The gunfire halted and the gunners tried to run, but the gas can crashed close by and the fiery fingers lashed out at them. They were burning. They were screaming. Others were fleeing from the flames that swept across the earth.
The Executioner twisted, then put the weight and strength of his entire body behind the second gas can. It spun like a Frisbee, arcing out over the valley for an incredible distance and coming down in the path of the fleeing soldiers. Those who had been farthest from the fires were suddenly at the forefront of a fresh conflagration. They became burning, dancing puppets.
They were dead men who just didn’t know it yet, and Bolan wasn’t going to waste bullets on them.
He triggered the M-16 A-2 into the oddballs who had managed somehow to avoid the bodily harm of Bolan’s hell on earth. Two of them dropped, and the third was returning fire when Bolan took him in the chest with a 5.56 mm shocker that stopped his heart.
But now the M-16 A-2/M-203 was just as dead. Bolan’s assault rifle rounds were used up.
He dropped it, yanked out the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle, then sighted on an Iraqi who thought the warrior was now unarmed and helpless. The gun blasted once, twice, three times, and the Iraqi gunner fell over with half his skull gone.
Bolan heard the thrum of another rotor and found a tiny bug-like speck rushing over the hills from the north, coming right at him. He witnessed a flash of light from under its belly. Rockets.
Bolan ran, up and out the narrow passage, then along the cliff top for three long strides before the rocket arrived.
It couldn’t find him. The projectile wasn’t designed for man-sized targets. It focused its attention on the only machinery in its range of vision. General Jawdat’s jeep exploded and went over the edge, raining more flaming metal on the scattered Iraqis.
Bolan kept running. The gunship kept coming. And if the flyby-wire rockets had trouble homing in on a target as small as a human being, well, at close range they would work just fine. Better yet, a few short trigger pulls on the machine guns and there would be nothing left of Mack Bolan except scraps for the vultures.
Bolan was feeling it again—the sense of utter depletion. He had pushed too hard, slept too little, suffered too many injuries. He was a walking train wreck, and the resources his body needed to heal all those cuts, scrapes, bruises and burns were as substantial as if he had a single major wound he was trying to overcome.
He was slowing. His legs would not carry him faster. The angry buzzing of the gunship was closing in like an angry hornet. The drop-off from the cliff top to the trail was a hundred feet away and Bolan clawed at the air, cursed the soil, sucked in the oven-hot air, and it didn’t make a difference. He was incredibly fit, but he was drained beyond his deepest well of resources and he wasn’t going to make it.
But he sure as hell wasn’t going to die while running for cover. He brought himself to a halt, turned and raised the Desert Eagle defiantly at the hideous black insect that closed in on him.
The Iraqi pilots couldn’t quite believe what they were seeing.
There was a man there, who had to be one of the escaped prisoners they were ordered to look for. He was a scarecrow, a bloodied, ragged, dirty stick figure. He was panting like a marathon runner. He was wavering on his feet like a drunk.
And he was threatening the Soviet gunship, one of the world’s deadliest technological creations, with a handgun.
The pilot grinned. The copilot smiled sardonically and waved.
The scarecrow grimaced, as if he, too, saw something amusing in the situation.
Then, just for their amusement, he tucked the handgun into a hip holster and pointed his finger at them, thumb up, like a pistol.
The pilot laughed out loud.
The scarecrow fired his finger and mouthed the word “Bang.”
And the Iraqi gunship exploded.
“WHAT THE FUCK is he doing?” the gunner cried.
“Distracting them, dammit!” the pilot shot back. “Take ’em out before they see us!”
“With him standing right there?”
“Just fucking fire!”
The rocket tore away from the U.S. Apache gunship with a plume of white fire. The radar jam that the Iraqis had attributed to equipment failure couldn’t hide the rocket signature and the radar on the Iraqi gunship squealed an alarm for an eighth of a second—then the alarm stopped dead, along with every other system on the gunship and her crew.
