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  At the front of the building, Bolan could hear the first helicopter landing. He paused for a moment, thinking. They needed to enter the building, where the WMDs were stored. But they had no protection whatsoever.

  And one tiny round piercing a fifty-five gallon drum might be enough to kill him, Ahmad and O’Melton. Yet the longer they waited, the more time any men inside would have to prepare for what was obviously an assault on the storage site.

  Bolan took a deep breath, considering exactly where they stood. The men in the chopper would have brought them gas masks, as instructed. The masks should protect them from the deadly agent alone. But if the binary was in place—and a drum was pierced—they’d still die.

  Should they go on in without the masks, doing their best to avoid hitting the sarin containers, and hope the Hezbollah inside didn’t just start shooting into the drums as their own personal and unprompted “suicide bomb”? Or take the time to go back around the building and put on their masks first?

  The question had come to the Executioner in a heartbeat, and he made his decision just as fast. “Go to the chopper!” he ordered Ahmad and O’Melton. “Get your masks on, then Pat takes the side he came down. Zaid, take the other side.”

  “And you?” Ahmad asked as all three men started running back around the building.

  “I’m going in,” Bolan said, as he sprinted on ahead.

  “Without your mask?” Ahmad asked.

  Bolan didn’t answer; he just kept running. When he finally caught sight of the chopper, he saw that five Stony Man Farm blacksuits had already disembarked and were making their way toward the concrete storage building. In their Level A, single-use positive pressure suits they had an otherworldly appearance. Like astronauts walking on the moon, or something out of Star Wars.

  Bolan’s first thought was that the suits, while protecting them, would hinder their agility and speed. They were likely to be cut down in the doorway when they tried to go in after the big, heavy drums. And as sure as he knew his own name, Bolan realized it was up to him and his own men to lead the way.

  At the same time, he saw that his decision to enter the building maskless while he sent the other two men after breathing protection would not be necessary.

  The Level A man in the lead held an M-16 in his right hand as he approached the front door. From his left hung three gas masks. Bolan let his own rifle fall to the end of the sling as he ripped one of the masks out of the man’s hand and pulled it over his face. “You wait until the gunfire dies down,” he said. “Then come in.”

  The gas mask facing him nodded vigorously.

  Bolan had already started toward the front door as O’Melton and Ahmad donned their own masks. There was no time to wait. The men inside—and Bolan knew there had to be some in there—would be over the shock their sudden attack would have prompted, and would have had time to think.

  Which was dangerous. The more time they had to consider, the sooner the thought of just drilling the sarin containers full of holes might cross their minds.

  Bolan reached the front door, grasped the knob and found it locked. More time for the men inside to prepare their defenses or begin shooting the drums, he thought as he stepped back and riddled the lock area with 5.56 mm rounds. The door popped slightly open, and Bolan grabbed the knob again, swinging it wide. He went in low, and felt a dozen enemy rounds buzz over his head and back as he entered.

  There was no cover. Not that he’d have any time to take it if there had been.

  Bolan saw the sarin drums in the middle of the one-room building, standing upright in rows and painted yellow. Above them, he saw a loft of sorts that ran completely around the storage area. And perched around the railing were at least a dozen more Hezbollah men dressed in green BDUs and aiming their AK-47s down at him.

  Bolan’s first instinct was to begin shooting. But at the same time, he realized that if there were men in front of him and to the sides, there had to be some directly behind and above him, too.

  And the unseen men posed the most danger at the moment.

  Diving to the ground as the 7.62 autofire came toward him, Bolan hit the concrete in a shoulder roll, twisting to face his rear as he came up on one knee. He had switched the M-16 to 3-round burst, and his first trio of semijacketed hollowpoint rounds took out a man wearing a turban above his “greenies.” The guard flipped over the rail and landed three feet in front of the Executioner.

