in the shallows, while small children built sand castles. Standing alert on a centrally located wooden tower, a burly lifeguard dabbed zinc oxide on his nose to prevent unsightly peeling.

Teams of armed police officers in T-shirts, shorts and sneakers, pedaled their speed bikes along the boardwalk, voices crackling from the compact radios clipped to their gun belts. Safely out of the way, a group of muscular young men lifted weights in the glare of the noon sun, while countless dozens of young women in bikinis lounged on oversized towels and spread suntan lotion on their bare skin in a lazy, almost sensuous manner.

All along the length of the beach and boardwalk, smiling vendors pushed along wheeled carts and sold hot dogs, ice cream, cold beer, sandwiches, sunglasses, cell phones and shark repellant.

Trying to blend into the crowd, Bolan and Kirkland were wearing civilian clothing, loose white slacks, and Hawaiian shirts of multicolored orchids. Bolan had the Beretta holstered behind his back, a water bottle in a nylon-mesh sling disguising the telltale lump. Kirkland had the same, a leather camera case masking the presence of his big bore Webley.

Leaving the boardwalk, the two men turned inland and crossed the street. Pausing for a traffic light, Bolan suddenly took out his cell phone. “Cooper here,” he said, using a favored alias.

Watching the ebb and flow of humanity, Kirkland waited patently until Bolan finished the call.

“What was hit?” Kirkland asked, waving off an approaching taxi.

“An army battalion in Afghanistan,” Bolan replied. “Everybody was killed, and even the vehicles were destroyed—trucks, tanks and gunships.”

“The sons of bitches are getting bold,” Kirkland growled, glancing at the fleecy white clouds in the blue sky.

“There’s no reason why they shouldn’t be,” Bolan replied, taking a sip from the water bottle.

“Think the strike was advertising?” Kirkland asked with a scowl. “Show the world what they could do to the mighty United States?”

“Unlikely. Afghanistan is too remote to receive proper TV coverage.”

“Now, we could go there in person,” Kirkland suggested, as a group of kids in tight formation zoomed by on roller skates. “But there are far too many terrorist groups in that part of the world for us to question. It would take years.”

“I have something else in mind,” Bolan said.

“Hey, there it is!” Kirkland said suddenly, pointing across a busy intersection.

Nestled among the rows of T-shirt emporiums, yogurt shops, hair salons and bars was a three-story building that occupied half of the block. A sign on top merely had the single word Montenegro.

“Let’s go,” Bolan said, starting across the street.

“Why did she paint the building pink?” Kirkland asked. “That doesn’t really seem her style.”

“Look around, brother. Most of the larger buildings are pink or blue,” Bolan said, waving a hand. “I think the mayor wants the city to look the way it does in movies.”

“Bloody tourists,” Kirkland growled, as if expelling a piece of rotten fruit from his mouth.

Bolan laughed. “This from a man who runs a casino hotel?”

“Hey, my dice and wheels are honest! Tourists pay a lot for nothing. That just doesn’t make any sense to me.”

“Ever been to a museum?”

“Sure…okay, point taken. But I still don’t like them and all their damn cameras!”

As they started toward the pink building, Bolan had a strong feeling that that was the real source of Kirkland’s dislike. Undercover DEA agents, covert ops, spies and mercenaries had all taken a big hit the day the cell phone camera was invented. Jamming devices helped a lot, but nothing could stop all of them. There were just too many.

The row of windows along the top floor of the building were open, and as Bolan and Kirkland got closer they could hear the assorted cries, slaps and grunts of hard physical exercise in progress.

“We need her,” Bolan said, pulling open the glass door. “So keep the safety locked on that smart-ass mouth.”

“I’ll do my best, Sarge,” Kirkland said. “But no promises.”

The lobby inside was cool and crisp, with potted ferns in every corner, and the walls covered with photographs of famous clients: professional athletes, politicians and a lot of movie stars.

“The woman is good,” Kirkland said grudgingly.

“Few better,” Bolan stated, going to the front desk.

