Iraqi dictator reached up and tapped the button that shut down his computer. Then he sat back in his chair and found himself chuckling again.
The people of the United States were the smuggest human beings in the world, in his opinion. They would find that they were not as prepared to take over Iraq as they thought. He would disappear for the duration of the war—which would not last long, due to the Americans’ impatience. And when they had left again he would reemerge stronger than ever.
The hunted dictator’s chuckling became full-blown laughter. His plan was perfect.
What could possibly go wrong?
1
Mack Bolan had known it would be only a matter of time.
After all, what softer target could Islamic terrorists find than small, unguarded Christian churches?
The flutter of the helicopter blades above his head did little to drown out the gunfire Bolan heard below as Jack Grimaldi, Stony Man Farm’s top pilot, paused the chopper in midair above the tiny Catholic church standing out strangely in the middle-income residential area. Bolan recalled what he’d been told during the short helicopter “hop” from Chicago to Detroit.
The Catholic chapel had been built with money, and on a vacant lot, donated by an elderly retired schoolteacher who had never married. Having no heirs, she had passed on what little there was of her estate to the Church, with the request that the chapel be built in the medieval style reminiscent of many small Catholic churches in Europe. Her specifications had been followed to the letter, according to Stony Man Farm’s source of information, and Bolan was slightly surprised that the city had been willing to rezone the lot for the unusual building.
Looking down through the windshield of the whirlybird, Bolan counted an even dozen armed men hiding behind statues of saints and firing AK-47s. Others had entered the chapel and were shooting through broken stained glass windows.
They all appeared to be on the ground floor of the three-story building.
Atop the church, however, one side of the cross mounted on the steeple had been shot away. The sight caused Bolan, also known as the Executioner, to frown. Detroit Police cars and a pair of SWAT vans encircled the building. While some of the officers spoke into handheld walkie-talkies and cell phones, most were too busy returning fire toward the church. But surely none of them were such poor marksman that they had missed their targets by two stories.
“Bring her down another twenty feet or so, Jack,” Bolan told his pilot and longtime friend. “If I’m going into this gunfight I’d just as soon not start it with a broken leg.”
“You got it, big guy,” Grimaldi said, and reached for the control panel in front of him. Seconds later the helicopter began to drop through the air like a well-controlled butterfly. As they descended, Bolan saw the reason for the shot that had hit the cross on the steeple.
It had not been poor marksmanship. From this new vantage point, he could see that two of the terrorists had climbed all the way to the roof. Rather than blasting away with assault weapons, they were taking their time with bolt-action sniper rifles.
Bolan considered landing the chopper on the flat area of the church’s roof. So far, the enemies below hadn’t taken much interest in the helicopter. The cops, of course, wouldn’t shoot at him or Grimaldi. And the terrorists had probably surmised that the unmarked aircraft was from a news channel. They wouldn’t shoot, at least not until Bolan tipped his hand as an enemy combatant. Like all terrorists, they wanted all the news coverage they could get.
“Hold it here,” the Executioner said as he strapped the bungee cord harness around his shoulders, waist, and up between his thighs. The sharp cracks of rifle fire were becoming even louder. As Grimaldi continued to hover over the church, Bolan reached into one of the pockets of his stretchy, skintight black battle suit—known simply as a blacksuit—and pulled out his satellite phone. A moment later, he had tapped in the number to Stony Man Farm, the top-secret counterterrorist organization with which he maintained an “arm’s length” working relationship.
At one point in his career, he had been the Farm’s top agent. But Bolan was by nature a loner. And he had returned to his one-man war against evil in all its forms, while remaining on professional and friendly terms with Stony Man Farm.
The telephone call bounced off several satellites, via phony phone numbers, before reaching its destination. The few seconds that took were well worth it when weighed against the possibility of a criminal or terrorist group intercepting the call. In addition, every word Bolan spoke into the phone, and every word spoken to him, would be scrambled beyond recognition to anyone who might have stumbled across the frequency.
Barbara Price, Stony Man Farm’s chief mission controller, picked up the receiver. “Hello, Striker,” she said, using the Executioner’s mission code name. “Ten-twenty?”
“Hovering over the steeple right now,” Bolan replied. “Getting ready to jump out to the end of this rubber band and engage in a little target practice.” He paused, taking in a deep breath. “The only reason I called is to make sure word got to the cops that I’m on their side.”
“That’s been affirmed,” Price said. “The local law enforcement forces are expecting a Fed to come falling from the sky.”
“Good,” Bolan said. “I just told Jack I didn’t want to start this fight with a broken leg. I’m not too crazy about bouncing around on this bungee, either, while the cops below fill me with lead, like some monkey on a string.”
“They won’t,” Price assured him. “If you get shot, it’ll be by the bad guys.”
Bolan chuckled softly. “That’s a great consolation,” he said with only a trace of sarcasm. “And we’re sure the guys who’ve taken over the church are Hezbollah?” he added.
“Ninety-nine percent,” Price replied. “That’s what the informant was told, anyway.”
For a brief moment, Bolan thought of the unusual set of circumstances that had brought him from the aftermath of an assault on the Chicago Mafia to Detroit. He had barely fired his final shot, ending the life and criminal career of the Windy City’s godfather, when his satellite phone had vibrated, alerting him that there was trouble in Detroit and that Grimaldi would meet him at the airport in a helicopter. Hal Brognola, the director of sensitive operations at Stony Man Farm, had told him that a Catholic chapel in Detroit was under attack. The informant had said it was the work of Hezbollah—the terrorist group of which the man had once been a member.
The informant was a member no longer. He had been converted to Christianity by the Arabic-speaking priest of the chapel, and the terrorist group presently had a multimillion dollar contract out on his life. But he had not left Hezbollah before learning that they’d planned to place a bomb inside the chapel. And that they were going in heavy—with firepower—just in case they got caught during the act.
Which they had.
The new Arabic Christian had revealed this information during a confession to the priest, and since the crime had not yet taken place, and stood a chance of being prevented, Father Patrick O’Melton was not bound by the confidentiality code between clergyman and confessor. A former U.S. Army Ranger who had served his country during the First Gulf War, O’Melton had wasted no time contacting the authorities.
Bolan slid the single-point sling of
