Death Run

Bolan lay immobile until the Saudis began to kick at him, gently prodding him at first, but getting progressively harder.

“Wake up!” one of the men shouted in English.

Bolan felt the duct tape rip away from his eyes, taking half his eyebrows with it.

“You’re not dead yet!” The man ripped the tape away from Bolan’s mouth with the same force he’d used to remove it from his eyes.

Bolan looked around the cabin of what seemed to be a sport fishing boat and estimated the craft to be thirty-five to forty feet in length. Looking out the cabin windows, he saw land on the starboard side, which meant that they were heading south.

In addition to the man who’d waxed the soldier’s eyebrows with duct tape, two other men sat on a threadbare lounge, looking down at him. An AK-74 rested on each of their laps. The scar-faced thug who’d removed the duct tape wore the desert-camo uniform of a Qatar security force officer, but the AKSU-74 machine pistol slung around his neck and shoulder indicated he was an imposter—the well-funded Qatarian forces carried top-shelf European weapons, not twenty-year-old Russian sub machine guns.

The man whose patchwork face looked like it had been launched through a dozen windshields, grabbed Bolan and hoisted him up onto a stool by the galley counter. The two goons took a roll of duct tape and taped Bolan’s ankles to the stool’s pedestal, then gave his wrists another round of tape, tightening up the soldier’s bonds. This put him in an awkward position; it took all his effort to remain upright on the stool, leaving him completely vulnerable.

“So tell me Mr. Cooper,” the scarred man said in heavily accented English, “Why are you such a curious gas peddler? What were you doing with this?” He held up the satellite tracking device the soldier had attached to the shipping container. Before Bolan could say anything, the man backhanded him across his face, nearly knocking him off the stool. He felt his nasal cavity fill with blood.

When Bolan righted himself on the stool, the man put the barrel of his AKSU against the soldier’s forehead. Unable to move his hands, Bolan realized that his war everlasting might finally be about to reach its end. The Saudi slowly squeezed the trigger. The Russian Kalashnikovs weren’t known for their clean trigger breaks and time seemed to stop as Bolan watched the man slowly squeeze. Though it was barely perceptible, he saw the man’s finger tense up as the sear hit the breaking point.

Instead of the muzzle blast he expected, Bolan only heard the firing pin click on an empty chamber. All three men laughed.

“You should be so lucky,” the man said. “Death is preferable to the fate my boss has in store for you. We have to keep you alive for two more days. When my boss comes, he’ll send you to hell long before you have the good fortune to die.”

“Who’s your boss?” Bolan asked.

Instead of replying, the man smashed the machine pistol into the side of Bolan’s head, once again knocking him unconscious.

2

Jameed Botros hated racing. He hated motorcycles and he hated the people who rode them. He had never cared for any form of Western decadence, but being in the center of one of the West’s biggest and gaudiest spectacles was almost too much for him to bear. The only thing that kept him going was the fact that he hated the Western world even more than he hated motorcycle racing. And if all went as planned, this would be a very short racing season.

So far everything had been going as planned, until that damned gasoline sales rep had showed up and started nosing around. Somehow he had known which container held the plutonium. If he knew, surely others knew, which meant that they would have to get their equipment to America fast, and once there, they would have to alter all their plans.

Botros’ boss, Musa bin Osman, Free Flow’s vice president in charge of all racing activities, had chastised him for killing the American racer. Botros knew he might well have met a worse fate than Darrick Anderson’s had he not convinced his superior that the American had overheard him discussing the plan with Nasir, his compatriot who was posing as a member of the Qatar security force.

Nasir had the troublesome sales rep trapped aboard a fishing boat. Botros had wanted to kill the big stranger immediately, but bin Osman wanted to interrogate him before killing him. He wanted to know exactly what this man knew, or thought he’d known, about their operation. He wanted to find out who the big man really worked for, how he and his employers learned of the plutonium, and how much they knew about Team Free Flow’s planned activities in the U.S. As bin Osman wanted to question the man himself, but he couldn’t arrive until Sunday, the day of the race, Botros and his men had been forced to keep the interloper alive.

