Desert Fallout

Masozi tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“Mubarak had a weapons stash that he was parceling out to us,” Bolan stated. “We want our gear.”

The Shabaab leader turned to Kamau. “Does this sound like a good idea?”

“I’m just in this to get some payback. Those were my men murdered by the sneaky bastard.”

Bolan realized that something bigger had just replaced his mission to destroy the Shabaab militia under Masozi. Something dark and ominous threatened more than just the shipping lanes around the Horn of Africa.

The incinerated remains of jars full of ricin seed, buried in the collapsed storeroom, were the portent of an apocalyptic threat….

Asclepius, why do you weep? Egypt herself will be persuaded to deeds much wickeder than these, and she will be steeped in evils far worse. A land once holy, most loving of divinity, by reason of her reverence the only land on earth where the neteru (gods) settled, she who taught holiness and fidelity will be an example of utter [un]belief.

—Hermetica,

Asclepius III: 25

No nation is immune to the tragedy of being fooled into wicked deeds. But it is for the sake of those who still believe in justice that I never rest. My fidelity to them will never waver, and I shall defend their faith.

—Mack Bolan

To Fe. Patience, compassion and wisdom are gifts that grow the more you give them away.

Thank you, sir.

CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER ONE

The southern coast of Somalia

This was Africa.

That phrase popped into Mack Bolan’s mind as his lean, powerful frame sliced through the air over the hood of a rusty automobile, only moments ahead of the rattle of an AK-47 firing on full automatic. The fender and engine block stopped the swarm of rifle rounds looking to rend the Executioner’s flesh. He wouldn’t have more than a moment’s respite, but he made the most of it, reloading his Beretta 93-R and closing the slide on a fresh round.

The phrase was a cynical response to the violence that stalked through the continent, a place where life was cheap, and the forces of Animal Man reigned supremely. A child, starving despite tons of food in a nearby port? This was Africa. A family chopped to pieces by machete-wielding sociopaths? This was Africa. One violent government replaced by scum just as murderous? It often happened.

Bolan didn’t believe that any place in the world was more doomed than any other, that innocent people couldn’t be saved from the forces of greed and misery.

The Somali gunmen who had targeted him were fast and ferocious, already flanking the automobile to get a line of fire on the big American who had infiltrated their stronghold. One of the gunmen pivoted his AK to take out Bolan, but the Beretta machine pistol snarled, ripping a line of 9 mm bullets into the man from sternum to throat. The pirate stopped as if he hit an invisible wall, and the rifleman behind him staggered wildly, tumbling as he collided with the still-standing corpse. Bolan whirled and with one smooth movement pulled a knife from its sheath on his battle harness. The wicked, double-bladed, spear-point weapon gleamed in the sunlight, the only warning that another of the Somali killers had before the six inches of merciless steel plunged through the fragile bone triangle between the eyes.

Lobotomized by the razor-sharp blade, the pirate lost his grip on the FN FAL battle rifle he carried. Bolan released the handle on his knife and caught the big gun before it could clatter on the ground.

The Somali pirates skidded to a halt, gawking now that their opponent was suddenly in possession of a full-powered automatic weapon. Bolan let the partially spent Beretta fall to the ground, his trigger finger caressing the assault rifle to life. A volley of 7.62 mm NATO thunderbolts tore into the distracted rifleman who had been stopped by a collision with his dead partner. At over 2500 feet per second, the 165-grain rounds plowed aside bone and flesh like bulldozers.

“Get back! Get back!” another rifleman shouted in warning. Bolan swung the assault rifle around and took off the gunner’s head with a single bullet through the chin.

Retreating gunmen poured fire from their AKs into the car, but the fender and engine block proved sufficient to stop the much lighter 7.62 mm COMBLOC rounds that they fired. Knowing that their enemy was implacable and now much more heavily armed than he was when he’d whittled down their numbers with only a pistol, the Somali raiders retreated toward their compound.

Bolan gave them a few seconds’ lead, retrieving his Beretta, his knife and a bandolier of ammunition for the FN rifle he’d acquired.

