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
