Aftershock

“Who’ve you been butting heads with over here?” Abood asked, climbing into the shotgun seat.

“Sorry, I don’t have time for interviews,” Bolan stated as he started up the vehicle and tromped on the gas.

“It’s not an interview. I just want to know what’s gotten you spooked.”

Bolan sighed as he performed a hairpin turn. “Kongra-Gel.”

“The bombing in Van,” Abood said. “I was investigating that when I ran afoul of the storm troopers back there.”

Bolan looked in the side mirror.

Abood looked over her shoulder and saw what had caught the big man’s attention. “Shit.”

“Yeah. The one you winged just waved down some buddies,” Bolan said as he looked at the trucks in the distance. He gunned the engine, squeezing more speed out of the vehicle.

“No wonder you were in a hurry,” Abood said, settling down in her seat.

“Hang on tight. This is going to get a little bumpy,” Mack Bolan told the reporter as he swerved around a bend in the road.

3

Kandilli Observatory and Earthquake Research Institute

“Sir, I believe we’re heading toward a major disaster. We have to let the media know,” Vigo Pepis said to Kan Bursa, the director of the observatory.

“Nothing is clear on the graph, though,” Bursa answered, concern coloring his features. “And none of the other seismologists have been able to confirm on their readings.”

“I know. The background tremors caused by the bombing and the collapse of the buildings in the area have masked any readings in the city,” Pepis explained. “But just take a look at what I’ve recorded. Outlying sensor reports seem weaker, meaning that the epicenter is going to be right beneath Van itself.”

“There’s nothing to reinforce that fact,” Bursa replied.

“That’s because of Lake Van,” Pepis explained. “Sensors can’t pick up anything because we couldn’t place the ground sensors in a conventional perimeter. With the closest western land more than one hundred miles away, we’re not going to get properly effective readings.”

“How about the data we’re receiving from NASA?” Bursa asked.

“The satellite placed in orbit over Turkey is currently being worked on by their shuttle,” Pepis stated. “It’ll be another eighteen hours before we have a current observation of thermal patterns. However, there was a lava buildup on the infrared scans of the area before the scope went down.”

Bursa chewed his lower lip. “I’ll put out a warning, but Van is already under martial law. The military, police and Jandarma are on the hunt for the bastards who attacked the relief workers.”

“Then we have an infrastructure already in place,” Pepis said. “That’s good.”

“They’re hunting for terrorists,” Bursa explained. “If something does hit, they’re going to be spread doubly thin.”

“You don’t think that the Kongras would strike in the aftermath of an earthquake, do you?” Pepis asked.

“They might not,” Bursa said. “Usually, when we’ve had big earthquakes in the past, we’ve been able to rely on a general ceasefire to keep everyone in line.”

“But they already hit the medical supply warehouse,” Pepis stated.

“And relief workers,” Bursa added. “I’ll talk to the minister of defense and the minister of the interior, but right now, the earth isn’t the only threat we have to deal with. I’m sorry, Vigo.”

Pepis took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He nodded in quiet acceptance.

“How bad do you think it will be?” Bursa asked.

“Huge,” Pepis answered softly. “At least a 7.0.”

“You think it’ll be worse.”

Pepis nodded, almost spasmodically.

“I don’t have to remind anyone in the ministry of the interior that a 7.2 earthquake killed thousands of people a few years back,” Bursa grumbled, watching his best seismologist’s reaction.

“I’m praying it’s not going to be that bad,” Pepis said. “But sometimes your prayers don’t get answered.”

Bursa looked at the map of Van. “Bombings, civil war…and now an earthquake. If that city ever needed heroes, it needs them now.”

THE EXECUTIONER’S BATTLE instincts were on alert. He saw the Jandarma jeeps racing to keep up with his vehicle, and even though they were loaded down with armed riflemen, they kept a decent pace with the much lighter jeep he was steering. Something else kept him on edge, though. Bolan didn’t believe in psychic phenomena, but he had enough experiences with subconsciously detected threat cues to realize that there were senses many people possessed that provided them with early warnings.

Bolan had survived years of war against Animal Man simply because he’d managed to make his subconscious observations a part of his conscious thought. A bulge here, scuffed dirt there, the whisper of a foot across blades of grass or even the whiff of drying blood on a blade were all noticed by his intuitive bubble of early warnings. It wasn’t a sixth sense per se, but his mind processing all the data brought before it by his other five senses.

Something was nagging at him, and even as he twisted the jeep around another bend, his mind sought what made him uneasy.

Bolan’s soft probe, only an hour ago, had been interrupted because the sentry who had raised the alarm had been on his way to see why the guard dogs in their kennels were on edge and barking. Bolan had slipped into the training camp and made an effort to avoid the dogs, staying upwind of them and keeping out of their finely honed sense of smell. When he moved, he moved with the crescendo of background noise and walking feet so as not to tip off the guard dogs’ acute hearing.

So what had set the animals off?

Bolan heard Abood gasp and he yanked on the hand brake, spinning the jeep into a 180-degree turn. Another group of vehicles was racing along the hillside, and Bolan recognized them. They were from the motor pool at the Kongra-Gel camp, and they were joining the merry chase. All this took a heartbeat. The soldier released his handbrake and the jeep raced toward the onrushing Jandarma hunters.

“Who’s that?” Abood asked quickly.

“Kongra-Gel,” Bolan answered abruptly. “They’re after me.”

Abood shook her head and gripped her confiscated AK-47. “You make friends everywhere you go?”

“Yeah. Some of them don’t even try to kill me,” Bolan said. He glanced at the side mirror and caught sight of the Kongra-Gel hunters pushing their vehicles off their road and racing down the scrub-clotted slope to get even with their quarry.

Rifle fire opened up, spraying between the two parties of hunters as they recognized each other. Bolan glanced back as the Kongra-Gel cadre tore past the turning Jandarma pursuit team, their AKs spraying the slowed vehicles. The Turkish security force drivers struggled to keep them in the chase and the crews of their jeeps opened fire on the Kongra-Gel terrorists.

Bolan swerved and plunged his own vehicle off the road, knobby tires slipping on crushed bushes and loose shale, but he steered into the direction of any drift. In a few seconds, Bolan swung his jeep onto a lower road, hooked a hard right and tore down the snaking path through the forest. Automatic fire chattered, but it was wide of the target. Trying to get accuracy out of a moving vehicle, hitting another moving vehicle, was beyond the marksmanship skills of most untrained gunners.

The cut down the side of the hill had bought the Executioner and Abood a ten-second lead, keeping them ahead of the mayhem, but the jeep felt sluggish. Bolan scanned both side mirrors and saw that the right rear tire was at an odd angle. The vehicular gymnastics and off-road racing had twisted the axle and bled some speed. The tough little jeep would keep rolling, but it kept Bolan from reaching top speed, and that would be enough to allow the heavier pursuit vehicles to catch up.

“I wrecked the suspension,” Bolan announced. “We’re not going to be able to outrace the Jandarmas or the Kongras.”

Abood twisted in her seat and looked back down the road. “I caught a glimpse of a front bumper.”

Bolan tromped the gas, but the accelerator wasn’t giving him more speed. “I’m going to have to slow them down.”