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CHAPTER TWO

Above Southern Yemen

Loadmaster Terrence Smith almost tumbled from the ladder as he emerged from the flight deck of the Lockheed Martin C130J Hercules C5. He caught himself in time and slid down the ladder into the main cargo hold of the massive aircraft. The noise of the four turboprop Rolls-Royce Allison engines was overwhelming, and he was thankful for his military-grade ear mufflers. The aircraft was currently at fifteen thousand feet, making three hundred knots. That would be changing very shortly. They were about to make their approach to Aden International Airport.

Smith squeezed past pallets of rice, tents and other humanitarian aid, all destined for the Horn of Africa and parts of Yemen. The drought covered vast areas of Africa. Great Britain, along with many other nations, had flown in extraordinary amounts of emergency supplies using a squadron of semiretired Royal Air Force—RAF—transport planes. Aden was often used as a staging point for the aid, where the pallets would be split up and redistributed to various agencies. It was a routine flight. Everything was normal and on schedule.

Almost everything.

There was one anomaly.

The Hercules had a mysterious passenger, a last-minute addition during the refuel in Naples. The orders were specific. The man didn’t exist. He was never on the aircraft, and Smith was not allowed to remember him. He didn’t know who the passenger was or even what nationality he might be, but Smith knew enough to know what the man represented. Special Forces. His ice-blue eyes made Smith shiver. Even from several yards away, the stranger emitted a presence that spelled danger.

The man looked up, pinning Smith to the spot with his gaze. It was impossible to hear anything over the thunder of the engines, yet the commando had heard Smith approach. In the ten minutes that Smith had been away from him, the unknown soldier had applied combat cosmetics to his hands and face; he had also changed into a pure black jumpsuit. The man removed his gaze from the loadmaster and resumed preparing himself. A parachute was already strapped to his back, and a long black gear bag was lying next to his feet. Smith decided this was one guy he wouldn’t want to encounter in a dark alley, even if he was a friendly.

“Two minutes to the drop zone. You had better get ready.” Smith had to yell in the man’s ear to be heard.

The soldier merely nodded. Smith watched as the man ran his hands over the buckles and straps of his parachute harness, leaving nothing to chance. Together the two men walked over the vibrating deck to the side cargo door. The jump light was still red, but that would change within the next minute. The man secured himself to the aircraft frame to prevent himself from falling out. There was no need to worry about decompression or specialist breathing equipment, as they were not flying high enough. He reached out and pushed a button on a control panel and plunged the cargo hold into darkness.

Smith heard him punch another button. There was a hiss and a thunk as the side door opened. The noise level increased tenfold. The freezing night air rushed in, whipping around them.

Twenty seconds more.

Loadmaster Smith reached out and grabbed a metal strut for extra support. He disliked parachute jumps and being a parachute dispatcher. The height didn’t bother him. The sensation of falling did. But serving in the RAF meant standard parachute training, and he had managed to conquer his fears. The old anxiety, though, was always there.

Ten seconds.

Smith was glad that he was not jumping this night. A nighttime parachute jump was a terrifying experience for those who had never attempted it. A nighttime jump over the desert would only increase the tension. On a moonlit night the sand would appear as water, giving a false illusion as to exactly how high the jumper was, making him misjudge his landing and break limbs on impact. However, for a highly experienced soldier, one equipped with all the latest gadgets, it should be a walk in the park. And he could tell that the stranger was no novice.

Zero seconds.

The jump light changed from red to green.

The stranger exited the aircraft.

In a blink the man was gone, leaving only empty space and howling wind behind him. Smith didn’t bother peering out into the void. There was no point. The soldier would already be lost to sight.

Smith pushed another button that closed the door. He shivered in the cold. The aircraft’s interior lights came back on. He released his safety belt and walked toward the flight deck to report that the passenger had departed. The big man in black, whoever he was, was off to war.

And Smith wished him well.

* * *

PITCH BLACK.

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, plunged through the night on the latest mission of his War Everlasting. The noise from the Hercules was already lost, replaced by the sound of cold air roaring past his head, his suit and gloves keeping his body reasonably warm in the ice-cold air. Bolan didn’t bother trying to locate the aircraft, concentrating instead on his trajectory in what was called military free fall. He lay horizontal to the earth, chest out, back arched, steering with his outstretched hands. His gear bag was tight between his knees. The parachute, a standard MT1-XS fitted with an automatic opening device, had been borrowed from a US Navy SEALs unit that was on exercise in southern Italy. The parachute would automatically open at three thousand feet, giving Bolan plenty of time to glide the canopy to his designated landing zone. The parachute, like everything else on this mission, had been hastily arranged. The target was just too important for Bolan to be allowed to slip away.

