Righteous Fear

In Price’s eyes, violence was violence, and terrorism was her enemy. Seeing an acquaintance of Mack Bolan’s pop up on the lookout search engine was interesting, especially in regard to a forced birth extremism event.

Suspect attempted suicide. Deceased after taking lawman’s weapon and stopped by officer in police station.

Price grimaced as she took in the additional details. Blue suicide was not unusual, but the suspect had already shot himself through the jaw.

She took her hand, extended her index finger to form a gun and pressed it under her chin. There was no way that someone who wasn’t in a struggle could miss a major portion of their brain with a gunshot.

The second lookout alert was swiftly followed by a third.

She opened the second, an FBI surveillance tap on a suspected terrorist cell operating in the American south. Mobile, Alabama. Where Dr. Hassan’s incident occurred. A suspected terrorist was calling someone within the cell.

The readout said the two in communication were Hadib Asada and Krahiat Majnuna. Audio played from the clip.

Asada: “Remember the doctor bitch from Helmand? The one who ran the hospital for the refugee camp?”

Majnuna: “Dr. Annis Hassan. Yes, I do.”

Asada: “She is here. In Mobile. She walked into my store.”

Majnuna: “Here? Doing what?”

Asada: “Doctor shit, I suppose. She was bloody, and in scrubs.”

Majnuna: “Accursed witch... She should be dead already. We suffered grievous defeat.”

Asada: “We did. And we now have the opportunity to strike her down. It is our duty.”

Majnuna: “I want her dead more than anything. But can we accomplish this without ruining our cover?”

Price suppressed a snort of derision. They had no cover.

Asada: “We can do it without getting our faces on television.”

A moment of silence.

Majnuna: “We will gather the others.”

The phone line went dead.

Price blinked.

After an attack on a woman’s health clinic by a forced birth extremist, and mostly likely while on the way home from the police station, given the timing, Annis Hassan had incurred the wrath of Islamic fighters who’d been working alongside the Taliban.

It wasn’t much of a surprise to Price that foreign Arabs were the spine of a pro-Taliban movement.

Afghanistan, after its battle with the Soviet Union, had needed fighters and disenfranchised young men from Saudi Arabia had headed east to seek their combat glory. When the United States targeted the Taliban for their support of al Qaeda, even more Arabs had found a new crusade to battle against.

The average American thought that it was the Afghan people who’d founded the terrorist movement known as the Taliban, but in truth, the clerics who ran Afghanistan were a foreign occupational government. More commonly, it was the Afghan people who’d been robbed, executed, their children kidnapped for political indoctrination as child soldiers.

“Doc, you have to be one of the unluckiest women in the world,” Price said softly.

The third alert was from the FBI. They were in the midst of a search of Dr. Hassan’s background. The mission controller was tempted to help them look into the doctor to dismiss their concerns about her involvement with terrorism.

The Bureau’s background check for Hassan received an update. It had been terminated.

Price looked at the tag for the termination. She knew the codes, and it turned out to be shut down because it would interfere with an “ongoing undercover operation.”

Asada or Majnuna were either undercover operatives, confidential informants or something bigger. She’d need the Stony Man cybercrew to figure out which. This could even have been peripheral to a larger operation. Either way, someone at the FBI had decided to throw Dr. Hassan to the wolves.

She opened up an encrypted message window to the one man who could save Dr. Hassan from the pack of killers.

Striker. Sending surveillance logs regarding Dr. Annis Hassan. Under threat from FBE and radical Islamists.

Around the world, the communication app would find Mack Bolan and clue him in to threats that only he could respond to—or would respond to. If the American antiterrorism community decided that intel was more important than the life of a doctor helping American citizens, then the warrior would take up the challenge.

Minutes later, a response popped up.

Mobile, Alabama. Four hours out, as the Huracan flies.

Price blinked. There were no weather alerts for the Gulf of Mexico. When she realized Bolan hadn’t written “hurricane,” she knew he must be referring to a Lamborghini Huracan LP-610. It also told her that the Executioner had hit a very rich criminal somewhere along the lower East Coast or Gulf Coast. Considering the exotic nature of the sports car, and the fact that it could break 200 miles an hour easily, Price placed the man and the vehicle in Miami or its environs.

White supremacists and Islamist radicals. Seems like Dr. Hassan not only can’t escape the one but proved a lightning rod to the other.

Bolan was quick to respond.

You’ve seen these ideologies work together before. The only real difference is what they name their gods.

Gods twisted by their own personal prejudices.

Want any help?

I’ll recon scene first. Will send aid request if needed.

Will do.

Somewhere, out in the night, a dragon slayer rode a mighty Italian steed flat-out to save a maiden in distress.

Price wished him luck.

Mack Bolan worked the gears, flowing with the tach as it rose to the red line. He sat just in front of 317 cubic inches of V10 might. In the heyday of American muscle cars, the V8—four cylinders on each side of an engine—was the epitome of power and speed. The V10 increased that count by 125 percent, and in the Lamborghini Huracan, it produced double the horsepower of the biggest 7-liter Hemi or Cobra Jet.

