LITMIR.BIZ

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of coarse, wavy hair, streaks of gray had infiltrated his mane almost overnight, and his once-youthful features had been increasingly eroded by a deepening of the furrows around his eyes and mouth. The major now looked every bit his forty years, if not older, and though his resolve remained, it had been tempered by weariness. Gone was his proud assertion that the Lashkar Jihad could be eliminated by home forces alone. Much as he was loath to admit it, Salim was secretly relieved that evidence of UIF collusion had brought the U.S. back into the Indonesian fray. Perhaps, with America’s help, the terrorists could be rooted out once and for all, giving his country, for the first time in its turbulent history, a chance at peace.

      A pensive silence fell over the commandos as the bus groaned its way up the mountain. Bolan, himself troubled after the long flight from Islamabad, turned from Salim and stared out through the tinted windows at the surrounding valley. Miles in the distance, tall, steeplelike derricks rose from the oil fields of Muara Badak. Farther to the south, near the seaport of Balikpapan, dark, noxious clouds spewed from several coastal refineries, further polluting a late-summer sky already shrouded with the smoke of countless slash-and-burn fires set by small farmers and large date palm conglomerates looking to clear swaths of rain forest for the planting of new crops. Most of the surrounding hills had already been cultivated. Sarong-clad laborers could be seen working thin ribbons of terraced farmland, clearly oblivious to the impending danger at the agricultural facility less than two miles uphill.

      According to the classified files Bolan had skimmed through on the flight from Pakistan, over the past twenty years Indonesia’s Ministry of Agriculture had used its Samarinda mountain site to stockpile more than two hundred tons of obsolete, highly toxic pesticides. The compounds—laced with such carcinogenic agents as DDT, heptachlor and dieldrin—were not of Indonesian origin. They were imported from European manufacturers looking to rid their inventory of items banned by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization. Corrupt IMA officials made a fortune off the scheme, accepting bribes from the Europeans to take the outlawed agents off their hands and then passing along inflated invoices to the Indonesian government for reimbursement. A few of the herbicides had been put to use; the rest had been haphazardly stored outside Samarinda with few, if any, safeguards. FAO investigators hadn’t caught wind of the enterprise until corrosion breached several containers and unleashed a toxic cloud that had swiftly killed the compound’s entire fourteen-man day shift.

      That was two months ago. In the aftermath of the initial investigation, which resulted in five arrests and two suicides within the IMA hierarchy, a Malaysian-based waste disposal firm had been hired to safely repackage the volatile chemicals for transport across the treacherous mountain passes of central Borneo to a high-tech incineration facility in Tomani. The firm had seemed efficient and conscientious enough while removing the first loads from the storage site, but less than a week ago FAO overseers had determined, much to their alarm, that barely a quarter of the loaded pesticides had actually been delivered to the incineration plant. Concern over the whereabouts of the other cargo had triggered a wide-scale investigation, and two days ago UN officials—with help from the CIA and Indonesian Military Intelligence—had confirmed their worst fears, unearthing a paper trail that linked the subcontracted transport firm, Bio-Tain Enterprises, to an affiliate of the United Islamic Front. The implications were as clear as they were odious: the UIF, frustrated by failed attempts to amass an effective nuclear and biochemical arsenal, was apparently ready to go the “dirty-bomb” route, hoping the diverted pesticides could somehow be incorporated into a weapon that could duplicate, no doubt on a far larger scale, the same fatal effect they’d had on the day-shift workers at the Samarinda facility.

      Once the UN’s findings had crossed the President’s desk in Washington, they were quickly prioritized and relayed to the Virginia headquarters of Stony Man Farm. There, the covert ops brain trust—Hal Brognola, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, and Barbara Price, mission controller, had reviewed the data and forwarded it once again, this time via an encrypted e-mail, to Mack Bolan.