  Bolan swung his rifle to the right, drilling three more 5.56 mm slugs into the chest and throat of a bearded Hezbollah man above and slightly to the side. In his peripheral vision, he saw that two more were trying to get him in their sights, and he rolled again, just before a dozen or so AK-47 rounds hit the floor where he’d just been. Sparks flew through the air like Fourth of July sparklers as the bullets bounced off the concrete, and Bolan could only hope that none were hitting the yellow drums.

  With another pair of 3-round bursts he took out the two men firing at him. Only one Hezbollah guard still stood at the railing above him now, and Bolan noted that the man had redirected his fire to the side of the building.

  Which could only mean that O’Melton had entered the side door and joined the fray.

  Directing a final burst into the man’s chest, Bolan watched him fall back from the rail, then turned in the direction he had been shooting. Sure enough, O’Melton had made it inside and was firing his own American battle rifle up at the men in the loft. As he lifted his M-16 again, Bolan saw a kaffiyeh-wearing figure catch three of the priest’s rounds and fall over the rail, landing on top of the yellow drums.

  Bolan glanced quickly at the barrels, wondering if any of them had been punctured. But he didn’t belabor the point. If they had been, he, O’Melton and Ahmad would know it soon enough.

  And it might very well be the last thing they ever knew on this earth.

  A long-haired man with an even longer beard suddenly switched his point of aim to the other side of the building, telling Bolan that Ahmad had joined the fight, too. The beard flopped up and down beneath the man’s chin as he cut loose with a steady stream of fire from an Israeli Uzi.

  The irony of a Jew-hating terrorist being more than willing to use a weapon invented and manufactured by Israelis wasn’t lost on Bolan. But this was hardly the time to philosophize about such inconsistencies, and the big American sent a trio of rounds through the beard and into the man’s upper chest and neck.

  The Uzi fell from the loft, clanking and bouncing against the yellow barrels before finally settling on top of them. The man himself slumped headfirst over the rail, hanging upside down, with blood dripping from his wounds.

  Bolan felt the vibration as several rounds hit the concrete floor next to where he lay, and he rolled away, spotting the shooter upside down while in the middle of the roll. As soon as he landed on his stomach, the soldier fired a final two rounds from his weapon, and then the bolt locked open on an empty magazine.

  There was no time to switch them out, so Bolan rolled slightly to his side and drew the Desert Eagle from his hip. Raising it in front of him, he tapped the trigger and a lone .44 Magnum hollowpoint slug caught the shooter squarely between the eyes.

  The top of the man’s head blew off as cleanly as if he’d been scalped.

  Bolan fired again, catching a Hezbollah man in the chest with a double-tap of rounds. From the corner of his eye he saw Ahmad down another man wearing a turban, and then suddenly the building went quiet.

  The only sounds as the blasts of bullets died down were the ringing in the Executioner’s ears and the heavy breathing of Ahmad and Father O’Melton.

  Bolan jumped to his feet. “Pat,” he called out as he started for the front door. “Keep guard. We don’t want any supposedly ‘dead bodies’ coming back to life and killing us.”

  The former Army Ranger saluted.

  “Let’s go,”
Bolan said.

  He ran through the door to where the first Level A–outfitted blacksuit stood, rifle ready. The others had gathered just behind him.

  “Where’s the guy from NCEH?” Bolan said.

  One of the Level A men stepped from behind the leader. Unlike the other men, he bore no rifle. But his arms were filled with a variety of equipment Bolan didn’t even try to identify.

  He pointed toward the door. “Get in there and find out where we stand,” he said. “And be quick about it. We’ve still got to load this stuff and get out of here before the Syrian regular army shows up.”

  “Are you sure the Syrians will be coming?” the dressed-out NCEH man asked.

  Ahmad had appeared through the doorway in time to hear the question, and it made him laugh out loud. “Of course they will be coming,” he said. “It would be impossible for Hezbollah to have used this storage facility without the government’s knowledge.” He paused and drew in a deep breath.

