Desert Fallout

Pivoting, Bolan turned his fire toward the enemy troopers who had halted their retreat and turned their AKs toward him. The soldier had good cover, and better aim than the Islamist fanatics, but there were enough of them, spread out, that he wouldn’t be able to take them all down in one burst before they threw a wave of deadly steel-cored torment at him.

Moments later the Somalis jerked violently under gunfire from some unknown source. Bolan almost took it as a sign that a new player had entered the fight on his side.

The pickup truck Bolan crouched behind suddenly heaved as the unmistakable bulk of a .50-caliber rifle round smashed into its fender, seeking the Executioner’s flesh.

The death raining down on the Shabaab pirates came for Mack Bolan, as well.

CHAPTER TWO

Bolan leaped from behind the Peugeot’s fender as a second .50-caliber antimatériel round sliced through the vehicle as if it were made of paper. Had he not moved, he would have been caught in the path of the metal-crushing round and churned into froth by the passage of the irresistible bullet. He swept up his FAL, looking for the shooter who was concentrating on him, but couldn’t see a thing in the darkness.

The Shabaab gunmen were in a panic as they swept their AKs in all directions, opening fire on every shadow and flicker that caught their eyes. They had gone from warring with a one-man army to being surrounded and gunned down mercilessly. Bolan could see Kamau tuck Masozi under one arm and take flight once more, just as he’d done when he threw the first grenade through the storehouse window. Bolan was tempted to cut the two men down, but he needed answers. Everything had gone wrong, and the only way to salvage the situation was to get some inside information. That meant that suddenly, Bolan was on Masozi’s side.

Without a target, the Executioner was going to have to apply his razor-sharp intellect to determining where the new enemy was firing from. He couldn’t use muzzle-flashes, since whoever was firing utilized suppressed weaponry. It was disconcerting that the .50-caliber antimatériel rifle was also wearing a can, dampening its dragon’s-breath belch of flame down to a dull red glow that wouldn’t carry far in the night. However, there was no way for the riflemen to hide the angle at which their bullets impacted the ground, or the dust kicked up when they hit. The rounds impacted the dirt at an acute angle, meaning that the elevation of the enemy gunners had been between eight and twenty feet off the ground. That ruled out warehouses neighboring the Shabaab compound, which were thirty to forty feet tall with no windows.

Bolan swung back to the Peugeot and ducked below the fender. He put his eye to the cavernous tunnel that the enemy Fifty had torn through the metal, and saw shadowy figures crouched atop one of the small barracks buildings inside the complex. The enemy was dressed in black, making them almost impossible to see if they remained still, but because the Shabaab scattered under the onslaught of stealth weaponry, they had to change positions.

Bolan popped up over the pickup’s hood and triggered his FAL at the rooftop, raking the night sky. Drawing on his limited, halting Arabic, he shouted, “Over there!”

The big American pointed at the rooftop. Four Somali gunmen turned and saw what the Executioner had indicated. The young radicals hoisted their Kalashnikov rifles and opened up on the rooftop, as well.

The soldier sidestepped and sought new cover, this time behind the bed of the Peugeot. He’d moved just in time as the front of the pickup truck was clawed by a storm of automatic fire punctuated by the muffled thunderbolt of the enemy heavy antiarmor rifle. Bolan grimaced and knew that the Shabaab pirates who were aware of the mysterious marauders wouldn’t last long, and any hopes of additional forces following their cue were slim because of the death toll and terror inflicted upon the Somali militiamen by both Bolan and the hidden squad of killers.

The 84 mm rocket launcher and its bandolier sat at the wheel well of a Mercedes four-wheel drive, just where he’d left them. A mad dash across open ground drew the snipers’ attention, but Bolan was too swift, his own dark form flowing through the shadows, keeping ahead of the lines of bullets chasing him. He skidded to a halt, snatched up the launcher and swung behind the bulk of the jeep. Bullets hammered into the Mercedes’s frame as Bolan swung open the launch tube and stuffed a black, serrated warhead into the breech. Closing the action, he now had a weapon capable of evening the odds against the hidden gunmen. Rather than aim across the hood of the Mercedes, Bolan swung around the front fender, locked onto a spot at the top of the wall and triggered the Carl Gustav. The range was a mere twenty meters, but it was enough for the warhead to arm itself, and when it struck just below the roof, the explosive impact split the building, carving out a terrible furrow. Screams resounded from the marauders’ vantage point, at least two of the enemy shrieking as shrapnel reduced their limbs to bloody stumps.

