Once more, Bolan had proved his willingness to take a bullet for an ally

The Land Rover lurched, and with the odd plunk of a bullet striking the hardened skin of the big off-road vehicle, they were charging away from the battle scene.

The enemy had set up an ambush. It had taken alertness, luck, shooting skill and bald audacity to escape the attack.

But not before putting a few dozen into his enemies first.

The Land Rover charged over the broken road, escaping to let its occupants fight another day.

But Bolan knew the worrisome truth.

MACK BOLAN®

The Executioner

#246 Blood of the Earth

#247 Black Dawn Rising

#248 Rolling Death

#249 Shadow Target

#250 Warning Shot

#251 Kill Radius

#252 Death Line

#253 Risk Factor

#254 Chill Effect

#255 War Bird

#256 Point of Impact

#257 Precision Play

#258 Target Lock

#259 Nightfire

#260 Dayhunt

#261 Dawnkill

#262 Trigger Point

#263 Skysniper

#264 Iron Fist

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

The Executioner®

Suicide Highway

Don Pendleton

Hatred and vengeance, my eternal portion, Scarce can endure delay of execution, Wait, with impatient readiness, to seize my Soul in a moment.

—William Cowper 1731–1800

The Task

Hatred and vengeance are my eternal companions, not because I choose to give in to them, but because I oppose them. When my body falls and my soul is seized, hatred and vengeance will have one less wolf at their heels.

—Mack Bolan

To our soldiers still standing guard and giving their all around the world. Come home safe to your families.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

1

Sofia DeLarroque shook her head. The wounds from an AK-47 couldn’t have been more obvious if the shooter had circled each ragged hole in black marker and wrote “AK hit” with an arrow pointing to it.

The entry wounds were big enough to stick a finger into, and the bullets had cut completely through the body, their sharp steel cores plowing through muscle and bone like a boat hull through water, no deflection. Thankfully, there was little fragmentation or shrapnel. Truly dangerous bullets hit flesh and tore themselves apart, spinning missiles off the main track of the wound path. As it was, the child she was working on was bleeding badly, and she was running short on gauze to apply pressure bandages.

Welcome to day 216, she reminded herself.

Two hundred sixteen days in Afghanistan.

The American government claimed to have decisively beaten the supporters of the Taliban. So why did Americans and Afghans and international relief workers still come under attack on a daily basis?

Sofia wiped her brow, aware of the smear of gore she left on her platinum blond hair and her smooth, porcelain-like forehead. She could have been a model if she’d chosen to stay in France. She was tall, leggy, with just enough fullness of figure to give her deadly curves in all the right places. Crystal blue eyes that people said were perfect for seducing the camera instead were busy trying to evaluate how to best keep a psychopath’s victim stable long enough to make it to a surgical table.

Same stuff. Different country.

Ethiopia.

Palestine.

Afghanistan.

All the lands she’d chosen held the same things in common. Thugs and violence causing pain and suffering to the weak and helpless.

The thought flashed across her mind like lightning, and she tried to put aside the mental image of other children, the same age as this one, screaming and twisting terribly as bullets ripped into them.

Shame crushed Sofia as she gripped the girl’s hand, looking into her big, watery brown eyes. Tears glistened on the girl’s olive cheeks as thin, weak lips moved noiselessly.

“It’s all right,” Sofia whispered. She stroked a few strands of thick, black hair from the girl’s forehead, fighting off the memories that had been dogging her heels for exactly two hundred thirty-eight days and nine hours.

Images of grim murderers dressed head-to-toe in black, sweeping automatic weapons across fleeing, unarmed refugees in a Palestinian camp. The sound of cloth tearing echoed the distant sounds of bullet-spitting slaying machines as bodies were swept off their feet and flung cruelly, mercilessly into bloody rags.

Her body tensed against the sound of the shredding fabric, trying to fight off the memories of the murders she’d witnessed.

Murders she’d witnessed while huddled under the wreckage of a tent, flames licking all around her, as she muffled the face of a child against her bosom. Around them, shadows charged and darted, backlit by flames.

There was no mistaking it.

The men were on a mission of retribution. Only days before, a restaurant had been blown to hell by a suicide bomber. One madman’s act taking almost two-dozen lives and injuring tens more. A temporary cease-fire ended with rock throwing and riots and an assault on the refugee camp at Shafeeq.

When asked later she claimed not to have seen any faces.

She hadn’t been convincing enough because a salvo of gunshots only barely missed her. The UN pulled her and the other workers out as quickly as they could, finding a new territory for them to work.

It was unlikely anti-Palestinian forces would find refuge and assistance in Afghanistan.

Sofia held the girl’s hand as the doctor checked on her anesthesia’s progress.

It was unlikely that the hard-faced men she saw in the shadowy camp would follow her halfway across a continent, but she still sweated with terror each day, more intensely in recent times.

“THIS IS THE FIRST ONE we’ve even gotten anything on,” Greb Steiner said softly as he threaded the sound suppressor onto the muzzle of his Beretta. Olsen Rhodin often wondered at the mannerisms of the hard-core soldier, a man whose face and hands betrayed the violence of his life in a road map of scar tissue. He never raised his voice and rarely expressed anger or hostility. At times, Rhodin wondered if Steiner lived in a constant state of sadness, his brow bent with guilt.

Then again, Rhodin had watched Steiner shoot weeping mothers point-blank in the face just to send a message to their husbands.

Maybe it was guilt that weighed on Steiner’s face and voice. But it never stopped him from doing the job of protecting their country.

“We’ll find the others. Don’t worry,” Rhodin said. “We have the whole team here. They’ll find the others.”

Steiner chambered a .22-caliber slug into the Beretta, then holstered the piece. He was to be the executioner, again.

It was a role that Steiner was suited for. This was a man who would die before he talked, if ever he could be captured alive. A brick of a man, square, hard and rough, he towered a couple of inches over six feet, and his dark eyes seemed reddish, as if swimming in the blood he’d spilled over the course of his career. He slipped out of the truck with an agility that belied his blocky form.

Rhodin dropped down. He didn’t dramatically check the chamber of his rifle like the men with them did. He was a professional, and had locked and loaded the weapon as soon as he’d received it back at their improvised headquarters. Rifle shells pinged from breeches as “veteran” Taliban soldiers made themselves feel good with a spit of macho masterbatory gun manipulation.

“A waste of ammo,” he said under his breath, in English so the Afghans wouldn’t understand.

Steiner heard him and shrugged. “What? The rounds on the ground, or them?”

Rhodin shook his head. “Both.”

Steiner sighed, as if a greater load was added to the world-sized weight on his shoulders. “Let’s go.”

SOFIA’S HEART SANK as Dr. Gibson hung his head. Green streaks smeared across the monitor’s brownish black surface, the telltale whine of a flatline speaking the grim reality of another life lost. It wasn’t new, this horrifying change from a vibrant, living child full of the desire to play, learn and love to a cooling lump of motionless meat on a cold, metal surgical table.

“Let’s get the next one in here,” Gibson muttered, the harshness in his voice sounding like a body dragged across gravel. He was tearing off his blood-splattered gloves and pulling on fresh, sterile latex to keep infections from passing along.

Sofia looked down at the innocent face, gone from a healthy olive tone to almost bone-white from blood loss. The dead girl resembled an angel.

Les innocentes, the name for children who died with no spot of sin on their souls, going immediately to heaven, whatever heaven they believed in, if they knew that much at their age. Sofia wondered if heaven really existed, then dismissed the thought as she wheeled the body away to make room for a fresh victim.

Certainly a heaven had to exist.

Because this was hell.

She stopped as she reached the improvised morgue, leaving the table parked against a half-dozen others, lined up tightly to make the most of the space available until they could arrange burials. Their job was to make sure that the living survived. Respect for the dead would have to wait a few minutes, a few hours, until those who needed help got it.

The cart rolled as she let go of it, metal clanking dully against other metal, the tabletops covered with the wrapped-up remains of those who couldn’t be saved. Seven lost so far. That was just this day.

Sofia closed her eyes.

Seven added to the hundreds she had already seen.

Seven added to the mountain of dead she’d watched either die in the care of the medical mission, or gunned down directly by madmen on a crusade. Her jaw clenched as she tried to suppress her rage, her impotence at a world where juggernauts rolled over the helpless, smashing them to a pulp in the street, leaving dead and maimed in their wake.

She considered it a perversion of the concept of a trinity. Man fathered the gun. The gun sought to please its creator, so the gun gave man power. Man lusted after the power. Gun slew man’s children.

