Frontier Fury. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ was the standard small-talk introduction to his latest job. He hadn’t flown across country from San Jose to Washington, then driven south from there to Stony Man, to talk about the Shenandoah scenery.

      “Okay,” Brognola said. “We may as well get to it, then.”

      But first, they had to reach the War Room, situated in the farmhouse basement, theoretically secured against direct hits with conventional munitions. That remained untested, and if all of them were lucky, it would stay that way.

      They rode the elevator down and disembarked into a corridor that led them to their destination, through a coded secure access door. Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman was waiting for them in the War Room. He was seated in the wheelchair that had kept him mobile since a bullet clipped his spinal cord, during an armed assault on Stony Man.

      Bolan shook hands with Kurtzman, then moved around the conference table to take a seat to Brognola’s left, while Barbara took the right-hand side. Kurtzman remained at the keyboard that controlled the War Room’s lights and AV apparatus for events such as the current mission briefing.

      “Akram Ben Abd al-Bari.” Brognola managed the pronunciation flawlessly, smiling grimly as he said, “You recognize the name, of course.”

      “It rings a bell,” Bolan replied.

      Brognola didn’t need to tell those present that al-Bari had been among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives since 2001, with a four million dollar price tag on his head, dead or alive. Although the names on that dishonor roll were not officially prioritized, only al-Bari’s boss—known in the trade as O.B.L.—rated a higher bounty. Both had managed to evade manhunters during the Afghanistan invasion and remained at large, with open warrants naming some four thousand murder victims from the 9/11 raids and other terrorist events dating from 1993.

      Behind Brognola, Kurtzman displayed revolving photos of al-Bari on the large screen. Like the human monster’s reputation, the images were several times larger than life-size. Bolan had seen them all before, including the grainy captures from the latest video that had been aired last month on CNN and BBC, promising hell on Earth for the American Crusaders and their lackeys.

      “Also among the missing,” Brognola announced, “Ra’id Ibn Rashad, his number two.”

      More photos appeared on the big wall-mounted screen. Rashad’s brown, bearded face was seldom seen on Western television, and while he didn’t rank among the Ten Most Wanted, he was close. One million dollars waited for the bounty hunter who could bring him in alive, or prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was dead.

      Delivering his hands would do it.

      Or his head.

      “Big fish,” Bolan said, “but they’re still not in the net—are they?”

      “No, you’re right,” Brognola said. “But now we have a good idea of where to drop our line.”

      “That sounds familiar.”

      There’d been countless leads on al-Bari, Rashad, and O.B.L. himself, over the years. One thing the tips all had in common was that none of them had panned out. Agents and mercs had died on some of those wild-goose chases. But most had simply ended in frustration, time and money wasted in pursuit of shadows.

      “Sure it does,” Brognola said. “Except…”

      Another photo came up on the screen. This one revealed al-Bari and Rashad in conversation, over plates of food Bolan couldn’t identify. The angle of the shot made him suspect it had been snapped clandestinely.

      “That’s new?” he asked.

      “Taken ten days ago,” Brognola said.

      “Location?”

      “Somewhere in Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. We don’t have exact coordinates.”

      That stood to reason. If the Pentagon could put their finger on al-Bari and Rashad, they likely would have plastered him with smart bombs and cruise missiles, then apologized to the Islamabad authorities at leisure—if at all.

      Bolan could see where this was going.

      “Someone has to go in and confirm it,” he said, not asking.

      “Right. And take whatever action may be feasible, once confirmation is achieved.”

      “Presumably with someone who can speak the language.”

      “Absolutely,” Brognola agreed.

      “Okay,” Bolan said. “Let me hear the rest of it.”

      THE REMAINING DETAILS were quickly delivered. “Someone” had located al-Bari’s hidey-hole in northwest Pakistan, where he shared lodgings with Rashad and other members of al Qaeda. Some of them were only passing through—dodging pursuers, picking up their orders or delivering reports—but there appeared to be a constant staff of four or five top aides in residence, plus bodyguards.

      How many guards?

      No one could say, with any certainty.

      After the briefing, Bolan went up to his usual room. Brognola, or someone acting on his orders, had prepared a CD-ROM containing biographical material on Bolan’s two main targets and his Pakistani contact, plus a summary of known al Qaeda actions since the group was organized in 1988. Born out of battle with the Soviets in Afghanistan, al Qaeda—“The Base,” in Arabic—was a fluid band of Sunni Muslim militants, founded by one Abdullah Yusuf Azzam. A bomb blast killed Azzam and his two sons a year later, in November 1989, outside a mosque in Peshawar. Suspects named in different media reports included the Mossad, the CIA, and O.B.L. himself. Officially, the case remained unsolved.

      The rest was history. With O.B.L. in charge, warriors of al Qaeda rolled on to murder thousands, from New York and Washington to London and Madrid, Djerba and Casablanca, Istanbul and Aden, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, Jakarta and Bali. The world was their battleground. Their stated goals: destruction of Israel, eradication of all foreign influence from Muslim nations, and establishment of a new Islamic caliphate.

      In practice, that meant killing anyone who disagreed with them on any point of doctrine, or who was perceived to aid the group’s enemies. Bolan had faced al Qaeda members in the past and managed to survive, but this would be his first crack at the group’s top-level leadership.

      Which brought him to the men themselves.

      According to Brognola’s file, Akram Ben Abd al-Bari had been born in Cairo, in September 1951. His father was a pharmacist and teacher, from a long line of physicians and scholars active in radical politics. Al-Bari joined the Muslim Brotherhood at age fourteen, went on to study medicine and served in the Egyptian army as a surgeon, married and had two daughters. By 1980 he was rising through the ranks of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which merged with al Qaeda in 1998. Three years later, when American smart bombs leveled Taliban headquarters at Gardez, Afghanistan, al-Bari’s wife and daughters died in the rubble.

      Al-Bari escaped and channeled his grief into rage.

      Ra’id Ibn Rashad was another Egyptian, younger than al-Bari. Conflicting CIA reports claimed he was born in April 1960 or November 1963, but neither date was relevant to Bolan. Rashad was a suspect in the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president СКАЧАТЬ