Bolan fired two rounds toward the terrorist’s head

“You’re insane!” Kairoush shouted.

“I’ve never been more stone-cold. The next ones are for real,” the Executioner vowed. “I want to know about the North Koreans. I want to know where the backpack nuke is, or how I can get to it. Or I shoot to kill.”

“I will talk!”

And he did, spinning a tale so sordid its magnitude was difficult to absorb. Bolan was turning toward Dawkins when autofire rang out, the soldier flinching as he glimpsed a ragged line of holes dancing across the terrorist’s chest.

Black-clad, armored storm troops surged into the warehouse.

“Freeze! Lose the guns!”

Bolan found himself staring at Commander Tachjine, the muzzle of the Moroccan’s machine gun pointed at his chest.

Other titles available in this series:

Inferno

Ambush

Blood Strike

Killpoint

Vendetta

Stalk Line

Omega Game

Shock Tactic

Showdown

Precision Kill

Jungle Law

Dead Center

Tooth and Claw

Thermal Strike

Day of the Vulture

Flames of Wrath

High Aggression

Code of Bushido

Terror Spin

Judgment in Stone

Rage for Justice

Rebels and Hostiles

Ultimate Game

Blood Feud

Renegade Force

Retribution

Initiation

Cloud of Death

Termination Point

Hellfire Strike

Code of Conflict

Vengeance

Executive Action

Killsport

Conflagration

Storm Front

War Season

Evil Alliance

Scorched Earth

Deception

Destiny’s Hour

Power of the Lance

A Dying Evil

Deep Treachery

War Load

Sworn Enemies

Dark Truth

Breakaway

Blood and Sand

Caged

Sleepers

Strike and Retrieve

Age of War

Line of Control

Breached

Retaliation

Pressure Point

Silent Running

Stolen Arrows

Zero Option

Predator Paradise

Circle of Deception

Devil’s Bargain

False Front

Lethal Tribute

Season of Slaughter

Point of Betrayal

Ballistic Force

Renegade

Survival Reflex

Path to War

Mack Bolan®

Don Pendleton

Do not seek evil gains; evil gains are the equivalent of disaster.

—Hesiod

c.700 B.C.

Man makes his own choices. He chooses to either travel the righteous path, or to go the way of Animal Man. Without punishment for conscious and willful evil acts, Animal Man wins. My job is to level the playing field.

—Mack Bolan

To the unswerving dedication of the men and women of the Department of Justice

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

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

Kinbuvu Gaungalat considered the monster holed up in the apartment, and images of predators on the high savage end of the food chain leaped to mind. The former UNITA colonel may have staked his surveillance point from the dark end of an alley in Old Madrid, somewhere deep in the maze of cobbled streets choked with adobe apartment buildings, plazas, restaurants, bars, monasteries and convents, but numerous visions of feeding frenzies seemed to burn, alive and thrashing, the longer he stared at the wrought-iron balcony, nursing hatred, craving revenge.

And there it came, in living color, it seemed, as he felt the fire searing out from the core of his soul.

He envisioned the lioness on the savanna, her jaws clamped on the throat of a zebra as she took it down in a blast of dust and spewing blood. Then he pictured the crocodile, erupting out of brown waters in a great spume as its razor-sharp teeth clamped the neck of a gazelle that had fallen behind the pack in the river crossing, dragging it beneath the surface, drowning it in a death roll, the beast’s throat filling with the blood of its victim before the real devouring began. He imagined next the white shark, its massive dark shape boiling, a torpedo with teeth the size of celery stalks, as it surged up from the depths of the waters around South Africa’s Seal Island, a crimson cloud spraying the air before the creature splashed down to consume its meal in a frothy scarlet maelstrom.

Ultimate predators, driven by primal instinct to consume flesh to survive.

All of which, he decided, was simply the beautiful brutality of nature sorting out the food chain, the larger, more aggressive and dangerous animals ruling supreme, deciding, for the most part, what would live, what would fall prey to fill its belly. Something always, it seemed to him, had to die so something could live. And that held especially true, he concluded, in the world from where he came.

Only the predator he wished to kill had never displayed even a scintilla of such courage, much less any skill in those death hunts of wild animals. No, the monster in hiding was a mass murder, he knew, a coward who wallowed in the lap of obscene luxury while others risked their lives to carry out his homicidal dictates, swell his coffers with money earned on the blood of those he oppressed.

That in mind, Gaungalat reached into the dark vault of the gruesome past. For a moment he felt a stab of pain and bitter remorse as he weighed the awful truth about the living hell that was Angola. Like many of his countrymen he was Christian, a Roman Catholic, in fact, his ancestors converted by European missionaries who had passed on the teachings of their faith and their Bible down through the generations. Thus, recalling the Book of Revelation, he couldn’t help but picture the former Portuguese colony as a vast and eternal plague of death, war, starvation and pestilence, delivered unto all—in spirit, if nothing else, as far as he was concerned—a terrifying preview of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But had he not played a small part in the madness of genocide, razing villages where rival MPLA rebels were suspected of hiding large weapons caches, only to slaughter their women and children? he wondered. Had he not turned a blind eye when his soldiers vented anger and hatred through orgies of rape, torture and mutilation on helpless victims? Had he not, as overlord of the diamond mines of Cuango, personally flayed with bullwhip the impoverished miners and near to death?

He had, in time, aborted the course of the Four Horsemen, at least in his private corner of command and control, but not before dipping his hands into figurative rivers of the blood of the innocent.

So, then, was he any better than the monster he had come here to slay?

Oh, but he was, he told himself as he grasped the mini-Uzi hung in webbed nylon rigging beneath his long coat. Had he not turned his back on his old ways, rebelled against the monster, and nearly at the cost of his own life? Was he not sickened for years after by the mere thought of how he could have done what he did for so long to so many? Was it not all he could have done, in feverish dark nights of the soul, weeping alone, begging the God of his understanding for mercy and forgiveness, to have not taken his own life?

He fingered the compact subgun with his left hand, then shucked the other side of his coat higher up, feeling the empty space where his right arm should have been, grinding his teeth at the memory of the amputation, delivered to him for dereliction of duty, or so according to the monster. In his own war-torn nation he knew he wouldn’t present himself such an aberration, where, he heard, it was estimated by the Red Cross and World Health Organization that almost forty percent of eleven million Angolans were missing a limb—or limbs—either blown off in a land estimated to be planted with twenty-five million mines and other boobytraps, or hacked off.

He shuddered, wondering about the horror, the why of it all.

Perhaps, he then decided, God had merely punished him for his vile transgressions, only to spare his life, guiding him here to deliver both justice and grant him redemption.

If that was true, he would find out soon enough.

Shoving the howling ghosts to the catacombs of memory, he watched as the doors opened and a white man stepped out onto the balcony. Feeling the added weight of the 9 mm Makarov pistol snug in his waistband and the machete sheathed against his thigh, he melted back into the deeper shadows. As the raucous noise of the city in high-gear search of the night’s good times swirled into the mouth of the alley, Gaungalat studied the face of one of the monster’s mercenaries. The man had a hard glint in his wary eyes, framed in a lean face swathed in scruff, as if he had just retreated back to civilization after spending weeks in the African bush. There was a noticeable bulge beneath his buff-colored camou jacket, the slender shape of a commando dagger in sheathe poking out just beneath the left side. The whole picture simply confirmed in his mind this was just another whore of war, paid to murder blacks while the paymaster raped his country of diamonds or oil.

Which left Gaungalat wondering just how far and how much he could trust his own source of intelligence.

It was strange, he briefly reflected, why the white men who had found him in his apartment in Luanda would plant him on the trail of the monster. There were many—indeed, too many of his countrymen to count—who wished to see the monster die a slow and agonizing death by machete. Why him? Why not? had been their answer. So, they had paid him, ten thousand dollars in U.S. currency, making arrangements to land himself and a squad of three soldiers of his choosing under his former command to slay the beast and his mercenary thugs. Intelligence from his own paymasters stated two mercenaries, the monster, two of his own lackeys on the target site. And, if their information was accurate, they were in the process of unloading uncut diamonds, as he checked his watch, noted the time of the alleged rendezvous.

In a way, the setup was perfect. He had never seen the cutout, but he could surmise he had been sent from Wilders International. But, who else, he thought, other than the London-based cabal who had a monopoly on much of the world’s diamond trade would be sleeping with the monster? Angola, he knew, was responsible for at least fifteen percent of the world’s diamond haul. Where there were diamonds there was Wilders. Where there was Wilders there was oppression, misery and death for the poor by hard labor, or worse.

For a moment he wondered if his thirst for revenge, the burning need for redemption had trampled all reason when he should have been just as suspicious of Westerners he was certain were CIA. Was this a trap? If so, why? His hatred for the monster, his plans to create his own revolutionary army were no secret. And then there were rumors, whispering through the underground of former soldiers and officers in Luanda that the monster…

If they were true, then it was his task—no, he corrected himself—his destiny to stop the unthinkable before it became reality.

Gaungalat took the handheld radio from a coat pocket as the white mercenary retreated into the apartment. The team was parked two blocks north in a van provided them by his visitors from Luanda. Their escape route was already mapped out, but the more he thought about the predator he had come to kill, the less he cared if he made it out of the city alive, as long he killed the man-beast. What was one more life, when he considered the hell on earth the monster had helped create.

Critical, he decided, if his country would ever see any hope for real, and humane, change. If he didn’t do a thing to extinguish the evil he knew dwelled…

He depressed the button on his radio, told the others in Bantu, “It is time.”

THE PASSPORT AND VISA declared he was Francisco Alvandando, a Spanish National in America as a tourist. In truth, smiling to himself over the deception, he was Pakistani, and he had long since become Musa Mirba, recruited by his enemies to slay their enemies.

It was surely a strange and bizarre world, he thought, when the infidel became an ally, when he was asked to trust the enemy. So far, though, it had been easy enough to move freely about Washington, D.C., whiling away a few days and nights in strip joints, cash to burn on dancers and hookers, while he waited to be contacted by his handlers and told to move. No shadows were on his trail, as far as he could tell.

And he was now ready to strike down his designated targets here in the countryside of Fredericksburg, Virginia.

The targets here were high value. He and his brothers in jihad would pull off a mission that would shock and horrify their enemies, thrust terror and confusion, if nothing else, into the hearts of the highest infidel authority. Like the others, he was an assassin, trained in the camps of Afghanistan, skilled to move as silent as a ghost, infiltrating what high value targets believed were safehouses or fortified compounds. He had done this many times before, and in vastly more treacherous and hostile turf than the wide-open, so-called free society of America.

As he crouched behind brush at the tree line, tugged on the hood to match the rest of his black combat fatigues, he scanned the split-level home, some two hundred meters east. It sat alone on a grassy field that rolled in spots, but he had already determined after poring over the intel pics he would crawl until he reached the first hump. Supposedly the only sensors and cameras were placed around the immediate perimeter, but there would be no alert to his incursion, as his handlers claimed their man on the inside was in charge of security. For a second he thought he had to be insane to place his life so freely, perhaps recklessly in the hands of those he had long ago sworn to kill. If not for the exorbitant sums of cash they had paid his brothers in jihad back in Peshawar, with pledges to deliver small and large arms, with vows to aid and assist their future operations on American soil, he would have never accepted the mission, which, in truth, was their mission. When the Americans wouldn’t state the reasons they wanted these selected high value targets dead, there had been some heated discussion, he recalled, laced with threats, and directed at the infidels if they were simply infiltrating him into America, only to arrest him. After all, he thought, touching the hilt of his combat knife, he was Al-Jassaca, and he and his two brothers were themselves high value targets on the list of the Americans’ so-called most wanted.

Stealing one last moment to shore up his resolve, he checked the clear, velvet sky, noted the scimitar moon. Pride and confidence swelled his soul, as he believed—had to believe—God was watching down, smiling, ready to sweep him with a Divine Hand to steer him safely through the night, with the blood of infidels on his hands. Removing his hand from the hilt of his fighting knife, he stared at the engraving of the strange, frightening beast. The ivory handle was carved into the head of a bull, the body of a lion, the legs of a camel. According to Islamic lore, he knew Al-Jassaca was the supernatural monster who would mark all souls, both saved and damned, with a sacred seal on Judgment Day.

Why wait until then? Why not deliver his enemies to judgment at the feet of Al-Jassaca whenever, wherever, the opportunity arose?

Ready now, he gave the house another search. Light spilled from the edge of the north face, lower level, barely outlining the lone figure standing guard. Adjusting the lens on his night vision field glasses, he found the one sentry, stationed on the west side, armed with an HK MP-5 subgun, another operative allegedly posted on the east end. which left—if his handlers were telling the truth—the lone operative planted on the inside. Whoever the infidel traitor he would be his way into the CIA official’s lair. Of course, he was leaving nothing to chance or treachery. Between the AKM, the Makarov pistol for a side arm, a dozen spare clips for both pieces, the F1 frag grenades fixed to his webbing and the SVD Dragunov sniper rifle it should be more than enough if his handlers had decided to march him into an ambush.

If that was the case…

Why bother with stealth? he decided. Drop the sentry, sprint across open ground, hit them hard, a dark lightning bolt delivering sudden death. He would find another way into the house, other than the side door leading to the game room his handlers had told him would be open.

He dropped to one knee, lifted the Russian sniper rifle, already fitted with sound suppressor. Failure was never an option, but in the event he was killed, he found it vaguely amusing fingers of blame may point toward Russia. Confusion, stirring up strife was the next best thing to terror.

With virtually no wind, a stationary target at his killing touch, Mirba adjusted the PSO-1 scope, specially upgraded for night vision by his handlers. He framed the sentry’s face, green in the crosshairs, so close it seemed he was but mere inches away.

