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  “Yeah,” Bolan said.

  “Yeah what?”

  “Get on that FN.” He pointed to the belt-fed machine gun. “It’s time to get this going.”

  “Ready.”

  “Fire in the hole.” Bolan took a mortar round from the crate next to the launcher tube and dropped it in. The tube thumped and the round sailed overhead.

  The Executioner kept one eye on the men below and one on what he was doing. The trick with mortars was to keep feeding them at regular intervals, getting your rate of fire up without making a mistake that would cause you to explode. Kurtzman had once told him that video footage of terrorist insurgents around the world was now available on the internet, showing them blowing themselves up accidentally through equipment failures or simple inexperience with the machinery of war.

  It was a crazy world.

  “Now, Cooper?”

  “Not yet,” he said. “Don’t engage yet. We want to soften them up first.”

  Mack Bolan fed the launch tubes, first one, then the other, establishing a rhythm. The mortar rounds whistled through the air and shattered vehicles below. The Wolf’s men and the red-flagged loyalists scattered, but it was too late for them.

  The mortars wouldn’t be able to penetrate the tank’s armor, even with it sitting as a tempting stationary target. The moment some of the personnel carriers started to detonate, Fafniyal sealed himself within the tank and started to flee. Bolan decided to let him go. They had a few LAWS in the truck, which could be used to take out a tank at close range, but at the moment they were too far away to be able to target the Wolf reliably. Better to save the specialty antiarmor munitions for a sure shot.

  Besides, there would be time to deal with him later. Bolan intended to visit the Syrian palace, once they were finished here. The Wolf couldn’t escape the fate that was coming for him.

  For now, though, Bolan was content to smash the loyalist command structure.

  “Now, Cooper?” Yenni said again.

  “Wait for it.”

  He made adjustments in the mortars’ targeting, using the hand cranks provided, relying on his keen eye and doing the math in his head.

  The mortar rounds destroyed the last of the armored personnel carriers and wreaked havoc among the firebase below. Bolan walked his fire to the loyalist vehicles and began blowing them apart, too. A few had begun moving as the loyalist leaders tried to pull out, but Bolan did not need to target them. Instead, he bracketed the trucks that were parked nearby. The deadly hot shrapnel thrown as they exploded was enough to break apart the men and the vehicles unfortunate enough to be caught nearby.

  Enemies were running in every direction now. There was no safe place, nothing Bolan’s rounds could not touch. He started blowing apart the tents and outbuildings, careful to stay away from the trio of launch vehicles.

  “Now, Cooper?” Yenni demanded.

  “Now.”

  “Firing at the holes!” she shouted. The FN began blazing away, covering her in expended shells and links for the ammo belt.

  “Firing at the holes,” Bolan said under his breath, smiling. He was starting to think she said those sorts of things deliberately. Her command of English seemed to wax and wane depending on her mood.

  “Pour it on,” he urged. “Make them pay.”

  Yenni did just that. She gave the FN Minimi free rein, firing it in long, sustained bursts that raked the firebase below and took down man after man. Sundered corpses were starting to pile up. The soil was red with blood. Bolan checked through his monocular and watched Fafniyal’s tank, far away now, continue to put distance between the Wolf and this disastrous meeting.

  The smoke was beginning to clear. Vehicles on both sides of the firebase were burning. The tents, the other structures, had all been turned into craters. Nothing moved except the speck of Fafniyal’s tank, hurrying out of the little valley.

  The launching trucks and their payloads stood untouched.

  “The launchers,” Yenni said. “You have not hit the launchers.”

  “No,” Bolan said. “I haven’t. I’ve got a good reason for that.”

  “Is this another of your plans?”

  “Yes.”

  The words that came out of her mouth next were, he was certain, local profanity. “Come, then,” she said. “We must make our way down there.” She stood, hefting the now empty FN, and began walking toward the truck. When she returned she helped Bolan gather up the mortar tubes and what was left of the supplies.

  “Careful on the way down,” he said. “I’ll ride shotgun with my rifle. We don’t know what surprises are in store.”

