Devil's Bargain

The run to Chicago would never bear sweet fruit, but there was hope yet. Or was there? he wondered, catching the eye of a windbreaker by the lockers. The infidel looked away, watching him without watching, he sensed. Was the FBI man—if that’s what he was—taking special interest in the three of them? Perhaps, he thought, their attire and nylon bags were more errors in planning, marking them, pearls in a sea of infidel swine. He knew next to nothing about the Great Satan’s Arena Football League, but their jackets, caps and bags were emblazoned with individual team emblems, meant to identify them to their brothers-in-jihad. Instinct for survival long since honed in Iraq, twice over, he knew all the signals warning when the end was coming.

The babble of infidels swarming his ears, he shut his eyes. And the past drifted back to him from a dark corner of bitter memory. Beyond the rage and hatred he forced himself to lapse into a soothing trance, wishing to use visions of years waded through in anger and grief to fuel the fires of courage and resolve.

In the beginning it seemed the impossible dream, but the miracle of bringing holy war to the land of the Great Satan had already been mapped out by Syrian sympathizers, well in advance of his fleeing Baghdad the second time around. Before that moment of hope in Damascus, more than a decade since what the enemy called Gulf I, there was unimaginable horror, the foreign devils destroying all that he cherished in his heart. The death and destruction he had witnessed on the way back home from Kuwait had been terrifying enough, the American vultures slaughtering thousands of his Republican Guard brothers on that highway. The unholy ones, he recalled, dropped their bombs, safe in their flying cocoons of death, thousands of feet above the column of vehicles, decimating their numbers, a cowardly act, to be sure, but the worst was yet to come. With his own eyes he had seen many of his brothers burned alive, trapped in the wreckage of tanks, transport trucks, luxury cars rightfully taken from the treacherous, self-indulgent, obscenely rich Kuwaitis.

He could still hear their screams of agony, the stench of cooking flesh something he could so vividly remember. Somehow—call it divine intervention, or a special destiny reserved for him by God—he had escaped the conflagration, wounded, crawling off into the desert, praying all the way back to Baghdad that someday he would return the favor to those faceless cowards who murdered from the skies. He discovered the enemy had robbed him of what life he hoped to return to, a blow so cruel it would have been better to have burned alive on the highway of death. The murder of his wife and two sons, massacred along with many innocent Iraqis during a bombing run on the city, had been grief enough to bear. Only the dagger, he discovered, plunged deeper, twisted harder. Shuddering, he saw in his mind’s eye his daughter—or what remained of her. He found it especially tormenting he couldn’t even recall what she had looked like in all her innocent, youthful beauty, then or now. On his return and discovery, it had taken several weeks of agonizing before he made the decision, praying for the answer, the strength to do the thing he most dreaded. Certain it was God’s will he finally acted. And how couldn’t he? How, as a loving father and true believer of the Islamic faith, could he stand idly by, allow her to suffer her horror and shame of living on like that? How could he, in all clean conscience and purity of soul, let a child languish in perpetual horror and pain, no arms, no eyes, half of her face sheared away to the bone from a coward’s bomb? Small comfort she never saw it coming, but…

He jolted, eyelids flying open, the crack of the pistol swept away to the deep caverns of memory. Oh, but there was now fuel, determination enough to proceed, the fearless holy warrior, carrying out the will of God.

Let there be vengeance. Let there be blood. Let the horror descend, the wrath of God, on the enemy.

He found commotion in all bays beyond the doors on both sides, passengers ushered from buses, large gaggles herded near the gates, Greyhound employees and armed security guards trying to soothe nerves, hands waving down the battery of questions. A quick tally of the anticipated body count, and he figured that between the three of them they could bring the building down while consuming, at the pitiful minimum, three, four hundred in God’s divine retribution.

He looked to the others, held their stares. He didn’t know these men, the names or their Arab country of origin. That the three of them were of like mind and spirit, nurtured the hearts of lions, was enough to succeed in Pyrrhic victory. No choice, no turning back. How it had all been arranged, though, was a miracle by itself, their destinies about to be fulfilled, divine warriors blessed by God. Tactics changed, naturally, to circumvent the enemy’s high-tech counter surveillance, but the ends of retribution always justified the means.

