Don Pendleton - Desert Fallout

Bolan reined in his speculative plans on intercepting the enemy’s communications. There was too much at risk with one hostage still alive, but in no condition to survive an intense fight. While the mission was important, the life of a noncombatant was too precious to endanger. There would be ways to pursue the opposition without getting hold of that sat phone. They’d be less efficient, increasing the risk that the deadly poison could be utilized before he caught up with it again, but Bolan knew that if the enemy was willing to backtrack and kill anyone aware of the ricin, they had to have had a plan that was running on its own timetable.

It was a gamble, and Bolan didn’t like it, but he decided to bide his time.

To avoid combat unless absolutely necessary was the strategy he’d plotted for now.

A conspiracy whose perpetrators were paranoid enough to pounce on Mubarak as he bartered the biological toxin in Somalia might have enough contingencies to frustrate the Executioner and his cybernetic allies back at Stony Man Farm. Protective software, dense encryption and even a simple self-destruct mechanism in the sat phone could be in place to cover the plotters.

He swept the approaching commandos with his binoculars. He’d shaded the lenses with a collar of PVC pipe duct-taped in place, preventing the glasses from creating a glare of reflected sunlight. As an experienced former Army sniper-scout, it was second nature for the Executioner to disappear, even in plain sight. Stealth was more than merely camouflage, though the soldier had unfurled a desert-pattern lightweight blanket and had fashioned it into a cloak that not only blended him in with the terrain at the edge of the archaeological camp, but also shielded him from the sun’s burning rays. His head scarf was in place to keep his head from getting too hot, absorbing any sweat he did give off, and to keep his jet-black hair from providing stark contrast, which would have betrayed his position.

As a sniper, Bolan had learned about human perception and how to avoid being noticed in the field. He could observe the commando team with relative impunity. Still, the big American knew that he could find himself in trouble if his own observational skills had failed him.

The leader of the group spoke to his men in Arabic, directing them to store the containers out of sight. Bolan didn’t speak much of the language, and he wasn’t capable of determining the dialect that they spoke, pinning down their nation of origin, but he could make out what was happening with the assistance of the commander’s hand movements and phrases he did recognize. He also heard the word helicopter and knew that there wasn’t going to be much time to spy upon this group. Depending on the tent where the commandos stored their ancient prize, it was also possible that they would discover Metit’s disappearance.

Just to be certain, Bolan readied his Egyptian Beretta to buy a few more moments of time. He screwed a sound suppressor onto the pistol’s threaded barrel. He would rob the hardball ammunition of some of its velocity as the silencer baffles would trap propelling gases as well as their resistance against the bullet. Fortunately, Bolan and Kamau had picked up a supply of military-grade ammunition, loaded to much higher levels than civilian rounds. Again, experience had taught the warrior that 9 mm full-metal-jacket bullets would do the job he needed them to do, if only his accuracy was dead-on.

With Bolan’s lifetime of shooting experience, as well as his training and familiarity with the Beretta 92 platform, he didn’t think the slightly lower velocity and lack of frangibility would hinder him from making swift, decisive kills. He slithered toward the rape tent, his senses reaching out not only for conspirators heading toward the enclosure, but for indications that the enemy had noticed his presence. Luckily, the Executioner’s stealth had kept him in the shadows, just outside their awareness.

He shadowed one of the teams that had been given the task of stowing the containers that the whole group had brought with them. They rolled one toward a tent next to where they had found Metit. It was a small bit of fortune on a mission that already seemed so wrought with troubles. Bolan had only two advantages so far, one of them being Kamau, an assistant who was luckily a man of the same moral caliber as the Executioner, and who had the skills to assist him. Kamau’s knowledge of Arabic dialects as well as African languages was worth the Somali’s weight in gold. The other advantage was that his enemy was unaware that Bolan was pursuing them. It wouldn’t last long, though. His luck couldn’t hold out forever.

Bolan glanced toward the gully and saw that Kamau and Metit were long gone from sight, but he wasn’t willing to risk that the gunmen couldn’t track the pair even on the hard rocky ground. An added problem was that the small gash in the earth was the most blatant route that an escaping woman would take. If the mystery soldiers headed out to capture Metit, they’d know that Bolan and Kamau were present. He turned his attention back to the two men who were retrieving one more of the containers, the last one that was out in the open.

There was some brief conversation as the two men spoke with their commander. They pointed at the storage tent, then over to the one that Metit had been in. The leader nodded and waved them toward the rape tent. Bolan grimaced and circled to the front, the hammer on the Beretta drawn back to give him an effortless pull of the trigger if necessary. From his new angle, he saw only one of the men push the container on its trolley through the flaps of the tent. He left, leaving the trolley just inside the entrance, then turned back to his leader.

It was a moment of laziness, a lapse in judgment that gave Bolan’s allies a reprieve. He allowed himself a brief smile when the clatter of a falling crate sounded just inside the flaps. The trolley had to have been on uneven ground, or worse, it had been shoved against the corpse of Metit’s rapist, an act of happenstance that blew things for Bolan.

The flap had been pushed aside by the dolly’s back. There was a moment of grumbling as the guy bent to pick it up. He stood, his head tilted at a quizzical angle. Bolan rested the Beretta’s front sight on the commando’s goggles. The beginning of a question escaped the soldier’s lips, and Bolan applied just over three pounds of pressure. The Beretta 92 wasn’t a gun that kicked much, and with the suppressor weighing down its muzzle, the recoil impulse was nonexistent. Plexiglas imploded as the 115-grain FMJ round speared through it, driving deep through facial bones. Splinters of shattered skull exploded through the soldier’s brain and his head snapped back violently.

The sudden, violent death of one of their own froze two of the mercenaries in their tracks as they watched their comrade collapse to the dirt in a lifeless pile. Their confusion gave the Executioner a couple more targets while the rest of the group sprang into motion. The commandos’ training and experience was readily apparent as most of them broke for cover at the first sign of violence.

Bolan took one of the stunned gunmen with a second Beretta round to the throat. The sneeze of the 9 mm’s passage was discreet, but he knew that even that gentle sound would betray his position. He didn’t wait to see the effects of his shot on the second of the marauders, sidestepping to the shelter of a slab of sandstone before he rose from the ground, his camouflaging cloak fluttering behind him. The burp of 5.56 mm rifles popped through the air, and Bolan slid around the other side of the flat stone he’d swung behind. In the transition from one side of the rock to the other, Bolan had holstered the sidearm and gripped the AK on its sling. Two of the Arab-speaking gunmen were visible to the Executioner from his new vantage point, firing their bullpup assault rifles in profile to him. He shouldered his AK and triggered his own autoweapon.