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One down.
Bolan saw the other shooter, dazed by the white flash, trying to find a lost weapon. He triggered the Desert Eagle, its shattering report again splitting the night, and the round sliced a crimson line along the man’s shoulder, eliciting a cry and causing him to settle back on his rump.
The Executioner stepped up close to the man, kicked away his AK-47. “You speak English?”
The man looked terrified. “Yes. I studied in America.”
“You and I are going to talk,” Bolan said.
“Yes, yes,” the man said. “Talk.”
Bolan pushed the man to the ground and rolled him onto his stomach, bound his hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs. The warrior came up in a crouch, started for the alley, ready to back up an old friend with whom he spilled more blood than he cared to consider during his War Everlasting.
Moving along a building, he stopped just a few feet from Grimaldi’s combat zone. A moment of eerie silence had fallen, followed by a sudden chorus of anguished cries. Damn!
Before he could take another step, a roar reverberated throughout the canyon of buildings, followed by the tortured sound of grinding metal and a loud crash. A massive front of singeing heat whooshed out, smacked Bolan front-on forcing him to involuntarily cover his face.
What the hell had happened to Jack?
JACK GRIMALDI RAISED his silenced Ingram, unloaded a quick burst at the car blocking his path. Bullets skittered and sparked off its black metal skin, smacking into nearby walls.
Shit, he thought, armored to the teeth.
Orange-yellow muzzle-flashes flared from a pair of assault rifles protruding from the car. Grimaldi dropped into a crouch, caressed the Ingram’s trigger. The hellstorm of bullets thudded against the car and gave the shooters pause, buying him precious seconds in which to maneuver.
Judging by the open windows, the car had no gunports and for that, at least, Grimaldi counted himself lucky. Considering the odds, he’d take any advantage he could get. His first hastily placed burst drilled into a fortified car door, just below the window rim. The bullets bounced away, but threw the shooter off balance, prompting him to withdraw inside the vehicle. Firing on the run, Grimaldi tapped out two more bursts that sailed inside the car. An anguish scream sounded from within the vehicle, indicating he’d injured or killed one opponent. That left three more shooters, one in the driver’s seat, two more positioned outside and behind the car, using it for cover.
With quick, sure steps, the pilot crossed the killzone, acquiring a new target on the run. One man, crouched behind the car’s front bumper, was drawing a bead on Grimaldi. A quick burst caught the enemy in the shoulder, chewing through fabric and flesh before knocking him backward. Grimaldi knew the man was down, but probably not out, particularly if he had a backup piece that he could fire with his one good hand.
Reaching a small alcove created by a doorway, the Stony Man pilot inserted his slender frame inside the cramped space, riding out a concentrated barrage of autofire as he did. Unzipping his leather bomber jacket, Grimaldi reached inside, snagged a fresh clip, reloaded his weapon. He inventoried his personal armory—one remaining clip for the Ingram, a .40-caliber Glock in a shoulder holster and a .44-caliber Charter Arms Bulldog snugged in an ankle holster, a last-minute gift from John Kissinger before leaving for the mission.
He was loaded for bear, sure, but so were the two men, and perhaps a third, trying to kill him. Death, Grimaldi could handle, but he was the barrier standing between these men and his old friend. If they wanted to get to Striker, they’d have to do it over the ace pilot’s dead body.
It sure as hell wasn’t the first time someone had tried.
Peals of gunfire echoed throughout the alley, intensified, telling Grimaldi that the men had seized on his pause to reload. Whipping the Ingram around the corner, he fired blind, emptying one-third of a clip in his attackers’ direction. Chew on that, you bastards, he thought. He followed up with a second, more intense burst. Judging by the pause in return fire, he’d driven them under cover, at least for a moment.
A slight shift in the building’s shadow caught his attention. Even before it clicked in his mind, instinct warned him of immediate danger. Still crouching, Grimaldi folded his body around the corner, saw a gunman slipping along the length of the building toward him. He triggered the Ingram. The stubby weapon roared to life, spitting jagged columns of flame, a cloud of acrid smoke. Rounds drilled into the approaching man’s chest and throat, stopping him cold and pushing him backward. The man’s assault rifle clattered to the ground as he crumpled in a dead heap.