The unholy trinity continued to rampage across the face of the earth like a cancer. All she could do was help pick up the pieces, try to keep the wounded from being the dead and to reassemble the maimed.

It was a Band-Aid trying to cover an amputation. The stump was gushing blood, and the United Nations was holding up one sandbag in the middle, watching in despair, maybe in disbelief as currents slushed around on either side. A wave of sickness hammered into Sofia as she whispered a torrent of “damns” under her breath, pounding her hand against the trolley’s handlebars, until she realized that people in the hall were staring at her.

Her voice was hoarse, and her hand felt like someone had taken a maul to it. She’d be lucky if she hadn’t broken bones. Her eyes burned, face raw from tears.

The two staff members outside the door looked at her, a combination of fear and sympathy fighting for control of their features, and Sofia wished she were dead right then, shame and guilt boiling up into her throat, a new wave of tears ready to rise.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered.

One of her fellow aid workers, Charles, took a tentative step forward. “It’ll be okay, Sofia. You just need some rest—”

He never finished the sentence. His chest and head were suddenly obscured by a cloud of blood and gore, gunfire shattering the uncomfortable silence, plowing through the hallway like a rampaging rhinoceros.

Sofia stumbled back into the stretchers, screaming as her coworker smashed into the doorjamb, half his head caved in by the savage sledgehammer impacts of assault rifle fire. She lunged forward, trying to catch him, as if there were possibly some hope that a human being could take so much damage and still somehow be alive. She couldn’t hold him up. He was a heavy, limp thing, a formless blob spilling and pouring over her arms and tumbling to the floor no matter how much she tried to grab on.

Sofia looked up and saw Gerda, still out in the hall, her eyes staring up at the ceiling, her chest peppered with apple-sized splotches of red on her scrubs. But Gerda’s green eyes were bulging, her forehead literally dented an inch deep, a tiny red hole in the bottom of the crater in her face.

It was the camp all over again.

Sofia looked for another exit, knowing that if she went out into the hall, she’d end up as shredded meat. Charles and Gerda had granted her a reprieve with their deaths, and she had to get out, to warn people.

It was them.

Sofia wasn’t fighting her fears, her paranoia anymore. If it was the dark men who came to slaughter the families of suspected terrorists, then they were coming after her because they knew she would willingly testify.

She threw herself across a pair of tables, feeling the lumps of flesh under bloodied linens shift beneath her. On hands and knees she crawled frantically, charging toward the window on the far side of the storage room turned morgue. Sofia hated herself as she looked back, watching the dead girl she tried to help, half spilled off her gurney, brown eyes fallen open, staring with glassy indifference toward her.

Guilt wrapped around her throat with strangling strength, but she tore away from the eye contact with the dead, slamming her palm into the base of the window to force it open. It stopped her cold. Screams and gunfire ripped horribly through the building behind her. She slapped the window frame a second time, and it budged a quarter of an inch.

“Open, dammit,” she cursed.

The gunfire went silent as she punched the window frame again. It was the same hand she’d smashed over and over again into the gurney handle, and each strike sent fiery pain shooting up her arm. Blood was pouring freely from split skin, but Sofia finally got the window levered open wide enough to squeeze through.

Something crashed behind her and Sofia froze. She looked over her shoulder and saw a sad-faced man, overturning stretchers, dumping corpses to the floor. She recognized his face from the night of slaughter that had sent her halfway across a continent to escape retribution.

Her muscles were seemingly paralyzed, though some part of her mind recognized that she was actually moving—he was simply moving faster. Fear sent her adrenaline level skyrocketing, and time felt as if it were slowing down.

It gave her a chance to feel like she could live longer as the gun in the murderer’s hand rose slowly toward her. Sofia’s hand was through the window. She was in midfall to the ground outside.

A flash of light emitted from the barrel, though there was no loud crack of a gunshot.

Time suddenly snapped back to normal as her head was driven back, crashing into the half-opened window. Glass shattered and cleaved through her scalp, turning her blond locks to a ruddy crimson.

The next shot that Steiner pumped into Sofia DeLarroque’s face didn’t bounce obliquely along the curved bone of her skull. This .22 slug hit dead on, penetrating the fragile shell of her temple, tearing deep into the UN worker’s brain.

She was alive, technically, even as her brain cells were spun into a frothy soup by the bouncing bullet. Her heart still beat, and she still had reflexes that crashed her completely through the opened window. The frame snagged her, holding her as muscles flinched, making Sofia’s corpse twitch and twist.

Steiner walked up to the dying woman, looking her up and down. Blue eyes, the color of a tropical sea, glimmered, staring into a cloudless sky, lips moving wordlessly.

“Go to sleep, girl,” Steiner said, pulling the trigger on the Beretta twice more.

The Israeli unscrewed the sound suppressor from his pistol and stowed both pieces in his gear.

This wasn’t over, the assassin knew.

Where it would stop was anyone’s guess.

2

Hal Brognola chewed into his unlit cigar so hard he felt his teeth ache, as the voice on the other end of the phone line spoke.

“I’m going on a hunting trip, Hal.”

“Dammit, Striker,” Brognola spoke up. The handset was plugged into a hardline at Stony Man Farm, a top secret facility in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Even with the latest encryption hardware and software protecting the call, years of experience had taught him that nothing was one hundred percent secure, and even after all this time, he was not in the habit of talking openly on the phone with the man whose voice he knew intimately.

Experience had also taught Brognola something about the man he called Striker. Once he made up his mind to accomplish a goal, nothing would stop him.

“Dammit, Striker,” Brognola repeated, “I think I know what you’re looking at.”

“You think,” came the reply. There was no mockery or challenge in his tone. Brognola and Striker were friends who respected each other too much to play word games. “There’s a big wide world out there, Hal. A world that needs me to act between the jobs you have for me.”

Brognola grunted. He tasted the buds of tobacco squeezed from the crushed cigar between his teeth and set it down on an ash tray. Spitting residue from the tip of his tongue, he looked at the desktop full of news clippings and intelligence reports that made up the hell that was tearing through the world at that very moment.

It was the same crap, just different names. Terrorists. Mobsters. Drug dealers. Murderers. Conspiracies. Threats ranging from the schoolyard to the ivory towers of governments and corporations. This was the world that Brognola looked at every day, a wall of mourning and misery that he had to pick and choose from, and apply the powerful resources of America’s most elite covert action organization against.

To have Striker, one of Stony Man’s most important allies…

That was the truth about their arrangement, Brognola reminded himself.

Mack Samuel Bolan, the Executioner, wasn’t an employee. He wasn’t a recruit. He wasn’t a member of Stony Man Farm. The Executioner was the cat who walked by himself. He chose whether to go along with the soldiers of Able Team or Phoenix Force when they needed an extra hand. And he chose when to discharge his duties elsewhere.

The career of the big soldier wasn’t one defined by pay, or orders. It was entirely personal. It had started with destroying major chunks of the criminal organization that drove his family to its death. It moved up to battling terrorists, and then to the Executioner’s realization that there was more that needed to be done than what was sanctioned by any pencil-pushing politician or even Brognola himself.

“I’m sorry. Thanks for letting us know that you’ve got other pots cooking,” the big Fed said. His cheeks burned, even though he knew Bolan would forgive him.

“If it’s any consolation, you could be right about who I might be doing,” Bolan said.

“I’m betting it’s Chaman,” Brognola said, pulling the report of an attack on a relief hospital setup near a refugee camp in Afghanistan.

“Remind me to keep you away from LasVegas,” Bolan said.

A chuckle relieved the pressure in Brognola’s gut. “I dunno. I don’t remember having much time to place bets any time we’ve been to Vegas. Besides, I’d be much more interested in catching one of the shows.”

“Well, that’s one thing Vegas and Chaman will have in common,” the Executioner said.

Brognola chuckled. “You’ve always been known for your tiger impersonation.”

“Yeah. But when I put my teeth into someone’s neck, I intend to take their head off,” Bolan said.

MACK BOLAN WENT to Afghanistan in answer to the murders of UN relief workers, but he went not to bury them, but to insure that no one else would fall. The soldier’s duty he undertook didn’t have room for feelings of hatred and revenge.

He needed assistance, and while the cyberteam he usually relied upon at Stony Man Farm might have proved helpful anywhere else, in the technological wasteland of Afghanistan, Internet evidence of the suspected Taliban perpetrators was scarce.

