Syrian Rescue

  CRITICAL EVACUATION

  A secret meeting with antigovernment leaders ready to negotiate peace in Syria backfires when the plane carrying UN diplomats to the war-torn country is shot down. Tasked with finding—and extracting—the diplomats before word of their disappearance gets out, Mack Bolan drops into the Syrian desert.

  But Bolan isn’t the only one looking for the crash site. The rebels and the Syrian military each have their own agendas, and UN officials would make valuable hostages for either side of the conflict. With the plane’s tracking device mysteriously disabled and hundreds of miles of desert to search, Bolan is in a deadly race against fighters who are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their cause. The Executioner won’t stop until he leaves his enemies in the dust of their own destruction.

  Bolan leaped from the Niva carrying the RPG-7.

  Behind him, he heard Sabah Azmeh jump out and make a run for it, as instructed. Not that it would help, if the advancing chopper’s searchlight fell on either one of them.

  Whether it was a Hind or Hoplite helicopter, neither could shrug off a direct hit from one of Bolan’s 93 mm rocket-propelled HEAT warheads. He could bring down whichever helicopter it turned out to be—if he hit it.

  He’d have to do this right the first time. He hadn’t grabbed a second rocket from the Niva’s backseat, and he likely wouldn’t have time to reload the launcher anyway, if his first warhead missed its mark.

  The searchlight found his ride, swept to the pilot’s right and froze on Bolan.

  He recognized the stutter of a heavy machine gun and saw its muzzle flashes winking at him from the helicopter’s chin. That meant he had a Hind to deal with and would have to make a clean hit with his HEAT round when he let it fly.

  First, though, Bolan had to dodge the storm of bullets streaming toward him. He hit the ground and rolled, took a beating on his shoulder from the launcher’s tube, and came up in a crouch, squinting through its sight into the searchlight’s blinding glare.

  #367 Loose Cannon

  #368 Crisis Nation

  #369 Dangerous Tides

  #370 Dark Alliance

  #371 Fire Zone

  #372 Lethal Compound

  #373 Code of Honor

  #374 System Corruption

  #375 Salvador Strike

  #376 Frontier Fury

  #377 Desperate Cargo

  #378 Death Run

  #379 Deep Recon

  #380 Silent Threat

  #381 Killing Ground

  #382 Threat Factor

  #383 Raw Fury

  #384 Cartel Clash

  #385 Recovery Force

  #386 Crucial Intercept

  #387 Powder Burn

  #388 Final Coup

  #389 Deadly Command

  #390 Toxic Terrain

  #391 Enemy Agents

  #392 Shadow Hunt

  #393 Stand Down

  #394 Trial by Fire

  #395 Hazard Zone

  #396 Fatal Combat

  #397 Damage Radius

  #398 Battle Cry

  #399 Nuclear Storm

  #400 Blind Justice

  #401 Jungle Hunt

  #402 Rebel Trade

  #403 Line of Honor

  #404 Final Judgment

  #405 Lethal Diversion

  #406 Survival Mission

  #407 Throw Down

  #408 Border Offensive

  #409 Blood Vendetta

  #410 Hostile Force

  #411 Cold Fusion

  #412 Night’s Reckoning

  #413 Double Cross

  #414 Prison Code

  #415 Ivory Wave

  #416 Extraction

  #417 Rogue Assault

  #418 Viral Siege

  #419 Sleeping Dragons

  #420 Rebel Blast

  #421 Hard Targets

  #422 Nigeria Meltdown

  #423 Breakout

  #424 Amazon Impunity

  #425 Patriot Strike

  #426 Pirate Offensive

  #427 Pacific Creed

  #428 Desert Impact

  #429 Arctic Kill

  #430 Deadly Salvage

  #431 Maximum Chaos

  #432 Slayground

  #433 Point Blank

  #434 Savage Deadlock

  #435 Dragon Key

  #436 Perilous Cargo

  #437 Assassin’s Tripwire

  #438 The Cartel Hit

  #439 Blood Rites

  #440 Killpath

  #441 Murder Island

  #442 Syrian Rescue

  SYRIAN RESCUE

  Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Is not every war between men, war between brothers?

  —Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

  Borders will not keep me from hunting down those who kill their brothers and sisters for personal gain. Willing or not, those criminals are at war with The Executioner.

  —Mack Bolan

  THE

  MACK BOLAN

  LEGEND

  Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

  But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

  Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

  He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

  So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

  But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

  Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

  For Staff Sergeant Melvin Morris

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria

  Yaser Jenyat was sick of waiting. It was miserably hot and the dry earth underneath his buttocks was scorching. When he checked his Rolex replica, it seemed the hands were frozen. Had they moved at all since he had checked them last?

  “They’ve changed plans, or itineraries,” he suggested. “Maybe someone warned them.”

  “Who?” Ziad Dalila asked him.

