Desert Fallout. Don Pendleton

two yards of the Peugeot’s rear bumper before he cut loose with the big Belgian rifle. The leader of the security detail stared down at the smashed crater in his chest where his heart had once been. Blood sneezed from his nostrils, soaking his shirt with even more crimson before his legs folded beneath him. The second and third gunmen didn’t have time to register the death of their partner, Bolan’s next rounds spearing through their skulls.

      The remainder of the squad spun and retreated, so the Executioner turned his attention toward Somali riflemen who had stayed back to provide cover. He took down the two snipers after he flicked the selector switch to full-auto. Most people wouldn’t have been able to handle a 7.62 mm NATO rifle at 600 rpm, but Bolan’s 220 pounds of finely tuned muscle and sinew, as well as years of experience, allowed him to drill tri-bursts into the Shabaab gunners who had opened up on him.

      Pivoting, Bolan turned his fire toward the enemy troopers who had halted their retreat and turned their AKs toward him. The soldier had good cover, and better aim than the Islamist fanatics, but there were enough of them, spread out, that he wouldn’t be able to take them all down in one burst before they threw a wave of deadly steel-cored torment at him.

      Moments later the Somalis jerked violently under gunfire from some unknown source. Bolan almost took it as a sign that a new player had entered the fight on his side.

      The pickup truck Bolan crouched behind suddenly heaved as the unmistakable bulk of a .50-caliber rifle round smashed into its fender, seeking the Executioner’s flesh.

      The death raining down on the Shabaab pirates came for Mack Bolan, as well.

      CHAPTER TWO

      Bolan leaped from behind the Peugeot’s fender as a second .50-caliber antimatériel round sliced through the vehicle as if it were made of paper. Had he not moved, he would have been caught in the path of the metal-crushing round and churned into froth by the passage of the irresistible bullet. He swept up his FAL, looking for the shooter who was concentrating on him, but couldn’t see a thing in the darkness.

      The Shabaab gunmen were in a panic as they swept their AKs in all directions, opening fire on every shadow and flicker that caught their eyes. They had gone from warring with a one-man army to being surrounded and gunned down mercilessly. Bolan could see Kamau tuck Masozi under one arm and take flight once more, just as he’d done when he threw the first grenade through the storehouse window. Bolan was tempted to cut the two men down, but he needed answers. Everything had gone wrong, and the only way to salvage the situation was to get some inside information. That meant that suddenly, Bolan was on Masozi’s side.

      Without a target, the Executioner was going to have to apply his razor-sharp intellect to determining where the new enemy was firing from. He couldn’t use muzzle-flashes, since whoever was firing utilized suppressed weaponry. It was disconcerting that the .50-caliber antimatériel rifle was also wearing a can, dampening its dragon’s-breath belch of flame down to a dull red glow that wouldn’t carry far in the night. However, there was no way for the riflemen to hide the angle at which their bullets impacted the ground, or the dust kicked up when they hit. The rounds impacted the dirt at an acute angle, meaning that the elevation of the enemy gunners had been between eight and twenty feet off the ground. That ruled out warehouses neighboring the Shabaab compound, which were thirty to forty feet tall with no windows.

      Bolan swung back to the Peugeot and ducked below the fender. He put his eye to the cavernous tunnel that the enemy Fifty had torn through the metal, and saw shadowy figures crouched atop one of the small barracks buildings inside the complex. The enemy was dressed in black, making them almost impossible to see if they remained still, but because the Shabaab scattered under the onslaught of stealth weaponry, they had to change positions.

      Bolan popped up over the pickup’s hood and triggered his FAL at the rooftop, raking the night sky. Drawing on his limited, halting Arabic, he shouted, “Over there!”

      The big American pointed at the rooftop. Four Somali gunmen turned and saw what the Executioner had indicated. The young radicals hoisted their Kalashnikov rifles and opened up on the rooftop, as well.

      The soldier sidestepped and sought new cover, this time behind the bed of the Peugeot. He’d moved just in time as the front of the pickup truck was clawed by a storm of automatic fire punctuated by the muffled thunderbolt of the enemy heavy antiarmor rifle. Bolan grimaced and knew that the Shabaab pirates who were aware of the mysterious marauders wouldn’t last long, and any hopes of additional forces following their cue were slim because of the death toll and terror inflicted upon the Somali militiamen by both Bolan and the hidden squad of killers.

      The 84 mm rocket launcher and its bandolier sat at the wheel well of a Mercedes four-wheel drive, just where he’d left them. A mad dash across open ground drew the snipers’ attention, but Bolan was too swift, his own dark form flowing through the shadows, keeping ahead of the lines of bullets chasing him. He skidded to a halt, snatched up the launcher and swung behind the bulk of the jeep. Bullets hammered into the Mercedes’s frame as Bolan swung open the launch tube and stuffed a black, serrated warhead into the breech. Closing the action, he now had a weapon capable of evening the odds against the hidden gunmen. Rather than aim across the hood of the Mercedes, Bolan swung around the front fender, locked onto a spot at the top of the wall and triggered the Carl Gustav. The range was a mere twenty meters, but it was enough for the warhead to arm itself, and when it struck just below the roof, the explosive impact split the building, carving out a terrible furrow. Screams resounded from the marauders’ vantage point, at least two of the enemy shrieking as shrapnel reduced their limbs to bloody stumps.

      The sniper fire had died out immediately, but Bolan swung back behind cover anyway. He took the lull to feed the FAL rifle another magazine, and just for good measure, he popped a fresh 84 mm warhead into the Carl Gustav. He’d come to stop the flow of illicit diamonds into Somalia, and he had been determined to give another crew of pirates a crippling blow.

      The discovery of a batch of raw materials for processing a particularly toxic strain of ricin and the intrusion of a mysterious party of well-equipped and stealthy commandos had altered the mission. It didn’t take much imagination for Bolan to realize that Mubarak had gone rogue, taking a secret supply of deadly biological poisons to the black market in exchange for a suitcase full of illicit diamonds. The dark-clad assassins had all the earmarks of a retrieval team.

      At least, that was the hope Bolan harbored. The gunmen had opened fire so quickly on the Shabaab militiamen and Bolan, that it had to be a shock-and-awe strike.

      The suppressed antiarmor rifle was the thing that gave Bolan the most consternation.

      “White man!” someone called.

      Bolan turned at the sound of the voice. He spotted Masozi and Kamau, crouched behind the corner of a building. They were armed, but they hadn’t leveled their weapons at him.

      Yet.

      “What?” Bolan asked.

      “Who was that shooting at us?” Masozi asked.

      Bolan settled quickly into the role of lone mercenary. “Not a damn clue. I was just here to get the Egyptian back for shorting me.”

      Masozi’s eyes narrowed.

      Bolan patted the Carl Gustav launcher. “I was supposed to get six of these.”

      “He promised me four,” Masozi answered. “You made a mess of my people.”

      “I just came for the cheater,” Bolan said. “I may have fired on a couple of your boys in self-defense, but I nearly got flattened when they blew up half your storehouse.”

      Kamau glared. “That so?”

      “You might have bought his story about magic beans,” Bolan began.

      “What’s your name?” Kamau cut him off.

      “Matt Cooper,” Bolan replied. “You?”

      “Orif Masozi,” the Somali answered. “This is Kamau, my chief of security.”

      Bolan