That meant that the Executioner was going to have to go hunting the old-fashioned way. Electronics only went so far, but human eyes and ears, and trusted old friends, could reach further and deeper than anything. When the world was still in a cold, cold war, Bolan had been to Afghanistan often and had built up a network of allies, warriors among the mujahideen, the first and finest of whom was Tarik Khan, an old ally from the very last days that Bolan had been known as Colonel John Phoenix.

Aleser Khan looked every bit the younger version of his Uncle Tarik, and though he didn’t know Bolan personally, the two men knew each other by reputation. The young leader accepted the soldier into his camp as if he were a long lost cousin, and listened to the Executioner’s reasons for being there. Aleser’s dark brown eyes flashed with outrage, not at his presence, but at the need for the Executioner’s presence. His long black hair flowed like the mane of the lion he was named after.

“My uncle and my cousin owe you their lives, Al-Askari. It matters not which name you travel under. You will always have the best Aleser Khan can provide you, in men or arms,” the young mujahideen leader told him. “Especially when it comes to righting the wrongs done by those who claim to be our countrymen.”

“Thank you.” Bolan accepted, glad at Aleser’s facility with English. While the soldier knew enough Arabic to help him get around most of the Middle East, the Dahri dialect wasn’t one he was as skilled with. “I know that the men of the Taliban are no sons of this land, just another conquering army in a long line,” he said.

“That they succeeded so well leaves the taste of ashes in my mouth, Colonel,” Aleser stated. “We would hunt them down ourselves, but your military commanders tell us that it is their job to insure the peace.”

Bolan frowned. “They mean well, but sometimes they tie the wrong hands. Mine, however, are free.”

“Tarik Khan spoke of your willingness to step outside the laws thrown in your path. What others consider walls, you step over as scratches in the dirt,” Aleser stated. “Ask what you will, and I shall give you anything.”

Bolan was already well-armed, thanks to the generosity of Khan. He didn’t want to risk the lives of any others in his crusade. All Bolan needed, and asked for, was information—a handle on his enemy so he could work his way up the chain of command. Aleser responded totally. Though disappointed the request was so simple, and that he would do no more than act as a pointer, the Afghan warrior not only gave Bolan a handle, but a road map of potential Taliban targets, from desert training camps untouched by the U.S. military to urban cells nestled in towns, hiding under the noses of their enemy.

“It is the same information I have given many in your government,” Aleser said, dejectedly.

“Let me guess. Nobody acted on any of it,” Bolan replied.

Aleser shook his head, a deep melancholy in his leonine eyes. “And now, unarmed healers and caregivers lay dead at their hands. Only say the word, Colonel, and I shall assemble fifty of my best men, and we shall descend upon them and slay them all.”

“It’s tempting,” Bolan stated, “and I am honored by your offer. I cannot risk, however, our forces mistaking you for the enemy. If you are armed for war, and lurking around our area of control…”

Aleser nodded.

“I look like one of them, at least. And one man can disappear more easily than fifty,” Bolan explained.

“Then if you wish stealth and a low profile, you will need more than one man.”

“I cannot—” Bolan began.

“You cannot speak our dialects fluently. You come seeking information, and you will undoubtedly come across more in your quest,” Aleser replied. “My younger brother, Laith, he speaks English as well as I do, as well as half a dozen local dialects. He moves like a hunting cat, is good with a gun, but will follow orders.”

“Are you sure?” Bolan asked. “I’ve been assigned young bucks in the past.”

Aleser smiled and put a reassuring hand on Bolan’s shoulder. “Laith’s enthusiasm has been long since tempered. The wilderness does not suffer many fools.”

Aleser gestured toward the newcomer entering the tent, a young man just inches short of six feet, with short, curly black hair and light brown eyes that flickered golden with the reflected lamplight. He looked out of place in the Afghan camp, and for a moment, Bolan wasn’t sure if it was one of the mujahideen, or perhaps a Green Beret assigned to the area.

The newcomer was dressed not in the traditional robes of an Afghan warrior, but in a green coverall that Bolan recognized as a Nomex jumpsuit, used by American pilots and Special Forces soldiers alike. Over the flight suit was a black vest festooned with tool and magazine pouches. One of the pouches had been improvised into a holster for a handgun. While the outfit was relatively clean, Bolan saw signs that this wasn’t original GI issue for the young man.

The jumpsuit showed wear and tear, weathering except for patches just below the youth’s elbow and kneepads. The previous owner, having worn similar joint protection, kept those parts of the garment looking newer. The cuffs on his wrists were turned in, and the young Afghan wore no gloves, a mainstay of U.S. operators in either full or fingerless form for the past decade. The final clue was the lack of shooting glasses.

Bolan aside, no active American special operations trooper as young as this man would be caught without a set of protective eyewear.

Laith Khan looked Bolan over, evaluating him, but not challenging. Apparently the Executioner met the young man’s standards of approval, because Laith took a step forward and extended his hand. “It is a pleasure to meet the man who saved my cousin and my uncle.”

“I am honored by the hospitality of your tribe,” Bolan answered, shaking hands. The kid’s grip was strong, and his fingers not quite so callused as his older brother’s. The almost golden eyes held his stare for a moment, then the young man stepped back, hands at his sides, head tilted just slightly, watching Bolan studiously. His body language was calm and observant, even more so than Aleser. While Aleser did his best to show the strength and power of a commander, Laith staked no claims of dominance. Bolan looked slyly to Aleser.

“You anticipated me?” he asked.

Aleser nodded. “You were regarded as a wise and skilled man. Such wisdom is written that a man has to know his limitations, and the wisest of such men is truly intimate with his limitations and accepts them.”

Bolan caught Laith’s slight smile. His shoulders straightened and he untilted his head. It was the first show of pride he’d noted in the younger Khan, and it was a subtle one.

“Come on, Laith. It’s time to go hunting,” Bolan said.

ROBERT WESLEY CROUCHED behind the wreckage of the burned-out Volkswagen, casting a nervous glance back at the woman in fatigues he was supposedly guarding. From everything he’d seen of Theresa Rosenberg, she needed a bodyguard like a pit bull needed a switchblade.

It wasn’t that she was particularly rough or hard around the edges. She had a flinty gaze, but that was due to alertness, and her round face was soft and attractive, with full lips. Staff Sergeant Welsey couldn’t explain it. While she didn’t look anything like a soldier, she looked exactly like some of the best soldiers he’d ever met as a Special Forces A-Team member. Not in appearance, but the way she moved, the way her eyes were always in motion, never settling on any one thing.

Theresa Rosenberg had the warrior mentality, and Wesley doubted she could have gained it easily. You got that kind of alertness only by having walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and proving yourself one bad mother.

Wesley idly wondered if you could refer to a woman that way, but then movement outside the collection of battered buildings drew him back into the moment. He had been silently complimenting the Israeli woman on her ability to be one with her surroundings, and he nearly let his attention wander fatally.

“Couple more guards, side one, moving toward side four,” Staff Sergeant Luis Montenegro spoke up through their LASH radio set. The terminology was developed by the LAPD long ago, side one being the front, and turning in a clockwise manner. In a situation where north and south were confusing, people could determine which side was “front.” And front was always the place to start.

“We see it,” Rosenberg whispered. She slid prone, resting on her elbows. The stock of her M-4 carbine pressed her left cheek. Only now did Wesley realize that she was a southpaw.

Odd details bubbled to the surface when the adrenaline hit the bloodstream, and Wesley remembered the term called tache-psyche syndrome. In some instances, it meant that time seemingly slowed down for people. In others, people could count the ridges on the front sights of their pistols. At its most dangerous, peripheral vision blacked out and noises and speech sounded like they were trying to pierce pillows stuffed over the ears.

The Green Beret took a few deep breaths, oxygenating his blood. His fingers tingled despite the fact that he had them crushed down hard on the pistol grip and forearm of his Special Operations Modification M-4 carbine. The SOPMOD was outfitted with all kinds of things to make a firefight easier, from big holographic dot sights, recoil-reducing muzzle brakes and forearm pistol grips to flashlights, lasers and infrared illuminators. Wesley’s rifle was painted in desert camouflage patterns.

The Israeli woman, on the other hand, had her carbine wrapped with burlap and twine. Sand and dust caked into the weave of the heavy cloth, making it better camouflaged than the sleek lines of the heavily customized rifle Wesley had. Rosenberg’s only concession to “modern” technology was an Aimpoint sight.

“They haven’t noticed us, yet,” she said finally. She spoke without any hint of an Israeli accent.

