Armed Response

“Two minutes to the drop zone. You had better get ready.” Smith had to yell in the man’s ear to be heard.

The soldier merely nodded. Smith watched as the man ran his hands over the buckles and straps of his parachute harness, leaving nothing to chance. Together the two men walked over the vibrating deck to the side cargo door. The jump light was still red, but that would change within the next minute. The man secured himself to the aircraft frame to prevent himself from falling out. There was no need to worry about decompression or specialist breathing equipment, as they were not flying high enough. He reached out and pushed a button on a control panel and plunged the cargo hold into darkness.

Smith heard him punch another button. There was a hiss and a thunk as the side door opened. The noise level increased tenfold. The freezing night air rushed in, whipping around them.

Twenty seconds more.

Loadmaster Smith reached out and grabbed a metal strut for extra support. He disliked parachute jumps and being a parachute dispatcher. The height didn’t bother him. The sensation of falling did. But serving in the RAF meant standard parachute training, and he had managed to conquer his fears. The old anxiety, though, was always there.

Ten seconds.

Smith was glad that he was not jumping this night. A nighttime parachute jump was a terrifying experience for those who had never attempted it. A nighttime jump over the desert would only increase the tension. On a moonlit night the sand would appear as water, giving a false illusion as to exactly how high the jumper was, making him misjudge his landing and break limbs on impact. However, for a highly experienced soldier, one equipped with all the latest gadgets, it should be a walk in the park. And he could tell that the stranger was no novice.

Zero seconds.

The jump light changed from red to green.

The stranger exited the aircraft.

In a blink the man was gone, leaving only empty space and howling wind behind him. Smith didn’t bother peering out into the void. There was no point. The soldier would already be lost to sight.

Smith pushed another button that closed the door. He shivered in the cold. The aircraft’s interior lights came back on. He released his safety belt and walked toward the flight deck to report that the passenger had departed. The big man in black, whoever he was, was off to war.

And Smith wished him well.

* * *

PITCH BLACK.

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, plunged through the night on the latest mission of his War Everlasting. The noise from the Hercules was already lost, replaced by the sound of cold air roaring past his head, his suit and gloves keeping his body reasonably warm in the ice-cold air. Bolan didn’t bother trying to locate the aircraft, concentrating instead on his trajectory in what was called military free fall. He lay horizontal to the earth, chest out, back arched, steering with his outstretched hands. His gear bag was tight between his knees. The parachute, a standard MT1-XS fitted with an automatic opening device, had been borrowed from a US Navy SEALs unit that was on exercise in southern Italy. The parachute would automatically open at three thousand feet, giving Bolan plenty of time to glide the canopy to his designated landing zone. The parachute, like everything else on this mission, had been hastily arranged. The target was just too important for Bolan to be allowed to slip away.

The target was one Zaid abu Qutaiba. Bolan’s mind quickly ran through the known facts and conjectures as he plummeted to the ground. Qutaiba had been on

Stony Man’s most-wanted list for some time. At one time the man had been a captain in the Iraqi Republican Guard. Now he claimed responsibility for the destruction of an embassy in Kenya, the attempted shooting down of a US commercial aircraft and several assassinations of liberal politicians in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. It was also believed that he was behind several car bomb attacks in Israel.

These atrocities were more than enough to bring him to the attention of the antiterrorist unit at Stony Man Farm.

Qutaiba had been spotted before, not only by Stony Man but also by several key law-enforcement agencies around the world. Yet Qutaiba had managed to avoid capture through the use of disguises and false names, despite all the technology and all the human resources brought to bear. The report had come in less than twelve hours earlier from the CIA. An agent had followed Qutaiba and his entourage to an abandoned village that was probably being used as a transit point on the southern shores of Yemen. The window of opportunity was slim. Bolan had been in Italy at the time, accepting a mission to free a hostage, a mission that was scrubbed by the time he arrived, the hostage already freed by the Carabinieri. So he was hastily pressed into a new operation and was now jumping out of an aircraft at ten thousand feet.

The mission was simple.

