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“And attribute it to who? God? Officially we’re out of the assassination business.”
“I see your point.”
“I don’t care what you see. Just send your people to the rendezvous. And you get underground. Once this goes down, we’ll need you to step in.”
“Fine.”
“And one other thing, Riyadh.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m on to you. I did some checking, found out you’re looking to make a little cash on the side selling Saddam’s chemical and biological agents to the Russian mafia and the Libyan government.”
Riyadh smiled. The spy had been spying on him. The man was boorish, but smart, resourceful. Riyadh couldn’t help but feel a grudging respect for the man.
“And what will it cost to buy your silence?”
“We’ll discuss that later. After we finish this op. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get lucky and someone will kill me before it’s all said and done.”
“I should hope not,” Riyadh said, not meaning it.
The phone clicked as Stone terminated the call. Riyadh holstered his pistol and went to get his brother.
DRESSED HEAD TO TOE in a black khaki bodysuit and combat boots, Abdullah Riyadh smeared black combat cosmetics to his cheeks and forehead in tight, circular strokes. Then he picked up the Heckler & Koch MP-5, slammed in a magazine and charged the weapon, realizing how it had become an extension of himself. He could field strip it, reassemble it, blindfolded, just as he could countless other weapons. He had learned to enjoy the feel of the weapon, the sense of power it gave him. The American, Chris Doyle, had trained him to handle it, to fight empty-handed. It had taken more than a year, but Doyle and the other Americans had turned Abdullah and his forty-nine comrades, a mixture of defectors and angry patriots, into a tightly knit band of warriors. Unlike Stone, Doyle had taught the men not just to fight, but to survive, to live long enough to enjoy their freedom. Though outwardly tired and cynical, Doyle seemed to care about the men he was teaching.
Hearing footsteps from behind, he whirled and saw the three Americans approaching. Other men, all outfitted in attire similar to Abdullah’s, stopped their preparations and also stared at the trio.
“Okay,” Stone said, “you girls ready to save the world, or what?”
Abdullah ignored him. Instead he looked at Doyle, who flashed a tight smile.
“We are ready to move?” Abdullah asked.
Doyle nodded. “It’s a go.”
ABDULLAH RIYADH CROUCHED beside the tire of a large troop carrier as he lay in wait for the Republican Guard soldier. Fear constricted his lungs, causing them to ache for oxygen as though he’d just run a marathon. He pressed his knees together to keep them from shaking and gripped the knife clutched in his right hand so hard that it caused his knuckles to throb.
Twenty yards away lay a critical target for the mission. Abdullah knew all too well that Saddam’s network of tunnels and bunkers was almost legendary, both inside and outside Iraq. Fewer people knew of the dozen or so well-guarded emergency exits connecting the tunnels to the surface, all of which led into innocuous structures such as small groceries or apartment buildings. If it ever struck Iraqi civilians as odd that Republican Guard soldiers might fortify such seemingly useless structures, Abdullah knew they swallowed their curiosity. Their very survival depended on such compliance.
At his back lay a one-story structure, a former restaurant apparently sagging under its own neglect. The windows and doors were boarded-over and parts of the red-brick exterior had been scorched black by fire. In stark contrast, the structure bristled with security cameras and halogen spotlights, rated the attention and protection of a handful of elite guards.
During the past thirty seconds, another portion of the crew had successfully killed power for the surrounding four blocks, including the target building. According to intelligence and best guesses by the Americans, Abdullah and his group had ninety seconds once the lights went out to cover the open ground surrounding the building and breach its defenses before backup generators restored power, resurrecting alarm systems, security cameras and lights.
Abdullah knew he and his crew were living on borrowed time. During the past five minutes, his teammates, using a lethal mix of knives, garrotes and poisonous darts, had slain ten Iraqi soldiers, each identified as Republican Guard by the red triangle on his shoulder patch. With the area pitched into darkness, Abdullah had donned a pair of night-vision goggles, plunging his world into green. Four more soldiers closing in on the building, all of them Egyptian mercenaries recruited for the job by Jon Stone, were similarly equipped and considerably more dangerous than Abdullah could hope to be.
