Death Run

by Don Pendleton

  The man spotted the motion and fired at Bolan. He only got off one round before the flashbang detonated, but that round struck the soldier square in the chest. He wore a vest containing an experimental lightweight armor that John "Cowboy" Kissinger had developed back at Stony Man Farm. The weapons specialist claimed this thin, flexible armor could stop anything up to and including a standard 7.62 mm round, though he wasn't sure about high-velocity armor-piercing rounds. Fortunately it was capable of stopping the 9 mm round from the officer's machine pistol, though the bullet struck the Executioner with enough force to knock him over the edge of the container.

  Still in midair when the flashbang went off, Bolan covered his ears, closed his eyes and let out a shriek to equalize the pressure in his lungs. He landed on his feet, his legs pumping as soon as they hit the ground. The security officer would recover from the flashbang, but not before Bolan slipped back into the vent through which he'd entered the building.

  Doha was a quiet city, and if the shots that the officer fired didn't bring nearly all eight thousand men of the Qatar security force to the warehouse, the flashbang's explosion certainly would.

  The Executioner moved the grate covering the vent pipe aside, slid inside, replaced the grate and climbed up the pipe. When he got to the top of the vent, he crawled through the rectangular vent pipe that ran along the roof toward a blower fan until he reached the hole he'd cut in the bottom of the pipe. There was only about eighteen inches between the pipe and the roof of the warehouse so he had to snake his way out of the pipe. He could see flashing blue lights from the security force vehicles driving toward the front of the warehouse. Bolan ran to the back edge of the roof where he'd left the rope he'd used to climb up and clipped his descender to the rope. He let himself down the side of the building as fast as he could without breaking any bones. Upon hitting the ground, he ran toward the hole he'd cut in the security fence on his way into the warehouse facility. He was in his Range Rover and driving back toward his hotel before the security officers even discovered he'd left the building.

  Bolan was grateful that he hadn't injured any of the officers who kept the peace in the tiny emirate. Qatar's security force had a reputation for being good cops, honest and reasonable men who had never been charged with a human rights violation.

  He hadn't been so lucky; he was pretty sure he'd broken a rib when he took the round from the officer's MP-5, but he'd survive. He hadn't located the plutonium, but at least he had a lead: Free Flow Racing. He knew that the Losail circuit in Doha would be hosting Grand Prix motorcycle races that weekend. He wouldn't be able to get back in the warehouse after the fiasco that had just occurred, but at least he knew where to look.

  First, he'd have to find a reason to be at the race. He drove back to his hotel and dialed the secure number for Stony Man Farm on his cell phone. It took a few moments for the signal to travel its circuitous but untraceable route before he heard Kurtzman on the line. "What's up, Striker?" Kurtzman asked, using Bolan's Stony Man code name.

  "I need to be someone else," Bolan replied.

  "Anyone in particular?"

  "I'd kind of like to try an average Joe, but maybe another time. Right now I need to be a salesman."

  * * *

  Posing as Matt Cooper, Bolan presented his credentials to the paddock guard. Overnight Kurtzman had created a background for Cooper, an American sales rep for the racing fuels division of CCP Petroleum, a Russian company created from the ashes of the failed Yukos Oil. Cooper's assignment was to get MotoGP racing teams to use CCP racing fuel. To create the character of Cooper, Bolan, who spoke decent Russian, spent the night studying the recent history of Grand Prix motorcycle racing.

  The Federation Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) formed the MotoGP class, motorcycle racing's most prestigious racing series, for the 2002 season. Originally FIM had dictated that 990 cc four-strokes raced in the class. When those motorcycles became so powerful that their performance outpaced the limits of tire technology, the FIM lowered the displacement limit to 800 cc for the 2007 racing season.

  Darrick Anderson, an American rider, dominated the first three seasons of MotoGP, but problems with alcohol and other drugs had destroyed his career. He'd disappeared for several years, but this year he was back. Bolan had Darrick's name at the top of the list of people he planned to interview, since Darrick was Free Flow Racing's top rider.

  Posing as Cooper's assistant at CCP's American branch, Barbara Price, Stony Man's mission controller, had arranged meetings with representatives from several MotoGP teams. Most top teams were already supported by major oil companies so the story was that CCP targeted smaller teams. Since MotoGP teams didn't get any smaller than Free Flow Racing, it only made sense that Cooper would meet with them first. Price set up a meeting with Team Free Flow Racing's general manager Jameed Botros.