Qasi Alzhad unzipped one of the two bags, granting him easy access to the Ingram MAC-10.

It was time.

He rose with his brothers, aware, too, he would see them shortly in Paradise.

KHELID AMNAN LAUGHED. For him it was over, but the brilliance of foresight would preempt the problem. He wouldn’t be denied.

They were swarming the terminal from every possible entrance, he saw, FBI or SWAT or whoever, armed with submachine guns, full body armor and helmets, creating a ruckus as they began searching carry-ons down the line. Other armed enemy began surging into both men’s and women’s restrooms to clear them out. The building was sealed, then, locked down. So be it. The more, he believed the Americans said, the merrier.

Fear not, he told himself. Let them come, let them search his bags. He was prepared, expected them, in fact, to have arrived well before now.

Close to two hours, and no bus arrived or departed, repeated messages over the loudspeaker regretting all delays, instructing all passengers to remain calm, stand where they were. Since the first announcement the knot in his gut warned him he wouldn’t leave Washington, never make it to the Port Authority, the dry run and reconnaissance in vain. A lesser man, he decided, would have felt defeat, but initiative shielded him against failure.

He ignored the strange looks several infidels threw him, chuckling again. They looked confused, fear bordering terror, questions hurled between them, but he would soon enough shed light on their ignorance. There was some irony in the moment, he thought, unable to decide what it was, but there was most certainly truth and justice ready to be delivered by his hand. He was a holy warrior, an instrument of the will of God, after all, there to fulfill the promise he’d made to fellow Iraqis he’d left behind in his homeland of Syria. They would remember what he had done here. Someday soon they would sing his praises, glorify his martyrdom. From Karachi to Casablanca, they would pen his name in stories, splash his heroics all over Arab satellite television, his face wreathed on banners as they marched the streets, torching American flags and effigies of the Great Satan President. But this was about far more than a few dozen fedayeen and Iraqi officials smuggled over the border, seeking safe haven in his country, crying out for personal revenge. And more than his own glory.

Then he fathomed his mood, a bolt of lightning between the eyes, telling him why he felt so strong, amused even. The American barbarian law enforcement, representative now of those occupiers of Arab land, those destroyers and oppressors of all Muslim peoples, he saw, were marching toward his departure gate. Just a few more moments, he told himself, reflecting on the source of his sense of invincibility.

“Sir? Are these your bags?”

Amnan lost the smile, but enjoyed the cold touch of the small box in his coat pocket as he wrapped his hand around it. “Yes, they are, sir,” he told the FBI man in perfect English, thumbed the switch to the On position, forced confusion and anxiety onto his face as he glanced at the armed phalanx around the gate. He listened to the angry bleat of infidels demanding to know why they were searching their bags, one of them snarling something about a police state. Amnan watched, riding out the moment, his heart thundering in his ears. Without asking, the FBI man unzipped his bag—and froze.

“What the—?”

It was a moment carved into all eternity, the sweet second he had been searching for, perhaps since even before birth to the end of his nineteen years. Confusion and horror etched on his face, the FBI man appeared torn between pulling away the T-shirt emblazoned with Osama’s face, sweeping the submachine gun his way or shout a warning.

Amnan allowed the infidel to snatch up the T-shirt, discover what lay beneath. It was reckless impulse, he knew, pulling out the detonator box, displaying it for a heartbeat, risk a barrage of bullets that would tear into him, defeat the moment. He skipped any jihad eulogy or war cry and thumbed the button.

He believed he was still smiling as the explosion lifted him off his feet, hurling him into the air. He was blinded by the light from the blast, deafened by the roar, but not until he thought he glimpsed bodies sailing through the firestorm, caught the evanescence of their screams.

