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  "When do you want us to move the material to the lab?" Botros asked, changing the subject.

  "We'll be ready for it on Saturday, so plan to move it tomorrow night. But at the moment don't you have an appointment with the American?"

  "Yes, he should be here soon. Do you want us to take care of him?"

  "Like you took care of him last week? I think not. You and your men are to take no more risks, especially at the racetrack. I will take care of Mr. Cooper. Besides, I wish to meet a person who could dispatch five of your best men with such ease. Arrange for him to meet with me when I get to San Francisco tonight."

  4

  "I'm sorry I missed you last week Mr. Cooper," Botros told the Executioner after he sat down in the cramped office area set up in the back of the garage complex, "but it couldn't be avoided, as you know." Botros gave Bolan an artificially sweetened smile. "A terrible tragedy, and a blow to our organization," he said, referring to Darrick Anderson's death at Losail.

  Bolan thought the man didn't seem terribly upset, especially given that the team's second rider, an aging Brazilian, was a perennial back marker who hadn't won a race in over a decade. Any chance of the team scoring points had died with Darrick Anderson, along with the attendant publicity his star power would have generated. Darrick's notoriety guaranteed television exposure whenever he was on a racetrack, even if he was only battling for eighth place. The only time the Brazilian racer ever appeared on a television screen was when he was getting lapped by the front runners.

  In addition to his apparent indifference to the team's professional loss, Botros seemed not to have experienced a personal loss, either. In the close-knit fraternity of motorcycle racing, a racer getting killed devastated all the teams, especially the dead racer's team. It seemed as if the other teams grieved Darrick's loss more than Team Free Flow. Eddie's theory about his older brother's death could very well be true. Bolan knew firsthand that Team Free Flow was affiliated with people who were more than capable of murder.

  "I tried to contact you several times over the weekend to reschedule," Botros said, "but I couldn't reach you. I assumed you were indisposed."

  "I was fishing," Bolan said. Botros' smile wavered momentarily at Bolan's reply, but returned more sickly sweet than ever.

  "Well, Mr. Cooper, I hope you won't disappear on a fishing expedition this week. Musa bin Osman, Free Flow's vice president of racing, is flying in from Kuala Lumpur. He will be in San Francisco this evening and would very much like to meet with you. Our recent difficulties have been problematic for him. Free Flow's CEO is starting to question the expenses of racing, especially after the unfortunate incident last week. Getting sponsorship from your company would help smooth over the situation."

  "You don't think this will create friction with Arexpo?" Bolan asked, referring to Team Free Flow's primary sponsor.

  "Arexpo is an oil exploration company, not a refining company. They do not provide us with fuel. We purchase that," Botros said, referring to an Italian fuel company. "Of course we would have to analyze your fuel at the factory, then conduct extensive testing before we could come to an agreement. You really must discuss these details with my superior."

  * * *

  Bolan arranged to meet with bin Osman that night.

  Following the meeting, Bolan rode over to the Ducati garages in search of Eddie Anderson. Perhaps his supposed proof of his brother's murder might help him find the missing plutonium. It was a long shot, but right now it was the best shot Bolan had. No one at the Ducati garages had seen Eddie. The soldier overheard Daniel Asnorossa remark to his crew chief in Spanish, "Maybe he's off getting drunk, like his older brother."

  Bolan walked around behind the garage area to where the riders' motor homes were parked. When practice got underway the following day, security in the area would tighten up, and by race day he knew he wouldn't get near the motor homes without an official escort, but this early in the week the area was practically deserted and security was lax. Only about half a dozen truly driven riders like Anderson and Asnorossa had shown up this early; everyone else would drift in later that night or early the next morning.

  He found Anderson's motor home with the door wide open. The latch had been broken, and there were signs of some sort of struggle having taken place within the vehicle. Cushions had been knocked off the sofa and a broken cup and saucer lay on the floor in the kitchen area. A burner was still on under a stainless steel espresso pot on the stove and finely ground coffee was spread all over the counter and floor. Small drops of blood mixed with the coffee grounds and left a trail leading out the door. Bolan looked out the window above the stove and saw three men trying to stuff a struggling figure into the back of a Chevrolet Impala.