“Hello, can I help you gentlemen?” the receptionist asked, switching her gaze back and forth between the two men.

A mature woman with mocha-colored skin and ebony hair, she was wearing a flower-print skirt, but above the waist a skin-tight leotard displayed her firm figure to its full advantage.

Any tighter and Bolan would have been able to see her religion. “We’re here to meet Heather,” he said. “We’re old friends from out of town.”

“How nice, Mr… .” She waited.

“Dupree, Roger Dupree,” Bolan said.

“A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Dupree.”

“Roger, please.”

She smiled, revealing unexpected dimples. “Hitesri Chandra… Sherry to my friends.”

“A pleasure to meet you, Sherry.”

She glanced at Kirkland.

He grinned. “Lamont Cranston.”

She arched an eyebrow at that. “Is Ms. Montenegro expecting you?” Sherry asked hesitantly.

“No, this is a surprise visit,” Bolan said.

“However, we did leave a message at her AA meeting,” Kirkland suddenly added with a straight face.

Frowning at that, Sherry turned to look only at Bolan. “Well, I’m sorry, but Ms. Montenegro is conducting a private class at the moment. But if you’d care to wait…” She smiled invitingly and didn’t finish the sentence.

“Mind if we just go straight up?” Kirkland asked, pulling open the stairwell door.

“Sir, that’s not allowed!” Sherry shouted, reaching out a hand.

But Kirkland was already gone, taking the steps two at a time.

“Please excuse my friend,” Bolan apologized, heading for the open doorway. “He was raised in a cave by bears.”

“Pity they didn’t eat him,” Sherry muttered, sitting back down.

At the top of the stairs, a small landing led to a changing room lined with lockers. There were private showers, a steam room, and from down a short hallway came the familiar sounds of a fight in progress.

Heading that way, Bolan and Kirkland caught the smells of sweat, blood and some sort of stringent herbal compound.

“Ah, Tiger Balm, just the smell makes me ache,” Kirkland said wistfully. “You know, I still carry some of the stuff in my bag?”

“Who doesn’t?” Bolan replied, as they proceeded along the hallway.

“I just wish it didn’t reek like the southern end of a northbound rhinosaurus.”

As they’d expected, the room wasn’t a gymnasium, but a dojo, a martial arts studio. Although it was large and well-lit by ceiling fixtures, there was no furniture of any kind, just thick mats covering the floor and punching bags hanging in every corner. On the walls were racks of blunt bamboo poles, cushioned wooden sticks, then uncushioned sticks, knives and swords, followed by a wide variety of more exotic weaponry. The only decorations were framed pictographs in Japanese, Chinese and Korean extolling the virtues of honor and courage.

There were a dozen people of various ages sitting on the mats. Everybody was barefoot and wearing a loose cotton judo uniform, the twill jackets held shut with twisted cloth belts. Most of the students wore the red belts of advanced pupils, but there were also a few beginners in white belts and one high-ranking brown belt.

Standing at the front of the class was a tall woman with flaming red hair tied off her face with a strip of rawhide. She was completely without cosmetics and strikingly beautiful, with a full mouth and slightly slanting eyes of emerald-green that spoke of a mixed ancestry. Her white uniform was edged with black piping, and she wore the black belt of a teacher tied around a trim waist.

“So that’s the deal. The first person to physically touch me gets a full refund on all of their fees,” Heather Montenegro said, tightening her belt.

“That’s all?” a burly black man asked suspiciously. “Just touch you? Not put you down or draw blood?”

Tolerantly, Montenegro smiled. “If you manage either of those, Mr. Cortland, you can have the building. Now, everybody stand!”

In unison, the students rose smoothly to their feet, many of them going immediately into an attack stance.

“Any volunteers for today’s demonstration?” Montenegro asked, adjusting the rawhide around her forehead.

Three men and two women stepped forward, everybody else stayed in place.

“All right, begin,” Montenegro said calmly, both hands at her side.

