Don Pendleton: Fireburst

RAINING HELLFIRE

A deadly series of lightning strikes confounds experts and pits Mack Bolan against a new kind of terror that comes out of the sky. The death toll spreads as a plane loaded with innocent victims is blown apart, an office building ignites, killing hundreds, and refinery and munitions factories burst into fireballs. Whoever’s responsible leaves no fingerprint. And the strikes continue—unpredictable, undetectable and unstoppable.

Posing as the front man of a rival terrorist organization claiming responsibility for the attacks, Bolan lures the enemy—Iraq’s Republican Guard—out of the shadows. And by coaxing them to put this latest lethal incendiary weapon on the black-market auction block, traitorous old friends and reformed enemies converge…right into the center of Bolan’s crosshairs.

The wall of compressed air painfully crushed his chest

For an unknown length of time, Bolan’s universe was filled with deafening chaos, every hair on his body standing stiff, the fillings in his teeth growing uncomfortably hot.

That was when he realized that the magnetic field of lightning had to be creating eddying currents in anything made of metal.

Quickly Bolan tossed away his guns, throat mike, transceiver, spare ammo and knives. Yanking a grenade out of a pocket, he could feel how warm it was and whipped it as far away as possible. Then he tossed the remaining ones.

But the last grenade’s detonation pounded the Executioner hard, ripping apart his clothing and peppering him with hot shrapnel....

Fireburst

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims—national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil.

—Benjamin Netanyahu

International Terrorism

Terrorists have no morals or ideals, no sense of what’s right or what’s wrong. Any end justifies the means. One thing has always been crystal clear—someone has to stop them. That’s where I come in.

—Mack Bolan

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nick Pollotta for his contribution to this work.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

PROLOGUE

New York City, New York

Following a rumble of thunder, lightning flashed across the night sky, illuminating the roiling storm clouds from within like misshapen Japanese lanterns.

“God, I hate the rain,” a passenger on the jetliner growled under his breath, sliding shut the plastic cover to block his view out the window.

“Oh, sir, our aircraft is one of the safest planes in existence!” a pretty flight attendant said with a comforting smile. “We get hit by lightning two or three times every trip, and it doesn’t even damage the paint! I can assure you that there is nothing to fear.”

Completely unconcerned, the slim woman walked away to check on the other passengers.

Twenty miles ahead of the jetliner was John F. Kennedy International Airport, a glowing oasis of incandescent and halogen lights, mixing together into a whitish haze that dominated the night in open defiance of the rumbling storm.

“How’s the traffic?” the pilot asked the navigator, keeping one hand on the yoke while reaching out to tap the glass front of a fuel gauge. The needle quivered, but didn’t change position.

The curved banks of controls surrounded the three members of the cockpit crew in a rainbow of technology, while outside lightning flashed again, much closer, and then farther away.

“We’re in the pipe,” the navigator replied, infinitely adjusting the delicate controls on her radar screen. “There’s nothing in the sky closer than a klick.”

No other airplanes were visible because of the tumultuous summer storm, but the radar showed that the sky was full of flying metal, with an even dozen commercial jetliners steadily circling the busy airport, impatiently waiting for permission to land.

“This must be a slow day for Kennedy,” the copilot said, keeping both hands on the yoke.

She shrugged. “Pretty much so, yeah.”

“Bad for them, good for us,” the pilot said, unclipping a hand mike and thumbing the transmit button. “Hello, Kennedy? This is flight one-nine-four out of Oslo. Do you copy? Over.”

“This is Kennedy Tower, one-nine-four. We hear you five-by-five.” The ceiling speaker crackled. “You’re behind schedule. Should have been here an hour ago. Over.”

“We hit a headwind over the Atlantic,” the pilot replied. “Kennedy, could I please have an ETA?”

“Fifteen minutes until you can have a runway, one-nine-four. Stay on your heading and maintain—”

Suddenly, a blinding light filled the windows, and every instrument on the control boards flickered wildly.

“Say again, Kennedy. We got tickled,” the pilot said with a laugh, as the instrument readings returned to normal once more.

“Any damage?” the navigator asked, glancing up from her screen.

“Nope,” the copilot said, brushing back his thinning hair. “Just a—”

The terrible light filled the windows again, and the controls dimmed. But before they could reboot, another lightning bolt hit the aircraft, then another, and yet another, the force of the last one cracking a side window.

“What the fuck just happened?” the copilot demanded, looking around the flight deck. Nothing seemed to be damaged, but the overhead lights were dim, one of them flickering, and most of the control boards were dark and inert.

“Radar is down!” the navigator announced grimly. “The radio is dead, and ILM is off-line!”

“Maybe we blew a fuse,” the pilot said, flipping switches with both hands. “Oh, Christ, we blew every fuse!”

“What about the backup circuits?”

“Dead! Everything is dead!”

Just then, the entire airplane shook as another bolt of lightning struck.

“Left engine is gone,” the copilot announced in a strained voice. “Not dead. Gone. There’s just a hole in the wing!”

“That’s impossible!” the navigator stated furiously, twisting dials and pressing buttons. “This plane is designed to withstand any conceivable storm!”

The reply of the copilot was lost in the noise of a lightning bolt hitting them again. A spray of sparks erupted from a wall unit, and smoke trickled out from under the floor.

“Kennedy, this is one-nine-four!” the pilot said into the hand mike, but there was only silence from the overhead speaker. Tossing away the mike, he wrapped both arms around the yoke and braced his legs. “Fuck it, we’re going straight in! Kennedy will just have to figure out what happened on their own!”

The copilot tightened his seat belt. “Okay, I’ll tell the—”

This time the flash of the lightning came with the scream of ripping metal as a section of the roof broke off and sailed away in the storm. Instantly, the flight crew was hammered by a howling wind, and every loose item swirled around the compartment before vanishing into the rain.