Botros thought the Malaysian businessman was making a mistake by keeping the man alive. The big American was clearly a man to be reckoned with. He had dispatched with one of Botros’ best men as if squashing an ant. Bin Osman is weak, he thought. He is as much a slave to his own vices as any Westerner. In this case, bin Osman’s vice was the thrill he received from torturing a human being to death. Botros had watched him do it on several occasions, and the pleasure bin Osman received from the act seemed almost of a sexual nature. Botros found his boss’s behavior disgusting, but he didn’t dare call him on it lest bin Osman decide that Botros himself might make a fitting subject on which to practice his fetish.

Botros had come close to finding out what it would be like to be tortured at the hands of his superior after he had killed Darrick Anderson, but he had placated bin Osman. Of course he had lied to the man; he had been looking for an excuse to kill the decadent young American since he first met him. Anderson, a drug addict, alcoholic and whoremonger, represented everything he hated about Westerners. Anderson claimed to have reformed, but Botros knew he only pretended to have given up his vices in order to attain a job racing motorcycles. He was still a weak American, a slave to his vices, and Botros knew that at the first opportunity he would return to his hedonistic ways. Botros had made a promise to Allah that he would kill Anderson at the first possible opportunity. Bin Osman, being a slave to his own vices, could not have understood why Botros had to do what he did.

But at least bin Osman shared Botros’ hatred of Westerners. The Malaysian hadn’t always been such a devout believer in Wahhabism, the ultraconservative form of Islam embraced by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, but his years of dealing with the West had converted him. As a young man, bin Osman had suckled at the teat of Western decadence, attending the finest universities in England and America, denying himself no pleasures of the flesh in the process.

But after a series of failed business ventures, the Malaysian had finally been made to see the need for jihad to cleanse the world of the social disease that was Western culture. At last bin Osman understood that the only way to bring that about was to have a world governed by Sharia law.

When the Malaysian allied himself with al Qaeda, he proved to be one of the most capable operatives the organization ever had. Now he was about to execute what would be not just a blow against the decadent West, but a death blow to Arab leaders who weakened Sharia with Western concepts. When bin Osman’s plan came to fruition, there would be no so-called “moderate” Islamic states left, and the entire world would be subject to the strictest interpretations of Sharia.

Bin Osman may have still had his vices, but he also had the power to make Botros’ desire a reality. He’d obtained the plutonium, he had the resources to make a bomb, and he had the connections needed to carry out the plan once they got to America. Botros may have hated the man, but he needed him more than he hated him.

WHEN BOLAN regained consciousness, he had no idea where he was. He could tell he was still on a boat, but the boat wasn’t moving. It took a few moments for him to remember Scarface striking him. He had no idea what time it was, but the stiffness in his shoulders and legs told him he’d been out for a long time. He raised his head to look around and almost lost consciousness again. He realized he must have received a concussion from his captor’s blow.

Through sheer force of will, the soldier made himself sit up and try to focus on his surroundings. He saw that he was in the lower bunk of a small stateroom. His hands were still bound behind his back and his ankles were still bound together, but at least they hadn’t put duct tape over his eyes and mouth again.

He worked his way to the edge of the bunk, swung his legs over the edge, and stood, balancing on his tied-together legs as if they were a single limb. The small room had a sliding pocket door that probably led to the hallway between the main stateroom and the steps leading up to the galley. He looked out over the top bunk. From the angle of the light coming through the small rectangular window above the bunk, he could see that the sun was just starting to rise over the Persian Gulf. That meant that he’d been unconscious all night.

He looked around for anything he could use to help him escape from his bonds and spotted a nail that was working itself loose from the wood frame of the top bunk. The head of the nail rose just barely high enough above the wood for the Executioner to see a faint shadow around its edge. It might be enough.