“Only a matter of time,” Wesley answered. “Hush the chatter.”

She glanced over at him, then gave him a wink, her emerald green eyes twinkling. She took a breath to speak, then paused, thinking better of it, and just nodded.

Wesley loosened his grip on the SOPMOD, laying it down gently. Through binoculars, he scanned the men walking around the corner. They looked woozy and were leaning against each other. One passed the other a pipe, and he took a deep hit from it, holding in his breath for a long time before streaming white smoke out of his nostrils. Wesley shook his head and swept the binoculars over to the front of one home. Amber firelight spilled through the portal, backlighting two men standing out front. One shook his head with the same disbelief Wesley had at the two pipe smokers.

The Green Beret took these two men seriously. The AK-47s they held were all business, and at only one hundred yards out, he was well within range of those deadly, efficient man killers. Too many American soldiers, from Vietnam to the streets of Tikrit had learned how dangerous those weapons were, even in the hands of rag tag thugs.

According to Rosenberg, these weren’t just ragtag thugs. They had connections with a Middle Eastern group and had received training, weaponry and funding. Wesley had asked who. He was in intelligence and operations, after all. Knowing who they’d be up against could be vital, life-saving information. Rosenberg kept those cards close to her vest. She said it was suspected that they might be Syrians. Rich, powerful, well-armed and willing to share all kinds of training…

“We have movement coming in from side four,” Montenegro’s voice whispered over the LASH. “Two figures.”

Wesley brought his binoculars back to the two pipe smokers. Hashish, heroin or marijuana, he didn’t know what the pair was smoking, but they were not so buzzed as to fail to react to a pair of shadows rising from the scrub brush that reclaimed shattered town roads. As the Green Beret was about to take action, he watched the two smokers stiffen, jerking in response to silent, but lethal impacts. For a moment, he could have sworn he’d seen the flicker of reflected steel and the red-pencil flare of a suppressed handgun’s muzzle-flash. The hashed-up thugs collapsed into lifeless piles of limbs and robes. As quickly as the shadows had appeared, they were atop the dead men.

The smaller man wrenched something wicked, curved and metallic from one corpse while the other covered him with a large pistol, a suppressor on the muzzle.

“Are they friendlies?” Montenegro asked. Perched atop the M240 light machine gun, even with the barrel shaped and steel-drum tough ECLAN scope atop it, he was watching all the action from the cheap seats.

Wesley glanced at Rosenberg, whose mouth gaped with surprise. Then she smirked.

“Get ready to watch a show,” she whispered.

MACK BOLAN WAS IMPRESSED with Laith Khan’s stealth and skill with a thrown blade, but he didn’t let it get in the way of going about the grim and silent business of bringing death and getting prisoners. Laith’s skills simply reinforced the Executioner’s confidence that Aleser had given him a reliable backup.

They slipped quickly around the corner and Bolan put away his pistol, exchanging it for the head weapon for this assault. Entering Afghanistan with his faithful signature weapons was a task that would have required more official support than the Executioner wanted for this mission. He’d opted for a low profile, at least in terms of ties to the West. A diplomatic pouch for his Beretta and Desert Eagle were out of the question, and a war bag full of larger weapons, grenades and ammunition was impossible.

Instead, Bolan set down with nothing more than his Applegate-Fairbairn folding knife, a .32-caliber Beretta Tomcat hidden inside the guts of a camera and plenty of spending money to give to the Peshwar gun dealers in Pakistan.

Bolan’s silenced pistol was a NORINCO NP228, a Chinese knockoff of the 9 mm SIG-Saur P-228 autoloader. He also managed to get a Taurus Model 44 with a 6.5-inch barrel and a 6-shot capacity. It didn’t reload as fast or hold as many shots as his Desert Eagle, but it was accurate, and more importantly, it was with him.

The head weapon was a severely cutdown version of the AK-47 called the Zastava M-92. It was chambered for a rifle round, the 7.62 mm COMBLOC, and was no larger than most submachine guns. It gave Bolan an incredible power advantage in a small package. While recoil didn’t bother Bolan, the muzzle-flash of such a short-barrel rifle would give away his position, so the only modification was a segment of PVC pipe over the muzzle that provided room for the superhot, flaming gases to disperse while only adding minimal length to the agile little gun.

Bolan was counting on speed and audacity to get his work done. The Zastava was suited for such action. He stuffed the muzzle through the canvas curtains over the doorway, using it as a spear to cleave his way into the firelit room. Men rose, scrambling and crying out at the sight of the Executioner, tall and fearsome with his hands and face smeared black with grease paint, clad head to toe in black clothing and black military gear.

“On the ground now!” he shouted in Arabic, repeating the sharp command that Laith had taught him.

Some dropped at the sound of his bellowing voice, but others weren’t buying orders, even from Death himself.

One robed thug was scrambling for a rifle in the corner, but a more immediate threat was a second man, pulling his knife and charging, letting out a shrill scream of challenge. Bolan swung his weapon around and stroked the trigger. A blistering salvo of slugs smashed into the attacker, ripping him from crotch to beard, sending him flying backward. In the enclosed space, the roar of the short rifle was staggering.

The guy reaching for the rifle stopped short at the thunderstorm that signaled the gore-splashed demise of his comrade, shock widening his eyes. Bolan tracked the PVC-piped muzzle of the Zastava around to catch the gunner, but the Taliban rifleman got his weapon and dived into the next room as bullets smashed the wall where he had been moments before.

“Laith, keep these guys honest,” Bolan shouted, pointing to the prisoners.

There was a moment of conflict in the younger man’s face as he watched the doorway through which Bolan’s quarry disappeared. The Executioner respected that the Afghan fighter acknowledged his responsibilities over glory. There still was the danger that the moment Bolan left the room, his presence would no longer cow the trembling Taliban supporters face-down on the floor.

Bolan didn’t envy Laith’s task should a melee take place. He plunged through the doorway, hit a shoulder roll and kept tight to the ground. His low-down approach kept him alive to fight another day as not one but three muzzle-flashes lit up the hallway, bullets chewing into the door frame as he tumbled past it. Throwing himself on his stomach, the Executioner brought up his rifle and triggered off four short bursts, sweeping the darkness where he remembered the muzzle flashes originating.

Only one cry of agony answered Bolan’s hellstorm of fire. The soldier cursed, knowing that he was in the open, his position given away by the harsh flare of his rifle’s muzzle, and flat on his belly with his hands full. A shadow swung around the corner, and wild gunfire ripped all along the hallway, still at chest height as the enemy muzzle-flash bobbed up and down as if to the beat of some macabre sing-along. With a hard shove, Bolan pushed himself to one side in time to avoid a blast of slugs that chewed along the floor he was slumped on. He abandoned his rifle and watched as impacts propelled the weapon down the hall.

Bolan’s hand had dropped to his thigh, grabbing for the holstered .44 Magnum Taurus when, over the ringing in his ears, he heard the metallic thunk of a canister bouncing off wood. Looking up, he saw the unmistakable shape of a fragmentation grenade thumping toward him.

3

The sound of AK-47s going off was Rosenberg’s signal to get up and charge toward the squat hovel that the Taliban suspects had chosen to call home. She recognized one of the two men making the assault on the thugs inside, and even though she had watched him battle a mine complex full of heavily armed killers, she couldn’t sit idly by and watch him risk a chestful of rifle fire in conflict with a room full of hashed-up terrorists.

On her heels Sergeant Wesley was grunting and huffing as he tried to match his long strides with her short, pumping legs. Over her LASH headset, she listened to Montenegro shouting about rules of engagement and Captain Blake.

There was a time to play by the rules, she thought.

And there was a time to play it like the man she knew as Striker.

Usually, that time came the moment the big mystery soldier strode onto the scene, making his presence felt like a herd of bison crashing across a plain.

A firefight was blazing inside, but nobody was making a break for it. She reached the front in time to see a figure fly backward out the door, his rifle blazing as the canvas draping the entrance fluttered closed. She struck the wall beneath the window, crouching. She watched as Wesley, not even pausing, bent and scooped up the lithe young form with the rifle and dragged him away from the doorway in time to avoid a hail of gunfire punching through the curtains.

“What?” she heard the fighter say as he realized he was being handled like a rag doll.

The thunderous sound of gunshots filled the air from the other side of the opening. A heartbeat later, a tall lean figure burst through the curtain, pistols in each hand. The compression wave and its subsequent debris cloud chased the diving form of the man as he somersaulted away from the doorway.