He drew a breath, exhaled, finger taking up slack on the trigger. Judgment Day, he told himself, had arrived.

THE SENATOR’S POLITICS was a moot point. From where he sat, the Democrat from Florida, an infidel of voice and authority who headed some committee on so-called terrorism, would be dead as soon as the waitress delivered their dinner. Whether liberal or conservative, he was still a powerful demon who helped engineer the suffering and oppression of Muslims, and just by breathing the same air as his political opponents and constituents. Whatever his policies on the Middle East or his own country, he was still a poisonous serpent, one that needed trampling, even if he publicly voiced objections to the plight of Arab misery brought on by American military occupation and interference in sovereign Islamic nations. And his guest, an official from their Department of Defense, or so his handler informed him, was likewise a high value target.

Halud Demma sipped his coffee. Savoring the twin rush of caffeine and adrenaline, he weighed the setup. As fate had it, he was given a table within a few yards from where the curtained double doors kept the senator and the DOD man in isolation from the other guests, as they were granted complete privacy in the banquet room. The intelligence provided him by his handlers in Pakistan stated the senator was predictable in his dining habits. Same Italian restaurant in Virginia, same day, nearly the same time, give or take thirty minutes or so. One bodyguard for each man, side arms their only hardware. That the bodyguards were standing post just inside the doors, taking drinks and appetizers from the waitress once she knocked, would make his task that much easier. So far, it appeared their strange and unnatural collaboration with the American intelligence operatives was panning out, though he wasn’t about to take the mission for granted for one moment.

Which was why, at the last minute, he had acquired certain ordnance from a sleeper cell in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington.

He figured the targets would be granted sufficient time before the main course was delivered, but he found himself becoming impatient. They were special guests. VIPs, after all. Why rush them through a pleasant dining experience? What was another few minutes? It had been a fearsome strain on nerves alone just to make it this far, trusting his fate to men he would have normally shot on sight. Only their money, their willingness to betray their own country for undeclared reasons, hire assassins to do their dirty work…

The mullah had given his blessing, and that was enough for the three of them.

Finally the waitress went to the door, tray on her shoulder. Quickly, he palmed his cell phone, tapped in the sequence of numbers required to time the executions. Call it one minute and counting, he figured, and the six-ounce block of C-4 would cover his exit from one of the side doors in the banquet room. Indulging a last-moment smile, he thought himself clever, walking in, dressed as a cleanshaven businessman, the briefcase perched on the empty seat, doomsday ticking down to the last supper for all gathered.

He unzipped the small duffel bag at his feet, easy access now granted to the Czech M-25 submachine gun. Grasping the weapon, he stood and marched ahead just as the bodyguard filled his hands with plates.

RIKAZ HANAHZUD WAS the avenging angel of death for all Islam.

Trained in the Afghanistan camps, he had sharpened his skills to lethal perfection in the killing grounds of Iraq. How many Iraqis, betraying Islam by serving the Great Satan, had he slain? he wondered. How many American soldiers had he sent on to judgment with roadside bombs or sniped dead from a distance?

Not nearly enough, as far as he was concerned.

There were always more enemies, millions, in fact, that needed to feel the sting of death if Islam were to thrive, remove itself from under the bootheel of the Americans.

No, his mission wasn’t the glorious big event he had often dreamed about in Peshawar, or fantasized about during the missions he had pulled off in the hit-and-run killing fields of Iraq, but the targets here in the condominium complex in Washington D.C. were high value. He had been told they were CIA officials, two men, he believed, who kept charting the genocide in Islamic countries. Whatever the reasons the American operatives wanted these men killed were insignificant in the long run. Any dead infidel, especially one who had the power to keep murdering his people, was a good infidel.

The pizza box and matching uniform had gotten him through the secured door when he buzzed the desk. A quick ride up the elevator to the seventh floor and he was now climbing the steps to number eight. He felt his belly churn with hunger as the aroma of pepperoni and onions filled his nose, aware he hadn’t eaten all day. Anticipation, adrenaline and nerves had kept him edged out before the call from his American handler gave him the green light. Food could wait until the victory dance.

It was time, he knew, feeling the weight of the duffel bag hung over his shoulder, open for quick access to the hardware he would use once he crashed the door. Once it was done, he would descend the stairs, evacuate through the basement door.

He was in the hall, gripping the sound-suppressed 9-mm Makarov, when the two infidels standing guard at the door came alive. Falling into his best subservient act, he showed them a wide smile, chirping, “Pizza delivery.”

They looked suspicious, turning his way, one of them lifting a hand, waving him off.

“This is a restricted floor, pal. And nobody ordered any pizza.”

He acted confused, shook his head, then one of them took a step toward him. Honahzad threw the box in the man’s face, the Makarov pistol up and chugging death.

THE HARDEST NATURAL substance on the planet was his ticket out of the life and into the sweet bliss of golden retirement in a tropical paradise of his choosing.

Mike Mitchell knew a little something about diamonds, and he found himself becoming impatient to the point of anger the longer the middleman from Wilders sat at the table, grunting, now and then, as he examined the uncut gems under the 10-power magnifier. No, he didn’t want to hear all the trade talk about clarity, brilliance of facets, color, carat weight and so forth. Nor listen to another round of patronizing babble from the man, how diamonds were the world’s best conductor of heat, with a higher melting point than any other mineral, all the gibberish about their being extracted from kimberlite beds, those pipelike intrusions formed by olivine, deep as eighty feet beneath the earth’s surface. He wanted his damn money.

Mitchell paced the apartment, chain-smoking, hating the setup more with each passing minute, fearing the worst, which was that his little game plan had been found out and someone on the home team was coming to yank his ticket. The ringer and his two cronies from Luanda, he saw, were more interested in the porn flick on the giant screen TV—one of several perks imported along with a case of whisky and Cuban cigars—than a business transaction with the Swiss cheese who called himself Herr Cabal he figured would net him three, hopefully four mil or more. With their AK-74s resting on the deck, barely within quick snatching distance, if they were concerned about security…

Look at them, he thought, chortling, swilling booze, lounging on the big couch, wishing probably they could jump through the screen and devour some light-skinned flesh, ignorant people thinking the bottom line here belonged to them. No way. This was his deal, earned on sweat, blood and balls of steel. A pound or more of rocks, smuggled, here and there, out of Angola the past year or so, stashed in a safe-deposit box in Madrid until he felt it safe to bring in his man from Wilders. And the idiots, he thought, he was sitting on for the organization he had slaved for as mercenary were one of several reasons he was bailing. The org’s end game, for one item, was unnerving enough, preposterous, even suicidal the more he thought about it. It was time to look out for number one. Fifteen years dodging bullets had earned him the right to walk off into the sunset with a bag stuffed with cash.

Mitchell felt his hand wanting to twitch to unleather the Beretta M-9 pistol under his coat, force Herr Cabal to hand over the briefcase he knew was stuffed with a down payment. He looked at Johannsen, sitting on the other side of the table, the big blond merc boring diamond-edged drill bits into the middleman, his AKM resting in his lap. One nod and they would force this show to a surprise ending.

“What’s the story?” he barked at Herr Cabal who took another handful of stones from the large silk pouch. A noncommittal grunt, a shake of the head, and Mitchell snapped, “Come on. Those stones are perfect, but you’re sitting there, acting like they’re cheap knockoffs.”

Cabal grunted. “Perfection is impossible. A ‘perfect diamond’ is an unacceptable trade term. What I am looking for are as few flaws as possible.”

“What’s the whole lot worth?”

“Did you know that diamonds are also found in meteorite?”

“All that’s very interesting, but answer my question before you really start to piss me off.”

Mitchell was taking a step toward the man, on the verge of slapping a straight answer out of him, when the front door crashed open. For a second he was paralyzed at the sight of four armed blacks charging the room, frozen long enough for the invaders to begin unleashing autofire. By the time he palmed his Beretta, he glimpsed Johannsen tumbling to the deck, scarlet fingers spurting from his skull and chest, then felt the first few rounds tearing into flesh pitching him, back and down.

MIRBA SETTLED the severed head beside the man’s notebook computer, placed the card with the image of Al-Jassaca in a spreading pool of blood. Quickly he wiped the knife on the man’s shirt, sheathing the blade as he sensed a presence just beyond the doorway to the study. He slipped the AKM off his shoulder.

“You’ve had your fun. I suggest you vacate now.”

It had been almost too easy, dropping the sentries, lopping off their bullet-shattered heads, then penetrating through the kitchen door. He wasn’t sure what he’d actually expected—more hardmen, bells and alarms blaring, some type of resistance—but he had gunned down the CIA man with a quick burst of autofire where he sat, scrolling through what looked like an endless series of numbers. Not a stir in the house, until now.

Mirba, though, knew all along what he would do when he encountered the traitor. His part of the mission was finished, and so was the American, as he turned, found the shadow, armed with a pistol, looming tall and angry in the doorway. Witnesses, even paymasters, were always a liability.

“I’ll take it from here.”

And Mirba lifted his AKM, squeezed the trigger and blew the infidel traitor off his feet. The nameless adversary was grunting curses, rolling on his side, pistol tracking when Mirba drilled a 3-round burst into his chest.

All done, he figured as he took the laptop and dumped it in a nylon sack and began his retreat from the abattoir, as silent as a ghost.

THE CROWD BURST into a stampede with the opening rounds. Their terror and panic was pure sweet music to his ears, a taste of paradise, he thought as he surged into the banquet room swinging the Czech subgun to his three o’clock as Bodyguard-driver Two was digging into his coat for his weapon. Number One was already tumbling back, pasta and sauces flying through the air, when Haludba Demmahom hit the second guard with an SMG blast. He aimed for the face, having already noted the extra girth beneath the shirts, hit the grim snarl point-blank with. Number Two kicked off his feet, he advanced deeper into the room, found the two HVTs jumping from their seats. The DOD man was hauling his bulk for the exit door next when Demmahom gave him some lead, squeezing off a short burst that stitched him up the arm before his head burst apart in a gory detonation of red and gray. Advancing, he looked at the senator who had his hands raised, blubbering something Demmahom couldn’t make out through the maelstrom of shouts and screams to his rear. A check of his watch, counting down to pay dirt, and he delivered 7.62 mm judgment to the senator, shredding his white shirt to a crimson rag, the man windmilling his arms as he jig stepped, tumbling over his seat, down and crashing to a twitching sprawl.

All computers and paperwork, he’d been told, were to be taken.

Not much time, as he kicked it into another higher gear, yanking the folded nylon pouch from the small of his back, dumping the laptop and two briefcases into the big sack.

Flipping the calling card with the picture of the beast of Judgment Day on their table, he made the fire exit door with seconds to spare. The thunderous retort of the explosion brought a smile to his lips. With any luck, he thought, what was a paltry body count would rise before he vanished from the premises, God willing.

THE FLASH-STUN GRENADE stole him critical seconds. As Rikaz Hanahzud charged down the foyer, his senses choked with dust and cordite, he held back on the subgun’s trigger. He found them in the living room, on their feet now, as they hopped, deaf and blind, around the coffee table, screaming as he ripped them apart with a long stuttering burst. They were crashing down as he took the corner post, peering through the smoke, watching the hall opposite the living room.

For some reason he felt disappointed, having hoped to encounter a larger group.

Two dead CIA officials, though, and their gunmen had to suffice for the moment. Tonight, four dead infidels. Tomorrow was another day. All this racket, he knew, was sure to alert the neighbors. Time to pack it up.

Whether the blast or a few rounds from his subgun, he found both laptops had been reduced to mangled shards. There was a way to retrieve what was on the hard drives—or so he hoped—though he wasn’t sure of the procedure.

Later, once he was clear and free.

There were papers, some floating to the floor now, so he quickly filled his nylon sack with ruins and paperwork, then retraced his path. At the front door, he found the hall empty, dropped a card with the image of Al-Jassaca on one of the dead sentries, and marched away, hoping God guided him safe and unmolested through the night.

IT WAS A SICKENING display of pure savagery, but Ron Baraka had expected nothing less. The good news, from where he stood, slipping into the apartment, AK-74 up and ready, was their bloodlust had so consumed them they were blinded to all else except their machetes hacking off arms. One quick assessment and he could tell Guangalat had given the order to shoot low, gut shots or legs, but to keep a couple of them breathing long enough to become amputees. He understood a little Bantu from all the years he’d spent in Angola, knew Guangalat was in a mindless rage, feeling duped, no doubt, that the real Katanga hadn’t stepped out from behind door number one.

Tough. Katanga was the org’s meal ticket. It was the diamonds he had come here for, content to leave the dirty work to hired field hands.

Without warning, Merkelsen stepping up on his right wing, they cut loose with autofire, sweeping the Angolans, left to right, their lackeys unable to do much else besides lurch to their feet, shout in pain and shock, and it was done.

There was a groan, the pitiful sound marking the remains of the ringer as he rolled around in his own blood, glazed eyes searching out a mercy nowhere to be found. As Merkelsen swept the diamonds off the table, Baraka looked at Mitchell. The thief was dead. Lucky for him, he thought, or he might be tempted to do some on-the-spot surgery himself. How long and how much carat weight the man had stolen from him he didn’t know, but a quick look at the size of the pouch and Baraka figured the thief had come here, part baby-sitter, but looking to walk off with a few mil in cold cash. Sashay off into the sunrise, waving a middle finger salute at the Organization.

It was, yes, about the money, Baraka knew, but there was a bigger picture to consider as he turned and followed Merkelsen for the door.

There were entire nations, perhaps even the world to conquer.