The sniper fire had died out immediately, but Bolan swung back behind cover anyway. He took the lull to feed the FAL rifle another magazine, and just for good measure, he popped a fresh 84 mm warhead into the Carl Gustav. He’d come to stop the flow of illicit diamonds into Somalia, and he had been determined to give another crew of pirates a crippling blow.

The discovery of a batch of raw materials for processing a particularly toxic strain of ricin and the intrusion of a mysterious party of well-equipped and stealthy commandos had altered the mission. It didn’t take much imagination for Bolan to realize that Mubarak had gone rogue, taking a secret supply of deadly biological poisons to the black market in exchange for a suitcase full of illicit diamonds. The dark-clad assassins had all the earmarks of a retrieval team.

At least, that was the hope Bolan harbored. The gunmen had opened fire so quickly on the Shabaab militiamen and Bolan, that it had to be a shock-and-awe strike.

The suppressed antiarmor rifle was the thing that gave Bolan the most consternation.

“White man!” someone called.

Bolan turned at the sound of the voice. He spotted Masozi and Kamau, crouched behind the corner of a building. They were armed, but they hadn’t leveled their weapons at him.

Yet.

“What?” Bolan asked.

“Who was that shooting at us?” Masozi asked.

Bolan settled quickly into the role of lone mercenary. “Not a damn clue. I was just here to get the Egyptian back for shorting me.”

Masozi’s eyes narrowed.

Bolan patted the Carl Gustav launcher. “I was supposed to get six of these.”

“He promised me four,” Masozi answered. “You made a mess of my people.”

“I just came for the cheater,” Bolan said. “I may have fired on a couple of your boys in self-defense, but I nearly got flattened when they blew up half your storehouse.”

Kamau glared. “That so?”

“You might have bought his story about magic beans,” Bolan began.

“What’s your name?” Kamau cut him off.

“Matt Cooper,” Bolan replied. “You?”

“Orif Masozi,” the Somali answered. “This is Kamau, my chief of security.”

Bolan stepped into the open, keeping the launcher at low ready. There was the chance that there was a second squad of sharpshooters among the rooftops, but there hadn’t been a shot fired in the minute that Bolan was conversing with the Shabaab. “I think it’s clear.”

“What the hell was that?” Kamau asked. “And never mind the name, who are you?”

Bolan didn’t lie with his answer. “I’m a free agent who needs a lot of firepower. What say we grab the diamonds and get the hell out of this place.”

Masozi pointed at the storehouse. “If you can sweep them up and sift them from the ashes, they’re all yours.”

Bolan grimaced looking at the gouts of smoke pouring out of the shattered warehouse.

“So much for that plan,” Bolan grumbled. “Let’s get a closer look at the guys who shot at us then.”

Kamau frowned, but after a moment of consideration, he nodded in agreement. Leading he way, Uzi locked in his massive fist, he approached the half-wrecked barracks. Through the shattered wall, Bolan and his companions could see the bullet-riddled bodies of Shabaab militiamen, slumped on their cots or strewed across the floor. It was a complete slaughter, and Bolan felt better.

The kind of commandos that Bolan could consider soldiers of the same side wouldn’t engage in wholesale execution of unarmed opponents. The corpses were evidence of bottomless ruthlessness that trained U.S. special operations forces wouldn’t resort to. None of the Shabaab gunmen had even gotten close to a sidearm. It was one thing to end the life of an armed sentry on patrol, even after knocking him out, but shooting unarmed, half-naked, half-awake men as they lay in their berths was a sign of brutal, cold-blooded murder.

Kamau sneered as he looked at the carnage. “Bastards. What kind of coward shoots a sleeping man?”

Bolan looked at the tall Somali and held his tongue. He had to remember that the Shabaab had declared that they would execute any American sailors they encountered after the United States Navy executed several pirates who’d held a U.S. merchant captain hostage. Looking back at the littered corpses in the barracks, he remembered that these sleeping men could easily have taken another ship and gunned down unarmed crew members.

Their loss wasn’t one that the Executioner would mourn, even if he would have waited until they were awake, dressed and armed to put bullets into them.

“Give me a boost to the roof,” Bolan said. “I’ll help you up then.”

