Free Strike Force Delta by Mack Maloney Page A

paranoia just getting the best of him?
    Faheeb stayed frozen in the open doorway as the gas truck lurched through the main gate and finally stopped. He immediately yanked the driver from the cab. Faheeb was a big man, and the driver was a slight black teenager. Or at least that’s what he appeared to be.
    Faheeb began slapping the driver viciously, this as his guards closed in on the driver’s assistant in the passenger seat.
    â€œWhat do you know?” Faheeb screamed at the driver. “Who sent you here to do this?”
    But the driver could only cover up from the blows and shake his head. “It is my job!” he began screaming back. “Just my job!”
    Faheeb finally stopped striking the man and pushedhim back toward the tanker’s hose. “If it is your job, then get your lazy ass to work!” he shouted at the man.
    Meanwhile, the bodyguards allowed the passenger to get out of the fuel truck and together he and the driver dragged the delivery hose across the room. Here a four-hundred-gallon tank sat, taking up one end of the vaultlike enclosure. This was where the fort’s lifeblood gasoline was stored.
    The driver nervously attached the hose to the tank and started pumping. Half of the bodyguards came down from the ramparts, their weapons turned toward the driver and his helper. Faheeb knew the two African youths would have made perfect suicide bombers, igniting the truck and destroying the fort and everything in it. Luckily, the enemies of the people Faheeb worked for didn’t operate like that. At least, he didn’t think they did.
    The refueling went unmercifully slow as always. Once the gas was flowing it didn’t seem like it would take all that long for the four hundred gallons to go from truck to tank, but at this point Faheeb imagined the gas moving in slow-motion dribs, drabs, and drops. There should have been a larger storage tank here; everyone involved knew this would have made more sense. Then these three-times-a-week sessions could be reduced to something more manageable, like once a week. But that would be against the financial wishes of Faheeb’s superiors. Al Qaeda was much too cheap to buy a large, safer tank.
    The tension grew almost unbearable. Faheeb’s stomach was in knots. He was sure that at any minute the back of the tank truck would burst open and some country’s special ops forces would come tumbling out and then they’d all be on their way to a fiery end.
    But no. . .
    That did not happen.
    The tank truck finally ran dry. The driver and his assistant quickly jumped back inside and backed out of the fort. The doors were closed, and the stink of gas left Faheeb’s nostrils. The tension eased. Faheeb took his Arab-style skullcap and wiped the sweat from his brow. At least
that
was over.
    He called to his remaining bodyguards up on the roof. It was time for breakfast. Faheeb retreated back to the kitchen, the weight of Allah off his shoulders once again. A cup of tea was waiting for him; so was a fresh sugar roll. His bodyguards arrived moments later. As they were his best fighters, they always dined with him.
    Faheeb took his seat at the head of the old wooden table. His bodyguards sat around him and waited—only Faheeb could start the meal. He faked a prayer and, now ravenous, took a huge bite of his sugar roll. His men did the same a second later.
    A second after that, Faheeb went over in his chair, his head hitting the floor with a loud, bloody crack. White foam spewed from his mouth. He shook once, violently—and then he was dead. The 10 men around him all hit the table a moment later, following their leader into the black hole of death. All of them victims of the sweet pastries that today were covered with fastacting highly toxic curare poison made to
look
like sugar.
    Just like that, nearly half the prison’s hard-core gunmen were eliminated.
    The first Superhawk helicopter crashed onto the prison’s roof a