  The Executioner exited the motor home and in several long strides he was almost to the car. The sight of the big man charging them momentarily distracted the kidnappers. Anderson took advantage of their paralysis, driving his knee into one of their crotches so hard he felt soft tissue rupturing in the man's groin. He may not have been a physically large man, but what mass he had consisted of strong bones wrapped in corded muscles, the result of constant training, years of wrestling the most powerful motorcycles on Earth around racetracks and good genetics. The wounded man collapsed to the ground, only to be replaced by two others, the driver and the front-seat passenger.

  Bolan reached the melee at the moment the driver stepped out of the car and pointed an AK-47 his way. He had no time to draw his own weapon but from the angle at which the man held the rifle against his hip the soldier could see that the shooter's aim was high. The Executioner dived into the grass beneath the stream of bullets, sliding into the shooter's legs and knocking him back into the car. Bolan leapt to his feet, grabbing the hot rifle barrel on his way up and wrenching it away from the shooter's hands.

  Meanwhile, Eddie Anderson fought like a demonic howler monkey against the two would-be kidnappers, but they were proving too much for him. Bolan raised the gun barrel over his head and brought the wooden stock down square in the shooter's face. When he pulled the stock from the man's face, which no longer bore any resemblance to a human face, he spun around and slammed the gore-covered rifle butt into the temple of one of the men attacking Anderson. The man fell to the ground.

  Anderson had the other attacker on the ground, his knees pinning the man's arms and his fist pumping into the man's face. Anderson looked as if he might beat the man to death, but the fellow whose scrotum he had ruptured rose up and pulled him off the man before he could deliver the killing blow. The man Anderson had been beating struggled to his feet, blood spraying from a deep gash near his left cheekbone. He reached behind his back. Bolan knew he was going for a weapon so he swung the rifle stock around again and caught him right across his right temple, hitting him so hard that a geyser of blood erupted from the left side of his head. His eyes rolled back and he fell to the ground.

  Bolan flipped the rifle around as he spun to see the remaining kidnapper holding Anderson in front of him, a 9 mm dock 17 pressed to Anderson's right temple. Bolan put the hooded post of the front sight on the portion of the kidnapper's head that was the farthest away from Anderson. Though he had no idea how well sighted in the AK was, at this short range the executioner could see the gun barrel was pointed past Anderson's head. He gave the trigger a short squeeze, firing off just one round even though the selector was on full auto.

  That round did the business. The man flew back and dropped, his torso falling against the back seat through the open door. Anderson whirled around, ready to fight some more, but there was no one left to fight. The four would-be kidnappers all lay dead at their feet.

  The dead man looked Asian, possibly Filipino, judging by what was left of their faces. Laguna Seca was still relatively empty and so far no one had arrived on the scene, but Bolan could tell the gunshots had attracted attention because of the sirens he heard coming their way. He looked inside the car and pulled out a magazine. Bolan knew it would be filled with blow-in subsc
ription cards, so he shook it until four cards fell out. He dipped each of the kidnapper's right-hand index fingers in blood and made fingerprint imprints on the card stock. He had the cards in the vest pocket of his sport jacket before the police arrived.

  Four squad cars skidded to a stop on the grass. "You're no gas salesman, are you?" Anderson asked the soldier.

  "I'm a sales representative for the manufacturer of quality racing fuels," Bolan said, "but I had some combat training when I was in the military."

  "Whatever," Anderson said. "I don't care. I'm just glad you came along when you did. Thank you."