      For Bolan, the timing couldn’t have been more opportune. When he’d first received the directive, he was already in Asia, attempting to track down the UIF’s founder and mastermind. Hamed Jahf-Al, a charismatic Egyptian known in some circles as the Nile Viper, had risen to the top of the FBI’s list of Most Wanted Terrorists back in June, when he was implicated in the ballroom explosion aboard a Caspian Sea cruise liner that had killed more than four hundred tourists, including sixty Americans. Jahf-Al had thus far eluded a four-country manhunt, and after three days in Islamabad the trail there had gone cold as well. Intel as to his whereabouts was conflicting, but the consensus was that the Nile Viper had fled Pakistan and was headed east. News of the UIF link to the missing pesticides, coupled with the Front’s already established collusion with the Lashkar Jihad, had given Bolan hope that in Indonesia he might once again pick up Jahf-Al’s scent, or at least that of one of his closest lieutenants.

      The raid would be a start. During a quick briefing after his arrival in Samarinda, Bolan had been told that a Bio-Tain crew had shown up at the IMA facility earlier in the morning to load another shipment of pesticides, purportedly for delivery to Tomani. To the best of Major Salim’s knowledge, the transporters were unaware that they had fallen under suspicion. As such, there seemed a good chance that, once apprehended, the crew—or at least their transport vehicle—would provide evidence as to where the pesticides were being routed once they left the facility. The key was to storm the site and overpower the crew as quickly as possible, before it had a chance to realize its cover had been blown. Bolan had tackled similar missions dozens of times in the past, and Salim had assured him that most of the KOPASSUS commandos were equally seasoned. If all went well, it would be over in less than an hour.

      Bolan was still staring out the window, preparing himself for the pending confrontation, when he saw two farmers suddenly glance up from their labors, shielding their eyes against a faint glare of sunlight that had somehow managed to penetrate the haze. Bolan tracked their gaze and saw two armed helicopters drifting low across the valley toward them. He wasn’t concerned. They were friendlies. He’d seen the choppers—both U.S. Black Hawks armed with .50-caliber M-2 Browning machine guns and submounted 2.75-inch rockets—back at the airport. One was being flown by a KIPAM-trained pilot, the other by Stony Man flying ace Jack Grimaldi, who had also been at the controls of the Learjet that brought Bolan to Samarinda from Islamabad. The Black Hawks were flying low for the same reason the bus had been outfitted with tinted windows: to maximize the element of surprise as they closed in on their target.

      As the gunships drew nearer, Bolan glanced at his watch. Abdul Salim did the same.

      “Right on schedule,” the major said, echoing Bolan’s thoughts.

      Salim rose from his seat and conferred briefly with his second in command, Sergeant Umar Latek, then strode quickly down the aisle, passing along last-minute instructions to the other commandos as well as the driver. Latek, meanwhile, donned a headset linked to a portable Heaton 525 field transceiver and patched through a quick call to the three-man KOPASSUS surveillance team posted on a hillock overlooking the agri-compound. Bolan could see the sergeant’s features darken as he spoke with the team leader. As Major Salim passed by on the way back to the rear of the bus, Latek motioned him aside to pass along the news.

      “Apparently the smoke from all these fires has drifted across the IMA grounds,” the major explained as he rejoined Bolan. “Our surveillance team is having trouble seeing the facility.”

      Bolan stared back out the window at the dark, low-hanging soot cloud that loomed ahead of them. “Assuming they’re having the same problem at ground level, it could work to our advantage,” he stated. “Disguised or not, we’ll be better off the closer we can get before they see us coming.”

      “True,” Salim conceded. “Maybe there’s some truth to that saying about every cloud having its silver lining.”

      Soon the bus came to a turnoff. A posted sign indicated a left turn for those traveling to the textile center. The driver ignored the sign and continued to drive straight, downshifting to better tackle a steep rise in the grade. Bolan knew from the briefing that the agricultural facility was now less than a quarter mile up the road.

      “It’s time for the masks,” Salim said. He pulled on

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