Plains Of Fire

He was driven by the need to protect the victims of corruption and terrorism. Husbands, fathers, brothers and sons were executed brutally, while wives, mothers, sisters and daughters were raped and mutilated by Janjaweed forces.

The Darfur crisis, and the Rwandan slaughter a decade before, were symptomatic of an international apathy in regard to Africa. Its jungles and deserts, once colonial prizes of European governments, were considered lost causes, realms where white people had no business interfering.

Skin color didn’t enter into the Executioner’s equation of justice. The Thunder Lions were about to make the Darfur crisis even worse, which elevated them to the top of Bolan’s priority list—for a bullet.

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

—1 Peter 5:8

Human predators abound, preying on the weak, the helpless. These lions do not need taming. They need to be put down.

—Mack Bolan

To those who have made a stand and refuse to let the

world ignore the horrors at work in Darfur.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Douglas P. Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.

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 TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER ONE

Darfur, Sudan

General Thormun “Thor” Bitturumba watched with approval as his artillery crews screwed the canister warheads onto the 240 mm rockets. The fat tubes, nearly ten inches thick, each held a concentrated mixture of biological weaponry in an inert suspension. The suspension had a vaporization point that was well over fifty degrees Fahrenheit. In the blazing African afternoon, the carrier fluid would evaporate swiftly, assisted in its dispersal by a low-temperature, high-velocity explosion designed to hurl the weaponized microbes into the air.

The viruses had toughened cellular membranes, enabling them to survive as their long cilia spread out to catch air currents and ride the wind.

Bitturumba’s satellite phone rang. He knew who it was.

“How goes the preparations, Thor?” Alonzo Cruz asked. Bitturumba smirked. Here he was, speaking with one of Spain’s most prominent businessmen, on the eve of a biological weapons test, seemingly as a gigantic spit in the face to the world. Certainly, the general realized, the multimillionaire’s sat phone had incredible encryption protection, much like his own phone. But the call, only hours before a preview of hell on Earth, would have been detected despite its indecipherable nature.

“They’re going well, Lonzo,” Bitturumba answered. “The hammer will fall at dawn.”

“No need to be cryptic, brother,” Cruz replied, the quality of the digital signal so clear and free of static that it was as if the man were right next to the African. “No one could break this call down.”

“Never say never, Lonzo,” Bitturumba admonished. “Just when we think that our keenest laid plans are going to go one way, reality takes over.”

Cruz chuckled. “The cunning animal wisdom of a warrior.”

Bitturumba sighed. “One does not rise to the rank of general without being absolutely prepared for the worst. Idi Amin was an optimist when it came to attempts on his life.”

Bitturumba’s hand absently dropped to the .50-caliber Desert Eagle on his hip. Though most experts declined to recommend the massive Israeli-designed hand-howitzer for self-defense due to its need for perfectly tailored ammunition, Bitturumba was careful in his feeding of the Desert Eagle. Its reliability and power had protected the general’s life on numerous occasions, tearing through the body armor of assassins and even shattering the thick, armored skull of an enraged bull charging at him. In no instance had the thunder pistol ever failed him. Given that his half brother, Cruz, always called him Thor, after the Norse god of thunder, the big. 50 was a welcome companion.

Bitturumba had been deemed the African god of war by many in the press, and his army had been given the nickname “Thunder Lions.” The roar of launching rockets and the thunder of 105 mm shells were his militia’s heralds on the field of battle.

“Just remember not to get caught downwind of your barrage,” Cruz warned. “I’d hate to lose blood just to run a quick test.”

“Fear not, little brother. We are prepared,” Bitturumba replied.

The phone call ended and Bitturumba raised the binoculars to his eyes once more, scanning the refugee camp in the distance. It had been established and was currently under the protection of members of the Ethiopian Expeditionary Force, a trained army of African veterans who had been subjected to enough of the horror stories emanating from Sudan. They had come in hard and fast, putting the Janjaweed forces on the defensive. Only Bitturumba’s army had been unfazed by the Ethiopian interference, but that was because Bitturumba had the same intensive military education that the EEF’s leader possessed. Both men were students of war, and theirs wasn’t a brutal slugfest as much as a show of jabs and feints as both armies looked for weaknesses in each other’s defenses.

