The few gunshots he could still hear in the distance were drowned by the electric death whine of the Hind as it spiraled to the ground.
It was going to strike the trench right behind him.
This was going to hurt.
He felt the chopper more than he heard it. The impact reverberated through his body, enveloping him in a cloud of heat and sound and pain that crushed the air from his lungs and rattled the bones of his rib cage. The darkness briefly came alive in the light of the fireball that was the Hind. For that instant, night was day.
The blood-soaked floor of the trench rushed up to smash Bolan in the face.
Then there was nothing.
3
Al Tabkah, Syria
Faces.
Bolan saw faces. They were the faces of every woman he had ever loved, every man he had ever fought beside, every innocent to whom he’d extended his protection. He remembered them all. Each and every face was etched on his brain, indelibly printed in his memories.
So many had died. Some of them had simply vanished, lost to him. Some had perished as he’d held them. Some had been tortured, reduced to gibbering wrecks for whom a bullet was the only kindness.
The litany of the dead, the rolls of the fallen, were never far from his mind. But in the heat and light and pain of the explosion, something had brought the memories flooding into the forefront of his brain.
Bolan’s eyes snapped open, his head jerking forward.
A palm against his chest stopped him. He looked down, then to his left. The surprisingly slender palm belonged to Yenni, who was driving the truck with her left hand. The Toyota Hilux bore the scars and dust of driving many miles across the Syrian terrain—or wherever it had driven from to get here. The dirt road on which they traveled was pocked and scarred with ruts of all sizes. A city, such as it was, began to open up around them.
“You were restless in your sleep,” Yenni said.
“A dream.”
“You had many dreams,” she replied.
Bolan changed the subject. “Where are we? What happened?”
“Your plan was not a good one,” Yenni said. “You should have told me you intended to have the helicopter fall on you. I would have spoken against it.”
“That wasn’t exactly… What I mean to say is—”
“So you did not intend for the helicopter to fall on you. This was an accident?”
“Not exactly,” Bolan said. “It’s complicated.”
Yenni took a pack of gum from inside her jacket, unwrapped it with one hand and popped the square of pink bubble gum into her mouth. She gestured with the pack to Bolan.
“I’m trying to quit,” he said.
She chewed, shaking her head. At no time did she slow the truck, which continued to raise a furious dust cloud behind them. The streets began to grow more congested, but Yenni was undeterred. “To answer your question,” she said, “the helicopter fell on you.”
“What?” Bolan said. “We’ve established that pretty thoroughly.”
“You asked what happened.”
“After the helicopter.”
“Which fell on you,” Yenni continued. “A horrible plan.”
Bolan told himself not to sigh. “Right,” he said. “So stipulated.”
She looked at him with a slight frown, as if she didn’t know the word, then went on anyway. “Your wounds were not severe. I am concerned you may have a concussion, however. The windows of your eyes are not quite the same size.”
“The windows of my…” Bolan realized she meant his pupils. Leaning forward, he examined them in the rear-view mirror. If one was slightly blown, he couldn’t really tell. His head felt a bit thick, but that was normal after absorbing an explosion. “I feel fine,” he said. “Although I could really use some coffee.”
“Here, there are many Star-pokes,” Yenni said and laughed at her own joke.
“That’s not actually what they’re called.”
“We have none of the others, either,” she stated. “We are in Al Tabkah. There is an arms bazaar here that will have the weapons you require. Had you not dropped a Hind gunship on the Wolf’s patrol, we might have scavenged more than enough arms from the enemy soldiers.”
“I’m particular about my hardware,” Bolan said. “Besides, we need serious explosives if we’re going to be ready to neutralize the missing weapons systems. A couple of rounds from my Beretta won’t do it. And I think it’s time we moved on, philosophically speaking, when it comes to the Hind.”
Yenni blew a big pink bubble, popped it and pulled it back into her mouth. “We should buy you a helmet,” she said. “Your head is not as thick as it looks, I think.”