  “Which makes them enemy combatants,” Bolan said simply. Still looking at the NCEH man, he added, “Now get going.”

  The agent nodded, ducked slightly and hurried into the building. Ahmad looked up at Bolan. “All the Hezbollah inside are dead,” he told him. “Father O’Melton and I checked each one individually.”

  As he spoke, O’Melton exited the building, as well. As soon as he was outside, the priest reached up and took off his gas mask. “The guy inside said it’s safe to take these things off,” he said. “None of the drums were even punctured.” An unusual smile—as if he knew something the others didn’t—lit his face.

  Ahmad shook his head in awe. “With all those rounds being fired,” he muttered. “And not even one of them hit the containers. The odds against it must be phenomenal. We are truly lucky.”

  As all the blacksuits sprinted in to begin transferring sarin gas to the helicopter, Ahmad and Bolan took off their masks. “Luck had nothing to do with it, my young convert,” the priest said. “Never underestimate the power of prayer.”

  While Bolan, O’Melton and Ahmad watched, helping here and there when needed, the blacksuits from the first helicopter loaded their drums into the chopper and took off.

  Almost immediately, the second aircraft landed, and five more men from Stony Man Farm sprinted out to do their duty, rolling more drums of chemical agents onto the stealth helicopter.

  Bolan glanced at his watch. They were making decent time. But it was still a lengthy and nerve-racking process. And he knew that Syrian soldiers and/or police would show up any second.

  All the choppers needed to be gone before that happened. And if possible, he, O’Melton and Ahmad had to disappear from the scene, as well.

  As the final helicopter landed and began loading sarin, Bolan heard the sound of sirens over the whirl of the rotor blades. They were still a ways off, but would arrive soon. The assault on the sarin storage site, the battle both inside and out, and then landing each chopper and loading the yellow drums had been loud and long. Somebody—probably a lot of somebodies—could have called in.

  When the last chopper had secured its load of drums, the blacksuit pilot looked to the Executioner and saluted. As he did, Bolan saw the first of a long line of Syrian personnel carriers squeal around a distant corner and head toward them.

  Uniformed men hung out both sides of the vehicle, aiming AK-47s their way.

  More trucks turned behind the one in the lead. Bolan quit counting when he reached an even dozen. Pausing for a second, he did some quick mental calculations. Even if each vehicle carried only ten armed Syrian regulars, that amounted to one hundred twenty troops who would soon be upon them. He, O’Melton and Ahmad could stay and fight if they wanted. But they’d eventually be mowed down like wheat beneath a combine.

  Bolan knew there was a time to fight.

  He also knew there were times for tactical retreats, so you could live to fight another day.

  And this was one of those times.

  “Get on board the chopper,” he shouted to O’Melton and Ahmad as the first shots from the AK-47s began flying past them. “And you,” he said to the saluting pilot, “get this thing off the ground and out of here.”

  Bolan helped shove O’Melton and then Ahmad up into the cargo area as the helicopter lifted off. Two rounds shot past him—one in front of his face, the other just behind his head—and he felt the heat of both burn him like a sudden sunburn.

  The odor of his own singed hair filled his nostrils.

  The helicopter had begun to rise as Bolan let the M-16 A-2 fall to the end of its sling, then jumped up to catch the skid a split second before it rose out of reach. As bullets continued to fly from the weapons of the Syrian regulars, he pulled himself up and over the skid, finally taking a hand from O’Melton, inside the helicopter.

  A few seconds later, the state-of-the-art stealth chopper had risen out of effective range from the small arms on the ground.

  Bolan stood up inside the chopper and eyed the blacksuits crowded around the yellow fifty-five-gallon drums. No one seemed to have been injured.

  “Thanks for the lift,” he told O’Melton. “You’re pretty strong for a priest,” he added with a smirk.

  Father O’Melton just laughed out loud.

