Don Pendleton - Plains Of Fire

He was driven by the need to protect the victims of corruption and terrorism. Husbands, fathers, brothers and sons were executed brutally, while wives, mothers, sisters and daughters were raped and mutilated by Janjaweed forces.

The Darfur crisis, and the Rwandan slaughter a decade before, were symptomatic of an international apathy in regard to Africa. Its jungles and deserts, once colonial prizes of European governments, were considered lost causes, realms where white people had no business interfering.

Skin color didn’t enter into the Executioner’s equation of justice. The Thunder Lions were about to make the Darfur crisis even worse, which elevated them to the top of Bolan’s priority list—for a bullet.

Mack Bolan ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.

—1 Peter 5:8

Human predators abound, preying on the weak, the helpless. These lions do not need taming. They need to be put down.

—Mack Bolan

To those who have made a stand and refuse to let the

world ignore the horrors at work in Darfur.

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Douglas P. Wojtowicz for his contribution to this work.

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

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Darfur, Sudan

General Thormun “Thor” Bitturumba watched with approval as his artillery crews screwed the canister warheads onto the 240 mm rockets. The fat tubes, nearly ten inches thick, each held a concentrated mixture of biological weaponry in an inert suspension. The suspension had a vaporization point that was well over fifty degrees Fahrenheit. In the blazing African afternoon, the carrier fluid would evaporate swiftly, assisted in its dispersal by a low-temperature, high-velocity explosion designed to hurl the weaponized microbes into the air.

The viruses had toughened cellular membranes, enabling them to survive as their long cilia spread out to catch air currents and ride the wind.

Bitturumba’s satellite phone rang. He knew who it was.

“How goes the preparations, Thor?” Alonzo Cruz asked. Bitturumba smirked. Here he was, speaking with one of Spain’s most prominent businessmen, on the eve of a biological weapons test, seemingly as a gigantic spit in the face to the world. Certainly, the general realized, the multimillionaire’s sat phone had incredible encryption protection, much like his own phone. But the call, only hours before a preview of hell on Earth, would have been detected despite its indecipherable nature.

“They’re going well, Lonzo,” Bitturumba answered. “The hammer will fall at dawn.”

“No need to be cryptic, brother,” Cruz replied, the quality of the digital signal so clear and free of static that it was as if the man were right next to the African. “No one could break this call down.”

“Never say never, Lonzo,” Bitturumba admonished. “Just when we think that our keenest laid plans are going to go one way, reality takes over.”

Cruz chuckled. “The cunning animal wisdom of a warrior.”

Bitturumba sighed. “One does not rise to the rank of general without being absolutely prepared for the worst. Idi Amin was an optimist when it came to attempts on his life.”

Bitturumba’s hand absently dropped to the .50-caliber Desert Eagle on his hip. Though most experts declined to recommend the massive Israeli-designed hand-howitzer for self-defense due to its need for perfectly tailored ammunition, Bitturumba was careful in his feeding of the Desert Eagle. Its reliability and power had protected the general’s life on numerous occasions, tearing through the body armor of assassins and even shattering the thick, armored skull of an enraged bull charging at him. In no instance had the thunder pistol ever failed him. Given that his half brother, Cruz, always called him Thor, after the Norse god of thunder, the big. 50 was a welcome companion.

Bitturumba had been deemed the African god of war by many in the press, and his army had been given the nickname “Thunder Lions.” The roar of launching rockets and the thunder of 105 mm shells were his militia’s heralds on the field of battle.

“Just remember not to get caught downwind of your barrage,” Cruz warned. “I’d hate to lose blood just to run a quick test.”

“Fear not, little brother. We are prepared,” Bitturumba replied.

The phone call ended and Bitturumba raised the binoculars to his eyes once more, scanning the refugee camp in the distance. It had been established and was currently under the protection of members of the Ethiopian Expeditionary Force, a trained army of African veterans who had been subjected to enough of the horror stories emanating from Sudan. They had come in hard and fast, putting the Janjaweed forces on the defensive. Only Bitturumba’s army had been unfazed by the Ethiopian interference, but that was because Bitturumba had the same intensive military education that the EEF’s leader possessed. Both men were students of war, and theirs wasn’t a brutal slugfest as much as a show of jabs and feints as both armies looked for weaknesses in each other’s defenses.

Bitturumba’s wide lips turned up in a cruel smile. This would be the first shot that he’d launched that would bring the Ethiopian forces to their senses.

THE DISTANT SOUND of launching rockets sounded like a warthog clearing its nostrils, at least to Lieutenant Alem Tanku of the Ethiopian Expeditionary Force. The Avtomat Kalashnikov rifle that had been resting across his knees was instantly in his hands, and he jerked to his feet. On the horizon he could see the white yarns of exhaust smoke trailing from the thrust nozzles of a half-dozen rockets and he stuck his fingers into the corners of his mouth to amplify his whistle.

The shrill bleat woke the other sleepy Ethiopian troops on his side of the camp, and they began rushing along the shanty homes, rapping doors or rickety walls to awaken Sudanese refugees.

Tanku squinted as the contrails of the artillery rockets snaked across the sky. He didn’t put it past the Thunder Lions to launch a quick reconnaissance by fire with a long-distance salvo. He was halfway to the communications shed when the rockets reached the apex of their climb. Losing power, they began their descent, gravity proving stronger than burned-out chemical motors. The contrails bent sharply as the remnants of their fuel gave out, smearing flat black streaks across the graying dawn.

“Artillery launch from Thunder Lions’ recon force,” Tanku shouted as he reached the entrance of the communication shed.

The comm operator, Lieutenant Jolu Okuba, nodded, already rattling off the information.

“Launch coordinates?” Okuba relayed from headquarters.

“Six miles out,” Tanku said, eyeballing the end of the puffy dissipating arch of smoke. “Northwest, call it heading 310.”

Okuba barked the information to the Ethiopian Expeditionary Force command. He glanced nervously back toward Tanku. “The evacuation?”