Bolan made no reply. The air outside was surprisingly cool despite the time of day and the bright sun beating down. Al Tabkah was typical of Syrian towns in that multiple layers of architecture sprawled among one another. Soviet housing blocks and French flats, relics of the 1970s, reared their heads above modern twentieth-century prefabricated concrete and old Ottoman and French Colonial structures. No building was untouched by concrete rubble and holes from artillery or small-arms fire.
Yenni was eyeing him curiously, spending too much time staring at him and not enough—as far as he was concerned—watching the road. She reached behind her seat with one hand and offered him a dented metal canteen. Bolan thought it looked like 1980s Soviet-era issue. He uncapped it and took a swallow, surprised to find the water cool and delicious.
“Drink well,” she said. “You look dry, Cooper. Death can sneak up on a dry man.”
“Death has been sneaking after me for a while,” he answered. “We’re old friends.”
“I’m not surprised.” She took the canteen when he handed it back, drank some water herself, then stowed it away again. “We are almost to the bazaar. The man we want is named Khasky. He is well-known in Al Tabkah, with many allies. Do not antagonize him.”
“I’ll do my best,” Bolan said.
Traffic picked up as Yenni navigated the streets. There was no real order to the pedestrians, bicycles and motor vehicles they passed, or which surged around them at break-neck speeds. People walked wherever they pleased and seemed to trust that the motorbike and truck drivers would shoot behind or in front of them. At least once, Bolan saw a rust-eaten sedan snap the mirror from an equally aged flatbed truck. The sedan’s driver kept going. The truck driver didn’t even bother to waste an angry gesture from his open window.
They were entering the oldest quarter of the city. The bazaar Yenni had mentioned was covered with cloth tarps that stretched from the nearest buildings to create an on-again, off-again fabric roof, offering some protection against direct sunlight. There were many gaps in the canopy, which followed as little plan as the traffic.
The surrounding structures were a mixture of ramshackle stone huts and a handful of more modern concrete blocks. There were plenty of rubble piles, and an equal number of craters and gaping holes in the buildings. Bolan thought he could pick out individual mortar and artillery scores amid the pockmarks from small-arms fire. None of the damage seemed recent.
Yenni parked the truck in a nearby alley. The narrow passageway smelled of garbage and urine and was littered with debris. Wrapping her scarf more tightly around her face, she beckoned for him to follow. Bolan made sure his weapons were concealed beneath his jacket and jogged along after her.
He still felt slightly lightheaded. She might be right; he might have a mild concussion. The thought did not worry him overmuch. His body was a mass of scar tissue from previous dances with fate. There was no reason today should be any different.
The crowd was thick at the bazaar’s perimeter, but thinned as Yenni led him on toward the rear of the canopied space.
Smells, both exotic and mundane, enticing and foul, assailed his nostrils. A booth of sorts offered what he thought might be Turkish coffee…or something more narcotic in nature, judging from the glazed faces of the men within the enclosure. Other stalls featured dry goods an
d foodstuffs. Some slightly more illicit booths were offering everything from knockoff designer sunglasses to what Bolan thought might be stolen cell phones.
The crowd was predominantly male, although he saw several women wearing black abayas—long, loose-fitting robes. Their heads and faces were covered, showing only their eyes. The men generally opted for head scarves and the didashah, a loose, one-piece robe. There were also several men wearing a variety of fatigues and other paramilitary garb.
What surprised Bolan was that he saw no military-police patrols. None of Hahmir’s regular army and none of the Wolf’s men were in evidence. He had gotten the impression, from his intelligence briefing, that the new Syrian government was busily asserting its authority over those areas in its control.
That might mean Al Tabkah was a pocket of loyalist resistance, dominated by fighters who supported the previous regime. The farther they traveled without evidence of government presence, the more likely that seemed.