Bitturumba’s wide lips turned up in a cruel smile. This would be the first shot that he’d launched that would bring the Ethiopian forces to their senses.

THE DISTANT SOUND of launching rockets sounded like a warthog clearing its nostrils, at least to Lieutenant Alem Tanku of the Ethiopian Expeditionary Force. The Avtomat Kalashnikov rifle that had been resting across his knees was instantly in his hands, and he jerked to his feet. On the horizon he could see the white yarns of exhaust smoke trailing from the thrust nozzles of a half-dozen rockets and he stuck his fingers into the corners of his mouth to amplify his whistle.

The shrill bleat woke the other sleepy Ethiopian troops on his side of the camp, and they began rushing along the shanty homes, rapping doors or rickety walls to awaken Sudanese refugees.

Tanku squinted as the contrails of the artillery rockets snaked across the sky. He didn’t put it past the Thunder Lions to launch a quick reconnaissance by fire with a long-distance salvo. He was halfway to the communications shed when the rockets reached the apex of their climb. Losing power, they began their descent, gravity proving stronger than burned-out chemical motors. The contrails bent sharply as the remnants of their fuel gave out, smearing flat black streaks across the graying dawn.

“Artillery launch from Thunder Lions’ recon force,” Tanku shouted as he reached the entrance of the communication shed.

The comm operator, Lieutenant Jolu Okuba, nodded, already rattling off the information.

“Launch coordinates?” Okuba relayed from headquarters.

“Six miles out,” Tanku said, eyeballing the end of the puffy dissipating arch of smoke. “Northwest, call it heading 310.”

Okuba barked the information to the Ethiopian Expeditionary Force command. He glanced nervously back toward Tanku. “The evacuation?”

“We’re rousing the civilians. Luckily, they’re early risers,” Tanku said. “This section of the camp is already filing out through the fence.”

Okuba nodded. Tanku could tell that his fellow soldier wanted to bolt from his position, but his duty kept him on station. It wouldn’t be much of a consolation when nearly ten inches of enemy warhead dropped out of the sky, delivering the punch of dozens of kilograms of high explosives. The lieutenant looked toward the descending rockets when he saw one burst into a blossom of smoky tentacles that stretched across the sky over the refugee camp.

“Gas attack!” Tanku bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Gas masks!”

Okuba whirled back to the microphone, updating the EEF’s officers about the changing nature of the rocket assault. Other rockets began detonating as they dropped within a certain height, splitting the air with sharp cracks that were unnervingly devoid of the light of flame.

That was the surest indication on Tanku’s part that they were dealing with some form of chemical assault. The Ethiopian’s face twisted into a rictus of anger as he glanced toward Okuba.

“Put your gas mask on!” Tanku snapped.

“You don’t have one!” Okuba replied. “They don’t have masks outside!”

“Just do it!” Tanku ordered.

Okuba did so. His gas mask was in the bottom drawer of his desk.

Tanku cursed himself for not bringing his mask with him, but he knew that none of the refugees would have more than a wet towel to protect their lungs from whichever chemical scourge Bitturumba’s Thunder Lions were dropping on their heads.

With the introduction of weapons of mass destruction, Tanku idly wondered if there was a possibility that the United States would take a more urgent role in the Sudanese conflict. After all, it was the fear of Muslims with chemical weaponry that started the Iraq war, and that had been spurned by far less spurious evidence than an actual chemical attack such as here.

Tanku steeled himself, waiting for the first symptoms of poison or nerve agent to appear. There wasn’t even the scent of burned almonds, indicative of cyanide gas, in the air. He knew that nerve agents were odorless and flavorless, but once they touched him, he would begin twitching uncontrollably, frothing at the mouth as he felt his insides liquefy. Unfortunately, a quick glance to Okuba reminded him that the gas masks the Ethiopians wore were thin, almost useless protection against the horrors of weapons like Sarin or Tabur.

