The Gulf of AdenNear the southern coast of Yemen
A few hundred feet below, the water looked black, while the night sky was stained a variant shade of ebony. They were coming in low and fast. Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, peeled back the Velcro strap covering the face of his watch and checked the time: 0334. They were close to their estimated target time. Everything was proceeding well.
This mission had a bit of déjà vu and also more than a little irony. The man they were on the way to capture had been a prisoner in Guantanamo this time last year. Erroneously released as part of a prisoner exchange, the bureaucratic slip-up was suddenly discovered when Ali Sharif was purportedly observed playing an active role in a planned chemical weapons attack against Saudi Arabia. This sent the State Department scrambling to stop Sharif before the attack against the kingdom could be carried out, thus resulting in another can of worms being popped open in the volatile area. Of course, any open involvement by the United States would result in another round of histrionics at the UN, the standard condemnations of American interference, both in the US and around the world, and so forth. Thus, a key player in the Justice Department, Harold Brognola, was asked by the President to utilize his clandestine resources to make a field adjustment, and hopefully recapture or exterminate Sharif before anyone took real notice that he was back in the arena fighting his jihad.
As far as the mission objectives, recapture or extermination, Bolan was leaning toward the latter since the first attempt at intelligence gathering and reprogramming had been so successful.
Bolan needed a team for this mission, but Able Team and Phoenix Force had their own missions. As well as Jack Grimaldi, five young men, all former blacksuits based at Stony Man Farm, had been tapped to assist the Executioner: Elvan Johnson, Romeo Vargas, Dennis Washington, Frank Doerr and Terry Miller. They all had previous military experience in Iraq and had Ranger training, but not all had seen the brutal door-to-door combat of the early days of the war. And none had been on a special operation of this magnitude and complexity before.
Allegedly, no special ops teams were currently available, or were already encumbered with a crisis of their own in the area, and current intel had indicated that an attack was imminent. That was why Bolan had been called in for this one. But the Executioner had his own doubts. The bureaucratic bungling that had resulted in Ali Sharif’s premature release meant that somebody somewhere down the line would be held accountable. Or so it should be. If, however, a team could quietly recapture the errant jihadist, and he could be surreptitiously returned to his cell at Guantanamo, the whole matter could be put to rest. Like sweeping a pile of dust under the rug and pretending nobody would notice the bump. So this “reapprehension,” as Department of Defense liaison officer Kevin McCarthy had put it in their briefing aboard ship “...has to be a surgical strike conducted with the utmost care and precision due to the exigent circumstances, along with an accompanying plausible deniability factor.”
Plausible deniability, Bolan thought. Every bureaucrat’s trump card.
Failure was not an option because it never happened.
The repetitive noise of the slicing rotor blades and the cool intake of the sea air made conversation inside the Black Hawk impossible, so Bolan adjusted the fit of his ear mic and switched the frequency so he could talk exclusively to Grimaldi.
“How far, Jack?” Bolan asked.
“All the way, Striker,” Grimaldi answered, repeating the old airborne refrain with a chuckle.
Bolan allowed himself a rare smile as he waited.
Seconds later the Stony Man pilot spoke again. “We’re about three minutes out. And the last report from our limited, myopic eye-in-the-sky showed no activity.”
“Roger that,” Bolan said, amused by his partner’s pejorative description of the drone surveillance aircraft. Grimaldi considered himself a top-notch pilot for virtually any type of aircraft, but held a special disdain for the unmanned variety.
Bolan, on the other hand, had developed a healthy respect for the drones and recognized the advantages and capabilities they brought to the battlefield, not the least of which was they could provide a lot of information and firepower without a lot of risk. He’d been in enough combat situations to know that you had to grab every advantage you could get.
He switched back to the team frequency. “Three minutes. Then we’re on the ropes.”
Five heads nodded in unison. Despite the cool sea air rushing in through the open doors, Bolan could smell the adrenaline-laced sweat.
“Approaching drop point,” Grimaldi said over their radios.
Bolan moved to the edge of the door, adjusted his tight-fitting leather gloves and picked up the thick rope. The others did the same. They felt the Black Hawk cant to the left and angle downward. Outside the night sky was still black, but traces of stone buildings dotted the terrain, punctuated by the occasional winking of a light. Other than that, the remnants of the ancient city below were almost totally dark.
When the helicopter’s movement slowed to a stop, Grimaldi’s voice echoed in their earpieces once again.
“Okay, ladies, all ashore who’s going ashore.”
Bolan tossed the coiled rope through the door and followed it down.
He swiveled on the rope to give himself a better view of the target destination. It was an old fort, or rather the remnants of one from the long-lost days of British colonialism in this part of Yemen, set along the sloping embankment of one of the rising hills that overlooked the coast. Not far away, the seaport had once been one of the busiest in the world, but of late had been practically abandoned as the region continued its downward spiral. Bolan hit the uneven, rock-covered ground seconds later and assumed a prone position several feet away. The jutting rocks poked into his torso, making the position uncomfortable, but in combat, comfort was the rarest of luxuries. He heard the grunts of the others as they touched down as well, and heard the faint click of Grimaldi’s mic as the helicopter disappeared into the darkness.
Bolan did a quick equipment verification check, then glanced at his watch again and marked the time. The Stony Man pilot had enough fuel to circle for twenty minutes before heading back to the landing zone to pick them up. That meant they had to get moving. Their pinpoint placement on a slightly higher elevation gave them the initial advantage of the high ground. Taking out his night-vision goggles, he quickly surveyed the area, centering on the stone tower of the old fortress and the missing sections in the deteriorating wall that surrounded it.
The intelligence-gathering drones had provided them with comprehensive and detailed pictures of the area. But the flat, two-dimensional images didn’t provide an exact, three-dimensional perspective. He saw now that the tapering angle was sharper than he’d anticipated. It would slow them down a tad, but at least the heat and humidity had abated due to the darkness. It was still far from pleasant, however, and each of them was wearing level 4 body armor and Kevlar helmets. Bolan could already feel himself starting to sweat from only this mild exertion.
No movement was discernible. Johnson, the highest-ranking team member, crawled up next to Bolan.
“How’s it look, sir?”
Bolan
