Devil's Bargain

Clever, she thought, how he’d boxed her in. She was damned if she did, damned if she didn’t. She picked up the disk.

“The password,” Geller said, “is ‘Resurrection.’”

ACTION, IN BOLAN’S experience, cured fear. From the warrior perspective it most certainly excised the cancer of evil. The hesitant or the paralyzed in the face of mortal danger sometimes died from the strangehold of fear. But the warrior, he knew, acted on fear, used it to motivate, propel him to new heights—in this case—to violence of action. The enormity of the task before the nation might be so daunting, funded and planned for nobody knew how long by unknown financiers—the lurking notion in his mind they had inside help from homegrown traitors—with fanatics prepared to commit suicide if only to unleash mass murder, the Executioner knew only one answer would wipe out the evil ready to consume the country, slaughter countless innocents.

Identify and strike down the enemy, lightning fast and hard. No mercy, no hesitation, no exceptions.

To the credit of the man on the other end of the sat phone, Bolan knew Hal Brognola was more than up to the grim job, bloody as it would prove, lives in the balance, perhaps an entire nation on the verge of collapsing into anarchy. After all, he and the big Fed had known each other since mile one of what was the genesis of the Executioner. Those days were light-years distant now, when Brognola once hunted a young soldier during his war against the Mafia, but they were of like mind, immutable in principle and commitment when it came to solving the problem of dealing with the enemies of national security.

No sooner was Bolan in the air, the Black Hawk soaring now over I-64 at top speed, than he had raised Brognola at his Justice Department office. A quick sitrep, Bolan printing out the grid map of the blocks surrounding the Greyhound terminal in Richmond, and Brognola filled him in.

“They what?” Bolan said, forced to nearly shout above the rotor wash pounding through the fuselage.

There had been a few minutes’ lag time between them, during which Brognola had contacted the FBI SAC in Richmond. Bolan now feared the problems had just begun to compound, as he listened to Brognola.

“The order came straight from the Office of Homeland Security, who received their orders from the President and who just passed it on to this office. Before your intro to this butcher—Moctaw—and believe me, the President will hear about this, and I will move mountains to find out who this son of a bitch is—it was already believed the bastards intended to pack lockers with plastic explosives before they boarded their respective buses. Every terminal from Miami to Maine, New York to Los Angeles, is being locked down by local and federal authorities. Buses are being emptied of passengers, luggage searched, same thing with all trains, national and local rail service. It’s a logistical nightmare, I’m sure you can imagine, but we tackle the major cities first, take it from there—and hope.”

Bolan didn’t like it, FBI agents already inside the Richmond terminal, forcing open lockers, their presence alerting the Red Crescent operatives there the game was over for them. But the soldier knew he couldn’t be everywhere at once. The threat was so grave, so public now, no telling how far and wide or how many operatives were out there, human resources stretched so thin as it stood….

“The descriptions you passed on, Striker, match up. They’re being watched as we speak.”

“Pull those agents back, Hal, discreetly. Don’t let them approach those three. If that happens…”

“Understood. The bastards might panic and just go ahead and light up whatever they have. I’ve alerted Special Agent Wilkinson you will be landing shortly and that you are in charge.”

Bolan moved into the cockpit hatchway. The interstate in both directions was gridlocked, he found, a vast parking lot east to west, the state police having erected checkpoints, roadblocks, staggered every other exit. With national alert, all civilians were ordered to stay home, get off all buses and trains at the next stop if they were traveling, but Bolan wondered if it was too little too late.

The skyline of Richmond looming ahead, Bolan spotted the Black Hawks soaring above the city, ready to report to him any suspicious vehicles, specifically buses that might have pulled out of the terminal before the FBI descended.

“There’s a stadium, directly across from the terminal,” Bolan told the flight crew, both of which were Farm blacksuits. “Set it down in the lot.”

When they copied, Bolan went and opened one of three war bags. He opted against going in loaded to the gills, even though once he was spotted by the terrorists, they would know he wasn’t any late-arriving passenger.

The Executioner decided to march right through the front door, mark the position of Red Crescent operatives from agents inside. He hoped to do it quickly, with as little mess as possible. There would be panic, chaos, of course, but a hard charge into the terminal, wielding the HK MP-5, could prove disastrous. One clean quick head shot each, then, with the Beretta would have to do it.

