Ground Zero Read online

  He bent over Heider; the man was dead. Bolan extracted the knife. One down. He’d search the apartment, then confront the arms dealer, Younis.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Mummar was becoming Rodney again. It was like being an actor. The idiots in Hollywood thought they were so great pretending to be someone else—they should try doing it when their very freedom and lives depended on it. They had no idea, though Rodney guessed that he had the drop on them because he was acting himself. Or his previous self, at least. It felt like Rodney Fraser was some dude he had read about in history. His previous life was far removed from where he was now.

  And where he was now was something pretty spectacular. The more he thought about it, the more his stomach flipped. The plans he had been formulating had been intense, but these new instructions for the cell were a real switch on what they had been working on. His boys he could contact easily enough, but Heider’s cell was another matter. Security dictated that they keep apart, with Mummar and Heider as the only link between them. That was why he had helped the fool get an apartment here.

  Rodney did not like Heider. He didn’t trust him. Not because he doubted that the man was anything less than sincere, but because he was a fool. He had a background in radical politics, and he’d developed what Mummar saw as a liking for sticking his head above the sand and making a big noise to show how important he was. That was the last thing they wanted. What they did want, however, was the knowledge of armament, the group strategy and the working relationships with local arms dealers that none of the others in these cells had. Heider’s boys would have been introduced as a matter of course. Mummar and his men were still in the dark. So even though he had the lurking fear that Heider’s ego would expose them, he was in no position to do anything other than go along with the fool.

  Thinking of Heider reminded him that the man would have returned from his trip by now. He would probably be home soon. His instructions on departure had been to report progress to Mummar immediately on his return. The knowledge that he had recently picked up only made him all the keener to see Heider and pool information.

  Mummar looked at his watch, then out the window onto the street and saw a man in a black raincoat leaving. The way the man walked was not like anyone around here. There was something about the way he carried himself that made Rodney uneasy.

  If he hadn’t heard from Heider in an hour, he would have to go and see if the fool had returned and forgotten the arrangements. He hoped that was all the problem was.

  * * *

  BOLAN RETURNED TO Mount Pleasant by Metrorail. The search of Heider’s apartment had yielded nothing. If he was the holder of communication devices in his cell, he was smart enough to keep them elsewhere. Hopefully, Stony Man would have some answers for him.

  Right now, the priority was to take out their arms connection. It was dark, but the streets were still alive with people since the stores stayed open late. Hours were as flexible as the lifestyles of the population wanted them. Now that the rain had ceased, the streets were packed with people, making it harder for Bolan to make his way to the back of the store owned by Samir Younis with the same kind of discretion he had managed earlier.

  It was still too early for the arms dealer to have left and gone to where his stock was located. The store that was used as cover was still busy, and as Bolan had passed he had seen his target serving customers.

  That was good. It would enable the soldier to gain access at the rear with ease and wait for his target. Bolan was over the wall in the same way as before. He scaled the drainpipe and tested the second-floor window he had listened at earlier in the day for alarms. As he’d thought—it was clean. Opening the simple catch was an equally simple task, and he was inside with the window closed within moments. The room was dark and damp, with incense covering the smell of rotting and stale food. The paint on the walls was peeling, and there was a bare table with four chairs and a hashish pipe. Nothing else suggested habitation or use. Bolan listened at the door, noting that business was winding down in the store below, and settled down to wait.

  The hours passed, and soon the clamor from below was reduced to the sound of a few people shutting up shop. Bolan listened to the store staff clean up and the owner cash out before going on to his second, more lucrative business.

  Younis saw his staff out the rear of the building, and Bolan watched them go from the side of the window. He heard Younis lock up and climb the stairs. Taking the Desert Eagle from its holster, the soldier opened the door leading to the hall and stepped out in front of Younis as he reached the head of the stairs.

  “Try it and you die now,” Bolan said softly as the shocked arms dealer automatically reached for his own weapon.

  At the soldier’s tone, he let his hands drop to his sides. “Now take it out carefully and slide it across the floor,” he continued, waiting patiently while Younis complied. “I want to see your stock.”

  “All my stock is here, mister. And the money I took in. That’s all there is,” Younis said with a ghostly smile.

  “Grocers don’t usually carry Glocks,” Bolan replied wryly. “You know what I’m talking about. You can die here, or you can show me your stock and maybe we can talk.”

  Younis snorted. “You’re a customer? You’ve got a strange way of doing business, mister.”

  “Call me careful. I hear you’re the best-equipped dealer around here. I need your stock, but not the kind of pineapples you have in the storefront.” Bolan sighed at Younis’s baffled expression. “Skip it. It wasn’t that funny. Take me to the real storefront now, okay?”

  “I don’t usually have a buyer and myself with no security.”

  “You don’t normally die from a no sale. Let’s go,” the soldier snapped, leaving little room for negotiation.