CHAPTER TWO

It was called the Serpent Tank, and from what Mack Bolan had gathered, he suspected it was aptly named. According to the cyberteam at Stony Man Farm, the ultracovert intelligence base in rural Virginia, it was a CIA slush fund, created for the express purpose of buying arms—small and large—information, and whatever in-country contract players that could aid and assist Company black operatives in tracking down the enemies of America and the free world. The trouble was, given his vast experience in dealing with the CIA, what with the double-dealing, double-speaking, backstabbing operatives he’d encountered over the years, he couldn’t help but wonder how many snakes were in charge of the tank, and what some of the funds might actually be used for. The short list could include narcotics, arms, even WMD for enemies of America in exchange for a fat payday meant to vanish into numbered accounts.

As the man in black—also known as the Executioner—motored the Peugeot down the wide Boulevard du Forbin he recalled the brief from Hal Brognola—a high-ranking official at the Justice Department and Stony Man’s liaison to the Oval Office—just before he set sail in the Gulfstream for Morocco. Three separate assassinations had snared the big Fed’s keen interest, and when the President green-lighted the mission to hunt down the perpetrators, the soldier was wheels up, crossing the Atlantic to eventually land at a private airstrip just south of Casablanca. There, he was greeted by members of an FBI special counterterrorism task force, and also waiting on the tarmac was the Commander of Morocco’s own Counterterrorism Task Force. Bolan’s bogus credentials stated he was Special Agent Matthew Cooper, and he was in charge of the American contingent. The Moroccan commander was on hand to, ostensibly, smooth the way in, provide intelligence and so forth.

Details were sketchy, with no firm leads or clues as to the whereabouts of the assassins, and the soldier had a nagging tug in his gut he was going in blind for the first tags on his hit parade. What he knew was a CIA storm tracker—a Company operative who gathered and sifted through intelligence on the world’s most wanted terrorists—had been executed, along with three operatives in rural Virginia. Their heads had been lopped off—standard operating procedure these days, it seemed, for extremist executioners—a calling card of a supernatural Islamic beast left behind, which presented at least a narrow window of opportunity as far as identifying the killers. Next there was a senator who headed the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence, his dinner companion—a high-ranking official from the Department of Defense—and their bodyguards gunned down, the suspect fleeing the scene, a ghost in the wind, but not before bringing down the restaurant’s roof with plastic explosive, killing ten diners and employees, and wounding several others. Finally a team of CIA operatives, rumored to be in charge of the Serpent Tank, had been murdered in their D.C. condo, which supposedly doubled as some sort of clandestine after-hours office. As was the SOP of many terrorist attacks, the trio of hits seemed to go down nearly at the same time, according to police and FBI reports.

And all of the kills, Brognola informed Bolan, were the work of a trio of Pakistani assassins known to American intelligence agencies as Al-Jassaca.

So why launch the campaign in Casablanca, he had posed to his longtime friend. Known associates of the assassins had been discovered holed up in an apartment by Moroccan authorities who had pledged full cooperation with their American counterparts, vowing pretty much to bow out, let them bag Habib Mousuami and his brothers in jihad. It was strange, Bolan thought, that the Moroccans, after three recent car bombings, would so graciously step aside. Which put some bogeys on his radar screen.

Trust no one.

Last, but hardly least, two Asian males had been spotted going into the target apartment by an FBI stakeout team, less than an hour ago. Who they were, what they wanted with Islamic extremists…

Well, Bolan had his own methods for extracting information.

It was awkward, manning the wheel, weighted down with the hardware he was taking to the party. The overcoat was customized to stow flash-bang, frag and incendiary grenades. More pockets were stuffed with spare clips for the shoulder holstered Beretta 93-R and the mammoth .44 Magnum Desert Eagle riding his right hip. An Uzi submachine gun was stored on his left hip. Accessible through a special-cut deep pocket. It may prove cumbersome, grabbing for hardware when he hit the front door, but full combat webbing and vest may attract the wary eye of the denizens of the night the alarm sounding to local authorities, slamming the brakes on his mission before it got off the ground. He had been assured by Commander Raz Tachjine, however, that he had complete authority in the city if Special Agent Cooper had any problems with some overzealous police.

The kind of trouble the Executioner was poised to dump along the waterfront and deeper into the area known as Medina would provide nothing but problems of the most bloody kind.

He saw the dome of the Great Mosque looming in the distance, cut the wheel to turn south on Place Mirabeau. It was a seedy part of the big city, the grimy whitewashed apartment buildings somehow oddly stacked and out of place, as they were lined behind rows of palm trees. Another few blocks and he spied the FBI stakeout team in its black van. They had grabbed a corner, just south of Boulevard Mohammed, perfect for watching the front doors to the apartment. Bolan took his handheld radio, patched through to the team leader to let him know he was in the neighborhood. A quick sitrep from Agent Andy Dawkins, and Bolan was informed the players were still hunkered down in their lair. Their standing orders were to sit tight, come in only as backup, or go through the front door themselves if he wasn’t out in fifteen minutes.

The soldier parked, bailed and crossed the boulevard, navigating a quick flight through heavy traffic. He went through the front doors, climbed the steps to the second floor. The aroma of tea and tobacco filled his senses as he marched down the empty hall. He heard a baby crying somewhere and what sounded like a couple engaged in a heated argument from behind another door. All clear in the hallway. At least for the moment.

Bolan reached the target door. He knew the enemy was inside; since their phone had been tapped by his team for weeks, the number traced here to this apartment, and complete with eyeball confirmation.

He palmed a flash-bang, pulled the pin, but held down on the spoon. What the hell, he figured, go in the hard way, get the game jump started, all blood and thunder. Five jackals total were behind the door, he’d been told. One way to find out. He hated not knowing the layout of a target site, but if it was a standard two bedroom, figure foyer leading to the living room…

Digging out the Uzi, he lifted a booted foot, sent it crashing through flimsy wood, just beside the knob, falling back just as the door exploded in countless shards and splinters.

ANOTHER TIME and Special Security Agent Lance Dexter of the Department of Defense would have idled away the waning twilight hours strolling Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, taking in the sights of the tall ships, girl-watching, swilling whiskey, eating lobster and crab at a waterfront restaurant. Given what he knew waited beyond the warehouse door, however, and any thoughts of R and R should have been banished from his mind. He was on a mission, and it wasn’t ordained by God.

He looked both ways down the lot—all clear—then he shucked his sports coat higher up his shoulders, suddenly feeling the weight of the shouldered Beretta M-9. The heavy artillery—M-16, Uzi and Colt Commando—were locked in the trunk of his black sedan. It was an unsettling feeling he experienced, out of nowhere, aware of the experiment under way inside, and he wondered if the human test subject might go berserk, require an extended lead punch…

Well, he had a job to do, and the shadow men overseas were eagerly awaiting his report.

Swiping his magnetic card down the keypad, he punched in his access code. A green light and he was in, the door automatically snicking shut behind. A grim Delta Force sentry, armed with an HK MP-5, nodded curtly as he marched past, quickly moved down the narrow corridor. At the end of the gloomy corridor, lit by only two hanging bulbs, a steel door barred the way to what he thought of as Frankenstein’s laboratory. Another keypad; his access code punched in, only this time he was forced to place his right eye to the retina-iris scan. This part of the security routine always put his nerves a little on edge, as he imagined some sharp object would jump out of the lens and gouge out his eye. The way he understood it, the scan took a digital picture to compare with prior retina-iris scans. One of the high-tech DOD geeks had once explained each human eye had a unique pattern of blood vessels. The iris, the core part of the eye, was a complex weaving of countless connective tissue. In short, every human being had his or her own individual eye marking.

The steel door slid open and he was rolling in, finding the biochem genius—recruited by DOD especially for this task—washing his laptop with a wave of cigarette smoke. Briefly wondering what other vices or skeletons the man had in the closet, he spotted the giant ashtray, carved with the porcelain figure of a naked woman and piled to overflow with butts, within easy arm’s reach of Dr. Teetel. The genius was squat, stoop-shouldered, with a gray Bozo hairdo. He always had the urge to address the man as Ygor, but figured in his own field and own right he was due respect.

Then Dexter looked at the test subject, dead ahead, stretched out on a gurney, just inside the glass bubble, naked accept for underwear, arms and legs strapped. Two more whitecoats were glued to their monitors on each flank of the human lab rat, the subject wired to their laptops, skull and chest. Granted, the man had volunteered for the experiment, known the risks, but Dexter had to wonder about his sanity. No, scratch any pyschobabble. Mr. Smithson had come to them out of desperation, pure and simple, a down-on-his luck mercenary, a degenerate gambler, cash-strapped, who been sought out by the Consortium, offered ten thousand dollars to become Ygor’s monkey.

Dexter stood beside Teetel, caught a whiff of whiskey, flashed him a look, then peered through the boiling cloud. He was uncertain of what he saw on the monitor, but it looked as if the good doctor was playing computer games while getting tanked in the process.

Teetel twitched his head, a wet grin pasting lips. “Ah, Mr. Dexter. So good of you to come. You’re just in time.”

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” he said in his perpetual squeaky voice.

“What do you mean, ‘what do I mean’? You’re getting paid top dollar, and it looks to me like you’re wasting time, playing a kid’s video game.”

Teetel snickered, shook his Bozo mane. “Mr. Dexter, allow me to explain something. This is no game. What you see is a maze, yes. Those are insects, yes, but who are in the process of self-replicating.”

“Self-what?”

Another shake of the head and Teetel went on. “We’re talking about creating a form of artificial life here. We’re in what science calls, ‘A-life programming.’ Beyond the synthetic steroid-methamphetamine I created for you people—so you could have your so-called supersoldiers—science wants to understand the bigger picture of evolution, the origins of life, the nature of learning and intelligence. In other words, we’re seeking to create the perfect man here. What I am giving you, on the other hand, is a warrior who requires no food, no sleep, who is virtually impossible to kill—though that concept alone is impossible—but, just the same, one who is just shy of the perfect man, or, for your purposes, the perfect killing machine. These insects you see are in the process of searching out their own energy-food source. They are reproducing—or cloning—themselves, transferring one cell’s nucleus into another cell. As you can see, one or two vanish from the screen, as they are searching out simulated food through a complex series of mazes. Translation—only the fittest, the strongest, survive. Pure Darwin.”

“Well, that’s all very interesting, but what’s cloning have to do with the Z-Clops drug?”

“Z-Clops, good sir,” Teetel said, “has been infused with dopamine and endorphin derivatives, you know, the bio-chemicals relaying messages by way of neurotransmitters?”

Dexter clenched his jaw, resentful of the way the good doctor condescended to him. “I have a basic understanding of all that.”

Teetel pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his desk drawer and dumped a splash in a foam cup. “The dopamine-endorphin derivative infusion self-replicates itself by feeding on other neurotransmitters. In other words, your supersoldiers can go on and on and on. My chemical-molecular software program for Z-Clops is fairly based on this Survival of the Fittest program you now see.”

Dr. Teetel was either half in the bag, eccentric or crazy, but what did they say about genius? Dexter wondered as Teetel pressed the intercom button and told them to proceed. There was a thin line between genius and insanity?

“What I am telling you, Mr. Dexter,” he heard Teetel say as he watched one of the whitecoats inject Z-Clops into Smithson’s arm, “if I am successful here, with a synthetic drug that self-replicates while in the brain, there is a good chance I can eventually do that with human beings—self-replication, that is. And, no, good sir, I am not a ghoul, nor do I seek a Nobel Prize.”

Dexter wasn’t so sure about that as he watched the test subject, waiting for the wonder drug of the ages to kick in, Teetel hitting his cup when—

The first spasms were so violent it looked to Dexter as if Smithson was lifting the gurney into the air. He glimpsed Teetel go tense, jaw slack, saw the whitecoats wearing grim concern on their pink faces, then their test subject convulsed, the left arm suddenly breaking free of the strap. Smithson’s eyes bulged with what Dexter could only call wild-eyed fury, an animal-like bellow blasting clear through the reinforced glass. They were lurching back in there, set to run for cover, as the leg strap burst next, Dexter aware of what he had to do. There was only one way to subdue the test subject.

“Get that door open!” he shouted at Teetel as he unleathered his Beretta and rushed to the far side of the bubble. He was inside, just as the berserker burst another arm binding, the whites of his eyes rolling back in his head. Both whitecoats jumped on the screaming demon, one of them with a syringe in hand, shouting, “Don’t shoot him!”

Dexter was drawing a bead for a shot between the eyes when Smithson suddenly went limp. He stood, watching as they checked his pulse. “He’s dead, isn’t he?”

One of the whitecoats nodded, a defeated look on his face. “Cardiac arrest would be my best guess, but we’ll need an autopsy.”

“Forget that. You failed.”

“No, we haven’t.”

Dexter wheeled, found Teetel on his back. “You haven’t, huh? I suppose you have a good explanation.”

“We injected him with too large of a dosage. Our mistake.”

“Your mistake? You didn’t know the risks?”

“We did, and he did, too. Understand, too, this man came to us, a lifelong alcoholic. His kidneys were weak, he had cirrhosis of the liver, two previous heart attacks, and there were indications he was in the first stages of lung cancer.”

“And still you went ahead?”

“He insisted. He needed the money. Or perhaps…”

“Perhaps what? That he was looking to commit suicide?”

Teetel shrugged. “Well, a man with his…lifestyle…that’s a distinct possibility.”

Dexter stowed his weapon. He gave what Teetel told him consideration; decided what the good doctor told him could well be true. For the most part, the soldiers he knew who pledged allegiance to the Consortium were young, figure in prime physical condition, and with a smaller dosage…

Without a word, Dexter brushed past Teetel, anxious to give his report to the shadow men overseas.

TWO POSSIBILITIES for enemy lightning response flashed through Bolan’s mind. One—the shooter had simply been standing post near the door. Two—the enemy had known he was coming. Either way, the Executioner knew there was only one option available.