  “How should I know?” Jenyat answered. “Someone.”

  “We have orders,” said Malek Hakim.

  “We have obeyed them,” Jenyat shot back. “We came, we waited. No one said we have to take up residence.”

  “You want to leave,” Hakim replied, “start walking.”

  Jenyat tried to spit but found his mouth had suddenly gone dry. “I didn’t say that.” His voice cracked like the sunbaked soi
l. “We all should go, before a damned patrol turns up.”

  “You know these Westerners,” Tawfiq Jandali said. “They’re slow with everything.”

  Until they want to kill you, Jenyat thought. Shifting where he sat, his back against the left rear tire of their UAZ-469 off-road vehicle, his elbow grazed the AKM assault rifle standing beside him, almost toppling it before he lunged and caught it, just in time. He glanced around to see if any of the others had observed his clumsiness, but they were busy squinting at the eastern skyline, toward Iraq.

  “We’ll wait another thirty minutes,” Hakim said. “If they’re not here by then, I’ll call in for advice.”

  No one replied to that. It had not been a question.

  Jenyat sipped warm water out of his canteen. He wished they had some shade, that someone else had drawn the so-called “plum assignment,” that he might be anyplace but here. The thoughts of glory he’d envisioned when his name was drawn had long since disappeared, evaporating like the sweat that drenched his shirt.

  At least he would not be the one to fire the crucial shot. He understood the basics of the 9K338 Igla-S shoulder-mounted launcher and its 9M342 missile, but he was not competent to aim and fire it, thank Allah. If they had waited all this time only to fail at their assignment, Jenyat was relieved the shame would not be his.

  “I see something,” Dalila said, passing Hakim his field glasses. “East-northeast.”

  That covered half the godforsaken desert, but Hakim had barely raised the glasses to his eyes when he said, “I see it.” Several seconds later he added, “Yes. It’s them.”

  Jenyat rose to his feet, surprised to feel a fleeting tremor in his legs, and reached for his rifle. He would have no use for it, if all went well, but he felt better holding it, sharing the AKM’s potential for explosive violence.

  “Get ready,” Hakim ordered.

  Tawfiq was even now hauling the Igla out of the UAZ-469’s cargo bay. The tube was painted olive drab, like everything else in the army. It was a little over five feet long, nose-heavy with its pistol grip and its bulbous infrared sighting gear. Already loaded, it weighed thirty-seven pounds, including the warheads. Its maximum operational range was almost four miles, with a flight ceiling of eleven and a half thousand feet.

  They had been promised that the target, although capable of cruising at much higher altitudes, would be within the missile’s range. The flight would be a border hop, evading radar on both sides to keep the visit under wraps. Deniability was crucial to diplomacy among the states that labeled themselves civilized.

  “Late as they are, how do we know it’s them?” he asked Hakim.

  “I see the plane,” Hakim replied. “It has ‘UN’ painted behind the cockpit and on the tail.”

  “Praise Allah,” Ziad Dalila said.

  “Allahu akbar,” Jandali chimed in, as he hoisted the launcher to his right shoulder.

  Jenyat could see the target now, and he heard the whisper of its twin engines drawing closer. He considered praying briefly, silently, but then decided it would be a waste of time.

  Squinting, he watched the small white speck, distorted by the heat haze, moving into range.

  * * *

  “I WILL REMIND you that we must not set our hopes too high,” Sani Bankole said.

  Seated across the aisle from Bankole, Roger Segrest almost asked, “what hopes?” but stopped himself. He was a pessimist by nature but had learned to hide it well during his long climb up the State Department ladder to his present post. Most of the people he dealt with daily lived for smiles and reassurances, not straight talk that would drive them all to drink.

  Besides, he didn’t have to spell it out. Segrest was confident that everyone aboard the Let L 410 was wise enough to know the truth—namely, that Syria was in the toilet, circling the drain. The country had been bad enough, a nest of terrorists, before its latest civil war erupted, pitting a despotic government against hundreds of rival “liberation” forces. Toss in Hezbollah, the Kurds and ISIS, among other players, and what did you have?

  A goddamned recipe for disaster.

  Still, there was an outside chance he and the other passengers on this plane might accomplish something, he supposed. Stranger things had happened in the strange world of diplomacy, but they were few and far between.

  One of the pilots spoke up on the intercom. “We’ve crossed the border, gentlemen.”

  Segrest couldn’t have told the difference, peering out his window at the trackless wasteland below. All deserts looked the same to him: bleak, unforgiving, dangerous.

  He idly wondered what their lodgings would be like in Deir ez-Zor. They’d be stuck in the Syrian city for three or four days, unless the talks broke down immediately—as they might, considering the endless grievances both sides advanced.

