Appointment In Baghdad

The car came out of nowhere

It shot past Bolan on the shoulder, racing down the ramp, and he had only a fleeting impression of gray primer. It hurtled down the line of idling vehicles and made a kamikaze rush straight toward the roadblock.

“Down!” Bolan snarled.

Both James and Encizo reacted without hesitation. The Cuban sprawled flat in the back of the minivan as James threw himself between the front seats, landing next to Encizo.

The vehicle-based improvised explosive device detonated. Shrapnel cut through the air like steel rain and shattered the vehicle’s windows, spraying glass shards on the Stony Man team.

Shaken by the concussive impact and sudden violence, Bolan pushed himself into place behind the steering wheel and grabbed the AK-104 carbine.

Welcome to Baghdad, he thought grimly.

Appointment in Baghdad

Don Pendleton

Mack Bolan ®

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

—Ernest Hemingway,

1899–1961

War is a special kind of hell. There are no winners.

—Mack Bolan

For the men and women of the U.S. armed forces

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nathan Meyer for his contribution to this work.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER ONE

Toronto, Ontario, Canada: 0146

The mosque had been defiled.

Mack Bolan studied the building. A place of worship had been transformed into a forum for hate. A place where the devout and faithful had once found expression had now been subverted into a recruiting ground for blasphemers killing in the name of religion.

The rest of the street lay quiet.

Earlier that evening, Bolan had pored over an architect’s blueprints of the structure procured for him by computer expert Carmen Delahunt at Stony Man Farm. Like most of the buildings in that area of downtown Toronto, the old building was aesthetically unappealing. The mosque was not beautifully gilded, nor did it possess a dome and minaret. Only the placard sign announced what the squat bricked building housed.

A red flag had risen immediately when ownership of the building was traced to Syrian business magnate Monzer al-Kassar. The Syrian’s dealing had been on Stony Man’s radar for almost a decade. However, the Syrian facilitator had such a diverse, worldwide portfolio that his mere ownership of certain real estate was not considered a primary cause for action in and of itself. But that had all changed.

The mosque occupied two floors of a four-story brownstone in the run-down neighborhood. On the street level there was a Korean grocery store, and the top floor housed five apartments rented to people, as far as Delahunt could find, who had no connection to the radical activities going on beneath their feet.

Bolan looked at the dive watch on his wrist. It read 0148. Gary Manning, the Canadian-born Phoenix Force commando, would be in his overwatch position by now. Bolan had requested the operator as a readily available asset already long familiar with the Toronto area. For this brief operation Manning monitored Toronto police communications and stood guard against the possibility of outside forces arriving after Bolan had penetrated the building.

Bolan slid the earpiece into place so that the microphone was resting against his cheekbone. He placed a single finger against the device and powered it on.

“You ready?” he asked.

Manning answered immediately. “Copy that, Striker. I’m up. I’ve got eyes on your approach and the area. Radio chatter is good.”

“Let’s do it.”

Bolan eased open the door to his nondescript Toyota 4-Runner and stepped out into the street. It was very late winter in Toronto and still cold. There was dirty slush on the ground, and everything was cast in a gray pallor. Streetlights formed staggered ponds of nicotine-yellow illumination. In the building facing the street a single light burned in the window of the third floor.

Bolan closed the door to the 4-Runner and fixed the stocking cap on his head before walking to the rear hatch of the vehicle. Despite the chill bite in the air, he left the zipper to his heavy leather jacket undone. The deadly Beretta 93-R hung in a shoulder holster customized to accommodate the sound suppressor threaded onto its muzzle.

He opened the rear hatch, reached down and pulled up the lid over the compartment that held his spare tire and jack. He moved it to the side and pulled out a hard, plastic-alloy box of dark gray. His fingers quickly worked the combination locks and the case popped open.

Inside, snugly held in place by cut foam, was a Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD-3, the silenced version of the special operations standby weapon. Bolan pulled out the submachine-gun, inserted a magazine, chambered a 9 mm Parabellum round and then secured a nylon sling to the front sight and buttstock attachment points. He thumbed the selector switch to 3-round-burst mode. When he finished he shrugged his jacket off his right arm, slung the weapon over his shoulder so that it hung down by his side and slipped the sleeve back into place.

Bolan slammed the rear hatch shut and looked around the quiet street. No one moved in the early morning hours. He clicked on the alarm to the Toyota and shut the automatic locks as he crossed the street.

He turned left, away from the mosque set above the Korean grocery store. A used-furniture store stood next to the store and beside that was a run-down apartment building six stories high. On the other side of the tenement, next to the intersection, was a tire store.