Bulldoze and blast.

Spoon released, he pitched the steel egg, a sideways whipping motion that sent it flying through the smoking hole. Another thunderous retort all but obliterated what remained of the door. Bolan pulled farther back down the hall, covering his ears as the flash-bang erupted. A million candlepower going off like a supernova along with noise that could match an artillery barrage would have all but shattered the shooter’s senses, but Bolan needed his human barrier waxed, deaf, dumb and blind or not.

The soldier was up, bell slightly rung by the concussive retort, another flash-bang filling one hand as he went low around the corner, Uzi poking through the smoke. He found his man in jig step, backpedaling down the foyer, a big figure swathed in smoke, a massive SPAS-12 auto-shotgun coming up to draw blind aim. Holding back on the trigger, Bolan hit him with a rising burst, crotch to sternum, the SPAS-12 roaring one more time as he toppled back, a section of the ceiling coming down in a rain of dust and plaster.

That left four, if intel was on the money.

Combat senses torqued to maximum overdrive, Bolan bulled through the jagged teeth, caught the commotion around the corner. He hugged the wall, spotted an AK-74 swinging around the corner, flaming away. A short burst of autofire from a snarling figure in a katfiyeh, lead wasps zipping past the soldier’s ear, and the soldier drove the hardman to cover with an extended Uzi burst, lobbing the flash-bang grenade in what he assumed was the general direction of the living room. Bolan dropped back into the hall, autofire chasing him around the corner. They were shouting and screaming for all of two seconds when number two brain-cleaver sounded off, sure to knock them around every which way, senses on the verge of winking out.

There was no choice but to end it quick and hard. The soldier charged back in, tagged the howling demon with the AK-74 as he hopped around the corner, firing a brief spray and pray. The Executioner hit the edge low, peered around the corner to find the living room a smoking whirlwind of debris, three targets reeling around the couch. A live one would be nice, but the Asians were going for broke, firing deaf and blind with machine pistols, the corner above Bolan’s head shaved off with wild rounds. The Executioner dropped them both with a quick burst of 9-mm Parabellum rounds, left to right, hot lead eating up their fancy threads. They were falling when the last one brought an AKM to bear, hollering something in Arabic. Bolan chopped him off at the knees, a hideous shriek flaying the smoke-choked air.

Time for all due haste, he knew, as he kicked all weapons away from the Arab stretched out on the floor, one eye on both bedroom doors. As good fortune had it, he was looking at Mousuami. A one-two sweep next, kicking in both doors, and he found both bedrooms clear. He went back to the moaner, who was clutching at his mangled knees. It would have been a small coup, as he glanced at the mauled remnants of a laptop, but even still there might be a way for some cyberwizard to access the hard drive. Then he spotted the briefcase, pocked with shrapnel, but since it had been hidden behind the couch, settled on the floor, it had been spared the brunt of the blast. The Uzi stowed, he hauled out the Desert Eagle, opened the briefcase and found stacks of U.S. currency. Figure somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars, and it was a safe bet he had interrupted a nasty deal.

Bolan crouched beside Mousuami. A viselike grip to the throat, squeezing hard, and as the extremist’s mouth opened, eyes going wide, the warrior rammed the hand cannon’s muzzle into the man’s mouth. “Nod if you can read lips and speak English.”

Gagging, Mousuami nodded.

“Who were your guests?” Bolan asked, likewise mouthing the words, removing the weapon from the Arab’s mouth, releasing some pressure on his throat.

Mousuami choked, then sputtered, “North Koreans.”

“What was the deal here?”

A feral hatred, defiance cleared the glaze in Mousuami’s eyes. “It does not matter now. You are too late.”

Bolan placed the muzzled between the fanatic’s eyes. “Last chance. The deal.”

Mousuami was bleeding out, lapsing into shock. Bolan slapped his face.

“A dream for us. A nightmare for you.” Mousuami laughed, eyes bulging with fanatic hatred. “The Suitcase from God.”

“Is it here in Casablanca?”

“We have it.”

Bolan felt his blood race hot. Beyond a biological attack, a backpack nuke with a wallop of anywhere from five to eight kilotons would prove the Western world the worst nightmare. Say anywhere from five to eight city blocks wiped out, and with fallout, or a strong wind blowing radiation…

“Where is Al-Jassaca? And don’t tell me you don’t know who they are.”

Mousuami grinned, eyes rolling up in his head. “Try…Pakistan…if you know so much.”

The game here was dead, Bolan knew. Before he left he would take the briefcase and laptop, the bundle of cash at least destined to fatten covert coffers for the war on terror if any information on the computer couldn’t be retrieved.

The Executioner stood, sensing he would get no more information out of Mousuami who was retching and moaning, set to pass out. Cold-blooded killing normally wasn’t part of his SOP, but the enemy was proving itself more vicious and savage with every attack, every abduction, showing not a scintilla of mercy or compassion, especially when it came to noncombatants. Besides, if he let Mousuami live he could reach out and warn his comrades in Casablanca, perhaps see yet another day where he could plot mass murder.

Bolan gathered in the briefcase and laptop, tucked them under one arm. Then the Executioner drew a bead between Mousuami’s eyes, his finger taking up slack on the trigger to remove one more scourge from the planet.

RON BARAKA CAUGHT a bird’s-eye view of the Gulf of Naples along the Amalfi Coast as he was escorted to the villa by two men in black wielding HK MP 5 subguns. After his report on the Madrid incident, he had been summoned to Italy by the men of the Phoenix Consortium. He had a few hours’ downtime in the Learjet from Madrid to the private airfield they controlled outside Naples, the local authorities greased, he was sure, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy a few moments of the breathtaking view following the long ride in the van along the winding, treacherous cliffside roads. He figured they were several hundred feet in the air, high above blue-green waters sprinkled with fishing boats and pleasure craft, the compound perched on the edge of a cliff, ringed by native vegetation. It was a fleeting sensation, the sudden longing he felt to be in a cabin cruiser, stretched out in a chaise longue, drink in hand, the lassies at his beck and call.

Someday, he told himself as another black-clad sentry opened the ornately carved teak doors, allowing him entrance to a marbled foyer, the walls fairly splashed with frescoes, the corridor lined with statues of what he guessed were Roman and Greek gods and goddesses. For the foreseeable future it was all business, grim and savage, he considered, to the point of…

What? Madness?

The good news, as far as he could tell, was that he’d been allowed to hold on to his twin Beretta M-9 piston in shoulder holsters beneath his Italian silk sports jacket.

As his escort led him down another frescoed corridor, chandeliers the size of small automobiles hovering above him, he briefly considered the past, what had led him to man the helm of what would prove the most ambitious undertaking—in terms of conquering foreign land—since the Nazis blitzkrieged across Europe and into Russia. He was now “retired” from active duty, but his track record as assassin, saboteur and leader of covert operations for the CIA, from West Africa to the Far East, had shot him to the front of the employment line at present. No wife, no family of any kind, there was only himself and his work to consider. That, and the monumental task set before him.

And what was he? he wondered. Black bag operations was all he’d known, but was he simply their cannon fodder? An errand boy? A hired gun? For damn sure, he wasn’t like the Consortium, these men who called the shots from behind the front lines, never getting their own hands dirty, never having to dodge bullets or to worry about stepping on a landmine that could amputate on the spot. Hell, he couldn’t even begin to count all the men—and women and children—he’d killed. At times, when he felt the wear and tear of the years, it seemed as if an army of ghosts was marching behind him—or the dead were eagerly waiting for him to check out to the other side, anxious to take back their pounds of flesh. And what were his motives at present? he wondered as another black-clad sentry opened the door to the room where the men waited. On that score, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain. Money, lots of it, shot to the top of the list. Beyond basic greed, though, he couldn’t say why he had agreed to lead the charge into a New World for the Consortium. Where they wanted power, were perhaps looking to dictate whatever their terms and conditions to the rest of the world, he simply wanted to secure whatever was left of his future, retire for good. They wanted Africa, all of it, and Angola was the springboard. Madness? he wondered again. Or was it?

They had the means, he knew, to pull it off.

And that, he thought, should have scared him into a sprint for the setting sun.

Striding toward the long mahogany table, Baraka ran a look over the five men seated on the other side. He didn’t know their names, figured in the long run that was for the best, if it hit the fan and he was forced to go for number one. Considering their clout—the endless parade of contacts in the intelligence world, the way they could access intelligence and arms on the spot—clued him in they were former big shots. CIA? DIA? NSA? Pentagon honchos? He wasn’t about to ask or to go digging around for information. In his mind, their ambition—delusional or not—made them every bit as dangerous as he was. Even if they only drew the battle maps in the safety of this cocoon, they knew enough bad folks around the globe to yank his ticket if he became insubordinate, careless or didn’t perform to expectations.

There was no chair for him to sit, so he was forced to stand at attention, as usual. Mentally, he tagged the men according to appearance or vice, giving each one a look as they chewed on their own thoughts. Quickly, then, he gave the circular, whitewashed room a once-over. Other than a wet bar, there were two black-clad men manning what he knew was the Consortium’s supercomputer. It was above and beyond NSA quality, he had once been informed, with multiple processors linked and connected to a massive memory by a bus called a hyperchannel. Not only did it monitor all the world’s hot spots, capable of hacking into the mainframes of every intelligence and law-enforcement agency around the globe, it controlled the Serpent Tank. In fact, when one of the many tank’s accounts was electronically manipulated, cash could be ready and available in any Bank of America for any operative in about a dozen countries.

He knew. He’d seen cold cash in the six figures dumped in his hand in Luanda, Casablanca and Madrid to finance the ongoing operation.

Goatee got the ball rolling. “What is your take on the Madrid situation?”

“Renegade operation. One man going for himself. I have the diamonds in the van. Quite a sizable haul. I’d say he had about five, six million in uncut stones.”

“Good,” Pipe Smoker said, tamping fresh tobacco in his bowl. “There is no room in the Consortium for loose cannons.”

Baraka found that statement somewhat ironic, since their army was made up of mostly mercenaries, disgruntled ex-Special Forces with a smattering of criminal rabble in it purely for the buck. “Wilders lost a man.”

Cigar Man spoke up. “We will handle Wilders. Several of their executives are aware of the coming situation and they will accept the loss of one man who, as it would appear, wasn’t a team player.”

“We have other investors,” Whiskey Man chimed in, “who are most anxious for us to proceed. Once your operators in Morocco have acquired the package, we will launch the operation within forty-eight hours. Do you see a problem with that?”

Baraka did, but he’d come this far, what was he going to say? “As long as we have the backing of our contingent in the Angolan Armed Forces—FAA—and UNITA, there should be no problem taking down the palace. I’m assuming you will want the sitting president executed?”

“We will hand him over to his shadow adversaries,” White Suit said, “in the Angolan Armed Forces. According to our intelligence, there are some officers under our command in-country who have had family members ‘disappear.’ They believe the sitting president and some of his rabble are responsible.”

“And they will want answers,” Cigar Man said, “or retribution.”

“What we need,” Goatee said, “is to seize complete control of the diamond fields and as soon as the smoke of battle clears.”

“And,” Whiskey Man said, “the oil fields. Including the offshore platforms. Your men and trusted FAA officers will take charge of that area of responsibility. It will be difficult, considering we’re but a few hundred strong, but not impossible. Once the situation is explained and passed on to their army, with cash incentives being distributed, we should be able to bring the army under our control.”

Should, Baraka thought. Why did that make him so nervous? Loyalty wasn’t a common trait among West African grunts, unless, of course, cold hard cash was distributed and they were promised a slice of the pie. All things considered, it was going to be messy, dangerous, with his own neck in a noose that could tighten at any time.

“As you know,” Pipe Smoker said, “Angola is capable of pumping out two billion—count that—two billion barrels per day.”

Cigar Man shrouded his grizzled face in smoke. “But they are presently only producing six hundred thousand.”

Goatee cleared his throat. “In other words, we need to take the hands of the savages off the spigots.”

“This is common throughout all of Africa, sadly even South Africa,” Whiskey Man said. “When the Europeans bailed and the United Nations stepped in, anarchy swept the continent, complete meltdown of infrastructures, but, of course, you already know that. We need to regain control, even if it’s by way of strategic genocide. Should we prevail then…”

“The world could be ours,” Goatee finished.

“Eventually, we will leave the petroleum situation to our people in Gemini, Inc.,” Cigar Man stated. “Naturally there will be an uproar from the world community, sanctions and so forth, but the North Koreans need oil, too. Likewise a few other nations who are willing to do business with us. As for the NKs, they have guaranteed delivery of three more packages once the situation is under control.”

“We’re hoping for a fairly bloodless coup,” Pipe Smoker added.

“Meaning,” Cigar Man said, “we’re hoping to avoid riots throughout the country and such. Should this happen, you will have at your command death squads, Russian gunships, both fixed wing and rotary, at your disposal to quash any unrest. If a massacre, say, in the six figures is required, then so be it.”

“As for neighbors Namibia, Zaire and Zambia,” Goatee said, “they will be issued an ultimatum, should they feel so threatened they feel an invasion is warranted.”

“How is the general holding up?” White Suit suddenly inquired.

Baraka gave General Asabba Katanga a moment’s consideration, choosing his next words carefully. Branded a war criminal by both the United States and the United Nations, forced into exile by Angola’s president, the general, Baraka thought wasn’t the man for the job. “I’m not trying to sound flippant, but if you keep the man swimming in booze and whores, he’s happy as the proverbial pig in slop.”

Goatee lifted an eyebrow. “I hear disapproval of our selection in your voice.”