Even as the dead shooter fell, Grimaldi was turning his attention to the hardman situated behind the car. A hand popped up over the trunk and Grimaldi saw that it clutched something.
Grenade!
Firing low, Grimaldi swept the Ingram in a tight arc, dispatching a swarm of .45-caliber rounds underneath the car. The way he saw it, this was his best bet. If he gunned for the hand, he had a better than average chance of hitting it. If he tried for the man’s crouching body, and more specifically, his legs, the pilot improved his own odds of survival.
He hoped.
As the Ingram clicked dry, he heard the man scream. Shifting back into the doorway, Grimaldi folded in on himself. If he was lucky, the guy had dropped the grenade, releasing the spoon and activating the explosive. The man and the armored vehicle would absorb most of the explosion and shrapnel.
If he was lucky. If not…
The weapon exploded, sending waves of heat and shrapnel buzzing through the alley. A grinding noise, metal on concrete, followed and Grimaldi had to assume the explosion had knocked the car up on its side.
Grimaldi reloaded his weapon and got to his feet. He peered furtively around the wall, trying to present as small a target as possible. He saw the vehicle on its side, corpses spread around it.
He felt something behind him, turned, his muscles tensing for another confrontation.
“Easy, Jack,” Bolan said.
Grimaldi relaxed, grinned. “Easy? Easy my ass. This is some of my best work.”
MINUTES LATER Mack Bolan shoved his POW hard into a chair, causing it to creak and slide back several inches. The man, a Pakistani dressed in jeans and a gray athletic sweatshirt, glowered at his captors. A few extra minutes of drawing breath apparently had emboldened him into thinking he was in the clear.
Bolan was about to show him the error of his ways.
“Shallallab. Where was he going?” Bolan asked.
The man sat mute.
“Was he going to see Ramsi al-Shoud?”
A flicker of recognition lighted the man’s eyes before fear doused it back out. He remained silent.
“Where is al-Shoud?”
Nothing.
Grimaldi spoke. “The problem with you, Striker, is, you give people too damn much leeway.”
“Shut up, Ace,” Bolan growled.
“I’m just saying—”
“I’m just saying shut up. So shut up.”
“Maybe he doesn’t speak English.”
“He speaks English.”
Grimaldi turned back to the man. Raising his voice, he asked, “You speekie English?”
The man looked insulted, but said nothing. “I think you’re wrong,” Grimaldi said. “He doesn’t speak English. Hell, he doesn’t seem smart enough to speak his own language.”
“Bullshit,” Bolan said. “He spoke English like a pro ten minutes ago. He’s just playing stupid.”
“Doing a good job of it, too,” Grimaldi said. “So I suppose we’re going to sit here all night, coddling this dumb-ass until he decides to talk. Him. A guy that doesn’t speak English. I’m telling you, you’re wasting your damn time with this.”
Bolan made a grim face, turned away from the prisoner. “So what the hell do you suggest?”
“Remember Kabul?”
“Don’t even go there with me, Jack.”
“See that’s what I’m talking about. You’re too soft on these people.”
“And you’re mental.”
“I’m just saying it worked in Kabul. It’ll work here. That guy suddenly remembered his English really good after we did that to him.”
“I’m not letting you cut this guy’s balls off, Ace. It’s not going to happen.”
Bolan glanced over his shoulder, saw the man sitting stiff, eyes about to pop out of their sockets.
“What about his ears?” Grimaldi asked. “Can I cut them off?”
Bolan thought about it for a moment. Finally he nodded. “Okay,” he said. “That’s not so bad. You know, you can’t just go around cutting off a guy’s privates. Not right out of the gate, anyway. You gotta at least give him a chance to cooperate. It’s only fair.”
Grimaldi pulled a switchblade from his jacket pocket. He clicked it open with a metallic snick, held it up to the light so it glinted.
“But the ear’s okay?”
Bolan shrugged. “Knock yourself out.”
An evil grin twisted at Grimaldi’s lips. “Righteous,” he said.
The words practically exploded from the man’s lips. “Please,” he said. “I will talk about Shallallab and al-Shoud. I want to tell everything.”
And he did.
BOLAN AND GRIMALDI climbed aboard a Black Hawk helicopter and slipped into the front seats. Each man carried a heavy gear bag packed with weapons and equipment, Bolan had laid his next to his seat, allowing him to perform a last-minute weapons check during the flight.
