Alone again, feeling it deep in his gut, the Executioner laid down his M-16/M-203 combo. Drawing himself onto a knee, he pulled the sound-suppressed Beretta 93-R. He pointed at the sentry, who flicked the cigarette away, unzipped to relieve himself. The whirl of a hand, the arranged tornado signal, and they knew it was a go after the sentry was taken out.
The Executioner drew target acquisition.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Don’t talk.”
Hamid Bhouri looked over at the black-clad, warpainted commando, not liking what he saw or heard in the least. He felt his gut clench, heart sink, fear gripping him as he stared into eyes that held no life. He knew it was over, and he cried inside, aware he would never see his family again.
Such, he thought, was the cruelty of life.
There was something about this one—unlike the first commando he had laid eyes on—he couldn’t trust. It was as if he were looking at a sack of flesh with no soul, unlike the other commando, who seemed to have something else beyond the war face, something far greater and far more noble burning deep inside. But what? he now wondered. Mercy? Compassion? Understanding? That the first one could discriminate between good and evil, draw a line that defined clearly what was human and what was not, act decisively when there was no point of return for the other, no remorse or hope for those at the end of his gun?
Hamid Bhouri couldn’t say for certain, but he knew he was looking at his own death beside him.
The one time this commando in the passenger seat had looked at him—or through him—Bhouri felt a chill walk down his spine, a whisper of doom ghosting through his mind that he was expendable at the end of this ride. Or was it simply just fear talking back at him, the fervent desire to finish his task and return home to his family? Was there hope still?
No.
This commando, apparently in charge, had a cold voice and the dead eyes of a serpent, looked and spoke to him as if he were less than dirt, alive only to serve his purpose, so much garbage to be crumpled up and tossed aside when he was no longer useful. It was only a gut feeling, but he’d seen and been around enough cold-blooded killers to know when he was in the presence of evil.
He had been explaining the route, distance, how he’d tracked the safest passage to the southern edge of the camp, nerves getting the better of him, talking if only to hear himself talk, clinging to a fading hope he would see his wife and children again.
Fading fast, and gone. God—or destiny—was calling him now to accept that which he couldn’t change. Had he not, he recalled, told his own children that violence only begot more violence, continued only a cycle of pain and suffering for all? That angry pride was the willful instrument of the Devil, serving only to drive man to self-destruction? That, to turn the other cheek, going against the willful and proud impulse of man, was the only way? That there was more strength in humility, that a savage act only made man less human, or worthy in the eyes of God?
Who could say, he thought, but knew he was moments away from discovering.
Lights off on the van, he was winding them ahead through the wadi, cedars dotting the lunar landscape up the slopes, the night illuminated in a ghostly green hue through his NVD goggles. Three of the invaders had been left behind to penetrate the cave, do whatever they were going to do, while he provided taxi service for the rest, a sudden wish the first one was here now with him, that he would see the dawn and be with his family.
A fool’s wish, he knew.
Four of the commandos were in the van, with four more heavily armed shadows lurching in his rear and side mirrors as they trailed, scouring the ridgelines, he assumed, for any threat. He had been ordered to maintain a steady ten miles per hour, the near invisible rearguard clipping along, armed spacemen, he thought, with their NVD headgear, falling farther behind but keeping a pace that told him they were in top mean and lean physical conditioning.
“Don’t look at me—watch where you’re going. I won’t tell you again.”
Something in the voice said it all.
Silently Bhouri began to pray. They were suddenly getting themselves worked up, the serpent commando with some minicomputer in his hands, his fingers a blur as they flew with a fury over the keyboard. He was rattling off numbers, ordering one of the others in the back to relay a series of those numbers, call it in.
“Park it, kill the engine.”
Bhouri did as he was told. The serpent commando was ordering the others to go. They were out, melting into the night, charging the hill that would take them to the camp. He stripped off his night-vision goggles, laid them down between the seats, afraid but strangely calm in some way that took him out of his body. The fire began to burn up behind his eyes next, as he prayed for his soul, the future safety of his family, but he wouldn’t show weakness or beg for his life. He was sick for a second, painfully aware that he had not sided with the angels.