  “I am ready. Come on. Hurry. You can devise more of your horrible plans in the truck.”

  They took the long way, using a series of defiles to get to the valley, moving cautiously once they were within range of small-arms fire. The devastation of the firebase seemed total. Yenni, perhaps remembering Sarrin and the other unnamed village destroyed by the loyalists, seemed to be taking real joy in rolling over the bodies of the fallen troops.

  Bolan looked at the launch vehicles, surveying them for damage. As he did so, he made a decision. “Come on,” he told Yenni. “We’re going to do something Fafniyal’s technicians couldn’t.”

  “Cooper?”

  “We’re going to activate these weapons.” He took out his secure tablet and began tapping the screen. In minutes he’d opened a scrambled channel to a satellite, which was in turn relayed to Stony Man Farm. The alarmed face of Barbara Price, the Farm’s honey-blond, model-beautiful mission controller, appeared on the screen.

  “Striker,” she said, paling. “What are you doing? We’re radio silent for the duration of your mission.”

  “I’m taking emergency option Zeta.” He rattled off a code number. “Do you hear me? I’m taking emergency option Zeta. I need real-time satellite surveillance of the presidential palace here in Syria. Feed it to my tablet.”

  “We…we’ve got you covered, Striker,” Price said. “Just please be careful.”

  “I’ll do the job, Barb,” Bolan said. “That’s all I can do.” He cut the voice transmission in order to leave all the tablet’s bandwidth open for the data he needed.

  “Cooper,” Yenni said. “What are you doing?”

  “Something I don’t like. There are a lot of variables. It’s not like lobbing mortars down a hill. But these weapons systems are very special.”

  “Special how?”

  “It’s one of the reasons the Man was so insistent that his new Syrian allies have them,” Bolan said. “The reason they’re suitable for antiair and surface-to-surface use. The rockets—missiles, technically—are capable of going suborbital. They burn a solid fuel derivative that can keep them aloft for a long time compared to conventional rockets. And they carry very advanced targeting systems, slaved to GPS and satellite contours if warranted.”

  “What does all this mean?”

  Bolan pointed to two of the three launchers. “I need you to go to the first and second trucks,” he said. “Open the control panels. Press the power icon on each one.”

  Yenni complied, heading for the first. “It wants to be initialized,” she said.

  “Type in the code I give you,” he said, gazing at his tablet. He recited the code, waited for her to go to the second launcher and recited another. Meanwhile, he was configuring the third launcher.

  “You haven’t told me why we are doing this,” Yenni said. “Why would we want to make these platforms work? Hahmir has lied to your President. If he or the Wolf takes control of these launchers…”

  “They won’t,” Bolan said. “But trust me, we need them. It’s the only way to finish this mission.” He continued tapping keys on his own launcher’s control panel.

  Yenni sighed. “All right. Explain to me this plan.”

  “If we’re going to stop all this,” Bolan said, “if we’re going to take out the troops now guarding the palace, and get to Hahmir himself, we’ve got to have enough firepower to do it.
Two of the three remaining launchers can do that. I can use them to neutralize the forces surrounding the place, and I can delay their delivery until we get there.”

  “That is insane,” Yenni said. “What will the missiles be doing all that time?”

  “They’ll go suborbital and come down per the trajectories I calculate.” Bolan held up the tablet. A satellite image of the presidential palace was now displayed there. “Everything is ready.”

  “And the third launcher?” Yenni said. “We must destroy it, yes? Why would we activate it?”

  “Because we need it.”

  “For what, Cooper?”

  “Remember the Wolf?” Bolan said. “He strikes me as a sore loser. And I haven’t forgotten.”

  “Tell me what it is you plan,” Yenni demanded.

  “Wait for it,” Bolan said. He pointed to the sky.

  The sound came to them on the wind.

  It was the rhythmic thumping of helicopter rotors.

