Righteous Fear Read online

  The guy had a record spotted with armed robbery, and he was a person of interest in the burning of a predominantly African American church. Though Bolan wasn’t a religious man, the assault of innocent people in a place of community and comfort, or the destruction of that home, was heinous in his opinion. He hated any form of bigotry, but attacking the defenseless where they sought respite and joy was one of the worst thefts, not only of life, but of the sense of safety for everyone of a similar faith or community.

  Then again, that was the nature of the beast Bolan battled. Animal Man, he’d called it when he’d first encountered it. Hatred was a peripheral part of disease, because Bolan had seen enemies like Christian and Islamic extremists put aside their hatred for one another to attack a mutual enemy, like the United States government.

  Hatred could bind the most venomous as surely as it could split the most tolerant.

  That was what leaders of dangerous movements counted on.

  A text followed the file from Stony Man. Trouble at Dr. Hassan’s apartment.

  Bolan opened a news article, but he could already guess what had happened.

  Hours earlier

  Krahiat Majnuna sat in his car, waiting. He kept a low profile, smoking a cigarette in a mini-mall parking lot down the street from Dr. Annis Hassan’s apartment building. He was drinking a nonalcoholic beverage, and had the radio playing. Majnuna was dark enough with his shaved head that he could pass for black if necessary, but this neighborhood had enough Asians and Middle Eastern people that it wouldn’t be an issue.

  A pistol was tucked into his waistband, but if things went well, he wouldn’t have to do a thing. Indeed, he kept it well hidden as he watched a tall man in dark clothing approach a van. Majnuna thought he had seen a similar large, dark figure in another nondescript van pass only a few minutes before.

  Then came the explosion of physical violence. Hands flew, bones broke, bodies dropped.

  There were a few moments of silence. He could see the tall man push a body into the back of the van.

  His figure was familiar, but the sudden appearance of a large handgun, a spray of full-auto and deafening booms linked everything. Majnuna had been on the outskirts of the refugee hospital in Helmand Province, but he’d seen a similar silhouette blaze away in broad daylight. He recognized the distinctive chatter of a machine pistol.

  Three more men appeared at the van and were handily taken care of. The black-clad shadow who killed or mutilated the Southerners could be none other than the same wrathful wraith who had visited death and destruction upon his brothers in arms. He moved so swiftly, so certainly, and the effect of his violence was sudden and definite.

  The woman Majnuna had come to stalk was outside. Dr. Annis Hassan. The stranger loaded her into the Southerners’ van and drove off. Majnuna was tempted to peel out after the stranger and his target, but realized that the escaping man would be looking for a tail. He gritted his teeth and left his gun in his waistband.

  One man against the mysterious warrior would be a suicide mission.

  The gunfire had drawn sirens, however.

  Majnuna’s mind raced.

  An idea snowballed behind his eyes, one that stretched a grin across his features, his dark eyes narrowing to black slits. There was humor in his smile, but it was the comedy of the gallows, schadenfreude writ large and deadly. He picked up his radio, used in lieu of a telephone as they were too easy to trace and intercept.

  “When the police arrive, that is when we strike.”

  “But did not the witch get away with the American?” It was a valid question from one of his subordinates.

  “She’s long gone. Perhaps she will disappear into witness protection, perhaps she will be used as bait. Either way, we cannot touch her for the time being. So if we cannot damage her body, we can damage her in the eyes of the Americans.”

  “How would we do that?” the subordinate questioned.

  Majnuna chuckled. “I need two brave souls. One willing to quickly hit the bitch’s apartment and one willing to take action to remove many American jackboots.”

  There was an excited murmur on the other end of the radio.

  * * *

  Waleed Ghamdi’s heart thumped. Was it fear of his imminent shooting? Was it excitement of striking a fatal blow against the West’s most hated oppressors—American policemen? Was it the promise of paradise as guaranteed by the Taliban leaders?

