Desert Fallout

Metit was hesitant to leave the tent alone and unarmed. She also didn’t want to make a lot of racket smashing open the trunk that the hostage-taker had stashed his weapons in. The eerie silence may have sounded empty, but it all could have been a trick.

Maybe, she thought, the rapist had his throat slashed because the other terrorists thought he’d killed her, ruining the fun for the rest of the group. It was a grim, morbid thought, and she was acutely aware of the foul taste of her bile still in her mouth, as if it was punctuating the realization that she had been counted among the dead.

It would probably explain the inactivity of the camp. With one of their own having killed off a valuable hostage, there would have been enough of a panic to evacuate the dig site, moving to another area so as not to be associated with her murder. Metit rubbed her cheek, and looked at her hand, watching the dried flakes of blood and vomit tumble like dust off her skin. She didn’t have a mirror available, but she could easily imagine that she appeared like death warmed over.

The belt had been discarded by her rapist, tossed casually aside after Metit had been battered into unconsciousness. She picked it up and wrapped the strap around her fist just as her rapist had. She could only get half the belt around her hand, as it was smaller than his, and the buckle dangled like the ball of a flail. Metit nodded. It was a better weapon than a glorified fist load. She weighed a little over a hundred pounds, so her punches wouldn’t have the same benefit as a full-grown man’s fist and body mass. However, centripetal force would amplify the strength of her swing, enabling her to cave in a cheek or gash an eyeball from a socket easily. She felt a moment of uncertainty, shocked by how swiftly she had descended into a kill-or-be-killed state of mind, determining the lethality of one form of weapon over the other.

She remembered what an anthropologist once told her. The will to survive was universal human nature, but what needed to be done to achieve that survival often seemed to go beyond what most people called civilization. Every animal engaged in brutal conflict to survive, and combat was hardwired into each and every human. Going into a murderous state of mind was natural.

Metit pushed the tent flap aside and stepped into the open, the buckle of the belt dangling heavily from the end of its leather strap. She couldn’t decide if the wobbly tremors of her knees were weakness and pain from the abuse she’d suffered at the rapist’s hands, or if it was from the adrenaline overdrive of fear. It helped to concentrate on walking, every movement of her battered right leg sending a spike up the length of her side as she took a step.

“Keep going,” she whispered to herself. She closed the prison tent, a breeze whipping across the camp. The rush of air flipped up the unfastened opening, and she saw glimpses of shadows within, just enough to see bodies strewed across the floor. Metit froze, her heart hammering inside her ribs.

More slow, tortuous steps, a few more yards before she could hook the tent flap with her free hand and tug it aside. As she did so, the light spilled over her shoulder, illuminating the scene she’d only briefly glimpsed moments before. Hostage and terrorist alike lay in crumpled heaps on the floor, bodies twisted and mutilated by bullets. Flies buzzed around the open, sticky wounds on the corpses, crawling over faces stretched out in fear and surprise. Her best friend, Rani, had died with her eyes open, and the sight of insects walking across the white surface of her orbs would have brought up a torrent of sickness had Metit not emptied her stomach earlier.

Her knees gave out at the sight of Rani. Metit curled forward, her forearms crossed in front of her face, trying to block out the sight. Her heart felt as if it wanted to explode with the horror of the atrocity before her. Unarmed, bound women, all of them shot to death. Metit could understand if someone had just killed the thugs holding them all hostage, but there was no reason to kill a bunch of archaeology students on a field study.

Metit tried to hold in the sobs, but she didn’t have the will or strength. Her body had been denied its impulse to vomit, so it took its solace elsewhere. Deep, ragged breaths were sucked in between the torrent of tears and wailing over the brutal murders. She called upon God, begged for all of this just to be a nightmare that she would awaken from. She wanted the hell she was stuck in to melt away, evaporate like spilled water on hot sands. Metit asked what she had done to warrant such torment. The rapes were survivable, even if they had left wounds on her heart and soul that would never heal. But Rani, her face spattered with the blood of another woman, her chest riddled with bullets, was something that she couldn’t bear.