Bolan stood by the door gunner. Roughly two hundred feet below lay the interstate, groups of civilians standing outside their cars. Arguments appeared to break out in pockets, stranded motorists flailing their arms. It didn’t take a mind reader, he knew, to imagine those thoughts swarming with panic and terror. Then, recalling the omen of ASAC James, he looked at the smattering of eighteen-wheelers, spotted a U-Haul, several cabs.

And he wondered.

One crisis, one terrorist at a time, he told himself.

“Striker?”

Bolan caught the grim note ratchet up in Brognola’s voice.

“Nail these bastards, Striker.”

“Count on it.”

“Get back to me when it’s done there.”

Not “if,” he thought, but “when.” There was no other option, no margin for a half victory, the soldier aware that if one rolling bomb was right then on the highway…

The thought was echoed by Brognola.

“If only one of them is out there, Hal,” the Executioner vowed, “then I’ll make damn sure he is on a highway to Hell.”

BEYOND GRATEFUL for fresh air, Price felt relief as she slipped away from Geller, no dramatic goodbyes or promises to get in touch. So why did that bother her? On the way out the door, she expected the man to press her for some callback, update him on whatever progress he believed she might deliver.

Nothing.

She wondered if she was being unduly paranoid, scanning the bowels of the garage, an itch going down her spine, her heart racing. It was empty of human or vehicular traffic, no sound anywhere—too quiet, too still—her surveillance working down the gauntlet of parked vehicles as she hastened her strides. She spotted her GMC, backed in against the wall, and she was anxious to get in and drive off. She wanted to play back the entire meeting with Geller, hash over all the questions he left hanging, but the nagging instinct was back, stronger than ever, warning her to get out of the garage.

She reached her vehicle, hesitated, looking over her shoulder. Keying open the door, she heard a thud, scoured the garage, unable to determine where the sound originated, but aware someone had just stepped out of a vehicle. Was that a shadow at the far end? she wondered, opening her door. Two shadows, easing in her direction, trying to move, swift and silent?

Hopping in, she shut the door, slipped the key into the ignition. Staring down the garage, she saw the dancing silhouettes, but no bodies. It was almost, she determined, as if they were using cars for concealment. And the shadows were indeed, she saw, advancing her way.

She was about to twist the key when she spotted it out of the corner of her eye.

Price froze at the sight of the signature card on the shotgun seat, then she glimpsed the shadow rise up in the rearview mirror, the weapon aimed at the back of her head.

Silently she cursed Geller, heard the ghoul chuckle as she threw her shoulder into the door.

CHAPTER THREE

“All passengers inside the terminal are asked to remain seated or standing where you are. Those passengers at boarding gates are asked to step back to the center of the terminal. Passengers are asked to leave or place all bags on the ground. This includes purses, or any item that can be carried.”

And Qasi Alzhad saw the dream vanishing before his eyes, felt the slow fuse of anger sizzle toward simmering wrath. Silently he cursed the sudden injustice of it all, the seat trembling beneath him from fury, ears ringing, sweat breaking out beneath the bill of his cap. Glancing at the other two in the row of seats ahead and to his right, he found them, eyes wide and darting around the terminal, cornered animals perhaps, but still dangerous enough, he knew, despite the falling net. Contingency plan locked in place, though, the three of them were ready to martyr themselves, even if they couldn’t fulfill their final role in the big event. So it was written during their correspondence by hand-delivered mail.

So it was spoken by God.

It was easy enough, he thought, to read between the lines of the voice issuing commands over the loudspeaker, telling passengers to remain calm, exit buses, leave carry-ons behind, apologies once again for the delays. Something had indeed gone terribly wrong, the glory of jihad about to be derailed, he feared, and when they were so close. The logical conclusion was that one of the cells had been captured, talked, betrayed the operation.

