6

      Mack Bolan’s left hand dug into the loose soil, but his right hand dropped instinctively to the Ka-Bar fighting knife he’d bought earlier that morning. The blade sank into the earth and dragged for a few moments, but finally his slide toward the chomping rift below him slowed. He dug the toes of his boots into the ground and he hauled with all of his might. His war bag skidded closer to the edge, and for a moment he reached out for it before the earth seized shut, smashing the bag between stony jaws.

      The earth stopped heaving, and Bolan drew back, looking at the satchel clamped in the fissure. He winced as a flood of granite pebbles and dust hit him, eyes snapping shut to protect the vulnerable orbs beneath his lids.

      “Brandon!” Abood called. He looked up to see the young woman extending one long leg toward him. “Grab my leg!”

      Bolan hauled himself up on the knife and grabbed her ankle. With the extra leverage, he managed to crawl to the lip of the cliff. Abood slid back from the edge and sighed.

      “We lost the rifles,” Bolan announced.

      “Are you all right?” she asked.

      “No permanent damage,” he answered as he looked toward the fissure. He could see a half-loaded box of ammunition sprawled in the dirt, bullets glinting in the sun.

      “How much do you have?” Abood asked.

      Bolan checked his harness. “Four loaded magazines for the Jericho, and four more for my own Beretta.”

      “You usually carry all that ammo?” Abood asked. She shook her head. “Sorry…I forgot. You’re a spook in hostile territory.”

      “I’ll get by,” Bolan said. He looked around, then grabbed the root of a tree trunk, stretched down and pulled his knife out of the dirt. “It’s not worth the risk to climb down to grab more ammo, but the knife will be useful.”

      Bolan looked toward the city. In the frantic slide to death when the ground first shook, he’d only been concerned about keeping himself and Abood alive. Now, the city of Van had changed drastically from when he’d seen it only moments before. Columns of thick, choking smoke rose lazily into the sky from fires. Clouds of gray-white dust from collapsed buildings formed a hazy fog in the wake of the brutal earthquake.

      “Good God,” Abood whispered.

      Bolan couldn’t speak. Already his mind was racing. He was going to have to navigate through a city where buildings had been compromised. He knew that in the aftermath of such violent earthquakes, lethal aftershocks ripped through the terrain, causing nearly as much damage when shifting earth gave that one final tug that brought down weakened buildings and power lines, or split streets to expose jets of invisible, highly flammable gas into the air. In all of the Executioner’s years of warfare, he had seen only a few cities as thoroughly destroyed, and usually those were the targets of coordinated, concentrated bombing, and the destruction was spread over hours, not moments.

      “We’ve got to do something,” Abood said, breaking the numbed silence.

      “We don’t have anything to help them with,” Bolan answered. “Unless we recover those medical supplies.”

      “Don’t you have contact with your superiors?” Abood asked.

      “No. I was en route from another mission,” Bolan said. “This was sort of a pickup.”

      Abood looked at him in disbelief.

      “If the law finds out that I’m intruding in their territory, there will be hell to pay,” Bolan admitted. “Which was why—”

      “Which was why you didn’t want me along,” Abood concluded. “One of the reasons, at least. Your mystery bosses give you carte blanche in racking up collateral damage?”

      “No, my boss doesn’t want any collateral damage at all,” Bolan answered firmly.

      Abood narrowed her eyes. “Something tells me that I’m looking at your only boss right now.”

      “Are