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He came up out of his somersault and shoved a store mannequin toward the searching light. The figure toppled and the cop triggered his gun twice. The man’s second round struck the mannequin in the head, and the soft lead slug hammered a crater into the plastic statue.
Bolan shoved a hand into the pocket of his leather jacket, grasped his key ring and pulled it clear. He looked down and located the electronic fob on the end. His thumb pressed the vehicle’s remote start option.
Out in the street the Toyota exploded in a sudden ball of flames with a deafening boom. The chassis leaped straight up, engulfed by fire and pouring black smoke. It came down hard and sent metal car parts scattering in all directions.
The ruined 4-Runner came to a rest in the middle of the street and burned like a bonfire. Up the street Gary Manning’s Ford Expedition locked its brakes with an angry squeal. Bolan swept up his MP-5 and fired at the plate-glass window. Spent shells clanged together as they rattled into his brass catcher.
The window shattered and heavy shards of glass cascaded like icicles to burst against the concrete outside the window. Bolan slung the weapon as he raced forward.
He heard pistol shots from behind him, but had no idea if they came close or not as he stepped off his lead foot and sprang into the air.
He hurtled the bottom of the window like a track star and landed outside. He heard shouts coming from his left and risked a look as he landed in a crouch. He saw a squad of Toronto uniformed policemen, most of them on the ground and disorientated by the car bomb he had just detonated.
One patrolman was sufficiently together to lift an arm and point, shouting out a warning as Bolan pivoted and began to sprint up the slushy sidewalk toward the Ford Expedition gunning straight for him. His breath billowed out in front of him in silver plumes as he charged forward. His breathing was loud in his ears, and he could feel his heart hammering in his chest.
He saw Manning clearly through the windshield of the Expedition. The Phoenix Force commando locked up the emergency brake, and the tires screeched in protest as he swung the back end of the SUV in a smooth bootlegger maneuver. Bolan dived toward the passenger door.
Pistol shots rang out from behind him.
He saw Manning lean across the front seat and open the passenger door. A bullet struck the rear windshield and pebbled the safety glass. Another round sparked off the bumper. Bolan reached the front of the SUV and threw himself inside.
Manning didn’t wait for his passenger to close the open door but instead stood on the gas. Tires screamed, turning fast, digging for traction. Then they caught and the Expedition lurched forward like a bullet train leaving the station, throwing Bolan back into the seat.
“Grimaldi ready?” the soldier panted.
“Always,” Manning stated as he sent the SUV into a power slide that took the fugitive vehicle off the street and out of sight of the policemen firing on them. “He’s put the Little Bird down on the top floor of a parking garage six blocks over. We’ll be in the air in two minutes.” He looked down at a digital clock display. “One minute,” he corrected.
Bolan nodded. He reached inside his jacket pocket and checked for Hadayet’s cell phone. If they moved fast, he thought, they just might have a crack at Scimitar.
CHAPTER FOUR
The Stony Man team switched out the Little Bird for a clean JetRanger at the Buffalo Niagara International Airport and proceeded south. In a reasonable amount of time the helicopter was following Skyline Drive along the backbone of the rugged Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. The base for the Special Operations Group was only fifty-odd miles southwest of Washington, D.C., and dawn was breaking as the aircraft approached the installation.
A Chevy Blazer was waiting beside the landing strip where Jack Grimaldi put down the JetRanger.
“You guys go on ahead,” he told Bolan and Manning.
“I’m going to do some postflight checks.”
“Thanks, Jack,” Bolan said.
He and Manning ducked under the slowing props and crossed over to where Buck Green, chief of security, waited behind the wheel of the SUV. He smiled as the Stony Man commandos approached.
“How was Canada?”
“Chilly,” Bolan replied.
“He warmed it up a bit,” Manning noted, his voice dry.
“So they tell me,” Greene laughed. “Get in. Gary, you’ve got some time off coming. Later tonight David wants your help running an op-for exercise against the blacksuits,” Greene said, using the slang term for Stony Man’s security detail.
Manning grunted. “What have you cooked up?”
Greene grinned. “It’ll be good. I want to focus on the orchard approach to the compound.”