Locate the terrorist transit camp.

Identify Qutaiba.

Termination with extreme prejudice by drone strike.

Although Mack Bolan carried enough firepower to take on a small army, his task this time was one of pure surveillance: make sure that it really was Qutaiba, then contact the Farm. They in turn would relay the message to the Pentagon, who in turn would contact the pilot of a remote drone that was orbiting high overhead. The White House had made it clear to all parties involved. No mistakes. No civilian casualties. Make sure it really was a terrorist camp. Make sure that Qutaiba was at the location. Then and only then would the order be given to destroy the terrorists. All of this would require boots on the ground, and those boots belonged to the Executioner.

Bolan had to give the terrorists credit. Not a light showed anywhere. The camp was under observation from an orbiting Keyhole KH-12 satellite, which would be using infrared and thermal imaging. It would show the observers back home how many warm bodies there were.

Crack!

The unexpected noise came from behind the soldier. He turned his head quickly to witness the black canopy opening, then checked the altimeter on his right wrist.

The parachute was deploying too early.

The automatic activation device fitted to the chute had to have been faulty. Bolan hadn’t had the time to thoroughly check all of the equipment himself, and when he had preset the required height, he hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

An invisible hand grabbed Bolan by his neck and jerked him into an upright position, his head snapping backward. His hands flew automatically to the risers, which would enable him to have some semblance of control over his descent. They were not there, and his terminal velocity had not significantly decreased.

Bolan looked up and cursed. The black parachute, all 370 square feet of it, had collapsed and become entangled on itself.

Bolan plummeted toward the ground completely out of control.

He had only seconds to react. The gear bag had slipped from between his knees and was now hanging by its quick-release cord. The weight of the equipment in it was causing him to gyroscope, spinning him to the left in ever-quickening circles. Soon it would be impossible to maneuver. The centrifugal forces would prevent him from moving his arms. He forced his right hand slowly down to his belt, fighting the gravitational force. He fumbled for several seconds, unable to locate the emergency-release cord.

Suddenly it was in his hand and he tugged hard. Immediately the gear bag dropped away, disappearing into the darkness. With the loss of ballast, Bolan began to spin slightly slower. His fingers were throbbing, his head felt as if it were about to pop from the blood being forced into his extremities. Gritting his teeth, he found the emergency release for the parachute with his left hand and depressed it.

There was a snap as the faulty parachute let loose.

Bolan was once again in free fall.

Instinct told him that his time was almost up. He curled in a ball, rolled over and threw his limbs out in a star formation. He pushed aggressively down with his right arm and leg, and the spin quickly was brought to a halt. Reaching down, he tugged on the cord for the reserve chute.

Once again there was a crack, and Bolan was grabbed from behind into an upright position. Above him the black canopy of the reserve chute opened to the familiar rectangular shape, its 270 square feet fully spread. Bolan’s unchecked descent slowed.

He reached for the risers and checked his altimeter.

He was a mere two hundred feet above the ground. Swiftly he pulled them to further slacken his speed and braced for impact. He began running as he landed on the soft sand, which absorbed the shock. His left foot went out from under him, and he fell down the side of a dune, dragging the parachute with him. Bolan rolled several times before coming to a stop. He was now wrapped up in the collapsed parachute.

Could anything else go wrong?

Bolan released the straps and cut through the cords and material with his Cold Steel Tanto fighting knife. Once free he quickly crawled away from the landing site, all the time listening for sounds that somebody had spotted his parachute, that they were coming to investigate.

There was no movement. The desert was silent.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

BARBARA PRICE, mission controller at Stony Man Farm, felt her heart thud as she watched the thermal image of Bolan falling out of control on one of the digital screens in the Computer Room. She and Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, head of the Farm’s cyberteam, quickly surmised that there was a problem when Bolan’s body began to windmill. What exactly was happening was impossible to say. They couldn’t see what the situation was with the parachute or the gear bag. But for several long seconds they watched as Bolan plunged through the sky.

“How high is he?” Price asked Kurtzman, a slight tremor in her voice.