Instantly, the group of five charged forward, three of the students assuming the cat stance, the last two dropping into the horse position. Separating fast, they all converged on Montenegro from different directions.

“Pitiful,” Kirkland muttered. “Five will get you six she drops them all in under a minute.”

“No bet,” Bolan said, shaking his head.

As the first student got close, she collapsed into a dragon crouch and did a leg sweep. Swaying out of the way, Montenegro caught the foot by the ankle, and twisted, sending the woman tumbling away.

Extending both arms, a man dove forward, obviously intent on trying merely to touch the teacher. Montenegro ducked under the arms, then spun around the man and slammed him in the back, adding her force to his own rush. Out of control, he slammed into the cushioned wall and rebounded, bleeding profusely from a broken nose.

The third student flipped over backward like an acrobat to land in the drunken monkey position, both arms raised for a double strike. A split second later, Montenegro buried her heel into the stomach of the man. Turning bright red, he doubled over, gasping and choking.

The last two students immediately retreated slightly, circling the motionless Montenegro. Then they both moved with blinding speed, the man chopping for her neck, while the woman kicked for a knee. A classic hi-lo formation.

Swatting aside the punch, Montenegro lashed out a foot to block the kick, then threw the man over her shoulder to crash into the woman. They went down in a tangle of limbs.

“Enough!” Montenegro called, straightening her stance. “Now, class, what was wrong with—” Spinning, she blocked a punch from the man with the bloody nose, then effortlessly flipped him sideways.

“While I applaud your tenacity, Steven,” Montenegro said, walking closer to stand over the panting man. “The next time you attack after I called a stop, I’ll break both of your arms.”

“Yes, sensei,” he muttered, his face pressed into the mat.

“Only try something fancy when you’re desperate,” Montenegro continued, kneeling to massage his spine with her knuckles. Almost instantly, the bleeding stopped and he began to breath more easily.

“Better?” Montenegro asked, ceasing the administrations.

“Better,” he muttered, stiffly getting to his feet. “You’re fast, sensei.”

“True. So never underestimate an opponent,” Montenegro said sternly, then turned about. “All right, class, as I was saying…” Her voice faded away at the sight of Bolan and Kirkland across the room.

“What the hell are you two doing…aw, crap,” Montenegro said, yanking off the rawhide strip.

Politely, Bolan gave a short bow of respect, while Kirkland waved in greeting. “Hiya, toots! How’s tricks?”

Scowling in annoyance, Montenegro deeply inhaled, then sighed. “Barbara!”

“Yes, ma’am?” replied the short blonde wearing the brown belt.

“Please take over for me. Work on disarming an opponent armed with a knife without breaking their bones. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Days,” Bolan corrected.

“After that, who knows?” Kirkland added with a grin.

Frowning for a moment, Montenegro then shrugged in acceptance. “Barbara, the class is yours until further notice.”

Barbara seemed flustered. “But, ma’am—”

“Hey now, wait just a damn minute!” said a burly man wearing a white belt. “I came here for Montenegro, not some teenager barely out of diapers!”

Without comment, Barbara stepped sideways to grab him by the wrist, then twisted hard, sending him to the mat. Then she buried a thumbnail into his throat. Twitching with unbelievable pain, the man broke into a sweat, his mouth opening and closing, but nothing coming out.

“What were you saying again?” Barbara asked, easing her grip.

“Yes, sensei,” he wheezed softly.

“Senpai,” Barbara corrected. “I’m only a teacher, not a master.”

Seeing that everything was in order, Montenegro bowed to the class, then crossed the mats to kiss Bolan warmly on the cheek. “Nice to see you again, Blackie.”

“Same here, Heather.” Bolan smiled. “You look great.”

“You, too!” Montenegro chuckled.

“I see you’ve updated the curriculum,” Kirkland said diplomatically.

“Shut up! Never speak to me again,” Montenegro growled. “And just who the hell do you think you are?”

Confused by that, Kirkland struggled to formulate a response as Montenegro strode down the hallway to the locker room.

