The Executioner abandoned the trail

He tucked the carbine in close to his chest as he zigzagged down the uneven slope. The going was precarious as the ground beneath him was clotted with loose stones and small rocks. For each sure step there would be one where the ground gave way under his weight. Several times he dropped to one knee, raising welts along his thigh as he half fell, half slid his way downhill, raising a cloud of volcanic ash and dislodging the gravel around him. It was as if he’d become a one-man avalanche.

After another twenty yards, the ground abruptly fell away and he was thrown forward, off balance, into a deep recess. He struck the far edge of the gully knee-first, then with his shoulder, jarring his carbine loose. The rifle sailed past him and rolled sideways another five yards before coming to a rest. Bolan, meanwhile, slumped into the cavity, dazed. He had the presence of mind to drop as low as he could, avoiding the stream of gunfire that, moments later, skimmed past the gully’s rim. As he waited for his head to clear, the Executioner reached for his web holster, unsheathing his Beretta.

He was down but not out.

Loose Cannon

The Executioner®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Ron Renauld for his contribution to this work.

The responsibility of the great states is to serve and not to dominate the world.

—Harry S. Truman,

1884–1972

When a man who holds power tries to dominate others for his own benefit, it is my responsibility to stop him.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

1

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

Mack Bolan liked to start his day, whenever possible, by stretching and then going for a short jog. The routine loosened him up, eased the aches incurred from combat on a thousand battlefields and helped clear his mind so that he would feel energized and focused for whatever demands the day would bring. Of course, given the extent to which he found himself out in the field—under the gun with his life on the line—moments like this morning were more the exception than the rule. It had been weeks, in fact, since there’d been time for the Executioner to indulge in his favored regimen. So, as he loped along the inner perimeter of Stony Man Farm, breath clouding in the cool morning air, Bolan savored the moment.

He was out on the east edge of the property, where evenly spaced rows of timber trees blocked his view of the chipping mill that served as a front for the Farm’s covert Annex facilities. Mottled sunlight filtered through the bird-filled poplars and a slight breeze carried with it the faint, cloying scent of fresh peaches and strawberries. Save for an occasional glimpse of the perimeter fence off to his right, Bolan had the sense of being out in the middle of nowhere, reprieved, for the moment, from his tireless commitment to stand hard and tall against those dark elements forever intent on heaving the world into a maelstrom.

As he neared the edge of the tree line, the steady, rhythmic thump of Bolan’s jogging shoes on the dirt path was echoed by a similar, albeit mechanical, drone from overhead. As the sound drew closer, Bolan recognized the telltale rotor hum of the Farm’s shuttle chopper. The Bell 206 was coming in from the east, a sure sign given the hour that Sensitive Operations Group Director Hal Brognola was on board, heading back from a presidential briefing in Washington. Bolan knew it was equally likely that Brognola had left the White House with news that some fresh hell had broken out at one of the world’s hotspots, requiring the input of Stony Man’s covert operatives to ensure that U.S. interests were not imperiled by the recent turn of events. Duty called, and with solemn intent, the Executioner cut short his morning run and changed course.

Barbara Price, Stony Man’s mission controller, had emerged from the tri-level main house where she resided when not conducting business at the nearby Annex facilities. Tall, blond-haired and casually dressed in jeans and a lightweight sweater, Price had the look and bearing of a woman who knew her own mind and brooked little nonsense from anyone who might mistake her ready smile for a sign of weakness. She flashed that smile at Bolan as he approached her. He returned an equally disarming grin. The look between them spoke of shared intimacy, and though neither of them had ever so much as entertained a matrimonial notion, they acknowledged each other as soul mates, and Bolan had spent the night in Price’s arms before setting out on his morning run.

Bolan gestured at the chopper, then asked Price, “Where’s the fire this time?”

“LET ME RUN this back to make sure I’ve got it all right,” Bolan said a half hour later as he sat with Brognola and Price in the Annex computer room. Brognola’s face was taut with an expression of quiet intensity. Also in the room was Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, a burly man whose confinement to a wheelchair did little to sap a look of vitality that was only partially enhanced by his steady consumption of what others at the Farm kindly referred to as the World’s Most Mediocre Coffee.

“You never get it wrong,” Kurtzman told Bolan, “but this one’s so convoluted a quick rehash might do us all some good.”

“All right, then,” Bolan said. “Two days ago in Indonesia, UNESCO found a party of seven men shot to death in a gorge in a nature preserve in Aceh Province. Less than a mile away, they came across more bodies near a Jeep that looked like it went off a mountain road after crashing into some fallen trees. They think at least a couple more men were dragged off by crocodiles.”

“So far, so good,” Brognola said.

“The men found in the gorge were killed by weapons found on the men who died in the Jeep crash,” Bolan went on, “so the theory is the second group died while fleeing the scene of the ambush.”

“And the men in the gorge were unarmed,” Price added, making certain she’d pieced it all together correctly herself. “They were supposedly on a field trip trying to gauge the toll poaching had taken on the preserve’s endangered species.”

“Correct,” Brognola said. “They were with Gerakan Aceh Merdeka.”

“The Free Aceh Movement,” Bolan interjected. “And the men in the Jeep were with the Ministry of the Interior. Government agents.”

“The head of the ministry is running against GAM for reelection as governor of Aceh Province,” Price said. She turned to Brognola. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember his name.”

“Noordin Zailik,” Brognola said. “He’s denying that the ministry agents had anything to do with ambushing the GAM people. Of course, GAM is pointing to the evidence and trying to milk the situation for all it’s worth, since their guy is running neck-and-neck with Zailik in the polls.”

“And their guy is Anhi Hasbrok,” Bolan said. “Former head of GAM’s military arm.”

Kurtzman grinned at Brognola. “What’d I tell you? You run something by Striker, it’s like programming it into a damn computer.”

“The governor has ordered a full-scale investigation, down to going after crocodiles with tranquilizer darts on the chance they can be x-rayed for any trace of the missing G-men,” the big Fed said.

“Good luck with that,” Kurtzman replied.

“It’s apt to be a drawn-out process,” Brognola admitted. “Meanwhile, both Zailik and Hasbrok are cranking up the rhetoric to the point where Washington is worried about the area’s political stability. And not just because of GAM’s track record for resorting to violence.”

“They’re worried about JI moving in,” Bolan guessed.

“Exactly,” Brognola said. “Jemaah Islamiyah have been taking it on the chin lately thanks to the antiterrorist squad Densus 88, but they’re not about to roll over. According to our intel, JI are replacing their cells as fast as they get knocked down, and they’re hoarding whatever arms they can get off the black market. Word is they’re stirring up most of the clamor in East Timor, and if they figure the time is right in Aceh, odds are they’d be quick to make a move there.”

“They’re backing some cleric who’s running against Zailik and Hasbrok, too, right?” Kurtzman asked.

“Yes,” Brognola replied, “but the guy’s running a distant third. The latest polls had him at less than ten percent.”

“He could wind up playing spoiler, though,” Kurtzman said.

“I suppose so.”

Bolan weighed the implications, then voiced his thoughts. “Any chance JI had a hand in the ambush?”

“You want to spell it out?” Brognola asked.

“It’s simple,” Bolan said. “If we’re assuming that things aren’t the way they look, then we’re saying somebody drove the ministry agents off the road, made sure they were dead, stole their weapons and used them to ambush the GAM people, then doubled back and left the weapons near the Jeep so it would look like a government hit. To pull off something like that takes a lot of precision.”