The Somali giant nodded and laced his fingers together, lifting Bolan to the top of the building. It was empty except for a couple of fallen weapons and a stripped-off load-bearing vest. Bolan reached down and gripped Kamau’s massive paw. Had not the Executioner’s muscles been honed by countless hours of exercise and almost daily combat, the three-hundred-pound bulk of the Somali giant would have proved a strain. Even so, Bolan was glad that Kamau dug the waffle tread of his boots into the wall to assist in getting to the roof.

“They grabbed their wounded and dead and ran,” Bolan noted. “They left behind a vest and a couple of weapons, though.”

Kamau pulled a flashlight from his belt, and Bolan did the same. It was to examine the evidence left behind by the mysterious marauders, but it was also to look for weakened sections of roof. Neither man relished the potential of crashing to the ground if he took a misstep.

Bolan crouched by the vest and saw that it had been sliced off. Blood soaked into the ballistic nylon of the shell showed that one of the commandos had shorn off the garment in order to reach a chest or neck injury. Kamau, on the other part of the roof, prodded an assault rifle with the tip of his machete, just in case the weapons left behind were rigged with booby traps.

“They were too busy trying to escape to leave us a surprise,” Bolan said.

“Not that you’re taking chances by pawing that assault vest,” Kamau noted.

Bolan nodded. “Whoever it was unsnapped the pouches of spare ammunition and took them with when they bugged out.”

“That’s very odd,” Kamau said. “No spent casings.”

Bolan frowned. “They probably had brass catchers hooked up to their guns.”

Kamau squinted at the circle of light as he ran it across the rifle. Bolan recognized the gun as a Steyr-AUG, an A-3 model, from the rails mounted on it. The compact bullpup allowed a full-length barrel on a short, handy rifle. The weapon was the size of a submachine gun yet had the punch of a rifle. Bolan had used the Steyr quite a few times in the past. Its plastic furniture was dull, dark slate gray, in variance with the usual olive-drab shell that the AUG was adorned with. Kamau flipped over the rifle, and in the glow of the flashlight beam, Bolan could see frayed fabric hooked to a collar around the ejection port.

“They took their brass with them,” Kamau noted. “Probably will ditch it off a pier.”

“Those are paranoid levels of operational security,” Bolan said. He picked up the Steyr and worked the spring-loaded bolt handle. The chamber was empty. Whoever had sanitized the weapon had thought to take the round in the breech, as well as the remainder of its magazine. “We won’t get fingerprints off this, nor do we have serial numbers on this thing.”

“Fingerprints,” Kamau noted. “You have your own crime lab or something, Cooper?”

“I’ve got a few friends who can look through Interpol databases for relevant information.”

“How do we know you’re not a policeman?” Kamau asked.

“Would a policeman drop a grenade in a suspect’s lap?” Bolan countered.

“This is Somalia, Cooper. We chop off thieves’ hands and hurl rocks at the heads of women who won’t let their husbands have their way with them,” Kamau answered. There was a hint of a sneer on the big Somali’s lips, a hint of disgust at the behavior of the men who claimed to be the law. “Blowing the hell out of a man with a grenade would make you a saintly police officer, because you at least give a quick death.”

“I’m as much of a cop as you are, Kamau,” Bolan said. In all likelihood, the Executioner figured he hadn’t told the man a lie. Bolan was no officer of the law. He wasn’t some civil servant with a .44 Magnum. The Executioner was his own man, a warrior who haunted the shadows of the world, seeking out the criminals and psychopaths who haunted decent citizens of every country. Kamau, with his hint of moral indignation at the abuses of the Shabaab and the Islamic Courts Union in Kismayo, was someone who was more likely a policeman, working undercover. If he wasn’t working for a government law-enforcement agency, then he was likely a lone crusader, much like Bolan himself.

Kamau looked at Bolan under a heavily hooded beetle brow, suspicion dancing in his eyes like reflected firelight. It was a moment that the Executioner had experienced many times before, facing down a man who could have been either friend or foe. Though Kamau could easily have been mistaken for a muscle-bound brute, he had a sharp awareness in his gaze. The Somali strongman buried his glimmer of curiosity and extended a hand. “You mess with Masozi, I’ll tear you apart.”

Bolan nodded. “I don’t doubt that. The Egyptian…”

“Mubarak,” Kamau interjected.

“Mubarak cheated me. I only came to show him my displeasure,” Bolan said.