It was a gross miscalculation, he now discovered, killing time in the terminal, waiting for the others to arrive before he packed the locker with what the letter—delivered two days ago by courier to his motel room near Richmond’s airport—called divine retribution. Two of them stood at the ticket-information counter, he saw, huddled with Greyhound employees, three more breaking open lockers with small drills, working with methodical grim purpose. No FBI stenciled on the backs of windbreakers, but he noted bulges beneath their shoulders betraying concealed side arms, earpieces the glaring tip-off the building was about to come under siege by American law enforcement. Yes, perhaps they were surrounded, outgunned, he thought, but before the infidels began searching baggage and they were staring down weapons, he would take decisive action.

The run to Chicago would never bear sweet fruit, but there was hope yet. Or was there? he wondered, catching the eye of a windbreaker by the lockers. The infidel looked away, watching him without watching, he sensed. Was the FBI man—if that’s what he was—taking special interest in the three of them? Perhaps, he thought, their attire and nylon bags were more errors in planning, marking them, pearls in a sea of infidel swine. He knew next to nothing about the Great Satan’s Arena Football League, but their jackets, caps and bags were emblazoned with individual team emblems, meant to identify them to their brothers-in-jihad. Instinct for survival long since honed in Iraq, twice over, he knew all the signals warning when the end was coming.

The babble of infidels swarming his ears, he shut his eyes. And the past drifted back to him from a dark corner of bitter memory. Beyond the rage and hatred he forced himself to lapse into a soothing trance, wishing to use visions of years waded through in anger and grief to fuel the fires of courage and resolve.

In the beginning it seemed the impossible dream, but the miracle of bringing holy war to the land of the Great Satan had already been mapped out by Syrian sympathizers, well in advance of his fleeing Baghdad the second time around. Before that moment of hope in Damascus, more than a decade since what the enemy called Gulf I, there was unimaginable horror, the foreign devils destroying all that he cherished in his heart. The death and destruction he had witnessed on the way back home from Kuwait had been terrifying enough, the American vultures slaughtering thousands of his Republican Guard brothers on that highway. The unholy ones, he recalled, dropped their bombs, safe in their flying cocoons of death, thousands of feet above the column of vehicles, decimating their numbers, a cowardly act, to be sure, but the worst was yet to come. With his own eyes he had seen many of his brothers burned alive, trapped in the wreckage of tanks, transport trucks, luxury cars rightfully taken from the treacherous, self-indulgent, obscenely rich Kuwaitis.

He could still hear their screams of agony, the stench of cooking flesh something he could so vividly remember. Somehow—call it divine intervention, or a special destiny reserved for him by God—he had escaped the conflagration, wounded, crawling off into the desert, praying all the way back to Baghdad that someday he would return the favor to those faceless cowards who murdered from the skies. He discovered the enemy had robbed him of what life he hoped to return to, a blow so cruel it would have been better to have burned alive on the highway of death. The murder of his wife and two sons, massacred along with many innocent Iraqis during a bombing run on the city, had been grief enough to bear. Only the dagger, he discovered, plunged deeper, twisted harder. Shuddering, he saw in his mind’s eye his daughter—or what remained of her. He found it especially tormenting he couldn’t even recall what she had looked like in all her innocent, youthful beauty, then or now. On his return and discovery, it had taken several weeks of agonizing before he made the decision, praying for the answer, the strength to do the thing he most dreaded. Certain it was God’s will he finally acted. And how couldn’t he? How, as a loving father and true believer of the Islamic faith, could he stand idly by, allow her to suffer her horror and shame of living on like that? How could he, in all clean conscience and purity of soul, let a child languish in perpetual horror and pain, no arms, no eyes, half of her face sheared away to the bone from a coward’s bomb? Small comfort she never saw it coming, but…

He jolted, eyelids flying open, the crack of the pistol swept away to the deep caverns of memory. Oh, but there was now fuel, determination enough to proceed, the fearless holy warrior, carrying out the will of God.

Let there be vengeance. Let there be blood. Let the horror descend, the wrath of God, on the enemy.

He found commotion in all bays beyond the doors on both sides, passengers ushered from buses, large gaggles herded near the gates, Greyhound employees and armed security guards trying to soothe nerves, hands waving down the battery of questions. A quick tally of the anticipated body count, and he figured that between the three of them they could bring the building down while consuming, at the pitiful minimum, three, four hundred in God’s divine retribution.