Bolan checked his Beretta for any damage from its sudden meeting with the dirt. It was in perfect working order, so he slipped it back into its shoulder holster, keeping in mind that it had a few rounds missing from its magazine. The FAL was given a reload, simply because he had the luxury of seven full boxes for the rifle. The partially spent magazine went into the empty pouch on the bandolier. Fully armed, the big American scanned for signs that one of the Somali gunmen had hung back, ready to take a shot at him.

No snipers were in evidence, and Bolan took off on the trail that the remaining compound guards had left behind them. As the only white man in the streets, Bolan knew he’d draw a lot of attention. He’d lost track of a shipment of diamonds illegally mined across the continent in Liberia. Actually, it wasn’t a matter of losing the shipment. He had determined where the bloodstones were going—the port city of Kismayo to be exact. However, Bolan fell behind in pursuit of the diamonds in order to free the slaves who had been sent to hard labor by Liberian militiamen who were still sympathetic to al Qaeda, the Hizbul Shabaab. The precious gems were going to Kismayo as part of a plan to reinforce the finances for their pirates operating out of the hard-line Islamist-controlled southwestern coast of Somalia. Both the Ethiopian army and the Islamic Courts Union had tried to tame the port city, but there was still violent lawlessness.

Unfortunately, the ICU was standing by its claim of Kismayo, even after being pushed into retreat by the Ethiopians and Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government, and were reluctant to act against the renegade Shabaab militia, which had worked so diligently as an impromptu special forces assisting the Islamic Courts’ military units against the Ethiopians.

It didn’t bode well for the country that the authorities turned a blind eye to Shabaabist activities that included kidnapping Western journalists and murdering unarmed and wounded enemy soldiers in their hospital beds.

Bolan wasn’t in Kismayo to determine the legitimacy of the ICU and the Taliban-like enforcement methods of their youth wing. He was here to make sure the murderous thugs who collaborated with slavers wouldn’t profit from the blood and sweat of Liberians kidnapped and abused on the other side of the continent.

So, walking in public, his general description known by the smugglers, was simply the best way to home in on the profiteers. The trail of wounded or frightened Shabaab militiamen was clear as they rushed back to their home base.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Bolan whispered softly.

He continued his pursuit, knowing that every moment he delayed, the longer the Shabaab gunmen would have to prepare against his assault.

ORIF MASOZI FROWNED as Ibrahim Mubarak patted the crate. Masozi’s briefcase full of diamonds was supposed to go toward buying rocket launchers for his fellow pirates. The crate, however, didn’t look as if it contained top-of-the-line Egyptian-issue 84 mm Carl Gustav recoilless rifles and the big, powerful rounds of ammunition they fired.

“What the hell is this?” Masozi asked. They shared the Arabic language, but the dialects were far enough removed from each other, and Masozi’s native Arabic was flavored with Somali phrases and dialects. They were forced to converse in English.

The Egyptian smiled to his Somali trading partner. “A little something extra for the Shabaab.”

Masozi’s frown deepened, and he was tempted to brush his fingertips over the 9 mm MAB pistol under his untucked white shirt. “The dimensions on that crate are all wrong for military armor-piercing shells and their launchers.”

“You’ve got your recoilless rifles,” Mubarak returned. He pointed at a pair of containers.

Masozi did some quick mental math, and realized that there was only room in the two standard crates for three-quarters of the shipment he’d needed. “Son of a bitch! You shorted me on the firepower, and now you’re making up for it with what?”

Mubarak pried open the crate with a crowbar. “Good stuff.”

Masozi looked and saw there were two Egyptian jars. “Artifacts? Who are we going to sell secondhand Egyptian treasure to?”

“You could throw the jars away for all I care,” Mubarak said. “They’re only replicas.”

Masozi took a deep breath, his patience starting to fade. “Give me a good reason not to open up your idiot skull, Mubarak.”

“Seeds of the castor oil plant, Orif,” Mubarak explained. “Ricinus communis, in Latin.”

