Point Of Betrayal

A well-lit street separated Bolan from Shallallab’s estate, making a stealthy approach that much more difficult. He knew he’d have to ditch the hooded robe, switch to the combat black-suit hidden underneath and sneak into the grounds. It could add several minutes onto his approach, but Bolan knew it couldn’t be helped. If these men knew about their dead comrades, they’d be on the lookout for an intruder.

A pair of fighter jets flew over low enough that Bolan almost could read their markings. The jet engines’ whine momentarily drowned out all noise and set Bolan’s teeth on edge. As the sounds echoed for another moment in his ears, he smelled cologne, heard the faint scrape of a shoe sole disturbing gravel.

Unleathering the Desert Eagle, Bolan whirled. A bulky man stood behind him, a pistol clutched in a two-handed grip.

“Your mistake,” the man said, grinning.

Fire and sound exploded from the pistol. Bullets pounded against Bolan’s chest like a sledgehammer, the blunt force stealing his breath, causing white flashes of pain to erupt in his vision. His mind raced as an overloaded nervous system tried to assimilate the fiery sensation spreading through his chest. The soldier reeled back, his legs rubbery, and fell to the ground. His skull hit the pocked asphalt, but the pain seemed little more than a distant echo of the pain created by the impact of the bullets.

The man closed in, sighted down the pistol. Bolan knew the kill shot was a heartbeat away.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

FORTY-EIGHT HOURS EARLIER, Mack Bolan, sitting in Stony Man Farm’s War Room, studied a photo of former CIA director James Lee. From the chin up, Lee looked as if he were sleeping, eyes shut, but not squeezed tight, mouth parted an inch or so, as though snoring. From the chin down, he looked as though a bear had clawed out his throat, leaving behind a shiny mess or ragged flesh and spilled blood. Bolan stared at the close-up digital image of Lee’s face and felt his stomach knot at the sight.

The Executioner already had seen accounts of Lee’s death in both the Washington Post and the New York Times. He had a cursory knowledge of the situation. Lee, the former CIA director, had been gunned down in an alley in Islamabad less than twenty-four hours earlier. A four-man squad of Diplomatic Security Service officers, all highly skilled with weapons, had also been killed. An unidentified woman had been rescued by local police.

Surrounded by Stony Man chief Hal Brognola, mission controller Barbara Price, pilot Jack Grimaldi and armorer John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Bolan clenched and unclenched his jaws as he memorized the image down to the smallest detail. The fallen man’s left hand rested next to his head, a smooth, gold band encircling the third finger.

“He had a family,” Bolan said.

Brognola cleared his throat, nodded. “Wife, two kids. The kids came later in life, and the youngest is still in high school. I knew Jim. He was a good guy. Bit of a politician, but he believed in what he did, cared about his country. He didn’t deserve this.”

“No,” Bolan agreed, “he didn’t. What do we know?”

“You’re staring at the exit wound from a 9 mm hollowpoint round,” Brognola said. “Judging from the powder burns on the back of his neck and the path of the bullet, someone stood over him, put the barrel against his neck and fired. Jim knew it was coming.”

“He was dead instantly.” It wasn’t a question; Bolan was trying to piece together the facts, picture things just as they went down. What he saw in his mind’s eye thus far made his blood boil. “Who found him?”

“Pakistani state police. Since he was an American citizen, they called in the local FBI team to help investigate. They recovered the round that took out Lee, along with a few dozen stray slugs and shell casings. It was a damn bloodbath, Striker.”

Bolan nodded, but kept his icy blue gaze locked on the picture. “How many nut job extremist groups are claiming responsibility?”

Brognola leaned forward, pushed a folder Bolan’s direction. The soldier trapped it under his big hand and dragged it toward him, found it to be about the thickness of a rural community’s telephone book. Setting the dossier on his lap, he fanned it open and gave its contents—stacks of paper, several with photos held to them with a paper clip—a cursory glance. He knew he’d have plenty of time later to pore through it. He shut it and returned his attention to Brognola, the head of the Sensitive Operations Group.

“To answer your question,” Brognola said, “five extremist groups have taken credit.”

“How many are credible?”