His right foot positioned on the gear bag to keep it from shifting in flight, Bolan loaded his Heckler & Koch with a sound suppressor and attached extra clips to his web gear. Grimaldi ran a preflight check on the craft.
“I’m glad that guy talked,” Grimaldi said.
“Me, too,” Bolan said. “I was afraid he’d call our bluff.”
“Who said I was bluffing?” Grimaldi joked.
Bolan shook his head. “Forget it. An old tomcat like you could never do that.”
“Your buddy didn’t tell us a lot,” Grimaldi said.
Bolan nodded. “Foot soldier,” he said. “Probably doesn’t know a whole lot.”
Fifteen minutes later, the Black Hawk was aloft with Grimaldi guiding it expertly toward Waziristan, a Pakistani territory.
Straining against the harness holding him in place, Bolan reached into his equipment bag and withdrew a laptop. The pressure of the straps against his recently bruised skin, even through the Kevlar vest, kicked up jolts of pain. He winced, ground his teeth and ignored it. During his War Everlasting, the soldier had suffered much worse, and had the scarred flesh to prove it.
Setting the laptop on his thighs, Bolan popped it open and powered it up. Within minutes he’d lock into a Stony Man computer dump system via an encrypted wireless connection. A digital camera would eventually carry his and Grimaldi’s images electronically to the Computer Room. After a few more keystrokes, Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman appeared on the screen.
“Striker,” Kurtzman said.
“You get the coordinates I sent earlier?” Bolan asked.
“Right,” Kurtzman replied. “I ran them through the National Security Agency’s database and liberated a few things for our use. I’ll send you the satellite pics while we talk. But your guy told the truth. There’s something there, an encampment of some sort, right on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. It was an al Qaeda camp at one time before a CIA paramilitary team shut it down a few years ago. After the team arrested the inhabitants, seized all their computers and documents, a couple of F-18s bombed the buildings to rubble.”
“Our boy told us they’ve been setting up the place for months,” Bolan said. “On the surface it looks like an agriculture operation, with animals and the whole thing. They do all their training inside a series of nearby caves to help avoid satellite scrutiny. No outdoor firing ranges, or anything like that. They do a lot of hand-to-hand combat training, classroom work, that sort of thing. There’s also a large concrete building that houses their command functions.”
Kurtzman nodded. “That tracks with what I found out. The intelligence community had tagged the site as suspicious because of its history. But without any hard intel, they had to knock it pretty far down on the priority list. Plus, it’s a crappy target.”
“What do you mean?”
“Guess al-Shoud and his people brought their families along with them. Women, kids, elderly.”
Bolan’s brow furrowed, his lips formed a tight line as he considered the implications. “Lots of innocents on the firing line,” he said finally.
“Right,” Kurtzman said.
“We don’t have much of a choice in this one,” Bolan said.
“Just laying out the facts,” Kurtzman replied. “Hey, Hal wants to speak with you.”
“Go.”
Kurtzman disappeared from view. An instant later Brognola’s weary features appeared on the screen. Since Bolan had last seen him, the big Fed had lost his necktie, but judging by the coffee stain on his right breast, he still wore the same shirt, now unbuttoned at the collar.
“Striker,” Brognola said, “what’s the word on Jennifer Kinsey?”
“Nothing yet,” Bolan stated. “The man we spoke with knew nothing about her.”
“Could he have been lying?”
Grimaldi cut in. “He was pretty motivated to be honest.”
Brognola drank some coffee from a foam cup. “I don’t even want to know what that means.”
“That’s why we wanted to find Shallallab,” Bolan said, “the finance guy. He’s high enough up that he’d know whether she was there. Al-Shoud considers him a confidant.”
“But you’ve got a good fix on al-Shoud?”
“Yeah,” Bolan said. “Bear says we’ve got apparent innocents in the way. I plan to make this a soft probe until I learn more.”
“Keep Barb and Aaron posted,” Brognola said. “I won’t be around.”
“Why?”
“We have an antiterrorism summit at an undisclosed location,” Brognola replied. “Heads of state from Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are expected to be there. So are their intelligence chiefs. We’re going to share information, try to expand cooperation, all that sort of thing.”
