Aftershock

“We lost the rifles,” Bolan announced.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“No permanent damage,” he answered as he looked toward the fissure. He could see a half-loaded box of ammunition sprawled in the dirt, bullets glinting in the sun.

“How much do you have?” Abood asked.

Bolan checked his harness. “Four loaded magazines for the Jericho, and four more for my own Beretta.”

“You usually carry all that ammo?” Abood asked. She shook her head. “Sorry…I forgot. You’re a spook in hostile territory.”

“I’ll get by,” Bolan said. He looked around, then grabbed the root of a tree trunk, stretched down and pulled his knife out of the dirt. “It’s not worth the risk to climb down to grab more ammo, but the knife will be useful.”

Bolan looked toward the city. In the frantic slide to death when the ground first shook, he’d only been concerned about keeping himself and Abood alive. Now, the city of Van had changed drastically from when he’d seen it only moments before. Columns of thick, choking smoke rose lazily into the sky from fires. Clouds of gray-white dust from collapsed buildings formed a hazy fog in the wake of the brutal earthquake.

“Good God,” Abood whispered.

Bolan couldn’t speak. Already his mind was racing. He was going to have to navigate through a city where buildings had been compromised. He knew that in the aftermath of such violent earthquakes, lethal aftershocks ripped through the terrain, causing nearly as much damage when shifting earth gave that one final tug that brought down weakened buildings and power lines, or split streets to expose jets of invisible, highly flammable gas into the air. In all of the Executioner’s years of warfare, he had seen only a few cities as thoroughly destroyed, and usually those were the targets of coordinated, concentrated bombing, and the destruction was spread over hours, not moments.

“We’ve got to do something,” Abood said, breaking the numbed silence.

“We don’t have anything to help them with,” Bolan answered. “Unless we recover those medical supplies.”

“Don’t you have contact with your superiors?” Abood asked.

“No. I was en route from another mission,” Bolan said. “This was sort of a pickup.”

Abood looked at him in disbelief.

“If the law finds out that I’m intruding in their territory, there will be hell to pay,” Bolan admitted. “Which was why—”

“Which was why you didn’t want me along,” Abood concluded. “One of the reasons, at least. Your mystery bosses give you carte blanche in racking up collateral damage?”

“No, my boss doesn’t want any collateral damage at all,” Bolan answered firmly.

Abood narrowed her eyes. “Something tells me that I’m looking at your only boss right now.”

“Are you going to conduct an interview, or do we find those stolen medical supplies and save a few thousand people?” Bolan asked.

Abood grimaced for a moment, then her irritation dissolved and she smiled softly. “You got me there, soldier.”

“Come on,” Bolan said. “It’s fifteen minutes by brisk walk to the closest street. If we run, we can find some wheels and get those medical supplies even more quickly.”

The Executioner turned toward a safe path down the cliff and started jogging.

Abood was right on his heels.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

“A FEW MINUTES BEFORE the earthquake, we picked this up,” Barbara Price said as she handed the translation to Hal Brognola.

“Tall man, six, to six-and-a-half-feet tall, heavily armed, indeterminate nationality,” Brognola murmured as he read it. “Who put out the word?”

“That was under Jandarma’s known frequencies,” Price answered. “Bear thought it best to keep our ears open on the police scanners, give Striker a bit of assistance in the region if he should call in.”

Brognola frowned. “I wished he’d taken the time to hook up properly with us before tearing off after the Kongras.”

Price sighed and folded her arms. “Striker said that time was of the essence. The Kongras wouldn’t hold on to the stolen medical supplies for more than forty-eight hours, maybe even less. He said he had to be on the ground and operating before they had a chance to move that stuff out to the black market.”

Brognola squeezed the wrinkled knot between his eyebrows, then blinked away his frustration.

“Hal, you’ve known him longer than almost anyone,” Price said. “You know that Mack isn’t going to turn his back when he can do some good. Now, it’s even more vital than ever for him to get those relief supplies.”

“How bad was the earthquake?” Brognola asked.

“Kandilli Research Institute measured it at 7.8,” Price responded. She set aerial photographs of the city of Van in front of Brognola.

“Christ, it looks like it’s been hit by a bomb,” the big Fed stated.

“According to Aaron, a 7.8 earthquake is nearly as powerful as the bomb that hit Hiroshima,” Price stated. “Or it at least released the same amount of energy as an atomic weapon.”

Brognola shook his head. “What do we have in the region that can help out?”

“Not much. Turkey is still sensitive about the Iraq invasion, so our resources in the area have been drastically trimmed,” Price stated. “Politics will keep people dragging their feet, and even if there was a way to get major supplies in, it would still take at least three days before we could have a strong enough presence there.”

“What would we be talking about?” Brognola asked.

“The President has two aircraft carriers he can deploy,” Price stated. “One off Kuwait, and one in the Mediterranean. Between their desalinization plants, they can airlift enough fresh water to turn the tide.”

“Airlift fresh water?” Brognola asked. “There’s a huge lake right near the city.”

“It’s a saltwater lake,” Price answered. “It’s not fit for drinking or irrigation. The best we can hope for is for one carrier to make port in Iskenderun and ferry supplies across four hundred miles of Turkish airspace.”

Brognola pursed his lips. “And the Turkish government is still sensitive about our craft using their airspace to penetrate Iraq airspace. “All right. What about the teams? Can we dispatch them to give Striker some backup?”

“Able Team and Phoenix Force are fully occupied. Able Team would be free in thirty-six hours, then factoring in travel time…. There’s nothing we can send right away,” Price stated.

“None of our assets in the region are available?” Brognola asked. “We have former blacksuits in every branch of the military and a lot of embassy posts.”

“Nobody on hand,” Price admitted. “Our military people have their work cut out for them, and any who would be dispatched to the scene are going to be busy with conventional relief efforts.”

Brognola picked up his cigar and began chewing on it to relieve his frustration. It took a moment for the old stress mechanisms to take effect, and his mind cleared. “Just keep your ears open for Striker. You never know. He might be able to contact us. I want the cyberteam to give him every assistance and up-to-date satellite intel. Paths through the city, aftershock warnings, what we hear from the Jandarma…”

Price nodded.

Brognola looked at the translation. “He killed them while they were questioning an American journalist.”

“You know how the Turkish paramilitary forces work, Hal. If Striker dropped the hammer on them, the only questions asked were ‘who do you want to rape you first’ or ‘head or gut, where do you want to be shot?’”