“Which JI specialize at,” Price added, completing the thought.

“You could have something there,” Brognola conceded. “But there’s another option we need to look at, too. I wanted to make sure you were clear on what went down before I brought it up, but now that you’re up to speed…”

Bolan nodded. “There’s always a twist.”

“Unfortunately, yes.” Brognola raided his attaché case for a file, which included a compact disc. “Can you cue this up for me, Bear?” he asked, handing it to Kurtzman.

Kurtzman, who oversaw the Farm’s cybernetic crew, wheeled to his computer station. In seconds, he’d opened the CD’s files and transferred its data onto his hard drive.

“Done,” he told Brognola. “What do you want to look at first?”

“The photo file,” Brognola replied.

“Coming up.”

Kurtzman worked his cursor, and moments later the image of a dough-faced middle-aged man with dark hair and a well-groomed goatee filled his screen as well as one of the larger monitors imbedded on the far wall.

“Carl Ryan,” Brognola said, identifying the man on the screen. “Career politico, mostly with the State Department, including a nice, long run as U.S. ambassador to Indonesia.”

“Until he wound up in prison, right?” Price said. “Something to do with skimming reconstruction funds after the tsunami.”

“That’s right,” Brognola confirmed. “He siphoned off nearly two million dollars that’s been accounted for, and they think he helped himself to even more before he got caught with his hand in the cookie jar.”

“I think I can see where this is headed,” Bolan murmured.

“Ryan was paroled last month after serving half his sentence,” Brognola explained. “He wasn’t out more than a week before he disappeared.”

“That would be a euphemism for ‘skipped the country’,” Kurtzman guessed.

“We don’t have any proof yet, but that’s the scenario we’re working with,” Brognola said. “And the thinking is that he’s probably headed back to his old stomping grounds.”

“To get to whatever money he managed to stash,” Price said.

“Again, that’s only speculation, but it would make sense,” Brognola said. “And you have to consider that he’s probably still connected with some key players in the islands. After all, he was ambassador for four years before the wheels came off.”

“Got it,” Bolan said, “but how do we figure he might be mixed up with the ambush?”

“He might not be,” Brognola conceded, “but when you figure he was replaced over there by the guy who blew the whistle on him, it’s fair to say he’d have an interest in seeing all hell break loose and have the new ambassador take the heat for letting things get out of hand.”

“That’d be going to a lot of trouble for not much in the way of payback,” Bolan said.

Brognola nodded, adding, “Or maybe the ambush is just the beginning.”

2

Banda Aceh, Indonesia

“Of course we had nothing to do with it!” Noordin Zailik snapped into his speakerphone. The provincial governor, an obese man in his late fifties with dyed black hair, leaned forward in his chair and slammed his fist hard on a large oak desk where the phone rested alongside a stack of paperwork and a few objets d’art accumulated during his term in office. “The ministry agents were there because poachers had been reported in the area. For no other reason!”

“What was that noise?” a man with a calm, sonorous voice asked over the phone’s speaker. Ambassador Robert Gardner was on the line from the U.S. embassy in Jakarta.

“This noise?” Zailik bellowed, thumping the desk a second time. “It’s me cracking heads trying to find out who was behind those killings! I’m being framed and you know it!”

“I’m looking over the intel,” Gardner responded, his voice taking on the tone of a school teacher whose patience was being tested by a problem student, “and I have to say, all the evidence seems to point to—”

“I don’t care where the evidence points!” Zailik interrupted. “Do you really think I’d be so stupid as to place a hit on some low-level GAM lackeys? You think I don’t know how something like that would backfire on me at the polls?”

The governor glared at the speakerphone, waiting for an answer. He could imagine Gardner smirking back in his office, taking pleasure in riling him. It’d been like this from the moment Gardner had taken over as ambassador. Always so smug and condescending, just like his predecessor.

Zailik was still waiting for Gardner to respond when his personal secretary appeared in the doorway, holding a clipboard, an urgent expression on her face. The governor signaled for her to wait a moment, then leaned toward the speakerphone.

“I have an important meeting to get to,” he told Gardner coldly. “Think what you want, but I’m telling you I had no hand in this and when I prove it I’ll be expecting an apology!”

Zailik pressed a button on the phone’s console, abruptly ending the call. He glanced back at his secretary. Ti Vohn was an attractive woman in her early thirties, conservatively dressed with her dark hair pulled back from the high cheekbones that adorned her oval face. Zailik’s wife had raised a fuss when he’d hired the woman, but he’d refused to let her go. There were days, like this, when he wished his wife’s jealousy had some foundation.

“What is it, Ti?” he asked, trying his best to offer the woman an inviting smile. “Good news, I hope.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Vohn responded.

Zailik slumped in his chair as the woman explained that investigators combing the rain-soaked Gunung Leuser ambush sites had yet to find any evidence to refute the prevalent theory that Interior Ministry agents had carried out the GAM killings before dying when their Jeep had subsequently gone off the road as they were leaving the scene. The placement of logs across the mountain road seemed to be the work of illegal loggers who had been attempting to slide fallen trees down to the river for transport away from the park. It appeared merely coincidental that the ministry troops had crashed into the inadvertent barricade before the loggers could move the trees off the road. The investigators were still looking for the loggers but suspected they had fled the area once they realized what had happened. The rain had washed away any tracks that might have provided clues as to the direction they might have taken.

Preliminary autopsies showed that the victims had died of blunt trauma injuries likely incurred when the Jeep had plummeted into the ravine. And, as Zailik feared, little headway had been made regarding the logistical nightmare of rounding up the area’s population of thousand-pound crocodiles so they could be x-rayed for any trace of those ministry agents still reported missing.

As he absorbed the news, Zailik stared dully out his window. A storm front had long passed, and morning sunlight shimmered on the black domes rising from Baiturrahman Grand Mosque, located a short walk from the governor’s residence in downtown Banda Aceh. Why was Allah testing him like this? Zailik wondered fleetingly. First the tsunami, then having to deal with scandal-plagued reconstruction efforts. And now this. Whatever had happened to the dream of his governorship being a stepping stone to the presidency of all Indonesia? As it was, Zailik knew he’d be lucky to win another term as head of this godforsaken province.

Ti Vohn was eyeing Zailik expectantly when he turned back to her. He told the woman to line up a call so that he could arrange to allocate more manpower to the investigation. Somewhere out in that overgrown wilderness there had to be proof that would vindicate him, and he needed to find it as quickly as possible.

“Before I do that, there’s one more thing,” his secretary told him. There was a tinge of reluctance in her voice.

“More bad news, I trust,” Zailik groused.

“There’s a demonstration at the mosque.”

Zailik shook his head miserably. “Let me guess,” he ventured. “They’re waving placards calling me ‘GAM butcher’.”

“I’m not sure of the wording, but they’re holding you responsible,” the secretary replied. “Word is they plan to march through town to gather more supporters, then continue the demonstration here.”

“And burn me in effigy, no doubt.”

Zailik eyed the clock on the wall next to him. In a couple of hours he was scheduled to fly to Takengon for a fund-raising dinner. In light of events, he’d planned to cancel the appearance, but now the idea of pandering for campaign contributions seemed less burdensome than having to contend with an angry throng of GAM sympathizers.

“Round up the motorcade,” he told his secretary. “I want to leave early for the airport.”