FROM THE ENEMY’S twisted perspective, the Executioner knew bombs on wheels was the next logical phase in their unholy war. Make no mistake, trains and buses were soft targets, he thought, but they had long since drawn the grim concern of every intelligence and federal law-enforcement agency in the nation. Airport security might have been nailed down, all bases covered as well as humanly possible, but the task—between available human resources, public outcry over inconvenience and government funding—would prove so monumental it was next to impossible to protect America’s ground-transportation network. Consider the enormity of checking every bag or purse, he thought, running a metal detector over each passenger, choked webs of stalled, impatient travelers. Consider the vast nationwide system of countless trains, subways, buses. Consider every moving company, every eighteen-wheeler or van, cab or car on the road, in the cities, at any given time. Unless the country locked itself down, declared martial law….

Well, all it would take to perhaps push America to the edge of a police state, he knew, was one or two rolling bombs lighting up an interstate, a major highway or taking down an entire terminal or depot, a few hundred bodies buried under the rubble. Every overt and covert intelligence agency may know about Red Crescent, that it was created from the shattered or disgruntled remnants of al-Qaeda and a host of other known terrorist organizations impatient to unleash another 9/11 on America….

They were here, and it was happening, as Bolan heard the shooting inside the terminal.

Blueprints of the Richmond facility and perimeter committed to memory, having handed out the orders to Brognola’s people along with descriptions of the three operatives, the Executioner gathered steam, closing on the Norfolk bay. Beretta 93-R leading his charge, he shouldered his way through passengers bolting for the lot. It was just as he feared, the RC operatives panicking at the sight of agents inside the terminal, now going for broke. There wasn’t a second to spare on “what ifs,” the inside of the terminal Bolan’s turf to nail it down—or get blown into a thousand grisly pieces if they lit up the terminal.

Clinging to hope, propelled up the side of the bus by racing adrenaline and dire urgency, the Executioner spotted the first terrorist and drew target acquisition. Just inside the door, the enemy swept the MAC-10 around the terminal, the doomsday bag bouncing off his shoulder, screams rising to ear-piercing decibels as he fired on with indiscriminate bursts. For whatever reason—perhaps due to his murderous outburst—Bolan found a clean field of fire behind the savage. No chance of an innocent victim taking a projectile, tumbling on after a fatal exit wound to the head, so Bolan went to grim work.

The Red Crescent operative whirled, ready to barrel through the door, when Bolan squeezed the trigger. The 9 mm subsonic round blasted through glass, cored smack between the would-be martyr’s eyes, a dark cloud of blood and brain matter jetting out the back of his shattered skull, the Dallas Stars cap flying. Lurching back, the Red Crescent butcher then wobbled, eyes bulging in shock, nerve spasms shooting through his arms, the package of mass murder slipping off his shoulder. The Executioner advanced, pumped two more rounds into the enemy’s forehead, dropped him.

One down, the soldier thought as he threw wide the door and waded into the bedlam. He was aware the doomsday clock had ticked down to zero, that quite possibly he was marching to his own death.

PRICE THOUGHT the bastard laughed as she hit the ground on her shoulders, rolling up between two SUVs one row down, her sunglasses flying. Digging out the Browning Hi-Power, she thumbed off the safety, sprung to her feet. Mitchell-Acheron, she found, hadn’t budged, the killer grinning, laughing to himself. Was he winking at her, blowing a kiss with his weapon? It occurred to her this psychopath could have already killed her, but given his track record she wasn’t taking any chances. And she was certain he hadn’t come here alone. There would be time enough later to track down Geller, make him spill the truth—whatever it took—why he’d set her up, assuming, of course, she made it out of the garage alive.

He was still enjoying his belly ripper when she framed the laughing face in her sights, squeezed the trigger. Even before the first 9 mm round blasted out the window he was gone, melting to the seat, anticipating her preemptive strike. A combination of adrenaline and fear coursing through her veins, she cracked out two more rounds, ventilating the far window, shuffling for deeper cover. Hunched, she searched the garage, thrusting the weapon around each corner as she surged down the line of parked vehicles, in the direction of the exit ramp. If there were in fact more gunmen on the prowl, then she had to believe they had all escape routes covered. No choice, she knew, other than a fighting evacuation.

She stopped, listened to the silence. Popping up, she saw the back passenger door open, the bald dome emerge. She capped off two more rounds, Acheron ducking as bullets tattooed metal. If she could draw him deeper into the garage, then double back for the GMC…

Two peals of thunder, and she saw the GMC’s tires flatten out, Acheron’s laughter flung away by the booming reverberation of gunfire. Worst case, she could hope the attendant or some civic-minded individual heard the racket of weapons fire, dialed 911. Then what? Was the bastard crazy enough to commit suicide by cop, if it came down to that?