Bolan turned down the sidewalk next to the apartment building and circled the tire store, entering a narrow alley that ran behind the businesses fronting the street. He slowed his pace as he entered the alley, senses alert as he neared the target.

Bolan kept his gaze roving as he moved closer to the back door of the mosque’s building. A couple of empty beer bottles stood among wads of crumpled newspapers. It was too cold for there to be any significant smell. Slush clung to the lee of brick walls in greater mounds than out on the open street. Several patches of slush were stained sickly yellow. Halfway down the alley Bolan drew even with the building housing the mosque.

The devout entered the building through the rear entrance, avoiding the grocery store all together. An accordion-style metal gate was locked into place over a featureless wooden door, and a padlock gleamed gold in the dim light. Bolan approached the security gate and pulled a lock-pick gun from his jacket pocket.

He inserted the prong blades into the lock mechanism and squeezed the lever. The lock popped open. Bolan reached up with his free hand and yanked the accordion gate open. The scissor-gate slid closed with a clatter that echoed in the silent, cold alley. He quickly inserted the lock-pick gun into the doorknob and worked the tool.

He heard the lock disengage with a greasy click and put the device back into his jacket pocket. He grasped the cold, smooth metal of the doorknob and it turned easily under his hand. He made to push the door inward and it refused to budge. Dead bolts.

Bolan swore under his breath. He placed his left hand on the door and pressed inward. From the points of resistance he estimated there were at least three independent security locks attached to the inside of the door.

His mind instantly ran the calculations for an explosive entry. He factored in the metal of the bolt shafts, their attachment points on the door frame and the density of the door itself. He was able to sum up exactly how much plastique he would need and ascertain the most efficient placement on the structure.

But Bolan had no intention of blowing the door of a building in downtown Toronto. Not until he was exactly sure of what he would find inside. He was well versed in various forms of surreptitious entry and had been thoroughly schooled in the techniques of urban climbing, or buildering as it was sometimes called.

Bolan lifted his head and looked up. As per the city’s fire code, a means of emergency egress had been placed on the outside of the building to aid occupants above the ground floors. The fire escape was directly above the back door and ended in an enclosed metal cage around the ladder on the second floor.

“Change of plans,” Bolan said into his throat mike.

“I’m going up.”

“Your call, Striker,” Manning answered. “Everything is good at the moment.”

Bolan looked around the alley. He thought briefly of pushing over one of the large green garbage bins and climbing on top of it to reach the fire escape. He rejected the idea as potentially attracting too much attention. He looked around, evaluating the building like a rock climber sizing up a cliff face. Above the first floor five uniform windows ran the width of the building along each floor.

Bolan made his decision and zipped his jacket. It would keep him from getting to his concealed weapons quickly, but it was a necessary risk if he were to attempt this climb. He opened the scissor-gate again and grasped it at the top. He stuck the toe of one boot into a diamond-shaped opening and lifted himself off the ground. He placed his other hand against the edge of the building, using the strength of his legs to support him as he released one handhold on the gate and reached for a gutter drain set into the wall.

He grabbed hold firmly and held on before moving his other hand over. The drain was so chill it almost seemed to burn the flesh on the palm of his hand and fingers. He pulled himself up despite the great strain of the awkward position and grasped the vertical drain with both hands. He moved his right leg and stuck his toe between the drainpipe and the brick wall, jamming it in as tightly as he could.

Once he was braced Bolan pulled his boot from the scissor-gate and set it on top of the door frame. It was slick along the top and he was forced to knock aside a minor buildup of slush along the narrow lip. Confident with the placement of that foot, the soldier pushed down hard against the lip at the top of the door frame and shimmed himself farther up the drainpipe.

Bolan’s muscles burned, and he forced himself to breathe in through his nose. Squeezing the frigid, slick pipe tightly, he inched his way up until his knee touched the second-story window ledge.

His body stretched into a lopsided X, Bolan carefully pressed his hands against the windowpane and pushed upward, testing to see if the window was open. He met resistance and realized it was locked. Bolan eased his head back and looked up. Light shone from the window on the floor directly above his position. Above that the fourth floor was as dark as the second. Directly above that was the roof.

From his careful study of the architect’s blueprints Bolan knew the internal staircase rose up to a roof access doorway. He debated breaking the glass on the window and working the lock mechanism from inside. He decided the risk was simply too great and made a decision to keep climbing.

“This is a no go,” he whispered. “I’m going all the way up.”

“Roger,” Manning answered.

He chose this route for the same reason he had decided not to use the fire escape. The metal structure was as dated as the building and ran directly next to the softly lit third-floor window; he feared the occupants in the lighted room would be aware of the rattle as he climbed and be alerted to his presence.