Masozi’s eyes widened as he looked in the open-topped jar. “Ricin.”

Mubarak smiled. “The plants originated on this continent, my friend. And I’m a little off in the actual botanical title of this particular strain.”

Masozi raised an eyebrow. “But you can process this stuff into ricin.”

Mubarak nodded. “A particularly powerful strain. Just the thing your people would need to push back against the Ethiopians and the TFG.”

Masozi looked at the seeds, temptation tugging at him for a brief moment, then his frown returned.

“Weapons of mass destruction bring down some serious heat,” Masozi said.

“This is Somalia. The Americans went after North Korea, and lost. North Korea developed nuclear weapons, and all those cowards could do is negotiate. They were murdered up the coast in Mogadishu, and they will never come back. The sentiment among those who would have the courage to go against the Islamic revolution here is that Africa isn’t worth the effort. You don’t see them landing in the Sudan, or invading Libya. They’ll turn a blind eye, and you can poison all the Christians and Ethiopians you want,” Mubarak said.

Masozi ran his fingers over the case full of diamonds. “Why not sell this to someone with some real backing?”

“Because Syria already has those markets filled,” Mubarak replied.

“Don’t try to screw with me, Ibrahim,” Masozi snarled. “If your group had real, viable weapons of mass destruction, you wouldn’t be fucking around with a bunch of people who can barely afford rubber rafts and recoilless rifles and ammunition.”

Mubarak squeezed the skin between his eyebrows, his eyes clenched shut as he fought off a wave of frustration. “Fine, you don’t want it, keep the third of the diamonds that would have gone to the missiles I didn’t bring.”

“Don’t get testy with me. I wanted that firepower so that we could make damn sure that we could deal with the gunboats sent to escort freighters rolling past the Horn,” Masozi said. “Even if we have ricin on our side, how is that going to help against a twenty- or thirty-foot craft bristling with cannon?”

“It’s for whatever ground forces the TFG and Ethiopian government send after you,” Mubarak replied.

Masozi looked at the seeds in the jar. “Are they safe to touch?”

Mubarak nodded. “They haven’t been processed.”

“And if we do process them?” Masozi asked.

“Twice the yield of standard ricin,” Mubarak told him.

Masozi let the seeds sift through his fingers. “Twice the yield? Where did you get this shit? Syria?”

“Egypt,” Mubarak said.

Masozi frowned. “Not a lot of arable land to plant this stuff. Whatever there is, it’s all dedicated and you can’t mix it with other crops.”

“They were grown in a hydroponics laboratory,” Mubarak said.

“How’d you develop that?” Masozi asked.

“Are you buying it, or what?” Mubarak countered.

Masozi’s frown turned into a grimace. “I—”

There was commotion at the storehouse door. Masozi sighed and went to it.

“Sir, there’s an intruder in the compound,” his security chief, Kamau, announced. The Somali guard was well over six feet tall, and Masozi often imagined that there had to have been the blood of giants in his background.

“How long has he been here?” Masozi asked. He pulled his French MAB-15, flicking off its safety.

“We had a group encounter with a white man out on the docks. Two had gunshot wounds, and the other four were scared witless,” Kamau said. The muscles on the big African’s forearms swelled as he clenched his huge fists. “They arrived about fifteen minutes ago, and we’ve been securing the compound.”

“A white man,” Masozi said with a grunt. His brow furrowed at the thought of the stranger who had hit the mining camp in Liberia. “How did they describe him?”

“They said he was big, almost tall as me. Black hair, blue eyes.”

“It can’t be a coincidence,” Masozi replied. “That’s the one I told you about.”

Kamau nodded.

“What one?” Mubarak asked.

“An American agent was harassing the diamond mine we have in Liberia,” Masozi explained. “More than six feet tall, approximately two hundred pounds, all lean muscle. Fights like twenty men.”

Mubarak’s caramel-colored features paled. “Oh, hell.”

“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost,” Masozi said.

“It’s the man they call the soldier,” Mubarak whispered breathlessly.