“Not high enough” was the muted reply.

“What went wrong?”

“I have no idea.”

They could only observe the imminent death of the Executioner, a man they had known, admired and supported through the years, a man who was Price’s occasional lover.

It was a huge relief when they saw the falling man resume a normal position in the air, then suddenly slow. They watched as the figure rolled and tumbled on the ground. He was down and very much alive.

Kurtzman turned back to his computer, tapping at the keys. After several seconds he looked up at Price, his expression grave.

“There is a slight problem.”

Price looked away from the screen, shifting her focus to her friend and colleague. “What?”

“Striker is here,” he said, pointing at the main screen, “but his equipment, including the transmission gear, is here.” The image on the main screen zoomed out. “He must have dropped it when he lost control during the free fall. The problem is these two guys.” On the screen they could clearly see two shapes advancing toward the gear bag. The bag contained not only Bolan’s long-range weapons but also the transmission equipment needed to contact base. The two men were believed to be a foot patrol, one of several that monitored the area.

“When they open it and find the guns, they’ll run all the way back home and show their treasure to the boss. If it is Qutaiba, then he’ll disappear, and a hunting party will be looking for Striker.”

“And there’s no way we can contact Striker to have him intercept the patrol.”

“No way at all,” Kurtzman confirmed.

“Inform our contact in Yemen that there’s a problem. See what assistance he can offer,” Price ordered.

Kurtzman nodded and immediately got to work.

Southern Yemen

MACK BOLAN STAYED at the landing site for ten minutes, waiting, watching, ignoring the cold night air. Nobody came. He had quickly regained his breath; he had hundreds of hours of experience with parachute jumps and had been extensively trained in what to do when things went wrong, but even so, an uncontrolled free fall was something to be avoided. It wasn’t his first bad experience during a jump, and most likely it wouldn’t be his last.

His biggest worry now was the loss of his specialist weapons and equipment. The electronics would be smashed, the guns damaged beyond use. He was now only armed with two pistols, a .50-caliber Desert Eagle and a Beretta 93-R, with its custom sound suppressor. Two hand grenades hung from his combat webbing. He also had a garrote, the knife he cut the chute with, a small map and compass, a tiny flashlight and two hundred US dollars along with several spare magazines of ammunition in various pouches and pockets. Everything else was gone.

Bolan considered the situation for a moment. The mission objectives hadn’t really changed. He would be able to find the terrorist camp from the map; he would still be able to locate and identify Qutaiba. The only difference was his inability to communicate with the Farm. They would in all likelihood still have him under observation via the drone. If he could find a way to signal them, then the mission was still a go. And if he was unable to do so, then he would find a way to remove Qutaiba himself. Then get out of Dodge, avoid the Yemeni army should they show up, rendezvous with the contact and leave Yemen as fast as possible.

Yes, the mission was definitely still a go.

A thousand things could yet go wrong. The drone might have been called off. The powers that be might decide to fire the drone’s Hellfire missiles despite Bolan being unable to report in. His main parachute might be discovered, alerting the terrorists. And who knew where his gear bag had landed. The mission could go to hell in an instant, but the soldier had been in tight spots before and knew exactly how to get out of them. This time would be no different.

Bolan buried his reserve parachute in a shallow hole that he dug with his bare hands. The warm jumpsuit joined the chute in its grave, unlikely to be seen ever again. Now dressed in his combat blacksuit, he quickly checked his weaponry for damage and for sand blockage, before withdrawing the map and compass. Using the miniature flashlight, he roughly worked out his position. Returning the navigation equipment to a pouch on his combat webbing, he straightened and started a slow jog across the loose sand in what he believed to be the correct direction.

The Executioner had a date with a terrorist.

CHAPTER THREE

The solitary candle flickered in the draft from the tiny open window, its flame creating and erasing shadowy images in an instant. The black cloth that covered the opening billowed slightly, held in place by four nails hammered hard into the surrounding wall. Zaid abu Qutaiba lay on his camp bed, his left arm tucked behind his head, using it as a pillow since there was no real one to be found. The arm had long since gone to sleep, and Qutaiba knew that it would hurt like hell when he did eventually move. For now he ignored it, lost in the imaginary world that the candlelight formed.

