Hellfire Crusade

2

Mack Bolan was not a born killer. In fact, he was far from being a soulless, cold-blooded murder machine.

First and foremost, Bolan was a soldier.

The Army had trained him. They had worked him hard, honing his natural skill as a sharpshooter and teaching him every trick in the book for deep penetration recon survival. It was the young recruit's own determination that had given him the cutting edge. His country had set him a task-sniper specialist and he had taken that responsibility seriously.

Mack Bolan did his duty.

And he did it well.

He had shot the enemy neither in cold blood, nor in the heat of anger. He had killed them in the execution of his duty as a soldier. Sergeant Mack Bolan had carried out his orders with consummate skill, efficiency and dedication.

There was blood on his hands. Much of it. And Bolan did not brag about it. But then this dark-haired, serious young man was never given to boasting. He left that to others.

He was not ashamed of what he had done.

He was not proud of it, either.

It simply was.

And Bolan lived with it.

There was another side to his character. His closest associates saw it often enough: it was his regard for women and deep compassion for all the children. They had a nickname for Bolan back in Nam. Sergeant Mercy they had called him.

Like his kill record, this name, too, was earned.

The hard way. By living it.

To kill... and to care. Two sides of the same extraordinary man. Two edges of the lethal blade named Executioner. He would put his own life on the line to save a youngster just as readily as he would terminate the life of a terrorist, a mafioso, a homicidal fanatic, a war criminal or the Cong.

His targets were soldiers, too, of one stripe or another. They chose to serve in the ranks of organized crime or the international conspiracy of indiscriminate terror, which in their lust for power willingly shed the blood of innocents.

Bolan did not sit in judgment of the enemy. He was not their jury. They condemned themselves by their own actions. The Executioner simply meted out the sentence they deserved.

Mack Bolan stood up for all the countless victims who could no longer speak out for themselves.

He answered back with bullets or blades or bare hands. He did what was necessary to blow away the scum.

He did what impotent governments, armies and law enforcement agencies could not, or would not, do themselves — the dirty work they had trained him to perform.

Bolan was a fighting machine all right.

Ruthless, but with a heart.

Calculating, but with a conscience.

Deadly, but with a soul.

He was a man living on the edge.

Living large... all the way.

Each moment might well be his last. But he would go down fighting for what he believed in, the values that so many others blithely advocated but did not care to defend.

There were some good people combating the same evil tide; each doing what he or she could to hold back the violent forces of darkness and barbarism. The crippled Aaron Kurtzman was such a man.

The Bear, as he was known to his friends, rumbled around in a wheelchair these days. His spine had been shattered in the firefight to defend Stony Man Farm, but the bullet had not shut down Kurtzman's brilliant mind. The computer wizard still shouldered his share of the burden in the ongoing battle.

After Bolan himself had so forcefully severed his connection with the Phoenix project, the Bear remained a loyal contact. The Executioner was on the outside once more, waging unrestricted war the way he did best, but despite official prohibitions, Kurtzman still worked the inside track for Bolan.

The massive accumulation of data that the Bear was privy to and the complex correlations he could coax from the incredibly powerful computers under his control often gave Bolan the vital edge in this latest round of the unceasing conflict.

Hal Brognola, liaison officer between the White House and Stony Man Farm, and once Bolan's closest ally in the Establishment, knew full well of Kurtzman's divided sympathies. But he also knew the Bear would never jeopardize national security.

As it was, Stony Man's techno-wizard was a useful conduit to the big man fighting his lonely, uncompromising war against staggering odds.

Bolan returned from Rio Santos to find a bulky package waiting for him from the Bear at a prearranged drop point. Bolan collected the other mail and messages, then hurried to the secret strongbase which he shared with his brother, Johnny.

Bolan paused only to light a cigarette before ripping open the padded envelope. It contained a floppy diskette, a videotape and a note from Kurtzman.

The accompanying message had been quickly scribbled on the back of a square of printout paper. It read: Mack — do you believe in synchronicity? The day my SCAN program, which tracks international shipments of fissionable material, indicated that certain quantities of uranium and/or plutonium were being sidetracked to a small Middle Eastern state — check data on the diskette — I happened to catch the other item on a television newscast. See video. Could there be a connection? If so, it's scary! Call me as soon as you can. A.K.

Bolan slipped the diskette into the strongbase microcomputer unit and punched up the data that had attracted the Bear's attention. Ships names, ports, sailing dates and known or estimated cargoes of potentially dangerous material flickered in array across the screen. It did appear as if a freighter bound from Ostend to Karachi had detoured through the Gulf of Oman to make an unscheduled call at the port of Khurabi.

Details of the manifest were labeled as only "suspected"; still, it was enough to send a warning shiver up Bolan's spine. The crescent of the Mideast was in constant turmoil — if the ongoing Gulf War turned nuclear it could bring down the whole deck of cards.