She looked around the tent and saw that one of the terrorists had gotten his handgun out. It had fallen from his lifeless fingers before he could pull the trigger, his existence ended with as much violence as those of Metit’s friends. She reached for the pistol’s butt, fingertips running along the Glock’s plastic handle.

This is too much, she thought as she curled her grasp around the gun. Suicide may be a sin, but hell cannot be worse than this…

Metit tilted the muzzle up to her chin, and her thumbs felt for any levers on the weapon. She pressed a small tab she’d found, hoping it was the safety.

Rough hands suddenly grabbed her, prying the pistol out of her hands. Reflexively, Metit pulled the trigger and the 9 mm round exploded past her face, hot gases and powder burning her cheek, striking her deaf in one ear, but she was still alive.

Strong arms wrapped around her shoulders as tears flowed, and she clawed at the man who’d grabbed her. One squeeze and her arms were pinned against her chest, between them. Metit thrashed her head, her one good leg kicking at the ground in an effort to get leverage. That’s when she heard the whispered words in her good ear.

“Relax. Relax,” he said in English. “You’re safe now.”

“Safe,” she repeated. She let out an anguished shriek, and through tear-blotted eyes, she could see the tanned face of a white man, American by his accent. Cool blue eyes looked into hers, and her rage subsided.

This man wasn’t like the thugs who had taken to rape when they’d gotten bored. He held her not to dominate her, but to prevent her from hurting herself, to console her. Muscles in her shoulders bunched, trying to push away from him, but slowly, she was more aware that this was a helper, not a murderer. Metit also noticed that they had moved away from the carnage of the prison tent, both of them standing in the middle of the camp.

“I know it’s hard, but you’re safe,” he told her in a deep voice.

“Everyone’s dead,” she whispered.

Those blue eyes softened with empathic sadness. “I know.”

Metit let herself relax, resting her head against his broad, muscular chest. “Why?”

“That is what we’re here to find out,” Mack Bolan told her softly. He caressed her reddish-brown hair, a gentle touch that soothed her nerves. She wanted to sleep again, but Bolan cupped her chin and looked into her eyes.

“Sit down. You look like hell,” Bolan told her. “You might have a bad head injury.”

“I just want to sleep,” Metit replied.

“Not yet,” Bolan said. He pulled a pencil flashlight from a pouch on his belt and shone it in her eyes. He looked relieved as her pupils dilated under the glare. “No concussion.”

He ran his fingers through her hair, and Metit could tell that he was examining her scalp. When he reached the bruise that her rapist had inflicted on her to knock her out, she winced, shoulders trembling at the touch.

“The skin’s not broken, your eyes dilate and there’s no sign of blood from your ears or nose,” Bolan said.

“Does that mean no concussion?” Metit asked weakly.

Bolan nodded. He gave a low whistle and called, “Kamau!”

Metit noticed Bolan’s companion for the first time. He was a black African, well over six and a half feet tall, with powerful arms jutting from the sleeves of a khaki shirt that stretched tautly across a barrel of a chest. Kamau’s head was shaved bald, but he wore a bushy mustache and a scruff of chin growth. The African was laden with weaponry, much as her savior was, but she still hadn’t gotten a feeling of menace off either of the men.

“Not another living soul in sight,” Kamau reported as he reached into his pack for a medical kit. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s beat to hell and back,” Bolan replied, “but she doesn’t have a concussion or any other signs of a skull fracture.”

“Small mercies,” Kamau said grimly, looking around.

“Who are you?” Metit asked as Bolan put a wet compress to her forehead. He also slipped some painkillers between her dry lips and gave her a sip from the straw attached to the hydration bladder on his backpack. The straw kept her from gulping the water, but she suckled for a minute before her thirst was sated. Her stomach was no longer empty, but water and pain pills wouldn’t make her heave more. Metit’s nausea had dissipated.

“Matt Cooper,” Bolan answered.

“Kamau,” the big African added.

“Names don’t explain why you’re here,” Metit said.

“No, they don’t,” Bolan told her. “This looked like an archaeological dig. Who were the goons with the rifles?”

“Terrorists who hit us a few days ago,” Metit answered. “We were looking for the hidden tomb of a fabled Egyptian sorcerer.”

Kamau looked at her, then to Bolan. “That explains where Mubarak got the seeds.”

