Don Pendleton - Plains Of Fire

CAPTAIN AFLAQ LISTENED to the rattle of distant gunfire and dying screams, then glanced over to Yuri Grigorei, his brow furrowed in disdain.

“I thought the mafiya had the services of Russia’s finest warriors.” Venom dripped from Aflaq’s every word.

Grigorei sneered at the African militiaman. “What would a scumbag like you know about anything Russian?”

Aflaq’s nose wrinkled, but he shook off the insult. “Now is not the time for us to be at each other’s throats. Someone stumbled onto us, and they have done an excellent job at turning this deal to shit.”

“Your enemies?” Grigorei asked.

Aflaq shook his head. “The goat-fucking primitives and their Ethiopian defenders don’t have enough brain cells combined to even spell Alexandria, let alone send a covert operations team here.”

“Setting off a bomb in an Egyptian harbor isn’t the style of the CIA,” Grigorei noted. “And there isn’t another crime organization with the kind of reach to touch us here.”

The Russian’s eyes narrowed as he saw a shadow in the distance. “That idiot.”

Aflaq followed the Russian’s line of sight and saw a man running down the street toward their position. His arm hung uselessly at his side and his pale features were twisted into a mask of terror and pain.

“He’s leading the enemy to us!” Grigorei snapped. “Everyone! Harden up!”

Aflaq’s hand tightened around the pistol grip of his rifle. “You’ll frighten off our adversaries, yelling like that.”

Grigorei glared at the African. “If we do, then we’ll live another day.”

Aflaq shook his head in disbelief at such a naked display of cowardice on the Russian’s part. Still, there was the evidence of nine men shredded into lifeless sacks of meat in the length of a minute. It was possible that it could have only been three-to-one odds, but none of his men had survived long enough to estimate the size of the force that had killed them.

Could it have been one man, utilizing psychology and stealth to strike at the forces who outnumbered him when they were at their weakest and most underprepared?

If so, then Aflaq counted the men around him. Adding in Grigorei and himself, he had twelve gunmen total. Thirteen if the bewildered, wounded fool jogging frantically toward their position recovered his wits long enough to utilize the handgun he wore on his belt. For someone who’d snuffed out nine men in under sixty seconds, it wouldn’t be much of a challenge.

“Flashlights!” Aflaq ordered. “Get some lights on the shadows! A herd of elephants could walk by in this murk!”

He received a nod of approval from the surviving leader of the Russian smugglers. Cones of light splayed out, slicking apart the darkness, seeking out the lone opponent who’d turned their arms deal into a wash of carnage.

Yuri Grigorei swung his rifle, following the diameter of light thrown off by one of his men. He wanted to be on the spot to take out the bane of this evening.

Aflaq watched in disbelief as three explosions erupted on the side of Grigorei’s head, geysers of gore vomiting out and spraying his face as he looked at the Russian’s dying shudders. More bullets flew, striking only at the Russians, all except for the wounded, terrified man who simply folded into a fetal position when he saw his friends shriek and die under a hail of silent, brutal death.

Aflaq’s own Thunder Lions were untouched.

“Captain Aflaq,” a voice said from Grigorei’s radio.

Aflaq looked down at the corpse, the small electronic device speaking his name.

Bolan’s voice cut over the airwaves. “Pick up his radio. He won’t have any use for it.”

Aflaq picked up the radio. “Hello?”

“Captain. I’m giving you a courtesy call. Tell General Bitturumba that if he was trying to seek my disapproval, he found it,” Bolan said. “The predatory scum among you who call yourselves Muslim militiamen know who I am. I am God’s wrath for your twisting of the path he laid out for you. Surrender and retirement will save your life, once you send my message to Bitturumba.”

“He would surely kill me,” Aflaq answered.

“Then phone him. And hide,” Bolan retorted.

Aflaq looked around. “Are you…?”

A bullet smacked violently into Grigorei’s slack face, the round exploding through flesh and bone.

“Small talk is over. You have my message,” Bolan said.

Aflaq listened to the static on the other end of the line, feeling the darkness of the dock grow deeper and colder as he waited for another act of wrath.

But the Executioner had moved on.

There were other matters to attend to before the sun rose.

Alexandria, Egypt

The Executioner had let his guns remain silent, but he was far from through with the Thunder Lion contingent of survivors. The men gathered into two vehicles, seven men stuffed into the jeeps that hadn’t been hurled into Alexandria harbor by the sinking Russian smuggling ship. Aflaq had taken a moment to put two bullets into each of the other pair of SUVs to cripple them.

Too bad for Aflaq that the bullets went into the radiators of the jeeps. Bolan was able to affect repairs on one of the jeeps by jury-rigging a patch with swatches of duct tape and a flat plate of metal that he’d kicked off a rusted section of fender. With the improvised patch in place, sealing the radiator’s leak, all Bolan required was a discarded soda bottle and water from the harbor to refill the radiator. Aflaq had been in too much of a hurry to efficiently cripple the abandoned vehicles. He’d seen them as nails, and his gun as the only hammer. Had it been Bolan, he’d have manually gone through the engines, slicing apart hoses and tearing out the alternator generator, hurling it into the bay.

Bolan was taking his time, allowing his quarry to move along toward their destination. He spent the time grabbing spare jerricans of gasoline off the second crippled jeep, and removing its battery, loading it into the back of his repaired ride. With the gas and battery, Bolan would be able to devise some high-intensity improvised explosive devices to even the odds when he paid a visit to the Thunder Lions’ safe haven in Alexandria. Satisfied that his preparations were complete, he flipped open his satellite phone. He was connected to Stony Man Farm immediately.

“They have a two-minute lead, Striker,” Aaron Kurtzman said. “They’re moving slow, though. I think they’re trying to make sure no one’s on their tail.”

“Too bad for them that they’re being tailed by eyes five thousand miles above them,” Bolan countered. “I gave Aflaq a real shot of terror and he will keep an eye on his six. He needs to think that there’s no leash. He sees my headlights in his rearview, I won’t have a chance to visit the rest of the militia’s presence in Alexandria.”

“We’re not lying down on the job here, Striker,” Kurtzman said. “I’ve got his path downloaded to your PDA.”

Bolan nodded, patting the pocket where the compact personal digital assistant was tucked away. “Any data processed from Cal’s interrogation of Bashir?”

“Nothing so far. He’s got the camera and mike set up, but he’s still running the interrogation baseline,” Kurtzman replied. Bolan understood the difficulty of a proper chemical interrogation. Baseline truth or false reactions had to be recorded to ensure the veracity of subsequent answers. Bashir would be hooked up to a polygraph machine to not only register unconscious reflexive responses to lying, but to monitor Bashir’s cardiological responses to the scopolamine. If the militia commander was under too much stress from the addition of the “truth serum” to his bloodstream, the stress would show on the polygraph and James would be able to head off a heart attack.