Given his druthers, Bolan would have preferred a Dodge Hellcat, or the newer Demon, mainly because either wouldn’t have stood out as much as the Lamborghini. The Challenger would have had a back seat as well as a roomy trunk for more battle gear. The drug dealer he had just taken down hadn’t had that kind of aesthetic, however.

Bolan didn’t mind. The Italian supercar went fine with his Italian custom machine pistol, the Beretta 93-R. He wore it in a shoulder holster, balanced out by a pair of 20-round magazines. The gun belt with a tie-down holster for his Desert Eagle sat on the other bucket seat. Three extra magazines of .44 Magnum rounds in hip pouches—plus one round up the pipe—gave him thirty-three shots that could reach out to two hundred yards to tag an enemy. The gun belt and its contents were hidden beneath a light windbreaker, so as not to arouse any suspicion if he were pulled over by a state trooper.

Bolan wore his Beretta and shoulder rig under a loose-fitting Hawaiian shirt. Lead washers had been sewn into the placket of the shirt, so a breeze would not inadvertently disclose his armed status.

He had more clothing in the trunk of the Huracan, including his blacksuit, a piece of high-tech fabric that made him harder to see in the shadows and provided protection from both heat and cold. The heat protection extended to fire; flame-proof Nomex. The midnight-dark suit had seen material upgrades across his career, but it had maintained the same attributes all around—no snag, low-profile pockets with plenty of storage, and elasticity for plenty range of motion. It was like his second skin, and it made him look leaner, meaner, far more intimidating.

Along with the blacksuit, the trunk held a load-bearing vest festooned with munitions and tools for infiltration, sabotage and destruction. Under that, in a Pelican gun case, were two long guns. One was a Brügger & Thomet MP-9, 20.6 inches long unfolded, lightweight, with a sturdy folding stock. It could spit out 9 mm Parabellum rounds at 900 rounds per minute. Once folded, the weapon was a mere 11.9 inches long, able to be secreted in a shoulder holster like his Beretta 93-R. It even shared the forward pistol grip, though it didn’t fold like the Beretta’s.

The other was a Fabrique Nationale SCAR-L. It was a rifle designed to replace the M-4 carbine for the US Army. Unlike the M-4, the SCAR-L could fold its stock, making it easier to store while still providing firm shoulder support for accurate fire. Folded, it was slightly more than two feet long, which fit inside the Huracan’s trunk readily. Even with the stock extended, it was under three feet, handy and quick in combat.

Bolan looked at the phone resting in its cradle on the supercar’s dashboard. Not only did it have a GPS, thanks to the technology and algorithm programming of Stony Man Farm, it had a map of all the speed traps between his current position and Mobile, Alabama. As it was late at night, there was very little traffic to contend with, and the highway stretched long and clear ahead of him.

A fraction over seven hundred miles was about ten hours doing the speed limit. Even 110 miles an hour wasn’t a stress on the Lamborghini’s engine. Bolan revved it up to 150 miles an hour on the straightaways. He’d only had to stop for gas three times, but by the time the sun cracked the horizon behind him, Bolan was just a few miles outside of Mobile.

He took a sip from a thermos full of coffee. Now just after dawn, he was doing 55 on the interstate.

Earlier, he’d reserved a motel room using the smartphone on the Lamborghini’s dash. He pulled into the lot and parked. He caught a weary, curious glance from an old man sweeping the sidewalk.

“Nice car,” the elderly man told him.

“Thanks. It’s borrowed, though,” Bolan answered. “I needed a quick ride.”

“Where’s the fire?” the old man asked.

Bolan paused for a moment then replied, “The Foster Portman Women’s Health Center.”

He nodded. “Yeah, there’s been trouble. Heard about that on the news.”

“Heard anything else?” Bolan asked.

“If I did, I’d tell ya, son. You look like you could put out a few fires here.”

“Yeah?” Bolan said.

The old man grinned. “Yeah. You must be the guy who phoned ahead with that motel app.”

“I must be,” Bolan returned.

“I’ll get you the key,” he told the Executioner. “Nice thing about those programs, you can pay by credit card right on the phone.”

“Makes cross-country travel easier,” Bolan admitted.

The old man smirked. “Y’all look like a rambling man.” He ducked into the office.

Bolan left his Pelican case in the Lamborghini, but did take out his more conventional luggage before the man could see the weapons bag. The clerk came back and underhand lobbed the room key to Bolan. “I’ve been known to wander.”

“Thanks, Mr. Cooper,” the clerk said. “I’m Joseph. I’m the one who keeps the odd hours running this place. Jessica works mornings and Baxter does afternoon to evening.”

“Thanks,” Bolan said. He offered Joseph a handshake. The older man smiled and gripped the Executioner’s hand firmly.

“Just so you know, Mel’s Diner is the one with the best coffee and bacon and eggs. It looks greasy, but it’s cheap, it’s good, and what it doesn’t put into decoration, it makes up for with good food. And the health inspector doesn’t need bribes from the owner.”

“Thanks.”

“Mel’s also has the best gossip, if you sit for a bit.”

Bolan nodded and gave a slight salute to the clerk before heading to his room.

Right now, it was time to unpack and organize.

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