  The conversation stopped there as they flew to join the other stealth helicopters on the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier offshore in international waters.

  6

  A three-quarter moon had played peekaboo with the clouds ever since the final helicopter had taken off from the sarin storage site, and Bolan had watched the waters below go from small, white-tipped waves to total blackness and back again each time the glowing orb passed behind a cloud.

  The aircraft carrier was roughly fifteen miles out from Syria, safely in international waters. It should have made for a short flight. And it did.

  It just didn’t seem that way to Bolan as he contemplated his next move in this intricately complex mission to protect the world from the weapons of mass destruction that the former Iraqi dictator had “farmed out” to sympathetic countries.

  As he held on to an overhead strap, Bolan suddenly sensed a presence next to him. Turning, he looked down slightly to meet the eyes of Father O’Melton. The former Army Ranger was checking both his featherweight Smith & Wesson M&P .357 Magnum and the Special Combat Government Model .45 ACP to make sure they were ready to go.

  Bolan had watched the priest do the same thing just prior to their attack on the storage building, with the .45, .357 and his M-16 A-2. It was a time-honored exercise performed by many warriors the world over. It served not only the obvious purpose—to make certain their weapons were good to go—but also as a way to keep their minds occupied both before and after battle.

  It helped keep the “creepies” from crawling into a man’s brain and soul.

  When he had replaced both weapons in their holsters, O’Melton looked up at Bolan. “I’ve got this picture that keeps running through my mind,” he said. “I see this dog chasing a car down the street. Then, suddenly, the car just stops. And the dog looks around in bewilderment because now that he’s caught the car, he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with it.”

  Bolan had heard the comparison before. What O’Melton was really trying to say was now that we’ve got the sarin, what do we do with it?

  “These drums aren’t our problem anymore,” Bolan said. “We turn them over to the folks on the aircraft carrier and they take them to a disposal site.”

  “Where’s that?” the former Ranger asked. “And exactly how do they dispose of them?”

  Bolan shook his head slowly. “We’re getting out of my field of expertise now,” he said, as the moon came out from behind a cloud and the whitecaps appeared blow again. “But it’s my understanding they go to one of several locations in the U.S. One’s at Pueblo, Colorado. There’s a
nother one in Lexington, Kentucky, and a few more around the country that I can’t remember right now.” The moon hid behind another cloud, darkening the sea below them once more. “But my guess is that since these drums will already be on board a ship, they’ll be heading for Johnston Island.”

  “Johnston Island?” O’Melton said with a frown on his face. “Never heard of it.”

  “It’s a small atoll about eight hundred miles west-southwest of Hawaii, in the central Pacific,” Bolan said. “It’s the safest disposal site. If something goes wrong, the sarin gas has a lot of ocean to cross before it gets to any major populations, and it has time to dissipate before it arrives.”

  O’Melton was looking into the darkness as the moon crept back out again and illuminated his face. “Okay,” he said. “But do you know how they dispose of it?”

  “Again,” Bolan said, “this is outside my frame of reference. It’s the kind of thing I leave up to the guys with the thick eyeglasses and white lab coats. But they tell me they incinerate it.”

  “Incinerate it?” The priest turned to face him once more. “I’d think that would poison—”

  “The air with sarin-soaked smoke,” Bolan finished for him. “I know. But, for whatever their reasons, the lab rats seem to have found burning it all up to be the safest way possible of getting rid of it.” He paused and drew in a deep breath. “They were just storing and guarding these things for a while. But that always left open the possibility that they’d fall into the wrong hands again.”

  Both Bolan and O’Melton fell silent, and the only sounds were the overhead chopper blades and the wind rushing past them as they flew on to meet the aircraft carrier. Bolan lowered his eyebrows in concentration as he contemplated the next leg of the mission. A quick glance back into the chopper showed him the shadowy form of Ahmad sitting cross-legged on the deck, slightly apart from the blacksuits, who were still crowded around the yellow drums.