Baraka felt the frown tug at his lips. “One thug is as good as another, I suppose, all things considered. Problem is, I have to wonder if the man will become an asset or a liability down the road.”

“Meaning?” Goatee asked.

“Meaning can he be trusted? He’s just like any other megalomaniacal sociopath who’s ever controlled a country in Africa. He wants it all and for number one only. Money. Power. Pleasure. The way I read Katanga, he could make Idi Amin look like an altar boy. What I’m saying, down the road, what’s to keep him from kicking us out of Angola?”

Goatee chuckled. “Try nuclear blackmail.”

And there it was, Baraka thought. He was hardly shocked, but just to hear it said out loud sent a shiver down his spine. They were serious. They would do it.

“And the same goes if America wants to counterattack?” Baraka asked, looking ahead to the possibility he might want to be far away from Luanda in the event the U.S. decided to send in the troops.

“It will be their decision,” Goatee answered. “I mean, how would it look to the world if Uncle Sam tried to remove us by force and we pull the plug by turning Luanda into a radioactive crater?”

“At present,” Cigar Man said, “the United States is on the thin edge of the pond in the eyes of many of their own allies. We do not think they would want to be responsible for igniting a nuclear holocaust.”

Baraka cleared his throat. “If I may?”

“Something troubling you?” Pipe Smoker inquired.

“Our so-called jihadist comrades.”

“What about them?” Goatee asked, a slight edge to his voice.

“I’m not questioning your judgment, but I’m not so sure how wise it is to include them in our plans for phase two.”

“But you are questioning our judgment,” Goatee said, his voice rising a decibel toward anger. “We’re using them, do you understand, as a way in to phase two. We have already paved the way into Yemen, bought power players, contacts, have practically financed an entire fundamentalist army, and they are waiting at our disposal in the desert as we speak.”

“For what exactly?” Baraka pushed.

“As cannon fodder,” Pipe Smoker answered, “in the event of just such an American response as you suggested. They’ll be more than willing to attack and kill American soldiers. By the time Angola is a wrap, Yemen will be under our control. Again, nuclear blackmail.”

“I was more or less referring to the deal in Morocco.”

Goatee leaned up, his gaze narrowing. “Without our contacts in Morocco it is unlikely the package would have been delivered. They were paid…”

“By me,” Baraka stated.

“Yes, by you,” Goatee said, “to give the NKs a down payment. A show of good faith that all would go well. It is their country. Should we have cut the top extremists in Morocco out of the picture it would have only made our task more difficult. And considering the proximity of Morocco to Angola I would state, with no hesitation, that it was a wise decision.”

“And the North Koreans were the only ones available,” Cigar Man said, “and willing to deliver what we need.”

“At what cost?” Baraka asked. “I mean, what’s their angle?”

Goatee chuckled. “Simple. They hate America. They’re already stamped as part of the Axis of Evil, they figure why not go all the way?”

“They want a piece of the action, in other words, once we’ve taken control of the oil and diamonds?”

Baraka wanted to know.

“Why not?” Pipe Smoker said. “They can deliver all the WMD we need. I know, before you say it, it was too risky to seek out our Russian contacts. Their black market is under too much scrutiny to risk involving them.”

“Is there anything else troubling you?” Goatee asked.

“Yeah. What about this Z-Clops? This speed that’s supposed to turn my men into supersoldiers? I’m sitting on a batch of it, but none of my men has used it yet. I was waiting for the nod from you gentlemen.” Baraka watched them closely as Goatee cleared his throat and Pipe Smoker exchanged a look with Whiskey Man.

“You and your men will be in the field, under extreme duress for possibly great stretches,” Goatee said.

During the pause, Baraka sensed they were holding back. “So? They’re professional soldiers. They’re not a bunch of junkies who can’t cut it. I’m standing here, thinking there’s a problem with this stuff.”

“No problem,” Pipe Smoker said. “I would recommend using it, though. It has been tested and approved. I’ll explain it very simply. Before Z-Clops, a man hits a baseball just clearing the fence. After Z-Clops he can reach the upper deck. Superstrong. Supertough. Superenduring.”

“Aftereffects?”

“None,” Goatee said.

“Hey, we’re talking about something that’s not exactly FDA approved.”

“It’s approved,” Whiskey Man said. “As long as your men are in top physical condition, they will suffer no side effects. It is designed to sharpen your senses, your reflexes to near superhuman. Picture the soldier who needs no sleep, no food, can fight all day and all night without relent.”

“The Terminator.”

“If that comparison pleases you,” Pipe Smoker said. “But, judging the report we received, it sounds as if that’s a very close comparison.”

Baraka didn’t like using his men as guinea pigs, but decided he’d leave it up to each soldier whether he wanted to use it. “What about stateside?”

Goatee sounded irritated as he said, “What about it?”

“Our backs covered?”

“They are, indeed,” White Suit said. “The situation has been resolved. Those who were aware of our dipping into the Serpent Tank are no longer among the living. We’re in complete control of the tank. As for the three exterminators, they are, we understand, safely back in Peshawar.”

Baraka didn’t feel one hundred percent reassured. Perhaps it was because he would be the spearhead, out there risking it all while these guys hunkered down in these posh digs, waiting on the final outcome. He watched as Goatee settled a briefcase on the table.

“Now,” he said, “if you will step up, Mr. Baraka, we will go over the final battle strategy and then, sir, you are on your way.”

To what? Baraka wondered, moving toward the table. Glory, riches or death? These men, he considered, were hell-bent on creating a New World Order in their image, one built on the blood and suffering of what would prove to be thousands of men, women and children.

And the possibility of nuclear holocaust.

Ron Baraka wondered right then about his own sanity, and just how far he would go to pull off the revolution of the ages.

ONCE CONSIDERED an adventurer’s paradise, a thriving hub for artists, poets and travelers the world over, even once tagged the Paris of North Africa, Morocco, the Executioner knew, was changing, and for the worse. Situated at the far northwest corner of North Africa, its shoreline spanning both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, it was a short ferry, or hydrofoil ride from Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar. Perfect, as far as logistics for extremist forays into Spain went. Times did change, Bolan realized, and with the expansion of Islamic jihad into once-moderate Morocco, there was no longer the allure of some Arabian Nights fantasy, a guaranteed peaceful stroll through the souks, a leisurely hour or so spent in a bathhouse, or wandering the kasbah, marveling at the citadels, ramparts and fortifications the old sultans had erected.

No, the extremists had found a new home, due to both its close proximity to Europe—where terrorists could hop back and forth, planning or acting out atrocities, then seeking safe haven in Morocco—and the fact that it was inclined to cooperate with the West in its war on terror. Meaning it was fertile ground to stoke the flames of fanaticism. And with its vast expanse of desert and mountain ranges to the south of Casablanca, American intelligence was lately learning of terror camps springing up, extremists from other countries shopping here for fresh cannon fodder.

The world, Bolan thought, was becoming darker, stranger, more vicious and savage with each passing day. If he was so inclined, he might become depressed that the scourge of Animal Man seemed to be expanding, a boiling dark cloud, where no one was safe anywhere, anytime.

But in his War Everlasting there was no time for a dark night of the soul. It was his task, his duty to the innocent, who wished only to live in peace, to hunt down and trample the plague of evil wherever, whenever he could.

The Cabaret Medina was next up for the Executioner’s cleansing fire.

Bolan navigated the domed alleyways, following the twists and turns, having committed to memory the course to his next hit as drawn out by his team. With Mousuami, his thugs and the North Koreans the ghost of a memory, the soldier thoroughly trusted his team when it came to their intelligence on the players in question, the numbers, their pedigrees and such.

And the player on deck was the great white shark of Islamic jihad in Casablanca. With luck, the soldier would net him, alive, if not thrashing.

The souks were shut down, but Bolan found the alleys teeming with shadows on the move, the night alive, with both prey and predator alike. Swiftly passing beneath the high arch, he cut left down a wide alley, caught the muffled din of music about midway down, spotted the banyan tree that landmarked he had arrived. Several couples, spilled half-drunk through the doors of the Cabaret Medina, the establishment advertised by an ornately carved sign, trimmed in gold, and hung above the entrance.

The Beretta 93-R already fixed with a sound suppressor for what he intended a quick and quiet hard hit, Bolan only hoped he could tip his hat to his team’s intel once again.

He would know soon enough, as he moved inside the Cabaret Medina to a blast of American rock and roll.

NABHAT KAIROUSH HAD a decision to make, as he considered the future of Islamic jihad, both in and beyond Morocco.

He was gathered with his three most trusted lieutenants for their nightly situation report and brief. Before getting down to business they always gorged themselves on couscous, fruit, spicy lamb and chicken. Mohammed and Abibah were now helping themselves to fresh tea lighting cigarettes at the same time. Under the dictates of Islamic law forbidding drug use, Kairoush should have chastised Fetouka for indulging himself on the native-grown marijuana, but the man was like a brother to him, forever loyal, always ready to shed blood, a hungry eye toward the future of jihad. Men of war, he reasoned, owed it to themselves to unwind, no matter what their pleasure.

And they were at war, make no mistake. Always braced for the worst, they kept their AK-74s canted against their chairs, a quick grab if the Moroccan authorities or the hated American FBI made it past Toulajah, who was posted outside the door watching the hall that led from the cabaret’s dance floor to the back office.

Kairoush sipped his tea, allowed them a few moments to relax, glancing around the spartanly furnished war room. They were far enough removed from the raucous crowd, drinking and dancing the night away in the cabaret, to speak at normal conversation level, though the walls thumped to the rhythm of American rock and roll. The cabaret wasn’t only a front for washing cash that came to him by way of fellow brothers in jihad who needed to remain at large but have ready funds available, but the business raked in enough money to buy weapons, explosives, recruit and train young fighters in the camp they ran in the desert. He was responsible for three recent car bombings in Morocco that had claimed sixty-eight lives, half of the victims, foreigners of one type or other. It galled him that he was forced to kill his fellow countrymen, but the government had chosen to hold hands with the Great Satan, and a message needed to be sent to those in power.

Sleep with the Devil, they could die with the Devil.

It was long since time, he believed, to reshape his country in the image of true Islam. All non-Muslims were the enemy, no exceptions.

As if reading his thoughts, Fetouka began the discussion. “I must ask again—do you feel it wise to trust the infidels in what is a venture so risky it may topple our organization?”

Kairoush pursed his lips, bobbed his head, the great leader taking his time, considering what sage advice he could deliver. He decided simple and straightforward was best. “My brothers, first I do not trust the Americans. Bear in mind, though, they came to us, practically on bended knee.”

“With money so that we could insure the safety of the North Koreans and grant safe passage for a suitcase nuke, which by all rights, should be ours,” Mohammed groused.

“I concur with your sentiments,” Kairoush calmly said, looking to keep the meeting from spiraling down into heated argument. “Granted, I believe the Americans should come bearing greater gifts than a few briefcases of their hundred-dollar bills. But we can put their money to good use for our own operations. Further, I intend to meet with the head mercenary—”

“Mercenary?” Abibah interrupted. “Nabhat, for all we know, they could be CIA, looking to walk us into a trap.”

“I have considered that possibility, Abibah,” Kairoush answered, putting an edge to his voice, a warning he hoped the others cued in on to not interrupt again. “But when the North Koreans arrived and I met with them, I came to believe that these American mercenaries have their own agenda, one that does not involve any patriotic love of their country or any covert action against us.”

Fetouka blew the harsh smoke out his nostrils. “What are the chances we can acquire a Suitcase from God from the North Koreans?”

Kairoush checked his watch. Brother Habib should have called by now, the money transaction on behalf of the infidels completed, the North Koreans on their way out into the desert to deliver the package.

“It is something I intend to discuss with the head mercenary when we meet,” Kairoush answered. “Where there can deliver one, they can deliver more. Our own sponsors in Saudi Arabia will be more than willing to finance such a venture. I understand your reservations about this strange arrangement with the Americans, but my contacts in Yemen have assured me they can be trusted.”

“Americans building an army of freedom fighters,” Abibah said. “I do not like it, Nabhat. We have no idea what their agenda, why it is they are using us to do their dirty work.”

“Are you suggesting we cut them loose?”

Abibah hesitated, then said, “I believe it is too late for that. We’re being paid well, and I agree their money can build us our own army of freedom fighters here in Morocco. If they are, however, renegades, what if their own people are on to them? Say they are captured and talk? They would sing loud and long, point the authorities in our direction. The North Koreans would either be captured or flee the country in their private jet.”

“Again, I have considered that possibility,” Kairoush answered. “But without risk, there is no reward. We need to set our sights on bigger, grander operations. And I am thinking the Americans can find a way to smuggle us into their country, with, I am hoping, one or two Suitcases from God. Picture Washington, D.C., brothers,” he said, watching them closely as their eyes lit up, “wiped off the face of the earth in a nuclear fire cloud. Their country would collapse into complete anarchy, what with their government infrastructure wiped out. Say we could detonate another package in New York at the same instant.”

“Yes, yes,” Mohammed said, nodding vigorously. “It would be the greatest of all victories for Islam. Hundreds of thousands dead and dying in their streets. Riots sweeping the country. Military law. Their entire system would unravel.”

“But for now it is merely a dream,” Kairoush said. “In short time we will have what we need to bring America to its knees.”

“But for now we play second string to the mercenaries?” Fetouka said, an edge of annoyance to his voice.

“As long as their cash keeps coming we do,” Kairoush said.

Kairoush fell silent, allowing them to contemplate the future, the glory that could be theirs. It would be no small feat, smuggling an atomic device into America, but if it was hidden in a container ship, the crew handpicked and sworn to martyrdom if it came down to that, it could be done. He was always hearing how America’s borders were wide open, and with so much shipping traffic, the countless ports along its shores, he was feeling more confident they could pull it off the more he considered the operation. He had never seen, much less handled a Suitcase from God, but from his understanding it was fairly simple. A key that turned on the power pack, then punch in the access code, set the timer for doomsday countdown. Easy enough.