“That’s the real question,” Brognola said. “Four of them are little home-grown groups. Got some AK-47s, some whacked-out ideals and plenty of bad intentions, but not the expertise to pull off something like this. Forget about them.” To punctuate his point, the big Fed waved his right hand dismissively. With practiced ease, he snatched up his cigar from his ashtray, clenched it between his teeth and started chewing.

“You said four don’t have what it takes. What about the fifth?”

“That’s where things get more plausible,” Brognola said. “Barb?”

Using a nearby laptop, Price changed the image on the screen. “This is Ramsi al-Shoud.” A brown-skinned man with raven-black hair and an unruly beard and mustache of the same color stared at the assembled group. The man’s hair had receded well off his forehead, but he’d let it grow down to his shoulders.

Price continued. “Al-Shoud is a former Pakistani army officer. More recently, he was an officer with Pakistan’s intelligence service where he spent a lot of time arming, funding and training extremists so they could terrorize India. It’s estimated that he’s directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of more than two hundred Indian citizens. He also helped give aid and comfort to the Taliban before we went to war with them.”

“You spoke of his affiliation with the Pakistani government in the past tense,” Bolan said.

“Right,” Price said. “The CIA knew about his behavior and had for years. Once Pakistan allied itself with us after September 11, we strongly encouraged them to fire him. They grudgingly complied and retired him four years ago.”

“I take it he hasn’t been puttering around the house, playing with the grandkids,” Bolan said.

Price smiled. “Hardly, Striker. He’s just taken his hate show on the road, but without official sanction, of course. He hates Americans, wants them expelled from the country. We believe he’s behind a recent car-bomb attack on our embassy in Islamabad.”

“Kill anyone?”

“Twelve Pakistanis, no Americans.”

“I assume that’s our fault, too,” Bolan said. He caught the bitterness in his tone and scowled. He’d seen so much innocent slaughter in the name of religion and nationalism that his anger toward extremists groups sometimes spilled over.

“The Pakistani government fired him,” Price stated. “But won’t take it any further. Al-Shoud still has lots of powerful friends and the president’s office worries that arresting or killing the guy might incite the extremists and lead to a coup.”

“Is he even still in the country?” Bolan asked.

Price nodded. “He splits his time between Islamabad and Waziristan, a territory located near the border of Afghanistan. The U.S. has sent CIA paramilitary teams after him, but he always gets away, probably because his contacts keep dropping a dime on us. The Company also has tried bribing various Pashtun leaders in Waziristan into turning him over. Apparently he has enough money or power to counter us.

“Or both,” Barbara said. “With his intelligence contacts, he’s been able to get everything short of nuclear missiles. That and the embassy bombing already had made him a priority target, putting him in the Agency’s top twenty-five covert targets.”

“That all changed,” Brognola said.

Leaning back in his chair, the Executioner clasped his hands behind his head and studied al-Shoud’s features, memorizing even the most minor details.

“What about the woman?” he asked. “The newspapers said she’d been rescued, but that she’d been whisked off to a U.S. Army base for a debriefing. Has she told us anything of any value?”

Price tapped another key on the laptop. An image of a pretty woman with pale blue eyes, an athlete’s tan and shoulder-length blond hair popped up on the screen.

“This is Jennifer Kinsey,” Price said. “She was Lee’s assistant and traveling companion. She’s a former CIA agent, but more recently has been assisting Lee with his diplomatic work. During the last year, they’ve traveled through Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. She speaks four languages and has a law degree from Stanford. She’s supposed to be a rising star in foreign-service circles. Most people don’t know of her CIA ties.”

Bolan nodded. “But her background as an agent should be a good thing. With her training, she must have remembered something. Has she given us any good details?”

Brognola plucked the cold cigar from his mouth, tapped an end against the table. His cheeks flushed red and a scowl spread over his features. He jabbed the stogie back into the corner of his mouth, spoke around it.

“Her rescue was a little creative storytelling on the CIA’s part,” Brognola said. “Actually, Kinsey’s MIA. The evidence techs found some stray hairs, a woman’s shoe, a ripped gold chain and a torn piece of fabric from an expensive suit. They also found some of her blood, but only in small patches.”

“So you don’t know whether she was kidnapped—”

“Or she escaped,” Brognola finished. “That’s right, Striker. If I was a betting man, though, I’d say she escaped. These guys weren’t taking any prisoners.”

“So you’re asking me to find her?”

“We’re asking, is all. Alive or dead, we want to know what happened to her.”