Bolan put his mouth over the nail and worked it loose from the wood with his teeth. When he finally got it in his mouth, he bent down and spit it onto the mattress of the lower bunk, right where he estimated his hands might rest. Then he lay down on top of the bunk and felt the nail with his right hand. He grabbed the nail with his fingers and worked it around until the point was aimed at his wrists. Then with the heel of his hand he maneuvered the point of the nail under the edge of the duct tape. He pushed on the nail and felt the tape give just a little bit. He repeated the process and pushed the nail through a bit more of the tape. He repeated the maneuver over and over throughout the day, stopping only when he heard one of his captors coming to check on him. By the time night fell, he’d worked through almost an inch of the tape, not quite enough to break his hands free. He kept at it and by the time he worked his hands free, the sky was beginning to lighten again in the east.

When Bolan regained feeling in his extremities, he tested the sliding door to see if it made noise. It did, but its squeaks weren’t any louder than the rest of the creaking emitted from the old boat as it rode the waves and he slid it open as quietly as possible. He stuck his head out the door and scanned the boat. To his right he saw the door to what must have been the forward stateroom. To his left he saw the steps leading up to the galley, and across from his stateroom he saw the open door to the bathroom.

He could hear loud snoring coming from the forward stateroom. Odds were that was where his lead captor slept, and the soldier wanted to keep him alive for questioning.

Softer snoring wafted from the salon area beyond the galley. Bolan crept up into the galley and looked over the counter to see one man sleeping on the lounge and another curled up on a smaller settee. The man on the lounge had been one of the men who had kicked him earlier; he didn’t recognize the man on the settee. He couldn’t see anyone out on the deck, but he heard movement on the flybridge above the cabin.

The Executioner knew he needed a weapon. He’d have to get one without alerting the man on the bridge or the man sleeping in the forward stateroom.

He looked around and saw a wooden block on the galley counter that held several knives. He pulled out a chef’s knife, but the blade was so dull that the handle would have made a better weapon. The second knife he pulled out was a boning knife with a razor-sharp blade.

Bolan crept into the salon. The man sleeping on the lounge stirred and Bolan was forced to quickly slit his throat. The man died silently. Knowing what was at stake, Bolan had dispatched the second man in similar fashion.

The Executioner grabbed the second man’s AK-74 and slung it over his shoulder, but kept his hand on the knife as he made his way to the ladder leading up to the flybridge. He crept up the ladder and peeked over the top. No one was at the helm, but the other man who had kicked him when he was first taken captive sat on a bench alongside the helm, looking toward land through a pair of binoculars. Bolan managed to get up on the flybridge and creep close to the helm before the man started to put down the binoculars.

Bolan rushed toward the man and before he could put down the binoculars and snatch his gun, the soldier plunged the knife blade into the side of the man’s chest, just below the armpit. The seven-inch blade severed the man’s main artery and he bled out before his heart beat five times.

A pool of the man’s blood covered the floor of the flybridge and drops followed the soldier down the ladder to the deck, where they mixed with the water that had splashed on deck during the night. Inside the salon, pools of blood covered the upholstery of the lounge and settee, dripping off and soaking into the carpet below. Bolan walked past the bodies and went to the master stateroom. He threw the door open and fired the AK into the ceiling above the bed. Shards of fiberglass rained down on the leader’s sleeping form.

The man lunged as Bolan had expected. What he didn’t expect was that he would have a Glock pistol in his hand. The scarred man swung the weapon around toward the soldier, but before he could get the muzzle pointed in Bolan’s direction, Bolan fired off several rounds into the man’s face. In a split second his scars vanished, along with the rest of his features. And any hope the Executioner had of interrogating the man disappeared with his face.