There was, yes, evil alive and walking in the Bekaa, he knew, but who was what? Perhaps the invaders had come here to erase an abomination that was simply on the earth to cause grief and misery. Perhaps, he decided, it took some form of evil to defeat a greater evil. Perhaps God, in his infinite wisdom, didn’t need to explain his plan to a simple farmer.
He didn’t see the serpent commando do it, sensed instead the pistol coming out, a sound suppressor being attached. It was a flash before his eyes, as he stared ahead into the night. All that was, and could have been, the faces of his family, a mosaic of pain and joy, tears and laughter raced before him, a living vision that told him all he needed to know.
He could have fought the serpent commando, lunging over, grabbing the gun. Even if he killed him, there were other men of violence with automatic weapons who would turn back, murder him.
Bhouri shut his eyes, the smile tight on his mouth, Samira and his children dancing through his mind again.
All that never would be.
There was a warmth next, a glow, spreading with a paralyzing force through him, a light he could see inside his head. He felt a courage he would have never dreamed himself capable of, accepting what was. It was over, but someday…
Someday he would see his family in Heaven.
In Arabic he told the serpent, “May God have mercy on your soul.”
“What?”
“May peace and mercy be unto those who seek it.”
He heard the serpent chuckle. “You know, if God cared so much, the world wouldn’t be such a fucked-up place.”
He turned his head toward the serpent as the commando lifted the pistol and told him, “Appreciate the lift.”
NO SOONER HAD Bolan leaped off the ledge, landed, flanked by Wallbanger and Gator after getting the all-clear hand signal from the Cobra commandos, then he sensed how wrong it all felt. Sure, they were painted in red, five stationary targets in all at the deepest end of the reverse L on his heat-motion sensor, but one look down the narrow cave and his gut told him it was about to go to hell. Were they lying in wait? No question the enemy had the advantage in this situation, and what was to say they likewise didn’t have heat and motion sensors at their disposal? Well, he had to go to them, no matter what, one of several potential deadly problems, and if they knew he was coming…
Damn! Bolan would be the first to admit he hated armed engagements in a cave, turf the enemy had created with every advantage on their side. Nothing he could do about it now. A flamethrower would be nice, or better still one of those warbirds at the good major’s beck and call simply cleansing the cave with a well-placed laser-guided bunker buster.
So much for wishful thinking.
Bolan motioned for Gator to guard the entrance, Wallbanger to lag behind during their penetration. Each ventured step was going to prove beyond hazardous, Bolan’s gaze flickering from the heat monitor to the floor and walls in search of trip wires, booby traps but…
It occurred to the warrior that if Collins did in fact want him out of the way, he just might get his wish.
Not tonight, Bolan determined. There was, ye
s, something to be said about sheer willful pride and raw guts.
The hole was just large enough for the soldier to slip inside, a single naked bulb midway down providing just enough light to steer his advance. Wallbanger, he glimpsed, wasn’t listening so good; Bolan shooting his arm back for the commando to keep his distance. The Executioner wasn’t looking to take a bullet for the home team on a reckless whim, but if it went south he could tell Collins—assuming he walked out—that he’d taken point, done his damnedest to keep his men out of harm’s way, Colonel Considerate.
He scanned the rocky floor, the breaks in the wall for wires, concealed explosives, every yard breached and earned with agonizing quiet care. The assault rifle was out, one-handed, Bolan maybe fifty paces from the bend when he saw the flurry of movement on his screen.
They were coming.
A heartbeat later he saw the mirror mounted on the wall where the cave cut back in its reverse L. More often than not, Bolan knew, low-tech could beat high.
“Fall back!” he shouted at Wallbanger, just as two skullcapped hardmen whirled around the corner, holding back on the triggers of AK-47s, blazing away and screaming in Arabic.