  Ghamdi did not fear death or imprisonment. Death was drummed into him as a step on the ladder of ascension to Heaven. It was the key to being important, not another mindless, lifeless drone. His life would matter now. The weapon in his briefcase was primed and loaded with a 30-round banana magazine, ready to fire with a push of the trigger on the handle. Once it was empty, he could go for the handgun under his untucked shirt.

  Ghamdi thought that his transfer from Detroit, Michigan, to Mobile, Alabama, had been intended to punish him. The money his cell generated, smuggling guns and cigarettes through the gas station he owned, had seemed insignificant. But the move now gave him this, proximity to one of the greatest opportunities in any freedom fighter’s life.

  He took in the lights, the bright yellow police tape, the men in their dark uniforms. The big white ambulances with orange stripes across the sides, and the plain white Dodge Chargers with their black lettering and stripes, were packed, blocking off the street. A fire truck was backing up.

  “Annis?” he called, trotting through the crowd.

  “Annis? Are you okay?” he yelled louder.

  A pair of officers parted the throng of onlookers and approached him. “Sir,” said a tall, middle-aged black cop, “do you know Dr. Annis Hassan?”

  “She is my sister,” Ghamdi said. He allowed the tremor of excitement into his voice, hoping that the pigs would mistake it for frightened concern. “What happened?”

  One of the lawmen looked him over then back at the apartment building. “You have to stay back, sir. There are casualties, and the fire marshal is in your sister’s apartment.”

  Ghamdi tried to peek past them.

  “Whatever happened, your sister wasn’t home, or isn’t home now,” the cop told him.

  “You failed to protect her,” Ghamdi announced. “For my sister!”

  He pulled the trigger. The police officer’s legs exploded with blood and flesh before Ghamdi turned the briefcase. Bullets arced out from his concealed weapon, and people farther away and between the two lawmen jerked from impacts. He twisted the briefcase to face another cop, pumping his belly full of slugs.

  “You let them kill my sister!” Ghamdi roared. He’d emptied the briefcase machine pistol and reached for the gun in his belt. Mid-draw, he felt his chest sting, the brief bites of small bullets growing huge and heavy, weighing him down. He stumbled backward, clutched his handgun tighter.

  The wounded black policeman fired again, his Glock roaring. Ghamdi’s vision blurred, but only in one eye. Something monstrous clawed the left side of his skull. He tried to raise his handgun and blast the cop who’d just fired at him, the one who’d traded his heritage for the badge of his oppressors, but suddenly everything went black.

  Chapter Seven

  The Executioner had no logical means to have anticipated the killing of two police officers and a paramedic, and the wounding of several more first responders at the hands of the Islamist death squad. He also hadn’t anticipated a further complication—the shooter claimed to be her brother immediately before opening fire.

  Only the action of a brave policeman, despite serious injuries to his legs, stopped what could have been a massacre. Bolan was torn between checking the scene himself and paying a visit to Hadib Asada. Thanks to FBI surveillance, he knew where both Asada and Majnuna were.

  But his common sense prevailed. Neither of the two options would accomplish much. He’d only risk exposure in the first instance, and leaning on
Asada might not get him any more information than he already had.

  Hassan looked at the television as a news anchor spoke of the double blast of violence at her apartment building. Her features were worn and wan.

  “What is going on, Matt?” she asked, her composure drained by the bloodshed literally on her front lawn. “Who would want to set fire to my place?”

  “Your ‘trouble from home.’ When you were on your way back from the police station after the shooting at the women’s health center, you stopped at a small market. Sources told me that Hadib Asada saw you there,” Bolan told her.

  “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Krahiat Majnuna?” Bolan asked.

  Hassan shook her head then thought about it. “Majnuna. That was the family name of a man who complained about my presence in Helmand Province. He didn’t want the refugees on his land.”

  “Ari Majnuna,” Bolan replied. “He was a major in the Taliban who had a home built near your camp and hospital.”