Kairoush was smiling, envisioning in his mind’s eye the White House, their Capitol building heaved up into a blinding mushroom cloud when he heard a loud thud outside the door. It sounded like a body falling. Kairoush grabbed for his assault rifle, Toulajah’s name on his tongue, then the door crashed in, a big figure in a black overcoat holding a weapon in a two-fisted grip.

Mohammed and Abibah jumped to their feet, AK-74s in their hands, but they never fired a shot. Kairoush felt a moment’s paralysis at the big invader’s brazen show of deadly force as the weapon chugged, blood and brain matter puking from the shattered skulls of Mohammed and Abibah. As they toppled, the gore splashing what was left of their feast—a Westerner, he believed, though he had a swarthy or sun-burnished look that could have made him Arab or Italian—swung his aim and drilled a third eye in Fetouka’s forehead. It was over as fast as lightning would streak the skies, Kairoush staring down the black eye of the sound suppressor.

“Grab some air.”

Kairoush stared into icy blue eyes that seemed to belong to something out of hell rather than anything human. He showed his hands.

“You can come with me in peace and talk,” the big stranger said, “or join your comrades. Your choice.”

“Who are you? Are you with the mercenaries?”

“I’m with me. Your answer.”

Kairoush barely heard the thundering rock and roll through the pounding of his heart in his ears. He nodded, waiting as the big invader came around the table, snatched him by the shoulder and shoved him toward Toulajah’s outstretched body.

CHAPTER THREE

Bolan understood the pros and cons where torture was concerned. Sleep deprivation, genitals hot-wired for electric shock, extreme forms of humiliation, even beating a prisoner senseless rarely produced viable information, and, more often than not, an enemy captive would say anything to stop the pain or shame. There were times, however, when the Executioner believed the right application of suffering could loosen the most obstinate tongue. It wasn’t part of his SOP to inflict pain, but under certain circumstances—such as the threat of WMD being loosed to wipe out thousands of innocent lives—the threat of torture could work as well, if not better, than the act itself.

The soldier found the warehouse near the waterfront, northeast of Casa Port, near Mole du Commerce pier. With the sound-suppressed Beretta he shot the lock off the door. Bolan informed the FBI team about the backpack nuke, and Special Agent Dawkins had insisted he tag along for the grilling. Glock pistol in hand, Dawkins followed the soldier into the dark interior. Bolan slung Kairoush, the terrorist’s hands bound behind his back with plastic cuffs, to the floor. He waited while Dawkins, using his flashlight, fumbled around in the dark until he found and turned on the hanging ceiling lights to the warehouse. It was standard warehouse fare the soldier had seen the world over, crates and catwalks, forklifts, other machinery and tool benches, with a few offices packed against the back wall. As good a place as any, he figured, to conduct some hardball Q and A.

Bolan fired two rounds from his Beretta, the 9-mm bullets whining off stone beside the terrorist’s head.

“You’re insane!” Kairoush shouted.

“I’ve never been more stone cold,” the Executioner told the terrorist, aiming the muzzle at the extremist’s crotch. “The next one’s for real.”

Dawkins muttered a curse, Bolan glimpsing the big, crew-cut agent rubbing his face, dancing a little from foot to foot.

“What do you want?”

“Answers,” Bolan told the terrorist. “I want to know about the North Koreans. I want to know where the backpack nuke is, or how I can get to it. Two seconds before I shoot your family jewels off. One…”

“I will talk!”

And Kairoush did. Bolan listened to the strange and sordid deal that had come to the Moroccan by way of what he called American mercenaries, though he believed they were current or former CIA, but with plenty of leverage still in their intelligence circles. Bad news to him, but at least he’d found a starting point. The head merc Kairoush knew as Baraka was hiding out in the desert, the last he heard, east of Marrakech on a desert plateau near the High Atlas Mountains. This Baraka had handed off close to half a million dollars to his terror group in U.S. currency for refuge in Morocco. Along with the cash tribute, Kairoush had settled the mercs in with his own fundamentalist army in the desert, both to sit on the Americans and for the mercs to use them as fighters in the event of an attack by Moroccan authorities. Between Kairoush’s army and the Americans, there were close to a hundred men in the camp. Bolan heard how Baraka had set up the deal with the North Koreans, using Kairoush’s contacts and safehouses to get them into the country, negotiate the good-faith payment with the late Habib Mousuami. What their plans were for the Suitcase from Allah, Kairoush couldn’t say, but he was supposed to make a phone call to a number given to him by Baraka once Habib handed off the initial payment to the North Koreans. Bolan was turning toward Dawkins to tell him to give Kairoush his cell phone when the autofire rang out, the soldier flinching as he glimpsed a line of ragged holes dancing and spurting crimson across the terrorist’s chest. The Executioner was wheeling when he spotted the black-clad, armored storm troops surging into the warehouse.

“Freeze, both of you! Lose the guns!”

And Bolan found himself staring at Commander Raz Tachjine, the muzzle of the Moroccan’s Spanish Ameli machine gun aimed at his chest.

RON BARAKA WAS DISTURBED. As he stepped away from the Learjet, greeted by his three most trusted fighters, he was hit by the first wave of bad news. It was troubling enough, shouldering the overthrow of an entire country, with Yemen in the wings, but there was no word out of Casablanca about the down payment to the North Koreans, and the way Engels informed him about Colonel Yoon Kimsung’s growing agitation and desire to leave Morocco, it sounded like the deal was about to fall through. No way, at the eleventh hour, he thought, would he be left holding the crap end of the stick.

Baraka heaved a breath, marching toward the first line of tents and stone hovels. He let his gaze wander over the sprawling camp, taking in the vast motor pool of Hummers, four-wheel drive SUVs and the rust bucket Toyota pickups most of the rabble here used as transport. Kairoush had fielded a small army of extremists, all of them well armed, with heavy machine-gun nests grabbing up turf on four points, but he had plopped them down in some of the most godforsaken country he could imagine. For miles in any direction it was all sand and stone, with some ancient ruins sprouting up to the west of camp. Marrakech, about twenty klicks or so west, was as close to civilization as he would find. Well, the Consortium had never promised him a day at one of Morocco’s beaches or leisurely booze-sodden nights in the clubs and cabarets. Still, he was mired in the bowels of hell, and the coming days didn’t bode much better for any decent change of scenery. During the day it was blistering hot, with the occasional Bedouin caravan with camels wandering the desert wasteland. At night it was bitter cold, with gusts blowing down from the mountains that could chill a man to the bone. He spied the fire barrels, shucking his black leather bomber jacket higher up his shoulders, the armed shadows of extremists looking his way. He was aware of the HK MP-5 slung across his shoulder, briefly wondered if he’d be forced to confront the NKs at gunpoint if they reneged on the deal.

“Hold up,” Baraka told his men, Engels, Durban and Morallis forming a half ring around him as he stared out across the rolling dunes, dark humps like a camel’s back outlined by moon, starlight and the combined glow of firelight and kerosene lamps around the camp.

And Baraka began looking toward the immediate future. Two Huey choppers and one Bell JetRanger, purchased at considerable expense through Consortium contacts high up in the Moroccan military, were grounded in a gorge in the mountain foothills. Getting to the far southern desert wastes of Morocco near the Mauritania border where the two C-47 Dakota transports waited wasn’t the problem. Hell, if he wanted, he could kill the North Koreans, take the nuke and fly on. No, the Consortium was in the revolution for the long run, no shortcuts, no quick fixes. He was to arrange the purchase of two more backpack nukes ASAP, as in this night. He wasn’t to fly off for the Angolan border without the package. Besides, he needed Katanga out of Barcelona and en route for his big return by sunrise. So much to do, he thought, so little time…

“Since there’s no word out of Casablanca,” Baraka told his men, “we’ll assume the worst. Either Kairoush took our money and ran or someone got to him.”

“If that’s the case,” Morallis said, “then our time in this country has run out.”

“You think?” Baraka quietly rasped. “Okay, we have how much cash on hand?”

“Three bags,” Durban said. “Just under ten mil.”

“I want you three to go get it,” Baraka said. “The North Koreans have stated they’re with us all the way through the revolution. They want in, they’ll have to take whatever money we have for now.”

“Yeah,” Engels growled, “they left at our disposal all of one full squad of their Special Forces. We’re not exactly battalion strength when we go marching into Luanda.”

Baraka ignored the skepticism. Grimly aware of the long odds, he knew that without the threat of the backpack nuke there was very little chance they could pull off the seemingly impossible. Morocco today, Angola tomorrow, then Yemen. Then what?

Telling himself he worried too much, he drifted a hard look over the grizzled, bristled faces of his soldiers. “We go with what we have. Go get the money. I’ll take care of the North Koreans, but be ready to back my play.”

Nodding, they strode off, their HK subguns in hand, Baraka wondering how many men he would lose in the coming revolt. Sure, the Consortium could always recruit more shooters, but finding hardened, bonafied warriors like the men he now commanded was next to impossible.

Go with what I have.

There was no other way.

Swiftly he rolled into camp, silently cursing the dark eyes boring their natural hostility into the side of his head. Say something had happened to Kairoush and his people in Casablanca, word reaching the top lieutenants here that the infidels needed to be skewered and hung over a fire for some imagined treachery that was beyond his control? Twenty shooters of his own on hand wouldn’t cut it against an extremist strong force of eighty or so. The only option, if a storm blew over the camp, would be to cut and run.

Baraka found Merkelson guarding the tent where his NK guests waited. He swept through the flaps, found the three North Koreans turning his way, wearing their perpetual scowls carved in stone, and demanded to know, “Is there a problem?”

“YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN, Tachjine, just what the hell you think you’re doing?”

Bolan listened as Dawkins echoed his angry thoughts, but the soldier was more focused on the Ameli subguns, as Tachjine’s six-man force spread out in a standard flanking pattern, taking cover behind crates, forklifts, weapons swinging this way and that.

“The weapons, gentlemen!” Tachjine barked. “You will drop them now!”

“Or what?” Dawkins snarled. “You’re going to gun down American agents you swore up and down to cooperate with. Or are you just some lying backstabbing sack of—”

“Drop the guns!”

And Bolan saw their own four-man force barrel through the door, HK subguns out and fanning the Moroccan commandos, the tension shooting up to superheated as their team pealed off in twos, sealing the six of their foreign so-called hosts. The Executioner sidled for a crate, heart thundering in his ears, while he drew the Uzi, watched both sides whirling on each other, shouting and cursing. If, Bolan thought, this was Tachjine playing out a dirty hand then he was steeled to go the distance.

“Enough! Silence!” Tachjine roared, the Moroccan commander raising his Ameli subgun over his head, as if the gesture was an olive branch. “We can talk this out!”

“Bullshit!” Dawkins growled. “You just murdered a man in cold blood. He was our prisoner and he had valuable information.”

Bolan took cover behind the edge of a crate, Uzi pointed at Tachjine’s chest, Beretta holding steady on swarthy faces framed in black helmets. “You better explain yourself, Commander. And if anyone starts shooting, you’re the first one I drop.”

“And believe me,” Dawkins said, “Agent Cooper hasn’t struck me as being long-winded on diplomacy.”

The short, swarthy, goateed Tachjine nodded, an odd smile creasing his lips. “I believe that. It would appear Special Agent Ballard has had a very busy night already. I count nine bodies to his credit, and the night is still young.”

“Saying you’ve been following us?” Dawkins quipped, his Glock drifting over the commandos as the FBI team spread out on the rear and flanks of the Moroccans. “Mind if I ask why? Since you told us to our faces this was our show.”

“It is simple. I changed my mind. You see, we have had this butcher,” Tachjine said, and spit on Kairoush’s corpse, “under surveillance for months. He and his murderers are responsible for close to eighty dead in this city. We’re aware of his dealings with the Americans and the North Koreans. I needed to be sure you gentlemen were not part of the conspiracy that is brewing in my country.”

“You’ve got a damn strange way of seeking the truth.” Dawkins was out in the open still, square in the spotlight, his Glock trained on Tachjine.

“It was the only way.” Tachjine lowered his subgun, waved at his commandos to stand down. “My government has pledged cooperation with your country in the war against the terror savages. We have been receiving these past months aid from the United States. You send your operatives here with money, weapons, intelligence. You have further built our Special Forces with helicopter gunships, high-tech equipment we desperately needed to keep Morocco from becoming like our filthy dogs of neighbors, the Algerians.”

“Tell us something we don’t know, Tachjine,” Dawkins snapped.

Tachjine nodded at Kairoush. “As for this jackal, he is only one more dead terrorist who can never again murder innocents.”

Bolan wasn’t quite buying Tachjine’s crusading act. “So where do we go from here, Commander?”

“Why, we go get the Suitcase from God the North Koreans smuggled into my country.”

“You know where it is?” Dawkins said.

“Or did you know where it was all along?” Bolan added.

“A reconnaissance aircraft, with the help of your people stationed in the city,” Tachjine said, “has pinpointed the location of the Americans and the North Koreans. It is a large camp, used by this dead jackal to train and build his fundamentalist army. I have transport arranged and a battle strategy mapped out.”

“And you’re going to cut us out?” Bolan demanded.

“Hardly. I need your assistance. I will even allow you,” Tachjine told Bolan, “to review my strike plan, as co-commander. I regret this encounter, but as I said, I needed to know which side you were on.”

Bolan grunted. “We could wonder the same about you.”

“Indeed.”

“Why do I get the feeling I’m not getting the whole picture?” Bolan posed.

