Path To War

Mitchell paced the apartment, chain-smoking, hating the setup more with each passing minute, fearing the worst, which was that his little game plan had been found out and someone on the home team was coming to yank his ticket. The ringer and his two cronies from Luanda, he saw, were more interested in the porn flick on the giant screen TV—one of several perks imported along with a case of whisky and Cuban cigars—than a business transaction with the Swiss cheese who called himself Herr Cabal he figured would net him three, hopefully four mil or more. With their AK-74s resting on the deck, barely within quick snatching distance, if they were concerned about security…

Look at them, he thought, chortling, swilling booze, lounging on the big couch, wishing probably they could jump through the screen and devour some light-skinned flesh, ignorant people thinking the bottom line here belonged to them. No way. This was his deal, earned on sweat, blood and balls of steel. A pound or more of rocks, smuggled, here and there, out of Angola the past year or so, stashed in a safe-deposit box in Madrid until he felt it safe to bring in his man from Wilders. And the idiots, he thought, he was sitting on for the organization he had slaved for as mercenary were one of several reasons he was bailing. The org’s end game, for one item, was unnerving enough, preposterous, even suicidal the more he thought about it. It was time to look out for number one. Fifteen years dodging bullets had earned him the right to walk off into the sunset with a bag stuffed with cash.

Mitchell felt his hand wanting to twitch to unleather the Beretta M-9 pistol under his coat, force Herr Cabal to hand over the briefcase he knew was stuffed with a down payment. He looked at Johannsen, sitting on the other side of the table, the big blond merc boring diamond-edged drill bits into the middleman, his AKM resting in his lap. One nod and they would force this show to a surprise ending.

“What’s the story?” he barked at Herr Cabal who took another handful of stones from the large silk pouch. A noncommittal grunt, a shake of the head, and Mitchell snapped, “Come on. Those stones are perfect, but you’re sitting there, acting like they’re cheap knockoffs.”

Cabal grunted. “Perfection is impossible. A ‘perfect diamond’ is an unacceptable trade term. What I am looking for are as few flaws as possible.”

“What’s the whole lot worth?”

“Did you know that diamonds are also found in meteorite?”

“All that’s very interesting, but answer my question before you really start to piss me off.”

Mitchell was taking a step toward the man, on the verge of slapping a straight answer out of him, when the front door crashed open. For a second he was paralyzed at the sight of four armed blacks charging the room, frozen long enough for the invaders to begin unleashing autofire. By the time he palmed his Beretta, he glimpsed Johannsen tumbling to the deck, scarlet fingers spurting from his skull and chest, then felt the first few rounds tearing into flesh pitching him, back and down.

MIRBA SETTLED the severed head beside the man’s notebook computer, placed the card with the image of Al-Jassaca in a spreading pool of blood. Quickly he wiped the knife on the man’s shirt, sheathing the blade as he sensed a presence just beyond the doorway to the study. He slipped the AKM off his shoulder.

“You’ve had your fun. I suggest you vacate now.”

It had been almost too easy, dropping the sentries, lopping off their bullet-shattered heads, then penetrating through the kitchen door. He wasn’t sure what he’d actually expected—more hardmen, bells and alarms blaring, some type of resistance—but he had gunned down the CIA man with a quick burst of autofire where he sat, scrolling through what looked like an endless series of numbers. Not a stir in the house, until now.

Mirba, though, knew all along what he would do when he encountered the traitor. His part of the mission was finished, and so was the American, as he turned, found the shadow, armed with a pistol, looming tall and angry in the doorway. Witnesses, even paymasters, were always a liability.

“I’ll take it from here.”

And Mirba lifted his AKM, squeezed the trigger and blew the infidel traitor off his feet. The nameless adversary was grunting curses, rolling on his side, pistol tracking when Mirba drilled a 3-round burst into his chest.

All done, he figured as he took the laptop and dumped it in a nylon sack and began his retreat from the abattoir, as silent as a ghost.