3

Monterey, California

“There’s no way in hell that Darrick’s crash was an accident,” Eddie Anderson told Matt Cooper, the sales rep for a Russian oil company. Anderson didn’t question why a gasoline salesman was asking him about his late brother—he’d told everyone he talked to that he thought that his brother had been murdered. Most people wrote it off as the petulant outbursts of a young man in the throes of grief. But grief and anger didn’t hamper his on-track performance; if anything, they enhanced it. Anderson won the race in Qatar by a huge margin, beating his teammate—the current champion, a hotheaded Spaniard named Daniel Asnorossa—by seven seconds.

Asnorossa earned his championship the previous year mostly because Anderson had crashed several times and had failed to finish three races while Asnorossa finished every race among the top five riders. Anderson won four races—three more than Asnorossa—and earned the rookie-of-the-year award. He’d been hired as Asnorossa’s backup rider, but this year everyone treated the upstart American like the team’s top rider.

Bolan missed Anderson’s victory. He hadn’t been able to get to the track before the entire MotoGP circus packed up and shipped off to the United States for the following weekend’s race at Laguna Seca. After searching his captors’ bodies, which turned up nothing but fake Qatar security force IDs, along with paddock passes for the Losail circuit, he’d ditched them in the Persian Gulf.

He hadn’t been able to steam into one of Doha’s heavily patrolled harbors in a blood-soaked boat registered to God knows who, especially with his light skin that immediately identified him as a Westerner. Qatarians didn’t trust foreigners, and he would have been sure to attract attention of the official variety. He waited until nightfall, then abandoned the boat and swam to a relatively deserted beach. In the meantime he avoided attention by doing what anyone aboard a sport fishing boat would do when out on the water—he fished. There was nothing else he could do because the Arabs had taken all of his electronic equipment, including his cell phone, along with all of his weapons and ID.

After hitting shore he made his way back to his hotel room, where he was finally able to contact Stony Man Farm on a secure line. By the time he’d contacted Kurtzman, it was too late to stop the plane carrying the Team Free Flow equipment, which had already been offloaded and was en route to the Mazda Raceway.

By the time Hal Brognola could organize a raid on the Laguna Seca paddock, the plutonium would almost certainly have been removed from the container. Bolan only hoped it hadn’t already been used to make a bomb.

While Stony Man’s top pilot, Jack Grimaldi, flew Bolan to the Monterey Peninsula Airport, Kurtzman sent Bolan new information regarding the Free Flow Racing organization. Apparently things weren’t going so well for the Malaysian scooter manufacturer. The costs of developing a full-sized motorcycle for the U.S. and European markets exceeded everyone’s expectations and Free Flow was in a state of chaos, with a revolving roster of top executives, none of whom seem to survive even a year within the organization.

The one person who seemed to float above the turmoil was Musa bin Osman, Free Flow’s vice president in charge of racing. That was in part because the racing organization was one of the few departments at Free Flow earning money, thanks to the generous sponsorship of a Saudi oil company. That was where things got interesting. The oil company was suspected of being a front for laundering money for several al Qaeda affiliates. The deeper Kurtzman dug, the more terrorist ties he discovered. Musa bin Osman had studied under the suspected mastermind behind the 2005 Bali bombings and many other terrorist attacks. He seemed to have close ties with Jemaah Islamiyah, the most active al Qaeda affiliate group in Malaysia.

Bolan knew that his Matt Cooper identity had likely been compromised, at least as far as the Team Free Flow organization was concerned, but it was still his quickest way to gain access to the racing paddock so he continued to play the role of a fuel sales rep for a Russian oil company. He had Barbara Price try to make an appointment to meet with Jameed Botros before he’d even landed at Monterey, but the earliest he could see the Saudi would be Thursday. In the meantime he scoped out the area around Laguna Seca.

To keep up appearances, he met with a couple of reps from satellite race teams—teams that leased the previous year’s factory race bikes. Such teams had some factory support—some more than others—but mostly they fended for themselves and were hungry for any sponsorship. By Thursday Cooper had tentative agreements with two teams. More importantly, he’d picked up on an undercurrent of mistrust between Team Free Flow and the other MotoGP organizations.

