Devil's Bargain

“Richard Cramnon’s dead, remember? I am Abbadon.”

“What?”

“I have been raised up from the dead as Abbadon. That would be ancient Hebrew for ‘destruction.’ I am the bottomless pit, consuming the damned in eternal fire. I am the abyss that vomits forth the dark angel to spread plague and death across the earth.”

“You’re insane.”

“No. I have never been more right.”

Balton felt his heart skip a beat, a rumble of cold laughter striking his back.

“Don’t look so puked out, Timothy. We just came by to say we love you.” His laughter echoed by the others, Cramnon went on, “By the way, I was real sorry to hear about your wife. Breast cancer, huh. Pity about your boy, too. Heroin, was it?” He laughed.

“You rotten son of a—”

“Drugs, modern-day scourge, I always said, the invisible foreign invasion. Hey, they say it’s a real heartbreaker, a father having to bury his own child. What do you think it was that pushed the little punk over the edge? Kid couldn’t live up to your high standards?”

Balton squeezed his eyes shut, heard Cramnon laugh beyond the roaring in his ears.

“Too much pressure from the old man, not enough love and affection? Big shot that you were at DOD, too caught up in work, family always on the backburner. Bet you hated and blamed yourself when you stared into his coffin, huh? Wonder still how such a tragedy could happen? Wish to God you could have it back to do over. Thing about that, Timothy, human beings always wish they could do it over, make it right, the old ‘if I knew then what I know now.’ Being a little more than human these days, well, I had a long chat with God while I was away. He told me, among other things, human beings would commit the same damn mistakes even if they could turn back time. Oh, yeah, I was thinking about you, asked God why even bother to create your son if the punk was going to cause you such grief. God, He tells me humans are always crying, ‘why?’ when they should ask ‘how?’As in how to fix, how to find a solution. That’s why I’m here…the disk?”

Shaking, Balton began to turn, aiming his rage toward their laughter. He hoped his body concealed the Taurus, long enough where he could at least tag one, two if he got lucky. He was in slow motion, dizzied by shock, as he faced the three of them. The one he believed was Cramnon appeared to float across the room, a tall shadow in a long black coat, rolling counterclockwise from the other two shadows peeling the other way. Pistol coming around, trigger taking up slack, he balked, shocked at how different they looked than he remembered. Where they were once clean-cut and fair-skinned, he found hair as black as a raven, flowing to their shoulders. With prominent cheekbones and hawk noses, complexions so dark or burnished by sun, black eyes that were once blue, they appeared…

Semitic?

A shot cracked from the dark. He heard a sharp grunt, pistol flying from his hand, then froze at the sight of blood jetting from the stump where his thumb was amputated. Balton slumped, clutched his hand, gagged.

“Your boy, Gulliver, I made it last two days before he gave you up.”

Balton heard his bitter chuckle, then felt tears welling as he looked at the picture. So this was how it would end, he thought, the world fading, the blood pumping out. So many mistakes, so much neglect dead-ending in too much pain and sorrow. It galled him, but Cramnon’s cruel words rang true, ground deep. They—whoever they were, he thought—said a man’s character was his destiny. Strange, he decided, he wasn’t sure what was his own true character. Way beyond guilt and regret now—again, “they” claimed not even God could change the past, and, yes, that even the Devil knew the darkest corners of human hearts, the worst pain, the most atrocious of every man’s thoughts and desires—he suddenly prayed to a divine being he hadn’t thought about since his wife died. He heard the evil thing demand the disk. Brushing it to the edge of the desk, he heard, “And the password?”

Why not? “Agrippa.”

He shut out the laughter, silently implored for a quick, merciful end he knew he didn’t deserve. He prayed for forgiveness, his own sins too many, he thought, to even recall. He glimpsed one of the shadows falling beside him, slip the disk into the computer. A metallic click. Behind, smoke blew over his head, Cramnon laughing about the irony of the password. Something about how Agrippa was an ancient sorcerer’s book, pages made of human skin, how it listed the names of every demon in Hell, how they could be summoned to earth to help the caller fulfill whatever desire and wish.