Metit blinked, her brain starting to clear. “They were waiting for Mubarak to come back.”

Bolan’s lips drew into a tight line. “He’s the reason we came here. Someone followed Mubarak to Somalia and tried to kill us.”

Metit wrinkled her brow. “Are you…”

She looked at some of the murdered riflemen.

“No,” Kamau said. “I’m an undercover agent. Cooper, he hasn’t said. But we are here with the support of people Mubarak wanted to sell the sorcerer’s seeds to.”

“Undercover agent?” Metit asked.

“I’m Ethiopian,” Kamau confessed. “Our country is not thrilled to have a bunch of radical fundamentalists controlling a large part of a neighboring nation.”

“And I’m not thrilled to see any terrorists trading diamonds for military weapons,” Bolan told her.

Metit shook her head numbly. The clarity she’d felt when she’d recognized Mubarak’s name was fading. “Is it all right for me to lie down? My name, by the way, is Rashida Metit.”

Bolan nodded in acknowledgment of her introduction.

“Kamau?” he said.

“I’ll check the perimeter again,” Kamau replied. “Whoever did this left to get into the catacombs your people were exploring. They could be on their way back any moment and they have guards at the cave entrance who could have heard you.”

Metit shuddered. “I’ll stay awake. And quiet.”

Kamau gave her a warm, reassuring smile, then stalked toward the entrance to the catacombs that had been built into the side of a mountain.

Bolan rested a calming hand on Metit’s shoulder. “I’ll see what medical attention I can provide, and you fill me in on this sorcerer.”

“Set Akhon,” Metit explained. “He was a master of death according to the few hieroglyphic references to him in the prepyramidal tombs.”

“Prepyramidal era?” Bolan asked. “It makes sense. More than a couple of ancient peoples had developed poison sprayers and chemical flame projectors around that time.”

“You know your ancient history,” Metit answered.

Bolan looked toward the catacombs, then to the bodies strewed around the camp and sighed. “Only because some people don’t see humankind’s greatest mistakes as anything other than inspiration for more madness and carnage.”

The Executioner tended to the young woman’s injuries. The psychotics who had wrought this destruction in the name of an ancient weapon were bound to return to camp sooner or later. Bolan needed Metit in peak health and able to fend for herself.

Then, Bolan would be free to deliver justice to a ruthless squad of murderers.

CHAPTER FOUR

Isoba Kamau thought about the twisting journey that had brought him from his youth as the child of ethnic Somali parents in Addis Ababa to the Sinai Peninsula, specifically the most recent stretch. The Ethiopian army Intelligence Division had sent Kamau undercover into Somalia, since his physical features and the Somali and Arabic taught to him by his parents enabled him to blend in, despite his great size and strength. Working his way through the ranks of infighting among the radical Islamists who had dissolved into competing factions with the defeat of the Islamic Courts Union in 2006, Kamau had risen to a position of trust under one small unit leader of the Shabaab. With his strength and fighting ability, he had proved himself to Masozi, and managed to limit his violence to rivals of the Shabaab splinter. Uncovering the pipeline of illegal Liberian diamonds that helped the young militia commander had been Kamau’s goal.

That was when the American, Matt Cooper, arrived and the Shabaab splinter was hammered mercilessly. Cooper admitted that he had been behind some of the damage wrought among the renegade Islamists, but the major issue had been where the Egyptian Mubarak had gotten his hands on potential weapons of mass destruction like ricinus seeds. Whoever the American really was, he had seen through Kamau’s position as Shabaab security chief.

It was probably Kamau’s polylinguistic ability, as well as the reaction to the deaths of his supposed comrades. Cooper had a sharp eye, and had betrayed that he was on his own mission of justice in the war-torn Somalia. Kamau was glad to finally drop the act of fanatic. Though he was familiar with Islam as practiced by his mother, the zero-tolerance xenophobic variety practiced by the hordes swarming southern Somalia was a heavy weight on Kamau’s broad, powerful shoulders.

He whispered the Lord’s Prayer, the Somali-Orthodox version of it in Amharic, thanking God for the relief of breaking away from the Shabaab on a scouting mission to seek Mubarak’s stash of deadly arms and poisons.

