LITMIR.BIZ

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men also wore black checkered head scarves, identical to the kaffiyeh worn by their leader. Hasseim’s army was one hundred percent Shiite, and in addition to their primary objective of driving the occupying infidels from their holy land, each member had also taken a solemn oath to eradicate the Sunni population responsible for polluting Islam.

      A sudden movement in the distance caught Hasseim’s eye. A battered white panel truck was speeding their way, trailing in its wake a yellow dust cloud reaching ten feet into the air. Hasseim nodded to his companions, who walked away from their SUV in order to put a buffer of safe distance between themselves. As they moved, they brought their P-90s to the ready position.

      The truck bounced over the dusty coastal trail at breakneck speed, coming to a skidding halt ten feet from where Hasseim stood. The front doors flew open, and two men jumped out and hustled to the commander.

      “Allah be praised,” the first said breathlessly, “your servants have been blessed with success.”

      “You have them all?” Hasseim asked in a flat voice.

      “Yes,” the driver replied as he and his companion began moving toward the back of the truck. Hasseim followed a few steps behind, his P-90 loaded and cocked. His right index finger itched with anticipation as it rested on the weapon’s trigger.

      When they reached the vehicle’s rear, the driver unlocked the back door and threw it open. On the floor inside, five men lay with their feet tied and their hands bound behind their backs with heavy nylon wrist wraps. Burlap bags covered their heads, loosely cinched at the throat with black shoelaces. Three were wearing United States Army uniforms, the unit patch on their left shoulders bearing the numeral one embroidered in red thread. They were members of The Big Red One—the Army’s First Infantry Division.

      Hasseim’s lips curled into a cruel smile when he saw his quarry.

      “The others?” he asked, indicating the two in civilian dress with the barrel of his P-90 submachine gun.

      “Munjian,” the driver responded, referring to a secondary Sunni militia operating along the Iraqi border.

      Hasseim signaled to the men who had come with him, and they trotted to his side. He motioned toward the captives with his chin, and two bent into the truck, grabbed a soldier by the uniform and dragged him to the floor’s edge. Upon being moved, the trussed man began jerking against his restraints, repeatedly arching his back until Hasseim took a step forward and gave the burlap bag covering the man’s head a sharp rap with the butt of his submachine gun. The soldier stiffened at the blow and stopped squirming.

      Once the bound prisoner was still, one of Hasseim’s men gripped him under the armpits while another grabbed him around his knees. Grunting under the effort, they lifted the trussed American and hefted him clear of the truck’s cargo hold, making space for their two teammates to duplicate their action with a second soldier. The truck’s driver and his companion followed suit when the second team moved away, pulling the final soldier from the back of the truck. Staggering slightly, they followed the others, carrying their soldier from the vehicle toward a spot designated by Hasseim roughly twenty yards away. There the soldiers were thrown onto the ground to await their fate. Although they remained motionless, their raspy breathing could be heard through the burlap sacks covering their heads, as rapid and shallow as a trapped rabbit’s.

      “Move them apart,” Hasseim ordered as he slung his P-90 over his shoulder. While his men obeyed his order, he walked to the panel truck’s open passenger door, reached into the leg space in front of the seat and came out holding an Uru Model II submachine gun. The stockless 9 mm Brazilian assault rifle had a well-earned reputation for fouling when exposed to the slightest amount of moisture or dust in the chamber. Despite its notorious unreliability, the inexpensive weapon with its 30-round magazines was a favorite among Third World militias. The Sunni Munjian was known to have outfitted their members with Urus.

      Hasseim rammed the rifle’s slide to the rear and let it fly forward, chambering the first of the thirty slugs waiting inside the clip. After scanning the area with dispassionate eyes to make sure his men were clear, he pulled the weapon into his shoulder and, leaning forward slightly, opened fire on the trussed soldiers laying on the ground.

      The Uru spit death on full-auto, filling the air with mind-panicking chatter. Hasseim swept the gun from left to right and back again, hosing the men from head to toe with lethal lead. The 9 mm slugs tore the corpses to pieces, slamming through flesh and bone before exiting through gaping holes the size of tennis balls. The Uru’s firing pin finally clicked onto an open chamber, and the weapon fell silent.

      Hasseim’s eyes were glassy, his face flushed. He placed the Uru on the ground at his feet and turned to the truck’s passenger seat. This time, he brought an American M-16 from the front leg well.

      The two Sunni militiamen were chanting death prayers when they were pulled from the back of the truck to a spot thirty yards from the soldiers’ corpses. There they were unceremoniously dumped onto the ground, and Hasseim reenacted his prior murderous action, spraying the captives with M-16 rounds.

      When the magazine was exhausted, he lowered the rifle, his ears ringing from the auditory assault of the M-16’s automatic barrage. His rapid breathing irritated the inside of his nostrils with the stench of death and cordite that now hung heavy in the late afternoon humidity. As his men rushed forward to cut the bonds from the dead men, he took a few steps back, handing the empty M-16 to one of his assistants. When Hasseim’s men finished arranging the bodies, it would appear all had died in a firefight. Skirmishes between independent militia and NATO forces were an everyday occurrence in this region; there would be no reason for anyone to doubt the evidence.

      “Abbas,” Hasseim called out, bringing a thin young man with alert brown eyes to his side. “Give this to one of them,” he said softly, holding out an eight-gigabyte memory stick wrapped tightly in a plastic sandwich bag.

      Abbas took the memory stick and hustled to the side of the Sunni on the left as Hasseim began walking to his SUV. Only he and his driver would take the trip back, the others would remain to arrange the scene.

      “The Americans will be alerted?” Hasseim asked the driver, although his tone conveyed the question was more a statement than an inquiry.

      “Within hours. We’ll give them GPS coordinates. They’ll be here tonight,” the driver replied.

      Hasseim took a final look toward the water when they reached their vehicle. The sun was low, reflecting off the Gulf’s rippled surface. In his mind, he pictured the narrow channel jammed with American warships. From the highlands above the strait, militiamen equipped with hundreds of missiles would find the unprotected vessels easy targets. Allah be willing, the remainder of the code would be delivered to his servants and the infidels would be destroyed.

      Running a dry tongue over his chapped lips, Hasseim climbed into his SUV. For the first time since morning, he thought of his most recent partners in Las Vegas, the city that in Hasseim’s mind, said all there was to say about Western civilization.

      3

      Stony Man Farm, Virginia

      Hal Brognola was sitting at the conference table, engaged in quiet conversation with Carmen Delahunt and Akira Tokaido, two-thirds of what Aaron Kurtzman considered to be the best cybernetics team anywhere. They stopped talking and looked up when Mack Bolan stepped into the room.

      “Striker,” Hal Brognola greeted the warrior.

      Bolan pulled a chair away from the conference table and slid in next to Delahunt.

      “Something I didn’t ask,” he said, looking at Brognola as if they were in the middle of a conversation, “was how they came to our attention in the first place.”

      “Homeland Security phone monitoring,” Brognola replied. “Key words and patterns flagged them for follow-up investigation. Akira started looking into their actions three weeks ago.”

      The hacker snapped his bubble gum a few times in rapid succession before saying, “Rookies. Lame attempts to cover their

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