It was pure luck, but Bolan spotted and flung himself into a narrow crevice slashed down the wall. A swarm of projectiles screamed past the Executioner in sense-shattering ricochets, the deafening roar of autofire swelling his brain. He crouched, heard the sharp cry ring out. A fleeting eyefull, but he caught Wallbanger falling, blood spurting from his chest and forehead. There was no choice but to brave the storm, bullets snapping past his head, if he was going to turn the tide. He was swinging around the edge of the crack when he found one of the two shooters arming a grenade. A lightning shift in aim and Bolan stitched him up the chest, flinging him back in a one-eighty jig, the grenade rolling up beside the falling body.
THE NUMBERS WERE crunched. All they had to do now, Collins thought, was to wait for the compound to start going up in flames. One F-117 Stealth, four F-15Es, two Apaches and his trusty Spectre were on the way. A combo American-Israeli squad of fighter pilots, but there was no mistake in his mind they were the best of the best. The Israelis, he knew, wanted this camp erased off the map, nothing more than a smoking memory, as bad as the Americans.
Stretched out in a prone position, Collins surveyed the massive compound, his troops fanned out on their bellies. They were spread out on the lip of the wadi, a quarter mile due south of the terror camp. Cyclone fence encircled an area that was roughly three city blocks. It was electrified, but it would be cut with rubber-handled hydraulic shears. Guard towers on four points of the compass, watching the valley, the perimeter swaddled in areas by cedar. One look, and he knew the fighter jockeys would have to get it right the first time. Four massive concrete buildings, the sat dishes marking the C and C structure to the west. Figure the other buildings were barracks, training centers, classrooms, over a hundred terrorists to tackle. Then there were machine-gun nests, two tracked ZSU-23-4s that would have to go first, enough APCs and Land Cruisers to swell a giant parking lot. Right then it appeared most hands were asleep, a few stragglers hanging around, just the same, smoking shadows in the outer reaches of klieg lights.
A fearsome piece of intelligence had reached Collins about this batch of terrorists. According to the late Gambler, there were detailed papers about their mission—or, rather, the darker aspects of what would soon go down. If those fell into the wrong hands, he was faced with major problems, his own plans all but scrapped. That would leave him…
Hell, broke, hung out and hunted.
No chance, if he had anything to say about it. That was part of the reason he had dispatched Stone to take down the cave. Not only that, but wiping out a nest of fanatics hunkered down in a cave was no easy task. With any luck…
Something told Collins he’d see Stone again. Or maybe not.
The face of Amir Habikin, the camp commander, was framed in his memory. He needed the Syrian bastard talking, and he had to take first what was suspected he had. There were to be no survivors, unless they were third or fourth tier, out of the deeper circle of the enemy intelligence loop, and threw their hands up, begging for mercy.
He was tempted to check the black skies, but looked at the illuminated dial of his chronometer. He would hear the explosions before he even saw the payloads on the way.
Collins did.
There was thunder and lightning, rocking the world out of nowhere, the sky falling on the compound with the laser-guided barrage. The night was on fire, one rolling, blazing wave after another, buildings blown to smithereens, but Collins knew it wouldn’t get any easier once they were inside the fence.
BOLAN RODE OUT the blast, hugging cover, then charged into the boiling smoke, sweeping the cloud with spray-and-pray autofire. They were shouting around the corner, a glance at his screen painting them at the deep end of the reverse L but coming toward him.
Arming a frag grenade, Bolan let it fly in a low whipping motion, the throw angled, a sidearmed pitch. He was aiming for a ricochet, spied it caroming off the far wall, then vanish. The explosion, trapped in the tight confines of the cave, split his skull but he was moving hard and fast to mop it up.
Crouched, he hit the edge, caught the moans of walking mangled and wheeled around the corner, holding back on the trigger. Two were reeling about, trying to bring their stuttering assault rifles back on-line, but they were absorbing lead, the soldier nailing them left to right.
Bolan took in the stacks of crates, then toed all five bodies, pumping a round each into forehead or the ground hamburger of each face. He whirled, barely catching the scuffling through the ringing in his ears. Gator materialized out of the smoke cloud.