On Thursday Bolan rode the BMW R1200GS he’d rented in San Francisco to the Free Flow garage to keep his appointment with Botros. The entire San Francisco area became an orgy of motorcycle activity during the week of the big race, and there was no better way for the soldier to blend in than to ride a motorcycle. Plus motorcycles were far more effective at slicing through the dense traffic that descended on the area for the race.

He’d chosen the BMW because it was one of the most agile motorcycles ever built. The big bike was too heavy for serious off-road work. But in the hands of a physically large rider like Bolan, it could scoot down some pretty rough trails if it had to. Bolan had ridden just about every motorcycle built since he began his vigilante war against the Mafia many years ago, and he’d also received training from some of the world’s best on- and off-road motorcycle racers over the years, so he knew how to muscle a big bike over rough terrain.

The Executioner knew damned well that he was being set up, that if this meeting wasn’t a trap, at the very least it would be the prelude to a trap. Botros and his crew might not try to kill him in the garage complex. They might keep a low profile at the track and attack Bolan somewhere off site. Or they might just try to kill him in their garages. But the soldier had made a commitment to recover the stolen plutonium before the terrorists had the chance to use it, and getting closer to the Team Free Flow crew, the only people who knew for sure where the plutonium was located, was the best way he could think of to find it.

Bolan knew that someone could try to kill him at any moment. The soldier had no way of knowing where or when that attempt would take place so he’d have to rely on years of experience and instincts honed to an almost preternatural degree to survive the next few days. That, and the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle on his hip and the Beretta 93-R machine pistol he carried in the shoulder rig beneath his jacket.

Bolan parked the BMW near the Team Free Flow garages just in time to see Eddie Anderson being escorted from the building complex by a couple of Middle Eastern-looking men. One could have been Scarface’s brother, or at least his cousin. The Arabs weren’t having an easy time of it. Most successful motorcycle racers were built like jockeys, and Anderson was no exception; he stood maybe five-four in his racing boots and couldn’t have weighed much, but he was giving the two Arabs as good as he got.

“Get your damned hands off of me!” Anderson told Scarface’s cousin. “I know he was murdered and I know you guys did it!” The man tried to push Anderson to the ground but the wiry little rider ducked and grabbed the man’s wrist, flipped his arm around behind his back, and pushed him face first into the tarmac. The other Arab grabbed Anderson before he could pounce on the fallen man and flung him into Bolan.

“Are you all right?” Bolan asked. Without answering, Anderson spun around to face the two men from the Free Flow garage. The man on the ground got up, his face scraped up from hitting the rough pavement. The two contemplated attacking Anderson, but when they saw Bolan, a look of recognition crossed their faces and they scurried back into the garage.

“Those bastards killed Darrick,” Anderson said. “They killed my brother.”

“Are you sure about that?” Bolan asked.

“There’s no way in hell that Darrick’s crash was an accident. There’s no way that brake line came loose without someone disconnecting it. No way. Those sons of bitches killed my brother and I can prove it.”

“How can you prove it?” Bolan asked. Anderson looked up at Bolan, suspicion in his eyes. “This is not a good place to talk,” Bolan said. “Can I buy you a drink later?”

“I don’t drink.” After watching alcohol and drugs destroy Darrick’s career, Eddie avoided the culture of hedonism that swirled around the racing circuit with an almost fanatical zeal, focusing on riding with the concentration of a Buddhist monk. The offer only increased his mistrust of the large stranger. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got a meeting.” He rushed off before Bolan could question him further.

Bolan had no doubt that Eddie was lying about the meeting, but he couldn’t fault the kid for not trusting him, especially if what he said about his brother was true. Bolan made a note to speak further with the young man, but for now the soldier did have a meeting, one he couldn’t afford to miss.

