Don Pendleton: Aftershock

Bolan pressed the hot muzzle against the Kurd’s cheek

“Captain Makal sends his regards,” he said.

Bolan nodded to Sengor, who grabbed two full bags of money. The Executioner leaned down and picked up the wounded man and hurled him through the doorway. Sengor had brought in a canister of gasoline with him, and left it behind when he evacuated, all part of Bolan’s plan.

Bolan tore off the cap and splashed the flammable liquid across the remaining money and corpses. He threw the container in the corner, pulled out a disposable lighter and fired it up.

The money-room was an inferno within thirty seconds, but by then, the Executioner was already en route to his next war zone.

MACK BOLAN ®

The Executioner

#258 Target Lock

#259 Nightfire

#260 Dayhunt

#261 Dawnkill

#262 Trigger Point

#263 Skysniper

#264 Iron Fist

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

#327 Serpent’s Lair

#328 Triangle of Terror

#329 Hostile Crossing

#330 Dual Action

#331 Assault Force

#332 Slaughter House

#333 Aftershock

Aftershock

Don Pendleton

Profit is sweet, even if it comes from deception.

—Sophocles, 496–406 B.C.

Make your blood money and enjoy it while you can. The reckoning for your deceptions will be paid off, and I will collect.

—Mack Bolan

To the Red Cross for the lives they’ve saved around the world.

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

The Turkish morning sun burned down on the city of Van and the crowded streets full of frightened and shell-shocked citizens. The ceaseless battle between the Turkish military security forces, Jandarma, and the Kongra-Gel terrorists was hottest in the southeastern region where Van was located. Cops were on every corner, and a small command post was set up by the hotel. Officially it was to protect American relief workers, but the soldiers stationed there were more interested in keeping an eye on the foreigners. They were wary of the strangers, realizing that the relief workers, or tourists in the same hotel, could be in league with the Kongra-Gel revolutionary front.

Boz Arcuri looked both ways before he got out of the Peugeot. The 9 mm Llama in his waistband was uncocked, but he could thumb the hammer back in a heartbeat and put all nine shots from the sleek handgun into anyone who challenged him.

Still, his black, scraggly beard was trimmed, and his clothes were neat and clean, despite their loose fit, allowing his shirt to cover the trim outline of his pistol. He frowned. The hotel he’d parked in front of wasn’t one of the best in Van, but it was loaded with relief workers, and frugal tourists from a dozen nations. The presence of the military so close by provided the foreigners with a false sense of security.

Westerners were comforted by the sight of soldiers, regardless of how truly effective they were in protecting them. Arcuri thought of the time he’d gone to the United States, setting up a heroin deal with a New York Mob boss. Since that dark September day, it wasn’t unusual to find men and women carrying assault rifles, but to the Kongra-Gel lieutenant’s experienced eye, he realized that those National Guardsmen were holding empty weapons, no magazines in place. A calculating enough assassin could kill a half-dozen of the armed guards and get a supply of pristine, unfired automatic weapons to unleash a wave of devastation among them.

Though the Turkish army troops had magazines in their weapons, they suffered from the conceit of many Middle Eastern men. They refused to use their shoulder stocks, and many of them had folded their metal stocks, or sawn off the wooden units, making their rifles ineffective and useless farther than twenty feet out.

Arcuri felt secure as he walked away from the truck. Its covered bed was stuffed with four thousand pounds of mixed fertilizer, plastic explosives and small arms shells that had been damaged in transport, or didn’t fit Kongra-Gel’s arsenal of weapons, all packed in a flat cake that was neatly concealed by a simple tarpaulin. Mixing in the bullets was a stroke of genius. It disposed of useless ammunition and created simple, effective shrapnel that would only add to the mayhem.

The goal of the bombing wasn’t to strike any specific blow, but the detonation would provide a thundering distraction for the Turkish rebels’ true goals.

The Multinational Organization Relief Effort for Southeast Turkey—MOREST—had a storehouse of drugs, including painkillers, that Kongra-Gel could steal and sell for millions of dollars, keeping a small supply for their own forces to continue the fight against the western-poisoned government. Arcuri grinned and walked. A bomb going off at the hotel would draw the relief workers and guards hired to protect the medical supplies to the scene of the bombing. It would leave only a minor skeleton crew on hand to protect the golden egg that Kagan Trug wanted.

After that, it would be easy to swoop in. The Kongra-Gel team was organized, had its trucks in position and only needed one thing to make the heist come off cleanly.

Arcuri looked around. The lawman standing on the street corner, pistol in his belt holster, dark eyes scanning the faces of passersby, had only noticed Arcuri in passing. The rebel Turk pulled his Llama from under his shirt as he’d gotten within an arm’s length. A woman’s scream alerted the cop that there was danger, but it was too late for him. Arcuri pulled the trigger, emptying nine rounds into the doomed policeman’s skull. As the cop fell, the terrorist turned his attention back to the military forces by the hotel. They heard the shooting and grabbed their rifles, racing in a throng toward the sound of gunfire.