“Might as well come to Daddy, Babs,” Acheron called. “I promise I’ll break it to you gently. Max—I know you didn’t have to worry about that sorry little sack of shit hurting anything. Me, well, you’re looking at a man-size pre-dic-a-ment. What the hell, consider me your incubus, baby-cakes.”

Where was the psycho freak now? she wondered. He moved like a ghost, there one second, gone the next, laughing as he taunted her, circling her, she was certain.

Keep moving, then.

She was darting across open ground, saw the exit sign that marked the service stairs when she spotted two more gunmen in black. Without warning, they opened fire with MP-5 subguns, chasing her to cover, ricochets screaming off the concrete behind her, spanging metal. Running on, she flinched as twin streams of subgun fire blew out a line of SUV windows behind her, glass slashing her back, bullets drumming metal. Shooting only to chase her? she wondered. Forcing her to run toward the service stairs? They had her out in the open seconds ago, dead to rights, could have dropped her easily. No, they wanted her prisoner, she decided. But why? If that was the case, they had given her something of an edge.

She was free to shoot to kill. No problem, she would live or die by that.

A pall of silence descended behind her as she stopped, peered around the corner of a Jaguar. It was as if they had vanished, no sight or sound of them. They were close; she could feel them, probably moving to outflank her. She looked to the service stairs, maybe a dozen yards or so away, but it might as well have been the dark side of Jupiter. She looked back, glimpsed a shadow about six cars down, the Browning jumping in her hand as she rode the recoil, blasting out two rounds, vandalizing a Mercedes.

Price was ready to bolt for the service stairs, looking back at the gap she would have to sprint across, when three more of them materialized, black leather trench coats flowing behind them as they marched through the door, MP-5s leading the way. She peered at the tall dark one in the middle, wondering where she’d seen him before. Then it hit her. Despite the long black hair, swarthy complexion, figure some plastic surgery, it was Cramnon.

And they had a hostage, she saw, tossing still more critical mass into the equation. The woman was honey-blond, slim, the one on Cramnon’s right flank holding her to his chest, hand over her mouth, muffling her cries. Had they snatched what could pass as her twin on purpose, or was it just a fluke?

“I know who you are, cupcake,” Cramnon said. “Make it easy on yourself. Hey, I promise, Babs, I won’t let my men savage you. I’m a gentleman when it comes to the fairer sex.”

She was torn between watching her six, Cramnon and his goons, when she heard the woman scream. A short burst of subgun fire, and Price saw the victim flung to the ground from the burst up her back.

Oh, God, Price thought, squeezing her eyes shut for a dangerous second, sickened at the sight of cold-blooded murder, as she slumped back against her SUV cover. The sound of Cramnon’s laughter echoed through the garage, as she heard the monster warn her he still had a few more victims on tap.

THE EXECUTIONER KNEW he couldn’t spare a second indulging anger or grief over the carnage he found inside the terminal. He discovered two of Brognola’s people were down by the lockers, blood pooling around their skulls. The killer opted for head shots, bypassing body armor.

“Clear the building! I want a perimeter, no less than three blocks out!” Bolan shouted at the Justice agent kneeling beside the bodies of fallen comrades. “You copy?”

The agent looked at Bolan, eyes burning with rage, nodded past him. “I heard you. The last son of a bitch went in the men’s room!”

“Get out of here!” Bolan said, then wheeled, got his bearings as he marched for the men’s room. A quick sweep of the terminal, and he figured ten, fifteen civilians cut down. Where they weren’t surging out the nearest door, a stampede of flailing bodies, the soldier found walking wounded limping for exits, the air pierced by screams and shouts of terror and panic. The last one? he thought, then spied the heap near the westbound gates, the New York Dragons cap beside his tattered carcass with doomsday bags. Two helmeted, armored FBI agents toed the body, secured the ordnance. That left Grand Rapids Rampage, he knew.

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