Armed Response. Don Pendleton

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      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 СКАЧАТЬ