Manning shrugged his acceptance and climbed into the back of the Blazer. If he’d wanted a life of leisure, he could have chosen a thousand other occupations. He was dedicated to the Stony Man cause without question. Even the covert action inside his homeland hadn’t bothered him. He’d operated surreptitiously under the nose of his host country, the U.S., on many occasions. Slaying dragons was a pannational vocation.
“What about me?” Bolan asked.
He climbed into the front seat and slammed the door shut. He gave a lazy salute to Grimaldi as Greene pulled the Chevy onto the narrow road leading from the airfields toward the central complex and the Stony Man farmhouse.
The security chief snorted. “Oh, no rest for the wicked, I’m afraid.”
“Hal?” Bolan asked, knowing the answer.
“Yep, Hal’s here. He’s very interested to hear what you got in Toronto.”
“I got time for breakfast? Maybe some coffee? Most of what we’ll decide will depended on what Aaron can get out of this cell phone I recovered.”
Greene nodded and reached down to pick up the Blazer’s radio. “I’ll call ahead to Barbara,” he said. “She’ll make sure the kitchen gets you what you want.”
Greene meant Barbara Price, the honey-blond mission controller and sometime Bolan paramour. She ran Stony Man with cool competence and considerable ability. If she gave the word, the Farm’s kitchen would prepare a feast. She was also the only one likely to keep Hal Brognola quiet about waiting.
After the fall he’d taken from the skylight in Toronto, Bolan wanted nothing more than a long, hot shower and to eat a good meal before his debriefing. However, the link he had discovered to Scimitar was tenuous. Most high-ranking insurgents in the Iraq theater never stayed in one location for more than twelve hours.
If Stony Man was going to have a shot at Scimitar, the clock was already ticking.
B OLAN SAT in the War Room.
The multimedia compatible meeting room was as secure as anything one could find at the NSA or CIA headquarters and as comfortable as a New York City law firm’s boardroom. It took up approximately one-half of the basement space of the main house, and Bolan knew the room intimately after all his years at the Farm.
Hal Brognola sat at the head of the conference table, chewing on an unlit cigar. Price and Bolan occupied two other chairs, while Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman sat in a wheelchair off to one side. Nearby was a high-tech console that controlled the War Room’s media displays and lights.
Bolan had brought his breakfast with him. He pushed his empty plate away and pulled a large mug of coffee closer.
While eating he’d gone over the details of the Toronto takedown. Brognola acknowledged that an inquiry had been made to the Department of Homeland Security regarding an operation against Hiba Bakr. Official channels had been able to respond honestly that they had neither authorized such an illegal incursion nor were they aware of such an ongoing operation.
Since Bolan had chosen to leave Bakr to Canadian intelligence, the CIA had requested that an agent join CSIS for the interrogations. Brognola had learned that the diplomat father of the Syrian youth had already filed a protest with the government in Ottawa and the UN regarding the arrest of his son. The company of known international terrorists notwithstanding, it was likely his request for release would be granted.
“This means Scimitar could already be alerted. In fact we have to assume so,” Brognola said. “Carmen is running those cell numbers into Iraq right now, cross-referencing NSA databases. We’re hoping for a triangulation. When we’re done here I intend to fly back into D.C. and follow up on some things Barb has put into motion.” He looked over at Barbara Price whose face was carefully neutral, a sure sign of her displeasure. “Certain operational contingencies we’ve already had in place, in the event that Stony Man was ever called upon to act in Iraq.”
Bolan nodded and sipped his coffee. He’d taken 800 mg of ibuprofen on arriving at the farmhouse and was beginning to feel less banged up.
“What kind of contingencies?” he asked.
“Barb, this was your brainchild,” the big Fed said.
Price nodded and set her mug of coffee on the conference table.
“If the need should arise, we’ve worked out several scenarios to get Mack into Iraq under operational cover. Our most promising cover is dual. We can coordinate your activities through the DNI and CIA. CENTCOM will think you’re Pentagon spooks. Your ‘cover’ for that cover will be employment as private military contractors working for a prestigious international company breaking into the lucrative southwest Asian market.”
“What company would that be?” Bolan asked.
“A Montreal-based firm called North American International, headed by one certain Gary U. Manning,” Kurtzman stated.
“I take it the background check for such contracts was expedited?” Bolan asked.