  15

  They came in low, slow and deadly. There were three of them, possibly representing a good chunk of the Wolf’s remaining airpower. All three were Russian Hind aircraft. All three cut through the air like bull sharks, their pods laded with missiles and rockets, their automatic cannons searching for targets.

  “Stay near me, near the launcher,” Bolan ordered. “They won’t want to risk destroying it. And once they see us launching rockets, they’ll want to take possession of this emplacement. It’s the only shield we have.”

  The Hinds opened fire with their cannons. The rounds went well wide of the launchers, but the message was clear. Automatic fire ripped up the ground and tore through the bodies that lay around the launchers. The rotors of the Hinds whipped up the plumes of smoke rising from the burning vehicles, spreading it around, creating a gray, acrid haze that hung over everything. Bolan was not paying attention to that. As long as he and Yenni were practically on top of the launch vehicle, they would be all right.

  “I do not understand what you are trying to accomplish,” she said.

  “Surface to air and surface to surface, remember?” Bolan said. “Brace yourself.”

  “For what—”

  Thick white smoke inundated them as the first of the launching platforms began unleashing its rockets. The vibration traveled through their chests and rattled their bodies. On tongues of fire, the rockets lifted off, one after another shooting into the sky. Yenni stared after them in amazement as they continued to travel up and up.

  “Hang on,” Bolan said. “It’s going to get worse.”

  The Hinds began peppering the territory around them with rockets. Again, the pilots were careful to not actually hit the launchers, but they were still determined to scare Bolan and Yenni away so they could move in and take possession. Bolan tried his best not to let the fire from the war choppers bother him, but each blast made his teeth feel as if they were being shaken out of his head. Yenni actually clung to him at one point, holding him and burying her face in his chest.

  * * *

  IT WAS TIME.

  Bolan plugged in the firing solution into the display. The radar and tracking systems in the launch platform engaged automatically. Right now the pilots and gunners in those double-bubble cockpits would be hearing every warning tone and alarm their machines could produce. The Hinds, though, were heavy and slow, arguably outdated technology. They were fierce when you faced them from the ground with little better than an assault rifle, but in the air, tracked by a modern system like this, the predator became the prey.

  “Hold your breath,” Bolan warned.

  Their launcher began shedding its payload.

  The vibrations had been bad before. Now they were almost unbearable as the launcher did its best to shake them to pieces. The heat from the exhaust of the rockets was amazing. Bolan felt as if he were being flash-tanned in the blast-oven temperatures. As soon as the sensation began, however, it was over, leaving behind only the dense white smoke of the rockets’ passage.

  One of the rockets released so close to a Hind that it actually clipped the chopper and kept on going. The Hind, fatally damaged, began spinning. As Bolan and Yenni watched through the smoke, it crashed to the earth and burst into flames.

  The pilots of the other two helicopters, realizing they’d flown into an ambush, tried to turn and run. A rocket immediately destroyed the second Hind in midair. Hot fragments of it and its crew rained down on the bloody soil below.

  The remaining Hind began popping countermeasure flares from ports at its rear. The missile that was following the chopper nosed down when it encountered the flares, dug into the soil below and detonated. The Hind was shaken by the updraft but not damaged. It started to swing around to make another strafing pass. It was coming right for them.

  “Uh-oh,” Bolan said.

  “You keep saying this. And every time you do, it means something about one of your very bad plans has gone very wrong.”

  “It’s not my fault,” Bolan said. “That one’s been retrofitted. They aren’t supposed to have any countermeasures that can confuse these missiles.”

  “Now it will kill us.”

  “It’s not that,” Bolan said. “In air-to-air mode, the missiles are persistent in their bogey tracking.”

  “I do not know this word bogey.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Bolan said. “The first missile, the one that clipped the chopper but didn’t detonate? Kept on going?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s coming back.”

  Just then the missile streaked through the sky, struck the Hind from the rear and turned it into an airborne fireball. Bolan pinned Yenni to the ground, protecting her with his body. Flaming wreckage pelted them and the launcher, but nothing large enough to do any real harm. When it was over, Bolan stood, helping her to her feet. He looked at his watch.