He waited for a full minute, breathing shallowly, as if the lowered respiration would somehow protect him from the ravages of chemical weapons that could be absorbed through the skin. He looked at his deep dark forearms, imagining the colorful globules of nerve agent molecules drifting and wafting down to his skin, turning his nearly black forearms gray and diseased as they landed, penetrating living flesh to invade his bloodstream.

“Alem?” Okuba asked, his voice muffled by the gas mask.

“Keep it on,” Tanku grated. His shoulders were knotted so tight that he thought that his tensed muscles would snap his clavicle like a twig.

“I don’t think anything was released into the air,” Okuba stated. “There isn’t any reaction anywhere in the camp.”

Tanku glanced around. His fellow Ethiopian soldiers were radioing in and he could hear their voices over Okuba’s radio. They were reporting a complete lack of casualties.

“I don’t even see any harm from shrapnel released by the air-bursting rockets,” one EEF trooper announced.

Tanku’s shoulders loosened and he took a deep breath, releasing it in a sigh of relief.

“Maybe they wanted to show us that they had the means to release bio or chem agents into the air,” Okuba noted, pulling off his mask. “To let us know that we don’t have anything to stop them.”

“You think they’d really bring down the ire of the Americans?” Tanku asked. “Saddam had a chemical weapons program, at least before he shipped it off to Syria before the invasion.”

Okuba shook his head. “Iraq is full of oil. This is the Sudan. What would the Americans care about here?”

“So Bitturumba isn’t the least bit concerned that he’s opened a can of worms,” Tanku grumbled.

“We’re on our own. I can’t think of a single white man who would come over here, roll up his sleeves and fight for us,” Okuba growled.

ALEM TANKU DIDN’T FEEL a thing. He remained healthy and unaffected, even as every one of his breaths sucked down dozens of airborne viral spores, parachuting gently to ground level on their long, slender cilia. The viral organisms rode the wind and found a welcome home in the bronchial sacs lining the Ethiopian’s lungs. Billions of their brethren were finding root in the respiratory systems of hundreds of EEF soldiers and Sudanese refugees.

Once the instantaneous effects of poison gas and nerve agents seemed missing from the aerial bombardment equation, the sighs of relief only served to make it easier for the Ebola mutations to ride currents into warm places where they could latch on to permeable cells and begin to feed. Within an hour, fully gorged on genetic material, the virus spores began to propagate, multiplying. One cell became two, which then became four. Some of the newly birthed spores spread their cilia and were blown out, exhaled into the world. Normally, the hemorrhagic fever spores would have been in the bloodstream and sputum of a larger organism, such as a tick, mosquito or the mammals they fed upon. These spores, however, had been redesigned. Their viral cellular membranes were thicker, allowing them to survive outside a liquid suspension. They no longer required transfer via the mixing of bodily fluids, as when a lesser animal would bite a human.

They could take to the air, riding the exhalations of the hosts where they first bred.

That’s how Tanku infected Okuba as they clinked their metal coffee cups in a toast to surviving a supposedly inept assault by Bitturumba.

It was only after Tanku began running a fever that the sighs of relief were suspected to be death sentences. His stomach felt as if a brick had been laid inside of it, and any thought of lunch and dinner repulsed him. Half of the refugee camp had assembled for lunch, but only a few people were willing to sit for dinner, possessing an appetite. Tanku’s limbs and muscles were knotted again, but this time involuntarily. Aches ripped through his frame.

An hour after sunset, when Alem Tanku was convulsing and trembling, tears of blood rolling down his cheeks, rivulets of crimson mixed in with the mucus pouring from his nose, the first of the EEF medics developed a fever. Those who hadn’t worn simple paper masks when dealing with the victims of the hemorrhagic fever outbreak were coming down with symptoms their patients had reported much earlier. Those medical personnel who operated under infectious disease precautions were unharmed.

