Death Run

by Don Pendleton

  Bin Osman chastised himself for thinking such thoughts. Now he was starting to parrot the primitive beliefs of that superstitious savage Jameed Botros. Botros, it seemed, had started to believe that the big man really was the devil.

  When the delivery van didn't show up at the allotted time, bin Osman's worry turned to low-grade paranoia. When his cell phone rang, the low-grade paranoia developed into a case of full-blown panic.

  "Speak," bin Osman said into the phone.

  "He was there," the voice on the other end of the line said. It was Atay, his contact with the Filipino gangsters in San Francisco. Atay had been a high-ranking member of the BNG in the Philippines and had founded the San Francisco branch of the gang. He was now too old to be of much use, but he still wielded enough influence with the gang to get them to work for bin Osman. Atay's cousin Gulay was bin Osman's contact with the Filipino branch of Jemaah Islamiyah. Gulay was one of the top-ranking members of the BNG in the Philippines; he was also a member of Jemaah Islamiyah and completely devoted to the cause of jihad.

  So far, Atay had proven reliable and resourceful. This was the first time the Filipino had had to contact the Malaysian with bad news.

  " Who was there?" bin Osman asked, though he already knew the answer.

  "The big gas peddler. He killed all but one of my men."

  "A more important question might be did your men kill him?"

  Atay paused for a moment before answering, irritating bin Osman. His eventual answer didn't do much to placate the Malaysian. "Maybe. I think so."

  "What do you mean, 'Maybe'?"

  "They shot him while he was riding his motorcycle and they saw the machine go over a cliff and hit the railroad tracks down by the surf. They are sure he was on the bike when it went over the cliff. It was a hundred-foot fall. No man can survive that."

  This played into bin Osman's worse fear — that this vengeful creature after him was not a man but some terrible retribution taken human form. "At least tell me we got the material out of the warehouse," bin Osman said.

  "We did. It should arrive at the lab any minute."

  Just then, the oversized cargo van pulled into the compound. Bin Osman's men directed it inside the turkey shed, which was barely high enough at its crest to accept the tall van. Bin Osman felt relief wash over him like a cleansing shower, but at the same time the intense adrenaline rush he'd felt left him nauseous and he had to fight to keep the bile down.

  Bin Osman ordered one of his men to take an old Jeep CJ that Randy owned down to the Coastal Highway and make certain this Cooper was dead once and for all. The Jeep was one of the few vehicles on the compound that ran, and it was ideal for navigating the dirt track that constituted the back route to the highway.

  The Jeep arrived on the scene just as Cooper got into a car and drove off. Bin Osman's man tried to pursue the car, but it was a high-performance European sedan and the driver seemed to know how to exploit the car's formidable capabilities. He drove at a pace that made it impossible for the underpowered old Jeep to keep up. Bin Osman's man kept the accelerator pedal of the Jeep to the floor while he watched the taillights of the Audi disappear in the distance. When the Audi was out of sight, he called bin Osman on his cell phone.

  "The big man's not dead yet," the Jeep driver told his boss. "He just got into a car and drove back toward Santa Cruz."

  When bin Osman hung up he once again felt a wave of nausea ripple through his digestive tract and he fought to keep from vomiting. When his stomach had settled down, he made another phone call.

  "What is it?" Botros said into the line, obviously unhappy about being awakened in the wee hours of the morning.

  "I need you to act," bin Osman said to the Saudi. "I need you to send your best man to kill Cooper in his hotel room. He should arrive in about ninety minutes. This must be done by first light. Do not fail me."

  9

  The Executioner knew immediately that someone had been in his room. He'd stuffed a small folded piece of a matchbook cover between the door and the frame, and it now lay on the floor in front of his door. He'd asked not to receive any maid service and so far no maid had entered his room.

  Bolan walked back to the elevator area and punched a speed-dial button on his cell phone. "How far away from the hotel are you?" he asked Osborne.

  "I've just pulled out onto the street."

  "Would you mind pulling back in and coming up to Room 312? I have a situation."

