He decided to let the sick drama unfold as it would. Beyond a scintilla of doubt—and there had been some up to then—he now knew Collins and Cobra were just as bad as the men they imprisoned. They were vicious, merciless predators. They could wrap themselves up in the Stars and Stripes all they wanted, but murder of helpless combatants, illegal or otherwise, simply ranked them as evil. The moment now also told Bolan he wasn’t one of them, never had been, never would be, and they could write that in stone. He would keep it to himself, but he would hold them every bit as accountable to retribution and swift justice as they wanted to hold the enemy.
A wave of shouting and screaming erupted down the bench, the extremists going berserk, fighting to break out of their bondage, insane with outrage and fear. Collins was shouting for silence, his commandos rolling up to the bench, pointing assault rifles at the prisoners. A butt crack to a skull or two began to simmer them down.
“Any of you other sons of dirty milk mama whores want a taste?” Cyclops said, wiping the blade off on the caftan of the terrorist sitting next to the victim and getting sopped in geysering crimson. The cut had been so deep, Bolan could tell he’d nearly decapitated the terrorist. They left him there, chained and spouting blood.
“Now, I believe I was laying out your sorry futures,” Collins said. From a metal table, the major picked up a yellow tablet of paper. “Whether you spill your guts by word of mouth, or if any of you fancies yourselves a wanna-be scribe,” he said, and slapped a face with the tablet, then flung it at another prisoner, “you are going to tell us everything. How it gets done is up to you. But you are going to give up every mullah, imam or goat-humping whore you have ever spoken with in your miserable lives. Your words will be eventually written down, and, no, for you there will be no six-figure advance out of New Yawk City for your tales of woe and sorrow through the narrow and rapidly closing windows of your former soulless murderous lives. You—each and every one of you—were not born and raised in the promised land. You have paved your own roads to Hell and Hell is where you are going. Do not worry. Soon there will be more joining you, so you are going to have plenty of misery loves company.” Collins paused, grinning down the line, then flicked his cigarette, winging it off a bearded face. “Any questions?”
Collins spun on his heels, Gambler falling in behind the major. Cyclops and Warlock remained with the prisoners. Bolan watched as the two ops opened small pouches, began fixing patches with numbers on the shoulder of each prisoner, unable to resist a few more taunts.
“Enjoy the floor show, Colonel?” Gambler asked.
“Immensely.”
“You being smart?”
“Never,” Bolan told Gambler.
He was grunting, but moving on to the work bays. Bolan, alone with Collins, spotted something in the major’s eyes he didn’t think the man capable of. Was that sorrow or regret? Or was Collins about to attempt to warm him up with another act?
Collins shook a cigarette out of the pack, offered one to Bolan, who’d declined. When the major had his smoke lit, he said, “Some days—you ever wake up, Stone, and not like who or what you see in the mirror? You ever wonder if sometimes your life should have been different?”
“I’ve had occasion.”
“But not too often.”
“We’re all only human.”
“Or inhuman,” Collins said, looking back over his shoulder.
Bolan said nothing, though he wanted to point out exactly who back there was the more inhuman.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do, Colonel. We hit Kenya, we’ll iron out the details for the next stint.” Collins worked on his smoke. “We’re going on a little vacation to the Seychelles. Just you, me and Gambler. Come on, let’s go see what goodies we grabbed up from the homeboys back there.”
Bolan kept the suspicion off his face about the next round, but the itch between his shoulder blades just got worse. There was a whole lot of doubt in his mind a trip to the island nation of the Seychelles was going to be a day at the beach.
KHALIQ QUNANI WAS a long way from home, and he was disturbed.
It wasn’t the first time he’d left his country, a cutout delivering intelligence, marching orders or money from his ayatollah to a group of fighters. Before, whether it was Chechnya, Kabul, Karachi or Paris, he had met with brother Muslims to outline future operations against the infidels, drop off money and intelligence, shore up resolve.