“Okay.”

“But that’s just a small part of the mission.”

“Lay it on me, Hal.”

“The President is very concerned about this. When a terrorist can kill the former CIA director, in broad daylight, on a busy street, and take four federal agents out with him, it sends a bad message to the perpetrators and any copycats.”

“I assume the Man wants me to deliver a message of my own.”

“Yes,” Brognola said. “A very nasty one.”

Islamabad, Pakistan

HIS CHEST RIDDLED with pain, Mack Bolan summoned his strength, rolled to one side and took himself off the firing line. The robe, heavy with ballistic plating, slowed his movements just enough to dull combat-hardened reflexes.

A bullet chewed into the concrete near him. Bolan fisted the Desert Eagle and was bringing it around to fire as the other man readjusted his own aim. The warrior knew in his heart he’d never make the shot, but he had to try anyway.

Even as his gun hand whipped around, Bolan heard a staccato whisper from behind the shooter. The man stiffened and, an instant later, a swarm of bullets burst through his chest, leaving a trail of blood and bone fragments in their wake as they buzzed into the darkness.

A male silhouette, distinguished by a ball cap and submachine gun, emerged from the darkness. Bolan trained the weapon on the man, but held his fire.

“Easy, Sarge,” Jack Grimaldi said. “Just me.”

Relief washed over Bolan and a smile ghosted his lips. Using his free hand, Bolan hugged his ribs as he rolled onto his side, climbed to his feet. Pain seared his muscles, bones and joints as he rose to his full height, melting away the grin.

“You okay?”

Bolan shrugged. “As well as can be expected. I thought you were going to stay with the airplane.”

“The hell with that,” the pilot said. “You stopped answering your radio, and that made the airplane seem kind of insignificant.”

“Thanks. The radio took a bullet earlier.”

“Forget about it,” Grimaldi said. “Did Cowboy’s ballistic robe work okay?”

Bolan nodded. “The thing’s heavy as hell, but it stops bullets.”

“So, who’s this clown?” Grimaldi asked, nodding toward the shooter’s crumpled remains.

Bolan walked to the man and, using the toe of his boot, rolled him onto his back. The man was Caucasian, with hair blacker than the Executioner’s, his bloodless lips locked open in shock. Bolan didn’t recognize the man, and said as much.

“He sounded American, though,” the soldier said. “His accent sounded east coast, from what little I heard.”

Kneeling next to the man, Bolan pulled a small digital camera from the pocket of his combat suit and snapped a couple of pictures of the man’s face.

“I’ll send these back to the Farm later,” he said. “When we get back to my laptop.”

“Couple of pinups for Barb,” Grimaldi said. “I’m sure she’ll enjoy that.”

Before Bolan could reply, he heard a flurry of activity coming from the financier’s compound. The sounds of a facility heading into lockdown reached his ears. Slamming car doors, voices, engines coming to life. Not surprisingly, the gunshots had announced his approach. He’d hated to waste the time shooting the man’s picture, but finding an American running interference for an Islamic extremist group sent up a massive red flag to Bolan, one that he couldn’t ignore.

Cursing to himself, Bolan turned to Grimaldi, flashed a series of hand signals. The ace pilot nodded and was already separating himself from Bolan so they didn’t present a concentrated target. The soldier dragged the heavy robe over his head, revealing his black combat suit and web gear. He grabbed the Beretta 93-R from its sleeve holster, slipped it into his shoulder leather. He discarded the robe and moved into the shadows cast by a nearby building. Holstering the Desert Eagle, he filled his hand with an Ingram Model 10, minus the sound suppressor.

Gliding along a brick wall, he peered around the corner and saw a trio of men, each toting an AK-47, coming his way. Bolan couldn’t help but be impressed. From what he saw, each man wore a headset and two of the men hung back, using nearby cars for cover as the third closed in on the alley. Hardly Special Forces tactics, but definitely better than anything he’d encountered thus far.

Bolan momentarily wished his own radio hadn’t been damaged, but purged the recriminations. Make the best with what you have, he thought. Adapt. He had to think like the enemy. He knew Grimaldi, a battle-hardened veteran, would do likewise. He turned to the pilot, signaled him to watch their backs. The pilot nodded and turned his attention toward their rear flank.