The big warrior operated his banks of electronic equipment — having been taught by Johnny — with the same dexterity he handled the very latest firearms. He shut down the computer and swiveled to feed the cassette into the VCR.

Kurtzman had sent only the segment that was of immediate interest.

The lead-in story detailed a most unusual kidnapping, before switching to an on-the-spot report filed from Florida.

The Bear was right to call it scary.

Being away in Greece, France and South America, and concentrating completely on putting a stop to Gershen and his ilk, Bolan had missed this bizarre domestic story.

The gist of it was that a high-school student, a sixteen-year-old named Kevin Baker, was about to go on trial for breaking into the Department of Defense computer systems. The brilliant young hacker had already made headlines two years previously when he had demonstrated how easy it was for even a schoolkid to build a workable A-bomb.

At that time Baker claimed he had only done it to point up how insecure the nuclear industry was in America. The reporter noted that Kevin's lawyers would likely be arguing a similar case in his defense now that Kevin had been caught over the computer incident. Still, the Pentagon was insisting on a stringent prosecution in the hope that this would act as a deterrent to other hotshot hackers. On the morning he was being transported to the hearing, however, the car had been ambushed by six masked men. Kevin Baker was snatched and the escorting officers had been killed.

A startled motorist, passing in the opposite direction, caught a glimpse of the driver in the getaway car — here the picture cut from the deserted scene of the crime to a police composite of the suspect — whom he described as appearing of medium build, with dark brown hair and a rather swarthy complexion.

The television reporter quickly discounted rumors that Soviet agents might have seized the youth, but speculated that a radical Cuban group might be trying to extort payment from Kevin's wealthy family. However, at the time of the newscast, no ransom demand had yet been received.

Whether it was mere coincidence — or the puzzling forces of synchronicity at work — Kurtzman had a shrewd bunch these two seemingly isolated incidents were in some way connected.

Bolan, too, felt they added up to trouble.

Big trouble. Bolan tapped out the memory code; the phone automatically dialed through to a "clean," unlisted number.

"Good to hear from you," said the Bear. "At least you got back in one piece."

"You can scratch one savage," grunted the Executioner.

"He's been scrubbed already. Lawrence Wetherby telexed a report through to Langley late last night. I 'eavesdropped' on it."

Bolan showed no interest in Wetherby's account of the Rio Santos affair. The events of the past two weeks were behind him; his concentration was focused fully on the problem at hand.

"I've just been screening the material you sent. What's the latest info you've got on this?"

Kurtzman gave him a rundown. "It's been eight days since the Baker boy was snatched and, according to the most recent reports, they still haven't heard a damn thing. No threats, no demands, no call for a ransom payoff — nothing! The kid has simply disappeared."

"No leads at all?"

"Not that I can find out from here." Kurtzman made no complaint about his confinement to a wheelchair, but Bolan could sense his friend's frustration. "My machines are monitoring everything. The only clue the police have to work with is that description of the driver; fairly short, dark complected, possibly Hispanic. They're hitting on every informer in the Florida-Cuban underworld."

Bolan had some powerful contacts of his own in that shadowy half world of crime and politics that pervaded southern Florida. He made a mental note to see what his sometime associates could come up with, but without any kind of ransom demand this Baker thing did not look like a local job. "From the pictures they showed, that wheelman could just as easily have been a Sicilian," tossed out Bolan.

"Yeah, there's been rumors to that effect. But what would the Mafia want with a computer prodigy, or an atom bomb?" Kurtzman was not convinced by the suggestion of a Mob operation. "No, I still think it could have been an Arab team that hijacked the kid."

"That's the most frightening possibility," conceded the Executioner. "So does that shipment of nuclear material tie in?"

"The boat docked in Karachi four days behind schedule. According to a local contact, the captain claimed he called in at Khurabi for emergency repairs. But they had plenty of time to drop off a contraband car go."

"What do you know about Khurabi? I thought that beneath all the usual rhetoric it was basically proWestern."

"I've assembled an electronic briefing for you. All you've got to do is hook up your terminal and I'll feed it through." Good, as always Kurtzman was on top of the job.

Bolan reactivated his machine, tapped in the appropriate instructions and waited for the two computers to start talking to each other. It did not take long.

The Stony Man genius had drawn on a variety of data banks, videotapes and intelligence digests to compile a concise overview of the current situation.

Khurabi is one of that patchwork of sheikhdoms and emirates that dots the shores of the Persian Gulf. Centuries ago it had thrived as a port for the spice trade and the slavers; in the modern age its fortunes were due entirely to oil. Colored graphs showed Bolan how oil revenues had spiraled to astronomical figures following the OPEC price hikes. The Zayoud family had inherited power in 1946, the country now being ruled by Sheikh Harun Zayoud. There was a recent photograph of the chieftain stripping the packing from a box of the latest video movies.