Now he had been ordered to work with the enemy, as different a mission as Heaven was to Hell. Precisely who they were he wasn’t sure, his entire task swathed in grim mystery, anxiety sure to dog him for days to come. He had never met them, not even viewed a photo of these shadow men. The homing beacon fixed to his belt beneath his cashmere topcoat would lead them to him, or so he had been told. And the briefcase in his hand was bringing to the enemy that which they so valued, and was apparently their sole reason for, as his ayatollah put it, coming over to the right side.
Money—three hundred million U.S. dollars to be exact—was to be delivered to these nameless, faceless Westerners. It was all electronic funds, but he had the access codes to the bank accounts that would prove the transfers had been made.
It had been a long journey from Tehran, but jumping nerves and running adrenaline kept his weariness at bay. He had stayed in Istanbul for a day, then flown on by a private charter to Sicily. He had been ordered to take his time, shake any tails, proceed with cautious optimism, meeting with fellow Muslim cutouts who had moved him on safely to the next leg of his sojourn. In Sicily a boat had been waiting, hauling him the sixty miles south to the island archipelago of Malta. Halfway to North Africa now, he vaguely entertained the notion of sailing on from the capital city of Valleta, turning his back on some plan that not even he was privy to in detail. But he knew to shirk his duty was not only a certain death sentence, but also he would risk his immortal soul to eternal damnation by not carrying out the will of God as spoken through his ayatollah. He had never questioned the ayatollah’s judgment before now, but he couldn’t help but wonder about the sanity of working with the enemy. Then he recalled the holy man’s final words before leaving Iran.
“These infidels will do as they told us they will, I assure you. They love money too much to not aid us in pulling off a big event that will shake the Great Satan to his knees. Go with God. Fear not. The future and our glory came to me in a vision.”
Inspiration to carry on with the task wished to return but too many questions were suspended in his thoughts. What big event? When and where would this happen? What would be his role? Why join forces with the Devil to begin with?
Wishing he was armed, he shucked up his coat against the chilly morning air breezing in off Grand Harbor. A dirty light was just now breaking over the ships and boats of various size and duties. He was on schedule, according to his watch, as he continued his westward vector, angling away from the docks, melting into the shadows swaddling the first rows of grimy stone buildings. Shadows were coming to life all around him, his nerves talking back to him louder with each passing moment. He wondered when and how many of his contacts would suddenly move out of any number of alleys and courtyards in the fortified city of towers and ramparts, a maze of imposing architecture he was sure that had helped the Maltese drive away invaders over the centuries. He stopped as he suddenly felt a presence closing on him from behind. He jumped when he heard, “Are you enjoying your stay in Malta?”
It was his contact. Slowly, he turned, found a muscular dark-haired man in a black bomber jacket. Hard to say what nationality, his skin burnished by the sun and the sea, but Qunani assumed he was of Western origin. “That remains to be seen,” he said, repeating the words he had memorized.
“This way.”
He followed his contact into an alley. His heart racing, he braced to attack should he discover his ayatollah had been betrayed. The contact led him to a nondescript stone building midway down the alley. A door was opened, and the contact held his arm out. Qunani had come this far, h
e hesitated in the doorway, then ventured inside. He was met by another dark man, who beckoned to follow him down the hallway. Light flickered from a doorway at the far end, and Qunani was ushered through.
It appeared to be some sort of command-and-control center. Qunani took in the banks of computers, other screens with digital readouts, a computerized wall map of the world.
A big gray-haired man walked up out of the shadows, displaying a shoulder-holstered pistol. “I assume you have it?”
Qunani set the briefcase on a metal table, clicked through the dial, opened it up. He produced the CD-ROM, handed it to the gray man. The gray man handed it off to a subordinate, who inserted the disk into a computer.
“The access codes,” the gray man said.
Qunani gave them the codes, watched as the fingers of the shadow man flew over the keyboard.
“Three hundred million. The down payment,” Qunani said. “As agreed upon, another third will be deposited when this event is under way. Another third when I have returned to Iran with the merchandise, whatever that is. I was informed by my sponsor that the rest of the agreed-upon price of a billion dollars will be turned over in cash, in person, when the item my sponsor was promised is delivered to him.”