“I’ll make the arrangements,” Vohn responded. Almost as an afterthought, she mentioned, “They’re still doing repairs on the main road, so traffic might be a problem.”

Without hesitation, Zailik responded, “Then we’ll take the back way.”

AS SHE LEFT the governor’s office, Ti Vohn almost felt sorry for Zailik. The man was clearly so obsessed with proving his innocence that he wasn’t thinking straight. Send more men out into the jungle? Chase after crocodiles the size of small dinosaurs hoping to find clues tucked away in their bellies? It all seemed so foolish. Why couldn’t he see that his resources would be put to better use investigating likely suspects instead of going over the same ground again and again? And then there was the matter of moving up his departure time for the airport. It would be one thing if he were merely some business executive looking for his chauffeur to show up an hour earlier. But as governor there were security protocols, and given the logistics and manpower involved, to suddenly create a mad scramble to make certain the motorcade route was properly screened and readied at a moment’s notice, especially under the circumstances, was foolhardy. And taking the back way was an even greater invitation to disaster. Vohn would have pointed out as much, save for the fact that she not only anticipated Zailik’s desire to go to any means to avoid the demonstrators, but she had also been banking on it.

Before returning to her workstation, Vohn detoured into the ladies’ room. She was the only woman working in this side of the building, but she locked the door behind her nonetheless. She retreated to one of the stalls farthest from the outer window. From her dress pocket she took a cheap prepaid cell phone and thumb-punched a memorized number. Someone answered on the seventh ring. She recognized the man’s voice.

“He took the bait,” she whispered. “He’ll be heading for the airport within the hour.”

“And you convinced him to take the back way?”

“He didn’t need much convincing,” Vohn said.

“Excellent,” the other caller responded. “We’ll be ready for him…”

Sulawesi, Indonesia

AGMED HASEM nodded approvingly as the latest group of recruits finished their training drills and fell into line before him. There were sixteen in all, ranging in age from their late teens to a couple, like Hasem, in their early thirties. They’d been worked hard and were all perspiring in the late-morning sun that beat down on the isolated camp, located five miles north of Makassar on the site of a water-treatment plant shut down years earlier when an upgraded facility had been completed closer to the city.

“Well done, praise Allah,” he told them. “Jemaah Islamiyah is blessed to have men of such caliber ready to devote themselves to our noble cause.”

In truth, Hasem was somewhat disappointed in the effort he’d seen. Most of the recruits were clumsy and far more winded from their exertions than he would have liked. But he’d found over the years that it was better to stroke the egos of those looking to join his fold than to play drill sergeant. Fill them with pride, food and constant indoctrination about the glory of martyrdom and there was a better chance they would be ready to lay down their lives on the suicide missions that were Hasem’s preferred modus operandi.

And, too, there was the matter of replenishing the ranks following a month when JI had seen more than a dozen men killed or imprisoned in raids on camps across the Java Sea in Larantuka and Maumere. The raids, carried out by Densus 88 antiterror squads, had, like countless other sweeps over the past five years, been widely publicized in the media, giving the impression that Jemaah Islamiyah was on the ropes and facing eradication. Hasem took issue with the assessment but there was no denying that bad press had taken its toll on recruitment. Gone were the days when JI routinely turned away fringe candidates for the organization. Now, Hasem and other field commanders had been forced to become more solicitous and less discriminating.

Things would change soon, though, Hasem reasoned. Even as he was exhorting the recruits, the charismatic leader knew that JI teams in Banda Aceh were preparing to launch what would be the first in a series of counterstrikes against Densus 88. If all went well, when the dust settled, JI’s reputation would be such that once again they would be able to pick and choose from the swelling ranks of those eager to join the cause. For now, however, Hasem would make do with what he had.

Hasem lectured his minions a few minutes longer, giving the men a well-practiced spiel heavy on references to Allah and laden with vitriol demonizing the United States as the Great Satan. Much was made, too, of the threat posed by secular leaders throughout the islands—men like Governor Zailik of Aceh Province—who took a hardline stance against Islamic fundamentalists. Those local politicians, to Hasem’s way of thinking, were every bit a hindrance to what JI stood for as the Americans and their European counterparts. Indonesia, after all, contained the highest Muslim concentration in the world. What better place for Islam to flourish and lay the groundwork for a long-overdue return to global prominence?

A breeze rustled through the camp, and as the recruits detected the smell of fried rice and roast goat coming from the kitchens set up inside the former treatment plant, Hasem could see the men’s attention beginning to waver. He quickly wrapped up his remarks, then sent the men to eat.

A truck had pulled up to the site, parking near Hasem’s quarters, a rusting Quonset hut set back at the edge of the clearing. Hasem went to check on things, catching up with the driver as he was circling around the truck.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

“See for yourself,” the driver told him. He opened the rear doors of the truck, revealing an oblong wooden crate the size of a small coffin. The lid was unfastened, and when Hasem raised it, he smiled. Laid out in neat rows within the crate where thin slabs of Semtec. Once placed in the lining of snug vests worn beneath loose clothing, the plastic explosives would be difficult to detect to the visible eye. As such, they would be a far better choice for suicide missions than dynamite sticks or the other, bulkier explosive materials JI had been forced to rely on, thanks to Densus 88’s clampdown on the black market.

“Excellent,” Hasem said, placing the lid back on the crate. He told the driver to wait while he went for his payment, then headed toward the nearby hut. He was met in the doorway by one of his lieutenants, Guikin Daeng, a sallow, sneering man in his late twenties.

“I was just coming to track you down,” Daeng told Hasem. “We just received word from our team in Banda Aceh. Governor Zailik is setting out early for the airport, just as we hoped.”

“Our little demonstration scared him out of his cozy little nest?” Hasem asked.

Daeng nodded, then squawked like a chicken and laughed.

“Out of the frying pan,” Hasem intoned. “Into the fire…”

3

Nearly twenty-one hours after its departure from a private airfield in Washington D.C., the Cessna Citation X jet carrying Mack Bolan dropped through the cloud cover veiling the Strait of Malacca, giving the Executioner a glimpse of Banda Aceh. He was seated in the lavishly appointed eight-seat passenger cabin, his view out the right window only partially obstructed by the jet’s sub-mounted wing. The jet was RICCO booty recently claimed by the government after the arrest and conviction of a high-rolling Chicago drug dealer.

The Executioner wasn’t the only passenger aboard the jet.

“Y’know, I could get used to this,” John “Cowboy” Kissinger drawled from the seat next to Bolan. Legs stretched out, the Stony Man weaponsmith had his feet propped on a foldout table that also held the remains of a gourmet breakfast he’d put together in the jet’s galley after sleeping most of the trip with his leather-and-suede chair fully reclined. “Only thing missing was some foxy stewardess ready to initiate me into the Mile-High Club.”

“Maybe next time,” Bolan deadpanned.

Some years back, Kissinger had left his career as a DEA field agent to join the covert ops team at Stony Man Farm. The original plan had been for him to stay on-site and oversee the acquisition and maintenance of the vast arsenal stockpiled in an outbuilding near the main quarters, and he’d excelled at both functions while finding time to tinker with new prototypes and modify existing weapons to improve performance and reliability in the battlefield. In time, though, he’d come to miss taking on the enemy firsthand, and whenever Hal Brognola or Barbara Price found themselves shorthanded when doling out assignments, Kissinger was usually the first to volunteer. Conversely, whenever Bolan felt the need for backup going into a mission, he invariably turned to Cowboy, as well as the pilot currently minding the Citation’s controls.