THE CROWD BURST into a stampede with the opening rounds. Their terror and panic was pure sweet music to his ears, a taste of paradise, he thought as he surged into the banquet room swinging the Czech subgun to his three o’clock as Bodyguard-driver Two was digging into his coat for his weapon. Number One was already tumbling back, pasta and sauces flying through the air, when Haludba Demmahom hit the second guard with an SMG blast. He aimed for the face, having already noted the extra girth beneath the shirts, hit the grim snarl point-blank with. Number Two kicked off his feet, he advanced deeper into the room, found the two HVTs jumping from their seats. The DOD man was hauling his bulk for the exit door next when Demmahom gave him some lead, squeezing off a short burst that stitched him up the arm before his head burst apart in a gory detonation of red and gray. Advancing, he looked at the senator who had his hands raised, blubbering something Demmahom couldn’t make out through the maelstrom of shouts and screams to his rear. A check of his watch, counting down to pay dirt, and he delivered 7.62 mm judgment to the senator, shredding his white shirt to a crimson rag, the man windmilling his arms as he jig stepped, tumbling over his seat, down and crashing to a twitching sprawl.

All computers and paperwork, he’d been told, were to be taken.

Not much time, as he kicked it into another higher gear, yanking the folded nylon pouch from the small of his back, dumping the laptop and two briefcases into the big sack.

Flipping the calling card with the picture of the beast of Judgment Day on their table, he made the fire exit door with seconds to spare. The thunderous retort of the explosion brought a smile to his lips. With any luck, he thought, what was a paltry body count would rise before he vanished from the premises, God willing.

THE FLASH-STUN GRENADE stole him critical seconds. As Rikaz Hanahzud charged down the foyer, his senses choked with dust and cordite, he held back on the subgun’s trigger. He found them in the living room, on their feet now, as they hopped, deaf and blind, around the coffee table, screaming as he ripped them apart with a long stuttering burst. They were crashing down as he took the corner post, peering through the smoke, watching the hall opposite the living room.

For some reason he felt disappointed, having hoped to encounter a larger group.

Two dead CIA officials, though, and their gunmen had to suffice for the moment. Tonight, four dead infidels. Tomorrow was another day. All this racket, he knew, was sure to alert the neighbors. Time to pack it up.

Whether the blast or a few rounds from his subgun, he found both laptops had been reduced to mangled shards. There was a way to retrieve what was on the hard drives—or so he hoped—though he wasn’t sure of the procedure.

Later, once he was clear and free.

There were papers, some floating to the floor now, so he quickly filled his nylon sack with ruins and paperwork, then retraced his path. At the front door, he found the hall empty, dropped a card with the image of Al-Jassaca on one of the dead sentries, and marched away, hoping God guided him safe and unmolested through the night.

IT WAS A SICKENING display of pure savagery, but Ron Baraka had expected nothing less. The good news, from where he stood, slipping into the apartment, AK-74 up and ready, was their bloodlust had so consumed them they were blinded to all else except their machetes hacking off arms. One quick assessment and he could tell Guangalat had given the order to shoot low, gut shots or legs, but to keep a couple of them breathing long enough to become amputees. He understood a little Bantu from all the years he’d spent in Angola, knew Guangalat was in a mindless rage, feeling duped, no doubt, that the real Katanga hadn’t stepped out from behind door number one.

Tough. Katanga was the org’s meal ticket. It was the diamonds he had come here for, content to leave the dirty work to hired field hands.

Without warning, Merkelsen stepping up on his right wing, they cut loose with autofire, sweeping the Angolans, left to right, their lackeys unable to do much else besides lurch to their feet, shout in pain and shock, and it was done.

There was a groan, the pitiful sound marking the remains of the ringer as he rolled around in his own blood, glazed eyes searching out a mercy nowhere to be found. As Merkelsen swept the diamonds off the table, Baraka looked at Mitchell. The thief was dead. Lucky for him, he thought, or he might be tempted to do some on-the-spot surgery himself. How long and how much carat weight the man had stolen from him he didn’t know, but a quick look at the size of the pouch and Baraka figured the thief had come here, part baby-sitter, but looking to walk off with a few mil in cold cash. Sashay off into the sunrise, waving a middle finger salute at the Organization.

It was, yes, about the money, Baraka knew, but there was a bigger picture to consider as he turned and followed Merkelsen for the door.

There were entire nations, perhaps even the world to conquer.

