Agent Of Peril

It was about then that Bolan started getting feeling back in his right hand. It hurt like hell, but he could move the fingers, and looking around, he saw three severely wounded gunmen, their fight gone, blood pumping out on charcoal-colored rock. Testing his weight on the right hand, Bolan got back on his feet and spared a single 9 mm bullet into each dying man’s head, granting them a swift release from their pain. Bolan was not a man to leave an enemy to suffer, no matter what they did.

A quick reload, and the Taurus went to Bolan’s right hand. He crouched and grabbed the chopped-off AK of the man he charged, as well as a pouch of magazines. Satisfied the weapon was in working order, he holstered his pistol and found the rifle was an AKSU in 5.45 mm Soviet. With the stubby barrel of the chop job, the rounds would put out a fireball the size of a watermelon, but wouldn’t have much more punch than a Magnum pistol, and have very limited range.

But the gun wasn’t going to shake to pieces and bruise Bolan’s battered hand any worse.

The Executioner looked over and saw that the Hezbollah hardforce had picked up a bunch of new shooters, and they’d noticed the conflict on the hillside. The range couldn’t have been more than sixty yards, and even for the most ill-educated thug, the math couldn’t have been difficult.

There was a stranger approaching in the wake of the destruction.

He was armed.

Bolan hit the ground again, using a large piece of debris for a shield as bullets raked the side of the hill. Sparks flew as copper jackets hit granite and flint, and crimson puffed skyward as slugs impacted on stilled corpses. The Executioner fisted the AKSU and poked it over the piece of metal, firing the contents of the clip already in place. It was a full load, and three seconds of mayhem swept in response to the crackling salvos downhill.

A bullet hammered into the frame of the AKSU and sent it flying again from the Executioner’s hand before he could pull it back to reload. Not wasting a moment, Bolan tucked tight and rolled, rocks stabbing along his body as he scrambled behind a flat plate of stone. Another wave of hellfire hammered a nearby corpse, reducing the lifeless body to a pulpy stew. Surrounded and outgunned, Bolan didn’t have many options. He took a look at the slab of granite he was behind and felt its thickness with his fingertips. Thick enough to stop enemy bullets for a while.

Long enough, Bolan realized, for his enemy to flank and kill him.

The hollow that he rested against was curved. The soldier could work with that. He wouldn’t have much of a chance, but it was a thread of hope. He began packing C-4 into the hollowed cavity, flattening the kilogram blocks like putty in three strips, kneading them like dough. Bolan pulled a radio detonator and plugged a wire into each strip, sticking it to the center patch of explosive.

Bolan poked up his head and saw the enemy was charging. He pulled both Taurus pistols and dived backward away from the rock, scrambling in frantic retreat. The pistols barked out hot 9 mm pills until the left one ran dry. A couple slugs plucked at the Executioner, and one bullet hammered into the Enfield’s stock, cracking it against the soldier’s ribs. A bullet creased Bolan’s elbow skin, not touching bone. He probably had as much accuracy as his enemy.

On the run, the enemy had no aim as they charged, a small favor to the Executioner as long as they were at a decent distance. If they got closer, though, he was hamburger.

The nearest gunman was almost at the rock that Bolan had mined.

The soldier dropped his left Taurus and slapped the radio detonator’s switch. The hill shook before him, and the shock wave nearly blew out his eardrums.

While Bolan was slammed by a pressure wave, his enemies fared far worse. The granite slab that the plastic explosives were jammed into fragmented instantly, shattering like a fine crystal goblet under the force of a sledgehammer. The shards of the slab didn’t just sit around, however. Thrown at 1500 feet per second, in a widespread cone of bloody murder, the pulverized stone became a gigantic shotgun round.

Whether the chips of granite were blunt pebbles or razor sharp, they still went through human flesh like hot knives through butter. The lead gunner, jumping onto the rock, sailed through the air over Bolan’s head, slamming into the hillside headfirst.

Where once there were men, suddenly there were ghosts, the debris wave flashing at them, then passing on, bloody stumps standing in the wake of the improvised Claymore. The whole scene was a panoramic widescreen display in Bolan’s pressure-wave-shocked brain. His perceptions warped in time and space so that he could see the pulped cores that used to be humans pouring and melting down to the ground, any pretense at being a solid long stripped by the brutal death wave that crushed through them.