“Okay, boys and girls,” Jack Grimaldi called out over the intercom as the jet continued its descent toward the airport located six miles inland from Banda Aceh. “You know the drill. Seats up, belts on, and stash away anything you don’t want pinballing around the compartment should I suddenly forget what the hell I’m doing and wind up dribbling this sucker across the landing strip.”

Kissinger got up long enough to take his and Bolan’s breakfast trays back to the galley, then strapped himself in for landing. He saw the Executioner still staring out the portal beside him.

“Already looking for that needle in the haystack, eh?”

“Something like that,” Bolan replied.

In truth, though, the Executioner’s attention was focused on a flurry of activity around one of the far hangars, where a handful of armed men in combat fatigues were crossing the tarmac toward where crews were hastily fuelling what looked to be a vintage Vietnam-era Huey. A pair of military Jeeps had pulled up alongside the combat chopper as well, ready to take on a few more passengers. Kissinger finally glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of the pandemonium.

“That’s our hangar, isn’t it?” he asked Bolan.

Bolan nodded as he continued to monitor the activity. “I have a feeling they’re up to something besides rolling out the red carpet….”

“NICE TIMING, MATE,” Shelby Ferstera told Bolan ten minutes later as the Executioner deplaned. “You want to hit the ground running, you’ve come to the right place.”

Ferstera was a tall, broad-shouldered Australian in his early forties. A former member of that country’s elite Special Forces, Ferstera now served as field commander for Densus 88, eighty-eight being the number of Australians killed during the deadly 2002 bombings in downtown Bali. Ferstera had lost a sister in that bloodbath, so he’d been among the first to volunteer for the counterterrorist unit, joining forces with several U.S. Delta Force veterans and a handful of CIA operatives, who, with the help of well-trained Indonesian nationals, had been instrumental in thwarting Jemaah Islamiyah’s efforts to surpass the carnage wreaked in the Balinese incident. Their tactics over the years had been as effective as they had been controversial, resulting in the arrest of several thousand JI conspirators and the deaths of several hundred others.

Still, Ferstera knew the enemy was far from defeated, and he was not the sort of man to let pride get in the way of welcoming another ally in the fight. He’d been given the standard cover story that Bolan, under the alias of Matt Cooper, and his crew were special agents for the Justice Department, but the Aussie knew better. When told by his CIA colleagues not to pry into Cooper’s background, Ferstera felt certain that by sending these men to help with the situation in the islands, the U.S. had decided to play an ace stashed up its sleeve.

For his part, Bolan at first misinterpreted the commando’s greeting.

“You found Ryan?” the Executioner asked as he shook the Australian’s hand.

“We’ll give you a hand with that in good time,” Ferstera assured Bolan. “Meantime, how about a little warm-up exercise?”

Bolan stared past Ferstera at the Huey and the waiting Jeeps. If Ryan had not yet shown up on their radar, he knew enough about Densus 88 to know who they were preparing to go after. “JI?”

Ferstera nodded. “We’ve got an informant who says they staged a rally in town so they could flush the governor from his quarters. He’s on his way here, and he left without a full security clearance. Worse yet, he’s taking the back way to avoid traffic. My money says he’s heading for trouble.”

The situation seemed far afield from Bolan’s intended mission, but he wasn’t about to back away from Ferstera’s request. Once Grimaldi and Kissinger caught up with him, he quickly relayed the news, then turned back to Ferstera and asked, “Where do you want us?”

DUE TO THE LAST-MINUTE change in the governor’s itinerary, only two of the intended six motorcycle patrol officers were available to escort Noordin Zailik when he prepared to leave his government quarters in a chauffeured Lincoln Town Car. The police helicopter scheduled to provide aerial support at the original departure time was en route from an assignment in nearby Lheue. It was expected to catch up with the governor by the time he reached the back country road serving as his alternate route to the airport. In the meantime, the down-sized motorcade took a circuitous route through the city, taking care to avoid Baiturrahman Grand Mosque as well as main thoroughfares or any other area where protestors were likely to be gathered.

Zailik was too preoccupied with other matters to give much thought to his compromised security. He’d been on the phone since the moment he’d sat down in the car, and now, miles later, as he closed his cell phone after speaking with Provincial Intelligence Director Sinso Dujara, Zailik frowned to himself. Something about Dujara’s demeanor during the call had seemed off. Dujara was, by nature, both contentious and territorial, and Zailik had expected the man to bristle at the suggestion that not enough was being done to ferret out clues regarding the deadly incidents in Gunung Leuser. Instead of being defensive, however, Dujara had gone so far as to apologize for the lack of progress in the investigation and welcomed Zailik’s suggestion to allot more manpower to the task. An apology? A gesture of humility from the most arrogant man in his makeshift cabinet? It just wasn’t like Dujara. Something wasn’t right.

Or maybe I’m just being paranoid, Zailik thought.

He tried to put the matter out of his mind as he fished through his coat pocket, taking out the notes he’d been working on for his upcoming fund-raiser speech in Takengon. He was glad that he’d decided not to cancel the appearance, which he knew could have a strong bearing on the final stretch of the governor’s race.

Takengon, located in the center of the province on the shores of Laut Tawar Lake, had long had aspirations of becoming a tourist mecca, but most travel guides still balked at recommending the area based on years of bloody skirmishes in the vicinity, most of them involving GAM separatists. In truth, there had been no political violence in the area since the tsunami. But the stigma remained, and as such Takengon’s movers and shakers were adamantly opposed to the gubernatorial candidacy of Anhi Hasbrok, who’d commandeered GAM forces in most of the battles waged near the aspiring resort. And since third-party candidate Islamic cleric Nyak Lamm had denounced leisure pursuits such as water-skiing and sunbathing as degenerate Western vices, Zailik was certain he’d be able to replenish his campaign coffers by assuring the locals that he remained a steadfast champion of tourism as well as a foe of clerical involvement in regional politics.

The governor quickly lost himself in his speechwriting, and it wasn’t until his chauffeur cursed under his breath that Zailik took his mind off the task long enough to glimpse out the window. In an instant, he realized it may have been a mistake to take the back way to the airport.

The motorcade was passing along a remote, two-lane stretch of roadway that separated a partially completed low-income housing development from a rolling meadow overrun by tents and clapboard shanties where thousands of displaced residents of Banda Aceh had been living in squalor and discontent as they waited for construction on the new homes to be completed. The development was two years behind schedule, thanks largely to the former U.S. ambassador’s pilfering of tsunami relief funds. However, many of the indigents held Zailik responsible for their dire straits, and it seemed someone had leaked word that he would be passing through the area. Several dozen people had wandered out from the tenement and taken up positions along the road, where they jeered and waved their arms angrily at the approaching motorcade. The crowd was made up primarily of men, though there were a handful of women and several boys in their early teens. As the car drew closer, they collectively drifted out onto the road, forming a human barricade.

“So much for avoiding demonstrators,” Zailik mused as he eyed the throng. The chauffeur slowed the car and the patrolman who’d been riding behind them pulled around to the front, joining his counterpart. They stopped their motorcycles at an angle, forming a protective V behind which the governor’s car eased to a halt twenty yards shy of the protestors. Beyond the demonstrators, Zailik saw two cars approaching from the direction of the airport. Apparently dissuaded by the commotion, both drivers slowed and made quick U-turns, leaving the confrontation behind.

