Rebel Force. Don Pendleton

      1

      The factory sat on the banks of the Sunzha River. As silent as a mausoleum, the building was surrounded by warehouses and industrial structures all bombed to rubble in the wake of the second Chechen war. An expensive black Mercedes sat abandoned in the half-acre parking lot. The sky was starless under close cloud cover. Rain fell, dirty gray from the sky.

      Mack Bolan drew his mouth into a tight line. He scanned the building and the area around it through his night-vision goggles. He searched for telltale smeary silhouettes in the monochromatic green of the high-tech device but saw nothing. Even the engine block on the Mercedes was cool. The sounds of traffic came to him from other areas of the city, muted across the distance. Close by, his ears detected only the whisper of cold wind skipping across the polluted river.

      Bolan scrutinized the building, determining his approach. To the rear of the building loading docks with big roll-up bay doors sat shut and locked. The front of the building was made up of wide glass windows, and revolving doors that led into the company front offices. If Bolan approached from that direction, he’d have his back to the access road and an impossibly wide front to cover.

      On the side of the building closest to him a maintenance door was set at the top of a short flight of concrete steps. Off in the distance, Bolan heard the rotors of a helicopter cruising low over the city. The Executioner’s finely honed battle instincts whispered to him. Danger lay on every side.

      The Mercedes, parked in the open, with no attempt at concealment or subterfuge in a city under martial law, was an enigma. Bolan wanted to be the wild card, not have some high-end vehicle fill that role. Sitting there, sleek and black and silent, it announced a human presence in a location supposedly long abandoned.

      Bolan again scanned the area.

      Grozny had been locked down under the threat of terrorist action by Chechen separatists. Police units patrolled in armored personnel carriers and army checkpoints secured every major road and highway leading into the city. Russia’s federal army worked hard at a three-point mission. Keep the oil flowing, keep the rebel insurgency suppressed and minimize troop casualties. Those protocols had resulted in an occupying force prone to using their weapons more than restraint.

      Bolan knew he had taken a grave risk by going armed into the sovereign territory of an allied nation dealing with the threat of a violent insurrection. It was an insurrection with increasingly solidified ties to the worldwide jihadist movement. Moving incognito, Bolan had flown into Grozny using Associated Press credentials as Matt Cooper, freelance reporter.

      Hal Brognola from Justice had secured the location of a cache drop used by CIA paramilitary teams during the Chechen wars. Slipping free from his state-sponsored monitors, Bolan had managed to get to the drop and secure money, equipment and a Kevlar armor vest, as well as personal weapons.

      Bolan moved forward, scrambling out of the empty drainage ditch that ran parallel to the building. He approached a chain-link fence and dropped down, removing wire cutters from his combat harness. Using deft, practiced movements, Bolan snipped an opening and bent back one edge.

      Bolan slid through headfirst and popped up on the other side. Traveling in a wide crescent, designed to take him as far as possible from the Mercedes, Bolan approached the maintenance entrance. He scanned the triple row of windows set above the building’s ground floor for any sign of movement. As he neared the building, Bolan pulled a Glock 17 from his shoulder rig.

      Bolan crept up the short flight of stairs leading to the door, clicking the selector switch on his pistol off safety as he moved. Reaching the door, Bolan pulled a lock pick gun from a cargo pocket and slid it expertly home. He pulled the trigger on the locksmith device and heard the bolt securing the door snap back. Replacing the lock pick gun, Bolan put a hand on the door handle, holding his 9 mm pistol up and ready.

      He thought about the intelligence intercept that had come through at the last moment. Because of strained relations with the Russian government over the Iraq war and the status of Iran’s nuclear program, the Oval Office had decided to keep America’s ally out of the loop. Enzik Garabend, an Armenian middleman responsible for financial networks and communications between disparate terror cells, was on his way to the Chechen capital. A meet had been planned with Kamir Abdhula Zanibar, head of a violent, Whabbism influenced, splinter militia of the main Chechen separatist movement.

      In order to make use of the real-time information, Brognola had been forced to rush Bolan into place. Garabend was known never to be without his laptop. Encrypted inside of its software was believed to be a blueprint to the worldwide financial networks of the global jihad, linking Abu Sayef in Southeast Asia, with Islamic Jihad and al Qaeda in the Middle East, all the way to EU splinter groups and Chechen field commanders. It was a brass ring worth killing for.

      Before he moved he took a final scan of his surroundings. The industrial wasteland was eerily still. Taking a breath, the Executioner turned the handle and pulled the door open. He stepped through the black mouth of the open door and into the darkened interior of the building. He shuffled smoothly to one side, sank into a tight crouch, pistol up, and let the door swing shut behind him.

      Bolan quickly took in the hall in both directions. It was empty. Rising, he began moving down the corridor toward the rear of the building.

      The building was oppressively still and quiet around him. The perimeter hallway ran the length of the structure, with doors leading to the building’s interior spaced at intervals along the inside wall. At the far end Bolan could make out the heavy steel of a fire door that would open to stairs.

      The intelligence on the building layout had been spotty. The factory had served many functions over the years and had played little part in the Chechen insurrection or in Russian oil concerns. All Bolan knew was that Garabend, with his bodyguards, would be in an office suite on the second floor for seven hours before departing Grozny for Damascus.

      Bolan