“That’s a myth. A story spread to make us afraid of Americans now that they’re too lazy to send their Marines and Army,” Kamau replied.

“He’s real,” Mubarak said. “He’s been active in Egypt.”

“And there were rumors that this bogeyman took out another faction of pirates a little farther up the coast a while back,” Masozi said. “So what?”

Mubarak looked at the crate and its two jars of seed. His hands trembled. “You said your soldiers returned fifteen minutes ago?”

“I’ve heard the stories,” Kamau said. “The man is a ghost, and he could hide, even among black men, as one of their own.”

“Why did you come to me just now?” Masozi asked.

“We found one man, his neck broken, but positioned as if he were still on guard duty,” Kamau explained. “This was about two minutes ago, and he hasn’t been dead longer than ten minutes.”

Mubarak licked his lips and fumbled a pistol out of his belt. “Damn it, damn it, damn it.”

Masozi turned to see what had panicked the Egyptian so badly, when something metallic clattered onto the floor under a side window of the storehouse. He couldn’t get a clear look at what was on the ground as Kamau picked him up as if he were a rag doll. The Somali giant carried him several feet, behind the cover of a stack of crates, instants before a fragmentation grenade detonated with a roar of doom. The Shabaab leader’s ears rang in the aftermath of the detonation. Kamau shook his shoulder, mouthing words that didn’t penetrate the sonic haze of aching eardrums.

Mubarak, or more precisely what was left of him, was a ragged floor mat of bloody, crushed flesh.

“We’ve got to move!” Masozi bellowed.

Kamau rolled his eyes at the Shabaab commander’s statement, and Masozi realized that was probably what the security chief was saying. The Uzi submachine gun in the big man’s fist looked as if it were a mere toy as he poked it over the top of the crates and raked the area around the window.

Masozi didn’t need to hear to know that Kamau was going to cover his exit from the storehouse. Fortunately, the hand grenade hadn’t damaged or detonated the crated rocket launchers, otherwise the explosion would have caused far more than temporary deafness.

Everything was going to hell.

MACK BOLAN WAS disappointed when he saw that his grenade had blown the panicky Egyptian into chopped meat. It wasn’t a total disappointment, since Mubarak’s face was intact and he could get the answers he needed from other sources, but it would have been easier to interrogate the Egyptian to get the lowdown on exactly how the man had gotten his hands on jars full of seed that could be turned into a powerful toxin. Now, he would just have to rely on established intelligence databases to identify Mubarak and the faction of terrorists he worked for.

Masozi would likely provide those answers, if Bolan weren’t forced to kill him. Either way, he had recorded the men’s conversation on an MP3 file thanks to the compact PDA, and a wire-thin high-audio-definition microphone built by Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz of Stony Man Farm’s domestic antiterrorism squad called Able Team. Bolan would be able to transmit the conversation back to the Farm, and the computer staff would run through analysis on what was being said.

Bolan’s efforts at delaying the compound’s hard force from finding him, leaving a trail on the far side of the complex, had given him the opportunity to spy on the two men and their meeting. Normally the Executioner would have immediately begun dismantling the terrorist headquarters, but the sight of the vehicles parked inside the compound had tipped him off to the possibility of a larger conspiracy. This was confirmed when he identified a trio of Arab men armed with compact machine pistols, obviously bodyguards for a visitor from far to the north.

The big American dropped to the floor and moved to the ragged corpse. A few quick snapshots with his digital camera recorded Mubarak’s features for future identification. Another moment was spared to get the man’s fingerprints on a strip of plastic-topped adhesive that the warrior had kept in his war gear for such identification processes.

It wouldn’t take long for Kamau to arrange a counterattack, sending sentries into the storehouse to clear it out. Bolan scooped up the dead Egyptian’s pistol and spare magazines, adding them to his web belt. The soldier hadn’t been able to bring his customary Desert Eagle with him across various borders. Its ammunition had been depleted and he couldn’t get more .44 Magnum rounds to feed it here on the Horn of Africa. Mubarak had been armed with an Egyptian army–issue Beretta 92-F. The spare magazines would feed Bolan’s own machine pistol easily.