“We’re in business,” Balton heard the shadow say.

Then Cramnon asked, “You prefer it in the back?”

He straightened, offered up a last silent prayer this monstrous evil was soon, somehow, removed from the face of the earth, sent where it belonged, before it was too late.

Turning, he told Cramnon, “No.”

CHAPTER ONE

If the nation’s enemies pulled it off, Mack Bolan feared the United States of America would cease to exist as he knew it. Any number of apocalyptic nightmares charged through his mind, stoked a sense of dire urgency while inflaming a righteous anger he hadn’t felt in some time. Martial law, he knew, would prove the least of the nation’s woes. The shortlist of horrors spewed from the brewing caldron of this hell—looting, riots, interstates and highways parking lots as panicked civilians fled for the hills, murder in the streets by those left behind in the chaos and terror—was incomprehensible to rational human minds.

Unfortunately, he had walked this road many times in his War Everlasting. And he knew all about the cannibals unleashing death and destruction on free and not so free societies, consuming or oppressing the innocent, driven by whatever dark machinations churned in hearts pumping with the blood of the wicked.

Only this crisis defied any past experience Bolan had ever known.

Wedged in the doorway beside the M-60 gunner, the Black Hawk gunship sailing over the wooded countryside of Williamsburg, Bolan took in the command-and-control center. A quick head count, as the warbird descended, and he figured ten to fifteen special ops ringing the farmhouse perimeter. Four Black Hawks were grounded in the distance, fuel bladders, he found, already dropped off for quick topping out of tanks, one critical detail out of the way.

Slashed by midmorning sunshine, there were too many black sedans to bother counting—government-issue vehicles having delivered the best and brightest from the FBI, NSA, DIA and whoever else muscled their way into the game—he then noted the small armada of oversize vans in matching color. High-tech communications-surveillance-tracking centers on wheels, bristling with antennae, spouting sat dishes, they could garner intelligence at light speed. From past hands-on experience with war wagons, he knew they could mobilize and steer field operatives to the enemy’s back door before they were aware the sky was falling.

Panning on, he saw satellite dishes staggered at various intervals, fanning away from the C-and-C center, cables hooked into generators mounted in the beds of Army transport trucks or Humvees. It appeared topnotch professional on the surface, but it was an operation marshaled in a few short hours, he knew, backed with the full blessing of an anxious White House and Pentagon. And the political-military powers had damn good reason to feel the collective knot in their belly. Sometimes, though, haste, edging toward panic in this case, he thought, led to bad decisions. Warning bells told him there were too many chiefs in the act.

There was some good news, a ray of hope they could abort the enemy’s twisted dream. The FBI had grabbed four of them—two in Richmond, two in Fredericksburg—Bolan learned during his initial briefing at the Justice Department. Under interrogation, the Feds had a general idea what was unfolding, but no clear fix on enemy numbers, where and when the big event—as the opposition called it—would happen. With their arrest, a nervous logic rippled down the chain of intelligence and military command, the former capital of Virginia chosen for strategic purposes, central command planted between what were believed intended strike points. Virginia Beach south, Richmond and Washington, D.C., due north, and Baltimore a short hop up the interstate from here, if the opposition was already on the move, if the enemy even partly succeeded….

Intelligence at this point, he knew, had to be on the money if he was to root out, crush the scourge before it unleashed its murderous agenda.

And hunting down the savages was the reason why he was here.

The Black Hawk touching down, Bolan bounded out the doorway, forged into rotor wash. Closing on the front porch, he found beefed-up security nearly invisible to the naked eye. Briefly he wondered how his sudden entrance into the hunt would be received, an unknown marching in with carte blanche to call the shots. On that score, all egos needed to take a back seat, he knew, as he glimpsed blacksuited men hunkered in the woods, Stoner 63 Light Machine Guns poking through brush, figures with FBI stenciled on windbreakers, Armalite AR-18 assault rifles slung around their shoulders, Feds scurrying in and out of the intel nerve center.