  "I'm on my way."

  The Executioner approached the door to his room as silently as possible and stopped outside to listen for movement from within the room. He heard nothing, but the sixth sense he'd developed over years of fighting told him someone was inside. He didn't want to chance having stray bullets flying through the paper-thin walls and killing innocent travelers in adjoining rooms. It was a distinct possibility even with his 9 mm Beretta, so he drew the Fairbairn-Sykes knife from the leg sheath he wore over his blacksuit and prepared to enter the room. He inserted his key card. The lights on the lock turned green, and he threw open the door while at the same time spinning away from the doorway. No bullets came.

  Bolan entered the room and glanced into the bathroom to his left. He didn't see anyone, but the shower curtain was closed. He'd left it open when he'd showered the previous evening on purpose — he liked to have any space where he slept as open to view as possible. Others might consider him paranoid, but it was such careful consideration and situational awareness that had helped him stay alive all these years. That, along with a fair amount of luck.

  With one eye on the bathroom door, Bolan backed into the main part of the room and scanned the sleeping area. The drapes were drawn, but there wasn't enough room for even the thinnest human being to hide between the drapes and the windows. The only area in the main room where an assailant could hide was under the bed, but Bolan knew that was impossible because the bed was on a pedestal and there was no space under it. That meant if someone was in the room, he or she was hiding behind the shower curtain.

  The soldier crept back to the bathroom, trying to figure out a way to capture the person hiding behind the shower curtain alive. Perhaps he might know where bin Osman's men had taken the plutonium. He reached around and turned the switch that operated the ceiling fan, creating noise in the room that would cover his movements and stood back from the door. He pulled an extendable baton from his utility belt, extended it to full length, and with his left hand he used the baton to open the curtain. In his right hand he held the razor-sharp Fairbairn-Sykes.

  He'd pulled the curtain about six inches by the time the figure inside lunged out at him. The man swung a dagger down toward the Executioner's clavicle. Bolan swung his right hand across the attacker's right hand and knocked his aim off so that his knife skimmed along Bolan's left arm. The blade cut through the soldier's blacksuit and bit into his skin, opening a gash from his bicep to the middle of his forearm before he could completely knock the attacker's hand away. Bolan felt his arm getting wet with blood, but he could see it was only a superficial wound.

  Bolan swung the metal sap in his left hand across the attacker's jaw, knocking him backward into the shower wall. The man bounced off the wall and lunged toward Bolan, but this time the Executioner was better prepared and had assumed a proper fighting stance. Once again he slapped away the blade that the attacker thrust at him, but this time he did so with his left hand, leaving his right hand free to counterattack with his own blade. He sliced the knife down across the attacker's right arm, opening up a much deeper wound than the attacker had opened up in Bolan's left arm.

  Right away the Executioner could see that the wound was too deep. The attacker had twisted his arm when Bolan had knocked it aside so that the underside of the arm was exposed. He'd filleted the arm, opening up a six-inch stretch of the main artery. The man fell back into the tub, blood spraying from his arm like a split fire hose. Bolan hoped to keep the man alive because he wanted to question him, but one look at his face told the soldier th
at he was already going into shock. He would soon be dead. "Where is the plutonium?" Bolan asked the dying man.

  "Allahu Akbar," the man whispered, his draining blood filling the bathtub. They were the last words the man would ever speak.

  Bolan grabbed a towel to stop the blood from his own wounded arm and wrapped the cut area. He heard a knock at the door. He took quick glance through the peephole and saw Osborne. He hurried to the door and let the ex-cop into the room, closing the door behind him.

  "S'up?" the retired San Francisco detective asked. Bolan pointed toward the bathroom. Osborne stepped into the room and came out a moment later. "Holy shit," he said.

  "That about sums it up," Bolan said.

  "You're bleeding," Osborne said, pointing at the Executioner's left arm.

  The soldier examined the wound. It was shallow, but it was bleeding profusely. He'd have to tape it up or he'd be a bloody mess.