He came up, almost like a snake in his speed and agility, leveling two long-barreled guns at her, but only for a heartbeat before raising the muzzles skyward.

“I figure at least two gunners are making a break for it out the back,” he said. “We need someone to interrogate in case nobody survived the explosion.”

Rosenberg watched him in amazement for a moment, then pressed her throat mike tighter to her voice box. “Sergeant Montenegro, we need suppression fire. No fatalities.”

The Special Forces weapons officer had quit complaining about rules of engagement and answered with a terse “Affirmative.”

The night lit up as in the distance, Montenegro’s Squad Automatic Weapon spewed a line of heavy fire across the darkness. Rosenberg looked back and saw that the warrior was gone, vanished like a shadow.

“Go get ’em Striker,” she whispered.

MACK BOLAN’S EYES FOCUSED on the grenade in an instant, the bouncing hellbomb grabbing his attention in an almost fatal stranglehold.

Almost.

The grenade’s pull ring and spoon were still locked in place, despite the rolling jumps it was making toward him. Bolan had used a similar tactic many times in the past, throwing a grenade with the pin still in it to flush out an enemy into shooting range.

Instead, Bolan held his ground. He fisted the Taurus as he got up from all fours, and lowered his hand to scoop the RPG-1 grenade as it came to him. Throwing himself against the near wall, he thumbed the pin loose from the miniblaster and launched it back where it came from.

Gunfire erupted wildly in the main room, and the Executioner caught a glimpse of Laith in full retreat, blasting away. His voice, almost smothered by the roar of his rifle blazing in full fury, was shouting warnings. The body of one Taliban supporter jerked violently under a salvo of savage strikes, fatal impacts driving the dead man’s corpse into two of his allies.

The Executioner straight-armed the Taurus. He drew the NP228 with his free hand and pumped the triggers of both handguns to lay down a wall of bullets that crashed into the disorganized gunmen while their backs were still to him. He plunged through the room, the mighty .44 Magnum empty but still clicking as he pulled the trigger, the 9 mm weapon still spitting its quiet payloads of death. He was out the door just as the grenade went off. The fatal blast radius of the grenade was ten yards, and Bolan wasn’t sticking around to be sliced to ribbons by hurtling shrapnel.

The whole event took moments, and Bolan dived into a shoulder roll, tumbling so as to reverse himself and not present his back to the enemies he knew were behind him.

What he didn’t expect was the sight of two soldiers out front. A lightning quick assessment showed one as a U.S. special operations trooper of some sort, and the other was a woman, dressed to keep up with the American soldier. As he raised the muzzles of both pistols to defuse any thought of a standoff, he made out the face. Even partially shaded by her helmet, he picked up some recognizable features, though it was too dark for him to be certain. His gut instinct told him that she was a friend, and he went with it.

“I figure at least two gunners making a break for it out the back,” he told her. “We need someone to interrogate in case nobody survived the explosion.”

She touched her throat mike, and as he heard her voice, he confirmed who she was.

Tera Geren, a gutsy Israeli agent Bolan had worked with before.

He didn’t stick around to hear what she was saying, and he guessed that the machine gun fire in the distance was more American special operations ordinance, a SAW by the sound of it.

Long legs eating up the ground in effortless strides, Bolan swung around the building and spotted a quartet of men racing in the distance. They dropped to the ground, cowering from the sizzling onslaught of autofire raking all around them, but the gunner wasn’t firing for effect. Bolan paused, fed a fresh speedloader into the Taurus, slapped a fresh clip into the NP228, then continued his charge.

The SAW fire let up, and the Taliban lackeys slowly got to their feet, looking to where the onslaught came from, firing wildly from their AKs. Marksmanship was an illusory skill that the gunmen thought they possessed, and having fully automatic weapons instilled in them the delusion that they didn’t have to aim. Whoever the gunner was, he was safe. The pathetic riflery skill of the Taliban killers was barely enough to spray the broadside of a street cafe. Against real soldiers who took cover, conserved ammo, and watched the front sight, they were standing sacks of meat ready to be plucked by a short burst.

The distraction of the Taliban fighters bought the Executioner a few seconds, enough time to close to hand-to-hand range. With a savage snap, he hammered the butt of the Brazilian revolver hard across the jaw of the first man he ran into. The punch, backed by four pounds of stainless steel, felled the thug.

The second man was turning, but not nearly fast enough to avoid Bolan’s boot rocketing into his groin. The mercenary for the former occupational government folded over, head dropping to where the Executioner slashed his elbow down mercilessly like his namesake’s ubiquitous ax.

Two down, one to go, and Mack Bolan’s free rein over his enemies ended.

Too close to bring up his rifle and fire, the last man merely swung the barrel hard at the Executioner. The front sight hooked Bolan’s wrist, wrenching the revolver from his grasp. Bolan brought his NP228 around to shoot the guy and be done with him, but the fighter wasn’t finished swinging. The pistol grip of the AK crashed off Bolan’s cheek and left his head reeling.

Bolan dropped back, dazed. The rifle slashed out again. The soldier brought up his left hand to block the next chop and felt his forearm go numb. The Chinese pistol sailed from his grasp.

The Executioner wasn’t standing still. He kicked the guy in the knee, a dead center blow struck with his steel-toed combat boots. With a cry, the rifleman staggered, letting go of his weapon and windmilling his arms to maintain his balance. Bolan didn’t allow him any mercy, launching two right jabs with pistonlike speed. The Taliban fighter’s nose exploded, rivers of blood streaming down into his mustache and beard. Another step forward, and Bolan folded his opponent over his knee. A hammering fist dropped savagely on the back of the thug’s head and with a savage twist, Bolan hurled the half-conscious man over his hip.

“Give up,” Bolan said, picking up the sand-covered .44 Magnum pistol. He aimed the tunnellike barrel at the militiaman’s nose.

Eyes wide, the man muttered what sounded like gibberish to Bolan’s ears, and passed out.

Bolan lowered the Taurus, then brought his fingers to his swollen cheek, tears welling in his eyes from the sting.

“Striker!” he heard Tera Geren shout. He looked up and saw her running toward him alongside Laith and two big guys in nomex jumpsuits and boonie hats.

“That’s Colonel Brandon Stone,” Bolan told her.

Geren paused, looking at her allies, then presented her hand. “Theresa Rosenberg.”

Bolan nodded. “And your friends?”

“Staff Sergeants Wesley and Montenegro,” Geren answered. “U.S. Special Forces.”

“Green Berets?” Laith asked.

“Yeah,” Wesley said apprehensively, while Montenegro simply nodded. “You don’t dress like a local.”

“To prevent friendly fire, soldier,” Bolan explained. “He’s my guide.”

“Uh-huh,” Wesley said. “And what’s he guiding you to?”

“All the hottest tourist traps on the map,” Bolan said.

“Tourist traps?” Laith asked. “Oh, Colonel Stone, I’m sorry. I thought you said terrorist traps.” He shook his head. “English is only my second language.”

Bolan rested a hand on Laith’s shoulder. “It was an honest mistake, though I can see now why you suggested bringing a .44 Magnum along to pick up girls.”

Laith shrugged and turned to face the others. “Well, if you don’t mind, we’ll be off.”

Bolan saw Geren struggling to control her laughter, but the Special Forces sergeants weren’t buying it. “We’re taking these men for interrogation,” Wesley said, pointing to the surviving Taliban fighters.

“We were supposed to be snooping and pooping on these creeps,” he explained. “You interfered with that.”

“And what are you doing here?” Bolan asked Geren.

“Protecting truth, justice and a really good kosher pickle,” she replied.

Yeah, Bolan thought. Tera Geren was still a red-hot firecracker.

“Thanks for the update,” Bolan said.

“Let’s not waste a valuable intelligence opportunity,” Geren told Wesley. “We’ve captured people who might lead us to the UN hit.”

“You’re working this too?” Bolan asked.

Geren glanced up at him. “We have to talk, Colonel,” she said stiffly.

Bolan remained silent, answering with only a nod. The atmosphere drained of whatever relief he’d felt at the sight of a familiar ally.

He dismissed his disappointment at being at cross-purposes with Geren. It was an occupational hazard that he’d faced before, all too often. When working with someone who was loyal to and spilled blood for the safety of the land of her birth, there was always the possibility that the people in the field could end up flipping from friends to enemies.

And even if they weren’t enemies, they’d still end up doing their own thing.

A situation like that could get people killed.