Zailik fumed. He wanted to get out and confront his detractors. What business did they have making him a scapegoat for their miseries? The tsunami hadn’t been his fault, and when Ambassador Ryan’s wholesale embezzlement had come to light, it had been Zailik who’d spearheaded efforts to secure relief funding elsewhere. If not for him, the lot across the road would still be nothing more than a pad of dirt instead of a development where there were at least signs of forward progress.

The governor’s indignation was quickly tempered when a piece of rotten fruit splattered against the tinted windshield he was looking through. Zailik instinctively recoiled, then let out a gasp when the next projectile—a rock the size of a baseball—struck the window. The glass was bulletproof and the rock left only small, weblike cracks, but Zailik suddenly realized he was facing more than a mere inconvenience. Casting aside his speech notes, the governor quickly grabbed his cell phone. Too flustered to dial a number, he instead pressed Redial, putting a call through to Intelligence Director Dujara. The official had little to do with the governor’s security arrangements, but Zailik was desperate.

“There’s a mob on the road to the airport!” he bellowed once Dujara picked up. “They’re after me…!”

4

The two motorcycle officers were brothers. Muhtar Yeilam, the oldest by three years, had joined the Banda Aceh police force straight out of college and distinguished himself as a patrol officer during the tsunami, saving a handful of lives and helping to maintain order in the storm’s traumatic aftermath. Muhtar’s example—along with the ceremony where he’d been decorated for heroism—had inspired his younger brother to follow in his footsteps. In three months Ashar would have his first year under his belt.

Muhtar had pulled strings to get his brother assigned to the governor’s detail, and this was the first time they’d worked together. Escorting Governor Zailik to the airport was a routine, inconsequential assignment. While waiting for the motorcade to get underway less than an hour earlier, the brothers had been joking with one another, enjoying their sibling camaraderie as they argued over who would be the first to get laid after they hit the discos later that night.

Suddenly, everything had changed.

“I thought this was supposed to be a walk in the park,” Ashar said. It was meant to be a wisecrack, but there was an edge in his voice. He idled his motorcycle and planted his boots on the road as he grabbed for the police-issue 9 mm automatic pistol nestled in its holster.

Muhtar had his gun out and was pointing it at the mob. Like Ashar, he remained on his bike, left hand lightly on the clutch, ready to get back in gear at a moment’s notice. He glanced quickly over at his brother. Save for a couple of high-speed chases, this was Ashar’s first true taste of danger since he’d received his badge. Muhtar could sense a glimmer of fear in his brother’s demeanor.

“I guess some parks aren’t as safe as others,” Muhtar quipped, trying to sound nonchalant and put his brother at ease.

The mob before them slowly began to fan out. Most of the protestors had already been unnerved by the sight of the armed policemen. They receded en masse to the shoulder. However, several men and one young boy split off from the group and began to circle around the governor’s car as if hoping to reach the vehicle from behind. Meanwhile, nearly a dozen protestors—many of them women and young boys—held their ground in front of the motorcade, linking arms to form a human chain that stretched across the entire width of the road and out onto the shoulder. Those at the end of the line clutched rocks slightly larger than the one that had already been thrown.

“We want the governor!” one of the women shouted at the two officers.

“Tell him to show his face!” another cried out.

Muhtar lowered his gun slightly and forced himself to remain calm. He ignored their demands but tried to reason with them.

“Please,” he said, trying to make eye contact with as many of the demonstrators as he could, “there’s no sense letting this get out of hand. Just drop the rocks and move away from the road.”

The plea fell on deaf ears. Those blocking the road stayed where they were, arms entwined, and continued to demand an audience with Zailik.

Ashar was less tactful than his brother when he swiveled astride his bike to contend with those making a move toward the car’s unprotected rear flank.

“Don’t even think about it!” he shouted.

When the stray demonstrators ignored him and continued toward the car, Ashar fired a warning shot over their heads. Startled, the group scrambled back. One man stumbled into another, knocking loose a rock the second man had been preparing to throw. Together, they retreated to the shoulder and rejoined the others, content, for the moment at least, to merely hurl insults at the man inside the car.

“The governor drives in a fancy limousine while we have no running water!” one taunted. “When will we have new homes instead of having to live out of tents and boxes?”

Another bellowed, “And what about those GAM workers he had executed the other night? Explain that, Governor!”

“If you have a problem with the governor, take it up at the ballot box!” Ashar snapped. “Not here!”

Muhtar whirled on his bike and shouted at his brother, “Don’t antagonize them! Just do your job!”

Ashar nodded and fell silent. Muhtar could see that his brother’s gun hand was trembling slightly, as were his knees, which were pressed close to the sides of his idling motorcycle. Muhtar knew that Ashar had gone through crowd-control drills during his training at the police academy, but in the heat of the moment his brother had clearly reverted to his hothead instincts.

“Just relax, Ashie,” Muhtar called out. “Don’t rile them up and we’ll get through this.”

Ashar continued to nod, but Muhtar was concerned. If his brother’s uneasiness was as obvious to the mob as it was to him, things could easily go from bad to worse in an instant.

By now a small delivery truck and a minivan were coming up behind the governor’s car. Both vehicles slowed to a stop. The minivan’s driver, like those in the cars that moments ago had been coming from the other direction, quickly assessed the situation and thought better of trying to move past the confrontation. Veering off the road for a moment, the van turned around and doubled back toward Banda Aceh. The driver of the truck was apparently not about to let matters throw him off schedule. After the van had passed him, he drove forward, picking up speed as he moved into the oncoming lane as if intent on passing the governor’s car. However, when a hurled rock smashed through the passenger side of the front windshield, just missing him, the man had second thoughts. He slammed on his brakes, then jammed the truck into Reverse and backed down the road a good thirty yards before making a quick three-point turn. Like the driver of the minivan before him, he retraced his route back to the city.

The motorcycle officers, meanwhile, remained on their bikes and kept a wary vigil over the protestors. Pistols outstretched before them, they fanned the weapons steadily from side to side in an effort to keep the mob at bay. It looked to Muhtar as if he’d gotten through to his brother. Ashar’s visible fidgeting had stopped and he seemed locked in to his police mentality, forearms rigid as he continued to keep his gun trained on the demonstrators. Muhtar was relieved. Though they were clearly outnumbered, he felt certain they would keep the upper hand so long as they gave the sense of being in control.

There was, however, the matter of the human chain that continued to block their way to the airport. No one had moved, and the man on the right end of the chain was still holding the rock Muhtar had told him to drop. The man at the other end of the line had only partially complied with the order; his rock had gone through the windshield of the now-retreating delivery truck.

“Put the rock down and everyone move off the road!” Muhtar told the group again, this time with more authority.

The demonstrators held their ground.

“We want answers!” one of the women shouted, raising her shrill voice to make certain the mob could hear it over the drone of the motorcycles. She pointed past the officers at the car, adding, “Tell that coward to show his face and give him to us!”

As she’d hoped, the woman’s harangue rallied the mob. Once again they began to chant and jeer. Another rock and several ears of corn bounded off the car, and Muhtar grimaced when a small, flat stone struck him squarely on the shoulder.

“Zailik’s a coward!” someone in the crowd howled. Some began to clap their hands in rhythm, as if at a sporting event. “Zailik’s a coward! Zailik’s a coward!”

