okay, Striker?”
Bolan nodded. “Yeah. I just caught a little whiff of that fog.”
“We better get you checked out.”
“I’ll be fine,” Bolan insisted. He was blinking harder now, however, and his eyes were reddening. Yet another cough shook through him.
“Fine, my ass.” Kissinger turned to the man next to him. “Rocky, grab that med kit and help him out.”
Although his nickname conjured up images of some towering brute straight out of the boxing ring, Raki Mochtar was, in fact, six inches shorter than either Bolan or Kissinger and weighed barely 150 pounds in full uniform. This was his first field assignment for Stony Man after two years of service with the Farm’s Virginia security detail. He’d had medical training during his stint with the Marines, but it was his family background that had earned him this, his long-sought chance to see action beyond the parameters of the Farm’s compound in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The grandson of Jakarta shopkeepers killed during a demonstration against Sukarno in the late l960s, Mochtar had visited Indonesia numerous times over the past twenty years and was as familiar with the country’s various languages and dialects as he was with its geography and culture. When asked to fly out and rendezvous with Bolan and the other covert ops in Samarinda, the thirty-year-old Mochtar jumped at the opportunity. And now, less than two hours later, here he was in the thick of things. He was eager to make the most of it.
“I’ll see what’s here,” he told Bolan, unlatching a large footlocker strapped to the cabin floor, “but if you’ve been exposed, you really need to go through a full decontamination. There’s probably a setup at the storage site, so—”
“Decon’s going to have to wait,” Bolan interrupted. “We’re in the middle of a firefight here, dammit!”
“But I’m telling you,” Mochtar persisted, “in a case of exposure, it’s vital to make sure you’ve washed off any traces of contaminants before they have a chance to work their way into—”
“Here,” Bolan interjected again, coughing as he reached past the younger soldier for a pair of surgical scissors and an intravenous bag filled with saline solution. “Let’s improvise, all right?”
Bolan shouted for Grimaldi to hold the chopper steady, then slit the top of the IV bag. Holding it high over his head, he craned his neck and quickly spilled the entire contents over his face. The saline stung his eyes but brought immediate relief. He coughed again, then cast the bag aside and told Mochtar, “Now grab some kind of antiseptic and pour it over my hands.”
Mochtar fumbled through the footlocker and uncapped a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. Not wanting another reprimand, he fought back an urge to tell Bolan he ought to get out of his HAZMAT suit. Instead, he followed orders and drained the bottle as Bolan rubbed his hands in its flow.
Once he was finished, Bolan grabbed a roll of gauze. As he wiped his hands dry, he told Mochtar, “I didn’t mean to chew you out like that.”
“Not a problem,” Mochtar said. He reached into the footlocker once more, then handed Bolan a small oxygen canister rigged to a lower face mask. “This might help with that cough.”
Bolan grinned at Mochtar. “You catch on fast.”
“I’m trying,” the rookie replied. “You were right. I guess at times like this you can’t worry about going by the book.”
Bolan pressed the mask to his face and opened the canister’s feed line. He was filling his lungs with pure oxygen when the cabin resonated with the staccato blasting of Kissinger’s M-16. Grimaldi had pulled up over the mountain and Kissinger was firing at snipers perched high above the roadway.
The Executioner moved closer to the open doorway and glanced over Kissinger’s shoulder. He saw two snipers wearing the long white robes that were a trademark for the Lashkar Jihad, ducking for cover among the rocks. They were under fire not only from Kissinger, but also from the other Black Hawk. At the base of the mountain, clouds of black smoke snaked up from the bombed-out remains of the Bio-Tain delivery truck’s front cab, while ruptured containers in the rear hold continued to release clouds of toxic vapor. A handful of bodies were scattered about the roadway near the truck, some felled by the gas, others during the exchange of gunfire. Sergeant Latek and another KOPASSUS commando were crouched near a remaining section of guardrail, flanking Major Salim. Latek was firing into the mountains while the other attended to their fallen commander. Apparently Salim was still alive.
Bolan impatiently tossed aside the oxygen mask and shouted to Grimaldi, “Put her down over there by the railing.”
“Will do,” Grimaldi shouted back.
Bolan turned to Mochtar. “We’ll be upwind from whatever’s seeping out of that truck. You think we can skip the gas masks?”
Mochtar stared down at the roadway, then told Bolan, “At this elevation the wind’s always shifting. Besides, to get to Salim we’ve got to go around the truck.”
“Masks then, you’re saying.”
“Full suits would be even smarter,” Mochtar said. “And you should put on a fresh one.”
“I had a feeling you were going to say that.”
There were several unused HAZMAT suits stored in sealed packets behind the footlocker. Mochtar handed one to Bolan, telling him, “Put the gloves on before you change so you don’t recontaminate yourself.”
As he changed, Bolan asked Mochtar, “You seen combat before, Rock?”
Mochtar shook his head. “Just training exercises,” he confessed. “I’m ready, though.”
“Good,” Bolan said, “’cause if they nail you, there’s no playing dead. It’ll be the real deal.”
Mochtar finished transferring a few first-aid items into a fanny pack, then strapped the pack around his waist. “I’m ready,” he repeated.
“Then let’s do it,” Bolan said.
CHAPTER SIX
Once he’d set the Black Hawk down on the tarmac, Grimaldi left the turboshafts running and remained at the controls.
“Go get ’em, guys!” he called out to the others.
“I’ll sit tight as long as I can.”
Bolan suppressed a cough, crouched before the side door of the cabin, then leaped to the roadway, rifle in hand. Mochtar was right behind him. Kissinger dropped to the ground last, carrying a lightweight collapsible stretcher along with his assault rifle.
Almost immediately they were greeted by a hail of gunfire from overhead. The men quickly dropped and rolled to the cover of several large boulders crowding the road’s shoulder.
“Nothing like a little rain on the parade to spoil a guy’s day,” Kissinger groused.
Bolan replied, “Yeah, well, at least there’s a way to stop this kind of rain.”
He raised his rifle to his shoulder and scanned the mountainside until he had