His orders were clear. And a presidential directive had cut through red tape, dropped him square in charge. If anybody had problems with that, there was a number to call, a direct line to the President. The Man in the Oval Office, and Hal Brognola, the big Fed at the Justice Department who gave him his marching orders, knew the credentials he was bringing here were bogus, but they were likewise aware this was no time for interagency backbiting and grandstanding.

It was the eleventh hour, time for decisive, swift and, hopefully, preemptive action.

Or else…

The grim thought trailed away as he saw the tall FBI man materialize in the doorway, venture a few steps across the porch, then appear to balk at what he saw.

“You Special Agent Matt Cooper?”

Of course, the FBI man knew that already, the coded message radioed ahead before his Black Hawk breached their airspace. “That would be me.”

“Agent Michael James. ASAC, now that you’re here.”

“What do you have?”

“What we’ve got are definite major ‘effing’ problems.”

“How about telling me something I don’t know?”

He pulled up short, watching as ASAC James looked him up and down, the FBI man perhaps wondering more “what” he was than “who.” No question, he looked military, specifically black ops, worlds apart from any G-man, he knew. Start with the dark aviator shades, for instance, then the combat blacksuit, his tried and proved lethal duo of side arms filling out the windbreaker. There was the Beretta 93-R in shoulder holster, the mammoth .44 Magnum Desert Eagle riding his hip, for killing starters. Just above the rubber-soled combat boots, a Ka-Bar fighting knife was sheathed around his shin, just in case all else failed. Combat vest, pouches slitted to house spare clips, webbing lined with a bevy of frag, tear gas, flash-stun and incendiary grenades, and whatever else he needed for battle, urban or otherwise, was bagged in nylon in the gunship.

“Come on, we’re on the clock, Cooper.”

Inside the nerve center, trailing James, Bolan felt the air of controlled frenzy, a hornet’s nest of buzzing activity. Banks of computers, digital monitors and wall maps packing the room with inches to spare, he navigated through the web of cables strung across the floor. Above the electronic chitter and voices relaying intelligence over com links and secured sat phones, he heard James say, “We think there may be as many as six to ten cells, according to electronic intercepts, surveillance, what cooperation we’ve gotten from their own communities, informants, here and abroad, on our payroll, filling in a few particulars. In the plus column, we grabbed another of these assholes in Boston. He appears willing to talk, but I’m hearing he’s second or third tier, meaning he was on need-to-know until the last minute before the big bang. We don’t know if the cells are working in twos, threes or as independent operators, nor what their specific destinations of target.”

James stopped by a bank of monitors tied into fax machines, sat phones. “Another sliver of sunlight—two more were snatched at Penn Station, while you were in the air. They were minutes from boarding the Number 90 and 93 trains. Two carry-ons per scumbag, four bags, all loaded with Semtex, the payload just inside Amtrak’s fifty-pound limit. Military explosive. Begs the question how the hell they got their hands on it, where and from who in the first place. First-class tickets, one way, of course, they were booked two cars down from the driver’s seat. That much wallop, we figure at least two cars trashed and gone up in flames, complete derailment, the works rolling up, one car after…”

“I’ve got the picture.”

“Okay. We are on ThreatCon Delta, terrorist alert severe. If you could ratchet it up a notch the country would be under martial law. You can well imagine the panic already out there among John and Jane Q. Citizen, what with the media jamming mikes and cameras in the face of anybody who looks official. All local and state law enforcement have been scrambled to aid and assist the National Guard, the Army, Special Forces, Delta in the shutdowns, searches, sealing off perimeters of all terminals and depots, starting with the major cities, particularly the Eastern Seaboard, the West Coast. If we don’t chop them off at the knees, and soon, well—”

“Airports?”