BOLAN FOUND HIMSELF running again, fleeing the ball of fire. The gunship crashed atop the cliff, where her munitions and fuel ignited uncontrollably.
He came to the edge of the trail. He saw his shadow below in the brilliance of the wall of fire about to engulf him, and he dived into open space. He fell, twisted, met the steep decline and rolled like a log down a mountain.
He came to halt on his back, looking up at the tongues of fire licking the sky, licking the rock, trying to reach him. Then their life force faded and the tongues retreated.
MACK BOLAN DID NOT move. The sky was blue now, clear and clean. It could have been the skies over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Or Oahu or Anchorage. It could have been the blue skies of Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
The War Everlasting had consisted of a thousand battles, but rarely had the Executioner been pushed so hard, bludgeoned and bruised and battered as he had this time.
But he pushed himself. Maybe, as strange as it seemed, he had become too personally invested in what had started out as a favor for Aaron Kurtzman.
The reason? The nature of the crime struck a powerful chord in Bolan. He had seen war. He knew men who were captured by the enemy.
It was to a nation’s shame that it failed to bring back its prisoners of war. But for a man of power to deliberately abandon his nation’s soldiers to the enemy was so dishonorable to those men that it was a personal affront to Bolan.
That was why he fought and struggled to keep going despite the pleas of his body to rest.
All governments had corrupt elements, but this crime made the U.S. seem—what? Unclean? Yes. Unclean. Bolan the patriot had been incapable of permitting the stain to linger uncleansed.
He rolled to his feet as the thrum of U.S. transport choppers and gunship chaperons filled the desiccated Iraqi valley.
He was paying for his compulsion now, and he’d be paying for weeks. He couldn’t find a place on his body that didn’t hurt.
“Sir!”
A pair of Army field medics was racing at him. They tried to grab his arms and sit him down to await a stretcher. He shrugged them off and limped among the devastation he had made of the Iraqi transport choppers. The rock was burned black. Twisted corpses issued a sickly gray smoke.
“The prisoners,” he said.
LONG WAS WAITING outside the transport chopper. He was insisting on being the last of the prisoners to be boarded.
“There’s going to be hell to pay, Sergeant,” Bolan said.
“Sir?”
“Juvenal is going to face the consequences of his actions. You’ll have the pleasure of testifying at his court-martial.”
Sergeant Long looked at the ground, then at Bolan. “Sir, we won’t testify against General Juvenal.”
Bolan said nothing.
“He was our commanding officer, sir,” Long explained. “We were sworn to secrecy. The mission we were on was a good one.”
“The mission has nothing to do with the fact that you were left here to rot for more than a decade just so he could avoid disciplinary action.”
“We knew going in that this was hit or miss. We agreed from the start to follow orders, and even after we ended up in this stinking jail we swore that we wouldn’t betray the cause that got us here.”
Bolan shook his head. “Long, even that cause was a sham. Juvenal was more interested in his career than a negotiated peace. The oath you took was just a tool of his manipulation.”
“Sir,” Long said with finality, “I’m sorry, but the oath is made. We won’t stab General Juvenal in the back.�
��
Long followed the last of the gaunt prisoners into the waiting medevac Chinook.
“Sir! Mr. Cooper!” A pair of MPs was jogging from the Black Hawk UH-60M parked nearby. “You need to come with us, sir.”
Bolan said nothing, did nothing. The MPs got nervous. Behind Bolan the hatch closed on the Chinook and the big chopper took to the air. In seconds the flurry of rotors filled the valley with a deafening miasma of echoes, and then the aircraft was gone. Only the Black Hawk remained.
“I know you’re the one who found these guys and all, sir. I don’t know what Washington’s problem is, but I’m afraid we have to take you into custody, sir.”
One MP took one arm. One MP took another.
“Would you grunts get a move on!” barked the UH-60M pilot. “We got a hundred berserk Iraqis gonna come down on us in about one minute!”