At dawn, the viral spores had turned Tanku’s lesser blood vessels, the fine, slender capillaries, into sieves. His tears and his sweat were crimson, filled with ruptured red cells, no longer capable of transporting oxygen to the rest of his body.

By noon, Tanku was the first to die from what the Ethiopian Expeditionary Force had named Ebola Thunder, in honor of the madman who had unleashed it upon the world.

Unfortunately he wasn’t the last, as in the next second a dozen refugees vomited the bloody slush that used to be their lungs and expired, as well.

By evening, thirteen hundred corpses were being shoveled into the bottom of a grave dug up by bulldozers. The World Health Organization resources sent to respond to an unprecedented outbreak of a new form of Ebola arrived just in time to see all but a handful of bodies turned to ash by concentrated streams of burning gasoline.

It was a preview of hell, Tanya Marshall thought. She took pictures of the carnage, documenting the destruction of the infected victim bodies in the pit.

CHAPTER TWO

Alexandria, Egypt

The three men moved quietly across the Egyptian docks, night enveloping them in a cloak of darkness that aided their stealthy approach. Rumor and gossip had brought the trio to this outlet on the Mediterranean Sea, clad in combat blacksuits and armed to the teeth.

When Mack Bolan contacted Stony Man Farm for help, the men of Phoenix Force usually stepped forward. But in this case only Rafael Encizo and Calvin James answered the call. David McCarter, Gary Manning and T. J. Hawkins had sustained various gunshot wounds, pulled muscles and ankle fractures that kept them anchored in the Blue Ridge Mountain headquarters.

James and Encizo had lost sight of Bolan, but they had no worries about the man known as the Executioner. Though more than six feet tall and carrying two hundred pounds of lean, well-honed muscle, Bolan was one of the stealthiest human beings on the planet. Moving with the sure-footed stride of a stalking panther, the Executioner was the embodiment of a ghost, flitting between shadows in the blink of an eye while creating no more sound than an errant breeze.

This night’s probe was tracing a cache of Cold War–era biological delivery systems—germ warfare shells—to Alexandria. The shells were being delivered by the Russian mafiya, and all indications from Bolan’s investigation led him to believe that they were earmarked for use in the Darfur ethnic cleansing sessions. Bolan had been intending to make his presence known in the region, to bring down the horde of madmen who engaged in wanton murder and almost ritualistic rape to destroy the non-Muslim population sharing western Sudan. The State Department across multiple presidential administrations had been handicapped by a desire not to offend Islamic governments by interfering with the Sudanese government.

Mack Bolan, however, wasn’t a tool of U.S. international policy. He was driven by the need to protect the victims of corruption and terrorism. Husbands, fathers, brothers and sons were executed brutally, while wives, mothers, sisters and daughters were raped and mutilated by the Janjaweed forces. The Darfur crisis, and the Rwandan slaughter a decade before, were symptomatic of an international apathy in regard to Africa. The jungles and deserts of the continent, once Colonial prizes of the European governments, were considered lost causes, a realm where white people had no business interfering. Bolan’s brow furrowed at the thought.

Skin color didn’t enter into the Executioner’s equations of justice. What did come to mind was the fact that Europeans had run roughshod across Africa, creating a powder keg. After stripping whatever resources they could, they left disenfranchised millions behind without a workable governmental infrastructure. The jackals who did move in took their lesson plans from their predecessors and fostered a culture of corruption and tribal retribution that helped them keep their wallets fat and their enemies cowering in fear. As long as ancient tribal feuds raged, no one would be able to accumulate enough power to unseat their corrupt rulership.

It would require an outside force to even the odds, and the Executioner and his allies were that outside interference. The fact that the Thunder Lions were the militia acquiring the lethal weapon systems put the Darfur crisis right at the top of Bolan’s priorities.

Mack Bolan was just one man and he did what he could. And when he set his mind to a task, few things could deter him. However, a sentry on patrol was about to notice that his partners, Encizo and James, were preparing to slip into the water from the end of the dock. The guard was a hardened warrior, moving with precision, his mind focused on systematic scanning of the pier. It would only be a matter of moments before he saw the Phoenix pair as they took to the water on their mission of sabotage.