The target was one Zaid abu Qutaiba. Bolan’s mind quickly ran through the known facts and conjectures as he plummeted to the ground. Qutaiba had been on

Stony Man’s most-wanted list for some time. At one time the man had been a captain in the Iraqi Republican Guard. Now he claimed responsibility for the destruction of an embassy in Kenya, the attempted shooting down of a US commercial aircraft and several assassinations of liberal politicians in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. It was also believed that he was behind several car bomb attacks in Israel.

These atrocities were more than enough to bring him to the attention of the antiterrorist unit at Stony Man Farm.

Qutaiba had been spotted before, not only by Stony Man but also by several key law-enforcement agencies around the world. Yet Qutaiba had managed to avoid capture through the use of disguises and false names, despite all the technology and all the human resources brought to bear. The report had come in less than twelve hours earlier from the CIA. An agent had followed Qutaiba and his entourage to an abandoned village that was probably being used as a transit point on the southern shores of Yemen. The window of opportunity was slim. Bolan had been in Italy at the time, accepting a mission to free a hostage, a mission that was scrubbed by the time he arrived, the hostage already freed by the Carabinieri. So he was hastily pressed into a new operation and was now jumping out of an aircraft at ten thousand feet.

The mission was simple.

Locate the terrorist transit camp.

Identify Qutaiba.

Termination with extreme prejudice by drone strike.

Although Mack Bolan carried enough firepower to take on a small army, his task this time was one of pure surveillance: make sure that it really was Qutaiba, then contact the Farm. They in turn would relay the message to the Pentagon, who in turn would contact the pilot of a remote drone that was orbiting high overhead. The White House had made it clear to all parties involved. No mistakes. No civilian casualties. Make sure it really was a terrorist camp. Make sure that Qutaiba was at the location. Then and only then would the order be given to destroy the terrorists. All of this would require boots on the ground, and those boots belonged to the Executioner.

Bolan had to give the terrorists credit. Not a light showed anywhere. The camp was under observation from an orbiting Keyhole KH-12 satellite, which would be using infrared and thermal imaging. It would show the observers back home how many warm bodies there were.

Crack!

The unexpected noise came from behind the soldier. He turned his head quickly to witness the black canopy opening, then checked the altimeter on his right wrist.

The parachute was deploying too early.

The automatic activation device fitted to the chute had to have been faulty. Bolan hadn’t had the time to thoroughly check all of the equipment himself, and when he had preset the required height, he hadn’t noticed anything unusual.

An invisible hand grabbed Bolan by his neck and jerked him into an upright position, his head snapping backward. His hands flew automatically to the risers, which would enable him to have some semblance of control over his descent. They were not there, and his terminal velocity had not significantly decreased.

Bolan looked up and cursed. The black parachute, all 370 square feet of it, had collapsed and become entangled on itself.

Bolan plummeted toward the ground completely out of control.

He had only seconds to react. The gear bag had slipped from between his knees and was now hanging by its quick-release cord. The weight of the equipment in it was causing him to gyroscope, spinning him to the left in ever-quickening circles. Soon it would be impossible to maneuver. The centrifugal forces would prevent him from moving his arms. He forced his right hand slowly down to his belt, fighting the gravitational force. He fumbled for several seconds, unable to locate the emergency-release cord.

Suddenly it was in his hand and he tugged hard. Immediately the gear bag dropped away, disappearing into the darkness. With the loss of ballast, Bolan began to spin slightly slower. His fingers were throbbing, his head felt as if it were about to pop from the blood being forced into his extremities. Gritting his teeth, he found the emergency release for the parachute with his left hand and depressed it.

There was a snap as the faulty parachute let loose.

Bolan was once again in free fall.

Instinct told him that his time was almost up. He curled in a ball, rolled over and threw his limbs out in a star formation. He pushed aggressively down with his right arm and leg, and the spin quickly was brought to a halt. Reaching down, he tugged on the cord for the reserve chute.

Once again there was a crack, and Bolan was grabbed from behind into an upright position. Above him the black canopy of the reserve chute opened to the familiar rectangular shape, its 270 square feet fully spread. Bolan’s unchecked descent slowed.

He reached for the risers and checked his altimeter.

He was a mere two hundred feet above the ground. Swiftly he pulled them to further slacken his speed and braced for impact. He began running as he landed on the soft sand, which absorbed the shock. His left foot went out from under him, and he fell down the side of a dune, dragging the parachute with him. Bolan rolled several times before coming to a stop. He was now wrapped up in the collapsed parachute.

