Path To War

TWO POSSIBILITIES for enemy lightning response flashed through Bolan’s mind. One—the shooter had simply been standing post near the door. Two—the enemy had known he was coming. Either way, the Executioner knew there was only one option available.

Bulldoze and blast.

Spoon released, he pitched the steel egg, a sideways whipping motion that sent it flying through the smoking hole. Another thunderous retort all but obliterated what remained of the door. Bolan pulled farther back down the hall, covering his ears as the flash-bang erupted. A million candlepower going off like a supernova along with noise that could match an artillery barrage would have all but shattered the shooter’s senses, but Bolan needed his human barrier waxed, deaf, dumb and blind or not.

The soldier was up, bell slightly rung by the concussive retort, another flash-bang filling one hand as he went low around the corner, Uzi poking through the smoke. He found his man in jig step, backpedaling down the foyer, a big figure swathed in smoke, a massive SPAS-12 auto-shotgun coming up to draw blind aim. Holding back on the trigger, Bolan hit him with a rising burst, crotch to sternum, the SPAS-12 roaring one more time as he toppled back, a section of the ceiling coming down in a rain of dust and plaster.

That left four, if intel was on the money.

Combat senses torqued to maximum overdrive, Bolan bulled through the jagged teeth, caught the commotion around the corner. He hugged the wall, spotted an AK-74 swinging around the corner, flaming away. A short burst of autofire from a snarling figure in a katfiyeh, lead wasps zipping past the soldier’s ear, and the soldier drove the hardman to cover with an extended Uzi burst, lobbing the flash-bang grenade in what he assumed was the general direction of the living room. Bolan dropped back into the hall, autofire chasing him around the corner. They were shouting and screaming for all of two seconds when number two brain-cleaver sounded off, sure to knock them around every which way, senses on the verge of winking out.

There was no choice but to end it quick and hard. The soldier charged back in, tagged the howling demon with the AK-74 as he hopped around the corner, firing a brief spray and pray. The Executioner hit the edge low, peered around the corner to find the living room a smoking whirlwind of debris, three targets reeling around the couch. A live one would be nice, but the Asians were going for broke, firing deaf and blind with machine pistols, the corner above Bolan’s head shaved off with wild rounds. The Executioner dropped them both with a quick burst of 9-mm Parabellum rounds, left to right, hot lead eating up their fancy threads. They were falling when the last one brought an AKM to bear, hollering something in Arabic. Bolan chopped him off at the knees, a hideous shriek flaying the smoke-choked air.

Time for all due haste, he knew, as he kicked all weapons away from the Arab stretched out on the floor, one eye on both bedroom doors. As good fortune had it, he was looking at Mousuami. A one-two sweep next, kicking in both doors, and he found both bedrooms clear. He went back to the moaner, who was clutching at his mangled knees. It would have been a small coup, as he glanced at the mauled remnants of a laptop, but even still there might be a way for some cyberwizard to access the hard drive. Then he spotted the briefcase, pocked with shrapnel, but since it had been hidden behind the couch, settled on the floor, it had been spared the brunt of the blast. The Uzi stowed, he hauled out the Desert Eagle, opened the briefcase and found stacks of U.S. currency. Figure somewhere in the neighborhood of a million dollars, and it was a safe bet he had interrupted a nasty deal.

Bolan crouched beside Mousuami. A viselike grip to the throat, squeezing hard, and as the extremist’s mouth opened, eyes going wide, the warrior rammed the hand cannon’s muzzle into the man’s mouth. “Nod if you can read lips and speak English.”

Gagging, Mousuami nodded.

“Who were your guests?” Bolan asked, likewise mouthing the words, removing the weapon from the Arab’s mouth, releasing some pressure on his throat.

Mousuami choked, then sputtered, “North Koreans.”

“What was the deal here?”

A feral hatred, defiance cleared the glaze in Mousuami’s eyes. “It does not matter now. You are too late.”

Bolan placed the muzzled between the fanatic’s eyes. “Last chance. The deal.”

Mousuami was bleeding out, lapsing into shock. Bolan slapped his face.