  “You have somewhere to be?” she asked.

  “We both do,” Bolan said. “Come on, run! Back to the truck.”

  “Why? You have defeated all our enemies here.”

  “The last missile,” he said. “I programmed it to go suborbital and then come back. Right down on our heads.”

  Yenni shot him a furious glare. He knew that look by now. This is a bad plan, it said.

  They were rolling as fast as the Mahindra would carry them when the missile came down amid the three launchers. The primary explosion created three more, and the repercussions rippled down through the valley to shove their truck with concussive force. The blast was so powerful it blew out the taillights on the Mahindra. Bolan and Yenni rocked forward in their seats, but he managed to keep the truck on the road.

  “Cooper,” Yenni said. “Look!”

  The tank. The tank was coming up on them, angling in from their flank, its gun tracking them.

  Bolan slammed on the brakes. A crater formed scant meters from their bumper, spraying the abused Mahindra with dirt and rocks, pocking its already damaged windshield. The sound of the tank’s main gun hammered their ears.

  “Back, back,” Yenni shouted. “We must keep turning to keep the turret off us!”

  Bolan pressed the accelerator down as far as it would go. The Mahindra leaped forward, rocking them violently as he drove over the rough terrain, skirting the crater from the blast. The tank fired again, and again, and now they were playing the deadliest high-explosive game of cat and mouse, with the tank chasing and Bolan doing his best to evade its fire.

  “That is Fafniyal’s tank,” Yenni said. “He was not trying to escape. He wanted us to believe he was. He has circled back for revenge, just as he sent in the choppers.”

  “Yeah,” Bolan said. “I have to admit the tank didn’t occur to me. I would have pegged Fafniyal for the type who stays well out of range when the going gets rough.”

  “If you must pig the Wolf,” Yenni said, “pig him as vicious first, and a coward second.”

  “Peg,” Bolan said. “Not pig.”

  “How is this different?”

  “I’m
really starting to think you do that because you think it’s funny.”

  Whatever Yenni would have said in response was lost when another shell from the tank rocked the Mahindra from the driver’s side. Bolan barely kept control. He rounded a curve, but the respite would be short. Soon the tank would be able to reacquire them on the relatively flat terrain beyond.

  “Where are we going?” Yenni asked.

  “We’re headed for the presidential palace. The loyalist leadership will never be the same. The stolen weapons have been neutralized. And we know that Hahmir’s government, with or without the Wolf, put one over on the United States. That means it’s time to clean house.”

  “You keep looking at your wristwatch,” Yenni said.

  “We’re on the clock,” Bolan replied. “We’ve got to get to the palace as fast as possible. We do have a major problem with the tank, however.”

  “We cannot avoid its shells. We could outrun it, but before we do, it will blow us apart when we try to escape on this flat ground.”

  “Exactly,” Bolan said. “That’s a Type 63A amphibious light tank. Its top speed is 75 kilometers per hour and it has a range of 400 kilometers. That makes it fast enough to kill us before we can get out of the effective range of its guns. So you’re going to take the wheel.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to crawl out onto the roof and then the truck bed. I’m going to grab a LAWS. Then I’m going to jump off and try to stay low so they don’t see me. And you’re going to do your best not to get blown up until I can take out their engine or one of their tracks.”

  “This is—”

  “I know,” Bolan said. “I know. Now take the wheel.”

  She did as he instructed. Bolan climbed out the open window, negotiated the roof of the truck and tumbled into the back. There he stumbled across the box of ancient grenades he’d been complaining about for days now.

  “Why the hell not,” he said. He began pulling pins. With each one he pulled, he tossed the grenade high, lobbing it far from the Mahindra.

  The explosions didn’t harm the pursuing tank; it was too distant for that. But the dust, dirt and debris the explosions churned up formed an excellent smoke screen. Bolan kept it up until he was out of the old grenades, then grabbed one of the two light antitank weapons systems they carried. The olive-gray tube was reassuring in his hand. He rolled from the truck and felt the dirt road bruise his ribs.