Could anything else go wrong?

Bolan released the straps and cut through the cords and material with his Cold Steel Tanto fighting knife. Once free he quickly crawled away from the landing site, all the time listening for sounds that somebody had spotted his parachute, that they were coming to investigate.

There was no movement. The desert was silent.

Stony Man Farm, Virginia

BARBARA PRICE, mission controller at Stony Man Farm, felt her heart thud as she watched the thermal image of Bolan falling out of control on one of the digital screens in the Computer Room. She and Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, head of the Farm’s cyberteam, quickly surmised that there was a problem when Bolan’s body began to windmill. What exactly was happening was impossible to say. They couldn’t see what the situation was with the parachute or the gear bag. But for several long seconds they watched as Bolan plunged through the sky.

“How high is he?” Price asked Kurtzman, a slight tremor in her voice.

“Not high enough” was the muted reply.

“What went wrong?”

“I have no idea.”

They could only observe the imminent death of the Executioner, a man they had known, admired and supported through the years, a man who was Price’s occasional lover.

It was a huge relief when they saw the falling man resume a normal position in the air, then suddenly slow. They watched as the figure rolled and tumbled on the ground. He was down and very much alive.

Kurtzman turned back to his computer, tapping at the keys. After several seconds he looked up at Price, his expression grave.

“There is a slight problem.”

Price looked away from the screen, shifting her focus to her friend and colleague. “What?”

“Striker is here,” he said, pointing at the main screen, “but his equipment, including the transmission gear, is here.” The image on the main screen zoomed out. “He must have dropped it when he lost control during the free fall. The problem is these two guys.” On the screen they could clearly see two shapes advancing toward the gear bag. The bag contained not only Bolan’s long-range weapons but also the transmission equipment needed to contact base. The two men were believed to be a foot patrol, one of several that monitored the area.

“When they open it and find the guns, they’ll run all the way back home and show their treasure to the boss. If it is Qutaiba, then he’ll disappear, and a hunting party will be looking for Striker.”

“And there’s no way we can contact Striker to have him intercept the patrol.”

“No way at all,” Kurtzman confirmed.

“Inform our contact in Yemen that there’s a problem. See what assistance he can offer,” Price ordered.

Kurtzman nodded and immediately got to work.

Southern Yemen

MACK BOLAN STAYED at the landing site for ten minutes, waiting, watching, ignoring the cold night air. Nobody came. He had quickly regained his breath; he had hundreds of hours of experience with parachute jumps and had been extensively trained in what to do when things went wrong, but even so, an uncontrolled free fall was something to be avoided. It wasn’t his first bad experience during a jump, and most likely it wouldn’t be his last.

His biggest worry now was the loss of his specialist weapons and equipment. The electronics would be smashed, the guns damaged beyond use. He was now only armed with two pistols, a .50-caliber Desert Eagle and a Beretta 93-R, with its custom sound suppressor. Two hand grenades hung from his combat webbing. He also had a garrote, the knife he cut the chute with, a small map and compass, a tiny flashlight and two hundred US dollars along with several spare magazines of ammunition in various pouches and pockets. Everything else was gone.

Bolan considered the situation for a moment. The mission objectives hadn’t really changed. He would be able to find the terrorist camp from the map; he would still be able to locate and identify Qutaiba. The only difference was his inability to communicate with the Farm. They would in all likelihood still have him under observation via the drone. If he could find a way to signal them, then the mission was still a go. And if he was unable to do so, then he would find a way to remove Qutaiba himself. Then get out of Dodge, avoid the Yemeni army should they show up, rendezvous with the contact and leave Yemen as fast as possible.

Yes, the mission was definitely still a go.

A thousand things could yet go wrong. The drone might have been called off. The powers that be might decide to fire the drone’s Hellfire missiles despite Bolan being unable to report in. His main parachute might be discovered, alerting the terrorists. And who knew where his gear bag had landed. The mission could go to hell in an instant, but the soldier had been in tight spots before and knew exactly how to get out of them. This time would be no different.

Bolan buried his reserve parachute in a shallow hole that he dug with his bare hands. The warm jumpsuit joined the chute in its grave, unlikely to be seen ever again. Now dressed in his combat blacksuit, he quickly checked his weaponry for damage and for sand blockage, before withdrawing the map and compass. Using the miniature flashlight, he roughly worked out his position. Returning the navigation equipment to a pouch on his combat webbing, he straightened and started a slow jog across the loose sand in what he believed to be the correct direction.

The Executioner had a date with a terrorist.