The soldier cleared his throat. The sound snapped Abdullah from his thoughts, caused his shoulders to tense. Using a handheld television with a tubular camera lens protruding from it, he snaked the lens around the carrier’s front end, caught a glimpse of the soldier. The man stood, staring straight ahead, apparently fixated on a grove of date palms situated fifty yards ahead. The soldier held a wicked-looking SMG in his left hand, its barrel canted at a forty-five-degree angle as he scanned the area.
Abdullah watched as the soldier pulled a walkie-talkie from his belt, raised it to his mouth. Setting down the television, the young Arab rose up in a crouch, trying hard not to jostle his MP-5 or other equipment as he did. Blood thundered in his ears, making it harder to hear the soldier’s transmission.
“Position ten,” the soldier said.
A pause, followed by a muffled response reached Abdullah’s ears.
“All clear,” the soldier said.
Relief washing over him, Abdullah snatched up the television, secured it on his belt, listened. The soldier had turned and was moving back toward the main building. Rounding the carrier’s front end, Abdullah fell in behind the soldier, closed the distance between them with just a few steps. Reaching around, digging fingers into the man’s fleshy jowls, he gave his adversary’s head a twist and dragged the knife blade across the man’s throat, severing muscles, tendons and arteries.
Blood spurted from the gash and he went limp, dead before he hit the ground.
Sheathing his knife, Abdullah let the soldier fall into a heap. Folding the man’s arms and legs in on his torso, the young Arab stuffed the soldier underneath the armored troop carrier, bunching his remains behind the tires so he’d be less visible.
Returning to his feet, Abdullah stared at his hands. The warm blood glistened bright green on his palms. His stomach rolled with nausea and his head momentarily grew light as the enormity of his actions struck him. He’d killed a man, willingly, mechanically. For a moment the realization and the physical sensations overshadowed everything else around him.
A voice exploded in his earpiece. “Abdullah! Left!”
The young man whipped around, bringing up the sound-suppressed weapon as he did. He spotted a pair of shadows approaching. Each brandished an assault rifle, the barrel tracking in on Abdullah. Without thinking, he triggered the MP-5, drilled the man closer to him with quick burst to the abdomen. Even as he did, his second attacker fired his own weapon, the muzzle-flash tearing a hole in the darkness, the report shattering the silence. Even as Abdullah tried to process the sounds, recognize them as gunshots, he whirled toward the second attacker. He cut loose with another burst from his weapon, simultaneously felt something grab hold of him, stop him cold. Pain seared through his right arm even as the gunshot registered in his mind. His knees buckled, slammed hard against the concrete.
The soldier, face obscured by night-vision goggles, readjusted his aim. Abdullah willed his arm to rise, realized it no longer responded to his commands. Streams of gunfire ripped through the air overhead, causing him to flinch. A storm of bullets ripped into the Iraqi soldier, pounding him back several steps, burrowing into the man’s body armor, but stopping short of his flesh. Although not mortally injured, Abdullah saw the man whipsawed about by the bullets’ force. Another burst smacked into the man’s face, knocking him backward as though tackled from behind.
A pair of Abdullah’s comrades, both Egyptian mercenaries, raced from the shadows and helped him to his feet while a third stayed behind the troop carrier and laid down cover fire. Weapons chatter and muzzle-flashes erupted around Abdullah. Bullets sizzled just past his head, chewing through concrete and ricocheting off the armored hide of the vehicle at his back.
He felt fingers slip into his shirt collar. Someone dragged him to his feet, roughly.
“Go,” said one of the mercenaries.
Abdullah nodded, backpedaled toward cover. Even as he did, he used his good hand to snatch the Beretta 92-F from his hip, snapped off three shots at another soldier. The first two rounds flew wild, screaming past the man’s head. The third, fueled by sheer luck, drilled into the man’s mouth, tunneled through his spinal cord before exploding from the back of his head.
His arm throbbing, his head lightening with blood loss, Abdullah continued moving. God had smiled on him with that last shot, that much he knew. He triggered the pistol again, watched muzzle-flashes pop lighter green in his field of vision. With the Egyptians’ guidance, he made it behind the large troop carrier.