Decision made, he shimmed his way up to the third floor despite the toll the physical exertion was taking on him. Bolan was in exceptional physical shape, but the task of urban climbing was extremely arduous. Hand over hand and toehold to toehold, the soldier ascended the outside of the building, working himself into position by the third-floor window.

Bolan paused. He could hear the murmur of voices and sensed shadowed movements beyond the blind, but not enough for him to gather any intelligence. Moving carefully to diminish any sound of his passing, Bolan climbed the rest of the way up the building.

He rolled over the edge and dropped over the low rampart onto the tar-patched roof. He rose swiftly, unzipping his jacket and freeing the MP-5 submachine-gun. Exhaust conductors for the building’s central air formed a low fence of dull aluminum around the free-standing hutch housing the door to the fire stairs.

Bolan crossed the roof to the side opposite his ascent and reached the door. He tried the knob, found it locked and quickly worked his lock-pick gun on the simple mechanism.

“All right,” Bolan said. “I’m going inside.”

“Be careful,” Manning’s voice said across the distance.

Bolan glanced quickly around to see if the occupants of any of the other nearby buildings had witnessed his climb. He saw no evidence of either them or Manning in his overwatch position and ducked into the building, leaving the door open behind him.

The Executioner descended into darkness.

CHAPTER TWO

Bolan moved down the stairs and deeper into the building. He moved past the fire door leading to the fourth-floor apartments and down toward the two levels housing the mosque.

NSA programs had intercepted calls originating in the An Bar province of western Iraq with their terminus in this area of Toronto. Official procedures had been followed and contact with Ottawa made in the offices of both the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, known as CSIS.

Because the intercepted cell-phone call had been made to the twenty-seven-year-old son of a Syrian diplomat stationed in Canada’s capital, the response from the government security services had been to decline the request for mutual cooperation. Subsequent investigations made by CSIS had concluded that the foreign jihadists were not threats domestically and served only in administrative and supportive roles to insurgents operating in the Middle East, much as American representatives of the Sinn Fein had served nonviolently to facilitate IRA activities during the 1970s.

The Canadian position became an official posture of low-key overwatch. The mosque in question would remain unmolested.

To an embattled and besieged America, the Damascus-Toronto-Ramadi connection represented a treasure trove of information and a clear and present danger. The Hiba Bakr, who ran the center for Islamic studies was a known Whabbist, and the Syrian diplomat in question was a man frequently associated with the top levels in the Idarat al-Mukhabarat al-Jawiyya, or the Syrian Air Force Intelligence known as the IMJ.

The IMJ had evolved into Syria’s most covert and ruthless intelligence agency and was, despite its moniker, not primarily concerned with gathering intelligence for the nation’s air force. Hafez al-Assad, the former president of Syria, had once commanded the air force and upon his assumption of power in 1970 had frequently turned away from the nation’s other three intelligence services in favor of one filled with men he personally knew and had in most cases appointed himself.

As Syria, like Saddam’s Iraq, was a Baathist state, IMJ’s internal operations had often involved operations against elements of Islamist opposition domestically. Externally, international operations had focused on the exportation and sponsorship of terrorist acts and causes the regime was sympathetic to, such as interference in the internal politics of Lebanon. Its agents operated from Syrian embassies and in the branch offices of Syria’s national airline. Dozens of terrorist actions had been attributed to them, including the attempted bombing of an Israeli airliner at London’s Heathrow Airport in April of 1986.

The IMJ’s position as favored attack dog had not changed with the death of Hafez al-Assad and the ascendancy of his son, Bashar.

Most importantly for Stony Man, the IMJ had been at the spearhead of the pipeline operation moving foreign fighters and equipment into western Iraq. Even if the Toronto cell was a passive operation, its communications, records and computer files could prove to be vital. Two days earlier a known courier, monitored by the CIA as an informational node between disparate jihadist cells, had disappeared after disembarking a plane in Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.

The runner’s face had shown up in a routine situation report filed by an Army counterintelligence unit working out of the Pentagon and in close liaison with the Defense Intelligence Agency. The report had put him outside an extremist mosque mostly unpopular with the larger Toronto Muslim community. Stony Man had been put on alert.

Mack Bolan had once again been placed at the sharp end.

The MP-5 SD-3 was up and at the ready in his grip as he ghosted down the staircase toward the third-floor landing. Intelligence targets were worth more alive than dead. However, as had been the case with al-Qaeda-in-Iraq’s leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, it was often more expedient to simply take them out when other means could not be readily facilitated. In this case a snatch operation under the eyes of CSIS had been deemed imprudent and traditional American assets too much of a potential political liability.

