He had heard the tales over the years from men who had allegedly climbed near to the top, accidentally stumbling across the splintered ruins of what they claimed was a giant, ancient boat, wedged frozen into the surface of a glacier. Myth or truth, he didn’t much care, but a part of him tended to believe this land—that had seen so much bloodshed since the time of the ancients of Anatolia—could, indeed, feel the wrath of a God who would bury the world in flood, though spare a chosen few to repopulate a new Earth, man and animal alike. That in mind, he savored the image of himself, an avenging arm of the Almighty, slaying the Turk hordes, Kurdistan rising from the ashes of the war he would soon declare.
And the instrument of his vengeance was somewhere in these mountains. If—no, when—he seized the cache he would unleash death of epic proportion that would rival the story of the Great Flood.
He watched, as the soldiers he knew responsible for burning their village, raping their women and murdering anything that walked or crawled, fanned out and the armored personnel carriers, Humvees and transports rolled into a smoke-and-corpse free zone. They fell out of canvas-covered transports, quickly began unfurling and erecting tents. Satellite dishes were uncrated, generators hauled from truck beds as they constructed a hasty makeshift camp. They were staying, but for how long?
Scanning the carnage, he watched as a Turk soldier toed a body. Ghirgulz thought he saw the body move, then the soldier drilled a short burst into the chest.
He had seen enough, as he caught the echo another burst of autofire ringing up from the valley. Rising, AK-47 in hand, he ordered his snipers with the scoped Dragunov rifles to take up positions along a ledge he indicated some thirty feet higher. Then he climbed a tortuous path along a precipice, careful not to kick loose a stone before his boots sank into a half-foot of snow.
The smell of roasting flesh and loosened bowels guided him into the cave. Six of his top lieutenants, he found, were standing near the fire, but they appeared more interested in the grisly sack of raw meat staked to the ground than keeping warm. Closing, he found the informant had been fileted around the chest and ribs some more since he’d left them to their grim task of extracting information. The stench of fresh urine told him they had attempted to revive Apo Buccalah, but he had seen enough men skinned alive to know when they were past the point of no return. Still, the Kurd traitor was clinging to life, Ghirgulz making out the faint gagging noises, muffled by the wool rag. He looked at Birdal, who shook his head, and told him, “I am afraid we will get nothing more out of this jackal.”
For the moment, Ghirgulz decided they had enough to at least stand by and watch what happened in the valley. Without hesitation, he lifted his assault rifle and pumped a quick burst into the traitor’s chest.
THE BLACK HAWK CLAIMED a landing zone near the fuel bin. As he marched from his command post, little more than a stone hovel, and vectored for the large tent where they were gathered for the daily briefing on operations in the northern Iraqi frontier, Major Alan Hawke hated himself. But he knew there was no choice.
Not if he wished to continue breathing.
Although what he was prepared to do was the ultimate crime against God, country and humanity, he reasoned the ends justified the means in his case.
They had to.
He had sold his soul long ago, he knew, but it had nothing to do with money or power, though the former would certainly assist him in vanishing to points unknown. In about two days, maybe less, the United States of America as he knew it would cease to exist. Either he was on board or he would be fed to the sharks. He had taken their money to keep silent, or inform them about what they suspected may be left in the region by way of WMD. He’d been ordered by them—without the knowledge of CENTCOM—to search out and eliminate any Iraqis linked to the pre-war smuggling operation. As for his personal life, he supposed it eased the pain of the coming task, was a salve for his conscience to know there was nothing left for him in terms of family back in the States. There would be no golden years with a loved one by his side, no grandchildren at his feet. Nothing left but to put it all—which, in reality, was nothing—behind, march into the future.
