Exit Code. Don Pendleton
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Chapter 17
Prologue
Afghanistan
Colonel Umar Abdalrahman stood at the top of a rise and stared at the smoldering ruins of his main operations center nestled in the mountains bordering the Khyber Pass.
His crack team of commandos—handpicked from an elite group among Abdalrahman’s various allies throughout the Arab inner circle—had not yet found the remains of his nephew, Sadiq Rhatib. Abdalrahman silently thanked Allah for that. It meant there stood a chance that Rhatib was still alive; if that was true, then he would find his nephew. His men hadn’t been able to gain access to the interior of what had once been their main encampment. Whoever had launched the assault against them had used explosives to blast apart the front wooden facade, and this had collapsed the inner structure. The cavernous remains would not be easy to clear, and Abdalrahman wasn’t sure he even wished to disturb what was certain to have become a tomb for many of his comrades.
The former mujiahideen warrior turned and studied his surroundings. Bodies were strewed across the neighboring hillside. Abdalrahman stood upon what had served as a helipad. The small attack helicopter they had left there was gone, and there were brass shell casings scattered everywhere. The bodies along the hillside had been stripped of their equipment.
It looked a lot like the handiwork of nomadic members from radical mujiahideen tribes, but Abdalrahman considered this move a bit too bold. His countrymen were not quite so confrontational; at least, not by their own choosing. They would not have planned such an attack against a numerically and technologically superior force without support.
Abdalrahman thought he knew exactly who had given them that support: the American named Cooper. What concerned Abdalrahman most was that if his nephew were not buried deeper within the confines of the rubble, then he had managed to escape and had gone into hiding, he had fallen into enemy hands. In either case, Abdalrahman wanted to know—he had to know. Everything in their plan depended on the safety of his nephew. If Sadiq was dead, it would be significantly detrimental to their plans.
One of Abdalrahman’s men approached—his second in command—and reported, “I do not know how much farther we can go without heavy equipment, Colonel.”
“Keep digging,” Abdalrahman replied with a wave of his hand. “I have neither the time nor the patience to await the arrival of heavy equipment. There were not a lot of explosives used. There has to be a gap somewhere.”
The man bowed slightly and walked down the hill to pass on the orders to his men. Abdalrahman looked around him one more time with disgust, and his heart was saddened by the sight. His men had died bravely; he wouldn’t have expected anything less. The New Islamic Front would not be scattered to the four winds as other groups had in the past. His men were different; different kinds of soldiers fighting a different kind of war.
Abdalrahman was a practical man, and his mentors and trainers had always touted him as a gifted soldier. He had a leadership ability that was exceeded only by his uncanny skill as a tactician. He hadn’t learned to fight the same way as conventional soldiers during his time battling the Soviet invasion of his homeland, neither had he taught his men to fight that way. Abdalrahman believed that the only way to gain victory against your enemy was to fight in a fashion they had never before encountered. Throughout military history—which he’d studied carefully at an underground university in Baghdad during the height of the Gulf War—armies had lost any battle or war where the tactics of the enemy were unlike any ever encountered by that army. The Crusaders had learned this about the Turks, the English about the Indians, and the Americans about the North Vietnamese.
And now, the Westerners were about to learn this about the New Islamic Front. Abdalrahman meant to teach that same lesson to the man named Cooper. And he would do it in such a way that it would never be forgotten. He would write it in the blood of the American people, as it ran into the gutters and streets of some of their greatest cities.
And that was exactly where it belonged.
Prologue
Stony Man Farm, Virginia
Mack Bolan rubbed his eyes, yawned and stretched in his chair, his combat hardened sinew and muscles pushing through the torn, dirty blacksuit.
Barbara Price watched him with concern, but he didn’t really acknowledge her attention. There was a time and place for more intimate contact, and Bolan knew that Stony Man’s mission controller understood that all too well. Besides, Bolan was pretty tired and stiff from his long journey. The Executioner had been unable to do more than doze on the flight from Pakistan, and the coffee he’d consumed had left him no more rejuvenated and with a sour stomach to boot. Even without having to worry about the NIF’s terrorist whiz kid—taken into custody at Peshawar and escorted back to the United States by CIA agents—Bolan’s job had really only just begun.
The situation still hadn’t stabilized such that Bolan could exit and let Stony Man handle the cleanup phase. Sadiq Rhatib was refusing to talk and unless they could get him to start squealing, they stood a snowball’s chance in hell of bringing down the roof on all of the participants. Still, there were a few players in the game dangling out there, and Bolan was thinking that if he couldn’t get Rhatib to roll over, maybe he could get someone else—someone less hardened by religious fanaticism and patriotic fervor—to betray the NIF’s real purpose.
One man topped that list. Nicolas Lenzini ran most of the numbers games along the East Coast, and his ties to organized crime were hardly a secret. Anybody who was somebody inside the law-enforcement community knew that it was Lenzini, or one of his immediate Family members, who had control over numbers activities in Washington, D.C. Knowledge wasn’t the problem; it was how to get inside the guy’s very tight circle of friends. There was only one man who had the kind of experience required for that.
Although he’d kept an eye on things, Bolan had let Lenzini’s activities slide, preferring to let the wheels of justice grind away until they got enough solid evidence to put him behind bars. But with the recent intelligence gathered by Stony Man that tied Lenzini and his crew to the New Islamic Front terrorist cell operating inside the United States, it was time to deal with the problem in the only way Bolan knew how: cover, role camouflage and—when the time was right—a full blitz. The rules hadn’t changed any since Bolan’s first campaign against the Mafia so many years ago, the same campaign that had kicked off his War Everlasting.
Bolan was about to open his mouth and speak to Price when Aaron “The Bear” Kurtzman suddenly wheeled himself through the doorway, immediately followed by Harold Brognola, the Stony Man chief.
The team was gathering to discuss Sadiq Rhatib’s campaign for the NIF to seize control of the FBI’s Internet packet-sniffer, Carnivore.
“How’s it going, Striker?” Brognola asked, an unlit cigar jammed between his teeth.
As the Executioner rose and gripped the man’s hand in greeting, he replied, “I’ll let you know after a shower, change of clothes and some shut-eye.”
Brognola nodded as he pulled the cigar from his mouth and sat. “I know you need to rest, but I wanted to give you what we know so you can plan your next step.”
“I’m all ears,” Bolan replied.
“I assume Barb briefed you on the situation with Nicolas Lenzini.”
“A bit,” Bolan said, looking at Price, “Haven’t really had time to get more in-depth on it, but I do think there’s enough evidence to assume he’s heavily involved with NIF activities here in the States.”
“And abroad,” Brognola added,