Masozi had whispered, before he and Cooper left for Egypt, to keep a close eye on the American. Masozi was paranoid and utterly bigoted. A white man was a devil in disguise, and Cooper’s guise as a mercenary only reinforced the Shabaab leader’s anxiety that he would betray them. Kamau, being a fellow African who knelt to Mecca five times a day, was utterly trustworthy.

Kamau smiled at the irony as he knelt behind a rock, observing the guards at the entrance to the catacombs of Set Akhon. The AK-47 gripped in his massive hands felt like a toy, but anything larger would be impractical. He noticed movement at the entrance, and in the late-afternoon sun, he was able to finally see what the enemy looked like.

Each was dressed in a black Nomex flight suit, the de rigueur uniform of special operations teams in the field. The suits had multiple pockets and were made of environmentally resistant materials that protected the wearer from anything from fire to ice. They allowed easy, unrestrained movement, and could be kept as warm or cold as necessary, thanks to the use of chemical-pack inserts. Under the jumpsuits, the men likely had on body armor, or they had incorporated it into the load-bearing vests that held their ammunition. The mystery killers were packing modern, twenty-first-century weaponry. Their black rifles were compact bullpup weapons with rail sights. Kamau wasn’t quite certain what they were, but they bore enough resemblance to the Israeli Tavor assault rifle that he had to wonder exactly whom the commandos worked for.

The Tavor had been around long enough that some models had been found on the black market, and undoubtedly, there were knockoff producers who had reverse engineered the guns to make their own versions. It was also entirely possible that these were some form of gun produced in Brazil or China, Kamau thought. The “Uzi” pistol that rode on his hip was actually a Brazilian look-alike, and the Beretta he wore in a shoulder holster had been built in South America.

Cooper was similarly rearmed, since both men had had to dispose of their weaponry to avoid undue attention by customs officials in Egypt. Unlike in southern Somalia, Egyptian law enforcement was on its toes, alert and ready for trouble at all times, being a target of extremists who thought that the rightful, democratically elected government in Cairo didn’t adhere strictly enough to the principles of Islam.

Men had appeared at the mouth of the cave, pushing a small cart loaded with crates. Kamau knew that the mystery commandos had retrieved some of their deadly cargo from within the catacombs. It was likely that more of the raiders were following with their own containers. Kamau gritted his teeth, knowing that he and Cooper were outgunned as well as outnumbered.

He turned and raced on quiet feet back to the camp. The woman student was on her feet, her long, reddish-brown hair pulled out of her face in a ponytail so that a damp bandage could be wrapped around her head. She didn’t look as if she could fight, but Bolan had given her a handgun in a belt holster that had been cinched around her hips.

Bolan nodded as he saw Kamau and turned to Metit. “They’re on their way back here. They’ll notice that you’re gone, so we need to move.”

Metit’s eyes at least looked as if they could focus. She rested her shaky hand on the grip of her pistol. “We’re going to let them get away with this?”

“No,” Bolan answered. “Kamau?”

“I saw four, but four people couldn’t take down this camp that fast. There’s at least another squad of four,” he answered.

Bolan turned to Metit. “Go with him, Rashida. I’ll make certain they don’t follow us.”

“Alone?” Metit and Kamau asked in unison.

“I’m used to long odds, and I won’t take any action until I’m certain they’re moving on us, and you haven’t gotten to a safe distance,” Bolan replied. “Inside those parameters, I won’t even have to take any action if you get moving quickly.”

“You heard the man,” Kamau said, gently taking Metit by the arm. “I’m just going to help you along.”

Metit nodded. “I know.”

Kamau shot a look to Bolan.

“She’ll be fine. Move it,” he ordered.

Kamau gave the American a small salute and led Metit toward a gully off to the side of the camp.

MACK BOLAN WAS no stranger to this situation, alone in the desert, unarmed and outnumbered, providing a firebreak in defense of allies. Luckily, the enemy hadn’t become aware of their presence yet, but once they returned to the camp, and if they happened into the tent where Metit had lain, they’d discover that the woman they thought was dead was very much alive.

