Suicide Highway

Bolan simply nodded.

They stopped as Tera Geren sidled up to them. “You boys have a nice visit with Captain Blake?”

“Absolutely charming,” Bolan responded. “He lets you keep your weapons.”

“Because I came and knelt at the altar of interagency protocol, big guy,” Geren said. “You might try it some time. Works wonders.” she grinned mischievously, then took a deep breath. “It’s good to see you again.”

Bolan nodded. He didn’t want to acknowledge their closeness. He glanced over to Laith.

“I need someplace to do a little first aid, and maybe get some food in us,” Bolan said, nodding to his Afghan companion. Geren looked at him, then nodded, her mischief replaced with a more serious look. “I also don’t want to deal with spies, no matter how friendly or well-intentioned they are,” Bolan said.

“I have a place I’m operating out of,” Geren told him. “Two, actually. One that Blake knows about and has under surveillance.”

“The other?” Bolan asked.

She smiled. “We’ll go there when we have to.”

Laith cast a nervous glance toward Bolan, who simply nodded to the younger man. “Not going to mind having me along, Ms. Rosenberg?” Laith asked.

Geren shrugged. “Why? Do you smoke cheap cigars or fart a lot?”

Laith relaxed. “No, ma’am.”

“Oh, God, please don’t call me ma’am. It makes me sound like your mother,” she answered. “Call me Tera.”

“Laith.”

The woman looked to Bolan again, trying to keep her features subdued, but the surprise still crossed her face. Bolan figured that she didn’t expect him to be close friends with Tarik Khan’s nephew. “You really know how to make friends around here. Makes me wonder why Blake stripped you.”

Suddenly, the Executioner caught a flash of movement in the corner of his eye. He lunged, one arm wrapping around Geren, his other hand clutching Laith’s jumpsuit, all three of them crashing to the ground an instant before the night exploded with gunfire.

Assault rifles tore through the silence as Mack Bolan reached for the minuscule Beretta .32 in his pocket. He knew that even if it wasn’t too late, its response would be too little.

ROBERT WESLEY HAD NEVER liked the fact that they were based out of an old office building in the small town of Ghiyath. He remembered the horror stories about embassies and Marine barracks. When he and the others had mentioned this to Blake, the response had been quick and forthcoming.

The four engineering experts in the A-Team, both the primary training and the secondary training sergeants, were put to work seeking the parts of the U-shaped office complex that were least vulnerable to a car bomb. Those areas would be the main HQ for the Special Forces.

Having a car roll up, park and detonate would be impossible. Trip wires, laser and standard wire would raise alerts from the alley behind the complex. A car bomb ramming into the main complex would be blunted by strategically placed cars, mined with high explosives. Anyone trying to ram through would upset the triggers on the blockades and end up with a premature detonation.

Blake took precautions. He didn’t like being hung out to be target practice for dedicated psychopaths, either.

The captain, Wesley noted, was no-bullshit. He might have been hard, but he looked out for his men, and he looked out for the people he was assigned to protect.

Wesley watched as the pair they’d escorted back to the base left Blake’s office, conversing quietly. He wanted to reserve judgment on the big man who had led a charge into a pit of terrorist thugs. Theresa Rosenberg seemed to like him, despite her efforts to seem aloof to the newcomer.

Then again, Theresa didn’t trust Wesley, or the rest of the Special Forces A-Team with her real name. He didn’t blame her; that was just the way the world of espionage and counterterrorism worked.

Wesley frowned as he watched her join Stone and Laith Khan once more.

Maybe it was a hint of jealousy on his part that kept Wesley from truly wanting to accept the black-haired, blue-eyed wraith who had entered the fray. Rosenberg acted more like a woman with Stone in a few moments than she had around the whole of the team for the week she’d been with them.

Wesley dismissed that. Getting jealous and workplace romances in combat situations were the construct of novelists and Hollywood scriptwriters. Bed-hopping games like that were a good way to insure a bullet in the back of the head, or a few moments of hesitation when death came charging down on you like an out of control bull. He would have liked life to be like a movie or a paperback novel, but the truth was, he had too much life to live, and too much job to do.

Wesley looked around. A car was waiting just outside the demarked zone in what the engineers considered to be a safe parking spot. An average-sized sedan parked at that point wouldn’t cause more than a few broken windows if it detonated. If a truck parked inside the same radius, Blake would have his teams swoop on it, kill anyone sitting inside, and check the back for high explosives.