CHAPTER TWO

It was called the Serpent Tank, and from what Mack Bolan had gathered, he suspected it was aptly named. According to the cyberteam at Stony Man Farm, the ultracovert intelligence base in rural Virginia, it was a CIA slush fund, created for the express purpose of buying arms—small and large—information, and whatever in-country contract players that could aid and assist Company black operatives in tracking down the enemies of America and the free world. The trouble was, given his vast experience in dealing with the CIA, what with the double-dealing, double-speaking, backstabbing operatives he’d encountered over the years, he couldn’t help but wonder how many snakes were in charge of the tank, and what some of the funds might actually be used for. The short list could include narcotics, arms, even WMD for enemies of America in exchange for a fat payday meant to vanish into numbered accounts.

As the man in black—also known as the Executioner—motored the Peugeot down the wide Boulevard du Forbin he recalled the brief from Hal Brognola—a high-ranking official at the Justice Department and Stony Man’s liaison to the Oval Office—just before he set sail in the Gulfstream for Morocco. Three separate assassinations had snared the big Fed’s keen interest, and when the President green-lighted the mission to hunt down the perpetrators, the soldier was wheels up, crossing the Atlantic to eventually land at a private airstrip just south of Casablanca. There, he was greeted by members of an FBI special counterterrorism task force, and also waiting on the tarmac was the Commander of Morocco’s own Counterterrorism Task Force. Bolan’s bogus credentials stated he was Special Agent Matthew Cooper, and he was in charge of the American contingent. The Moroccan commander was on hand to, ostensibly, smooth the way in, provide intelligence and so forth.

Details were sketchy, with no firm leads or clues as to the whereabouts of the assassins, and the soldier had a nagging tug in his gut he was going in blind for the first tags on his hit parade. What he knew was a CIA storm tracker—a Company operative who gathered and sifted through intelligence on the world’s most wanted terrorists—had been executed, along with three operatives in rural Virginia. Their heads had been lopped off—standard operating procedure these days, it seemed, for extremist executioners—a calling card of a supernatural Islamic beast left behind, which presented at least a narrow window of opportunity as far as identifying the killers. Next there was a senator who headed the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence, his dinner companion—a high-ranking official from the Department of Defense—and their bodyguards gunned down, the suspect fleeing the scene, a ghost in the wind, but not before bringing down the restaurant’s roof with plastic explosive, killing ten diners and employees, and wounding several others. Finally a team of CIA operatives, rumored to be in charge of the Serpent Tank, had been murdered in their D.C. condo, which supposedly doubled as some sort of clandestine after-hours office. As was the SOP of many terrorist attacks, the trio of hits seemed to go down nearly at the same time, according to police and FBI reports.

And all of the kills, Brognola informed Bolan, were the work of a trio of Pakistani assassins known to American intelligence agencies as Al-Jassaca.

So why launch the campaign in Casablanca, he had posed to his longtime friend. Known associates of the assassins had been discovered holed up in an apartment by Moroccan authorities who had pledged full cooperation with their American counterparts, vowing pretty much to bow out, let them bag Habib Mousuami and his brothers in jihad. It was strange, Bolan thought, that the Moroccans, after three recent car bombings, would so graciously step aside. Which put some bogeys on his radar screen.

Trust no one.

Last, but hardly least, two Asian males had been spotted going into the target apartment by an FBI stakeout team, less than an hour ago. Who they were, what they wanted with Islamic extremists…

Well, Bolan had his own methods for extracting information.

It was awkward, manning the wheel, weighted down with the hardware he was taking to the party. The overcoat was customized to stow flash-bang, frag and incendiary grenades. More pockets were stuffed with spare clips for the shoulder holstered Beretta 93-R and the mammoth .44 Magnum Desert Eagle riding his right hip. An Uzi submachine gun was stored on his left hip. Accessible through a special-cut deep pocket. It may prove cumbersome, grabbing for hardware when he hit the front door, but full combat webbing and vest may attract the wary eye of the denizens of the night the alarm sounding to local authorities, slamming the brakes on his mission before it got off the ground. He had been assured by Commander Raz Tachjine, however, that he had complete authority in the city if Special Agent Cooper had any problems with some overzealous police.

The kind of trouble the Executioner was poised to dump along the waterfront and deeper into the area known as Medina would provide nothing but problems of the most bloody kind.