Qunani felt a flash of resentment as the gray man ignored him, watching only the computer monitor.
“Confirmation, mister?”
“It’s there, sir. Three hundred mil.”
The gray man smiled, Qunani chilled for a moment by the lifeless eyes staring him back. “Okay. Looks like we’re in business.”
“May I ask—?”
“No, you may not,” the gray man said. “You can call me the Contact. That’s all you need to know. You will be our guest here, so why don’t you go get settled in, grab some food, some shut-eye. A lot is going to happen very soon and I don’t know when you—or any of us—will sleep or eat again when this thing starts.”
The gray man turned away, and Qunani heard another of the shadow men telling him, “This way.”
Qunani held his ground, the questions piling up now more than ever. He wasn’t sure how much sleep he would get in the house of the enemy, as he felt a sudden urge to pray.
CHAPTER NINE
“Oh, man, welcome to paradise. Have I arrived or what?”
It was a murmur, thrown to the wind at ten knots, but Bolan caught it, checked what he believed was yearning on Collins’s face, would have sworn next the Cobra leader was even getting a little misty-eyed beneath his black Blues Brothers shades.
Paradise.
The soldier, sitting at the midway point on a bench in the large motorized outboard, followed Collins’s stare to shore. It was, Bolan had to admit to himself, a beautiful sight to behold. The sun was up, cobalt and blazing, peeking in and out of scudding white clouds, the calmest and bluest-green water Bolan had ever seen sparkling like a vast bed of diamonds. Palm and takamaka trees rose from the white sand, a kaleidoscope of exotic birds fluttering here and there among the lush tropical vegetation. Gulls strafed the surface for breakfast to the west, a school of dolphins to the east, sleek torpedoes glistening as they arced in and out of sunlight. Schooners and what had to be a seven-figure, hundred-plus-foot yacht were sluicing toward the harbor of Grand Anse, but, according to Collins, the three of them were going to beach the boat in a remote cove, their beachhead on the island of Praslin, where an SUV was waiting for them, dropped off courtesy of Company ops, Bolan assumed. Water sprayed in his face as Gambler guided them toward shore in the Zodiac inflatable boat. There was one thing about this heaven on Earth he nearly mentioned to his two traveling black ops.
This was about as close as they would ever get to the Garden of Eden.
It was somewhat unclear to Bolan how they were going to proceed, though most of the details had already been spelled out, at least as far as the numbers and strategy went. Most of the night had been spent at the base in Kenya, he recalled, viewing training videos, poring over manuals that covered the usual nightmare aspects of murder and mayhem being dreamed up by terrorists, but with a few new frightening twists that involved chemical and biological agents, both the acquiring and use, or how to brew the nastier stuff at a home lab. There were various and sundry concoctions even for developing bombs on the spot using flammable liquids and other precursors and materials that could be bought at any hardware store. There were videos where black-hooded instructors taught hand-to-hand combat, hostage takedown, fired small and large arms, wired C-4 to cell phones as remote detonators, displayed the proper and most aggressive way to use knives and other sharp objects on dummies with poster faces of well-known American politicians and celebrities. One especially disturbing video had shown a goat thrashing in death throes as a white cloud was pumped into a room, but there was no mention of what the chemical had been. With all the material they had seized in Sudan, Bolan knew it would take days, perhaps even weeks to sift through, decipher encrypted passages, uncover future operations. Never one to look beyond the next battlefront, but depending on how the rest of the mission went, Bolan decided he could have Brognola flex some official muscle, land the intel gold mine or copies thereof in the hands of the cyber team at Stony Man Farm. No telling really what might turn up, but whatever intelligence could be stolen and studied always put the warrior one step ahead of the enemy.
Then there was Collins, giving Bolan once again the distinct impression he was holding back, or holding on to something only he was meant to know. For all his talk about filling in Colonel Stone on the rest of the mission, clue him in as to the final destination of the prisoners…
It didn’t happen.