Bolan felt the back of his head, scalp split, blood flowing hotly down the neck of his black BDU blouse. He sensed a concussion, but he sat up, reloading his last remaining pistol. The other Taurus had been lost, swept away in the shock wave. He looked for signs of the enemy.

Everything was still, except for one squirming figure, trying to crawl up the side of the Abrams tank. Staggering to wobbly feet, Bolan got up, feeling weak and dizzy. He had business to attend to before he could tend to his own scratches and scrapes.

Bolan pressed some gauze against the back of his head, looking around at the spread of bodies. Anyone left standing had run like hell. They had to have been convinced that missiles were raining down on this little bazaar of death. Sure, the terrorists were escaping to fight another day, but for now they were frightened.

And being frightened was three-quarters dead. Good enough for a bleeding, limping Executioner.

Bolan recognized the guy climbing the tank. It was the Hezbollah moneyman who’d lost his feet. There was something familiar about the guy who scrambled like a drunken spider. Getting to the tank, Bolan casually reached up under the man’s suit coat and grabbed his belt.

“Come here,” he growled, yanking the terrorist off the tank. The footless killer squealed as the back of his head bounced on the flattened and cracked concrete.

“Bastard…”

“That’s what they call me,” Bolan said. He knelt on the hardguy’s chest, lifted the stainless-steel Taurus and let swing with a savage stroke. Already, his brain had cleared enough to recognize Bidifah Sinbal.

“A long death or a short death,” Bolan said. “Your choice.”

“Generous offer. I give you nothing.”

Bolan looked down at Sinbal, then realized that droplets of blood were pouring onto the guy’s face with every exhalation of his own breath. The soldier put the back of his hand to his nose and came away with a glove of sticky, slick fresh blood.

“Looks like you overdid the explosives, punk.” The terrorist chuckled, lying on his back, wheezing as he finished off his laugh.

Bolan sighed. He was too dizzy and hurt to conduct a proper interrogation on Sinbal. The Hezbollah savage wasn’t going anywhere.

The Executioner got to his feet and climbed up the side of the tank, calling back to the wounded terrorist.

“Sit. Stay.”

Inside, the mystery of the first generation M1’s origins were revealed.

Outside, flags and insignias were scoured off and replaced with desert paint that broke up the graded and scaled camouflage pattern of the metallic beast. Inside, however, the writing on the controls was in Arabic.

The Executioner knew only one modern Arab military force that used the U.S.-built armored vehicle.

Egypt.

Hezbollah was in Pakistan, selling three Egyptian tanks. Bolan crawled up through the hatch once more, wiping his nose. The bleeding had stopped. He was still hurt, hammered and beaten.

But someone was moving top of the line tanks around like they were common contraband.

That was a someone the Executioner had a vested interest in shutting down—permanently.

It was time to call the Farm.

2

The flat LCD screen popped up a still image of the Executioner’s hawkish features, giving Barbara Price something to visually focus on as the satellite phone connected them vocally.

“Did I catch you after a full night’s sleep, or are you delusional from Bear’s coffee?” Bolan asked.

“Mix and match.” Price sighed. “What’s wrong?”

“Lots. I’ve got three M1 Abrams tanks. I’m thinking they’re U.S. military aid package tanks because they have the old 105 mm cannon instead of the new 120 mm tubes,” Bolan told her.

“Abrams tanks?”

“The Hezbollah operatives I followed had them transported here for the auction.”

Price summoned recent intel-footage on her second monitor. “We had three M1s roll into a Gaza Strip settlement and kill a few hundred people.”

“A tank attack on the Gaza strip? Where?”

“Nitzana.”

Bolan paused a moment. “If I remember my map of the space between Israel and Egypt well enough, it makes sense to strike there. Nitzana is far from any other major settlements. Vast expanses of empty hills, desert, and desert farmland surrounded the settlement.”

“It took twenty minutes for the Israelis to scramble aircraft.”

“A few hundred people?” Bolan asked.

“The count is 249 dead, another three hundred missing, and over twelve hundred injured. They blew up buildings…Hell, they even blew an F-16 out of the sky. That crash killed almost fifty people by itself,” Price said.

“Three hundred missing, which means that we could see the death toll get over four hundred as a conservative estimate,” Bolan said.

“Most of those missing are from a school and a hospital that the tanks shelled,” Price told him.

“Children and the infirm.”