He saw the dome of the Great Mosque looming in the distance, cut the wheel to turn south on Place Mirabeau. It was a seedy part of the big city, the grimy whitewashed apartment buildings somehow oddly stacked and out of place, as they were lined behind rows of palm trees. Another few blocks and he spied the FBI stakeout team in its black van. They had grabbed a corner, just south of Boulevard Mohammed, perfect for watching the front doors to the apartment. Bolan took his handheld radio, patched through to the team leader to let him know he was in the neighborhood. A quick sitrep from Agent Andy Dawkins, and Bolan was informed the players were still hunkered down in their lair. Their standing orders were to sit tight, come in only as backup, or go through the front door themselves if he wasn’t out in fifteen minutes.

The soldier parked, bailed and crossed the boulevard, navigating a quick flight through heavy traffic. He went through the front doors, climbed the steps to the second floor. The aroma of tea and tobacco filled his senses as he marched down the empty hall. He heard a baby crying somewhere and what sounded like a couple engaged in a heated argument from behind another door. All clear in the hallway. At least for the moment.

Bolan reached the target door. He knew the enemy was inside; since their phone had been tapped by his team for weeks, the number traced here to this apartment, and complete with eyeball confirmation.

He palmed a flash-bang, pulled the pin, but held down on the spoon. What the hell, he figured, go in the hard way, get the game jump started, all blood and thunder. Five jackals total were behind the door, he’d been told. One way to find out. He hated not knowing the layout of a target site, but if it was a standard two bedroom, figure foyer leading to the living room…

Digging out the Uzi, he lifted a booted foot, sent it crashing through flimsy wood, just beside the knob, falling back just as the door exploded in countless shards and splinters.

ANOTHER TIME and Special Security Agent Lance Dexter of the Department of Defense would have idled away the waning twilight hours strolling Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, taking in the sights of the tall ships, girl-watching, swilling whiskey, eating lobster and crab at a waterfront restaurant. Given what he knew waited beyond the warehouse door, however, and any thoughts of R and R should have been banished from his mind. He was on a mission, and it wasn’t ordained by God.

He looked both ways down the lot—all clear—then he shucked his sports coat higher up his shoulders, suddenly feeling the weight of the shouldered Beretta M-9. The heavy artillery—M-16, Uzi and Colt Commando—were locked in the trunk of his black sedan. It was an unsettling feeling he experienced, out of nowhere, aware of the experiment under way inside, and he wondered if the human test subject might go berserk, require an extended lead punch…

Well, he had a job to do, and the shadow men overseas were eagerly awaiting his report.

Swiping his magnetic card down the keypad, he punched in his access code. A green light and he was in, the door automatically snicking shut behind. A grim Delta Force sentry, armed with an HK MP-5, nodded curtly as he marched past, quickly moved down the narrow corridor. At the end of the gloomy corridor, lit by only two hanging bulbs, a steel door barred the way to what he thought of as Frankenstein’s laboratory. Another keypad; his access code punched in, only this time he was forced to place his right eye to the retina-iris scan. This part of the security routine always put his nerves a little on edge, as he imagined some sharp object would jump out of the lens and gouge out his eye. The way he understood it, the scan took a digital picture to compare with prior retina-iris scans. One of the high-tech DOD geeks had once explained each human eye had a unique pattern of blood vessels. The iris, the core part of the eye, was a complex weaving of countless connective tissue. In short, every human being had his or her own individual eye marking.

The steel door slid open and he was rolling in, finding the biochem genius—recruited by DOD especially for this task—washing his laptop with a wave of cigarette smoke. Briefly wondering what other vices or skeletons the man had in the closet, he spotted the giant ashtray, carved with the porcelain figure of a naked woman and piled to overflow with butts, within easy arm’s reach of Dr. Teetel. The genius was squat, stoop-shouldered, with a gray Bozo hairdo. He always had the urge to address the man as Ygor, but figured in his own field and own right he was due respect.