Drawn by the commotion, more residents of the tent city began to emerge from their dingy quarters and head toward the road. Some had already grabbed tools and makeshift clubs, and several others paused along the way to pick up more rocks.

“Not good,” Muhtar murmured under his breath, refusing to visibly acknowledge the stinging welt on his shoulder.

Concerned the balance would soon shift out of their favor, the two brothers, without taking their eyes off the growing mob, spoke hurriedly to one another, trying to determine the best course of action. There was no way they were going to let Zailik out of the car—it was too dangerous and both brothers doubted there would be anything the governor could say to diffuse the situation. Ashar thought their best chance was to proceed with the motorcade in hopes the demonstrators would scramble out of the way once they realized their bluff was being called. Muhtar, however, was concerned about the possible ramifications if the crowd failed to move and some of them wound up being struck by their motorcycles.

“They put women and children out there for a reason,” Muhtar explained. “We run in to any of them and we’ll have a riot on our hands.”

“If we wait around for this mob to get any larger, all hell is going to break loose anyway,” Ashar countered, allowing his anger and frustration to override his earlier fears. “I say we head out and pick up speed as fast as we can, and whatever happens—”

“Wait!” Muhtar held a hand up to silence his brother. He stole a glance over his shoulder and peered back over the roof of the car. Ashar did the same.

“Finally!” the younger brother called out.

The crowd’s attention had been diverted as well, and the chanting quickly tapered off as they stared down the road. Heading toward them, swooping low as it approached from the city, was the overdue police helicopter.

“Not a moment too soon,” Muhtar intoned.

The sense of an impending riot abated as the chopper drew nearer. Moments later, there were worried murmurs among those in the crowd when they spotted a second, larger helicopter heading toward them from the direction of the airport. Beneath the massive Huey, a pair of Jeeps could also be seen racing along the road, filled with armed commandos. As if to make certain their approach had not gone unnoticed, several men in the lead Jeep fired warning shots with their assault rifles, gouging divots from the road’s shoulder just shy of where the protestors were gathered. The crowd took notice and quickly fell back on itself. Some of the latecomers turned heel and fled back toward the tent city. Even those still out on the roadway were given pause; the chain was broken as they turned to face the armed force that had just sucked the life from their demonstration.

“Densus 88,” Ashar Yeilam exclaimed with an almost reverential sense of wonder. He eyed Shelby Ferstera’s hallowed contingent as if he were some refugee from a comic book greeting the unexpected arrival of superheroes as a sure sign that soon all would be right with the world.

Though to a lesser degree, Muhtar shared his brother’s sentiment. He could barely keep himself from smiling as he kept his gun trained on the now-subdued mob. That was too close, he thought to himself.

SHORTLY AFTER THE FIRST ROCK had struck the windshield, Noordin Zailik’s chauffeur had advised him to lie low in the backseat. The governor had been quick to oblige, to an extent. Zailik had felt that lying across the seat would have only made him feel more helpless and vulnerable, so he’d compromised by half-crouching, half-kneeling between the seats, his attention divided between watching the drama unfold outside and draining his cell phone in an effort to get someone—anyone—to come to his rescue before the situation on the blocked roadway got further out of hand. Intelligence Director Dujara had transferred his initial call to Banda Aceh’s police chief, Irwandi Alkihn, who’d assured Zailik the helicopter assigned to him was on the way and that, furthermore, a Densus 88 unit stationed at the airport was taking action to fill the breach Zailik himself had created by leaving for the airport ahead of schedule.

As the governor had waited for the reinforcements, his anxiety increased with every passing second. After the second barrage of debris struck the car, Zailik had sunk lower between the seats until he was no longer able to peer out the windows. The chauffeur had tried to keep him apprised of what was happening outside the vehicle, but as he listened to the almost surreal play-by-play, Zailik found himself distracted. Over and over, his mind kept playing back the chain of events that had led to his predicament. He’d already come to realize that much of it was his own doing, but he was equally certain there was blame to be laid elsewhere, and as he thought back, he made a mental note of everyone who’d been privy to the alterations in his itinerary. Only a handful of people had known of the route change in time to have been able to forewarn the tent dwellers that he was headed their way. He’d just spoken with two of them, Dujara and Alkihn, but however much he personally disliked both men, Zailik had known them both for years and felt their loyalty was beyond reproach. His suspicions led him elsewhere; to the person who’d prompted his decision to take the back way in the first place.

Zailik wanted to believe there was no way Ti Vohn could have duped him into harm’s way—or that he could have allowed himself to be so easily led, for that matter—but the more he’d thought about it, the more convinced he’d become that his personal secretary, whom he’d known for all of eight months, was indeed the culprit.

The realization struck a strange chord inside the governor. Rather than viewing Ti Vohn’s betrayal in terms of the crisis it had gotten him into, Zailik instead found himself fixating on what a field day his wife would have when she learned the news. She’d warned him about the woman, after all, and though it had been for the wrong reasons, Zailik knew she would never let him live this down.

Driven by his wounded pride and ignoring the fact that he might not live long enough to incur his wife’s scorn, Zailik had become obsessed with trying to reach Ti Vohn on his cell phone. He was convinced that once she heard his voice, her startled response would betray her, just as she’d betrayed him. At that moment nothing seemed more important to him than verifying his suspicions.

Zailik had become oblivious to the ebb and flow of the confrontation taking place outside the car. Balled up behind the driver’s seat, all he could hear was the mad pulsing of blood rushing through his temples and the frantic stabbing of his thumb against the cell-phone keypad, followed time and again by a recorded message where his secretary explained that she was unable to answer the phone.

“Pick up, damn you!” Zailik seethed after the fifth time he’d dialed both her work and personal numbers.

He was about to dial yet again when the entire car began to shake and wobble. Zailik could hear a loud thundering outside the vehicle. Forced back to reality, Zailik’s first thought was that the demonstrators had stormed the car and were attempting to overturn it. But as he was unfolding himself from his crouch, he detected motion through the sunroof overhead and glanced up. It was then he realized the police helicopter had arrived and was hovering directly above him, using its intense rotor wash to drive back the demonstrators who’d yet to stray from the road.

Looking out the front windshield, Zailik could see the motorcycle officers hunched low over their bikes, uniforms snapping in the fierce downdraft as the chopper eased past them, then tilted slightly so that the demonstrators caught the full brunt of the whirlwind. Many of the tent dwellers lost their footing and tumbled backward, then found themselves rolling across the tarmac toward the shoulder of the road.

“I think you just lost a few votes,” the chauffeur called out as he prepared to shift the car back into gear. “But at least now we’ll be able to get you to the airport….”

MACK BOLAN WAS RIDING shotgun in the second of the two Jeeps racing down the road from the airport. Jack Grimaldi was behind the wheel and John Kissinger was in the back along with one of the Densus 88 commandos, Daud Umar, a 37-year-old native of Banda Aceh.

“So far, so good,” Grimaldi said as he watched the Huey bank toward the mob. Like the police chopper, the larger aircraft was using its rotor wash to keep the protestors off the road. Clouds of dust rose into the air, providing a protective screen as the motorcade began to inch forward. The lead Jeep had stopped thirty yards ahead of the motorcycle officers. Shelby Ferstera stood in the front seat, gesturing to the motorcycle cops that the Jeep would turn around once the motorcade had passed and would follow as they proceeded to the airport.

Watching things play out, Bolan had a sense that something was wrong. It was all going far too smoothly. Ferstera’s informant, after all, had said that Jemaah Islamiyah had planned to go after the governor, and from what he knew of the terrorist sect, he thought their game plan would have consisted of more than setting loose a rock-throwing mob.