Bolan was mildly surprised when they stopped not at a booth but at the door of a stone building that faced the bazaar at the far end. The female guerilla fighter rapped on the rough-hewn wooden door with her knuckles, waited, then rapped again. Finally, the door opened. A man in a white robe and red-checkered head scarf, with a Skorpion machine pistol hanging from his right shoulder on a leather strap, glared at them both.
Yenni spoke a few words Bolan could not understand. Her tone was urgent, her pace quick. The guard—for that was most certainly what he was, and Bolan had met the type countless times—squinted at them. He hesitated, but finally stepped back, gesturing impatiently for them to follow.
Bolan entered the building behind Yenni. The guard slammed the door shut behind them and waved with his Skorpion toward the narrow hallway ahead. The cloying smell of hashish was almost overpowering. At the guard’s glowering encouragement, they made their way down a narrow stone-walled hallway and through a beaded curtain.
The room they entered was vast. Bolan scanned the ceiling and walls and, from the marks on them, assumed this chamber had been made by removing interior walls. At an immense octagonal poker table, of all things, a fat man in a bright white robe and matching head scarf sprawled on a brown leather recliner. The poker table was gray with age and matched the enormous man’s skin.
The fat man smiled. Three of his teeth were gold. His face was covered in a few days of stubble and a sheen of perspiration. He wore multiple gold and gem-studded rings on his thick fingers. On the table before him, he was shuffling an oversize deck of playing cards. Bolan did not let the motion draw his eyes. The man cut the deck, shuffled and riffled the cards in a practiced motion. He wore a diamond-studded gold watch on one thick wrist. A hookah stood on a shabby ottoman next to him, while a plate of dates sat on the poker table amid several greasy paper wrappers. Bolan assumed these were from whatever passed for take-out food in this place.
The pearl grip of a revolver jutted from the fat man’s armpit. He wore his shoulder holster over his robe. A pair of designer sunglasses, probably counterfeit, was perched on his forehead.
The guard with the Skorpion was joined by two others. One of the newcomers held a machete. The other had no weapon visible, but he was easily the biggest of the three, with hands that looked as if they could crack walnuts. Unlike the man at the poker table, nothing about the big guard looked soft or fat.
“How curious,” the fat man said in excellent English, “that you would bring a stranger, a Westerner, here to this place, Yenni.”
“Khasky,” Yenni said, offering a slight bow from the waist. “We have money. We come to buy weapons.”
Khasky squinted at them. He had one lazy eye. Bolan was careful to make no sudden movements. This man was a predator. There was no mistaking the hollow look in his eyes. He would order their deaths the second he thought it would profit him.
“What is it you require?” he asked.
Yenni glanced at Bolan. “Heavy weapons,” he said. “An assault rifle and grenade launcher combination. Explosives, preferably Semtex or something similar. Light enough to be portable, powerful enough to be effective. Detonators. Loaded magazines for the rifle. Grenade rounds for the launcher.”
“Hmm,” Khasky said. “You sound like a man who is preparing for war. What war do you fight here, American? And what makes you think I will help you fight it?”
“We have money,” Yenni interjected. “You sell weapons.” Her tone seemed to say this should be the end of any debate on the matter. Bolan would have grinned if he was not keenly aware of the iron in Khasky’s eyes.
“I do not think you understand.” Khasky’s gold-toothed grin grew wider. From under the table he produced an ancient tape recorder.
“What is this?” Yenni asked. Bolan shot her a glance. It was best not to ask more questions than necessary when you had a blade at your throat, figurative or otherwise.
“I have conducted business here for a long time,” Khasky said. “Things were much better before Hahmir took over. My profits are down. My people suffer. The Wolf’s patrols do not come near Al Tabkah. They know better now. But this did not come without a price. Many of my best fighters died.”
Bolan risked a reply this time. “That has nothing to do with us,” he said.
“Does it not?” Khasky asked. He pressed the play button on the tape recorder with one fat finger.