  The doctor sneered. “He was Taliban, and he was a military man. An Arab who didn’t own the land he claimed except by writ of the Taliban, who are nothing but other Arabs who infested the country in the wake of the Soviet pullout.”

  “I know the history,” Bolan said. He was acutely familiar with the country and how a wave of religious fanatics had been forged by a group of so-called Islamic scholars to form a perfect government. They had trouble spreading far from Kabul, the Afghan capital, thanks to the efforts of local warlords, some benevolent, others just as bad as the intruders. Bolan had warred against the Taliban before, and he had battled against other menaces within the country and its neighbors.

  “He wanted the refugees gone. He hated the local Afghans, and only my nationality had done anything to slow his desire to scourge the camp and the hospital from the face of the Earth,” Hassan said. “And then came the day you entered my life.”

  Bolan nodded. “Major Ari Majnuna was killed by US forces. He died, but not before ordering the assault on your camp.”

  Hassan sighed. “That’s when you showed up to save the day.”

  Bolan nodded.

  “They said this shooter claimed to be my brother. Which means I’ll be the one at fault,” Hassan said, emotion gone from her voice.

  “You won’t be blamed. I have access to people who can clear your name,” Bolan stated.

  “Right now, they’ll be hunting for me as a person of interest. You know what cops do to cop killers?” Hassan asked.

  Bolan was fully aware that police officers took little mercy with them as they hunted those who were responsible for the deaths of their fellow officers. He wished he could assure the doctor that he could protect her from those officers, but the truth was that he had long ago written in stone a vow never to shoot a soldier on the same side. He’d never fired a shot in anger at a cop, even if he had them dead to rights as being guilty of a crime. Sometimes he could circumvent such a moral conflict by having an ally who had no such qualms about burning down a crooked lawman, but that wasn’t the case this time around.

  Even if they did come at him guns blazing, they wouldn’t be the ones at fault. They would be innocent men doing their job based upon false evidence.

  Luckily, the motel was off the radar of local law enforcement, and Bolan intended to keep it as a very low-profile safehouse. He arranged a separate room for the doctor, away from him and the prisoners—both for her privacy and decorum, but also as a stopgap in case Malone tried to escape. Bolan hadn’t caused him the same extensive injuries as had been inflicted upon Howard, so at full strength, he could overpower the doctor if Bolan wasn’t around.

  “Do you think that you can locate Asada’s and Majnuna’s cell?” Hassan asked. “Without adding more bodies to interrogate?”

  “Asada and Majnuna are both under FBI surveillance,” Bolan told her. “I could drop on them any time I wanted.”

  “Why not let the FBI take them?” she asked.

  Bolan felt a sense of duty. Asada, Majnuna and their cohorts were dangerous infiltrators in the United States, and they had assembled a crew to murder a healer out of revenge for an act she hadn’t even committed. The safety of his home country from enemies foreign and domestic—as perfectly displayed by Annis Hassan being targeted by two radical groups—was something Bolan took personally.

  His concern came more from how the flagged conversation between Asada and Majnuna was quickly quashed along the chain of command, as if someone wanted the Taliban veterans to engage in violence in the Deep South. The Executioner had run afoul of such operations, as well.

  Suddenly his plan of action was certain. “Stay in your room, stay armed and stay safe.”

  Hassan nodded. “You have a plan.”

  Bolan’s face set firmly. “I’m going to visit the FBI.”

  * * *

  Special Agent Kellan Nicholas paused at the sink mirror after washing his hands. He’d gotten word about the shooting and fire at Dr. Annis Hassan’s apartment building. Actually, of the second shooting, which he had only peripherally lined up with his star suspect, Krahiat Majnuna. Despite a high forehead, something his less considerate coworkers called a “five-head,” he thought that he would look magnificent in front of the national news cameras.

