Fireburst. Don Pendleton
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RAINING HELLFIRE
A deadly series of lightning strikes confounds experts and pits Mack Bolan against a new kind of terror that comes out of the sky. The death toll spreads as a plane loaded with innocent victims is blown apart, an office building ignites, killing hundreds, and refinery and munitions factories burst into fireballs. Whoever’s responsible leaves no fingerprint. And the strikes continue—unpredictable, undetectable and unstoppable.
Posing as the front man of a rival terrorist organization claiming responsibility for the attacks, Bolan lures the enemy—Iraq’s Republican Guard—out of the shadows. And by coaxing them to put this latest lethal incendiary weapon on the black-market auction block, traitorous old friends and reformed enemies converge…right into the center of Bolan’s crosshairs.
The wall of compressed air painfully crushed his chest
For an unknown length of time, Bolan’s universe was filled with deafening chaos, every hair on his body standing stiff, the fillings in his teeth growing uncomfortably hot.
That was when he realized that the magnetic field of lightning had to be creating eddying currents in anything made of metal.
Quickly Bolan tossed away his guns, throat mike, transceiver, spare ammo and knives. Yanking a grenade out of a pocket, he could feel how warm it was and whipped it as far away as possible. Then he tossed the remaining ones.
But the last grenade’s detonation pounded the Executioner hard, ripping apart his clothing and peppering him with hot shrapnel....
Fireburst
Don Pendleton
When I say that terrorism is war against civilization, I may be met by the objection that terrorists are often idealists pursuing worthy ultimate aims—national or regional independence, and so forth. I do not accept this argument. I cannot agree that a terrorist can ever be an idealist, or that the objects sought can ever justify terrorism. The impact of terrorism, not merely on individual nations, but on humanity as a whole, is intrinsically evil, necessarily evil and wholly evil.
—Benjamin Netanyahu
International Terrorism
Terrorists have no morals or ideals, no sense of what’s right or what’s wrong. Any end justifies the means. One thing has always been crystal clear—someone has to stop them. That’s where I come in.
—Mack Bolan
Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nick Pollotta for his contribution to this work.
Contents
PROLOGUE
New York City, New York
Following a rumble of thunder, lightning flashed across the night sky, illuminating the roiling storm clouds from within like misshapen Japanese lanterns.
“God, I hate the rain,” a passenger on the jetliner growled under his breath, sliding shut the plastic cover to block his view out the window.
“Oh, sir, our aircraft is one of the safest planes in existence!” a pretty flight attendant said with a comforting smile. “We get hit by lightning two or three times every trip, and it doesn’t even damage the paint! I can assure you that there is nothing to fear.”
Completely unconcerned, the slim woman walked away to check on the other passengers.
Twenty miles ahead of the jetliner was John F. Kennedy International Airport, a glowing oasis of incandescent and halogen lights, mixing together into a whitish haze that dominated the night in open defiance of the rumbling storm.
“How’s the traffic?” the pilot asked the navigator, keeping one hand on the yoke while reaching out to tap the glass front of a fuel gauge. The needle quivered, but didn’t change position.
The curved banks of controls surrounded the three members of the cockpit crew in a rainbow of technology, while outside lightning flashed again, much closer, and then farther away.
“We’re in the pipe,” the navigator replied, infinitely adjusting the delicate controls on her radar screen. “There’s nothing in the sky closer than a klick.”
No other airplanes were visible because of the tumultuous summer storm, but the radar showed that the sky was full of flying metal, with an even dozen commercial jetliners steadily circling the busy airport, impatiently waiting for permission to land.
“This must be a slow day for Kennedy,” the copilot said, keeping both hands on the yoke.
She shrugged. “Pretty much so, yeah.”
“Bad for them, good for us,” the pilot said, unclipping a hand mike and thumbing the transmit button. “Hello, Kennedy? This is flight one-nine-four out of Oslo. Do you copy? Over.”
“This is Kennedy Tower, one-nine-four. We hear you five-by-five.” The ceiling speaker crackled. “You’re behind schedule. Should have been here an hour ago. Over.”
“We hit a headwind over the Atlantic,” the pilot replied. “Kennedy, could I please have an ETA?”
“Fifteen minutes until you can have a runway, one-nine-four. Stay on your heading and maintain—”