As it was, Wesley activated his LASH mike on the headquarters frequency. “We’ve got a gold-colored Peugeot parked a block away.”

“I’ve been watching it for a couple hours. The guy inside is on stakeout, but other than smoking cigarettes, he’s not causing us any harm,” came the reply from Jerrud, the rooftop sniper.

“He look local?” Wesley asked.

Jerrud grunted. “Nope. First, he smokes way too much. That means he has money to burn on cigarettes. Plus, he dresses too Western.”

“He hasn’t noticed you, has he?” Wesley asked.

Jerrud chuckled. “I’m insulted.”

“Pardon me—” Wesley started to joke.

Gunfire suddenly flashed. Rosenberg and the two newcomers were suddenly on the ground in a huddled lump, but only for a second as autofire raked the air where they once stood.

“We got hostiles!” Jerrud shouted.

“The car?” Wesley asked. Looking, he saw that the muzzle-flashes were far from the Peugeot, which had hit reverse hard. The muzzle of an AKM poked out the window, but it was aiming in the direction of the shooters. Gunfire flashed across the street in both directions, the fender and hood of the gold car suddenly peppered with impacts. The Peugeot spun out and tore off down the street.

Wesley shouldered his M-4, bringing the holographic scope on target to where he saw a couple rifle-toting gunners swinging their attention back toward Rosenberg and her companions. He milked the trigger for a short burst, but knew it was too quick, panic fire that didn’t even slow down the enemy shooters. Around him, other rifles were opening up, and the street was turned into a battlezone.

Wesley felt a lump drop into his stomach as he watched the trio charge toward the enemy gunners.

THE EXECUTIONER WAS ON his feet in an instant. Even as one vehicle downrange was pouring on the steam in full reverse—opening fire on the gunners—he was taking advantage of time in slices that made the beat of a heart seem like an hour.

The .32-caliber Tomcat was in Bolan’s big fist, but there was no way he was going to score fatal hits. The terrorists had picked their battlefield intelligently, well beyond accurate pistol range for most people, and behind cover solid enough to stop even the 5.56 mm rifle rounds of the Special Forces soldiers. With long, ground-eating strides, he pushed hard, knowing his only hope was to get inside the reach of his own weapon. Had he been armed with the Beretta 93-R machine pistol, or his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle, he might have chosen to fall back.

Unfortunately, he had a paranoid Special Forces A-team captain to thank for not having much firepower. He was aware of bodies racing behind him. Gunfire popped from his right, the chatter of an M-4 on semiauto. Tera Geren, not disarmed of her weapon, Bolan figured. To his left, he caught the sound of a magazine slamming into the well of another rifle. Laith was going to get into action with his M-92.

“Colonel!” came the cry. Bolan turned and paused, holding out his hands as the rifle was lobbed to him. Laith made the toss and reached for his handgun in the same fluid movement.

Bolan scooped the rifle out of the air, then turned his attention forward as rifle fire bellowed with increased fury. The Green Berets traded fire with the terrorists, but neither side was scoring a hit, as they were all entrenched behind solid cover.

One thug spotted Bolan and whipped his rifle around.

The Executioner didn’t even have time to get a grip on Laith’s rifle. He punched the .32 Beretta forward, opening fire and emptying out the 9-round payload of the little pistol. The rifleman jerked under multiple impacts, his face splashed with blood. Hardly the most powerful handgun on the battlefield, but the soldier remembered that long ago, some of his first shots fired in anger against the Mafia were from a .32. Size and power didn’t matter anymore. They were within thirty yards of the enemy, and the fusillade, even fired on the run, was dead on target.

Bolan tossed aside the empty pistol and got both hands on the Zastava. The muzzle exploded in a blast of flame and thunder. The steel-cored slugs smashed through the slab of plasterboard one terrorist was using for cover. His body jerked back violently, leaving a bloody smear on wall behind him. The corpse slid to the ground in a messy heap.

The Executioner held down the trigger for another short burst, a swarm of 7.62 mm slugs punching the skull of another Afghan rifleman. The gunner was still standing, triggering rounds blindly until a wave of 5.56 mm bullets from Tera Geren slashed open his chest and dropped him.

Cover fire from the Special Forces team members, except for the sniper who had the high ground, stopped. Bolan and his allies were dangerously close to the attackers, and there was a good chance that even the Green Berets would accidentally hit the three people. It didn’t matter to the Executioner.