“You’re okay?” the mercenary asked.
Abdullah nodded. “I can treat this myself.”
“You’re lucky,” the man said. “The bullet came out the other side. But you’re losing a great deal of blood.”
Abdullah waved him away. “Fight. We came here to fight.”
The mercenary grinned. “Yes, we did. And I came here for a paycheck. Unfortunately we find ourselves at odds.”
The man jabbed the barrel of his pistol into Abdullah’s forehead. Abdullah raised a hand to swat it away but never connected. Then his world went black.
Amman, Jordan
TARIQ RIYADH SAT at a table in the corner of the hotel bar, nursed his third whiskey. The hotel catered mostly to Westerners and a pianist tapped out an old jazz standard, the melody competing with the dull din of collective conversation, broken only by an occasional burst of laughter. Riyadh watched as the cigarette pinched between the first two fingers of his right hand, burned down to the filter. Discarding it, he lit another. What the hell? he thought. I have plenty of time.
A big man dressed in a summer-weight navy-blue suit, eyes obscured by a pair of mirrored aviator shades, drifting through the crowd. Clutching a glass mug of amber beer, he approached Riyadh’s table, dropped into a chair without invitation. Anger burned in Riyadh’s face, knotted his stomach, as he stared at the man, who was looking past him at a wall. With his eyes hidden and his mouth set in a neutral line, Jon Stone was as inscrutable as ever.
“They’ve killed more than three hundred,” Riyadh said. “The entire team, except for the mercenaries, are dead. They’ve also been hunting down members of their families, killing the men. I’ve lost four cousins and two nephews within the last week. One of them was twelve”
“Sorry,” Stone said, not meaning it.
“Sorry? Sorry gets me nothing.”
Stone shrugged and swallowed more beer. “It happens, man. You knew the risks going in. You don’t like how it worked out? Tough shit.”
“You knew the mission had been compromised.”
“We suspected. There’s a difference.”
“Without distinction.”
“Did you know the Egyptian mercenaries had gone rogue?”
“Maybe.”
“But you went anyway. Why?”
“Orders.”
“Whose?”
“None of your damn business.”
Riyadh thought for a moment of the 9 mm Smith & Wesson hidden under his light jacket, discarded the notion. He couldn’t shoot Stone, not here, not now. Even if he could best the man in combat, he knew he’d never make it out of the lobby without being arrested or shot by the armed guards protecting the hotel. Neither was an acceptable option. He had too much to accomplish.
“I’m making it my business,” Riyadh said.
Stone had shifted in his seat, sitting sideways so Riyadh faced his profile. He cupped the rim of the mug with his fingertips, swirled it around the table in long, lazy circles.
“Take it somewhere else, asshole. You made your bed, now lie in it. You don’t like how things worked out, tough. Truth be told, I don’t care what you think.”
“Perhaps you should start caring,” Riyadh said. Apparently, Stone caught the change of tone in Riyadh’s voice and fixed him with a hollow-eyed gaze.
“Really?” Stone said. “And why is that?”
“We both know about my little transgression with Saddam’s weapons. We also know you shook me down for a percentage of the money. I believe your country would consider that treason.”
“No one would believe you.”
“I have proof.”
“What kind.”
“None of your damn business,” Riyadh said, a smile ghosting his lips.
His hand still clasped around his drink, Stone unfurled his index finger and pointed it at Riyadh as he spoke. “If you report me,” Stone said, “you go down, too.”
Riyadh shrugged and ground out his cigarette. Setting both elbows on the table, he stacked his forearms atop each other and leaned in close to Stone.
“There’s a difference, Stone. I have nothing to live for, nothing to lose. Thanks to your bungling, I have no family, no home, no country. And if you think you can solve this problem by killing me, you’d better reconsider.”
“And why is that?”
“I have an audio copy of our previous conversation in Iraq attached to more than four dozen e-mails addressed to everyone from the CIA director to the White House to the managing editor of the New York Times,” Riyadh explained. “If I don’t check in every twenty-four hours, my people send out those e-mails. There are more than a dozen people spread out all over the globe, each with the same information, each with the same orders to distribute the information should something happen to me. You’d never stop them all.”