“Keep an eye on the crowd,” he called out over his shoulder.

“On it,” Kissinger replied. He was already putting to use a pair of high-powered binoculars. “It’s a little hard, though, with all that dust.”

Bolan turned his attention to the other side of the road, where the skeletal wooden frames of several hundred homes spread out across a series of unpaved streets. A few of the structures closest to the road were nearer to completion than the others, their inner walls hammered into place with foil-backed insulation strips secured between the studs. A handful of construction vehicles was parked nearby, but there was no sign of activity. Bolan had binoculars, too, and he used them to take a closer look at one of the bulldozers situated between a Dumpster and a large stack of lumber. Half-hidden behind the earthmover’s large front scoop, the Executioner spotted a body sprawled across the dirt.

He was about to pass along his findings when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a thin ribbon of smoke trail out from a second-story window of one of the homes near the road. A split second later, the police helicopter disintegrated in a fireball, showering the road with debris.

“A trap,” Bolan shouted, even as a second missile streaked through the air, broadsiding the Huey. In an instant, Governor Zailik lost his aerial support, and the Executioner knew his instincts had been correct.

5

Once the last fiery remains of the two downed helicopters had crashed onto the roadway between his Jeep and the governor’s motorcade, Shelby Ferstera fought off his shock and cursed. Jemaah Islamiyah had lured him into an ambush and now, in the blink of an eye, more than a dozen of his best men were gone. He could see a few of them scattered amid the flaming shrapnel, lifeless bodies rent and torn by the force of the explosion. Some were engulfed in flames, others spattered with blood, all of them missing limbs so that they looked like the remains of storefront mannequins that had been run through a threshing machine. There was nothing to be done for them other than to see to it that they had not died in vain. And despite the devastating blow to his ranks, Ferstera was determined to carry out Densus 88’s mission and ensure the governor’s safety. To do that, however, he had to make certain the rest of his men were not slaughtered by the enemy.

“Out of the Jeep and take cover!” he commanded, bolting from the vehicle. The surviving commandos followed suit, and not a moment too soon. Even as they were flattening themselves against the roadway, a stream of gunfire strafed over their heads and pelted the Jeep. The shots were coming from the direction of the tent city, so Ferstera crawled around to the far side of the vehicle. His men were right behind him. Three of them made it. A fourth caught a hail of bullets and slumped to the roadway, dead by the time his face struck the asphalt.

“Jackals!” Ferstera shouted.

He glanced quickly behind him. The Americans in the other Jeep had detoured from the road and were headed toward the housing development. They were veering to and fro to make themselves less of a target for the JI snipers firing from the upper floor of one of the uncompleted homes. Smoke and flames from the downed Huey’s charred fuselage blocked Ferstera’s view of those snipers, but he trusted that meant the enemy was similarly unable to take aim his way, allowing his men to focus on the gunners across the road.

Readying his M-16, Ferstera rose to one knee and peered over the Jeep’s hood. Through the rifle’s scope he was able to pinpoint a sniper positioned behind a large boulder on a raised knoll just beyond the tent city. The gunman had spent his ammo and was slamming a fresh cartridge into his rifle. He was a long way off, barely within range of Ferstera’s M-16, but the Aussie was an expert marksman and proved it as he cut loose with a burst that streaked above the rocks and found home in the enemy’s chest, taking the sniper down.

Wasting no time on self-congratulation, Ferstera scanned the knoll for more targets. He knew the playing field was a long way from being leveled….

MUHTAR YEILAM was knocked unconscious when a chunk of the obliterated police chopper crashed down on him. When he came to moments later, he was lying on the road next to his toppled motorcycle, fighting off a wave of nausea brought on by the stench of raw fuel and charred flesh. A searing, knife-like pain gnawed at his skull. Reflexively, he grabbed at his helmet and pried it off his head. The pain abated quickly as he noticed that the helmet had cracked almost in two while absorbing the impact of the fallen debris, which lay a few feet away, smoldering next to a severed arm. Staring past the grisly sight, Muhtar saw that the road was strewn with carnage. Beyond his field of vision, he could hear screams and gunfire and the flap of loose clothing as people fled in all directions, trying to take themselves out of the line of fire.

When he tried to rise, Muhtar became aware of a tingling numbness in his legs. Glancing down, he saw blood seeping through his right pantleg up high near his hip. He wasn’t sure what had caused the wound, but he knew he had to stop the bleeding. As he reached down, a sudden, aching weariness washed over him him, and he could feel himself on the verge of passing out again.

“No!” he gasped, shaking his head, fighting to remain conscious.

Then he thought of his brother.

“Ashar,” he murmured, groaning at the monumental effort it took as he rolled over and tried to get up. He collapsed back onto the roadway. He’d moved enough that he could see Ashar, however. His younger brother had been knocked off his motorcycle as well, but the blow had been less severe, as Ashar was on his feet, crouched near the front grille of the governor’s car, trading shots with an assailant firing down at him from one of the half-built homes off to his right. A group of commandos had entered the housing project and were heading toward the house where the shots originated.

“Need to help,” Muhtar moaned to himself.

He ignored the bleeding in his leg and looked around him. His service pistol lay a few feet away on the road next to his toppled bike. Drawing in a deep breath, he rallied his strength and willed himself to roll toward the gun, then reached out and slowly closed his fingers around it.

Straining, Muhtar turned onto his other side and propped himself up slightly with his free arm. He looked back down at his legs; they were still numb and the bloodstain on his hip was spreading. He took solace, though, when he realized he could wriggle both his feet. Not paralyzed, he thought. He knew he was probably in shock and convinced himself that the numbness would soon go. He would tend to the bleeding later, but for now he wanted to do what he could to help his brother protect the governor, who, Muhtar assumed, was still alive inside the car.

From his new position, Muhtar could see across the road, where there was a flurry of commotion. Most of the demonstrators had retreated back toward the tent city, but a handful of men stood just off the shoulder, hunched in a tight circle like football players huddling to discuss their next play. Something about their demeanor—they way they’d turned their backs on the pandemonium around them—put Muhtar on alert.

His suspicions were borne out when, a few seconds later, the men suddenly turned away from each other, eyes on the governor’s car. Remaining in a tight formation, they strode purposefully out onto the road, heading toward the vehicle. Muhtar could see that they were making an effort to shield one man in particular. When he saw the man reaching under the folds of his loose shirt, adrenaline spiked through his veins, giving him the strength to let out a plaintive cry.

“Ashar!” Muhtar shouted to his brother. “Behind you! They have a bomb!”

ASHAR YEILAM WHIRLED at the sound of his brother’s voice. Muhtar had managed to get a shot off before blacking out, and one of the men approaching the governor’s car dropped to the road. The others continued forward, closing ranks to protect the man in the middle of the formation. Shelby Ferstera had also been alerted by Muhtar’s cry and two more men went down when the Aussie cut loose with his M-16. Ashar took out a fourth with the last round in his weapon. That left three men, however, including the one fumbling with the bomb concealed beneath his loose shirt. They reached the car and pressed themselves against the passenger side of the vehicle.

There was no time for Ashar to reload. Casting the gun aside, he raised one foot onto the front bumper of the car, then pushed off with the other and leapt up onto the hood. As his forward momentum carried him toward the three demonstrators, Ashar extended his arms. The other men were crowded together enough that he was able to collide with all three of them, knocking them away from the car. As he fell to road, the young police officer managed to drag down two of the men, including the bomber.