The team had been sent to ruthlessly eliminate anyone involved in the archaeological dig and who knew about the discovery that was made. Mubarak had gotten away by a couple of days, so the arrival of the enemy in Egypt meant that this may have been the same group that had struck in Kismayo, and had a better means of transportation available to them than Bolan and Kamau.

Judging by the state of the corpses strewed about the camp, Bolan calculated that the students and their kidnappers had been dead for only a couple of hours. The Executioner bit off his anger and the accompanying recriminations that had delayed his arrival. Even if he had gotten here in time, there was no indication that he and Kamau could have taken down the murderers before innocents were harmed, especially if they’d stumbled onto the situation with Mubarak’s allies still holding unarmed, frightened people hostage. Two men rescuing dozens of frightened people from itchy, panicky terrorists would have been a prescription for mayhem, especially since the pair hadn’t thought to bring along secure communications. It had been a risk that they had taken, the illicit arms dealer only having weapons, ammunition and desert-survival gear.

Bolan remained hidden, crouched as he watched the mystery men as they brought out five containers from the cavern that concealed Set Akhon’s tomb. Thirteen men were in this group, and they were outfitted with all manner of equipment. Safety goggles and head wraps made determining their nationality difficult, and the way they handled their weapons indicated that they were well-trained professionals. With their index fingers straight and off the trigger, muzzles pointed to the ground, never sweeping their allies, they betrayed themselves as skilled warriors.

One of the group brought a hand unit with an antenna to his mouth. It was somewhat bulky, so that meant the man was in contact with someone far away. Cellular phones could be made tiny due to the fact that they were in contact with local broadcast networks. The bulk of the commando’s comm unit indicated that it was high-powered, able to transmit to satellites and communicate with people as far as the other side of the planet. His use of the satellite phone also indicated that he was in a position of leadership among the fighters at the tomb’s entrance. Commanders were the ones who tended to report back to whoever had financed and assigned the death squad.

Bolan knew that if he could get his hands on the mercenary’s sat phone, it was likely he’d have a handle on who was running this operation. Outnumbered, however, Bolan wasn’t certain that he could take the enemy by force. It would have to be by stealth. Luckily, the Executioner’s combat PDA had a series of universal connectors, and generally sat phones had their own ports for communication with computers, allowing the download of encryption and important information to secure transmissions. The software and hardwire links built into the Personal Data Assistant built for Bolan by Hermann Schwarz might be able to give him an edge in finding out who the enemy was.

Bolan reined in his speculative plans on intercepting the enemy’s communications. There was too much at risk with one hostage still alive, but in no condition to survive an intense fight. While the mission was important, the life of a noncombatant was too precious to endanger. There would be ways to pursue the opposition without getting hold of that sat phone. They’d be less efficient, increasing the risk that the deadly poison could be utilized before he caught up with it again, but Bolan knew that if the enemy was willing to backtrack and kill anyone aware of the ricin, they had to have had a plan that was running on its own timetable.

It was a gamble, and Bolan didn’t like it, but he decided to bide his time.

To avoid combat unless absolutely necessary was the strategy he’d plotted for now.

A conspiracy whose perpetrators were paranoid enough to pounce on Mubarak as he bartered the biological toxin in Somalia might have enough contingencies to frustrate the Executioner and his cybernetic allies back at Stony Man Farm. Protective software, dense encryption and even a simple self-destruct mechanism in the sat phone could be in place to cover the plotters.

He swept the approaching commandos with his binoculars. He’d shaded the lenses with a collar of PVC pipe duct-taped in place, preventing the glasses from creating a glare of reflected sunlight. As an experienced former Army sniper-scout, it was second nature for the Executioner to disappear, even in plain sight. Stealth was more than merely camouflage, though the soldier had unfurled a desert-pattern lightweight blanket and had fashioned it into a cloak that not only blended him in with the terrain at the edge of the archaeological camp, but also shielded him from the sun’s burning rays. His head scarf was in place to keep his head from getting too hot, absorbing any sweat he did give off, and to keep his jet-black hair from providing stark contrast, which would have betrayed his position.

As a sniper, Bolan had learned about human perception and how to avoid being noticed in the field. He could observe the commando team with relative impunity. Still, the big American knew that he could find himself in trouble if his own observational skills had failed him.