Just as he did, a car screeched to a stop at the other end of the alley, effectively blocking them in. Electric windows hissed down and the black muzzles of assault rifles popped out, the weapons spitting flame and lead.

A thrill of adrenaline passed through Bolan. He focused on the gunners in front of him, left the other threat for Grimaldi to handle.

Caressing the Ingram’s trigger, he cut loose with a salvo that blistered the air just next to the approaching terrorist. Acting with surprising presence of mind under fire, the man shifted positions and shot back at Bolan. The rounds pounded into the bricks just behind the soldier, peppering his face with reddish grit and slivers of mortar.

The bits of debris tore at Bolan’s cheeks, opening the skin and drawing trickles of blood, but thankfully sparing his eyes. He fired again, this time dragging the weapon in a wider arc, as though dousing a raging fire. Rounds smacked into nearby cars, perforating metal, puncturing windshields. A string of bullets pounded into the shoulders and chest of the shooter, who was approaching in a crouch. The man stopped cold, then jerked for a moment under the Executioner’s merciless onslaught.

Bolan’s combat sense screamed for him to look up. Even as he did, he was on the move, crossing the trash-strewed alley with long strides. Another shooter, a heavyset man with a long, unkempt beard and a lion’s mane of black hair, was drawing down on the warrior from a fire-escape landing. Even as he came into the crosshairs of the man’s AK-47, Bolan raised his own weapon, tapped out a pair of bursts that tore into the man’s girth, knocking him back against the wall, killing him.

Reloading on the run, Bolan drew down on another of his attackers, drove the man undercover with a quick burst. At the same time Bolan heard an engine roar, saw a small caravan of cars exit the building. Bolan’s heart sank for a moment.

Target lost. Game over.

Like hell.

He’d just adapt again.

Scanning the streets for bystanders, Bolan saw none. He could at least be thankful for that much, he decided. With the streets apparently clear, he decided to unleash a little controlled chaos.

Laying down his own cover fire, Bolan pinned his attackers under a withering hail. Shell casings fell around his feet and the popping of autofire in such a small space rang in his ears. At the same time, the warrior yanked a flash-bang grenade from his web gear, pulled the pin, but held the lever.

Breaking cover, he sprinted from the confines of the alley to grab a little combat stretch. At his back, he heard the rattle of subgun fire and thought fleetingly of Grimaldi, vowed to get back to him as soon as he defused the immediate threat.

Bolan’s sudden shift in position apparently threw off his attackers, gained him precious seconds. As his own gun locked dry, he tossed the grenade into a space roughly between the two men. In the meantime, the hardened fighters had already begun to recover from the change and were shooting in their adversary’s direction. The Executioner hurled himself to the ground in between a pair of parked cars. Knee and elbow pads absorbed much of the shattering impact of flesh and bone against concrete, but Bolan still felt flesh rip away from his open palm as he used it to help break his fall.

Letting the Ingram fall loose on its strap, Bolan fisted the Desert Eagle, rode out the stun grenade’s sting and then hauled himself to his feet. Cocking back the big Israeli pistol’s hammer to ease the trigger pull, the soldier stepped from between the cars, weapon leveled in front of him in a two-handed grip. One of the men, face buried in a V created by bending his left arm, fired wildly with a stubby black handgun. The Desert Eagle cracked once, the muzzle-flash illuminating Bolan’s hardened features. The Magnum slug chewed through the air, caught the man in the forehead and knocked him back.

One down.

Bolan saw the other shooter, dazed by the white flash, trying to find a lost weapon. He triggered the Desert Eagle, its shattering report again splitting the night, and the round sliced a crimson line along the man’s shoulder, eliciting a cry and causing him to settle back on his rump.

The Executioner stepped up close to the man, kicked away his AK-47. “You speak English?”

The man looked terrified. “Yes. I studied in America.”

“You and I are going to talk,” Bolan said.

“Yes, yes,” the man said. “Talk.”

Bolan pushed the man to the ground and rolled him onto his stomach, bound his hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs. The warrior came up in a crouch, started for the alley, ready to back up an old friend with whom he spilled more blood than he cared to consider during his War Everlasting.

Moving along a building, he stopped just a few feet from Grimaldi’s combat zone. A moment of eerie silence had fallen, followed by a sudden chorus of anguished cries. Damn!