Price knew the tone in Bolan’s voice—grim and torn. He was getting ready to revisit hell on the kind of savages who would drag the innocent and helpless into their petty political games.

“Striker, how many tanks did you say you had?”

“Three here. With Arabic writing on the controls. I’m looking for a good way to dispose of them, but I don’t have the kind of firepower needed to take them out.”

Price turned. “Hunt, I need a way to dispose of three M1 tanks without bringing the entirety of the Pakistani military down on whoever’s blowing it. They might think it’s India.”

“A Force Recon off the USS Stennis is stationed in Tora Bora. They can chopper in hot and fast, set daisy cutters on each vehicle and be out before anyone knows what’s going on,” Hunt Wethers stated. He managed a grin. “I’ve got Captain Hofflower on speed dial.”

“Send them on in,” the Executioner said.

Price heard a wet sniff on the other end of the phone. “What’s wrong? You sound…sick.”

“Got too close to an improvised Claymore mine I made. Or rather, didn’t get far enough away from it,” Bolan answered. “The shock wave broke blood vessels in my nose and I’m bleeding all over.”

“Why can’t you get nasal drip like most people?” Price asked.

“Just get the team here quick. I’ve got a live prisoner, and he’s Hezbollah.”

“Striker, you’re going to hand over a member of Hezbollah to a Marine?” Price asked.

“This animal’s buddies killed a few hundred people. Including children. I don’t care what the Marines decide to do with him.”

With that, the phone went dead.

PUSHING HIS TONGUE between his upper and lower molars, General Nahd Idel forced his lower jaw to relax, but the clenching muscles were relentless. His personal physician had tried all manner of muscle relaxants and therapy, but that didn’t help. A mixture of stress and old rooted pain from a botched wisdom tooth removal had given him a case of lock-jaw that he couldn’t kick.

Idel jammed several sticks of gum into one cheek and looked at the aide who was finishing his report about the “terrorist raid” on Nitzana.

“They’re saying that at least a quarter of the dead were Egyptian or Palestinian,” Major Pedal Tofo concluded. “Hezbollah won’t be so darling with some of their friends because of this.”

“No concern,” Idel replied. “Why did they only attack with three tanks? Didn’t we give them a dozen?”

Tofo shook his head. “We have people who are in Lebanon. They were watching Sinbal and his men leave Beirut on a cargo freighter with six oversize boxcars. He only left three in Alexandria, and stayed with the freighter. Records list the ship en route to Gwadar, Pakistan.”

Idel bit his tongue, muscles swelling and straining. Outwardly, his face remained impassive, but inside, he was strung as tight as a bear trap. He sat up and squared off a stack of paperwork on his desk, making sure the corners were sharp on the pile. Come to think of it, the jaw clenching could have just been another symptom of the obsessive-compulsive disorder that drove him to be the perfect officer, and kicked him through the ranks of the Egyptian military.

“Sinbal took three of our fucking tanks out of the country?” Idel asked.

“We gave him the tanks. Any money he’d get selling them would be pure profit,” Tofo answered.

Idel stood and walked to the window. Sunlight burned outside, flaring off the almost white sands surrounding his base’s compound. He took a deep breath, then spit out his gum, lighting a cigar to chew on. Grinding his teeth into the fat tobacco roll made him feel better, the sponginess cushioning his aching jaw muscles.

“Do we have anyone who can do a wet operation on Sinbal when he returns to Lebanon?” Idel asked.

“Affirmative,” Tofo stated.

“Make sure Sinbal doesn’t spend an evening more in Beirut without a bullet in a major part of his anatomy.”

“A pleasure.”

“That said, how did the three tanks do?” Idel asked.

“Reports have 375 dead so far, 250 missing, and thirteen hundred injured,” Tofo reported. “The border between Egypt and Israel has been locked down, and the Gaza Strip and West Bank are under heavy military patrols at this time. Combat aircraft are on constant patrol, too.”

“Their armored divisions?”

“They’ve brought up two divisions, in the north and the south to cut off access to their coastal settlements.”

“Only two?”

“Others are in motion, and a third is passing by Nitzana and has set up temporary camp across the Nitzala River.”

Idel smirked. “They’re wondering if Cairo had anything to do with an attack on their stolen territories.”

“Or they’re simply not taking chances. Israel might be outgunned by her enemies, but she makes up for it by not fucking around.”

