Agent Of Peril - Don Pendleton

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They had to have been convinced that missiles were raining down on this little bazaar of death. Sure, the terrorists were escaping to fight another day, but for now they were frightened.

      And being frightened was three-quarters dead. Good enough for a bleeding, limping Executioner.

      Bolan recognized the guy climbing the tank. It was the Hezbollah moneyman who’d lost his feet. There was something familiar about the guy who scrambled like a drunken spider. Getting to the tank, Bolan casually reached up under the man’s suit coat and grabbed his belt.

      “Come here,” he growled, yanking the terrorist off the tank. The footless killer squealed as the back of his head bounced on the flattened and cracked concrete.

      “Bastard…”

      “That’s what they call me,” Bolan said. He knelt on the hardguy’s chest, lifted the stainless-steel Taurus and let swing with a savage stroke. Already, his brain had cleared enough to recognize Bidifah Sinbal.

      “A long death or a short death,” Bolan said. “Your choice.”

      “Generous offer. I give you nothing.”

      Bolan looked down at Sinbal, then realized that droplets of blood were pouring onto the guy’s face with every exhalation of his own breath. The soldier put the back of his hand to his nose and came away with a glove of sticky, slick fresh blood.

      “Looks like you overdid the explosives, punk.” The terrorist chuckled, lying on his back, wheezing as he finished off his laugh.

      Bolan sighed. He was too dizzy and hurt to conduct a proper interrogation on Sinbal. The Hezbollah savage wasn’t going anywhere.

      The Executioner got to his feet and climbed up the side of the tank, calling back to the wounded terrorist.

      “Sit. Stay.”

      Inside, the mystery of the first generation M1’s origins were revealed.

      Outside, flags and insignias were scoured off and replaced with desert paint that broke up the graded and scaled camouflage pattern of the metallic beast. Inside, however, the writing on the controls was in Arabic.

      The Executioner knew only one modern Arab military force that used the U.S.-built armored vehicle.

      Egypt.

      Hezbollah was in Pakistan, selling three Egyptian tanks. Bolan crawled up through the hatch once more, wiping his nose. The bleeding had stopped. He was still hurt, hammered and beaten.

      But someone was moving top of the line tanks around like they were common contraband.

      That was a someone the Executioner had a vested interest in shutting down—permanently.

      It was time to call the Farm.

      2

      The flat LCD screen popped up a still image of the Executioner’s hawkish features, giving Barbara Price something to visually focus on as the satellite phone connected them vocally.

      “Did I catch you after a full night’s sleep, or are you delusional from Bear’s coffee?” Bolan asked.

      “Mix and match.” Price sighed. “What’s wrong?”

      “Lots. I’ve got three M1 Abrams tanks. I’m thinking they’re U.S. military aid package tanks because they have the old 105 mm cannon instead of the new 120 mm tubes,” Bolan told her.

      “Abrams tanks?”

      “The Hezbollah operatives I followed had them transported here for the auction.”

      Price summoned recent intel-footage on her second monitor. “We had three M1s roll into a Gaza Strip settlement and kill a few hundred people.”

      “A tank attack on the Gaza strip? Where?”

      “Nitzana.”

      Bolan paused a moment. “If I remember my map of the space between Israel and Egypt well enough, it makes sense to strike there. Nitzana is far from any other major settlements. Vast expanses of empty hills, desert, and desert farmland surrounded the settlement.”

      “It took twenty minutes for the Israelis to scramble aircraft.”

      “A few hundred people?” Bolan asked.

      “The count is 249 dead, another three hundred missing, and over twelve hundred injured. They blew up buildings…Hell, they even blew an F-16 out of the sky. That crash killed almost fifty people by itself,” Price said.

      “Three hundred missing, which means that we could see the death toll get over four hundred as a conservative estimate,” Bolan said.

      “Most of those missing are from a school and a hospital that the tanks shelled,” Price told him.

      “Children and the infirm.”

      Price knew the tone in Bolan’s voice—grim and torn. He was getting ready to revisit hell on the kind of savages who would drag the innocent and helpless into their petty political games.

      “Striker, how many tanks did you say you had?”

      “Three here. With Arabic writing on the controls. I’m looking for a good way to dispose of them, but I don’t have the kind of firepower needed to take them out.”

      Price turned. “Hunt, I need a way to dispose of three M1 tanks without bringing the entirety of the Pakistani military down on whoever’s blowing it. They might think it’s India.”

      “A Force Recon off the USS Stennis is stationed in Tora Bora. They can chopper in hot and fast, set daisy cutters on each vehicle and be out before anyone knows what’s going on,” Hunt Wethers stated. He managed a grin. “I’ve got Captain Hofflower on speed dial.”

      “Send them on in,” the Executioner said.

      Price heard a wet sniff on the other end of the phone. “What’s wrong? You sound…sick.”

      “Got too close to an improvised Claymore mine I made. Or rather, didn’t get far enough away from it,” Bolan answered. “The shock wave broke blood vessels in my nose and I’m bleeding all over.”

      “Why can’t you get nasal drip like most people?” Price asked.

      “Just get the team here quick. I’ve got a live prisoner, and he’s Hezbollah.”

      “Striker, you’re going to hand over a member of Hezbollah to a Marine?” Price asked.

      “This animal’s buddies killed a few hundred people. Including children. I don’t care what the Marines decide to do with him.”

      With that, the phone went dead.

      PUSHING HIS TONGUE between his upper and lower molars, General Nahd Idel forced his lower jaw to relax, but the clenching muscles were relentless. His personal physician had tried all manner of muscle relaxants and therapy, but that didn’t help. A mixture of stress and old rooted pain from a botched wisdom tooth removal had given him a case of lock-jaw that he couldn’t kick.

      Idel jammed several sticks of gum into one cheek and looked at the aide who was finishing his report about the “terrorist raid” on Nitzana.

      “They’re saying that at least a quarter of the dead were Egyptian or Palestinian,” Major Pedal Tofo concluded. “Hezbollah won’t be so darling with some of their friends because of this.”

      “No concern,” Idel replied. “Why did they only attack with three tanks? Didn’t we give them a dozen?”

      Tofo shook his head. “We have people who are in Lebanon. They were watching Sinbal and his men leave Beirut on a cargo freighter with six oversize boxcars. He only left three in Alexandria, and stayed with the freighter. Records list the ship en route to Gwadar, Pakistan.”

      Idel bit his tongue, muscles swelling and straining. Outwardly,

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