Kamau looked around at the spatter of blood. “You were displeased by these people?”

“Yeah,” Bolan answered.

“Then let’s file our complaint together,” Kamau suggested, a grin forming on his lips.

Bolan nodded. That Kamau offered Mubarak’s name indicated that there was a foundation of conspiratorial trust between the two men. Cop or crusader, the big man was offering a shred of cooperation.

“You two done up there?” Masozi asked.

“Cooper’s rocket launcher sent the bastards packing,” Kamau called down from the roof. The pair hopped off and landed on the ground, crouching deep enough to absorb the impact of their fall.

“Whoever they were, though, they were interested more in Mubarak than they were you,” Bolan told Masozi.

“Perhaps,” the Somali said, derision dripping from the term. “They brought a fight to my doorstep.”

Bolan looked at the storehouse. “And whatever they did, they were done with this place. They could have stuck around, but since the storehouse and Mubarak’s magic beans were destroyed, they bugged out.”

Masozi sneered. “Mubarak was pretty convincing about the potency of those seeds.”

Bolan shrugged. “Neither of us have what we wanted, and it’s not like this remaining rocket launcher is going to satisfy the both of us.”

Masozi tilted his head. “What do you mean?”

“Mubarak had a stash that he was parceling out to us,” Bolan answered. “We want our gear.”

“So we head to Egypt and grab Mubarak’s weapons?” Masozi asked. “With what army? My Shabaab has been decimated. Did you find anything at all?”

“They left nothing. No casings, and a completely empty rifle that we won’t be able to trace,” Kamau told his boss. “But since they had lots of firepower, and came here after Mubarak, if we find out where the guns came from, we will not only get that for ourselves, but hit back against the scum who hurt our operation.”

Masozi looked around. “We don’t have a lot of resources.”

“I could help,” Bolan offered. “I generally operate solo, but I’m not going to be able to haul a lot of stuff by myself.”

“What makes you think we’d let you take anything?” Masozi asked.

“What makes you think Mubarak’s people don’t have more than all of your people could carry, and then some?” Bolan asked. “We go there, we hit the mother lode.”

Masozi looked to Kamau. “This sound like a good idea?”

“I’m just in this to get some payback,” Kamau replied. “Those were my men murdered by these sneaky bastards. Can’t hurt to get some free weapons in the trade-off.”

Masozi nodded. “All right. Let’s get some order back in this compound. We’ll need whatever boats we can scrounge to transport the men to retrieve the guns, and to bring them back here.”

Kamau and Bolan looked at each other.

Something bigger had just replaced the destruction of the Shabaab militiamen under Masozi. Something dark and ominous that threatened more than just the shipping lanes around the Horn of Africa.

The incinerated remains of jars full of ricin seed, buried in the collapsed storeroom, were the portent of an apocalyptic threat.

CHAPTER THREE

Egypt, the Sinai Peninsula, two days later

Blunt fingers clamped around Rashida Metit’s upper arm as she was hauled out of the tent where the women of the archaeological expedition had been held hostage. She struggled to break free of the ham-handed grasp, but her captor slammed a handgun slide across her cheek. Metit could feel a trickle of blood dribble from the cut on her face.

When the man tugged again, she went along without further resistance. Metit recovered enough of her senses to do no more than put one foot in front of the other, and when her captor shoved her into another tent, she stumbled headfirst through the flaps, crashing to the sandy floor.

The structure she was in had become the official “rape tent.” It stunk of sweat, sex, blood and vomit. Metit and all the other female archaeological students on this dig had been on this floor at least twice in the past four days, dragged there by bored and angry terrorists who had grown tired of waiting for Ibrahim Mubarak’s return from Somalia.

Metit clawed at the sand and scurried a few feet deeper into the tent. Her tormentor chuckled at the sight of her desperate attempt at escape, and walked over to the trunk. The heavy lid and combination lock would prevent the hostages from getting to their captors’ weapons when the rapist dozed off in postcoital exhaustion. He spun the dial on the lock, rolling through the tumblers in order to open it, then dropped his AK-47 and Glock 17 into the trunk. The two simple guns and their ammunition would prove problematic if they fell into the hands of even a novice like the pretty twenty-three-year-old Rashida Metit. The Glock had no thumb safety, and was always ready to fire, while the AK-47 had been designed so that even untrained irregular militiamen from Angola to Zimbabwe could use them.