“Good. Good.”

“Have we been given any green light by Cairo, sir?” Tofo asked.

Idel looked over his shoulder, pulling the cigar from between his lips and stretching out his jaw. He let his ears pop before continuing. “Would it make you feel better if we had our benighted leaders’ support?”

“I’m already dedicated to the cause of getting back Egypt’s lands from the Israeli thieves. I merely worry that…”

“We will be seen as traitors and thieves if we are caught. I understand, Pedal,” Idel said, clapping his aide on the shoulder. “We won’t be tied to the events that turn the cold peace between Egypt and Israel into a hot war. But we will be there at the forefront when it is time to be heroes and take back what is rightfully ours.”

Tofo nodded. “I do not doubt you, or this plan.”

Idel smiled and took a drag on his cigar.

But if Tofo truly didn’t doubt the success of the plan, he was the only one in that room.

THE STRAPPED FOR COMBAT SH-60 Seahawks tore over the landscape, penetrating deep into Pakistani airspace. Captain Carlton Hofflower perched in the doorway of the lead chopper, eyes sweeping the horizon for an angry response coming over the horizon. Nothing, however, was turning its attention toward the quintet of helicopters this day.

The message from HQ was quick, simple and terse.

“Retrieve Colonel Stone. Bring lots of explosives. Coordinates to follow.”

“Captain. We have smoke,” Lieutenant Charles Ellis, the pilot, reported.

Hofflower’s hazel eyes focused like lasers on the spiraling rub of charcoal smearing upward into the blue over the rolling hills. He didn’t need a map to equate the billowing smoke to the location of Colonel Stone. “That’s our guy, GPS be damned.”

Ellis glanced back at Hofflower, and then returned his attention to guiding the Seahawk.

In moments, the sharklike chopper was splitting the sky over the smoldering battlefield, and Hofflower could see a conflagration. Two major blast craters, and a half dozen minor smoking pits plumed smoke skyward, while one man stood with an old-fashioned bolt-action rifle over an injured man.

“That’s Stone?” Ellis asked.

Hofflower nodded.

“Who’s the wounded?”

“I don’t know, but he doesn’t look like a friendly. Tell the other choppers to land in a diamond around this airfield,” Hofflower said.

Hofflower gave Ellis’s helmet a tap, and the SH-60 dropped to the ground, landing with a light bump. As always, the six-foot-six Marine captain “unassed” first, hands resting on the M-249 hanging from his neck and massive shoulders.

“I have a present for you,” Bolan stated in lieu of a greeting.

“I see. Middle Eastern, Lebanese by chance?” Hofflower asked.

“Yeah,” Bolan returned.

“Bidifah Sinbal. Works for Hezbollah,” Hofflower said. The Marine grinned and cracked his knuckles. “Colonel Stone, this is a wonderful gift.”

“I want to know where Sinbal got his tanks from, and if it was his people that were behind Nitzana,” Bolan said.

An interesting question, the Marine thought.

He intended to make Sinbal squeal and spill his guts.

IT TOOK TWENTY MINUTES for a medic to clean and dress all of Bolan’s injuries, but during that time, the Marine Force Recon platoon was busy wiring up the M1 Abrams tanks with enough explosive power to chop them to splinters.

Inside, even more insidious devices were being planted. The insides of the tanks would be able to survive the destruction of the hull and engine section. Nothing short of a nuclear weapon would pulverize every component of the tank in one shot, and even then, the M1s were designed during the Cold War. Their very design was meant to get the massive steel beasts through a nuclear-explosion blasted war plain and continue fighting, even as atomic artillery shells created football field-sized craters all around them.

The Marines were putting miniature Fuel Air Explosive charges inside the tanks. The mini-FAEs were designed for house clearing the easy way. First, a burst would spread a cloud of fuel through a space as large as a single floor of an apartment building. With the air saturated with explosive fuel, a second burst would spark and ignite the atmosphere. Everything within the space would be vaporized.

Bolan had seen entire mountainsides crumbled with a Fuel Air Explosive device improvised from a simple propane tank.

The mini-FAE would smash every ounce of valuable electronics and design inside the M1 to useless pulp. The last thing the world needed was a reverse-engineered version of the U.S. Army’s best tank.

The Marines were meticulous in setting the charges on the armor, though. That was the one thing that Bolan was most concerned about. Abrams armor, indeed any modern tank armor, was a secret design, and each nation had its own proprietary formula. Having that secret drop into the lap of even an ally was considered a disastrous development.