  * * *

  Both Anderson and Bolan spent the next several hours at the Monterey Police Department describing what had happened. Since Bolan wasn't suspected of anything besides being a good Samaritan who stopped the kidnapping of a celebrity, they allowed him to ride his motorcycle to the precinct. This enabled him to stash his weapons before he went through the metal detector at the security checkpoint in the precinct's entrance. Bolan's credentials as Matt Cooper were impeccable, and even though his brutal slaying of the attackers raised suspicions, his reactions were justifiable, and they'd had a beneficial result for the department. Having one of the world's top motorcycle racers kidnapped under their noses would have been a tremendous embarrassment to the force. Bolan was allowed to leave before Anderson, who remained behind because he wanted to tell the police his theories about his brother's murder. After the attempted kidnapping, the authorities were much more interested in what had happened to Darrick Anderson. So was the Executioner, but at the moment he had other matters to attend to.

  As soon as he was back at his hotel, Bolan scanned the fingerprints he'd pulled from the corpses on his portable scanner and sent them to Stony Man Farm. He wanted to find out who he'd just killed.

  Within half an hour Aaron Kurtzman was on the phone with that information. "You were right about their being Filipinos, Striker," Kurtzman said. "These were some particularly badass Filipinos, too, known members of Jemaah Islamiah."

  "So what's the connection between these guys and Team Free Flow?"

  Kurtzman paused, obviously reading through the information he'd uncovered in the short time since Bolan had sent him the fingerprints. "It all seems to point back to Musa bin Osman."

  "Speak of the devil," Bolan said. "I have an appointment with him in three hours."

  "There's something else you should know," Kurtzman said. "The men you killed also had strong ties to the BNG."

  Bolan knew the BNG — the Bahala Na Gang — was one of the most powerful Filipino street gangs. Originally formed by inmates in the notorious jails of the Philippines in the early 1940s, the BNG eventually spread its operations around the globe. Originally Bahala Na meant "God willing," in Tagalog, but in recent generations the term had come to mean a more fatalistic "whatever." Fatalism defined the BNG, and fatality followed it from the Philippines to North America, where the organization had evolved into an especially violent criminal syndicate. The BNG was strong in the San Francisco area.

  "I didn't have time to examine the bodies before the police arrived," Bolan said. "I didn't see any question marks." Each member of the BNG tattooed a question mark symbol somewhere on his body. "So these guys are hooked up with al Qaeda now?"

  "At least the four men you killed today were," Kurtzman said. "It might be more accurate to say that Jemaah Islamiah is hooked up with the BNG. My guess is that they're just hiring the BNG for muscle."

  "That would be my guess, too," the Executioner said.

  "But they're good muscle," Kurtzman replied. "Watch your back tonight, Striker."

  "How'd they get into the paddock?"

  Kurtzman took a moment to answer, meaning he was once again looking through the reports he and his team had generated. "Says here that they were posing as reporters for City Rider, a San Francisco-based motorcycle magazine."

  "Has our little altercation at the track this morning attracted any attention?"

  "Attention? It's being broadcast on every major news channel nonstop. You couldn't have attracted more attention. All the major newshounds are already on the scene. I don't know what's going to be harder for you — finding the plutonium or dodging those nitwits."

  "I'm not worried. They'll be gone tomorrow, chasing after some little girl who's fallen down a well or something," Bolan speculated.

  "You're probably right about that," Kurtzman said.

  "What have the police found so far?" Bolan asked.

  "I've hacked into their computer system, and it doesn't look like much. They haven't connected the BNG to al Qaeda yet, and they probably won't; they've already written the attack off as an attempted kidnapping by the BNG."

  "That makes sense," Bolan said. "Kidnapping is the BNG's primary source of income in the Philippines. And it makes sense that they'd go after Anderson."

  Bolan knew that while motorcycle racing was a relatively obscure activity in the United States, it was extremely popular in the rest of the world and the top MotoGP riders were super-stars. These young gladiators ranked among the most popular athletes on the planet, and a star rider such as Eddie Anderson or Daniel Asnorossa could earn ten million dollars a year or more. All of that made Anderson an obvious kidnapping target for a criminal organization like the BNG.

  "Have they called in the Feds?" Bolan asked.

  "I don't think they asked for federal assistance, but the FBI has already involved itself." Kurtzman said.