  They went down to the rear of the building, with Bolan bearing in mind what Younis had let slip about “security.” The arms dealer was expecting to go to his warehouse and so would be expecting his guard. One man or more than one? As they reached the back door and Younis unlocked it, his body language relaxed. Bolan tensed and stepped back, kicking out as he did so. Taken by surprise, Younis tumbled forward, stumbling from the kick he had received in the back of his thigh. He sprawled onto the filthy stone floor of the yard, yelling as he did so.

  Two men appeared, framed by the door. One of them was distracted, his attention drawn to his fallen employer and what had caused his fall. The other was square on to the doorway, a dark shape against the faint illumination of the night. His stance told Bolan he was armed, but there was no clue as to his weapon. He hesitated as he tried to sight in the comparative dark of the store. Bolan had no such problem. The Desert Eagle barked, and the guard grunted as he was thrown backward by the relatively close impact of the .357 round. His chest and upper abdomen were ruptured by the heavy slug, and he was dying as he hit the stone.

  Younis yelled again, trying to scrabble away, and tore himself from the guard, who was trying to help him. In so doing, he signed the man’s death warrant. Off balance and with his employer getting in his way, the guard was unable to draw, aim and fire in the time available. Another bark from the Desert Eagle and he was thrown backward, scored by a hit to the thorax.

  The way Younis froze, and the look on his face, told Bolan that they were now alone in the yard. Not for long, though. Gunfire was not rare in D.C., but it would still bring unwelcome attention. Bolan gestured to Younis to get moving, and the arms dealer complied with a posture that spoke of complete submission.

  The soldier didn’t bother to hide the gun as they made their way to Younis’s car. They would be gone soon enough, and any discretion had been lost by the necessity to unleash firepower.

  Sirens could be heard in the distance as they drove out of Mount Pleasant, and in less than twenty minutes they were at a small industrial park, where storage units were available for hire.
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  “You’re kidding me,” Bolan said as they pulled up. “You’ve got it in a normal storage facility?”

  “What do you people say?” Younis asked without humor. “Something about hiding stuff in plain sight. What else would you do in storage units but store stuff?”

  Bolan shook his head in disbelief and indicated that they should get moving. Keeping close enough to his prey but far enough to avoid any attempts at sudden movement, Bolan followed while Younis tapped in the security code at the entrance to the storage facility.

  It was brightly lit but empty inside. A maze of crisscrossing corridors housed small blocks of shuttered units. By day, people ran internet sales businesses from units such as these, and the place would be alive. By night, they were long gone, and it was easy for Younis to come and go with impunity—apart from the security camera, which Bolan noted as he looked up. Younis saw it and shrugged.

  “I own the building. You think I earn that money and put myself at risk that easily? What? You think I’m still some village peasant?”

  “I think you’re smart. You’re playing the law enforcement by feeding them scraps and going deeper than you’d have them believe. Now shut your mouth and open your stockroom.”

  Under Bolan’s watchful eye, Younis unlocked the conventional locks on the front of the storage unit and then pulled—with exaggerated care lest it get him shot—an infrared trigger from his pocket, which he used to switch off the alarm system.

  When he rolled up the shutter in the unit, it was all Bolan could do to stop himself whistling. The unit was stacked with boxes and cases, some marked and some unmarked. That didn’t matter. Bolan recognized the design of many of them, and could pick out the Heckler & Koch, Glock and Uzi cases, the AK-47s and the grenade carriers and the boxes of ordnance for each weapon. There were also cases that he knew carried Semtex, a small quantity of GPU22 and RDX mines. Younis had not been entirely honest with his customers earlier in the day.

  “So, you really interested in buying or you going to stand there with a hard-on? I don’t have all night.”

  “I’ve got the gun,” Bolan reminded him.

  “Yeah, and you keep us here too long and we take risks. I don’t like risk. I sell—I get out quick. Then I’m not going to get raided by law or bandits.’

  Bolan wasn’t listening. His plan had been to eliminate the arms dealer and torch the arms dump. Let it go up as a warning to other dealers. He clearly hadn’t thought this through. The amount of armament in the unit would not only take out the entire storage facility, but might just cause collateral damage to the neighborhood. True, they were fairly isolated here, but why should innocent people, their livelihoods and maybe even homes be at risk?

  “Close it up. I think we need to go for a little ride, see a few people with badges who aren’t your friends.”

  Younis’s face hardened. “Who are you, man? You’re not a buyer. You’re not the Feds. What do you want from me?”

  “I want you out of business, and I want you to tell some people I know all that you know about the terrorists you’ve been supplying.”

  Younis glared at the soldier. His eyes blazed and his flabby body quivered, but there was nothing he could do in his current situation. Slowly, he turned to the unit and made to trigger the shutter release.

  Bolan sighed to himself. Of course the man had a weapon secreted for emergencies. He could tell by the way Younis was holding himself that as he triggered the release he was reaching for a gun that was just out of sight. The shutter started to fall, and the arms dealer turned with a Smith & Wesson snubbie in his fist. It wasn’t the most powerful handgun, but it still had the advantage of being small, easily hidden and accurate over short distances.