After a moment, the men followed.

“So, where are we going, jungle or desert?” Montenegro asked, taking off the black belt before going into a private changing stall.

“We’ll discuss that somewhere less public,” Bolan said, leaning against the wall. “But pack light.”

There came the sound of a running shower. “Guns, guts and garters?”

“That sounds about right.”

“If you need any help with the garters, just let me know,” Kirkland said teasingly.

“Why, are yours slipping?” Montenegro asked as the shower stopped. “Colonel, are you sure that we need the shaved ape?”

“Wouldn’t have brought Bill along if he wasn’t necessary,” Bolan said, trying not to grin. “And call me Matt during this gig.”

“Matt it is,” Montenegro replied. “I suppose that somebody has to carry the luggage.”

“Heather, don’t say things like that!” Kirkland exclaimed in a shocked voice. “We don’t think of you as the luggage! More like…deadweight.”

Just then, the door swung open and Montenegro stepped out of a steamy cloud. She was still barefoot, but was now wearing a loose khaki shirt tucked into cargo shorts that showed a lot of leg. Her tousled hair was damp, but Montenegro was wearing full makeup, with jade earrings and a silver necklace.

“What happened to your legs?” Bolan asked in surprise.

“Laser surgery,” she replied, stepping into sneakers. “Scars make a man look tough, but aren’t very attractive on a woman.”

Just then, his cell phone vibrated and he took the call.

“Heads up! The main NASA launch facility at Cape Canaveral has just been attacked,” Bolan announced. “Over a hundred dead, including the head of NASA. The assembly building is gone, along with the prototype for the new Falcon rocket. Most of the base is on fire…”

He scowled. “Okay, Base. Striker out.” He put away the cell phone.

Instantly, the atmosphere in the locker room changed.

“Okay, I brought a full kit, and Matt has an arsenal,” Kirkland said quickly. “Anything special you need at home?”

“Yes, some new Glocks that I’ve been training with, and my body armor,” Montenegro replied, tucking away the knife.

“Don’t worry about it. We’ve got enough level four body armor to sink Manhattan.”

“General issue level four, or some specifically tailored for female soldiers?”

“General issue.” He gestured at the door. “Okay, you’re right. Lead the way.”

As Montenegro started down the stairs, she asked over a shoulder, “What’s our first move, Matt?”

“I have our ride waiting at the airport,” Bolan said. “From Miami we fly directly to Andrews Air Force Base where we pick up some heavy ordnance and switch to a C-130 Hercules.”

“And then?” Montenegro asked, pushing open the ground-floor door and rushing across the lobby.

Both men said nothing until they were outside and on the street.

“Sri Lanka,” Kirkland replied. “We’re going after the White Tigers.”

She paused. “They’re behind the attack on NASA?”

“Not a chance in hell,” Bolan said honestly.

Furrowing her brow, Montenegro started to ask a question, then comprehension flared.

“You clever bastards,” she said, slowly smiling. “Come on, my Hummer is this way. Let’s go!”

CHAPTER FIVE

Eyl Bay, Somalia

The morning sun was bright and hot enough to melt the flesh off a person’s back.

The sluggish water in the bay moved thick and gray, foamy with toxic chemicals, and raw sewage floated about on the surface. Seagulls screamed in annoyance overhead, and dead fish lay rotting on the pebble shore. Not even the local insect population was interested.

Clustered protectively along a torpid river were hundreds of ramshackle buildings. Most of them were squat and ugly, the ancient engineering adage of “form follows function” played out here as the impoverished inhabitants were forced to make do with whatever they could get their hands on. However, there were a handful of large buildings, made of tan brick instead of crude adobe bricks. The roofs were beautiful blue domes that reflected the bright sunlight, and more than a few had television antennas or shiny satellite dishes. The cracked streets were strewn with garbage, dotted with potholes and puddles of human waste.

There were no cars or any other form of motorized conveyance in sight. No music could be heard playing anywhere. There were no factory whistles, fire alarms, church bells, school bells or police sirens, only a deafening silence to go with the oppressive heat. The starving people shuffled along like an army of the damned heading back into Hell.