Then Dexter looked at the test subject, dead ahead, stretched out on a gurney, just inside the glass bubble, naked accept for underwear, arms and legs strapped. Two more whitecoats were glued to their monitors on each flank of the human lab rat, the subject wired to their laptops, skull and chest. Granted, the man had volunteered for the experiment, known the risks, but Dexter had to wonder about his sanity. No, scratch any pyschobabble. Mr. Smithson had come to them out of desperation, pure and simple, a down-on-his luck mercenary, a degenerate gambler, cash-strapped, who been sought out by the Consortium, offered ten thousand dollars to become Ygor’s monkey.

Dexter stood beside Teetel, caught a whiff of whiskey, flashed him a look, then peered through the boiling cloud. He was uncertain of what he saw on the monitor, but it looked as if the good doctor was playing computer games while getting tanked in the process.

Teetel twitched his head, a wet grin pasting lips. “Ah, Mr. Dexter. So good of you to come. You’re just in time.”

“What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?” he said in his perpetual squeaky voice.

“What do you mean, ‘what do I mean’? You’re getting paid top dollar, and it looks to me like you’re wasting time, playing a kid’s video game.”

Teetel snickered, shook his Bozo mane. “Mr. Dexter, allow me to explain something. This is no game. What you see is a maze, yes. Those are insects, yes, but who are in the process of self-replicating.”

“Self-what?”

Another shake of the head and Teetel went on. “We’re talking about creating a form of artificial life here. We’re in what science calls, ‘A-life programming.’ Beyond the synthetic steroid-methamphetamine I created for you people—so you could have your so-called supersoldiers—science wants to understand the bigger picture of evolution, the origins of life, the nature of learning and intelligence. In other words, we’re seeking to create the perfect man here. What I am giving you, on the other hand, is a warrior who requires no food, no sleep, who is virtually impossible to kill—though that concept alone is impossible—but, just the same, one who is just shy of the perfect man, or, for your purposes, the perfect killing machine. These insects you see are in the process of searching out their own energy-food source. They are reproducing—or cloning—themselves, transferring one cell’s nucleus into another cell. As you can see, one or two vanish from the screen, as they are searching out simulated food through a complex series of mazes. Translation—only the fittest, the strongest, survive. Pure Darwin.”

“Well, that’s all very interesting, but what’s cloning have to do with the Z-Clops drug?”

“Z-Clops, good sir,” Teetel said, “has been infused with dopamine and endorphin derivatives, you know, the bio-chemicals relaying messages by way of neurotransmitters?”

Dexter clenched his jaw, resentful of the way the good doctor condescended to him. “I have a basic understanding of all that.”

Teetel pulled a bottle of whiskey out of his desk drawer and dumped a splash in a foam cup. “The dopamine-endorphin derivative infusion self-replicates itself by feeding on other neurotransmitters. In other words, your supersoldiers can go on and on and on. My chemical-molecular software program for Z-Clops is fairly based on this Survival of the Fittest program you now see.”

Dr. Teetel was either half in the bag, eccentric or crazy, but what did they say about genius? Dexter wondered as Teetel pressed the intercom button and told them to proceed. There was a thin line between genius and insanity?

“What I am telling you, Mr. Dexter,” he heard Teetel say as he watched one of the whitecoats inject Z-Clops into Smithson’s arm, “if I am successful here, with a synthetic drug that self-replicates while in the brain, there is a good chance I can eventually do that with human beings—self-replication, that is. And, no, good sir, I am not a ghoul, nor do I seek a Nobel Prize.”

Dexter wasn’t so sure about that as he watched the test subject, waiting for the wonder drug of the ages to kick in, Teetel hitting his cup when—

The first spasms were so violent it looked to Dexter as if Smithson was lifting the gurney into the air. He glimpsed Teetel go tense, jaw slack, saw the whitecoats wearing grim concern on their pink faces, then their test subject convulsed, the left arm suddenly breaking free of the strap. Smithson’s eyes bulged with what Dexter could only call wild-eyed fury, an animal-like bellow blasting clear through the reinforced glass. They were lurching back in there, set to run for cover, as the leg strap burst next, Dexter aware of what he had to do. There was only one way to subdue the test subject.

“Get that door open!” he shouted at Teetel as he unleathered his Beretta and rushed to the far side of the bubble. He was inside, just as the berserker burst another arm binding, the whites of his eyes rolling back in his head. Both whitecoats jumped on the screaming demon, one of them with a syringe in hand, shouting, “Don’t shoot him!”