The Executioner was guided to the open entrance to the Black Hawk. The MPs jumped up, and Bolan plodded after them. The MPs grasped him by the armpits and lifted him inside.
One MP jogged up front to pound the cockpit wall. “We’re good to go!” he shouted.
The rotors whined and the landing wheels left the valley floor. Bolan straightened abruptly and floored his handler with an elbow to the gut. The second MP cursed and grabbed for his wrist. Bolan cracked the man in the chin and lifted his assault rifle from his shoulder in one sweep.
The ground was eight feet away when Bolan stepped off and plummeted to the rock, rolling, rising to his feet and running for cover behind the wreckage of the nearest Iraqi helicopter.
The MPs and the pilot shouted back and forth while the Black Hawk hung motionless. Bolan fired the MP’s assault rifle, stitching the helicopter’s body panels. That was all the argument the pilot needed. The Black Hawk ascended fast and shot out of the valley.
29
The valley filled to overflowing with a blessed silence.
Bolan felt disillusioned. Defeated. He had done what he set out to do, and he felt like he had accomplished nothing. Achieved nothing.
The U.S. rescue team had put plastic handcuffs on the surviving Iraqi rebels. A box cutter was supplied so they could free themselves later. The box cutter was on a rock a hundred feet from the survivors, and one of them had managed to crawl halfway there when Bolan confiscated it.
The Iraqi muttered at him unpleasantly. When Bolan appropriated all the water bottles, too, the muttering turned vehement.
Bolan left the valley. Within a couple of miles he took cover in a shallow depression in a stunted cliff wall and waited.
By dusk the Iraqi patrols had ended and the desert was silent. The air became cool. Bolan started walking.
He had water, he had a replacement M-16 with a nearly full clip, and he had his handguns. He would head southeast and eventually run into one of the dry riverbeds that would lead him south. He would find a hole to sleep in tomorrow at dawn and be in friendlier country by the morning of the next day. He could get a flight or a car in al-Lifiyah—on the Saudi Arabian side of the border.
Every step hurt like hell, but he would probably survive.
Bolan pulled out his phone and flipped on the power. The lights came on and he heard Kurtzman say half of the word “Hello” before Hal Brognola came on the line and bellowed, “Striker, where the hell are you?”
“Still in Iraq. I declined the U.S. government’s offer of free lodging in the military lockup. Seems I’ve rubbed somebody the wrong way. Probably our friend Juvenal.”
“That rat bastard,” Brognola exploded. “They had him assisting in the rescue. He must’ve issued the order to have you arrested.”
“How come he’s not locked up, Hal?”
“He is by now. The question is how long he’ll stay there. He’s a D.C. insider, Striker, Army or not. He’s connected, and he’s going to call in every favor he’s owed. It’ll be tough to nail him and make it stick.”
“The charges are serious,” Bolan countered, but it was a halfhearted argument.
“You know the game,” Brognola said.
“I know the game,” Bolan agreed. “I know about the pariah syndrome, too, Hal. No amount of political leverage can overcome a good negative-publicity blitz.”
“No way, Striker. You’re not using Stony Man files to publicize Juvenal’s shortcomings.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Hal,” Bolan said. Brognola’s next words were lost when the soldier cut the connection.
He dialed another number from memory.
“Samuels,” Bolan said. “It’s me.”
“Hey, Belasko Productions, the man himself,” said the German-based airman. “Let me guess. You just finished filming your latest laugh-riot comedy flick and you want me to make copies for all your friends.”
“You’re almost right,” Bolan said. Then he told the airman what he needed done.
“The networks will never air all this stuff, man,” Samuels said.
“They’ll air enough of it to show the world what really happened. Can you distribute it without being fingered?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll upload the video to a newsgroup from the Internet vending machine at the hypermarket in Frankfurt,” Samuels explained offhandedly. “Then all I have to do is send anonymous e-mails telling the news networks where to find it. The video will be there for anybody and everybody to see.”