“…American interference,” said a distorted voice. “Highest alert. The Americans seek the weapons.” The voice continued, but was too garbled to understand. The words had been in English but with a heavy accent. That was curious.
“We do not know who sent this,” Khasky said. “We recorded it from the radio. Now you, Yenni, bring me an American.”
“He is Canadian,” she said.
“And I am king of this land,” Khasky replied. His evil grin never wavered. “No. He is an American. He is an American come to find Hahmir’s American weapons. And this will not do. For if Hahmir and the Wolf secure these weapons, those who believe as I do will suffer more. And my control of Al Tabkah may be broken. I cannot allow this.”
They were loyalists. Whoever had tipped them off—possibly the same person who had told the Wolf’s men to expect an incursion in Bolan’s drop zone—wanted to make sure Bolan didn’t find those weapons. Was it the Wolf himself, pursuing his own agenda? Was it some other force? Was Hahmir hiding the weapons and claiming they were stolen, in order to deceive his newfound Western allies? There was no way to tell yet.
Before he could learn more, Bolan was going to have to survive the next thirty seconds.
Khasky drew a machete from under the table, where it had probably been in a sheath affixed beneath.
“Khasky, this is a mistake,” Yenni said. “We will pay you double.”
“Kill them,” the fat man told his guards.
4
Hal Brognola watched his .45-caliber Glock disappear into the metal tray and reappear on the other side of the blast-reinforced Plexiglas. The stone-faced attendant logged the weapon into his computer, nodding the big Fed through the door at the other end of the chamber. That door was tempered steel and opened on hydraulic pistons. Brognola ducked his head to clear the upper edge, mindful of the teeth that meshed with slots in the floor, then waited for the door to close behind him.
The hardened black site, a stone’s throw from the Potomac in the subbasement of a nondescript government building, employed a level of security that made Guantánamo Bay look like a summer camp. No weapons were allowed except those wielded by the staff. Potential recruits were drawn from the same pool of men who eventually became the blacksuits of Stony Man Farm. The counter-terrorism facility, hidden in plain sight in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, used them for its day-to-day operations and to occasionally assist Mack Bolan or the action teams when needed. The blacksuits were seasoned police officers and military personnel, extremely capable. Looking at these guards, Brognola did not have to remind himself that he was dealing with equally capable professionals.
They moved like panthers and they carried their M4 rifles with easy familiarity.
The public would go apoplectic if people knew that a “black prison” was operating right in Wonderland, a cab ride away from the Capitol. Still, sites like these were necessary. As much as Brognola hated to skirt the Constitution, he was forced to do so on a regular basis. The nation’s enemies didn’t follow the rules, nor could he afford to have his hands bound by idealism. There were times when it was necessary to go the black-bag route.
Today, for instance, there was the ugly business of interrogating the man who’d tried to kill the President.
Brognola carried in his hands the complete dossier Intelligence had compiled on the man, who’d given only one name: Eidra. Calling it that—complete—oversold the case. They knew very little on Eidra himself. His prints weren’t in the database, and while they could run his DNA, it would take weeks to get a match. Interpol had nothing on him, nor did the Farm’s supersecret compiled files. The worst part was that every time Brognola stared at the man, he felt as if he was missing something. It was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind, as if he’d walked into a room to get something and then forgotten what he’d come to find.
The guards walked him down several long corridors, which switched back on themselves and were, he swore, deliberately designed to be confusing. The halls were a uniform battleship gray, the doors steel with barred, inset windows. The bars protected bullet-resistant Plexiglas. Specifically, they prevented prisoners from kicking the square and popping the pane of high-tech Plexi straight out of the door. Each window was coated with a translucent film that prevented prisoners from seeing out and observers from seeing in…unless they wore a pair of specially coated sunglasses that somehow defeated the film. Brognola had been briefed on how the tricky little optics effect worked and had concluded he did not care. The guards with him were wearing those shades, which looked like the type of thing a snowboarder might wear. It didn’t make them seem any friendlier.
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