Hawke checked his watch. High noon. Right on schedule. He watched the tall figure in black fatigues, black beret with the Task Force Talon emblem and wielding an HK 33 hop from the helicopter, he wanted to tell himself that the revolutionary change about to ignite a firestorm of anarchy in America was for the eventual salvation of the country. Up to a point, he believed in their rebellion, having seen too many changes himself in a country he’d once loved and fought for to sit idly on the sidelines and watch the savages tear down democracy and rebuild it in their own wicked, selfish image, where greed and immorality were the gods they worshiped. The question begged itself as to how much better off America would be when it fell under the iron fist of military rule. Perhaps democracy—given the one constant that was human nature, with all its faults, flaws and follies—was simply a failed experiment, he decided, but one that required a different hands-on approach, or rather a fine tuning in order to rejuvenate what good was once there.
As the Black Hawk’s flight crew hit the ground running to refuel for the return trip, Hawke looked at the face of the man he thought of as Death incarnate, the assassin already plucking a frag grenade off his webbing. He went by many names, one of those black ops who would never show up on any intelligence agency’s radar screens, and the killer he knew as Locklin was there to make sure he fulfilled his role.
He took one last sweeping look at the broken tableland. There was nothing out there in the rock and scrub wasteland save for a roving band of Bedouin. Hawke raised his M-16. He hung back at the flap, as Locklin vanished down the other side. A moment later he heard the thunderclap, the blast signaling him to enter the future. For a fleeting second, he balked at those shouts of anger, cries of pain, then charged through the flap and began doing his grim part, telling himself these young soldiers were dying for a better America.
22
Logistics alone would prove a monumental task. After he laid out his suspicions to Hal Brognola over the sat link about the danger he felt the President was in under his own roof, the big Fed, he knew, had been scrambling. To cover everything Bolan needed, Brognola was juggling back-channeled calls from his Justice Department office to key contacts in the military and intelligence communities. The Farm was doing its part to park a satellite over the area to gather whatever intelligence he needed for the next phase.
Brognola and the Stony Man team had never let him down when it came to ironing out the finer details of hardware, contacts, insertion, and Bolan knew they wouldn’t pull any punches now. Just the same, he felt his nerves taut as piano wire. The knockout blow was up to him but still a way off in the wings, as he worked on a cup of coffee in the Gulfstream’s workstation.
At this juncture, given what he knew and suspected, patience was best left to the angels. Perusing satellite imagery and computer-printed flight charts, it was easily a nine-thousand-mile flight by the route they were taking to Incirlik American Air Base in Adana along the Mediterranean Sea. At top cruising speed of 521 mph, the Gulfstream’s range was good for forty-two hundred miles. That meant two refueling stops. Brognola struck gold on that score. Bolan’s original Bogotá fuel stop before hitting the Triangle on the way in was switched to Caracas, Venezuela where the big Fed unearthed a CIA contact with in-country pull. That put them a few hundred miles closer to Madrid, and even then Bolan knew they’d damn near be redlining their way in at the end of the transatlantic flight.
Already the morning was grinding on, and they had just hit Venezuelan airspace, needing to cover ten time zones from there before landing at Incirlik. And how much of a head start did Braden have? The Executioner believed the Task Force Talon leader had his own travel arrangements worked out in advance. He was thinking the transport bird—even customized for auxiliary tanks, slimmed down from the C-130 version, built for speed and distance—would cut the path of shortest and least re
sistance on a straight northeast vector, maybe having greased officials in one of the West African countries.
He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, aware his mind was racing. It was going to be a long flight, twenty to twenty-four hours or more, depending on time lost on the ground for fuel stops, no matter how efficiently Brognola kept the wheels spinning.
There was no point, Bolan knew, rehashing the treachery in the Triangle, the subsequent slaughter. The wreckage—legal, political or otherwise—was best left for others to clean up, sort out. He was a soldier, and his job was to keep on kicking ass.