Stone drained his glass, shoved it away. His lips curled into a snarl as he spoke. “You little bastard. You could bury me with that stuff.”
Riyadh knew the admission cost Stone, and he made no attempt to hide his pleasure. “There are few things I’d enjoy more. Who approved the mission?”
“James Lee, the director.”
“As I thought.”
“Okay. So are we even? Are we done?”
Riyadh shook his head, grinned. “Done? Hardly, my friend. I’m just getting started.”
CHAPTER ONE
Islamabad, Pakistan, the present
His hooded head bowed, his body shrouded in heavy robes, the big man shuffled down the street, arms crossed over his midsection, apparently trying to preserve what little heat he could. He stuck close to shadows cast by nearby buildings, stumbled and limped along as though physical pain accompanied every movement. A frigid January wind whipped down the street, carrying with it discarded scraps of paper and the smells of meat, vegetables and spices simmering in neighborhood kitchens.
In furtive glances, the man’s eyes, like chipped blue ice, scanned the cityscape as he closed in on his destination.
A pair of hard-eyed men, each brandishing an AK-47, blocked his path, but the man continued on. As he approached, they stepped aside, each staring at their feet as he passed. From his peripheral vision, the hooded figure saw one of them shiver as though touched by Death itself.
Mack Bolan’s face remained impassive as he moved. Though his life was steeped in violence, he took no pleasure in intimidating others, experienced no intoxicating rushes of power or pride. That was the province of the men he sought, men who abused others simply because they could.
Besides, Bolan knew that in war—particularly his War Everlasting—things never were as they seemed. Only fools declared victory prematurely.
Case in point.
A pair of shadows fell in behind Bolan, grew larger as their owners closed in. With his peripheral vision, the Executioner glanced into a nearby storefront window, saw the two men he’d just passed move in on him. Neither had unlimbered his assault rifle, but one of the men had produced a long knife from under his heavy coat.
Unbidden, Bolan’s heart sped up and his senses came alive. His pursuers’ gaits remained steady as they came up from behind, but maintained some distance. In this case, Bolan neither wanted nor needed any combat stretch. He planned to take out both men in short order, disable them before they could unleash their firepower on him, or, more particularly, on an innocent bystander.
At the request of an acquaintance, Bolan had come to Pakistan for revenge, but not a bloodbath. If even one innocent fell during his campaign, it would be deemed a failure.
Bolan’s pursuers accelerated their approach. The soldier counted down the microseconds, waited for them to pass the point of no return. The hairs stood on the back of his neck as one of them came within grabbing distance. Simultaneously whirling and folding at the knees, Bolan’s hands came into view, clutching the Beretta 93-R and the .44-caliber Desert Eagle. One of his attackers lurched forward, grabbing handfuls of empty air and stumbling under his own momentum. Bolan moved from his path and the man crashed to the ground.
A glint of steel caught the Executioner’s eye as the other attacker brought down his blade, the razor-sharp edge slashing a collision course with Bolan’s flesh. He fell backward, rolled and came up off to his adversary’s side. The silenced Beretta coughed once, spitting a thin line of flame. The 9 mm Parabellum round slammed into the man’s face, hitting the soft area at the bridge of his nose and driving him backward. Bolan’s opponent dropped his knife.
A scream sounded from somewhere, but a burst of autofire from Bolan’s other attacker quickly drowned it out. The man still lay on the ground and was aiming the Kalashnikov rifle in haste. The bullets passed overhead as shell casings flew from the weapon, littering the ground around the man.
Bolan cursed inside. The wide-eyed man’s rifle was spitting rounds everywhere, instantly raising the odds of innocent casualties. Bolan had hoped to take one of the men alive, to turn him into an intel source. With his erratic counterattack, the man had taken that option off the table.
The big American raised the Desert Eagle and fired two rounds. Even as the thunder from the big-bore handgun shattered the afternoon, reverberating off cars and buildings, the hollowpoint rounds tunneled into the other man’s midsection, pinning his lifeless body against the wall.