The town boasted a crude dockyard, the concrete pilings pitting under the salty spray. The workers were lean, but seemed almost fat in comparison to the people in town. Their clothing was a mixture of old and new, all of it clean, and they were heavily armed with multiple pistols, knives, machetes and well-oiled AK-47 assault rifles.

Using a plastic funnel, a tall man was carefully pouring gasoline into an engine bolted to a speedboat. “Is that enough, cousin?” he asked, stopping to straighten a kink in his sore back.

“More than enough,” the captain replied, screwing down the cap to the fuel tank. “With luck we should make a fine haul today. Our scouts along the coastline report that there is a yacht only fifty miles away.”

“A rich yacht full of fat men and their pale wives with big breasts?”

“There almost always is.” He grinned. “But more importantly they are secretly carrying the payroll for the French Foreign Legion.”

The tall man squinted. “How do you know such things?”

“That is why I am the captain and you pour the gas.”

“Fair enough.” The tall man laughed, displaying gold-capped teeth.

Sitting along the tattered edge of a street, a small crowd of people watched the pirates performing their chores in a mixture of wonder and raw envy.

Out in the harbor several container ships moved slowly along, their decks lined with armed men as protection from the local pirates. Off to the side was a shiny new warship from Saudi Arabia, located just on the other side of the harbor.

Much farther out a couple of European cruise ships skirted along the horizon, trying to keep the dismal villages lining the shore out of the sight of their vacationing passengers.

Only one ship was anchored in the bay, and there were no sailors in sight on the deck, nor any obvious defenses, such as barbed wire or Claymore mines attached to the hull.

“A fine ship, eh, cousin?” the tall man said, stroking his small beard.

“No, it is not,” the captain replied in a growl. “That is a ship of death.”

“Ah, the crew are good shots.”

“Worse.”

The tall man gasped. “They’re American?”

“Even worse than that,” the captain muttered, rubbing a fresh bandage hidden under his loose shirt. “Just keep moving, cousin, and keep breathing. There is no ship in our harbor. Understand?”

The tall man scowled at the bizarre statement, then slowly nodded in comprehension and went to check the manacles belowdecks. As the old saying went, a wise man knew when to be blind. There were just some things in the world that were too dangerous even to talk about, and, apparently, that ship was one of them. Then again…

“Would it really hurt if we did swing past the ship?” the tall man asked, the greed obvious in his voice. “A simple look, that’s all. What could that harm?”

“Hmm, I suppose so,” the captain replied, turning to glance at the vessel.

There was a distant boom, and a split second later the face of the captain erupted, teeth and eyes spraying out across the water.

The tall man had no time to cry out before his chest exploded. For a very brief instant, he felt himself falling backward, but never seemed to reach the water… .

* * *

A THOUSAND YARDS OFFSHORE, the guard on the stern deck of the ULCV Red Rose worked the arming bolt on his .50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle to chamber a fresh round. The empty six-inch brass shell hit the steel deck with a ring-a-ling noise, and rolled out a wash port in the gunwale to splash into the bay.

Normally, a sniper rifle would be a poor choice for a defensive weapon on a ship. But the Red Rose was no ordinary vessel, no matter how much it looked like one. The massive container ship was so broad and heavy that there was never any real sensation of being on the waves. Even when it was in motion, the ship felt oddly stationery.

“Alpha to Command. The danger is neutralized,” the guard whispered into his throat mike. “Area four secure.”

* * *

“COMMAND TO ALPHA, CONFIRM,” Lieutenant Naser replied into a gooseneck mike attached to a control board. “Continue your sweep, Alpha. Neutralize any possible threats at your discretion, over.”

The nearby walls were covered with monitors showing the real-time weather over every major city in the world, along with matching clocks and a glowing vector graphic of every telecommunication satellite in orbit.

“Alpha to Command. Roger. Over and out.”