MARID HAYTHAM KNEW the woman on sight. She was a member of the Israel’s secret police—one of the accursed enemies who hunted down his allies relentlessly. She was good, but she usually worked alone, almost as if she were a sacrificial lamb no one wanted to be associated with. Some wondered if it was because she was a woman who dared to take on the duties of a man, but Haytham knew better.

Women were present in all levels of Israel’s military. The country was in such a besieged state that women’s liberation was a nonissue, even in the 1950s. If you had two arms and two legs, you were able to fight for your country.

Tera Geren was not very tall, but she had a robust build, probably padded out by the body armor she wore. Still, it presented her as someone substantial.

Haytham was tempted to raise his AK-47, rest the barrel on the door of his car and hold down the trigger, stitching her from crotch to throat, but for once, he was reluctant to take out his fury on a known Jewish agent.

For one part, she had a reputation of not being a hard case who targeted bystanders. Because she worked as a lone wolf, she spent a lot of time alone among Palestinian and non-Palestinian Arabs who lived in Israel. Both groups seemed to consider her, grudgingly, as someone who was sympathetic to their desires to live in peace on land that they owned. She came down hard only on enemies who had killed, and who could fight back.

For the second part, he and his team were in Afghanistan to look for the same men she was seeking.

It was one thing for Israel to launch rockets into Palestinian towns. It was another for them to send in men to slaughter the children and wives of freedom fighters as if they were no more than dogs.

Haytham had his orders.

The men who were responsible for the deaths in the Shafeeq Refugee camp had to die. The blood of brothers, sisters, wives, sons, daughters, nieces and nephews had been spilled by merciless fusillades of bullets. The camp of compassion and tenderness had been turned into an abbatoir by cowardly men who had swooped down on the unarmed, the sick and the starving.

Haytham wanted to pull the trigger and wipe out the Jewish woman, but he knew that for now, she was an ally in that she would have a better chance of tracking down the killers. She had contacts, she knew about hideouts and she would be relentless, if the orders that were intercepted were true.

Haytham frowned.

He hated to admit that the Mossad would actually be interested in hunting down the men he had been ordered to kill. It meant that there were Jews who were actually interested in justice, even for the families of their sworn enemies.

It happened every so often—these moments of doubt. In the young fighter his superiors saw a powerful warrior ready to burst free, but one who was not willing to fight recklessly in the street. Instead of supervising a suicide bombing, he was more likely to be involved in direct conflict with armed Israeli troops.

Hamas needed all types of fighters. As long as Haytham’s dedication was unflinching when it came to facing enemy soldiers, then he had a task.

He was seeking justice against a band of savage killers.

He watched as others assembled around Geren. American soldiers, heavily armed and capable of wiping him out if they detected him, flanked her. They kept the muzzles of their rifles aimed at the ground, but their eyes swept the street as others came out to greet them. Two more men, one an Afghan, the other a tall, lean, grim soldier dressed in black, joined Geren and the American Special Forces troops.

On the street, there were easily a dozen people, all but Geren, the tall wraith in black and the Afghan were toting rifles and handguns. Whatever opportunity Haytham had had to strike a blow against the Israelis and America was gone. Twelve bodies were too many even for the 30-round magazine of anAK-47 on full-auto. He’d cause at least one or two deaths, and several injuries, but the others would dive for cover.

And with that many guns present, Haytham would never have the opportunity to reload.

In a way, the young eagle was relieved.

With temptation cut off, he had retained his window of opportunity. The woman would still be able to provide him with intelligence regarding the killers at Shafeeq.

He hunkered down, watching and waiting.

SPECIAL FORCES CAPTAIN Jason Blake watched as Wesley and Montenegro returned from their surveillance mission with Theresa Rosenberg and the newcomers in tow.

“Care to explain yourself?” Blake asked as the two intruders reported to him. He rose, as a sign of respect for the alleged “Colonel Stone’s” rank, but he restrained a salute. Salutes were more appropriate for safe Army bases stateside. Out in the real shit, such acknowledgment of rank could mean the difference between observation and a sniper’s bullet.

“Not beating around the bush, are you?” Bolan asked.

“I’m waiting for an explanation why a full-bird colonel is running around the desert picking fights with former Taliban enforcers, without alerting me.”

“I didn’t know you had forces in the area,” Bolan answered.

Blake shook his head. “No. Ignorance of my being here shouldn’t be a case. Not if you’re on the ball enough to have the little brother of one of our biggest mujahideen allies guiding him into a hot spot. At the very least, Aleser Khan should have let me know that someone was looking around in my backyard. Right, Laith?”

Bolan looked at Blake, then the young Afghan.

“My brother was sending word to you in the morning, Captain, so as not to disturb your sleep, nor to break curfew,” Laith responded.

“And you broke curfew?” Blake asked in challenge.

Laith smiled confidently. “I was accompanied by an American military officer.”

“An alleged American military officer,” Blake growled. “This guy has ID, but he has no official paperwork or orders. I’ve radioed back to headquarters, and nobody’s heard shit that some colonel was sweeping through on any form of inspection.”

“The expression is ‘need to know,’” Bolan stated.

“I do need to know. I’d like to know if an American, civilian or military, is running around killing locals and stirring up a hornet’s nest of retaliation against my A-Team,” Blake said angrily. “As it is, we had shots fired, and more than likely people saw American soldiers leaving natives, even if they were ex-Taliban, dead.”

“I’m on an investigation. Asking permission would take time I really can’t afford,” Bolan replied.

“And I’m on a peacekeeping mission. Having some wild-assed nutrod running around on a vendetta is something I can’t afford,” Blake said. “I’m going to run some checks on who you are, Colonel Stone. Until then, your investigation is on hold. Hand over your weapons,” Blake ordered.

Laith tensed, but the big American simply rested his hand on the young Afghan’s shoulder. “No need to pick a fight with the U.S. Army, Laith.”

“According to the law, I can keep my weapons as long as ammunition and gun are separated,” Laith said. He pulled the magazines from his pistol and rifle and ejected the chambered rounds. A bullet bounced across Blake’s desk, but the Afghan didn’t bother picking it up. He simply slung the AK and glowered. “Unless you’d like to explain to my older brother why you had me arrested for following the letter of the agreement we made.”

Blake clenched his jaw.

Laith took a deep breath, exhaling hard out flared nostrils.

“I was addressing Colonel Stone,” Blake said, recovering his control of the situation. “And the next time you violate weapons policy in my camp, you will be thrown into the stockade for a very long stay.”

Laith smirked in defiance, but Blake was satisfied he’d made his point. Controlling the young lion wasn’t an easy task, but he was glad to have the youth mollified for the time being. It was the tall, rangy American who gave the Special Forces captain pause.

Even though Stone acquiesced to Blake’s orders, he knew it was only lip service. The stranger no more intended to stay on a short leash and behave himself than Laith did. At least by confiscating the big man’s guns, the captain had managed to slow him down, somewhat.

Blake watched the man unload his arsenal. The pile of weapons grew until finally, almost as an afterthought, a tiny little black, five-and-a-half-inch-long pocket pistol and three slender magazines were placed on the desk.

Blake chuckled. “No, really. I wanted all your guns.” He wondered who this guy could be.

“Keep your knives,” Blake said, picking up the little black pocket pistol. It was a .32-caliber Beretta Tomcat. Not much in terms of firepower compared to the monstrous, eleven-inch-long .44 Magnum Taurus it was placed beside, it was firepower that would mean the difference between being unarmed and helpless and having a fighting chance.

He handed over the Tomcat. “Take your Beretta too. I don’t need to have you completely helpless. But the thing’s so puny, you won’t be assaulting armed gangs of Taliban reservists.”

Bolan plucked the gun and his spare magazines from Blake’s hand. “Thank you,” he said and turned to leave.

“Colonel Stone,” Blake spoke up.

The man in black stopped.

“Please wait to get clearance from me before you continue on. I don’t want administrative shit sliding down my neck because some spook went and got himself killed on my watch.”

Bolan glanced back at the Special Forces captain. “I’m not a spook. You’re not going to catch flak. I’m not going to get myself killed. Have a good evening, Captain.”

4

“If you want, you can borrow my AK,” Laith offered as they walked away from Captain Blake’s office.

“Thank you, Laith, but I’ll make do until I can find a substitute,” Bolan said.

“You had quite a bit of firepower. Did you have any more guns?” Laith asked.

“I kept a grenade in reserve, and didn’t show him my backup folding knife, my impact Kerambit, or my garotte,” Bolan told him. “I also have a spare barrel for the Beretta with an integral sound suppresser.”