THE ABRASIVE YOUNG American racer reminded Jameed Botros of his older brother, and as with the older Anderson, Botros felt it his duty to Allah to kill the man. People believed that Eddie Anderson differed from his brother, that he was not a slave to the vices that had destroyed Darrick’s career, but Botros knew the younger man deceived those around him. He was first and foremost an American, and like all Americans he was weak. Botros had wanted to kill him the minute he laid eyes on him during the winter tire tests.

Now he might have a reason, but first he would have to clear it with bin Osman. Botros had gotten away with making a unilateral decision regarding the older Anderson brother; he dared not move against the younger brother without express permission from his superior. Botros had to present the Malaysian with a good reason why Eddie Anderson should be killed, and that is exactly what the impetuous youngster was giving him.

“You killed him!” the young rider shouted at Botros. Botros just smiled, knowing that when he reported Anderson’s behavior to his supervisor, he would receive permission to eliminate the boy. “I know you killed him, and I can prove it!”

Anderson lunged toward Botros, but before he reached the Saudi, three sets of hands grabbed him and slammed him down on his back. Botros looked down at the face. The rage that twisted Anderson’s features made him appear much older than his twenty-one years. “I am sure you are mistaken,” Botros said. “It makes no sense that we would kill your brother.”

“I don’t give a shit if it makes sense or not! I know you did it!”

“Your brother’s death was an accident. A tragic accident. His brakes failed.”

“His brakes didn’t fail. You loosened the brake lines and I can prove it!”

Botros had had enough of this foolish American. “Throw him out,” he ordered his men in Arabic. For a small man, Anderson put up an impressive fight, but he was outnumbered four to one and after a drawn-out struggle, they ultimately ejected him from the garage complex. Before he was out the door Botros was in his office, calling bin Osman.

“We had an unexpected visitor this morning,” Botros told his supervisor.

“Who might that be?” bin Osman asked.

“Eddie Anderson.”

“Ah, the grieving brother.”

“It would be more correct to call him the raging brother,” Botros said. “He practically attacked me.”

“Does he know?”

“He does. He even knows how we did it. He says he has proof, though how that is possible I don’t know.”

Bin Osman paused for a moment. “This young man could disrupt our plans.”

“Do you want my men to take care of him?” Botros asked.

Again bin Osman paused. “No, we cannot draw unwanted attention to ourselves. He is too high-profile. Our plan must succeed. For that to happen, we have to be free to operate without the authorities investigating us, so we cannot engage in any activity that might attract such scrutiny. I know how we can deal with this.”

“How?” Botros asked.

“You cannot give the authorities information you do not possess,” bin Osman told Botros. “Just have faith that I will handle the problem. Unlike the way your men failed to handle our problem in Qatar last week.”

Bin Osman hit a sore spot with the Saudi. The Malaysian had been enraged when the American gasoline peddler had escaped from the boat, but Botros had managed to calm him somewhat by reminding him that they still had the plutonium.

Getting the plutonium into the United States had been ridiculously easy. Team Free Flow had smuggled it into the country with all its other racing equipment. No customs inspector could ever hope to understand the esoteric collection of hardware and data-acquisitions electronic equipment used by a modern MotoGP racing team. It had been relatively simple to disguise the components needed to make a nuclear weapon among the racing equipment, even the Type B container used to transport the plutonium.

“When do you want us to move the material to the lab?” Botros asked, changing the subject.

“We’ll be ready for it on Saturday, so plan to move it tomorrow night. But at the moment don’t you have an appointment with the American?”

“Yes, he should be here soon. Do you want us to take care of him?”

“Like you took care of him last week? I think not. You and your men are to take no more risks, especially at the racetrack. I will take care of Mr. Cooper. Besides, I wish to meet a person who could dispatch five of your best men with such ease. Arrange for him to meet with me when I get to San Francisco tonight.”