  "Who's that?"

  "I think I saw him working in the Team Free Flow garage on Thursday. I'm pretty sure he's a Saudi."

  "What are we going to do with him?"

  "Good question," the soldier replied. He thought a bit and said, "I think we should take him back where he came from."

  * * *

  The Executioner walked through the open overhead door of the Team Free Flow garage complex, took out his Beretta 93-R, and said, "I want to see Botros right now."

  The mechanic nearest the office area drew a Glock from a waistband holster but before he had it halfway up Bolan grabbed the crew member, put the Beretta to his temple, and said, "Tell your boss to get out here."

  "He doesn't speak English," another crew member said.

  Bolan turned his aim on the English speaker. "Then you tell your boss to get out here. Now."

  "I cannot do that," the mechanic said.

  "Well I can put a bullet through your melon. Get him out here."

  By this time the man was nearly in tears. "I cannot get him because he is not here."

  Bolan looked at the man to see if he was telling the truth. He showed nothing but fear.

  "Where'd he go?" Bolan asked.

  "I do not know."

  "Listen, I've had a really bad night," Bolan said. "I'm in no mood for games. Tell me where I can find Botros."

  "I genuinely do not know," the man, who was nearly hysterical, said between giant sobs.

  Bolan pressed the barrel of the gun against the man's head. "Take a guess," he said.

  "All I know is he went somewhere between Santa Cruz and San Francisco. Where exactly, I do not know."

  Bolan shouted to everyone in the room, "Listen up. I have something for your boss." He whistled and a car engine started outside the door. Osborne backed his car in through the door and popped open the trunk. Bolan reached in and pulled out something wrapped in a blood-splattered shower curtain. He unfurled the shower curtain and the body of the man who attacked him in his hotel room rolled to the floor. The man's blood had completely drained into the bathtub and his skin was a ghastly grayish white, but the men recognized their comrade.

  "I don't want this one," the Executioner said. "It's broken."

  While the members of Team Free Flow stared at the gruesome sight of their dead comrade, Bolan jumped in the car and Osborne tore out of the garage, all four fat tires of the Audi twisting up a noisy cloud of smoking rubber.

  * * *

  "He what?" Botros couldn't believe what the man on the other end of the cell phone had just told him. "Is he insane?" He paused while the man back at Laguna Seca asked him what they should do with the body.

  "Wrap him up in the shower curtain and throw him in the Dumpster in the back. Of course they will find him, but by then we'll be on a jet heading back to Saudi Arabia, and the American authorities will have much greater problems than a body in a Dumpster." He paused again while the man calling from the garage protested disposing of his brethren in such an undignified manner.

  "He is a martyr," Botros said. "He has given his life for jihad. He is guaranteed passage to Heaven. We should be so fortunate."

  Botros projected bravery to his man back in Laguna Seca, but in reality he feared he may very well end up a martyr himself and he felt anything but fortunate. He'd begun to believe that this tall stranger with no background had sprung from the bowels of Hell, a demon come to bring Botros back to Hell with him. He'd exercised bad judgment by expressing this thought to bin Osman, after which he'd been chastised for being a superstitious savage. But he suspected bin Osman had developed a healthy fear of this strange man himself.

  Of a more immediate concern was telling his superior he'd failed to kill the big devil. Depending on bin Osman's temperament at the moment, Cooper may not even get the chance to drag Botros down to Hell. If bin Osman decided his failure was unacceptable, the man would bring Hell to Botros before he even died. Many young boys torture insects and small animals, but thankfully they outgrow it. Bin Osman was one of the terrifying few who hadn't; rather, he'd graduated to ever larger and more challenging creatures to torture, ultimately settling on human beings as his subject of choice.

  Unfortunately for Botros, bin Osman was not in a very good mood. Gunthar Maurstad, the scientist from Los Alamos whom he had coerced into assembling the nuclear device he planned to detonate in San Francisco the following evening, was stalling.

