Path To War

The soldier found the warehouse near the waterfront, northeast of Casa Port, near Mole du Commerce pier. With the sound-suppressed Beretta he shot the lock off the door. Bolan informed the FBI team about the backpack nuke, and Special Agent Dawkins had insisted he tag along for the grilling. Glock pistol in hand, Dawkins followed the soldier into the dark interior. Bolan slung Kairoush, the terrorist’s hands bound behind his back with plastic cuffs, to the floor. He waited while Dawkins, using his flashlight, fumbled around in the dark until he found and turned on the hanging ceiling lights to the warehouse. It was standard warehouse fare the soldier had seen the world over, crates and catwalks, forklifts, other machinery and tool benches, with a few offices packed against the back wall. As good a place as any, he figured, to conduct some hardball Q and A.

Bolan fired two rounds from his Beretta, the 9-mm bullets whining off stone beside the terrorist’s head.

“You’re insane!” Kairoush shouted.

“I’ve never been more stone cold,” the Executioner told the terrorist, aiming the muzzle at the extremist’s crotch. “The next one’s for real.”

Dawkins muttered a curse, Bolan glimpsing the big, crew-cut agent rubbing his face, dancing a little from foot to foot.

“What do you want?”

“Answers,” Bolan told the terrorist. “I want to know about the North Koreans. I want to know where the backpack nuke is, or how I can get to it. Two seconds before I shoot your family jewels off. One…”

“I will talk!”

And Kairoush did. Bolan listened to the strange and sordid deal that had come to the Moroccan by way of what he called American mercenaries, though he believed they were current or former CIA, but with plenty of leverage still in their intelligence circles. Bad news to him, but at least he’d found a starting point. The head merc Kairoush knew as Baraka was hiding out in the desert, the last he heard, east of Marrakech on a desert plateau near the High Atlas Mountains. This Baraka had handed off close to half a million dollars to his terror group in U.S. currency for refuge in Morocco. Along with the cash tribute, Kairoush had settled the mercs in with his own fundamentalist army in the desert, both to sit on the Americans and for the mercs to use them as fighters in the event of an attack by Moroccan authorities. Between Kairoush’s army and the Americans, there were close to a hundred men in the camp. Bolan heard how Baraka had set up the deal with the North Koreans, using Kairoush’s contacts and safehouses to get them into the country, negotiate the good-faith payment with the late Habib Mousuami. What their plans were for the Suitcase from Allah, Kairoush couldn’t say, but he was supposed to make a phone call to a number given to him by Baraka once Habib handed off the initial payment to the North Koreans. Bolan was turning toward Dawkins to tell him to give Kairoush his cell phone when the autofire rang out, the soldier flinching as he glimpsed a line of ragged holes dancing and spurting crimson across the terrorist’s chest. The Executioner was wheeling when he spotted the black-clad, armored storm troops surging into the warehouse.

“Freeze, both of you! Lose the guns!”

And Bolan found himself staring at Commander Raz Tachjine, the muzzle of the Moroccan’s Spanish Ameli machine gun aimed at his chest.

RON BARAKA WAS DISTURBED. As he stepped away from the Learjet, greeted by his three most trusted fighters, he was hit by the first wave of bad news. It was troubling enough, shouldering the overthrow of an entire country, with Yemen in the wings, but there was no word out of Casablanca about the down payment to the North Koreans, and the way Engels informed him about Colonel Yoon Kimsung’s growing agitation and desire to leave Morocco, it sounded like the deal was about to fall through. No way, at the eleventh hour, he thought, would he be left holding the crap end of the stick.

Baraka heaved a breath, marching toward the first line of tents and stone hovels. He let his gaze wander over the sprawling camp, taking in the vast motor pool of Hummers, four-wheel drive SUVs and the rust bucket Toyota pickups most of the rabble here used as transport. Kairoush had fielded a small army of extremists, all of them well armed, with heavy machine-gun nests grabbing up turf on four points, but he had plopped them down in some of the most godforsaken country he could imagine. For miles in any direction it was all sand and stone, with some ancient ruins sprouting up to the west of camp. Marrakech, about twenty klicks or so west, was as close to civilization as he would find. Well, the Consortium had never promised him a day at one of Morocco’s beaches or leisurely booze-sodden nights in the clubs and cabarets. Still, he was mired in the bowels of hell, and the coming days didn’t bode much better for any decent change of scenery. During the day it was blistering hot, with the occasional Bedouin caravan with camels wandering the desert wasteland. At night it was bitter cold, with gusts blowing down from the mountains that could chill a man to the bone. He spied the fire barrels, shucking his black leather bomber jacket higher up his shoulders, the armed shadows of extremists looking his way. He was aware of the HK MP-5 slung across his shoulder, briefly wondered if he’d be forced to confront the NKs at gunpoint if they reneged on the deal.

“Hold up,” Baraka told his men, Engels, Durban and Morallis forming a half ring around him as he stared out across the rolling dunes, dark humps like a camel’s back outlined by moon, starlight and the combined glow of firelight and kerosene lamps around the camp.

And Baraka began looking toward the immediate future. Two Huey choppers and one Bell JetRanger, purchased at considerable expense through Consortium contacts high up in the Moroccan military, were grounded in a gorge in the mountain foothills. Getting to the far southern desert wastes of Morocco near the Mauritania border where the two C-47 Dakota transports waited wasn’t the problem. Hell, if he wanted, he could kill the North Koreans, take the nuke and fly on. No, the Consortium was in the revolution for the long run, no shortcuts, no quick fixes. He was to arrange the purchase of two more backpack nukes ASAP, as in this night. He wasn’t to fly off for the Angolan border without the package. Besides, he needed Katanga out of Barcelona and en route for his big return by sunrise. So much to do, he thought, so little time…

“Since there’s no word out of Casablanca,” Baraka told his men, “we’ll assume the worst. Either Kairoush took our money and ran or someone got to him.”