  "That's just one more thing I have to worry about," Bolan said. "I'd say there's a fifty-fifty chance that the Feds will uncover the al Qaeda connection. If they do, they're just going to get in the way of finding the plutonium. Any chance you could misdirect them, Bear?"

  "Striker, you know that would be wrong."

  "Meaning you can do it?"

  "Piece of cake."

  "Good. Could you get Barb on the line?"

  Kurtzman passed the phone to Stony Man's mission controller.

  "What do you need, Striker?" Price asked.

  "I need some security on the Anderson kid. Do you have any blacksuits you can put on it?" Blacksuits were operatives, often law-nforcement officials, who had been through advanced training at Stony Man Farm, though they never knew exactly where they had received the training. This training helped them better perform their jobs, and in return they often assisted Stony Man operatives in the field.

  "I'm one step ahead of you," Price said. "I've already sent one of our best men in the area, a former detective with the San Francisco PD named Delbert Osborne, to guard Anderson."

  "Thanks, Barb. That's one less thing I have to worry about."

  5

  The maître d'at Masa's Restaurant, a nice eating establishment on San Francisco's Nob Hill, led Bolan down to the Wine Cellar, the restaurant's private meeting room. Musa bin Osman had wanted to meet in his suite at a nearby hotel, but Bolan had insisted on taking his potential business partner out to dinner. Most likely bin Osman knew that the soldier was just trying to evade whatever trap he might have planned by meeting in a public place, but the Malaysian business man couldn't protest too vehemently without giving away his intentions.

  Bin Osman arrived with an entourage of four men who seemed uncomfortable in their bespoke suits. These hard-looking men seemed like they'd be more at home in prison jump suits. They were definitely not cut from the same corporate cloth as bin Osman, and they said little while Bolan and bin Osman went through the motions and discussed the details of CCP Petroleum possibly sponsoring Team Free Flow Racing. The Executioner had studied the intricacies of sponsoring a MotoGP race team on the flight from Qatar, and he proved remarkably adept at portraying a racing fuel sales rep.

  Not that he expected bin Osman to buy a word of it. Bolan was certain that the Malaysian knew every detail about what had transpired in Qatar. The real reason he and bin Osman attended the meeting was because they wanted to size each other up.

  "I'm glad you could make it to dinner tonight, Mr. Coo
per," bin Osman said, "given the adventure you had at the track today. The television portrayed you as some sort of superhero."

  "I got lucky," Bolan replied. "I remembered my military training."

  "Were you with Special Forces?"

  "Just a run-of-the-mill grunt," Bolan said. "I did have some sniper training, but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary."

  "Ah, a sniper," bin Osman said. "Retired, I hope."

  "Correct, and more than a bit rusty, but when I saw the attempted kidnapping, I was still able to do what I needed to do."

  "You seem more than capable," the Malaysian said.

  Bin Osman continued to grill Bolan throughout dinner. By the time he'd finished his dessert, the Executioner had no doubt that bin Osman intended to kill him. And maybe he would, but not before Bolan retrieved the plutonium. And if this turned out to be the Executioner's last mission, he intended to take bin Osman with him into the next world. When he looked at the man sitting across from him at the table, he saw something he'd seen far too many times in his life — pure evil.

  * * *

  Musa bin Osman needed to size up the American before having him dispatched. He'd learned that Cooper was not affiliated with CCP Oil, though he would not have learned that going through proper channels. Whoever had created Cooper's identity had been good, and every attempt by bin Osman to discredit the Cooper's credentials had proved fruitless.

  Cooper certainly looked the part. He dressed well enough so that he would fit in at a restaurant like Masa's, but not so well that anyone would wonder why he worked for a living. His clothes were expensive, but off-the-rack and not bespoke, though his broad shoulders obviously required some tailoring. Everything was perfect, from his sport jacket — which likely disguised at least one firearm, and perhaps two, judging by the nearly undetectable square-edged bulges beneath his armpits and at his waistline — to his shoes. Cooper didn't just dress like a sales representative; he dressed like a very successful sales representative.