Laith nodded. “You plan ahead.”

Bolan simply nodded.

They stopped as Tera Geren sidled up to them. “You boys have a nice visit with Captain Blake?”

“Absolutely charming,” Bolan responded. “He lets you keep your weapons.”

“Because I came and knelt at the altar of interagency protocol, big guy,” Geren said. “You might try it some time. Works wonders.” she grinned mischievously, then took a deep breath. “It’s good to see you again.”

Bolan nodded. He didn’t want to acknowledge their closeness. He glanced over to Laith.

“I need someplace to do a little first aid, and maybe get some food in us,” Bolan said, nodding to his Afghan companion. Geren looked at him, then nodded, her mischief replaced with a more serious look. “I also don’t want to deal with spies, no matter how friendly or well-intentioned they are,” Bolan said.

“I have a place I’m operating out of,” Geren told him. “Two, actually. One that Blake knows about and has under surveillance.”

“The other?” Bolan asked.

She smiled. “We’ll go there when we have to.”

Laith cast a nervous glance toward Bolan, who simply nodded to the younger man. “Not going to mind having me along, Ms. Rosenberg?” Laith asked.

Geren shrugged. “Why? Do you smoke cheap cigars or fart a lot?”

Laith relaxed. “No, ma’am.”

“Oh, God, please don’t call me ma’am. It makes me sound like your mother,” she answered. “Call me Tera.”

“Laith.”

The woman looked to Bolan again, trying to keep her features subdued, but the surprise still crossed her face. Bolan figured that she didn’t expect him to be close friends with Tarik Khan’s nephew. “You really know how to make friends around here. Makes me wonder why Blake stripped you.”

Suddenly, the Executioner caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. He lunged, one arm wrapping around Geren, his other hand clutching Laith’s jumpsuit, all three of them crashing to the ground an instant before the night exploded with gunfire.

Assault rifles tore through the silence as Mack Bolan reached for the minuscule Beretta .32 in his pocket. He knew that even if it wasn’t too late, its response would be too little.

ROBERT WESLEY HAD NEVER liked the fact that they were based out of an old office building in the small town of Ghiyath. He remembered the horror stories about embassies and Marine barracks. When he and the others had mentioned this to Blake, the response had been quick and forthcoming.

The four engineering experts in the A-Team, both the primary training and the secondary training sergeants, were put to work seeking the parts of the U-shaped office complex that were least vulnerable to a car bomb. Those areas would be the main HQ for the Special Forces.

Having a car roll up, park and detonate would be impossible. Trip wires, laser and standard wire would raise alerts from the alley behind the complex. A car bomb ramming into the main complex would be blunted by strategically placed cars, mined with high explosives. Anyone trying to ram through would upset the triggers on the blockades and end up with a premature detonation.

Blake took precautions. He didn’t like being hung out to be target practice for dedicated psychopaths, either.

The captain, Wesley noted, was no-bullshit. He might have been hard, but he looked out for his men, and he looked out for the people he was assigned to protect.

Wesley watched as the pair they’d escorted back to the base left Blake’s office, conversing quietly. He wanted to reserve judgment on the big man who had led a charge into a pit of terrorist thugs. Theresa Rosenberg seemed to like him, despite her efforts to seem aloof to the newcomer.

Then again, Theresa didn’t trust Wesley, or the rest of the Special Forces A-Team with her real name. He didn’t blame her; that was just the way the world of espionage and counterterrorism worked.

Wesley frowned as he watched her join Stone and Laith Khan once more.

Maybe it was a hint of jealousy on his part that kept Wesley from truly wanting to accept the black-haired, blue-eyed wraith who had entered the fray. Rosenberg acted more like a woman with Stone in a few moments than she had around the whole of the team for the week she’d been with them.

Wesley dismissed that. Getting jealous and workplace romances in combat situations were the construct of novelists and Hollywood scriptwriters. Bed-hopping games like that were a good way to insure a bullet in the back of the head, or a few moments of hesitation when death came charging down on you like an out of control bull. He would have liked life to be like a movie or a paperback novel, but the truth was, he had too much life to live, and too much job to do.

Wesley looked around. A car was waiting just outside the demarked zone in what the engineers considered to be a safe parking spot. An average-sized sedan parked at that point wouldn’t cause more than a few broken windows if it detonated. If a truck parked inside the same radius, Blake would have his teams swoop on it, kill anyone sitting inside, and check the back for high explosives.

As it was, Wesley activated his LASH mike on the headquarters frequency. “We’ve got a gold-colored Peugeot parked a block away.”

“I’ve been watching it for a couple hours. The guy inside is on stakeout, but other than smoking cigarettes, he’s not causing us any harm,” came the reply from Jerrud, the rooftop sniper.

“He look local?” Wesley asked.

Jerrud grunted. “Nope. First, he smokes way too much. That means he has money to burn on cigarettes. Plus, he dresses too Western.”

“He hasn’t noticed you, has he?” Wesley asked.

Jerrud chuckled. “I’m insulted.”

“Pardon me—” Wesley started to joke.

Gunfire suddenly flashed. Rosenberg and the two newcomers were suddenly on the ground in a huddled lump, but only for a second as autofire raked the air where they once stood.

“We got hostiles!” Jerrud shouted.

“The car?” Wesley asked. Looking, he saw that the muzzle-flashes were far from the Peugeot, which had hit reverse hard. The muzzle of an AKM poked out the window, but it was aiming in the direction of the shooters. Gunfire flashed across the street in both directions, the fender and hood of the gold car suddenly peppered with impacts. The Peugeot spun out and tore off down the street.

Wesley shouldered his M-4, bringing the holographic scope on target to where he saw a couple rifle-toting gunners swinging their attention back toward Rosenberg and her companions. He milked the trigger for a short burst, but knew it was too quick, panic fire that didn’t even slow down the enemy shooters. Around him, other rifles were opening up, and the street was turned into a battlezone.

Wesley felt a lump drop into his stomach as he watched the trio charge toward the enemy gunners.

THE EXECUTIONER WAS ON his feet in an instant. Even as one vehicle downrange was pouring on the steam in full reverse—opening fire on the gunners—he was taking advantage of time in slices that made the beat of a heart seem like an hour.

The .32-caliber Tomcat was in Bolan’s big fist, but there was no way he was going to score fatal hits. The terrorists had picked their battlefield intelligently, well beyond accurate pistol range for most people, and behind cover solid enough to stop even the 5.56 mm rifle rounds of the Special Forces soldiers. With long, ground-eating strides, he pushed hard, knowing his only hope was to get inside the reach of his own weapon. Had he been armed with the Beretta 93-R machine pistol, or his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle, he might have chosen to fall back.

Unfortunately, he had a paranoid Special Forces A-team captain to thank for not having much firepower. He was aware of bodies racing behind him. Gunfire popped from his right, the chatter of an M-4 on semiauto. Tera Geren, not disarmed of her weapon, Bolan figured. To his left, he caught the sound of a magazine slamming into the well of another rifle. Laith was going to get into action with his M-92.

“Colonel!” came the cry. Bolan turned and paused, holding out his hands as the rifle was lobbed to him. Laith made the toss and reached for his handgun in the same fluid movement.

Bolan scooped the rifle out of the air, then turned his attention forward as rifle fire bellowed with increased fury. The Green Berets traded fire with the terrorists, but neither side was scoring a hit, as they were all entrenched behind solid cover.

One thug spotted Bolan and whipped his rifle around.

The Executioner didn’t even have time to get a grip on Laith’s rifle. He punched the .32 Beretta forward, opening fire and emptying out the 9-round payload of the little pistol. The rifleman jerked under multiple impacts, his face splashed with blood. Hardly the most powerful handgun on the battlefield, but the soldier remembered that long ago, some of his first shots fired in anger against the Mafia were from a .32. Size and power didn’t matter anymore. They were within thirty yards of the enemy, and the fusillade, even fired on the run, was dead on target.

Bolan tossed aside the empty pistol and got both hands on the Zastava. The muzzle exploded in a blast of flame and thunder. The steel-cored slugs smashed through the slab of plasterboard one terrorist was using for cover. His body jerked back violently, leaving a bloody smear on wall behind him. The corpse slid to the ground in a messy heap.

The Executioner held down the trigger for another short burst, a swarm of 7.62 mm slugs punching the skull of another Afghan rifleman. The gunner was still standing, triggering rounds blindly until a wave of 5.56 mm bullets from Tera Geren slashed open his chest and dropped him.