  Bolan arrived at the Free Flow Racing garage complex in the Losail paddock fifteen minutes before his scheduled meeting with Mr. Botros but found the area deserted. The doors were open, so he let himself inside, hoping to find out where everyone was, but the garages were empty. The Executioner walked toward a wall covered with television monitors and realized why the complex was empty. From several different angles the monitors showed Darrick Anderson's lifeless body being loaded onto a helicopter. Bolan could tell things didn't look good for Mr. Anderson.

  He looked around the building and saw several containers identical to the ones he'd seen in the warehouse the previous night. He activated the GPS locator in his cell phone and saw that the container he wanted had to be either in the very back of the garage complex or behind it. He made his way to the rear of the complex without finding the container.

  He punched a button that opened one of the overhead doors in the back wall and went outside, where he found the container he'd tagged with the homing device still secured to the bed of a truck trailer. He examined it and saw that the seals applied to the container in Pakistan still hadn't been broken.

  Bolan turned around and found himself face-to-face with a man dressed as a member of the Qatar security force, though the dagger in his hand was not standard-issue for the force. Bolan hadn't heard the man approach because of the noise generated by the barely muffled motorcycle engines that permeated the entire Losail facility. The officer lunged at Bolan with the dagger, its tip contacting Bolan's rib cage just below his left armpit. Because the Executioner had moved back the moment he saw the blade coming at him, the dagger barely penetrated his skin.

  Bolan brought his left elbow down on the attacker's arm, snapping both the radius and ulna bones in his forearm. The man fell beneath the force of the blow. Bolan reached around with his right hand and caught the knife as it fell from the attacker's disabled hand. The man lunged forward and in an instinctive reaction Bolan sliced upward with the knife, catching the man several inches below the navel and cutting all the way up to his rib cage.

  The man staggered backward and fell, clutching his midsection in a failed attempt to hold in the intestines that poured from his eviscerated abdomen. Bolan knew this man most likely was not a cop. Cops didn't try to assassinate strangers with daggers, especially Qatar's security force officers. He was certain that the man he'd just gutted was a criminal posing as a security officer.

  Bolan pulled his Beretta from his shoulder holster and asked the man, who was dying too slowly to avoid intense suffering, "Do you speak English?" He received no answer. The man had entered a state of shock and wasn't able to respond. Bolan estimated he would be dead within minutes.

  He holstered the Beretta and began searching the body for some identification but stopped when he heard movement behind him. He spun around just in time to see a steel pipe swinging toward his temple. Then the lights went out.

  * * *

  The Persian Gulf

  The Executioner knew he was on a boat the moment he regained consciousness. From the sound of the muffled diesel engines and the carpeted floor on which he lay, he guessed he was on some sort of pleas
ure craft. The musty smell of the carpet told him it was an older boat. He heard at least two people conversing in Arabic, but otherwise he deduced very little information about his current situation. What felt like duct tape covered his eyes and mouth. His hands were bound behind his back and his feet were tied together tight, presumably with the same material.

  His head hurt almost as much as his broken rib, but the soldier suffered in silence. He didn't want his captors to know he was awake. Though he didn't speak Arabic, he'd picked up some phrases here and there and was able to glean some information about his captors, most importantly that they were Saudis, not Qatarians.

  They were angry Saudis. Apparently the man that Bolan had sent to visit Allah back at the racetrack had been one of their brethren. This virtually eliminated the possibility that he'd killed a law enforcement officer, since Bolan knew Qatar didn't hire Saudis for its police force. Qatar had a dark side when it came to its discrimination against immigrants, especially Saudis, because of the poor relationship Qatar had with its giant neighbor to the west. The two countries had only recently settled a border dispute that had simmered for almost two decades.

  Bolan could hear the sound of other boats over the angry conversation between the Saudis. Because he couldn't hear the telltale industrial noise of the Doha Port, he guessed that he was either in the Doha Harbor or the Old Harbor area. As he listened, the sound of the other boats grew more distant, which meant they were leaving the harbor and heading out to open water. Bolan didn't know how long he'd been out, but he guessed that it was no longer than an hour, and probably less.

  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 pl
easures 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.