“There is no picture,” Tachjine said, “other than my desire to rid my country of terrorist vermin.”

Dawkins chuckled as he lowered his weapon. “You want that suitcase nuke, don’t you? You want a trophy, something to hold up to your bosses so you can—”

“Nonsense!” Tachjine growled. “I am one of the most powerful men in Morocco. As for career advancement, I have gone as far as I wish to go, and politics has no appeal to me. I do not wish for my country to be viewed as a safe haven where tactical nuclear devices or any other weapons of mass destruction can be shipped and purchased here as easily as one might buy a carpet in the souk.”

Bolan stowed the Beretta, but held on to the Uzi, dropping it by his side as he stepped out into the open. “I needed this man, Tachjine. I suspected he knew where I could find three assassins who call themselves Al-Jassaca.”

“Yes, I know of whom you speak. They are in Pakistan.”

“That much I could have figured out on my own,” Bolan said.

“There is a strong possibility I can steer you to a cell here in the city who can give you the information you seek on Al-Jassaca. But, first—do you wish to assist us in our surgical strike against the camp?”

Bolan felt Dawkins staring at him as he stepped toward the Moroccan counterterrorist commander. “Let’s hear what you have.”

BARAKA FELT HIS NERVES, taut as a garrote around some victim’s neck, a hot anger bubbling in his gut the longer he stood around, sensing the heat build in the tent, mentally hashing over everything that could go wrong. The NKs were busy rolling the cash through their battery-powered money counters, grunting, mumbling to one another in their native tongue, while he and his men stood their ground like lackeys waiting for approval. Their granite expressions didn’t shift an inch from what he read as either contempt or disdain, their stares fixed on the numbers scrolling up on the digital readouts. And Baraka was on the verge of a quasi-tirade, figured to kick some life into their smug asses, eager for Colonel Kimsung to show him how to activate the suitcase nuke. He wanted out of Morocco, every bit as bad as the NKs, his paranoia radar all of a sudden blipping off the screen. So far the operation was running smoothly, but when it all looked and felt too easy…

He’d never known easy. Easy street was for brass, or the fat cats of the Consortium.

To throw gasoline onto the potential firestorm, Baraka could tell Engels and Morallis had shot themselves up with Z-Clops. Of course, he had passed on the order—it was up to each soldier whether he chose to inject the steroid-meth derivative—but this was the first time he was watching his own men morphing into possible rabid werewolves before his eyes. Even with the bite of the cold night air seeping into the tent, beads of sweat were mottling their faces, eyes bugging, the air practically whistling out their nostrils as if they were on the verge of hyperventilating or exploding out of their skin. A glance at their hands, and he found them trembling, knuckles stark white as if they were about to snap their subguns in two or rush the North Koreans in a wild cannibal frenzy. How many others under his command had gone ahead and fueled themselves with Z-Clops?

Baraka silently cursed. This wasn’t good. The stocky little Kimsung was throwing them dark looks, eyelids slitting so narrow Baraka could barely see his beady eyes, but suspected the North Korean Special Forces colonel knew they weren’t playing with a full deck, or were so edged out on fear and paranoia he believed they might start blasting any second. Baraka knew there were soldiers under his command who had track records of drug and alcohol abuse, wouldn’t think twice about juicing their systems with Z-Clops, if only to propel them into battle with an edge. Luckily the North Koreans only toted shoulder-holstered pistols, but the last problem Baraka needed was a shootout when he was surrounded by a few platoons of fanatics, many of whom, he was sure, wanted to seize that suitcase for their jihad.

“It’s all there, Colonel,” Engels suddenly said, eyes bulging, flickering over the North Koreans like ricocheting pinballs. “Close to ten mil, just like we said. So how much longer do we need to stand here and watch you count Kim Jong’s booty?”

Morallis jumped into the act, as Kimsung glowered at Engels. “Your little tyrant-buffoon you bow and scrape before while millions of your countrymen starve to death? That pint-size clown who spends his day swilling imported Scotch and watching Star Trek reruns and Rambo, and who claims he’s a god descendant from the UFO mothership? He isn’t going let you see the first Franklin of that, so let’s stop dicking around here and break open that suitcase.”

“Other words,” Engels growled, “we’re busy men. Places to go, things to do, Angolans to kill.”

“Take it easy,” Baraka snapped, his heart racing, poised for the worst as Kimsung wheeled on him.

“What is wrong with your men to talk to me with such insolence and disrespect?” Kimsung rasped.

“They’re tired and they’re stressed. That’s all.”

Kimsung held his furious stare on Engels and Morallis, and said, “I am not so sure. I have been to your America. I have seen the inhuman faces of your citizens who are on drugs…”

“Look, Colonel,” Baraka said, taking a step toward the North Koreans, “they’re fine. Can we get on with it?”

“Yes,” Kimsung said quietly voice. “We shall get on with it. But if we’re to share in the future we have planned, I would strongly urge you to tell your men to watch their tongues.”

“Consider it done. The suitcase, Colonel?”

Huffing and scowling, Kimsung went and crouched beside the large black suitcase. Glowering back at Baraka, he produced a key, inserted it into two latches on each end. “I trust you are a quick study and have a good memory?”

Baraka unclipped the Personal Digital Assistant off his belt. The small handheld computer was custom-built by Consortium technicians. Complete with e-mail, Internet and even fax capacity, the supermicrochip they had installed was capable of saving all the data, what with its powerful random access memory, that he would require for the operation.

“You are going to store such critical information on a PDA?” Kimsung inquired, looking slightly aghast.

“My memory’s not what it used to be, Colonel. Proceed.”

Heaving a breath, as if disgusted or amazed, Kimsung took a pair of keys, one larger than the other, from his coat pocket, tossed them to Baraka. “Pay attention. The small one is for opening the case itself, the larger key will turn on the device, but for complete activation and to keep it running, you will need the power pack. That is a backup set of keys. Do not lose them.”

While his comrades kept slapping the wads of hundred dollar bills through their counters, Kimsung punched in a series of numbers that Baraka, using a pen, scribbled down on his touch pad. A snick, and the colonel opened the suitcase. Taking a knee beside Kimsung, his men hovering behind him, Baraka looked at the blackmail instrument of the coming revolution. It didn’t look like much, but he wasn’t quite sure what he’d expected. He had heard about but never seen the Special Forces version of the tactical, or what was lately dubbed as the landmine nuke. Supposedly the lifespan of the weapons-grade plutonium didn’t last more than a few weeks, but Baraka didn’t intend to test that educated theory beyond the next few days. The backpack specials, he’d heard, were primarily meant to destroy railroads, bridges, large compounds, or annihilate the spearhead of an advancing army. Whatever it was meant to do, he knew it would be nasty beyond any human comprehension. There would be ground-zero blast, then fires, outsweeping fallout, radiation for years to come that would drop thousands with an invisible web of cancer. According to Consortium brains, this particular device could obliterate ten to twelve city blocks. Thirteen kilotons had vaporized 130,000 in Hiroshima, he knew, another 70,000 dropping eventually from radiation sickness, and the Devil only knew how many cancer deaths beyond that or the number of deformed babies born just after the world’s first Big Bang. At eight kilotons, this suitcase nuke, depending on where in Luanda it was touched off, could produce six-figure casualties, in and near ground zero.

Kimsung showed him the large key, grunted, then inserted it into a slot beside what he suspected was the control panel. He reached into the small nylon bag beside him and showed a small black box. “Power pack,” he said, then snapped the box into place beside the keypad. “I will provide you with one backup pack. They will only last for ten days.”

“I don’t plan on keeping the thing around as a conversation piece, Colonel.”

Kimsung grunted. “Indeed. I would think not.” The digital readout flashed on in red, the colonel tapping in the first set of numbers, Baraka writing them down as fast as he could. “Two more sets of numbers,” Kimsung said, then began tapping on the keypad.

Baraka took them down, then saved the data.

“This switch here,” Kimsung said, his finger hovering over a slender lever at the top right-hand corner. “Once the access codes I gave you are set—once you flip this switch up—there is no deactivating the device. The equivalent of eight thousand tons of TNT.”

Baraka felt his body go utterly still, sensed his men, jacked up as they were on Z-Clops, paralyzed by the mere notion of the power of the utter destruction before them. If he didn’t know better, Baraka would have sworn a smile ghosted Kimsung’s lips. Did his finger just move an inch closer to the switch? It did, and Engels nearly shouted, “What the hell are you doing?”

Kimsung chuckled. “I wanted to make certain you were paying close attention.”

“Cut the crap,” Baraka said. “I need time-setting and shutdown instructions.”

Quickly, Kimsung showed Baraka how to set the doomsday timer on the keypad, then wrapped it up with deactivating instructions, then, digital readout winking out, the colonel finally twisted the key and removed it. He shut the case, locked it, Baraka noticing the Colonel pocketed the other set of keys.

“Yes,” Kimsung said, “I will keep the original keys, in the event some unforeseen disaster befalls us.”

Baraka didn’t like it, noted Durban’s dark stare, Engels and Moralllis fidgetting, jaws clenched. “You don’t trust us?”

Kimsung stood. “Understand, this is a highly volatile and what will be a fluid situation when the time comes. The buffoon-tyrant,” he said, glancing at Engels and Morallis, “your soldiers so flippantly referred to, has put us under orders to see this operation is a one-hundred percent success—or we do not return to Pyongyang. Should you or your men fall in battle, I will become your Plan B. Is that a problem for you or your men?”

It was, but Baraka had the Consortium’s deal nailed down. Whatever glitch thrust itself into the operation down the road, he’d deal with it on the spot, by the barrel of his weapon if he had to. If he had to cut the NKs out of whatever they believed would be their lion’s share of Angola…

“You’re aware the people I work for want to acquire two, perhaps three more of these devices?”

“This would be the second time you mentioned the matter.”

Engels took a step toward the colonel. “Hey, we just handed you ten million bucks.”

“Relax!” Baraka growled. “What about that, Colonel? We negotiated a price of five mil per suitcase.”

“Yes. So consider yourselves owed at least one more device. What concerns me is why I have not heard from my operators in the city.”

“Meaning what?” Baraka said, tensing at what he believed was a sudden tone of accusation.

“Meaning, you brought in a third party, these Arab fanatics.”

“That was explained already,” Baraka said. “Their country. Their contacts. Their safe ouses for your men and for safe transport of the device.”

Kimsung bobbed his head. “You see my dilemma.”

Baraka felt his anger rising. “Not quite.”

“These extremists will want just such a suitcase. Have you looked outside at the army of fanatics you are surrounded by?”

“Their turf, their rules. And they’ve been paid for their cooperation.”

“What’s to keep them from killing us and taking the device for themselves?” Kimsung posed.

“How about twenty of the most ferocious, kick-ass and take-no-prisoners warriors since Ghengis Khan?”

“I am pleased you have such great confidence in your men. Just the same, I would feel much better if we were on our—”

Kimsung froze in midsentence, the sudden commotion outside alerting Baraka something was terribly wrong. Baraka was pivoting when two of his men rushed inside, voices beyond the armed shadows of his soldiers shouting in panic hurtled at his ears—along with the distant crunch of explosions.

“We’re being hit!”

Baraka cursed, wheeled on Durban and said, “Grab the suitcase!”

THE EXECUTIONER WASN’T all that wild about Tachjine’s battle plan. Since they were on the enemy’s clock, and with the suitcase nuke believed to be somewhere in the sprawling terrorist camp, Bolan figured any last-second tinkering of the strategy would only delay launch time.

It was going to be a straightforward blitz, three Hueys and a matching number of Cobra gunships laying down an aerial bombardment of machine, Gatling and minigun fire, peppering the enemy with a 70 mm rocket barrage while the Moroccan Special Counterterrorism Force jumped off into hot landing zones for hand-to-hand encounters. That left too much to chance, as far as the soldier was concerned, an errant missile perhaps finding the suitcase nuke, the potential of a nuclear firecloud being touched off never far from his thoughts if this Baraka or his North Korean cronies were spooked into some grandstand suicide play. Factor in all these extremists, many of whom he was sure wanted nothing more than to get their mass murdering hands on the suitcase nuke for themselves, and with Tachjine refusing to encircle the camp on all points with his flying armada, sealing off any escape hatch…

The Executioner would have preferred the gunships blow the motor pool to smithereens right off the bat, but Tachjine seemed more interested in full-scale slaughter of the extremists, bent on rolling them up, north to south, drive them into his guns. Whatever commandos on the ground, it was their grim duty to dig out information from prisoners—wounded or not—and steer them toward this Baraka and his brigands. Assuming he walked out the other side of this mess, Bolan knew he’d have to contact Brognola for a sitrep and background check on Baraka. Smart money told Bolan this Baraka was the spearhead, a grunt on the firing line for some shadow conspiracy. What he wanted with the suitcase nuke, his agenda or the endgame for whoever he answered to…

There was only one way to get to the truth, he knew.

Bolan supposed the only good news was that he was going in, solo, prepared to wax and roll from his east by southeast vector. It was his task to take out as much of the motor pool as he could. No small feat, he knew, considering the number of vehicles, but he’d brought plenty of 40 mm high explosive rounds for the M-203 launcher fixed to his M-16. Togged in blacksuit, face, hands and neck smeared with warpaint, he was as close to invisible at the midnight hour as he could hope for.

That was until the shooting started and he announced his lethal intent.

He had come in through the wadi, dropped off two klicks from the camp by chopper. A check of his watch and he knew the doomsday numbers were rolling off in a hurry, Tachjine in a grim knot of adrenaline and urgency, anxious to get the fireworks started. His own team of agents was reluctant to remain behind in a Huey, but Bolan didn’t want to get bogged down shouting orders under fire. Besides, he was unsure how they would fare in all-out combat, certain, too, a few of them were family men. If he could help it he never wanted the blood of either the innocent or those fighting on the side of good on his hands. Dawkins, however, was manning an M-60 in the Huey, and with the other agents able to shoot from above, they weren’t exactly left sitting on the bench.