But it wasn’t enough.

Though shaken and lying on his back, the bomber quickly regained his wits and grabbed at the detonator wired to the sticks of dynamite strapped to his chest. With a malignant grin, he eyed Ashar, who was an arm’s length away, preparing to lunge..

“Praise Allah!” the bomber cried out, triggering the detonator.

THE EXECUTIONER and his colleagues were thirty yards from the partially built home the JI snipers were firing from. “Try to hot-wire the bulldozer and put it to use!” Bolan shouted to Grimaldi.

The pilot nodded and was headed toward the earthmover when a violent explosion shook the ground under his feet, throwing him off balance. Bolan felt it, too. He crouched behind a Jeep, M-16 at the ready, and glanced over his shoulder, just in time to see the governor’s car fly into the air and slam back onto the road, landing on its roof.. There was a small crater in the road where the bomb had gone off. Nearby, a fresh heap of corpses lay in mangled ruin.

“Suicide bomber,” John Kissinger murmured, hunched next to Bolan behind the Jeep.

Bolan nodded gravely, ears ringing from the explosion. One side of the governor’s car had been caved in by the bomb’s force, but he thought there was a chance the governor might have survived the blast. If so, Zailik would have to wait to be rescued. Shelby Ferstera’s surviving commandos had their hands full contending with snipers on the hill behind the tent city, and when gunfire coming from a second house peppered his Jeep, Bolan knew that he was locked into his own battlefield.

Daud Umar, the Densus 88 member rounding out Bolan’s crew, had taken cover behind a stack of lumber just to the right of the Jeep. He fired at the enemy gunners in the second house, then pulled back when a return volley splintered the two-by-fours.

“Give ’em a grenade!” Bolan shouted.

Umar nodded, grabbing for an M6 clipped to his ammo belt. He waited out another round from the JI gunners, then thumbed the pin free and twisted his body, heaving the grenade. His aim was off, but not by much. The grenade exploded as it struck the loose dirt just in front of the house where the sniper was embedded.

The front door flew off its hinges and a dust cloud bloomed into the air, mixing with smoke given off by the blast. Bolan doubted the enemy inside the house had been taken out, but he figured they’d at least been distracted.

“Now!” he called out, breaking clear of the Jeep.

Together, Bolan and Kissinger rushed the house, using the dust cloud to mask their approach. Kissinger, like Bolan, had been issued an M-16, but his assault rifle came equipped with an under-barrel M-203 grenade launcher. As the dust began to settle, he stopped and planted himself behind a bulky, two-wheeled rototiller, shifting his trigger finger from the carbine to the launcher.

“Go wide!” he shouted to Bolan, waving to his left.

The Executioner veered away from Kissinger, following the dust cloud as it began to drift. Kissinger took aim at the house, peering through the haze. Once he could make out the framework of the ground-floor window, he fired. A 40 mm grenade whooshed from the launcher and finished off the job Daud Umar had started, penetrating the house before it detonated.

Bolan didn’t wait to see if the blast had neutralized the enemy. Cutting toward the house, he set his sights on the front door, ready to finish the job.

FIFTY YARDS AWAY, Grimaldi had already scrambled past the dead man next to the bulldozer and climbed up to the driver’s compartment. There was blood on the seat and when Grimaldi glanced down to his right, he spotted another slain worker sprawled on the ground near the treads. The man had apparently been gunned down while at the controls, because there were keys in the ignition, saving Grimaldi the need to hot-wire the engine.

“We’ll take our breaks where we get them,” the pilot muttered as he cranked the ignition. White smoke belched from the exhaust and the gears meshed noisily as he worked the clutch and maneuvered the front plow off the ground, giving himself just enough clearance to proceed.

The bulldozer rumbled and groaned as its tanklike treads clawed at the ground, pulling it forward. Grimaldi had seen the damage Umar and Kissinger had inflicted on the second house being used by the JI, and as they joined the Executioner in storming the house, he wrestled with the controls, moving down the unpaved street toward the structure from which the enemy had fired the missile rounds that had brought down the two choppers. Grimaldi could only hope they didn’t have a rocket left with his name on it.

NOORDIN ZAILIK WAS DISORIENTED when he regained consciousness. The last thing he remembered was one of the motorcycle officers tackling some demonstrators who’d rushed his car. Now, partly deaf, his face bleeding and his shoulder throbbing with raw pain, he found himself staring up at the backseat of the car. It made no sense. It was only after he’d turned slightly and found himself staring at bits of flaming debris on the road that he realized the car had flipped over. The passenger side of the vehicle was caved in and the windows had all shattered.

A bomb, Zailik thought.

Still dazed, the politician groaned, trying to move. He let out a cry as he shifted his weight onto his injured shoulder. Another shout leapt from his bleeding lips when a hand reached out and grabbed hold of him. He whirled and saw his chauffeur staring at him from a space between his headrest and the collapsed rooftop.

“Don’t move, sir.”

Zailik could barely hear the man, but he understood what was being said. He stayed put, grimacing, as the chauffeur contorted and slowly wriggled through what was left of the window frame next to him. Once he was out on the road, the driver crawled over and looked in at Zailik.

“Stay put,” he told the governor. “I’ll get—”

The chauffeur’s voice trailed off suddenly and his eyes went blank as blood and gore erupted from his chest and sprayed Zailik. The driver fell to the ground, dead.

Terrified, Zailik stared past the chauffeur’s body and caught a glimpse of one of the houses in the partially built development set just off the road. There was movement in one of the upper windows, and when he looked closer, Zailik saw a man taking aim at him through a high-powered rifle. He knew that even if he wasn’t injured, there would be no time for him to avoid the sniper’s next round….

6

Crouched next to the two spent rocket launchers he’d used to take down the Densus 88 Huey as well as the smaller police chopper, Yorvit Varung propped his elbows on the windowsill of the partially built house and grinned as he peered through the scope of his sniper rife, drawing a bead on Zailik. For Varung, it had already been a glorious day. Besides those in the chopper, he’d also taken out an enemy ground soldier. And now he had a chance to put a bullet through the skull of a despised nemesis who regularly denounced Jemaah Islamiyah and the notion of clerical rule in Indonesia.

Life was good.

“Take care of him!” snapped Freper Lorten, the sniper’s older colleague. He was in a dark mood after witnessing a handful of recruits gunned down and blown to bits on the roadway below. He’d come to know most of the men during their long months of training at a JI encampment outside Calang, and while he understood the need for martyrdom in the name of a greater cause, he was not the sort to gloss over casualties incurred on the battlefield.

“I’ll take care of him once I have a clear shot!” Varung retorted without taking his eye off the scope. “If I’d rushed earlier, I wouldn’t have brought down the helicopters.”

Lorten knew it was pointless to argue with the younger man. Instead, clutching his AK-47, he stared across the road, where surviving members of Densus 88 were caught in a firefight with JI assailants in the foothills behind the tent city. Lorten doubted he could do much to help, so he instead shifted his gaze to the road, looking for a closer target. In front of the overturned car, one of the motorcycle officers was crawling toward the remains of the man who’d nearly thwarted the suicide bomber. The officer was clearly wounded and seemed to pose little threat, but he was still the enemy, so Lorten raised his assault rifle into firing position, ready to finish the man off.

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