  "Bring out the woman," bin Osman ordered one of the Saudis that Botros had assigned to help assemble the bomb. A moment later, the man pushed a female figure, her hands bound behind her back, her feet shackled together and a canvas hood over her head, into the filthy, decaying turkey shed that served as their makeshift laboratory. "Secure her to the chair." He pointed to a wooden chair that he'd had bolted to the floor.

  "Dr. Maurstad, you are trying my patience. Do not think that I can't see through what you are trying to do. Believe me when I tell you it will not work. Did you think I was joking when I said that if you did not cooperate, I would torture your family?"

  Maurstad lunged toward bin Osman, but he hadn't gone three feet before several Saudis subdued him.

  "You have had ample opportunity to prevent this from happening, but my patience has worn thin. The time has come for me to show you that I am serious." Bin Osman produced a curved dagger and began cutting the bag over the woman's head from the back to the front, slicing the heavy canvas with the sharp dagger as if it were tissue paper. The woman tried to scream, but a gag filled her mouth.

  "Remember, everything I do to your wife, I will then do to your daughter if you do not cooperate.

  "Nancy!" Maurstad shrieked to his wife, but was cut off in mid syllable by a fist into his jaw.

  "I regret having to do this," bin Osman lied — in reality he was excited about torturing Maurstad's wife.

  Bin Osman grabbed the front of the woman's dress, which had looked elegant and expensive on the morning that his men had kidnapped the Maurstad family as they returned home from church but now looked like a filthy collection of rags. Bin Osman sliced down the front of the dress. The opportunity to practice his art came far too seldom these days. As a member of Malaysia's elite upper class, bin Osman had been able to prey on Malaysia's impoverished lower classes as a young man, but a concerted effort to build the nation's middle class depleted the ranks of potential victims for the twisted man to torture. While studying abroad, bin Osman had sublimated his urge to torture by engaging in date rape at every possibility, but he'd had to curtail even that mild diversion as he'd rose in the ranks of the business world.

  When he'd had his religious awakening and devoted his life to jihad, he once again gained access to subjects on which to practice his art and he thanked Allah for every opportunity to do so. These days it was the closest thing he got to sexual release.

  Maurstad babbled, "All right, I'll do it. I'll finish putting together the explosive device. It will be ready to transport by midday tomorrow."

  Bin Osman was glad that the man had seen the light, pleased that he would do his part in implementi
ng the Malaysian's plan, but he felt cheated of his fun with the Maurstad women. He would have to find some other means of relieving the tension that had built up in his groin.

  Maurstad had returned to work and bin Osman had left Nancy Maurstad tied up in the center of the room in order to motivate the scientist to do the job. When Jameed Botros entered the building, bin Osman could tell from the look on the Saudi's face that he wasn't going to like what Botros was about to say. Bin Osman decided to make the task as difficult as possible.

  "You have come to tell me that your man has taken care of this mad American, correct?" he asked Botros.

  "Not quite," Botros said.

  "I thought you sent your best man to kill him."

  "I did."

  "And the man failed. What does he have to say for himself?"

  "Nothing," Botros said. "Cooper just dumped his body in the middle of the garage complex."

  "He what?"

  "He drove a car into the garage complex and dumped our man's body on the floor. He'd been knifed and there wasn't a drop of blood left in him when the American threw him on the floor."

  "How is this possible?" bin Osman asked. "Did your men simply sit around and allow this to happen?"

  "No. One of my men attempted to shoot the American."

  "How did that work out?" bin Osman asked, though he suspected he knew the answer.

  "Cooper pulled his gun faster."

  Bin Osman gave the Saudi a look that he knew would make the man squirm in his skin. Who was this man who hounded his every step? He was no law enforcement officer — he killed with too much impunity to be associated with any law enforcement organization. And he was no soldier, at least not in any Western military organization. Even the Russians didn't operate as recklessly as this man. He had heard Botros call him Iblis, the fire demon, the Islamic equivalent of Satan. He had written off the Saudi's fear of the American as the barbaric superstition of a primitive, but now he wasn't so sure.