The dancing shadows shaped themselves into the face of a devil, before shifting to a flower, before reimaging into a racing cheetah. Qutaiba’s eyes remained unfocused, seeing but not seeing. In his mind’s eye he focused on only one image set against the backdrop of the yellow light—that of an old, long-lost photograph of his wife and young son smiling happily. It worried him that he was unable to recall their expressions, their mannerisms, their real faces. The only recall was of the photograph, which he had lost when Mossad had closed in on him in Tel Aviv, when he had been forced to dress as a woman to escape their clutches. The loss of the keepsake felt like a betrayal to their memory, and as punishment, it had made his memories of them decay.

Qutaiba could feel a wet line running from his eye to his ear, but ignored it. It was the Americans, of course, always the Americans. There were plenty of Shiite versus Sunni killings. Those were bad with their constant car bombings and suicide attacks, but the Americans had killed his beautiful wife and son; they were the ones who’d sprayed indiscriminate bullets around the marketplace in Kirkuk, not even sparing a backward glance when they left behind the torn bodies of the “insurgents,” including a five-year-old boy and his mother.

Qutaiba had not been there. Having survived the American-led invasion as a captain in the Republican Guard, he had thrown away his uniform and joined the newly reformed police force instead. He’d never cared for Saddam or his warped sons and wanted so much to help rebuild Iraq, even if it meant cooperating with the American occupiers. They would leave eventually, he had reassured his wife, Aya. But they didn’t leave soon enough. A new phenomenon appeared in American warfare—private armies. Supposedly hired to guard diplomats and protect foreign workers, some of these men took their duties too far and saw Iraq as a free-for-all. Anything could be done. No repercussions.

When a patrol of these private mercenaries had stones thrown at them in the marketplace by disenchanted youths, they had retaliated with extreme violence. The youths were gunned down, along with many other shoppers. When their magazines were dry, the mercenaries clambered back into their jeep and left. He could remember the call of the dispatcher over the scratched and battered radio, summoning all to the scene of the massacre. When he had arrived, he had been physically held back by colleagues, who had found the torn bodies of his family.

There was a blank after that, a large blank. Qutaiba imagined that he could remember the funerals the next day, but there was no definition, no clarity. There was a vague image of throwing away his police uniform, which he had been so proud of, but again that could also have been a fictional memory. What he did remember, like a searing pain, was that there had been no claim of responsibility from the Americans. Nothing. No mention of it anywhere. It was just gone, denied as if Aya and his son, Ajmi, had never existed. He’d felt his faith die along with his family. Revenge, vengeance, hate, it all became the same.

He’d sought out the company of the rebels; he’d known who they were and where to find them from his police days. At first they’d been skeptical, but Qutaiba had showed them what he was made of, leading a devastating attack on the Iraqi offices of the private soldiers responsible for the deaths of those he most valued. He’d slaughtered the men inside, shooting the corpses in their faces until all identity had been erased.

The insurgents had been impressed, but Qutaiba had wanted more. He was hungry for it. He’d vowed to kill Americans and their allies wherever they were to be found. He began kidnapping Western soldiers and civilians, making bargains with them in front of the rebels: if they could kill him in single combat with a knife, then they could go free. The prisoner was given a choice of fighting knife. One kidnapped diplomat had cut himself before the fight even started, so Qutaiba promptly had helped the fool by cutting his throat. All of the corpses had been dumped in a prominent part of the city where patrolling soldiers could find them.

He’d come to the attention of al Qaeda, who had taken him under its wing, faith or no faith, molding him into what he was today. He’d discovered a talent for leading and planning, one that the Mullahs, the mad, hypocritical Mullahs, encouraged. Qutaiba felt he was using them as much as they used him and didn’t care if they knew it.

Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Israel, Kenya—all had suffered from his wrath. But still he felt empty; nothing filled the void that he dragged around with him. Maybe, just maybe, the emptiness would go within a day or two, for then would come his greatest attack, one so simple that the Americans would have no time to respond, just as Aya and Ajmi had had no time to respond.

Qutaiba shook himself out of his reverie, closing the door on the ghosts. Blinking, he sat up on the camp bed, cursing as the pain of pins and needles surged through his sleeping left arm. Reaching over to the bedside table, he grabbed the half-filled plastic cup of cheap red wine and took a sip. Not being a devout Muslim had its advantages. He grimaced. The wine had warmed. Awful. Scraping his tongue against his teeth to remove the foulness of the warm wine, he replaced the glass next to a notebook, which he knew he should not have. But there were certain details of the operation that he needed to be reminded of and the notebook was invaluable.

The wooden door opened, and the candle almost gutted itself as an imposing figure stepped into the room. The door slammed shut behind him, the figure neither caring about noise or the intrusion. Qutaiba didn’t need to look up from his position to know who it was. Only Hakim Haddad would enter so, only Haddad lacked the manners and the sensibility to knock first. Only Haddad could repulse him more than all the Americans and Israelis put together. The man was a complete animal, and Qutaiba had to wonder if Haddad had finally come to kill him. Qutaiba’s AK-47 was propped against the wall next to the door, now out of reach. He tried and failed to suppress the shudder that ran through him. To hide it, he reached out for the wine, preferring its foulness over the presence of the Afghan visitor. He heard Haddad’s sharp intake of breath and smiled slightly, noting once again how easy it was to rile the fanatic.

“What do you want, Hakim?” The tiredness in his voice came as a surprise.

“The first group has arrived at the destination. They will begin their attack at the correct time. The rest of our group will arrive shortly. The men are eager for battle. They wish to bathe in the blood of infidels.” Haddad’s voice was a growl, and Qutaiba wondered if Haddad wanted to bathe in his blood, as well. The man certainly viewed him as an infidel, and only the orders of the Mullahs had kept the two men apart. Qutaiba finally turned to look up at the towering Taliban dressed in traditional Perahan Tunban clothing. Whereas Qutaiba grieved the loss of his child every moment, Haddad had actively murdered his own daughter in an honor killing, never blinking, never mourning. The very thought revolted Qutaiba. He wanted the monster gone, out of his single mud-brick room.

“Anything else?”

“I sent extra patrols out. Some men saw something fall out of the sky. They went to look.”

“Fall out of the sky? A bird?”

Haddad glowered. The man was a powder keg; the slightest perceived insult would provoke him. Qutaiba tried to keep his mocking tone in check.

“Perhaps. Or it was a spy or a robot drone. I sent them to look.”

“Yes, Hakim, you did well. Keep me informed.”

Haddad’s demeanor didn’t change as he turned and left the hut. The hate stayed in his eyes. Qutaiba closed his own eyes. It was so debilitating to work with these people, but it was a necessary evil. They were nothing more than cannon fodder. They would all be dead and gone within the next few days; maybe even he would be dead. There was an escape plan, one the pawns did not know about, but Qutaiba didn’t know if he wanted to use it. That empty aching void was dragging him down. The plan would kick into action soon, an attack against the hated enemy, one that would not be forgotten. And during that attack, he would make his peace with Aya and Ajmi, begging their forgiveness as he rushed to join them. It would happen soon.

Nothing could stop it.

* * *

MACK BOLAN, LYING on his stomach, observed the comings and goings of the terrorists from his vantage point atop a large sand dune. Even in the predawn gloom he could clearly see that the men were no normal villagers. Armed with AK-47s, they kept up a loose, sloppy guard. These were men not expecting trouble. They seemed more excited about something than keeping an observant lookout. Bolan could occasionally hear their enthusiastic conversation, even from three hundred yards away, the words too indistinct to discern. He had found this outpost an hour earlier and been in position ever since. It was obvious from the ground that this was no true village. Not one of the mud-brick buildings had been finished, there was no main road leading anywhere, and there were no animals of any kind, not even a chicken.