“I’m done,” the medic said. “You can stop the Zen meditation.”

Bolan managed a weak smile. “I was just thinking about the tanks.”

“How the hell did these get here?” the medic asked. “I mean, Pakistan uses old Soviet T-72s.”

“They were brought by the Hezbollah, and the Hezbollah somehow got them from Egypt,” Bolan answered. “How they got them, I intend to find out as soon as I get some intel.”

A gunshot rang out and Bolan turned his head. The sudden reflex action filled his head with sloshing, hot liquid pain, but it was dying down and his equilibrium swiftly returned to normal. It took a moment for his brain to register the sound as a .45-caliber pistol. Captain Hofflower was returning, stuffing his MEU (SOC) custom 1911 into its holster with one hand, holding a small black box with the other hand.

“I recorded everything,” he said, tossing over the digital recorder. Bolan caught it with one smooth motion.

“Make sure that someone sends me a new recorder. With all the features,” the Marine captain said.

“How much did he have? Nutshell version,” Bolan said.

“Well, he helped load the van with explosives for the 1983 Marine barracks attack.”

“That was more than two decades ago.”

“He’s forty-three. And he’s been Hezbollah since he was a teenager,” the captain explained.

“The tanks?”

“Given to him by his commander. He doesn’t know exactly where they came from.”

“Who’s his commander?”

“A creep named Faswad.”

Bolan closed his eyes and reviewed his mental files. Imal Faswad moved into the Bekaa Valley after Bolan rampaged through to take out a terrorist-backed drug cartel. He’d been behind some major counterfeiting of American hundred-dollar bills, approximately fifty million worth, before the U.S. Mint updated to the new bills. The Hezbollah headman was someone who was never quite on the top of the Executioner’s “to do” list because he was mostly attacking people who could, and did, fight back. Bolan’s previous interest in Faswad was derailed when the guy’s headquarters was blasted to atoms by an Israeli air strike and a dozen thousand-pound bombs.

It looked like it was time for the Executioner to pay Mr. Faswad a visit to find out why he was suddenly selling off tanks.

“Who did Sinbal come to sell the tanks to?” Bolan asked.

“Somewhere in the piles of grease you left littered all over the place, there was a party of Filipinos who are, er, were with Abu Sayyaf.”

Bolan’s jaw clenched for a moment. Abu Sayyaf was aligned with al Qaeda. Another case of unfinished business that the Executioner would have to get to.

“You sure I got them?” Bolan looked around. “A lot of guys just took off running.”

“Well, give me a good DNA lab, we’ll know for sure,” the Marine replied.

“All right. I’m lucky I got a single prisoner for you to interrogate,” Bolan conceded.

“Thanks for helping bring a little justice to the Corps,” Hofflower said, putting out one beefy paw.

Bolan took the hand, remembering what felt like a lifetime ago, his own incursion to avenge Marine blood. He could feel the bond with the fighting man before him.

“It’s time to unass and blow this Popsicle stand,” Hofflower called out, pulling Bolan effortlessly to his feet. “It’s good to have you aboard, Colonel.”

“Thanks,” Bolan answered. They got into the Seahawk and Lieutenant Ellis pulled the chopper into the sky, rising a half mile before stopping.

Hofflower handed over the radio detonator to the Executioner. “Your prerogative, Colonel.”

Bolan accepted the detonator, flipped up the safety cover on the firing stud and thumbed it down. Even through the rotor slap and vibrations of the SH-60’s powerful turbines, the shock wave from detonating the tanks was palpable. Concentric rings of smoke, indicating the rippling forces that devastated the armor, were still visible down below.

That was just the opening salvo to the scorched earth process being undertaken.

The four orbiting Marine Seahawks were armed with artillery rockets and Hellfire missiles. Pilots and gunners opened fire instantly on the ground where the terrorists sought to sell the Devil’s tools. Explosions formed a scouring cloud of devastation that swept from the four corners of the auction ground toward the middle, shredding and splintering anything in its path. Stomped flat as if under the feet of giants, the hodgepodge mixture of surviving jeeps, guns, helicopters and low-speed jets, as well as various missiles and other explosives, disappeared in a cacophony of devastation that Ellis yanked the SH-60 out of just in the nick of time.