“If that’s the case,” Morallis said, “then our time in this country has run out.”

“You think?” Baraka quietly rasped. “Okay, we have how much cash on hand?”

“Three bags,” Durban said. “Just under ten mil.”

“I want you three to go get it,” Baraka said. “The North Koreans have stated they’re with us all the way through the revolution. They want in, they’ll have to take whatever money we have for now.”

“Yeah,” Engels growled, “they left at our disposal all of one full squad of their Special Forces. We’re not exactly battalion strength when we go marching into Luanda.”

Baraka ignored the skepticism. Grimly aware of the long odds, he knew that without the threat of the backpack nuke there was very little chance they could pull off the seemingly impossible. Morocco today, Angola tomorrow, then Yemen. Then what?

Telling himself he worried too much, he drifted a hard look over the grizzled, bristled faces of his soldiers. “We go with what we have. Go get the money. I’ll take care of the North Koreans, but be ready to back my play.”

Nodding, they strode off, their HK subguns in hand, Baraka wondering how many men he would lose in the coming revolt. Sure, the Consortium could always recruit more shooters, but finding hardened, bonafied warriors like the men he now commanded was next to impossible.

Go with what I have.

There was no other way.

Swiftly he rolled into camp, silently cursing the dark eyes boring their natural hostility into the side of his head. Say something had happened to Kairoush and his people in Casablanca, word reaching the top lieutenants here that the infidels needed to be skewered and hung over a fire for some imagined treachery that was beyond his control? Twenty shooters of his own on hand wouldn’t cut it against an extremist strong force of eighty or so. The only option, if a storm blew over the camp, would be to cut and run.

Baraka found Merkelson guarding the tent where his NK guests waited. He swept through the flaps, found the three North Koreans turning his way, wearing their perpetual scowls carved in stone, and demanded to know, “Is there a problem?”

“YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN, Tachjine, just what the hell you think you’re doing?”

Bolan listened as Dawkins echoed his angry thoughts, but the soldier was more focused on the Ameli subguns, as Tachjine’s six-man force spread out in a standard flanking pattern, taking cover behind crates, forklifts, weapons swinging this way and that.

“The weapons, gentlemen!” Tachjine barked. “You will drop them now!”

“Or what?” Dawkins snarled. “You’re going to gun down American agents you swore up and down to cooperate with. Or are you just some lying backstabbing sack of—”

“Drop the guns!”

And Bolan saw their own four-man force barrel through the door, HK subguns out and fanning the Moroccan commandos, the tension shooting up to superheated as their team pealed off in twos, sealing the six of their foreign so-called hosts. The Executioner sidled for a crate, heart thundering in his ears, while he drew the Uzi, watched both sides whirling on each other, shouting and cursing. If, Bolan thought, this was Tachjine playing out a dirty hand then he was steeled to go the distance.

“Enough! Silence!” Tachjine roared, the Moroccan commander raising his Ameli subgun over his head, as if the gesture was an olive branch. “We can talk this out!”

“Bullshit!” Dawkins growled. “You just murdered a man in cold blood. He was our prisoner and he had valuable information.”

Bolan took cover behind the edge of a crate, Uzi pointed at Tachjine’s chest, Beretta holding steady on swarthy faces framed in black helmets. “You better explain yourself, Commander. And if anyone starts shooting, you’re the first one I drop.”

“And believe me,” Dawkins said, “Agent Cooper hasn’t struck me as being long-winded on diplomacy.”

The short, swarthy, goateed Tachjine nodded, an odd smile creasing his lips. “I believe that. It would appear Special Agent Ballard has had a very busy night already. I count nine bodies to his credit, and the night is still young.”

“Saying you’ve been following us?” Dawkins quipped, his Glock drifting over the commandos as the FBI team spread out on the rear and flanks of the Moroccans. “Mind if I ask why? Since you told us to our faces this was our show.”

“It is simple. I changed my mind. You see, we have had this butcher,” Tachjine said, and spit on Kairoush’s corpse, “under surveillance for months. He and his murderers are responsible for close to eighty dead in this city. We’re aware of his dealings with the Americans and the North Koreans. I needed to be sure you gentlemen were not part of the conspiracy that is brewing in my country.”

“You’ve got a damn strange way of seeking the truth.” Dawkins was out in the open still, square in the spotlight, his Glock trained on Tachjine.

“It was the only way.” Tachjine lowered his subgun, waved at his commandos to stand down. “My government has pledged cooperation with your country in the war against the terror savages. We have been receiving these past months aid from the United States. You send your operatives here with money, weapons, intelligence. You have further built our Special Forces with helicopter gunships, high-tech equipment we desperately needed to keep Morocco from becoming like our filthy dogs of neighbors, the Algerians.”

“Tell us something we don’t know, Tachjine,” Dawkins snapped.

Tachjine nodded at Kairoush. “As for this jackal, he is only one more dead terrorist who can never again murder innocents.”

Bolan wasn’t quite buying Tachjine’s crusading act. “So where do we go from here, Commander?”

“Why, we go get the Suitcase from God the North Koreans smuggled into my country.”

“You know where it is?” Dawkins said.

“Or did you know where it was all along?” Bolan added.

“A reconnaissance aircraft, with the help of your people stationed in the city,” Tachjine said, “has pinpointed the location of the Americans and the North Koreans. It is a large camp, used by this dead jackal to train and build his fundamentalist army. I have transport arranged and a battle strategy mapped out.”