As earlier agreed, the President would be kept in the dark about Camp Triangle for as long as possible while Brognola shipped in his own team of Justice and FBI agents to secure what was essentially a sprawling graveyard. He was bypassing all normal channels in that regard, protocol tossed out the window as he risked career or worse, but he understood Bolan’s line of reasoning. If this Special Countermeasure Task Force was plotting some kind of palace coup, Bolan didn’t want them on full alert, though he had to reckon Braden would sound the SOS. There was no point, he knew, getting swept up in myriad hypotheticals and worst-case scenarios.
“You understand what you’re asking, Striker, is unprecedented.”
“It’s an unprecedented situation, Hal.”
“Forget the idea that you have the Man authorize me in the event…and before an event we don’t even know will transpire.”
“I’m only looking for some trust on the Man’s part.”
“Oh, it would be a definite show of trust, I’ll grant you that. I just don’t know how much longer I can hold off running your scenario from A to Z by the Man. With all you’re asking him to give you, he’s going to want specifics, as in facts before he hands you the keys to the White House and the other free pass you mentioned. If it goes down the way you suspect, you understand we’re not the only game in town, covert or otherwise.”
“Understood. I know I’m stating the obvious, Hal, but each administration has used us specifically because we are at the top of their list for deniable expendables. He’s still a politician, he reads the polls, and if this thing is headed where I think, it might his approval rating won’t mean squat if this whole mess sees him staring at impeachment, assuming he’s still breathing.”
There was a long pause on Brognola’s end of the line before he said, “All right. In light of that argument, I think I might be able to persuade him to see it your way, without going into too much detail. Say he keeps the snakes right in front of him from here on, it makes sense, at least we know where they are. And if he can’t, I’ll dispatch my own team to monitor their movements around town. Okay, I’ll light a fire, you’ll get what you want.”
Bolan could believe that. He knew from long experience the clout the big Fed wielded when it came to national security. Successful track records had a way of speaking for themselves, even converting those skeptics bent on straddling the fence, finger in the air to see which way the wind blew.
The Executioner listened as Brognola informed him he had the carte blanche of a Presidential Directive when he hit Incirlik. It was already in the hands of a Major General Eugene Thomas of Special Forces who reported directly to CENTCOM. It was nonnegotiable where the Man stood, since Brognola had at least made him aware of the ongoing hunt for the WMD. Colonel Brandon Stone was part of the team, or he was out, though he would share command. Bolan agreed, but would call his own action on the spot, depending on which way that covert wind blew, adding the possibility he might need a fast ride back to the States.
“Consider it done. By the way, your prisoner’s story so far checks out.”
Bolan looked at the back of Mohammed Bal-Ada’s head as Brognola ran down the investigation particulars he’d dug up through the CIA, NSA and Interpol, but added he couldn’t be one-hundred-percent positive the Syrian was clean.
“In other words, whatever your gut tells you about him, it’s your call,” Brognola said. “But I don’t see the CIA chauffeuring him back home to Syria.”
“I’m cutting him loose at Incirlik, unless, that is, a red flag is raised on your end.”
“I’m sure you already know this, but the spooks will want to talk to him some more before they ring him up a taxi.”
“Understood,” Bolan said, perusing the satellite imagery of his destination. He could use Bal-Ada’s knowledge and experience in the region to point out the exact area where he’d encountered the Turks and Iraqis.
“Striker, I get the feeling there’s something you want to tell me.”
Bolan took a deep breath. How well his old friend knew him, he thought. “It was just a thought, a touch of paranoia maybe, and with no proof…for now, I’d just as soon keep it to myself, Hal.”
“But you’re thinking I can add two-and-two on why you want me tell the President as little as possible, unless absolutely boxed into a corner by the Man.” Brognola sighed.
Bolan picturing the big Fed sitting at his desk, a knotted bellyful of coffee and antacid tablets, gnawing on one cigar after the other. He probably hadn’t slept since before the mission began.
“Let’s hope to God you’re wrong,” Brognola said, and the line went dead.
Bolan gathered up the pile of satellite imagery. He would have a chat with Bal-Ada, and, if possible, a combat nap, though he doubted any rest would come. He was sore, bruised and busted, weary to the bone. But he was alive, and he was hungry to get to the next hellzone and burn down the enemy.