"Harun talks tough at times but he looks more favorably on the West than the Soviet Union," said Kurtzman, supplementing the visuals. He was watching the information displayed on his own terminal. "The sheikh likes new toys — an endless supply of them, in fact. And he sure can't get them from the Russians. As you can see... cars from Germany, video equipment from Japan, games and movies from America."

"Go on."

"Okay, now watch the guy seated on his left," instructed Kurtzman as the camera zoomed in on a youthful-looking Arab. "That's Hassan, Zayoud's younger brother, and he's the real power behind the Khurabi throne. Right now he's the Minister of Foreign Affairs, but while his brother plays with all the latest novelties, Hassan is quietly consolidating his own position. He's known to be a hard-liner. He's been chummy with Khaddafi and the Ayatollah."

Bolan watched as an abbreviated dossier rolled up across the screen. "So they think he was the man behind the hijacking of that Kuwaiti airliner? He sounds ambitious."

"If fissionable material was delivered to Khurabi, you can be sure that Hassan Zayoud was the customer."

"And his friends in Iran and Libya would like to get hold of the bomb," growled Bolan. "Or he could sell it to the highest bidder."

"No, he doesn't need the money. Zayoud can obviously finance a terrorist army out of his own pocket. He'll use it for ideological gain. Most likely he'll..."

"Hey, stop there, freeze the image!"

"That's the most recent picture we have of Hassan. The guy standing behind him is Craig..."

"Harrison. Yeah, I know him, or know of him rather. Had a good record in Nam, then he went bad; in fact, tie's one of the baddest mercs around. Harrison will sell his services to anyone if the price is right."

"Word has it that Hassan Zayoud has been recruiting," admitted Kurtzman, "but we don't know what for."

Bolan made another note to get in touch with Jeff Clayton in Toronto; he might have heard some scuttlebutt on mercenary recruitment.

Bolan did not like the way this was coming together. Not one bit. "Can you find out who the best expert on Khurabi is in the States? I want to talk with them."

"I'm working on it already. One of these machines is scanning recent publications, another is checking through university faculties. I should have a shortlist for you by tomorrow. What are you going to do?"

"Make some calls." Bolan checked the time. "And I can still make the evening flight to Florida."

"The Bakers?" Kurtzman was silent for a moment, then he said, "There's been all kinds of potential suspects mentioned — Cubans, KGB, the Mafia, maybe Muslim fanatics; everyone, that is, except the most obvious, Mr. and Mrs. Baker."

"Hey, guy, wait a sec. You think they might have snatched their own son to save him from going to trial?"

"Isn't that what you have in mind?"

"No. I don't think the Bakers would have had the police escort shot in order to protect Kevin."

"Of course, you're right."

"But I've an idea that whoever did it isn't too far away from the Bakers... I have to go down there to find out."

"Good luck, Mack. I'll track down an expert on Khurabi for you." Bolan signed off.

He poured out a fresh cup of black coffee and set a notepad by the phone. Then he searched for the Toronto area code.

Jeff Clayton was a friend of Phoenix Force's Gary Manning. Jeff was a tough guy with a good heart and, if he had not been retired, the kind of soldier Bolan would have recruited for his Stony Man team. It was a tip-off from Clayton that had sent Bolan and Phoenix Force deep into the Congo for an appointment on Blood River.

Clayton was playing host at his adventurers' bar, The Command Post, in downtown Toronto. He picked up the phone on the third ring. The two men exchanged greetings but wasted little time on small talk. Bolan asked Clayton point-blank if he knew anything at all regarding Craig Harrison's appearance in Khurabi.

"Yeah, I did hear he was taking a break in the sun. Look, er, let me take this in the office. Hang on."

There was a short break before Clayton picked up the other phone. His tone was now less guarded. "Dan Ruark recruited him right here in the CP. Ruark was on his way through Toronto with a shopping list; he signed up Harrison and Bull Keegan."

Ruark, Keegan, Harrison... Bolan knew what kind of scum they were: hardened mercs who fought strictly for profit. Even in the dubious trade of the professional warrior, these killers were considered outcasts.

"What was on Ruark's shopping list?"

"Oh, small arms mostly, ammunition, grenades... not enough to start a war."

"Then what are they up to?"

"From what I could gather it sounded like a training program, maybe they're whipping a personal bodyguard into shape, something like that. Ruark was pretty closemouthed about it, but I overheard odd snatches of his pitch to Keegan and Harrison. He talked about pulling guard duty... sounded like they were going to be miles from anywhere. It was easy money, I remember him telling them that; oh yeah, and there would be no booze. That's all I've got for you."

"It's enough. Thanks, Jeff. But if you do pick up on anything else, let me know."

"Sure, will do."

Bolan checked his watch. He still had plenty of time to catch a flight to Florida.