He also had the FAL rifle slung across his shoulders, but after listening to Masozi and Mubarak’s brief argument, he knew that he’d need something to give him equal footing with dozens of heavily armed pirates.

A solid kick snapped open the container for the stolen Carl Gustav rocket launcher. The meter-long weapon was heavy, but still remarkably handy. He took the time to stuff a variety of 84 mm shells into a bandolier provided for them, and went back to the window he’d entered through. The front of the storehouse suddenly erupted as AK-47 rounds tore through the front door and wall.

Bolan didn’t bother to slither through the window. He leaped, the butt of the rocket launcher leading the way, crashing through the glass. The chatter of a dozen rifles covered the noise, and his sudden appearance stunned the two guards sent around the back. The Executioner had seen them through the window, and laden with nearly seventy pounds of extra weaponry, his weight was enough to plow through the two Somali pirates, shoving them to the ground hard enough to stun them.

Bolan jammed his elbow into the throat of one of the gunmen, collapsing his windpipe. He reached out with his other hand to sink his fingers into the nostrils and eye sockets of the other guard. With the clenching of his fist, he blinded the Somali thug as fingernails popped eyeballs and tore bloody rifts through flesh. With a powerful wrench of his arm, Bolan snapped the stunned pirate’s neck using the holes in the man’s face as leverage. The death shriek that issued forth was drowned out by the thumps of two grenades thrown through the doors of the storehouse.

The pirates were so frightened of the intrusion by the Executioner that they were willing to risk their delivery of antiarmor rockets by using the minibombs on the storehouse. Bolan fished out another of his hand grenades and aimed the bomb at the crate of illicit firepower. Dropping the fragger in the midst of the 84 mm ammunition, Bolan whirled and ran from the building. The hand grenade would set off the armor-smashing shells, and the explosion could bring the building crashing down atop him if he didn’t gain some distance from the structure.

Thunder split the night, and the storehouse seemed to swell, heaving with a gigantic sigh. Chunks of masonry and other shrapnel flew from the front of the building, the roof collapsing under its own weight. The two bodies that Bolan had left behind the storehouse were crushed as the wall collapsed on them. The guards were already dead, but Bolan’s suspicion that he would have been pulverized was proved correct. He set down the Carl Gustav and its bandolier. It was too heavy, too much to move quickly with, but he still tucked it beside a vehicle for future usage.

Bringing the FAL to bear, he spotted Kamau and Masozi barking out orders, directing traffic as Shabaab pirates and militiamen scrambled, dealing with their wounded and searching for signs of their escaped opponent. Bolan announced his presence with a rapid-fire string of single shots into the crowd, the 7.62 mm NATO rounds piercing bodies, popping internal organs like balloons and sending gunmen on the fast track to oblivion. The 20-round string collapsed thirteen of the Somali compound guards, but Bolan left the men actually tending to the wounded alone.

The Executioner often struck ruthlessly, but he was no cold-blooded murderer. As long as the men acting as medics sought to save lives, and the wounded men appeared incapable of putting up a fight, he would allow them to live. Helpless and nonhostile people weren’t Bolan’s enemy. There were still plenty of riled Shabaab killers to keep the warrior busy, however.

After a quick magazine change for the FAL, Bolan scurried to another position as rifles snarled in the darkness, dumping bullets toward where the blaze of muzzle-flashes had issued. Though he was only moving from one end of a pickup truck to another, the change in location gave Bolan a new angle on the enemy forces.

The Shabaab militiamen took the lull in return fire as an invitation to break from cover and stalk toward the vehicle that they’d hosed with their automatic weapons. Bolan let them get to within two yards of the Peugeot’s rear bumper before he cut loose with the big Belgian rifle. The leader of the security detail stared down at the smashed crater in his chest where his heart had once been. Blood sneezed from his nostrils, soaking his shirt with even more crimson before his legs folded beneath him. The second and third gunmen didn’t have time to register the death of their partner, Bolan’s next rounds spearing through their skulls.