Before he could take another step, a roar reverberated throughout the canyon of buildings, followed by the tortured sound of grinding metal and a loud crash. A massive front of singeing heat whooshed out, smacked Bolan front-on forcing him to involuntarily cover his face.

What the hell had happened to Jack?

JACK GRIMALDI RAISED his silenced Ingram, unloaded a quick burst at the car blocking his path. Bullets skittered and sparked off its black metal skin, smacking into nearby walls.

Shit, he thought, armored to the teeth.

Orange-yellow muzzle-flashes flared from a pair of assault rifles protruding from the car. Grimaldi dropped into a crouch, caressed the Ingram’s trigger. The hellstorm of bullets thudded against the car and gave the shooters pause, buying him precious seconds in which to maneuver.

Judging by the open windows, the car had no gunports and for that, at least, Grimaldi counted himself lucky. Considering the odds, he’d take any advantage he could get. His first hastily placed burst drilled into a fortified car door, just below the window rim. The bullets bounced away, but threw the shooter off balance, prompting him to withdraw inside the vehicle. Firing on the run, Grimaldi tapped out two more bursts that sailed inside the car. An anguish scream sounded from within the vehicle, indicating he’d injured or killed one opponent. That left three more shooters, one in the driver’s seat, two more positioned outside and behind the car, using it for cover.

With quick, sure steps, the pilot crossed the killzone, acquiring a new target on the run. One man, crouched behind the car’s front bumper, was drawing a bead on Grimaldi. A quick burst caught the enemy in the shoulder, chewing through fabric and flesh before knocking him backward. Grimaldi knew the man was down, but probably not out, particularly if he had a backup piece that he could fire with his one good hand.

Reaching a small alcove created by a doorway, the Stony Man pilot inserted his slender frame inside the cramped space, riding out a concentrated barrage of autofire as he did. Unzipping his leather bomber jacket, Grimaldi reached inside, snagged a fresh clip, reloaded his weapon. He inventoried his personal armory—one remaining clip for the Ingram, a .40-caliber Glock in a shoulder holster and a .44-caliber Charter Arms Bulldog snugged in an ankle holster, a last-minute gift from John Kissinger before leaving for the mission.

He was loaded for bear, sure, but so were the two men, and perhaps a third, trying to kill him. Death, Grimaldi could handle, but he was the barrier standing between these men and his old friend. If they wanted to get to Striker, they’d have to do it over the ace pilot’s dead body.

It sure as hell wasn’t the first time someone had tried.

Peals of gunfire echoed throughout the alley, intensified, telling Grimaldi that the men had seized on his pause to reload. Whipping the Ingram around the corner, he fired blind, emptying one-third of a clip in his attackers’ direction. Chew on that, you bastards, he thought. He followed up with a second, more intense burst. Judging by the pause in return fire, he’d driven them under cover, at least for a moment.

A slight shift in the building’s shadow caught his attention. Even before it clicked in his mind, instinct warned him of immediate danger. Still crouching, Grimaldi folded his body around the corner, saw a gunman slipping along the length of the building toward him. He triggered the Ingram. The stubby weapon roared to life, spitting jagged columns of flame, a cloud of acrid smoke. Rounds drilled into the approaching man’s chest and throat, stopping him cold and pushing him backward. The man’s assault rifle clattered to the ground as he crumpled in a dead heap.

Even as the dead shooter fell, Grimaldi was turning his attention to the hardman situated behind the car. A hand popped up over the trunk and Grimaldi saw that it clutched something.

Grenade!

Firing low, Grimaldi swept the Ingram in a tight arc, dispatching a swarm of .45-caliber rounds underneath the car. The way he saw it, this was his best bet. If he gunned for the hand, he had a better than average chance of hitting it. If he tried for the man’s crouching body, and more specifically, his legs, the pilot improved his own odds of survival.

He hoped.

As the Ingram clicked dry, he heard the man scream. Shifting back into the doorway, Grimaldi folded in on himself. If he was lucky, the guy had dropped the grenade, releasing the spoon and activating the explosive. The man and the armored vehicle would absorb most of the explosion and shrapnel.

If he was lucky. If not…

The weapon exploded, sending waves of heat and shrapnel buzzing through the alley. A grinding noise, metal on concrete, followed and Grimaldi had to assume the explosion had knocked the car up on its side.