“Fine. Do it.”
“Hey, that was you, wasn’t it, man?” the airman asked. “You’re the guy behind the camera? You were actually in Iraq to get those guys.”
“Yeah.”
“That took some real balls, man.”
“Samuels, you want to know something funny—that’s the one part of me doesn’t hurt at this moment.”
“Got the shit kicked out of ya, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“But you kicked some ass, too.”
“I guess I did.”
“And now nobody appreciates all your hard work?”
Bolan smiled. This smart-ass kid was putting things into a pretty good perspective. “Think I’ll come to Ramstein and buy you a beer.”
“A beer? You’re gonna owe me like fifty beers. And after watching that damn movie of yours, I feel like drinking them all in one night.”
Bolan felt satisfied when he hung up. The well-connected General Juvenal was about to become world famous, and the most shunned man in Washington, D.C. His career was over. His friends would suddenly forget they knew him. He might even get a fair trial.
If it happened, it would be justice.
Justice was the least, and the most, that he could ever hope for.
His body was tiring, aching, slowing, but mentally he felt better than he had in days. He pushed on through the night with the Saudi border just a hundred miles away.
Epilogue
He emerged from the blackness slowly. He remembered nothing, then he remembered everything.
He should be dead. They shot him. He made them shoot him.
When he opened his eyes, he was face-to-face with Radhi Tereq.
“Good morning, General Jawdat.”
Jawdat tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t work. It felt as if it were caked shut with dried mud.
“Do not be alarmed. You are fine,” the intelligence officer said, wearing a plastic smile. “You were shot a number of times, but we pulled you through. You are in al-Azimiyah getting the best medical care.”
There was a covert prison hospital located near al-Azimiyah, one of the five Baghdad palaces. This facility specialized in fostering the recuperation of those prisoners who were viewed as valuable information sources. Jawdat had himself attended interrogations here.
“We’ve suffered some great setbacks in recent days,” Tereq said. “The American prisoners you were holding in the mountains escaped the country. They suffered not a single casualty, while we lost several aircraft and many men. We’re anxious to learn what you know about the man who spearheaded the operation. No one believes that one American could have caused so m
uch mayhem and destruction without help. But you’re coming along well. In a few days you will be well enough to tell us about it.”
Jawdat knew what that meant and he tried to say something. Anything. He would beg Tereq to free him, or kill him. Any option was better than torture by the pain artisans of Baghdad. Tereq observed his struggles dispassionately.
“Not yet, General. You need a few more days to get well. Then we’ll take the brace off.”
Oh. They had clamped his jaw shut. It was standard practice when it was feared a prisoner might chew off his own tongue to make questioning impractical. The big metal brace locked around his skull and a large wad of gauze was in the mouth to keep his tongue from moving around and being swallowed. The apparatus had a quick-release knob on top, in case the prisoner vomited while wearing it. Jawdat tried to move his arms and found them shackled to a belt around his waist. When he struggled to move his arms the pain in his chest sprang to life.
“Don’t overdo it,” Tereq advised as he turned away. “Rest. Get your strength back.”
To Jawdat’s mind there came an unbidden memory of being at this hospital years ago with one of the American prisoners of war. Jawdat himself had done the questioning. The American prisoners were his pet project, and very few people besides himself, the president, and a handful of top-level advisers had known about their existence. Now, because of his involvement with the Americans, he was about to face the same torture they suffered.
The hideous irony struck him as funny, somehow. He chuckled, and the sound came out as a grotesque gargle.
Tereq was waiting for the guard to unlock the door to the room, and he looked at Jawdat curiously. “I hope you do not go mad on me, General,” he said. “That would spoil everything.”
The gargle stopped. Tereq departed.
Jawdat wished he could go mad. That would make the rest of his life more bearable. But he was perfectly sane, and strong-willed, and despite himself he was going to last a long time here in the clandestine hospital at al-Azimiyah.
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