Her captor took one stride toward her, and Metit kicked out. Barefoot, she didn’t have much of a chance of causing him harm, even if he hadn’t danced lithely out of the path of her driving foot.

“Still have some fight, eh, bitch?” the rapist asked, chuckling as he unbuckled his belt.

“Get away from me,” she growled.

His chuckle turned into a deep guffaw as he slipped the belt out of its pant loops. He wound the leather around one fist, the cured hide creaking as it was drawn tight into an improvised fist weapon, the buckle hanging across the top of his knuckles once he was done. Metit knew what punches from that felt like. “Get undressed, girl. It’s fun time.”

Metit gritted her teeth, showing no intention of following his orders. He was going to have to work for what he wanted, and she lashed her foot out again. Only the rapist’s reflexes had protected his testicles from being smashed, her kick instead landing on his muscular thigh. The belt-wrapped fist came down hard on her shin and pain seared from ankle to hip, the leg gone numb from the brutal, jarring impact.

She grabbed at the side of the tent, her splintered fingernails clawing for a handhold, and her tormentor stepped in closer to her. Her fingers ached from the days of abuse as a prisoner, the nails cracked and worn down to the quick as she and the other women had scratched at the ground in order to dig an escape tunnel from their prison tent. It was when the terrorists had discovered their efforts that the rape tent had been initiated.

The wound belt bounced off Metit’s jaw, and her brain spun helplessly inside her skull. The impact hurled her against the canvas, which was taut enough to hold her hundred-and-five-pound weight without tearing. Then she crumpled to the ground.

Moments later, a rough hand squeezed her chin, holding her limply bobbing head still for a moment, and a second later, blessed unconsciousness descended upon her.

REALITY BROKE THROUGH her fever dreams of unconsciousness, and Metit managed to rise to her elbows before her stomach contracted violently. Bile coughed out between her blood-caked lips, and the acid in it burned the puckered wound on her inner cheek. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she rolled onto her side, instantly regretting the decision as she put her weight on her injured leg. Metit righted herself, lying on her back to alleviate her injuries.

Numbly, she reached down to take inventory of herself with her fingers. Her T-shirt was still intact, only having been shoved up and out of the way to bare her breasts. Her shorts and panties were gone from her hips, however. The sob she released transformed into a pained cough from a dry, blood- and bile-clotted throat and she turned her head to spit out the choking glob.

She took several deep breaths. Her leg ached badly, but gently flexing her foot and toes, she knew that no bones had been broken. It was a small mercy. Metit grimaced and saw that her shorts and underwear were still wrapped around one ankle. Stiffly, she slid her hurt leg through them, and pulled them up.

Getting dressed took on a new level of discomfort, every movement aggravating aching muscles, spearing her pain receptors mercilessly.

Her rapist was still in the tent, lying not far from her, his pants open and his genitals exposed. Metit was tempted to jam her thumbs into his closed eyes, gouging them out and blinding him for the horrors he’d inflicted on her, but as she had trouble even tugging her shorts over her hips, such aggression wasn’t in the cards for now.

Something was wrong. The way the terrorist lay was unusual. Her pain and nausea had been so distracting that she had missed the fact that he wasn’t breathing. A closer examination in the dim light of the rape tent showed that his throat had been slashed from ear to ear. Metit bit her lower lip and she crawled away from the corpse of her tormentor.

Emotions conflicted in her. She felt nothing but disappointment that she didn’t get to see the actual execution of her rapist, but if she had been rescued, then why were there no medics around to tend to her injuries? She closed her eyes in an effort to focus on her hearing. Even with the normal day-to-day routine of the Sinai archaeological dig disrupted by the presence of hostile riflemen, there had been sound, from chatting guards to sobbing hostages, as well as the smell of cigarettes and coffee percolating on the fire.

Silence and old, stale odors were all that answered her reaching senses. Metit’s stomach turned, but there was nothing down there to come up. Filled with a bottomless well of dread, she struggled to her feet and took a tentative step to the flap of the rape tent. Peering through the slit, she couldn’t see anyone, and the silence was thick and ominous. Her rapist had dragged her to the tent around noon, and she could see that the sun had dropped considerably in the sky. Since the terrorists had taken her watch, and she didn’t know the exact time of sunset by memory, all she could guess was that she’d been out for at least half the afternoon.