Don Pendleton - Face Of Terror

IT SEEMED THAT BOLAN had just closed his eyes when he was awakened by the distinctive sound of twin Pratt & Whitney PW305 turbofan engines. He turned to Jessup, grabbed the DEA agent’s arm and gently shook him to consciousness.

Bolan smiled when the pilot landed and brought the Learjet 60 to a halt less than twenty yards away. His friend controlled whatever craft he was flying as if it were an extension of his body. Aircraft were to Grimaldi what firearms and other weapons were to the Executioner.

When Jessup was awake, both men got out of the Hummer, walked down and then up across the bar ditch, then climbed over the fence. The Executioner found the door to the Learjet already open when he reached it, and Jack Grimaldi grinning at him below his sunglasses.

A second later, Bolan had strapped himself into his seat next to the pilot and Jessup took the seat behind Grimaldi. The ace pilot revved the engines, and the plane began to pick up speed again in preparation for takeoff.

The Executioner withdrew his sat phone and tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm, America’s top-secret counterterrorist headquarters. Bolan maintained an arm’s-length working relationship with Stony Man, and his and the Farm’s missions often coincided.

Barbara Price, Stony Man Farm’s mission controller, didn’t answer until the fourth ring. “Sorry, Striker,” she said. “I was busy transferring some data to Bear.”

Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman was in charge of the banks of computers and personnel who gathered the Farm’s electronic intel. Kurtzman spent most of his life in front of a computer. Once a strong bear of a man, he had been paralyzed from the waist down during a gun battle years ago and was now confined to a wheelchair.

And he was the best. There were simply no programs into which he couldn’t hack if given enough time, and there was no computer that came close to the power of his own brain. He had proved invaluable to Bolan and the other teams that worked out of the Farm.

“So what’s new on the western front?” Price said.

“We got the Mafia scum and the coke,” Bolan told the honey-blond mission controller. “Just missed the sellers.”

“Did you hear any of them speak?” Price asked.

Under normal conditions, the question would have sounded straight out of left field. But Bolan knew why Price had asked him. “Uh-uh,” he said. “We never got close enough to hear voices. They spoke to us with bullets and a bazooka.”

“A bazooka?” Price said.

“That’s right,” the Executioner said. “They missed.”

“Obviously,” Price said. “You need to talk to Hal?”

“Yeah,” the Executioner said. “Put him on.”

Bolan heard a click in his ear as Price put him on hold and went about her search for Hal Brognola, the Farm’s director. But he was also a high-ranking official within the U.S. Department of Justice. High enough, at least, that no one questioned his frequent and unexplained absences from Washington, D.C., during which time he manned the reins of Stony Man. He was also Bolan’s link to conventional law enforcement, and could get most things done with a simple phone call.

The Learjet continued to gain altitude, then leveled off as Bolan waited. A few minutes later, he heard the voice of another old friend.

“What’s happening, big guy?” Hal Brognola said into the phone.

“Just finished with the coke deal. Killed the bad guys, exploded the dope. There may be a few hundred cattle who get wired if the wind blows in the right direction, but that should be the only damage.”

Brognola laughed. “Better them than humans,” he said. “Barb already told me. Sounds like you came close to catching the pushers, too.”

“Yeah. Too bad we weren’t playing horseshoes.”

“Any idea who they were?” Brognola questioned. “Any chance they were this Islamic terrorist group that’s been robbing banks and creating other forms of havoc all over the place?”

“Hard to say, Hal,” the Executioner replied. “We didn’t get close enough to really get a good look at them. And as I suspect Barbara already told you, we couldn’t hear them speaking.”

“So tell me what your hunches are, big guy,” Brognola said. “They usually turn out to be as accurate as anything that can be proved.”

“My guess is that they’re the same bunch that hit the bank in Kansas City yesterday. They drove two pickups and a Jeep to the scene but had a helicopter waiting for them to make their getaway. I’d guess the chopper is theirs, which makes the Oklahoma panhandle only a hop, skip and a jump from K.C. The other vehicles I suspect they stole locally. And recently. There haven’t been any such theft reports come out over the police-band radio.”

“Anything else?” Brognola asked.

“Just that they were well trained. Either in one of the Middle-Eastern terrorist-training camps or some country’s armed forces. They worked with a certain military precision that I can’t quite put my finger on. And one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“The guy who fired the bazooka at us—there was something about him I can’t put my finger on. But my gut tells me he’s no more Arabic than you or me.”

“Why’s that?” Brognola asked.

“I can’t say for sure. Maybe something about the way he moved. I really don’t know.”

“You sound like you’re leaning away from the radical-Islamic-terrorist theory,” Brognola said.

“Not entirely. But I’m certainly questioning it.”

“When you think about it, these guys have done a lot of things to make it look like their crimes were for religious and political reasons,” Brognola said. “Almost gone out of their way to convince people of it.”

“That’s what I’m beginning to think,” the Executioner said. “Stop and think about it, Hal. There’ve been three kidnappings and a little over a half-dozen bank robberies attributed to these men. The only witness left alive was that pregnant woman yesterday. She said they spoke Arabic. But do you think she could tell Arabic from one of the other Middle-Eastern languages? Like Farsi, maybe?”

“I doubt it,” Brognola said. “In fact, I’m not sure half of my own agents could.”

“Right,” the Executioner said. “I’m not saying they aren’t radical Muslims of some sort. Just that we can’t be sure yet.”

“So what can I do for you at this point?” Brognola asked.

Bolan glanced to Jessup in the backseat. The DEA man was sitting forward again, straining to hear every word that Bolan said. Turning his attention back to the phone once more, the Executioner said, “I’d like you to pull whatever strings you have to in order to get Jessup assigned to me for the duration of this mission. Think you can pull that off?”

“All it’ll take is a phone call,” Brognola said. “What have you got planned next?”

Bolan glanced behind him, toward the Learjet’s storage area. He had come straight to this mission from another strike in Australia, and was running low on ammo and other equipment. It was definitely time to restock.

“I’m coming in,” the Executioner told Brognola. “We’re running short on supplies.”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. Then Brognola said, “You still have Jessup with you, right?”

Bolan knew what the pause had meant. Stony Man Farm was a top-secret installation. From the road, it looked like a regular working farm in the Shenendoah Valley. Knowledge of its location, as well as its function, was strictly on a need-to-know basis. And Jessup didn’t need to know.

“I’ve got him but I’ll take care of it,” the Executioner said. “Talk to you later.” He hung up.

Reaching under the seat next to Grimaldi, the Executioner pulled out what looked like a black cotton sack. But a small hole right in the middle would have raised the eyebrows of anyone seeing the bag for the first time.