Rising, his thoughts echoed the big Fed’s ominous sentiments. He hoped he was dead wrong. If the President of the United States was using the Special Countermeasure Task Force as an instrument of revolution…
For the time being he chalked it up to the ghosts of the conspiracy burned down in his wake. If the President gave him all he asked for, went the extra mile on the trust score, then the matter was settled. If not…
Bolan shut down the mental picture before it took full dark shape. Why buy phantom trouble, when there was plenty of real trouble to be had.
23
“I have a bad feeling it’s all set to fall apart.”
Lee Durham steepled his fingers, looking around the tight quarters of his West Wing office, crunching numbers while grunting at Ralph Griswald. Space—if he could call it that—in the sixty-by-ninety-foot West Wing was virtually nonexistent, his own cubicle, he figured, roughly seventy square feet. The Oval Office, a few long strides down from his door, measured thirty-six-feet long by thirty wide. Considering those dimensions, he knew what would be removed from inside the Kevlar vests his security force wore at all times would be more than sufficient. A little here in his office, the bulk of it spread around in the Oval Office when the time came, would get the job done. The basement was another matter, figure a hundred-plus personnel, down below, in what was essentially a minicorporation of kitchen staff and other service flunkies. With luck, the ceiling would drop on their heads. But it was the West Wing, where the real moving and shaking took place, that held the keys to his kingdom. If he was forced to—and he didn’t think the President would let it get that far—everything from the Oval Office and the adjoining President’s study, clear down to the National Security Adviser’s office, the Cabinet Room and on up through the second floor…
And then there would be what he secretly coined Big Mama. He pictured the moment of triumph when he dropped that bomb—or the threat of using it. Who would beg him not to do it? Would the President, or the chief of staff or whoever else happened to be there perhaps even kneel before him, groveling, kissing ass to save their world, spouting righteous indignation? Curse him as traitor? Spare the masses, the voting public, for God’s sake, something like that? Or would they stand tall, forget the politics and the polls, show some guts? Would the chief executive crumble, grant him coronation on the spot? Or would he be forced to execute a top aide, maybe shoot the National Security Adviser or the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, splash their brains all over the President’s Re
solute Table to get them in gear to meet his nonnegotiable demands?
Soon, and, oh, how glorious it would all be.
He looked at Griswald, sitting there in the wingback chair in front of his desk, gnawing on his lip, nerves on fire now that the hour of truth was nearly upon them. The man was beginning to annoy him.
“I read the President’s mood at our daily brief, and I can’t say I’m encouraged,” Griswald said. Durham thought the man had sprouted a few more gray hairs the past several hours, the sagging jowl drooping low enough it seemed to perch on his open necktie. “Suddenly, he’s postponed his so-called Mideast Peace Sojourn and his meeting in Pakistan with their president.”
“And?”
“Well, not to mention it was us who busted our tails putting together the whole logistical package, the security, but the sudden manner in which he appears to dismiss our effort, his ear now more tuned and attentive to his chief of staff, the Joint Chiefs, the National Security Adviser, when up to now they all fairly seethed with envy because it was our word and our work he showed favor—”
Durham waved a hand, frowning. “If it’s praise and recognition you want then you chose the wrong career, Mr. Griswald.”
“How can you be so glib?”
“Not glib—confident.”
“How? With what we know happened last night down there, your man on the way with a load of fundamentalists…”
Durham swept his office daily for bugs, but he’d been a spook too long to trust that the walls didn’t have ears. “Careful,” he said.
“Doesn’t it concern you that the President has made no mention of what clearly is not just a disaster but what could prove to become an international scandal? With potential impeachment implications? A fiasco, of which he will want an explanation from us. A thorough investigation is sure to follow, one that could see our scalps hung from his desk, since everyone in this town is always looking for a scapegoat. Those were our people, recommended, recruited by us.”
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