“Trouble, Lieutenant?” Major Armanjani said, leaning over a table covered with maps. He had a ruler in one hand and a compass, in the other. A cold cup of coffee sat nearby, along with a plate of untouched sandwiches.

Prepared for a meeting later that day, the major was wearing an expensive business suit that cost more than he’d made in a month as a major in the Republican Guard. His necktie was raw silk, the stickpin solid platinum. A gold Rolex gleamed on a wrist, and an aluminum tube bearing the logo of a Montecristo cigar jutted from his breast pocket. Armanjani didn’t smoke, but the cigar was just the sort of tiny detail that made his public persona of wealthy man absolutely believable.

“Nothing of importance, sir,” Nasser replied, swiveling in the chair. “Some of the locals joked about taking this ship, so our rear sniper convinced them it was a bad idea.”

“Good riddance,” the major said, checking the wind patterns over Australia. “The village elders should have tried harder to teach them restraint.”

Raising an eyebrow at that, Nasser said nothing. What village elders? There was nobody in the entire city more than thirty years old!

In a desperate attempt to make money to buy food, the Somalian government had leased the rights for foreign powers to dump garbage offshore. Now, this area of the ocean was so heavily polluted the men didn’t even dare to go swimming out of fear of catching a deadly disease. The Somalians had fouled their own nest. It made the major angry to think that any Arab had acted so foolishly. The government tried to feed the poor, and end up killing more of them than starvation ever could have done. It was pitiful.

Then again, to be brutally honest, she noted, this huge ship lying anchored so close off the coastline must seem like an irresistible target.

Registered out of Edinburgh, Scotland, the Red Rose was a typical container ship, deliberately designed to not be noticeable in any way. The ship was a thousand feet long and capable of hauling 20,000 of the standard twenty-foot-wide, ten-foot-high, forty-foot-long shipping containers. To maximize their speed, the Red Rose was only carrying only half that amount, most of it legitimate cargo just in case they were ever stopped for an inspection. It was mostly home appliances, rice and farming equipment. Nobody sane would ever try to check 10,000 containers. That would take weeks!

However, past that outer layer were reinforced containers stuffed with BM-25 Hail multiple-rocket launchers. Designed to destroy land fortifications, the 122 mm rockets were more than capable of destroying any attacking enemy vessel, whether it was a jet fighter, battleship or submarine.

Next came a buffer zone of containers filled with ordinary sand, a bulwark able to withstand any bombardment for a short while. Past those, safely located deep inside the main hold, was the prefabricated command module made of six cargo containers welded together, which made it just barely large enough to hold all of the equipment necessary to operate the Scimitar of God, as the new weapon was called. There was a mainframe computer sealed behind a Plexiglas wall, a bank of control boards, a compact emergency generator, pressurized containers of oxygen and a few chairs.

In an emergency, the command module could be sealed airtight to sink to the bottom of the sea, far away from any battle raging on the surface, giving the people inside plenty of time to assemble a small submersible pod and quietly leave unnoticed.

Their trip to Somalia from the construction shacks in southern Peru had been harrowing, almost nerve-racking. Zigzagging across two oceans, the major had closely followed every storm possible, endlessly fine-tuning the Scimitar to new and even more deadly accuracy. They had destroyed islands, icebergs and a dozen assorted small craft along the way.

Just then, a polite knock sounded and a slim man appeared at the open hatchway. Professor Kazim Khandis was dark and handsome, with hair so black that it appeared to have blue highlights, and a small European-style mustache, meaning that he used no oils or wax.

“Yes, what is it?” Armanjani asked without looking up from his work.

“We should have Tokyo online in a few minutes,” Khandis announced in cultured tones.

“Excellent!” Armanjani said, putting aside a ruler. “Was there any trouble with the relay?”

“None whatsoever,” Khandis said, flashing a wide grin, then disappearing around the bulkhead once more.

Leaving the command module, Armanjani awkwardly stepped over to the next container. A scarred hand reached out of the shadows, and Hassan pulled the major across.

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