Long odds, however it was sliced, but with this many enemy guns, the soldier knew he would need all the help he could get. As for Tachjine, well, if it turned out the Moroccan wasn’t playing it straight, the desert would simply get littered with another corpse.

Shedding his night-vision goggles, Bolan adjusted his eyes to the sheen of firelight glowing just over the edge of the southeast rise. M-16 leading the way, scanning the ridgeline, he climbed the slope, then dropped into a prone position when he topped out.

And found his first three marks.

They were grouped around a fire barrel, AK-47s slung around their shoulders as they rubbed their hands near the flames, smoking and conversing quietly among themselves in Arabic. Between tents, stone ruins from some ancient village long since dead and gone and the motor pool, the soldier figured he was looking at a compound that covered at least three city blocks. An extremist training and operations camp this large had to be backed, he knew, by power-players, either high up in the Moroccan military, government or both. It always left a bad taste in his mouth, but he was realist enough to know that bribery was alive and well in this part of the world.

A hundred shooters, he considered.

He had three in his sights, so why not get started?

Drawing the sound-suppressed Beretta, shouldering his M-16, he spied a narrow gully, and dropped into the crevice. Hunched and homing in on their voices, he advanced down the gully, intent on cutting the range to kissing close. At what he figured was twenty yards or so, he crawled up an incline, took a knee and aimed the Beretta over the lip. There were other armed shadows in the vicinity, but they were moving away, vanishing in the gaps of the second line of tents. He steadied the weapon in a two-handed grip, drew a bead on a kaffiyeh, gently caressed the trigger. Number One extremist was toppling, the headcloth sheared off his shattered skull, when Fanatics Two and Three came alive. Swinging his aim, the Executioner cored a 9 mm Parabellum shocker through a vented mouth, shoving whatever the fanatic was going to shout back down his throat, as a crimson finger jetted out the back of his skull. Fanatic Three froze for a mircosecond, lurching back at the sight of still another of his brothers in terror sprawled at his feet, and the Executioner punched his ticket, painting a third eye on his forehead.

And then it went to hell.

According to Tachjine’s time frame, the soldier still had two more minutes to get into position, but he saw the Cobras bearing down on the camp, as they unloaded their opening salvo. Cursing Tachjine’s impatience—or was it something else altogether?—Bolan stowed the Beretta, filling his hands with the M-16/M-203 squad blaster. A brief sideline stand, and Bolan watched as Gatlings, miniguns, 20 mm automatic cannons and 70 mm missiles began churning up the north end rows of tents. Armed figures, maybe twelve in all, were spiraling to earth with death and fury from above.

And the Executioner got busy doing his part.

A short march down the incline and five hardmen, armed with a hodgepodge of assault rifles, machine guns and RPGs, burst through the flaps of their tent, the air rife with angry shouts in Arabic.

The Executioner hit them with a long burst, sweeping the M-16 autofire, left to right, knocking them down, human bowling pins, but sliced to red ruins.

A clean strike, but the soldier knew the worst was yet to come.

CHAPTER FOUR

Colonel Yoon Kimsung was livid. Before embarking on Pyongyang’s African venture, he had considered everything that could go wrong. The list was short, but it was so rife with potential grave danger the operation could spiral down into a disastrous misadventure before the first shot was fired in anger.

First, there was the scheme—approved in person by Kim Jong-Il—to ingratiate themselves to Arab fanatics, thus allowing them to land their private jet, complete with suitcase nuke on board, at a remote desert airstrip run by lunatics he would have never sought out on his own. By and large, the Muslim fundamentalists—mindless brutes who blew themselves up on a regular basis and claimed it was for the glory of their religion and God—weren’t to be trusted. Who could, in all rationale and reason, ally themselves with savages who didn’t even place the first scintilla of value on their own lives, believed their own rubbish about some afterlife where they would float away to this Paradise and their god, swarmed by seventy virgin beauties if they murdered scads of innocent people? Oh, but the horror, the stupidity of such creatures, he thought. Killing, though, had never been a problem where he was concerned. Since he was Special Forces, he was often placed in charge of hunting down and eradicating rebels in the North Korean countryside who sought to oust Kim Jong-Il, or outspoken rabble who needed their thinking re-shaped by swift and merciless beatings.

Suicide, however, was for fools.

Then there was this business in Casablanca. He’d been forced to leave two of his commandos in the city at the request of the American, supposedly to pay the fanatics a cash tribute, and he hadn’t heard from his men. They were hours overdue, in fact, for a callback. His commandos never failed to obey orders, no matter what their situation. That alone should have signaled trouble had found them. If they were captured, he knew them well enough—what with their training and fear of retribution—to know they would never talk to the authorities. On the other hand, he couldn’t be sure about the Arab fanatics, say if a legal net had dropped over them, and Moroccan agents or law enforcement went to work in ways on their bodies that left little to the imagination.

In some perverse way he didn’t quite understand himself, he was proud that Kim Jong-Il had placed him solely in charge of carrying out the mission of the ages in Angola. His country, after all—cut off from the world, sanctioned and branded as part of this so-called Axis of Evil—was in desperate need of fuel, food, mineral resources. As far as that went, Angola, swimming in diamonds and oil, could beef up his nation’s military with all the uranium, plutonium, centrifuges, upgraded delivery systems and other component parts necessary to shoot them to the top of the nuclear superpower heap. The battle for Angola hadn’t yet dawned, but when it did, and he was standing, tall and proud on the winning side, there would be enough diamonds and oil for sale to other countries tagged as rogue states by America to buy what was needed to turn North Korea into a warring giant. That they were considered an outlaw nation by America and the West only strengthened Pyongyang’s resolve, he knew, to become the world’s premier military behemoth.

Pygonyang had its eye toward the future, and tomorrow, even years after, conquest of other nations fueled the hopes and dreams of a country feared and snubbed by the rest of the world.

Grim concern number two was the fact that the superiors of the American mercenaries had arranged the delivery and sale of the nuclear suitcase, had found operatives from his own country, stationed in Myanmar, Cambodia and other Southeast Asian nations, who could pull strings with Pyongyang. Yes, the United States was well aware of his country’s nuclear proliferation, but the risk that American operatives were luring them into a trap with, ostensibly, their desire to purchase a suitcase nuke, was always foremost in his thoughts. When too many individuals knew too much about any covert operation, there was always plenty of room for anxiety.

At the moment, as the sound and fury of battle raged around the camp, Kimsung was furious that the plan looked to be in danger of unraveling into the dreams of dead men.

He was on the heels of Baraka, one of his insolent soldiers lugging the eighty-pound suitcase. Their subguns were fanning the chaos as Kimsung spotted the gunships, perhaps five total, scissoring above the camp. For the moment they appeared content to unleash miniguns and rockets on the north edge, but the manner in which the fireballs rose into the black sky, with saffron flashes that hurtled torn stick figures into the air on bright mushroom clouds, warned him the assault would find its way to the motor pool.

“You and your men get to the motor pool, Colonel! We’re bailing!”

Kimsung, flanked by his two top lieutenants, Unsan and Horyin, bared his teeth at Baraka. Armed with nothing but a Browning Hi-Power pistol, delivered to him by the fanatics when he landed at their airstrip, Kimsung found the mercenaries breaking open crates, unzipping large duffel bags. “Give us something more than these pistols we carry!”

Baraka wheeled, his eyes bugged with anger. “The hell you say. I can’t risk you and your guys getting chopped down here!”

“We protect ourselves!” Kimsung shouted above the clamor of explosions, autofire and the general pandemonium of distant shouts and screams.

“This is business, Colonel. You leave the shooting to us!”

“Yes, this is business that you do not seem to be handling all that well at present! Give us weapons! I will not place my safety and the safety of my commandos squarely in your hands! I will stand here and be shot down before that happens, do you understand me?”

Baraka cursed, but gave the order. One of the mercenaries began tossing HK MP-5 subguns their way as the other Americans hauled out bazookas or shoved spare clips for their weapons inside their wastebands. Kimsung demanded and received a few extra magazines. He slapped the magazine home, cocked and locked, his lieutenants likewise armed and prepared in the event the fighting tore into the vicinity. He held his ground, aware his men would protect the suitcases, stuffed with cash, with their lives, watching as the sky strobed with more explosions, tents all but wiped off the face of this desolate earth.

Listening as Baraka barked orders at his men, the gist of it being several of them would be left behind to guard their rear, Kimsung thought he saw a big tall shadow, armed with an assault rifle, there then gone as the weapon blazed, cutting down four or five Arabs. Whoever he was, he appeared to be moving in their direction, from the southeast, using the tents to leapfrog and conceal. A quick but hard search of the area and he didn’t find any other shadows on the move. He wasn’t sure why—perhaps it was the cold way in which the big shadow had mowed the Arabs down with such lightning deadly proficiency—but a warning bell clanged in his head.

“Get the hell out of here, Colonel!”

Flashing Baraka a scowl, Kimsung began navigating a swift course between the tents as he heard autofire erupting too close for his comfort. Looking back, he spotted two of the mercs taking hits, bloody divots gouged in their upper chests, Baraka flailing about, cursing and triggering his subgun at adversaries he couldn’t see. Gathering momentum, he was closing on the motor pool when the first blast ripped through the vehicles.

KHALIFAH HOUDTA SUSPECTED treachery. Supposedly, the Islamic jihad in Morocco was both approved and protected by officers high up in the military. Naturally, they were paid handsomely, a few politicians who leaned more to the radical side of Islam likewise receiving fat envelopes on a biweekly basis. In short, they were granted refuge, allowed even to bring in fighters from neighboring Algeria or farther east from Libya and Somalia, cannon fodder for the jihad, but Muslim recruits, just the same, who could be shipped out to launch suicide missions. And with operations on the drawing board, days away even from being launched, simultaneous attacks in Casablanca and Saudi Arabia…

Why, then, were they being attacked?

The only possible answer, he believed, was that the Americans and their North Korean counterparts had called in a strike. But why? Had he and his brothers outlived their usefulness to the infidels? Had they been used as cover for the deal for the suitcase nuke, the infidels now prepared to flee, perhaps having aimed the authorities here, a smoke screen to seal the backs of a sudden vanishing act? Whichever it was, he would leave the questions hanging for the time being, as he shouted at his warriors to go after their alleged guests, sounding the orders for the big shots to be taken alive, if possible.

As he ran, heading south, navigating his path through the maze of stone dwellings and tents, a large contingent of perhaps twenty-plus warriors surrounding him, he considered that, by all rights, the suitcase nuke should belong to the Islamic jihad. After all, it was their country, and without the arrangements his cousins in holy war had negotiated with both the Americans and the North Koreans there would have been no deal. He passed on the order to find and seize the suitcase nuke, relaying that for the ones who took it back they would receive a cash bonus. Even among the holiest of warriors, he knew money still commanded steely determination.

AK-74 up and ready to blast, twin mags taped together for a quick flip and load, he was running hard past the final row of tents when he heard the massive explosion. The fireball climbed high above the large tent where he knew the Americans were gathered. Another blast rocked the night, and Houdta, recognizing voices bellowing in English, figured they were just around the corner of the stone ruins to his nine o’clock. A check of the sky around him on the fly, and he didn’t find any gunships in the vicinity, no rockets streaking past telling him the motor pool was being decimated by an aerial bombardment. Then what? Or who? With luck he hoped the North Koreans came to the same conclusion that the American dogs of war had duped them.

There was always room ready to be made for new buyers.

Houdta ran on, hopeful he could make the North Koreans see reason.

THE BATTLE GOING STRAIGHT to hell began to live up to Bolan’s grimmest expectations.

Two Hummers and a Ford Bronco were pulped to flying scrap by his opening 40-mm missiles, the soldier dumping another HE round into the M-203’s breech when a second warring faction began unloading weaponsfire on the group he assumed belonged to Baraka. As he grabbed cover behind a mound of rubble from some forgotten dwelling, he glimpsed three North Koreans hurling themselves back between the tents, wreckage winging out for their falling shapes, a sharp cry echoing from their drop site. Hindsight being for losers and the dead, Bolan determined he’d gut it out until they began to board the vehicles.

“Give us the suitcase nuke and we let you go your way!”

“Up yours!”

“You will die! We have you outnumbered four to one at the very least!”

“Then we take as many of you jackoffs to hell with us as we can!”

In the fire and kerosene light, the Executioner made out the swarthy, bearded faces poking out from the sides of tents and piles of rubble, AK-74s and AKMs now silent as whoever the terrorist in charge again shouted his demand. If nothing else, Bolan knew the suitcase nuke was within his grasp. His problems getting his hands on it, though, were obvious, and damn serious. Forty, maybe fifty shooters, fueled on anger, hate, greed and adrenaline, were hell bent on going the distance.

So be it. He’d been here before. What he could use was a little help from friendlies.

Tachjine and troops, he found, were still blanketing the campsite with heavy gunship fusillades, waves of debris and mangled mannequins that were once human beings now airborne and skydiving closer to this Moroccan standoff at his end. Somewhere he made out the heavy metal thunder of Russian DshK machine guns he’d seen on Tachjine’s aerial photos, big monsters, he knew, that could pound out 12.7 mm armor-piercing rounds in that could chew up a chopper in seconds flat. The warrior was scouting the action in the air when one of Tachjine’s Cobras was suddenly enveloped in a boiling fireball. In that direction he saw dozens of flaming fingers, autofire raking the other gunships, no doubt an RPG or two wielded in the hands of the extremist snakes.

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