Armed Response. Don Pendleton

       Above Southern Yemen

      Loadmaster Terrence Smith almost tumbled from the ladder as he emerged from the flight deck of the Lockheed Martin C130J Hercules C5. He caught himself in time and slid down the ladder into the main cargo hold of the massive aircraft. The noise of the four turboprop Rolls-Royce Allison engines was overwhelming, and he was thankful for his military-grade ear mufflers. The aircraft was currently at fifteen thousand feet, making three hundred knots. That would be changing very shortly. They were about to make their approach to Aden International Airport.

      Smith squeezed past pallets of rice, tents and other humanitarian aid, all destined for the Horn of Africa and parts of Yemen. The drought covered vast areas of Africa. Great Britain, along with many other nations, had flown in extraordinary amounts of emergency supplies using a squadron of semiretired Royal Air Force—RAF—transport planes. Aden was often used as a staging point for the aid, where the pallets would be split up and redistributed to various agencies. It was a routine flight. Everything was normal and on schedule.

      Almost everything.

      There was one anomaly.

      The Hercules had a mysterious passenger, a last-minute addition during the refuel in Naples. The orders were specific. The man didn’t exist. He was never on the aircraft, and Smith was not allowed to remember him. He didn’t know who the passenger was or even what nationality he might be, but Smith knew enough to know what the man represented. Special Forces. His ice-blue eyes made Smith shiver. Even from several yards away, the stranger emitted a presence that spelled danger.

      The man looked up, pinning Smith to the spot with his gaze. It was impossible to hear anything over the thunder of the engines, yet the commando had heard Smith approach. In the ten minutes that Smith had been away from him, the unknown soldier had applied combat cosmetics to his hands and face; he had also changed into a pure black jumpsuit. The man removed his gaze from the loadmaster and resumed preparing himself. A parachute was already strapped to his back, and a long black gear bag was lying next to his feet. Smith decided this was one guy he wouldn’t want to encounter in a dark alley, even if he was a friendly.

      “Two minutes to the drop zone. You had better get ready.” Smith had to yell in the man’s ear to be heard.

      The soldier merely nodded. Smith watched as the man ran his hands over the buckles and straps of his parachute harness, leaving nothing to chance. Together the two men walked over the vibrating deck to the side cargo door. The jump light was still red, but that would change within the next minute. The man secured himself to the aircraft frame to prevent himself from falling out. There was no need to worry about decompression or specialist breathing equipment, as they were not flying high enough. He reached out and pushed a button on a control panel and plunged the cargo hold into darkness.

      Smith heard him punch another button. There was a hiss and a thunk as the side door opened. The noise level increased tenfold. The freezing night air rushed in, whipping around them.

      Twenty seconds more.

      Loadmaster Smith reached out and grabbed a metal strut for extra support. He disliked parachute jumps and being a parachute dispatcher. The height didn’t bother him. The sensation of falling did. But serving in the RAF meant standard parachute training, and he had managed to conquer his fears. The old anxiety, though, was always there.

      Ten seconds.

      Smith was glad that he was not jumping this night. A nighttime parachute jump was a terrifying experience for those who had never attempted it. A nighttime jump over the desert would only increase the tension. On a moonlit night the sand would appear as water, giving a false illusion as to exactly how high the jumper was, making him misjudge his landing and break limbs on impact. However, for a highly experienced soldier, one equipped with all the latest gadgets, it should be a walk in the park. And he could tell that the stranger was no novice.

      Zero seconds.

      The jump light changed from red to green.

      The stranger exited the aircraft.

      In a blink the man was gone, leaving only empty space and howling wind behind him. Smith didn’t bother peering out into the void. There was no point. The soldier would already be lost to sight.

      Smith pushed another button that closed the door. He shivered in the cold. The aircraft’s interior lights came back on. He released his safety belt and walked toward the flight deck to report that the passenger had departed. The big man in black, whoever he was, was off to war.

      And Smith wished him well.

      * * *

      PITCH BLACK.

      Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, plunged through the night on the latest mission of his War Everlasting. The noise from the Hercules was already lost, replaced by the sound of cold air roaring past his head, his suit and gloves keeping his body reasonably warm in the ice-cold air. Bolan didn’t bother trying to locate the aircraft, concentrating instead on his trajectory in what was called military free fall. He lay horizontal to the earth, chest out, back arched, steering with his outstretched hands. His gear bag was tight between his knees. The parachute, a standard MT1-XS fitted with an automatic opening device, had been borrowed from a US Navy SEALs unit that was on exercise in southern Italy. The parachute would automatically open at three thousand feet, giving Bolan plenty of time to glide the canopy to his designated landing zone. The parachute, like everything else on this mission, had been hastily arranged. The target was just too important for Bolan to be allowed to slip away.

      The target was one Zaid abu Qutaiba. Bolan’s mind quickly ran through the known facts and conjectures as he plummeted to the ground. Qutaiba had been on

      Stony Man’s most-wanted list for some time. At one time the man had been a captain in the Iraqi Republican Guard. Now he claimed responsibility for the destruction of an embassy in Kenya, the attempted shooting down of a US commercial aircraft and several assassinations of liberal politicians in Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. It was also believed that he was behind several car bomb attacks in Israel.

      These atrocities were more than enough to bring him to the attention of the antiterrorist unit at Stony Man Farm.

      Qutaiba had been spotted before, not only by Stony Man but also by several key law-enforcement agencies around the world. Yet Qutaiba had managed to avoid capture through the use of disguises and false names, despite all the technology and all the human resources brought to bear. The report had come in less than twelve hours earlier from the CIA. An agent had followed Qutaiba and his entourage to an abandoned village that was probably being used as a transit point on the southern shores of Yemen. The window of opportunity was slim. Bolan had been in Italy at the time, accepting a mission to free a hostage, a mission that was scrubbed by the time he arrived, the hostage already freed by the Carabinieri. So he was hastily pressed into a new operation and was now jumping out of an aircraft at ten thousand feet.

      The mission was simple.

      Locate the terrorist transit camp.

      Identify Qutaiba.

      Termination with extreme prejudice by drone strike.

      Although Mack Bolan carried enough firepower to take on a small army, his task this time was one of pure surveillance: make sure that it really was Qutaiba, then contact the Farm. They in turn would relay the message to the Pentagon, who in turn would contact the pilot of a remote drone that was orbiting high overhead. The White House had made it clear to all parties involved. No mistakes. No civilian casualties. Make sure it really was a terrorist camp. Make sure that Qutaiba was at the location. Then and only then would the order be given to destroy the terrorists. All of this would require boots on the ground, and those boots belonged to the Executioner.

      Bolan had to give the terrorists credit. Not a light showed anywhere. The camp was under observation from an orbiting Keyhole KH-12 satellite, which would be using infrared and thermal imaging. It would show the observers back home how many warm bodies there were.

       Crack!

      The unexpected noise came