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lives. In this world there would be opportunity for all, he thought, an even playing field where man could use whatever natural abilities and intelligence, not to attain wealth, privilege, stature or dominion over others, but to help his fellow man make the earth a bright, kind, gentle place. There would be mercy, compassion, tolerance. There would be peace, harmony, trust and understanding. There would be no crime, no killing, no greed, no lust for a bigger slice of everything at the expense of his fellows, no life wasted in self-destruction. There would be no famine, disease or war.

      There would be no Habir Dugula.

      Of course, wherever this place existed, it was only just a dream, Mack Bolan knew, and all too painfully well. For the man also known as the Executioner this Nirvana or Heaven, this imagined place on Earth, where all men were free, created equal to follow the tenets of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness was the stuff of fantasy and angst, best left to the poets and the songwriters.

      He was a soldier, first and last, brutally aware after walking countless miles in the arena of the savage, that as long as animal man existed, preying on the weak and the innocent, going for number one, peace was just a word.

      The latest in a long line of vicious warlords in Somalia was all the proof he needed that evil was alive and well on Earth. But Habir Dugula was only one reason Bolan had undertaken this mission.

      They were almost there, in place to give Dugula’s mass murderers and armed profiteers a dose of their own poison. Hearing the familiar thunder, Bolan spotted the C-130, coming in for a landing on the plain, due south, the giant bird vanishing from sight a moment later above the lip of the wadi. Fisting his M-16/M-203 combo, adrenaline burning, Bolan shot a look at his driver, a twist to Cobra Leader’s original attack plan flaring to mind. On the surface, the strike could in all probability work, he reasoned. For openers, they were all seasoned pros, whereas Dugula and goons were accustomed, for the most part, to slaughtering their unarmed countrymen. Sure, there was the usual street fighting in Mogadishu with rival clans, but as a rule of thumb, Dugula’s thugs outnumbered the competition, and any sustained shooting match was spurred more by hair-trigger impulse than skill and cold tactics on an even battlefield. Just the same, he knew a wild bullet, even one fired in haste or panic, could score flesh.

      Timing was the key ingredient to get it started, the soldier knew, ground forces unleashing the lightning and thunder in sync. It was a brazen play, no two ways about it, Collins and company shooting their way off the ramp, Hummers rampaging into the stunned forces of Dugula, mowing them down off the starting line. The Black Hawks and the Apache, a mile or more to their rear, flying nap of the earth and jamming any atypical Somali substandard radar in the area, were a definite added bonus. If Dugula stuck to form, according to UN and CIA reports, he would hang back while his thugs boarded the C-130, then loaded up the APCs and transports parked at the command post of the warlord’s airfield. They would stock their warehouses with food and medicine slated for the sick and starving, sell it to other lesser-ranking warlords or whoever else could pay the going rate. Bolan expected once Dugula found they weren’t faced with well-intentioned UN or Red Cross workers, the warlord would bolt.

      The soldier gave a moment’s thought to the mission, the parameters, endgame, reasons why he had accepted. For starters, it angered Bolan deeply that in this part of the world, where those who needed food and medicine the most, cried out for a helping hand just to get through the day, were not only denied the basics, but viewed as a blight to be removed from the body whole. In other words, those unfortunate enough not to be able to defend or fend for themselves, whatever the circumstance, weren’t worth protecting or sustaining, seen as deadweight, a possible contagion to the power structure, worthy of only subjugation or death.

      Dugula had been on the soldier’s removal list for some time, the warlord living up to his ghoul’s handle given him by the UN for too long now. In a land where lawlessness ruled, where there wasn’t even the first fundamental institution, bureaucracy, no media or government whatsoever, it was impossible for even the World Health Organization to state the number of Dugula’s victims. Western intelligence could emphatically claim that entire villages had been wiped off the plains in a genocide campaign where Bolan assumed the warlord meant to do nothing but spread fear and terror.

      The soldier had been around long enough to know that whatever they did here would make little difference in the long run. One less Dugula, one less army of murderers, though, terrorizing the countryside might tip the scales an inch or so in favor of the oppressed. What was true, in his mind at least, that all it took for evil to triumph was for good men to turn a blind eye, wash their hands of atrocity and man’s inhumanity to man as long as it didn’t encroach on their own world. If all of it boiled down to the power of the gun winning over evil, the Executioner was a proved old hand at the game.

      A little over three days ago, Bolan recalled, he had been standing down at Stony Man Farm, the ultracovert intelligence agency in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and overseen by his longtime friend, Hal Brognola. Brognola, a high-ranking official of the Justice Department who was—in addition to routine Justice duties—a cutout between the President of the United States and the Farm, had presented the soldier with quite the unusual mission. How the channels ran through the various intelligence agencies to launch this mission and who, exactly, had brainstormed this campaign, not even Bolan or Brognola was sure. Assume Pentagon brass, CIA, NSA, but the Man—who green-lighted all Stony Man operations—wanted what he called the best of the best on board a black ops team called Cobra Force Twelve.

      It seemed the President—or whoever had put the idea in his head—felt the need for a second holding pen outside Guantanamo Bay. Gitmo, or so Brognola had been told by the Man, Bolan recalled, had gotten a bit overcrowded with bad guys. And secondly, or so the line of reasoning went, there was too much spotlight glaring on Gitmo, thanks to the media, which, in the usual convoluted political thinking, could end up smacking Washington with a black eye. Prisoner mistreatment, abyssmal living conditions, individual rights of terrorists denied, and so on. It hadn’t been spelled out one hundred percent, but Bolan’s gut told him the next prison camp for international criminals wouldn’t pop up on CNN.

      Usually the soldier operated alone, or as part of the two Stony Man commando teams. Working with unknown factors, CIA or bona fide military men with combat experience, had proved perilous to his health in the past. Brognola, however, had laid it out, convinced him to colead Cobra Force Twelve. Never one to unduly swaddle himself in the Stars and Stripes, the big Fed had told him twenty to thirty of some of the most wanted terrorists, depending on how many could be taken alive, could prove intelligence mother lodes in the war on terror. Somalia was first on the roundup list.

      Not even Brognola had been told where this military tribunal would be held, and Bolan wasn’t quite sure what to make on the lack of concrete details. It smacked of dark secrecy to the soldier, all around, and Brognola had as much as said if it blew up in the faces of those in the field doing all the hunting and capturing then America would take a verbal shellacking by the UN, her supposed allies, not to mention the Muslim world cranking up the heat for jihad.

      And even with intelligence operatives all over the map, guiding them from hit to hit, they were on their own. The Executioner understood and accepted his usual role as a deniable expendable if he was caught or killed by the enemy. That was acceptable. What wasn’t were a few nagging speculations tossed his way by Brognola before he headed out to Fort Bragg to introduce himself—Colonel Brandon Stone—to the Cobra troops. The file on Collins and Cobra was classified, but the cyber sleuths at the Farm had unearthed a few questions, framed as suspicion, about the man and his team. They were terrorist headhunters, with a trio of successful outings to their credit, only a “but” in caps hung over their heads. The thing was, they had been in the general vicinity when a spate of kidnappings and murders of American citizens in Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia sullied their record. Coincidence?

      Another reason to hop on board.

      The soldier was there now, willing to let battle and time tell the truth.

      He turned to the driver—Asp—the op’s mane of black hair and facial scruff framing the portrait of a mercenary. The pager on Bolan’s hip vibrated, the same signal transmitted, he knew, to the other ground troops. The bird had landed.

      “Listen