Cover fire from the Special Forces team members, except for the sniper who had the high ground, stopped. Bolan and his allies were dangerously close to the attackers, and there was a good chance that even the Green Berets would accidentally hit the three people. It didn’t matter to the Executioner.

There were more gunners, about four strong, holed up on the other side of a half-fallen wall. Bolan’s hand found the grenade he’d held in reserve and sent it sailing over the wall.

“Fire in the hole!” he called.

Bolan and companions hit the ground, gunfire raking the air over their heads now that the terrorists were no longer pinned down by enemy gunfire.

The chatter of autofire was cut off as Bolan’s grenade ripped itself apart. The shock wave made the Executioner grunt. A severed arm and other debris landed in a heap right in front of his face.

Bolan looked up and saw one Taliban mercenary staggering. The terrorist struggled to stay upright, holding his weapon one-handed and leveling it at the big man in black.

Bolan fought to claw his M-92 from the pavement and get target acquisition, but the terrorist spun under multiple impacts. By the time his front sight was tracking the dying killer, he was already spilling over the half wall. Bolan glanced back, seeing a figure on the roof of the office complex shift, raising a fist in an “all stop” hand signal.

Bolan lowered the rifle, then looked back to Geren, who was holding the earpiece on her headset.

“They want us to stay put. Looking for more bad guys,” Geren said. She quickly reloaded her rifle.

Laith skidded a spare magazine to Bolan.

The Executioner reloaded, keeping a wary eye on his surroundings.

“A little more excitement than you’re used to?” Laith asked.

Bolan looked around. “No.”

Laith wiped his brow. “The old curse bites again.”

Bolan managed a smile. “May you live in interesting times.”

CAPTAIN JASON BLAKE glowered at the man he knew as Colonel Brandon Stone. Stone had handed Laith Khan’s rifle back to him nonchalantly after running a perimeter search for more bad guys.

Blake felt stretched like piano wire, and he was just as likely to cut into someone. He fought the urge to grind his teeth and tried to get some work done. “Good job. You’re bleeding, though.”

Stone touched his arm and came away with fresh glistening blood on his fingertips. A rifle round had to have clipped him. He wiped his fingers on his sleeve and shrugged it off. “I’ll take care of it before it gets too bad. Right now, I want to check the terrorists.”

“I have my team checking them. I have four intel-trained noncoms here, in case you don’t know the set up of a—” Blake was sneering.

“I know the structure and training of a field deployed A-Team,” Bolan said, cutting him off. “You don’t have to treat me like an idiot.”

“No, but I do have to treat you as an unknown quantity, Colonel Stone,” Blake answered. “You might look good on paper, but anyone can fake a good cover. Until you tell me who you really are, I don’t have to do fuck-all except treat you with skepticism and distrust.”

There wasn’t any indignation on Bolan’s face. “Perfectly understandable, Captain,” he said.

“And Laith, make that rifle compliant with curfew laws—now,” Blake growled.

Laith ejected the clip and racked the bolt, all the while letting out a long, tired sigh. He stuffed the top round into a vent pocket and the magazine into an appropriate pouch. The young Afghan slung the rifle, then winked at Blake, pulled his pistol and did the same. “You forgot to warn me about my handgun.”

Blake felt his cheeks grow hot.

“Don’t worry. I remembered myself,” Laith added.

Blake sighed and shook his head. “Find yourselves a place to bunk down for the night. You don’t have to go home, but you’re not sleeping here.”

Laith shrugged. “Sounds like you’ve heard that order a few times before.”

“Kid, you’re starting to get on my nerves,” Blake grunted.

“Then it’s working,” Laith responded. “Because you’re getting on mine. Need I remind you whose nation you’re in?”

Blake took a deep breath, remembering that as a member of the Army’s Special Forces, he was a diplomat of American goodwill as well as a soldier. “No. But I can’t break the rules for you. Otherwise, why have rules?”

“Why not try recognizing who your friends are, and who they aren’t?” Laith asked.

“Take it easy, Laith,” Bolan said. “I don’t suppose this incident has inspired you to lend me back my equipment for self-protection,” the big man asked the captain.

Blake shook his head. “No luck. If you want an escort, I’ll lend you one of my men.”

Bolan frowned, then noticed something, or someone, over Blake’s shoulder. “Fine. I’ll take Staff Sergeant Wesley.”

Blake looked back at Wesley, who looked like a deer caught in the headlights. “Is that fine with you, soldier?”

Wesley gave a curt nod. “Sir, yes, sir!”

“Good. You’re going with Colonel Stone and his party, then,” Blake ordered. “Just remember, I want you back here. Alive and in one piece.”

“Sir?” Wesley asked.

“I want you back alive. Even if that means that you have to abandon Colonel Stone. He’s proved he can take care of himself.”

“Sir!” Wesley answered. The man looked conflicted. He didn’t like the idea of letting fellow soldiers on the same side die.

Blake didn’t like it, either. But he had a duty to the men in his team. He ate, slept, and drank, sweated and bled with them. Their lives were important to him, more important than any other soldier’s. It was unit integrity, a knot of loyalty, duty, command and friendship that couldn’t be undone by a few strands. He wouldn’t like having Stone, Rosenberg and Khan die on his watch, but he wasn’t going to sacrifice even the most junior of his noncoms.

“I’ll make sure your man returns to you unharmed,” Bolan promised.

Blake tried to hide his surprise, but couldn’t.

WESLEY WATCHED skeptically as Rosenberg unlocked her safehouse door and let the men in.

“I’m not loving this idea, Theresa,” he told her.

She paused, confusion coloring her features for a moment. “You mean about having two men you don’t know hanging around with me?”

“Seems that since we’ve met this guy, you’ve come under enemy fire twice. And we only met them a couple hours ago,” Wesley said.

“Once an hour, that’s not so bad for him,” she said. There was an impish grin on her face. Those beautiful green eyes sparkled with wit and allure, making Wesley look away, inwardly wincing as he felt himself being dragged in by her beauty. “Robert?” she said.

“I’m sorry. I’m not looking forward to seeing you get hurt,” Wesley answered.

“Who says I’m going to get hurt?” she asked.

“A bunch of really angry goombas we kicked out of power, who are still packing enough rifles to shoot up half the country. That’s who,” Wesley explained.

She sighed. “I’ve had people out to get me before. I’ll live.”

“I’m serious, Theresa.”

“Call me Tera,” she said.

“Tera…sorry…”

“I’m serious, too, Robert.”

Wesley reflexively bared his teeth, then calmed himself. “You say you can trust him, so tell me, is Stone his real name?”

“I can’t confirm or deny that for you. It’s not my place. I can tell you, though, even though we only worked together once, I trust him with every ounce of my being.”

Wesley hung his head. “I see.”

Geren touched his chin lightly, lifting his eyes to meet hers. “I understand you’re worried about me. And I’m worried about you, too. And I would worry about Stone, but he can take care of himself, and he’s taken care of me in the past.”

“He charges in wild-assed—”

“He can be as stealthy or as audacious as circumstances warrant,” Geren said defensively. “And he won’t let me down.”

Wesley sighed. There was going to be no winning this fight.

“Robert, I know you don’t like it, but I also don’t want you involved in our investigation. Stone and I are going after, I think, the same people, and there’s going to be a lot of gunplay.”

“Then have a soldier at your back, at least.”

“Captain Blake wants you back alive. And I don’t want to see you hurt,” Geren cut him off.

“Sorry. He said come back if possible. That was my priority. I’m also supposed to keep an eye on you and Colonel Stone,” Wesley replied. “Don’t try to leave me behind.”

“I don’t see the harm in you tagging along.” A powerful, but subtle voice spoke, startling Wesley. He looked up to see Colonel Stone seemingly appear out of nowhere. He was shaken for a moment.

“Thank you, Colonel, sir.”

“Don’t call me sir,” Bolan replied. “I work for a living.”

He offered his hand. Some of the distrust and jealousy that Wesley was hanging onto evaporated in the face of the gesture. Finally, the Green Beret took the stranger’s hand. “Sorry for being so much trouble.”

“You’re not any trouble. Just please don’t interfere with me getting fresh weapons,” Bolan said.

Wesley looked at Geren, then nodded. “I wasn’t going to have Tera go into harm’s way without someone adequately equipped on her side.”

Bolan smiled. “Good. Captain Blake won’t have a problem with that?”

Wesley looked around. “Captain who? Problem with what?”

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