“A dream for us. A nightmare for you.” Mousuami laughed, eyes bulging with fanatic hatred. “The Suitcase from God.”

“Is it here in Casablanca?”

“We have it.”

Bolan felt his blood race hot. Beyond a biological attack, a backpack nuke with a wallop of anywhere from five to eight kilotons would prove the Western world the worst nightmare. Say anywhere from five to eight city blocks wiped out, and with fallout, or a strong wind blowing radiation…

“Where is Al-Jassaca? And don’t tell me you don’t know who they are.”

Mousuami grinned, eyes rolling up in his head. “Try…Pakistan…if you know so much.”

The game here was dead, Bolan knew. Before he left he would take the briefcase and laptop, the bundle of cash at least destined to fatten covert coffers for the war on terror if any information on the computer couldn’t be retrieved.

The Executioner stood, sensing he would get no more information out of Mousuami who was retching and moaning, set to pass out. Cold-blooded killing normally wasn’t part of his SOP, but the enemy was proving itself more vicious and savage with every attack, every abduction, showing not a scintilla of mercy or compassion, especially when it came to noncombatants. Besides, if he let Mousuami live he could reach out and warn his comrades in Casablanca, perhaps see yet another day where he could plot mass murder.

Bolan gathered in the briefcase and laptop, tucked them under one arm. Then the Executioner drew a bead between Mousuami’s eyes, his finger taking up slack on the trigger to remove one more scourge from the planet.

RON BARAKA CAUGHT a bird’s-eye view of the Gulf of Naples along the Amalfi Coast as he was escorted to the villa by two men in black wielding HK MP 5 subguns. After his report on the Madrid incident, he had been summoned to Italy by the men of the Phoenix Consortium. He had a few hours’ downtime in the Learjet from Madrid to the private airfield they controlled outside Naples, the local authorities greased, he was sure, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy a few moments of the breathtaking view following the long ride in the van along the winding, treacherous cliffside roads. He figured they were several hundred feet in the air, high above blue-green waters sprinkled with fishing boats and pleasure craft, the compound perched on the edge of a cliff, ringed by native vegetation. It was a fleeting sensation, the sudden longing he felt to be in a cabin cruiser, stretched out in a chaise longue, drink in hand, the lassies at his beck and call.

Someday, he told himself as another black-clad sentry opened the ornately carved teak doors, allowing him entrance to a marbled foyer, the walls fairly splashed with frescoes, the corridor lined with statues of what he guessed were Roman and Greek gods and goddesses. For the foreseeable future it was all business, grim and savage, he considered, to the point of…

What? Madness?

The good news, as far as he could tell, was that he’d been allowed to hold on to his twin Beretta M-9 piston in shoulder holsters beneath his Italian silk sports jacket.

As his escort led him down another frescoed corridor, chandeliers the size of small automobiles hovering above him, he briefly considered the past, what had led him to man the helm of what would prove the most ambitious undertaking—in terms of conquering foreign land—since the Nazis blitzkrieged across Europe and into Russia. He was now “retired” from active duty, but his track record as assassin, saboteur and leader of covert operations for the CIA, from West Africa to the Far East, had shot him to the front of the employment line at present. No wife, no family of any kind, there was only himself and his work to consider. That, and the monumental task set before him.

And what was he? he wondered. Black bag operations was all he’d known, but was he simply their cannon fodder? An errand boy? A hired gun? For damn sure, he wasn’t like the Consortium, these men who called the shots from behind the front lines, never getting their own hands dirty, never having to dodge bullets or to worry about stepping on a landmine that could amputate on the spot. Hell, he couldn’t even begin to count all the men—and women and children—he’d killed. At times, when he felt the wear and tear of the years, it seemed as if an army of ghosts was marching behind him—or the dead were eagerly waiting for him to check out to the other side, anxious to take back their pounds of flesh. And what were his motives at present? he wondered as another black-clad sentry opened the door to the room where the men waited. On that score, he wasn’t one hundred percent certain. Money, lots of it, shot to the top of the list. Beyond basic greed, though, he couldn’t say why he had agreed to lead the charge into a New World for the Consortium. Where they wanted power, were perhaps looking to dictate whatever their terms and conditions to the rest of the world, he simply wanted to secure whatever was left of his future, retire for good. They wanted Africa, all of it, and Angola was the springboard. Madness? he wondered again. Or was it?

