Loose Cannon. Don Pendleton

Larantuka and Maumere. The raids, carried out by Densus 88 antiterror squads, had, like countless other sweeps over the past five years, been widely publicized in the media, giving the impression that Jemaah Islamiyah was on the ropes and facing eradication. Hasem took issue with the assessment but there was no denying that bad press had taken its toll on recruitment. Gone were the days when JI routinely turned away fringe candidates for the organization. Now, Hasem and other field commanders had been forced to become more solicitous and less discriminating.

      Things would change soon, though, Hasem reasoned. Even as he was exhorting the recruits, the charismatic leader knew that JI teams in Banda Aceh were preparing to launch what would be the first in a series of counterstrikes against Densus 88. If all went well, when the dust settled, JI’s reputation would be such that once again they would be able to pick and choose from the swelling ranks of those eager to join the cause. For now, however, Hasem would make do with what he had.

      Hasem lectured his minions a few minutes longer, giving the men a well-practiced spiel heavy on references to Allah and laden with vitriol demonizing the United States as the Great Satan. Much was made, too, of the threat posed by secular leaders throughout the islands—men like Governor Zailik of Aceh Province—who took a hardline stance against Islamic fundamentalists. Those local politicians, to Hasem’s way of thinking, were every bit a hindrance to what JI stood for as the Americans and their European counterparts. Indonesia, after all, contained the highest Muslim concentration in the world. What better place for Islam to flourish and lay the groundwork for a long-overdue return to global prominence?

      A breeze rustled through the camp, and as the recruits detected the smell of fried rice and roast goat coming from the kitchens set up inside the former treatment plant, Hasem could see the men’s attention beginning to waver. He quickly wrapped up his remarks, then sent the men to eat.

      A truck had pulled up to the site, parking near Hasem’s quarters, a rusting Quonset hut set back at the edge of the clearing. Hasem went to check on things, catching up with the driver as he was circling around the truck.

      “Did you get it?” he asked.

      “See for yourself,” the driver told him. He opened the rear doors of the truck, revealing an oblong wooden crate the size of a small coffin. The lid was unfastened, and when Hasem raised it, he smiled. Laid out in neat rows within the crate where thin slabs of Semtec. Once placed in the lining of snug vests worn beneath loose clothing, the plastic explosives would be difficult to detect to the visible eye. As such, they would be a far better choice for suicide missions than dynamite sticks or the other, bulkier explosive materials JI had been forced to rely on, thanks to Densus 88’s clampdown on the black market.

      “Excellent,” Hasem said, placing the lid back on the crate. He told the driver to wait while he went for his payment, then headed toward the nearby hut. He was met in the doorway by one of his lieutenants, Guikin Daeng, a sallow, sneering man in his late twenties.

      “I was just coming to track you down,” Daeng told Hasem. “We just received word from our team in Banda Aceh. Governor Zailik is setting out early for the airport, just as we hoped.”

      “Our little demonstration scared him out of his cozy little nest?” Hasem asked.

      Daeng nodded, then squawked like a chicken and laughed.

      “Out of the frying pan,” Hasem intoned. “Into the fire…”

      3

      Nearly twenty-one hours after its departure from a private airfield in Washington D.C., the Cessna Citation X jet carrying Mack Bolan dropped through the cloud cover veiling the Strait of Malacca, giving the Executioner a glimpse of Banda Aceh. He was seated in the lavishly appointed eight-seat passenger cabin, his view out the right window only partially obstructed by the jet’s sub-mounted wing. The jet was RICCO booty recently claimed by the government after the arrest and conviction of a high-rolling Chicago drug dealer.

      The Executioner wasn’t the only passenger aboard the jet.

      “Y’know, I could get used to this,” John “Cowboy” Kissinger drawled from the seat next to Bolan. Legs stretched out, the Stony Man weaponsmith had his feet propped on a foldout table that also held the remains of a gourmet breakfast he’d put together in the jet’s galley after sleeping most of the trip with his leather-and-suede chair fully reclined. “Only thing missing was some foxy stewardess ready to initiate me into the Mile-High Club.”

      “Maybe next time,” Bolan deadpanned.

      Some years back, Kissinger had left his career as a DEA field agent to join the covert ops team at Stony Man Farm. The original plan had been for him to stay on-site and oversee the acquisition and maintenance of the vast arsenal stockpiled in an outbuilding near the main quarters, and he’d excelled at both functions while finding time to tinker with new prototypes and modify existing weapons to improve performance and reliability in the battlefield. In time, though, he’d come to miss taking on the enemy firsthand, and whenever Hal Brognola or Barbara Price found themselves shorthanded when doling out assignments, Kissinger was usually the first to volunteer. Conversely, whenever Bolan felt the need for backup going into a mission, he invariably turned to Cowboy, as well as the pilot currently minding the Citation’s controls.

      “Okay, boys and girls,” Jack Grimaldi called out over the intercom as the jet continued its descent toward the airport located six miles inland from Banda Aceh. “You know the drill. Seats up, belts on, and stash away anything you don’t want pinballing around the compartment should I suddenly forget what the hell I’m doing and wind up dribbling this sucker across the landing strip.”

      Kissinger got up long enough to take his and Bolan’s breakfast trays back to the galley, then strapped himself in for landing. He saw the Executioner still staring out the portal beside him.

      “Already looking for that needle in the haystack, eh?”

      “Something like that,” Bolan replied.

      In truth, though, the Executioner’s attention was focused on a flurry of activity around one of the far hangars, where a handful of armed men in combat fatigues were crossing the tarmac toward where crews were hastily fuelling what looked to be a vintage Vietnam-era Huey. A pair of military Jeeps had pulled up alongside the combat chopper as well, ready to take on a few more passengers. Kissinger finally glanced out the window and caught a glimpse of the pandemonium.

      “That’s our hangar, isn’t it?” he asked Bolan.

      Bolan nodded as he continued to monitor the activity. “I have a feeling they’re up to something besides rolling out the red carpet….”

      “NICE TIMING, MATE,” Shelby Ferstera told Bolan ten minutes later as the Executioner deplaned. “You want to hit the ground running, you’ve come to the right place.”

      Ferstera was a tall, broad-shouldered Australian in his early forties. A former member of that country’s elite Special Forces, Ferstera now served as field commander for Densus 88, eighty-eight being the number of Australians killed during the deadly 2002 bombings in downtown Bali. Ferstera had lost a sister in that bloodbath, so he’d been among the first to volunteer for the counterterrorist unit, joining forces with several U.S. Delta Force veterans and a handful of CIA operatives, who, with the help of well-trained Indonesian nationals, had been instrumental in thwarting Jemaah Islamiyah’s efforts to surpass the carnage wreaked in the Balinese incident. Their tactics over the years had been as effective as they had been controversial, resulting in the arrest of several thousand JI conspirators and the deaths of several hundred others.

      Still, Ferstera knew the enemy was far from defeated, and he was not the sort of man to let pride get in the way of welcoming another ally in the fight. He’d been given the standard cover story that Bolan, under the alias of Matt Cooper, and his crew were special agents for the Justice Department, but the Aussie knew better. When told by his CIA colleagues not to pry into Cooper’s background, Ferstera felt certain that by sending these men to help with the situation in the islands, the U.S. had decided to play an ace stashed up its sleeve.

      For