Bolan ignored the angry look on Gator’s face, aware the commando was jacked up over the loss of his teammate, searching for a quick release for his pent-up aggression. The Executioner brushed past him, moved on to finish the task here. Stooping over Wallbanger, he checked for a pulse, but already knew the commando was dead.
Gator was cursing. “What the fuck happened, Colonel?”
“You saw it.”
“What am I—you—going to tell the major?”
“That he’s lucky he didn’t lose all three of us.” Bolan plucked the incendiary package off Wallbanger. “Get him out of here and fire up that Land Cruiser. Move it!”
There was just enough angry hesitation from Gator, but Bolan checked the tongue lashing, as the commando grumbled, then scooped up Wallbanger, draping him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
Bolan put him out of mind, then trekked back to ignite the fuse that would bring the roof down on this rat’s nest. Five more bad guys down, one less weapons cache for terrorists to slaughter the innocent with. Whatever else had happened here, Bolan figured it was a decent coup, all things considered.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The written standing orders had been delivered by fellow Syrian cutouts one week ago from their Iranian sponsor. It was so incredible, preposterous even, that Amir Habikin had dismissed it as lunacy. Seven long days later, and he was still left wondering if the vaunted leader of the global jihad was either insane or was in league with the Devil.
Which dumped him into a quandary of dark and unsettling dimensions.
The questions alone were endless, agonizing, driving him to consume more alcohol than normal, smoke an extra pack of American cigarettes per day. There were no answers in sight, just a stream of questions that flowed in the same direction toward the waterfall that could send him plunging into the abyss of some monstrous conspiracy, a leviathan in the churning waters at the end of the descent, waiting to swallow him whole.
Not even his fellow Muslims, he knew, were above betraying their own.
He was sitting at his desk, perusing the aspects of the proposed plan, wondering once more where the truth ended and the treachery might begin. It had become something of a nightly ritual, alone in his office, chain-smoking, a glass of whiskey at his fingertips, sifting through dark thoug
hts, reading the report over and over, then staring at it as if a vision of the future would leap out of the pages and slap him in the face, showing him all the answers, divine guidance sure to follow. The more he read and pondered the standing orders, the more curious—and anxious—he became.
Scratch that. He was frightened, and as a leader of holy warriors committed to jihad, he wasn’t allowed to be afraid.
Incredible as it sounded, the global jihad leader, it appeared, had cut some deal with infidels to capture what was more or less a who’s who list of well-known freedom fighters. From Somalia to Lebanon to the Gaza Strip many of what were, in his mind, the best, the brightest and the toughest of holy warriors, were to allow themselves to be taken prisoner by some faceless, nameless force of Western commandos. The when, where and how was unclear.
That was only the start, however. The insanity got better, or worse, depending on who was chosen to be saved and who was destined to become a sacrificial lamb.
It was so written that a select group would be captured alive, while scores of other holy warriors were to virtually commit suicide in the face of overwhelming force. Personally he had no desire to end up like so many of his fellow Muslims now imprisoned in Cuba, much less slain by hated enemies he was sworn to kill.
The plan didn’t end with detainment, but he had no intention of carrying out the orders.
It was time, perhaps, to cut the umbilical cord to Iran. Sure, their sponsor shipped weapons, the necessary cash to arm and house his troops, money and matériel that kept General Salidin happy and funneling still more freedom fighters and weapons into the Bekaa. But what he was being asked to do was madness pure and simple.
There were operations already on the table, and they took absolute and supreme precedence. It had taken too much time, toil, sweat and money to prepare the infiltration of his freedom fighters into Israel, Western Europe, the United States. Years of preparation, in fact, had gone into a jihad that would shake the entire world, carve his very name in stone forever as the most holy and fearsome warrior. In twos and threes his own warriors were slated to go within days, bogus passports stamped with Western names allowing them to slip into the targeted countries, too much money and training to see it all wasted at the last moment.
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