“I hand-carried the forms through channels myself,” Brognola admitted.
“This means,” Price continued, “that we’ll be able to funnel out special access program funds into legitimate government contracts paid to North American International.”
“Clever,” Bolan stated.
“It is a court of last resort,” Price said. “As far as I was concerned, this was a contingency plan that was never meant to be used. The U.S. government has plenty of assets in place already to deal with conventional problems.”
“But Scimitar isn’t conventional anymore, is he?” Bolan observed.
“No, he’s not,” Brognola said.
The big Fed leaned forward. He nodded once to Kurtzman. The head of Stony Man’s cybernetics team pressed a series of buttons on the table’s console. The lights dimmed and a slab of paneling in the wall behind Brognola slid back to reveal a six-foot HD wall screen. Immediately an olive-skinned, bearded face with blunt features and a patrician nose appeared on the screen. Bolan recognized the man as the individual known as Scimitar.
Brognola took his chewed up cigar out of his mouth and held it between his blunt fingers.
“He realized more quickly than most of his compatriots that no matter what happened in Iraq, post-Saddam, a return to Baathist rule in any form was extremely unlikely. He rapidly morphed his activity away from American resistance into establishing a power base for himself, using the insurgency as a cover with his jihadist allies. His method was, as most effective plans are, simple. Barb?”
Stony Man’s mission controller smoothly took over the briefing. She rose and crossed the room, placing a folder on the conference table in front of Bolan before continuing.
“Initially he set up a small regional base manned by Fedayeen subordinates in the Baghdad slum of Amariyah, along Route Irish,” Price began, using the U.S. military designation of the road running between the Baghdad International Airport and the Green Zone, often referred to in the media as the “Highway of Death.”
Price took a drink of her coffee and continued speaking. Bolan began to leaf through the file as he listened. His fatigue and physical discomfort began to bleed away as his interest in the mission grew with his realization of how important it was.
“Scimitar then withdrew to the west, into An Bar province in proximity to the Syrian border,” Price said.
“He used his Fedayeen troops to control the area, then exploited his contacts with Syrian intelligence as well as secret caches of equipment, weapons and cash to outfit foreign fighters.
“All pretty run-of-the-mill. He maintained credibility as anti-American with both former Saddam supporters and the international jihadists movement. However, Scimitar is no ideologue. He used his connections with jihadists in southwest Asia to begin moving heroin into Iraq. From there he used Albanian mafia connections given him by the Syrian IMJ and the freelancer al-Kassar, to move the heroin out of Iraq, through Istanbul and on to points west in both Europe and America. Ostensibly the funds were used to fund insurgent activity. Mostly it went to purchasing Sunni members of Iraq’s government to give him immunity from scrutiny. He now operates out of a section of the city of Ramadi completely under Iraq national control. He used his connections in the Iraqi government to give up rivals in the area when the National Army moved in. The area, under his orders, remained ‘pacified’ and the National Army was mostly supplanted by local Iraqi police units.”
“Its ranks filled with members of his personal militia,” Kurtzman added.
Price nodded in agreement. “Scimitar owns that city, or that neighborhood anyway. The imams answer to him there, foreign agents take his direction and the police forces are essentially his private militia. It is a quiet sector, a success story for the Iraqi national army in an otherwise blatant embarrassment. He moves funds for operations in Baghdad out of the city and heroin in through it.”
Bolan was silent. If ever a target or network had needed taking out, Scimitar’s rated right up there. The problem was not clear-cut, however. The soldier had adhered to an iron-fast rule during his War Everlasting. Cops were off limits.
“I’ll take down the network,” he said slowly, “but crooked or not, I don’t want to draw down on police officers.”
“Mack, this isn’t the bad old days. This situation isn’t even one of corruption per se. Scimitar’s militia hasn’t infiltrated or corrupted the Iraqi police in western Ramadi. His militia simply put on those blue uniforms,” Brognola said. “In the initial months there were honest Iraqis in that police unit. They were found, one by one, hung by their heels from lampposts with their heads cut off. Look for yourself.” Brognola indicated the file in front of Bolan. “Those uniforms don’t represent good street cops gone bad. It’s more like the Gestapo or some kind of disguise. This isn’t New York City, or even Chechnya. It’s like calling those butchers, the Fedayeen, police officers when they operated under Saddam.”