  Majnuna had either found Hassan’s real family or had had the brilliance to have his gunman claim her as his sister. In each instance, the result was that Mobile, Alabama, grew closer to lockdown because of a foreign threat. Nicholas kept Majnuna under his thumb in the hope that something big and exciting appeared, and a vendetta against Dr. Hassan, already in the city’s consciousness because of the prior day’s incident at the women’s health center, made this front and center news. Two dead cops and a paramedic were icing on the cake. Three dead first responders hung upon Hassan’s neck were gold medals for Nicholas himself. He smirked.

  “We’re going places,” he said to his reflection.

  The men’s room door opened with a slam.

  “Agent Nicholas?” a deep voice asked. The FBI agent turned and saw a newcomer, about the same height he was, but with broader shoulders and a leaner frame.

  “Who’s asking?”

  “Agent Matthew Cooper. Justice Department,” the stranger said, showing him a badge in his right hand.

  Nicholas sneered and took the billfold with the wallet. “Never show your badge with your gun hand...”

  Bolan swept aside his linen jacket, revealing his left hand on the butt of his Justice Department issue Glock 19. “Never assume, Agent Nicholas. You’ll end up shot.”

  Nicholas frowned. “All right, you know how to be a proper federal agent presenting credentials...”

  “Look as close as you want at my paperwork,” Bolan said.

  Matthew Cooper, Special Agent, United States Department of Justice.

  “What do you want?” Nicholas asked.

  “I want to know why other agencies are treating Krahiat Majnuna as if he’s hands-off.”

  “You’re asking?” Nicholas asked. He cleared his throat. The stranger had the kind of scar tissue on his face and hands that was indicative of someone who was used to violence. Nicholas picked up cues that Cooper’s service pistol wasn’t the only weapon he carried.

  “No. My boss. You might know him,” Bolan said. “Hal Brognola?”

  Nicholas felt the blood drain from his face. “You work for him?” He knew that Brognola was someone who had the president’s ear.

  “When he gets curious about a terrorist being kept off the radar, in a city under current terrorist difficulties, he wants answers. So, what’s with Majnuna?”

  Nicholas straightened, squared his shoulders and assumed the T-stance, a standard law-enforcement placement of feet that provided improved stability against a tackle or a push while speaking to a witness. He was set for violence, which seemed contrary to the loose, easy
poise of the man in front of him. “You know the deal. Small fish can lead us to bigger fish.”

  “From what I’ve seen and heard, he and his partner, Hadib Asada, are the biggest fish in this pond,” Bolan countered. “Or do you think they’re part of something bigger regionally or nationally?”

  Nicholas’s lips curled in a sneer. “I don’t have to explain myself to anyone other than the director of the FBI. Brognola doesn’t have jurisdiction over me.”

  The Justice agent snatched his wallet back from Nicholas’s grasp and stuffed it into the breast pocket of his jacket. As he did so, Nicholas noticed a handgun in a shoulder holster, accessible to his right hand. It most certainly didn’t look as if it were Justice Department issue, unless Brognola was handing out machine pistols. “I came here for answers, not a pissing contest.”

  “You’re the one who barged in on me in the bathroom, cupcake.” Nicholas chuckled. He hoped the sheen of bravado was enough to keep this big bastard at bay.

  The man’s face remained stony. He seemed to be neither offended nor rebuked by Nicholas’s witticism.

  “So who is your larger fish?” Bolan pressed.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Off the record, who’s the larger fish? I can make any trouble from Brognola disappear if you give me a morsel to get him to back off.”

  Nicholas pressed his knuckles into his hips, arms akimbo, presenting himself as open to the stranger’s question. “I tell you what I’m going for, you back off?”

  “Even better, give you more help. So you get your big press conference even sooner.”

  Nicholas tilted his head. He resisted the urge to fold his arms in front of himself, signaling that he was closed to the newcomer’s ideas. “Press conference?”

  The corner of the Justice agent’s mouth curled up. “You have a lot invested in this case. You heard Majnuna talk about killing a naturalized American citizen, and kept it swept under the rug. That means you want to sit in the glow of this case. You are interested in letting this case go full murder and conspiracy to murder in addition to terrorism.”