Bolan stepped softly off the staircase and stopped by the interior door on the narrow landing. From his check of the blueprints Bolan knew the third floor housed offices, a small kitchen and bedroom apartments while the second floor, directly above the grocery store, was a wide-open place of worship housing prayer mats, a lectern and screens to separate male and female faithful.

Bolan tried the knob to the fire door. It turned easily under his hand and he pulled it open, keeping the MP-5 submachine-gun up and at the ready. The door swung open smoothly, revealing a dark stretch of empty hall. Bolan stepped into the hallway and let the fire door swing shut behind him. He caught it with the heel of his boot just before it made contact with the jamb and gently eased it back into place.

Down the hallway, in the last room, a bar of light shone from underneath a closed door. Bolan heard indistinct voices coming from behind it, too muffled to make out clearly. Occasionally a bark of laughter punctuated the murmurs. The soldier stalked down the hall. Prudence dictated clearing each room he passed before he put those doorways at his back, but it was an unrealistic expectation for a lone operator in Bolan’s circumstance.

He eased into position beside the closed door and went down on one knee. Keeping his finger on the trigger of the MP-5, Bolan pulled a preassembled fiber-optic camera tactical display from his inside jacket pocket. He placed the coiled borescope cable on the ground and unwound it from the CDV display.

It was awkward working with only his left hand, but the voices on the other side of the door were clearly audible and speaking in what he thought was Arabic, though Bolan’s own skill in that language was low enough that it might have been Farsi. He turned on the display with an impatient tap of his thumb and then slid the cable slowly through the slight gap under the door.

The display reflected the shifting view as Bolan pushed the fiber-optic camera into position. A brilliant light filled the screen, and the display self-adjusted to compensate for the brightness. A motionless ceiling fan came into focus and Bolan twisted the cable so that the camera no longer pointed directly up at the ceiling.

A modest kitchen set twisted around on the slightly oval-shaped picture, and Bolan could clearly distinguish four men sitting around the table. All wore neutral colored clothes and sported beards, except for a younger man seated to the left, whose facial hair was dark but sparse and whispery.

Bolan was able to identify all of the men by the photographs that had been included in his mission workups. One man was Hiba Bakr, the imam of the Toronto mosque, a radical Whabbist cleric with ties to the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood. Sixty-three years old, veteran of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan where he had served as spiritual adviser to the mujahideen, Bakr was a man intimately plugged into the international jihadist network, and had been for decades. His fiery rhetoric and extreme interpretation of the Koran had earned him followers among the disaffected Muslim youth of the area and the interest, albeit passively, of the RCMP.

The next man at the table was the youth with the wispy beard. Bolan identified him as Aram Mohammed Hadayet. It was his cell-phone calls that had been intercepted. An automatic pistol sat on the kitchen table in front of the youth. He listened as the cleric spoke, but his eyes kept shifting to the pistol on the table.

Next to Hadayet sat the man who had so excited the DIA—Walid Sourouri. A known graduate of al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan under the Taliban, Sourouri had impressed his trainers with his nondescript demeanor and language capabilities. No glorious death by suicide for this warrior. Instead he was employed to help the networks circumvent the technical superiority of Western intelligence agencies by keeping things primitively simple. Sitting at the imam’s kitchen table was the foot messenger of al Qaeda.

The third man was Raneen Ogedi, a blunt-featured man with a large reputation within the intelligence community. It was a gruesome reputation that had somehow failed to capture the attention of the news media for one reason or another. Despite this, Bolan realized he had stumbled upon a killer from the Iraqi A-list of wanted men.

Ogedi was a former cell commander of Saddam’s fedayeen, and an operator who had exploited his Syrian intelligence contacts to funnel in foreign fighters during the earlier stages of the American occupation and to later on target Iraqi consensus government Shiite officials in hopes of exacerbating a civil war. He had been a virulent Baathist until the fall of Saddam, after which he had suddenly found his Muslim faith again, most specifically its very radical and extreme fringe elements.

The man was almost never accompanied by less than a squad of Syrian-trained bodyguards, but Bolan saw no evidence of them in the kitchen. Like the youth Hadayet, Ogedi had a weapon positioned in front on him on the kitchen table. The wire-stock of the Skorpion machine pistol had been collapsed, and the automatic weapon was barely larger than a regular handgun.

The resolution on the borescope was state-of-the-art, and Bolan was able to make out several books on the table as well as the weapons. One was a copy of the Koran, another a modern arms book and the third a U.S. Army munitions manual.