Bolan sat silently. He considered Brognola’s words as he mulled over this worst-case scenario. When he spoke he chose his words with careful deliberation.
“Scimitar has a network. I’m on board with taking that network down. I’m on board with bringing Scimitar down. But I reserve the right to call this off at any time. If I don’t like what I see going on when we get into Iraq, I walk. That’s the deal, Hal.”
“Wouldn’t want it any other way, Striker,” Brognola answered.
CHAPTER FIVE
Carmen Delahunt entered the room at that moment, bearing a slim file containing a computer printout. She also carried the cell phone he’d taken from Aram Hadayet.
Delahunt was an attractive middle-aged redhead who had been recruited from the FBI to become a vital member of Aaron Kurtzman’s cybernetics team.
She smiled and nodded her greeting to everyone in the room, then handed her findings to Barbara Price, who nodded her thanks.
“What did you find, Carmen?” Price asked.
“The Ramadi connection is now dead. I couldn’t discover whether that was because the people at that end knew about the raid or because the numbers are changed daily. However, overall the phone was a treasure trove. We were able to triangulate several geographic locations and assign specific personnel to those coordinates. I did a quick run up on them from our files. We’ve got several known players, and it gave us a pretty good idea about Scimitar’s network, if not his specific location.”
“If he has the Iraqi government bought off,” Bolan asked, “is he still underground?”
“Technically he’s still wanted by U.S. interests. He keeps a low profile, but it’s mainly the fact that the Iraqis run interference for him that keeps him operating outside of the notice of the U.S. CENTCOM there,” Price answered. “Either way, his network is in place. Simply cutting off the head of the dragon would do us only so much good.”
Bolan nodded his agreement with Price’s assessment, then turned his attention back to Delahunt.
“Three numbers proved to be of the most interest,” she said. “The first was confirmed to be that of an arms dealer named Mirjana operating out of Croatia. I have a file worked up on him. He’s known to Interpol but is well connected to the government there. He moves in the same circles as our friend Monzer al-Kassar, but we haven’t connected them specifically, yet.
“The second number is to a former commander in Saddam’s Special Republican Guard. He’s living with relatives in Amman, Jordan. He left Iraq immediately after Baghdad fell and has given no indication of having been involved in anti-American activities. The Defense Intelligence Agency had a workup on him they shared with Homeland Security, and he was given a pass.
“Perhaps the potentially most significant one is to the number of a Syrian National Airlines branch office in the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. It is, of course, well-known that certain elements of Syrian intelligence services operate frequently from these branch offices. I’ve pulled everything we have on the region and that airport for the report.” Delahunt paused, she seemed almost apologetic.
“It’s pretty sparse,” she admitted. “It’s obvious the Syrian diplomat to Ottawa was using his son as a plausible deniability cutout. However, what is unrelated Syrian interest and what is specific to Scimitar remains uncertain at this point. If the youth was using the Toronto mosque to expand Scimitar’s network then such a disparate web as the numbers seem to indicate is a very bad sign. The network is most definitely global and apparently reaches beyond either the jihadist movement or Syrian intelligence.”
“Thank you, Carmen,” Price said, and Delahunt exited the War Room.
“There you have it,” Brognola said. “Not much to go on. Despite that, they’re the best leads we’ve ever come across concerning Scimitar-specific information. Because of his links to the Iraqi government and what the press would do if they found out, the Man wants this kept Stony Man quiet.”
“I guess the sooner I start, the sooner Scimitar gets taken down,” Bolan said.
“This couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time, Mack,” Price said.
“Able Team is tied up in South America and Phoenix Force has been tapped to provide security on a high-profile VIP working on nuclear proliferation in—” Kurtzman added.
“It’s important,” Brognola interjected.
“That op was set up a while ago through—” The computer wizard started.
“I know.” Brognola cut him off again. “If this trail takes Striker into Iraq, I don’t want him operating in that cesspool alone.”
“I’m somewhat used to working alone,” Bolan said, his voice as dry as an old grave.
“I know, Striker. But this could get damn ugly, and I know you’re used to that, as well,” Brognola said.