Bolan stalked the Russian ex-special forces man walking patrol. He recognized the man’s Spetznaz pedigree, having encountered hundreds of them before. His disciplined military bearing, Slavic features and the scent of cheap Turkish tobacco that the Russian commandos seemed addicted to were unmistakable in combination. Add in the fact that the black-market weapons were on a Russian ship, owned by the mafiya, and it was plain to Bolan that the man was a trained commando. The muzzle of his rifle was held at waist level, finger off the trigger, but resting against the guard, ready to snap down and rip off a burst of autofire with a reflexive action.

The Executioner knew that it would only be a moment before the ex-military mob enforcer noticed the presence of his partners, or feel that Bolan was on his trail. Without a moment’s hesitation, the Executioner rose from the shadows. One of his hands clamped over the Russian’s mouth, while the other speared a hard-knuckled fist deep into the base of his adversary’s skull. The punch connected with the knot of neurons where the spine met the brain, causing an overload that paralyzed the patrolling sentry. With a savage jerk, Bolan yanked his insensate opponent back into the shadows, his arm snaking under the stunned Russian’s chin. He flexed both of his arms, and with the power of a full-grown python, he broke the unconscious man’s neck. The moment the sentry would have recovered a fraction of his senses, he would have mustered the strength to pull the trigger on his rifle, alerting the rest of his allies. Given that the guard was ex-military and working for organized crime, Bolan could live with the fact that he most likely had sent a murderer to justice.

A quick glance around the dock told him that the rest of the Russians on the outlaw freighter hadn’t noticed their guard disappear. Moving swiftly, Bolan peeled the corpse out of its jacket, then the red-and-white-striped sailor shirt, pulling them both on. He’d used a small utility knife to cut slashes in the side of the dead man’s T-shirt to allow himself access to his battle harness and shoulder-holstered Beretta, while still concealing his blacksuit and war load from casual inspection. He tucked the Russian’s cell phone and hand radio into his jacket pocket.

“Took out the snooper, continuing his patrol pattern,” Bolan said softly into his throat mike as he stepped out onto the dock.

There was the sound of two clicks, Encizo and James responding nonverbally to his transmission. The two men were underwater now and wouldn’t have seen Bolan take down the sentry and appropriate his clothing. They pressed the transmit buttons on their radios, the only way they could communicate with him while just below the waves, breathing through snorkels. Secure in the knowledge that his allies wouldn’t mistakenly target him, Bolan followed the guard’s regularly scheduled route.

“Guys,” a voice called over the radio in Russian. “Pull back in. We have the headlight signal.”

“Affirmative,” Bolan grunted in Russian, keeping his voice low. The Executioner made an about-face and returned to the freighter. Riflemen were posted on the railing, but their attention was on the burning pairs of headlights rolling down the back streets. In the shadowy light of the dock, neither of the sentries would have been able to see each other, which was an advantage. The men on the pier would be hard to target by any incoming force. The lack of light was no disadvantage to a Spetznaz commando.

Bolan could see the shadowy outline of the other Russian who had been patrolling the pier. He bracketed the other side of the gangplank, his eyes fixed on the newcomers.

“Anatoly,” the man whispered, “I heard that the stupid bastards used some of our shells last night.”

Bolan shrugged.

“I don’t like it,” the guard continued. “If we get caught with the rest of their shipment in our hold, we’ll bring down a shit storm.”

Bolan nodded.

The Thunder Lion convoy rolled to a halt, its headlights off. Bolan counted six vehicles, four of them SUVs, two of them two-and-a-half-ton trucks, which were workhorses and more than capable of carting off enough bioartillery to render Central Africa a lifeless wasteland. The members of the Thunder Lion crew were all tall, strong men with black skin and grim expressions. They assembled in front of their vehicles, all of them packing high-tech French FAMAS rifles.