  If a person had the chance to use it. Younis was too close to the still partially open shutter to risk a head or chest shot that might pass through at such close range and into the ordnance to his rear. Bolan lowered the Desert Eagle and put a slug through Younis’s thigh, aiming downward so that if it ripped through flesh and exited it would be angled into the concrete floor. As he did, he moved swiftly to his left, dodging into the cover provided by the intersection of two corridors. Younis, screaming in pain and frustration as he fell awkwardly to one side, snapped off a shot that went wide of the mark, ricocheting off the metal shutter of the unit opposite and fracturing a strip of neon, blowing out one tube and setting others off to strobe along the corridor.

  Bolan cursed. He didn’t want Younis to fire wildly again. A ricochet could easily bounce back by chance into the storage unit. Then it was goodbye Younis, goodbye building, goodbye Bolan....

  Not on his watch. He stepped out of cover, sighting the prone arms dealer in the flickering light. The air stank of cordite, and a thin film of smoke drifted on and off in the strobe. Blood was pumping from Younis’s thigh, and it was slick across the floor as he tried to crawl back under cover of the still slowly closing shutter. The light from inside, constant as it was, formed a pool into which he moved. With an artery ruptured, he would be dead soon enough. It would have been preferable to get some information from him before this, but fate had other ideas. Although the arms dealer still weakly clutched the snubbie, he seemed more concerned with gaining cover than seeing if his enemy was on his back.

  Bolan had a clear head shot, and as the man was already prone, he was saved the trouble of working out a downward angle. Younis bled out before the Executioner could take the shot.

  He stepped forward and searched Younis for the infrared locking trigger and for his key fob. He found them and triggered the lock. At least the unit would be secured until Hal Brognola could get men down here.

  Leaving Younis behind him, Bolan left the storage facility. He took out his smartphone and placed two calls as he walked to Younis’s car. One was to Brognola, informing him of what had just gone down. The other was to Stony Man. Information regarding the four men he had seen with Heider had been obtained and was downloaded to him.

  He got in the car and gunned the engine, leaving the storage facility to a cleanup team who could handle the ordnance and dispose of Younis. That was the good thing about working in the States: you didn’t always have to clean up your own mess. As time was tight, this was an advantage he would need. He drove back toward Mount Pleasant. It was early morning, and even a district with a twenty-four-hour lifestyle had downtime. This was one of them, and it would be easy to dump the car back near Younis’s store and put distance between the vehicle and himself.

  He needed sleep. He wouldn’t get it.

  There was too much to do.

  * * *

  BOLAN SAT IN a coffee shop near the Smithsonian. It was 6:00 a.m. He had taken the Metro back across town and needed to take a half hour out to consider his next move. Espresso followed by two cups of black coffee wasn’t the best way to start the day, but he needed the jolt to keep him awake until his task was complete.

  The Stony Man team had come through with all four of the men associated with Heider. Two of them had records, and the other two were known by their associations, although both had so far been clean.

  Richard Sahir, twenty-two, was the child of Somalian refugees. He had served eighteen months for an assault. Was known to be useful with weapons but, although he’d been pulled in several times, nothing had stuck. Lived in Columbia Heights a few blocks from Heider.

  Mohammed Kadir, twenty-four, had no record, but was known to associate with the gang Sahir had been a member of. Both men had been born Muslim, but had no known affiliation with any extreme or fundamentalist groups. Kadir also lived in the same neighborhood.

  David Soffitt, thirty, had a similar background to Heider. The move from one kind of extremism to another was not so unusual. It was something about the psychology, as though they were of a personality type that could not exist unless they felt they were oppressed and under threat. He lived in an apartment bu
ilding on Logan Circle.

  As did Albert Mohan, the last of the four. He was two years younger than Soffitt and had met him in prison. His offense had been assault and possession of firearms, but he was also known to have been a small-time drug peddler and have gang connections. Like Soffitt and Heider, he had been a convert to Islam during his prison period, but, unlike them, he had not adopted an Islamic name on release and seemed to have returned to his previous life, although he had seemingly stayed clean.

  Bolan paused in thought. He would be paying all four of these men a visit in the next few hours, but first he had a question for Kurtzman. He took out his cell phone and hit a speed dial number.

  “Morning, Striker. You’ve been busy, I hear.”

  “I don’t like being idle, Bear, you know that. I have the intel you’ve collated, and it’s very helpful. But it’s got me thinking. The last man on my list—Mohan—came out of prison a convert but didn’t make a show of it. The others use their adopted names, but he doesn’t. You could have put that down to him not being concerned once he was on the outside, but now we know different.”

  “And you’ll be wondering if there are any others who may just be following a similar pattern?”

  “Do we run checks like that?”

  “By ‘we’ I assume you mean the NSA rather than any more specialized unit.”

  “I guess. Any antiterror units, covert or otherwise.”

  Kurtzman exhaled loudly. “Now that is a question. By their very nature the most covert would be out of bounds. Like us. Noncovert, on the other hand... I can check, but I don’t think they do. I know we don’t.”

  “Anyone covert we’re not going to know about and we haven’t got time for Hal to go through channels. We’ll just assume they don’t. How long would it take you to do that for the past six months, Bear?”

  “How long have I got?”