  Make that all sides, Segrest thought. It might have been a relatively simple matter if the only people at the table had been government officials and the rebels who opposed them. Oil, politics and religion changed that, of course, dragging in Lebanon, Iraq, Israel and Jordan, not to mention Russia and his own employer, the United States. They hadn’t heard from China yet, or Egypt, but he wouldn’t be surprised if both of them weighed in before the year was out.

  Diplomacy, my ass, he thought, only half listening to their putative spokesman from the United Nations. It was a damned chess game, with better than a dozen players making moves.

  “But if we have patience—” Bankole was on a roll, but now the cockpit intercom cut through his platitudes.

  “We have a target lock! Fasten your seat belts, gentlemen. Evasive action, starting now!”

  Segrest looked out the window, didn’t see a damned thing but the pale blue sky they occupied and the broiling desert. “Target lock” meant someone had “painted” them with infrared to guide a rocket or a burst of antiaircraft fire, but who in the hell—

  The Let L 410 shuddered, riding a blast of thunder from the clear sky. The explosion didn’t breach the cabin, but oxygen masks automatically dropped from the ceiling, dangling like weird wilted flowers in front of their faces. Segrest fumbled with his seat belt, fastening it on the third try, as the turboprop nosed over and began to fall.

  Even the pilot sounded panicked. “Crash positions, gentlemen! We’re going down.”

  1

  Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria

  The Jeep Wrangler was twenty-plus years old and showed it, mangy rust spots peeking through its faded paint, a long crack stretching across the lower left-hand quadrant of its dusty windshield. The canvas roof rattled and flapped. Its seats were sprung, their stuffing visible where seams had split, and underneath a set of worn-out rubber mats, passengers could watch the desert rolling past below, if they were so inclined.

  Mack Bolan didn’t care about the Jeep’s appearance or its comfort. Before accepting it, he’d checked the tires—not new by any means, but serviceable—and the 4.2-liter engine, testing out the four-wheel drive, until he was more or less convinced that it would take him where he had to go and bring him back again.

  Maybe.

  A lot of that depended on terrain, of course, and any obstacles—human or otherwise—they met along the way. So far, they had been making fairly decent time.

  The man riding in the shotgun seat was a slender Syrian with a patchy beard, wearing a checkered keffiyeh and faded desert camouflage, the sleeves rolled up, pants cuffs tucked into well-worn combat boots. He had a pistol and a wicked dagger in the waistband of his trousers, hidden by the loose tail of his four-pocket BDU shirt.

  The heavy hardware rode behind them, on the Wrangler’s floorboard and backseat.

  They had left Highway 7 ten miles north of Al Mayadin, angling northeastward on a road that wasn’t marked on any map, barely a shadow of a line on Google Earth. No one had ever bothered paving it or even laying gravel down. Why waste the time and energy, when desert winds and shifting sand could cover and conceal it within minutes?

  “We are in bandit country now,
” Sabah Azmeh observed.

  “I’m more concerned about the army and irregulars,” Bolan replied.

  “They’re bandits, too. They just have newer clothes and weapons.”

  That was true enough. Deir ez-Zor Governorate harbored armed forces of various factions in Syria’s long civil war. Bolan was hoping to avoid them all and complete his mission with a minimum of static, but he knew that notion wasn’t realistic; hence, the hardware in the back.

  Beyond armed opposition, there was still the desert to contend with—over ten thousand square miles of nothing but sand, stone, scorpions and cobras. Water was scarce, cover likewise, and the only ally he had was riding in the Wrangler’s shotgun seat.

  Azmeh spat out a curse and pointed off to Bolan’s left, toward a plume of beige dust rising in the still, hot air. One vehicle, at least, and it was headed their way. “If they’re hostile, we’ll deal with it,” said Bolan. “Grab the rifles.”

  Azmeh twisted in his seat and rummaged underneath a tatty blanket covering a portion of their mobile arsenal. He fished out two AKMS assault rifles, their metal stocks folded, both with forty-round box magazines in place, loaded with 7.62×39 mm rounds.

  “It’s too bad,” Azmeh said.

  “Too bad,” Bolan agreed.

  But the encounter was unavoidable.

  * * *

  “YOU SEE IT?” Youssef Sadek asked his driver.

  “It’s hard to miss,” Sami Karam replied.

  “Get after them.”

  Karam changed course to chase the distant rooster tail of dust, downshifting first, then bringing the GAZ Sadko cargo truck up to speed. Their men in the back would be cursing by now, maybe craning their necks for a glimpse of whatever had drawn them off course.

  Karam knew the drill: stop and search anyone they found drifting around in the desert, unless they were Syrian regulars. Karam and his men were Hezbollah fighters, and their party had long sided with the Syrian government.

  “One vehicle, I think,” Sadek observed, talking to help himself relax. It was a trait Karam had noticed in the past but did not share.

  “Perhaps one,” he replied, to keep from being rude.

  “Not large,” Sadek said. “Maybe a UAZ.”