They had the means, he knew, to pull it off.

And that, he thought, should have scared him into a sprint for the setting sun.

Striding toward the long mahogany table, Baraka ran a look over the five men seated on the other side. He didn’t know their names, figured in the long run that was for the best, if it hit the fan and he was forced to go for number one. Considering their clout—the endless parade of contacts in the intelligence world, the way they could access intelligence and arms on the spot—clued him in they were former big shots. CIA? DIA? NSA? Pentagon honchos? He wasn’t about to ask or to go digging around for information. In his mind, their ambition—delusional or not—made them every bit as dangerous as he was. Even if they only drew the battle maps in the safety of this cocoon, they knew enough bad folks around the globe to yank his ticket if he became insubordinate, careless or didn’t perform to expectations.

There was no chair for him to sit, so he was forced to stand at attention, as usual. Mentally, he tagged the men according to appearance or vice, giving each one a look as they chewed on their own thoughts. Quickly, then, he gave the circular, whitewashed room a once-over. Other than a wet bar, there were two black-clad men manning what he knew was the Consortium’s supercomputer. It was above and beyond NSA quality, he had once been informed, with multiple processors linked and connected to a massive memory by a bus called a hyperchannel. Not only did it monitor all the world’s hot spots, capable of hacking into the mainframes of every intelligence and law-enforcement agency around the globe, it controlled the Serpent Tank. In fact, when one of the many tank’s accounts was electronically manipulated, cash could be ready and available in any Bank of America for any operative in about a dozen countries.

He knew. He’d seen cold cash in the six figures dumped in his hand in Luanda, Casablanca and Madrid to finance the ongoing operation.

Goatee got the ball rolling. “What is your take on the Madrid situation?”

“Renegade operation. One man going for himself. I have the diamonds in the van. Quite a sizable haul. I’d say he had about five, six million in uncut stones.”

“Good,” Pipe Smoker said, tamping fresh tobacco in his bowl. “There is no room in the Consortium for loose cannons.”

Baraka found that statement somewhat ironic, since their army was made up of mostly mercenaries, disgruntled ex-Special Forces with a smattering of criminal rabble in it purely for the buck. “Wilders lost a man.”

Cigar Man spoke up. “We will handle Wilders. Several of their executives are aware of the coming situation and they will accept the loss of one man who, as it would appear, wasn’t a team player.”

“We have other investors,” Whiskey Man chimed in, “who are most anxious for us to proceed. Once your operators in Morocco have acquired the package, we will launch the operation within forty-eight hours. Do you see a problem with that?”

Baraka did, but he’d come this far, what was he going to say? “As long as we have the backing of our contingent in the Angolan Armed Forces—FAA—and UNITA, there should be no problem taking down the palace. I’m assuming you will want the sitting president executed?”

“We will hand him over to his shadow adversaries,” White Suit said, “in the Angolan Armed Forces. According to our intelligence, there are some officers under our command in-country who have had family members ‘disappear.’ They believe the sitting president and some of his rabble are responsible.”

“And they will want answers,” Cigar Man said, “or retribution.”

“What we need,” Goatee said, “is to seize complete control of the diamond fields and as soon as the smoke of battle clears.”

“And,” Whiskey Man said, “the oil fields. Including the offshore platforms. Your men and trusted FAA officers will take charge of that area of responsibility. It will be difficult, considering we’re but a few hundred strong, but not impossible. Once the situation is explained and passed on to their army, with cash incentives being distributed, we should be able to bring the army under our control.”

Should, Baraka thought. Why did that make him so nervous? Loyalty wasn’t a common trait among West African grunts, unless, of course, cold hard cash was distributed and they were promised a slice of the pie. All things considered, it was going to be messy, dangerous, with his own neck in a noose that could tighten at any time.

“As you know,” Pipe Smoker said, “Angola is capable of pumping out two billion—count that—two billion barrels per day.”

Cigar Man shrouded his grizzled face in smoke. “But they are presently only producing six hundred thousand.”