Don Pendleton: Appointment In Baghdad

It shot past Bolan on the shoulder, racing down the ramp, and he had only a fleeting impression of gray primer. It hurtled down the line of idling vehicles and made a kamikaze rush straight toward the roadblock.

“Down!” Bolan snarled.

Both James and Encizo reacted without hesitation. The Cuban sprawled flat in the back of the minivan as James threw himself between the front seats, landing next to Encizo.

The vehicle-based improvised explosive device detonated. Shrapnel cut through the air like steel rain and shattered the vehicle’s windows, spraying glass shards on the Stony Man team.

Shaken by the concussive impact and sudden violence, Bolan pushed himself into place behind the steering wheel and grabbed the AK-104 carbine.

Welcome to Baghdad, he thought grimly.

Mack Bolan ®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

—Ernest Hemingway,

1899–1961

War is a special kind of hell. There are no winners.

—Mack Bolan

For the men and women of the U.S. armed forces

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nathan Meyer 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

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Toronto, Ontario, Canada: 0146

The mosque had been defiled.

Mack Bolan studied the building. A place of worship had been transformed into a forum for hate. A place where the devout and faithful had once found expression had now been subverted into a recruiting ground for blasphemers killing in the name of religion.

The rest of the street lay quiet.

Earlier that evening, Bolan had pored over an architect’s blueprints of the structure procured for him by computer expert Carmen Delahunt at Stony Man Farm. Like most of the buildings in that area of downtown Toronto, the old building was aesthetically unappealing. The mosque was not beautifully gilded, nor did it possess a dome and minaret. Only the placard sign announced what the squat bricked building housed.

A red flag had risen immediately when ownership of the building was traced to Syrian business magnate Monzer al-Kassar. The Syrian’s dealing had been on Stony Man’s radar for almost a decade. However, the Syrian facilitator had such a diverse, worldwide portfolio that his mere ownership of certain real estate was not considered a primary cause for action in and of itself. But that had all changed.

The mosque occupied two floors of a four-story brownstone in the run-down neighborhood. On the street level there was a Korean grocery store, and the top floor housed five apartments rented to people, as far as Delahunt could find, who had no connection to the radical activities going on beneath their feet.

Bolan looked at the dive watch on his wrist. It read 0148. Gary Manning, the Canadian-born Phoenix Force commando, would be in his overwatch position by now. Bolan had requested the operator as a readily available asset already long familiar with the Toronto area. For this brief operation Manning monitored Toronto police communications and stood guard against the possibility of outside forces arriving after Bolan had penetrated the building.

Bolan slid the earpiece into place so that the microphone was resting against his cheekbone. He placed a single finger against the device and powered it on.

“You ready?” he asked.

Manning answered immediately. “Copy that, Striker. I’m up. I’ve got eyes on your approach and the area. Radio chatter is good.”

“Let’s do it.”

Bolan eased open the door to his nondescript Toyota 4-Runner and stepped out into the street. It was very late winter in Toronto and still cold. There was dirty slush on the ground, and everything was cast in a gray pallor. Streetlights formed staggered ponds of nicotine-yellow illumination. In the building facing the street a single light burned in the window of the third floor.

Bolan closed the door to the 4-Runner and fixed the stocking cap on his head before walking to the rear hatch of the vehicle. Despite the chill bite in the air, he left the zipper to his heavy leather jacket undone. The deadly Beretta 93-R hung in a shoulder holster customized to accommodate the sound suppressor threaded onto its muzzle.

He opened the rear hatch, reached down and pulled up the lid over the compartment that held his spare tire and jack. He moved it to the side and pulled out a hard, plastic-alloy box of dark gray. His fingers quickly worked the combination locks and the case popped open.

Inside, snugly held in place by cut foam, was a Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD-3, the silenced version of the special operations standby weapon. Bolan pulled out the submachine-gun, inserted a magazine, chambered a 9 mm Parabellum round and then secured a nylon sling to the front sight and buttstock attachment points. He thumbed the selector switch to 3-round-burst mode. When he finished he shrugged his jacket off his right arm, slung the weapon over his shoulder so that it hung down by his side and slipped the sleeve back into place.

Bolan slammed the rear hatch shut and looked around the quiet street. No one moved in the early morning hours. He clicked on the alarm to the Toyota and shut the automatic locks as he crossed the street.

He turned left, away from the mosque set above the Korean grocery store. A used-furniture store stood next to the store and beside that was a run-down apartment building six stories high. On the other side of the tenement, next to the intersection, was a tire store.

Bolan turned down the sidewalk next to the apartment building and circled the tire store, entering a narrow alley that ran behind the businesses fronting the street. He slowed his pace as he entered the alley, senses alert as he neared the target.

Bolan kept his gaze roving as he moved closer to the back door of the mosque’s building. A couple of empty beer bottles stood among wads of crumpled newspapers. It was too cold for there to be any significant smell. Slush clung to the lee of brick walls in greater mounds than out on the open street. Several patches of slush were stained sickly yellow. Halfway down the alley Bolan drew even with the building housing the mosque.

The devout entered the building through the rear entrance, avoiding the grocery store all together. An accordion-style metal gate was locked into place over a featureless wooden door, and a padlock gleamed gold in the dim light. Bolan approached the security gate and pulled a lock-pick gun from his jacket pocket.

He inserted the prong blades into the lock mechanism and squeezed the lever. The lock popped open. Bolan reached up with his free hand and yanked the accordion gate open. The scissor-gate slid closed with a clatter that echoed in the silent, cold alley. He quickly inserted the lock-pick gun into the doorknob and worked the tool.