Bolan decided to sit back, aware the next few moments could be his last in some time to come to relax and take in the sights. If nothing else, the three of them were certainly decked out as if they were going to while the day away on the golf course or sip Mai Tais pool-side at some resort. Dark aviator shades covered Gambler’s and Bolan’s eyes, and they sported wildly colored aloha shirts with flowers, flamingos and scantily clad island girls. Black slacks of Italian silk for Bolan with wingtips. Gambler went with white pants and alligator shoes, Collins sticking to khakis and white loafers, the Don Ho wardrobe provided courtesy of the Cobra leader. Beyond the tourist-playboy appearance, the nylon bags on the deck would soon dispel anybody’s notion they were in Praslin for fun and games. The hardware was basic—mini-Uzis all around, Beretta side arms, commando daggers and a smattering of frag, flash-bang and incendiary grenades, with two canisters packed with NARCON-D, and three gas masks.
Collins stated his contacts on the island had nailed down the location of Iranian extremists, had them under watch. There were two hits on the scorecard, enemy numbers totaling fifteen, could be more, Collins said, split between a hotel suite in Grand Anse and a remote rain forest pocket at the eastern edge of the island. Collins claimed they were going in hard and fast, two faces committed to memory for the cuff and stuff, but said during the final brief he didn’t want to be running around Praslin, shooting and blowing up the island, drawing a lot of attention to themselves. They had left their Gulfstream ride parked back on the main island of Mahé on an airfield the major had informed him, Bolan recalled, was an American intelligence base, but when the soldier inquired which agency, the major answered he wasn’t even sure God knew. Out of all the 115 islands that comprised the archipelago in the vast expanse of the Indian Ocean, the question begged itself how Collins knew exactly where the Iranian fundamentalists were holed up. The Cobra leader had simply told Bolan they’d been working on it for some time. They just knew.
But of course.
Using his GPS monitor, Gambler steered them into a cove thick with swaddling palm trees. Birds cawing, the sun beating down on his neck, Bolan felt coral rock scrape the bottom of the outboard. They were out, the soldier helping his teammates haul the outboard up the sandy bank where Gambler took the mooring line and tied it around the base of a palm tree.
Personal weapons bag in hand, Bolan, suddenly f
eeling that itch between his shoulder blades as they were now stepping back into the ring for the next round, hung back. Gambler was giving him that strange look again, Collins staring down the shoreline, then out to sea.
“I tell you what, gentlemen,” Collins said. “You ever feel like you’ve worked and sweated—or in our cases—shed blood and risked our lives for Uncle Sam for so long and so many times you’ve earned the right to cut yourself a slice of paradise? Ever feel like you deserve it, screw it all, I’m going to take what I can now and live the good life?”
Bolan said nothing, but his gut was rumbling loud and angry, instinct warning him Collins had just revealed something dark and hungry about himself.
“All the time,” Gambler said.
“One of these days,” Collins murmured.
“And one of these nights,” Gambler chimed in. “There shall be an ‘all the time.’”
The look melted on the Cobra leader’s face, the dark hunger in the eyes back as he said, “Let’s go kick some butt.”
Bolan hesitated, Collins and Gambler moving past the warrior. They might be in paradise, Bolan thought, but he was sure in the coming hours the fires of hell would blow through the Seychelles.
“You want to join us, Colonel?” Gambler called back.
Something about that guy, Bolan thought, the tone, the look, the body language, and knew he wasn’t about to take point or drive their car with Gambler sitting behind him.
Welcome to Paradise, the Executioner thought, or welcome to Hell?
ZARIK HAMADAN HAD a gut feeling the party was over, but he’d suspected that the good times were never meant to keep on rolling even before he set foot on this island paradise. It was strange, if he thought about it, how he’d been ordered—a top lieutenant in the global jihad—to essentially cool his heels in the closest thing to heaven on Earth he could imagine, wait for whatever his marching orders from their ayatollah.
So he was now far away from his homeland, surrounding himself with all the sinful pleasures his religion denounced and despised as trappings of the Devil. But he had been told to go to the Seychelles, enjoy himself while he could, that a big event was soon to happen, be patient, have faith, be strong. The usual mantra, yes, but who could disobey the ayatollah?
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