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Assassin's Code
Don Pendleton


There's a brutal new player in the Middle East–a mysterious group of radicalized assassins unleashing havoc. When a U.S. envoy is slaughtered, Mack Bolan picks up the hunt in the Afghan mountains, the first leg of a mission to stem the flow of spilled blood across a shattered region…and the world.In a sophisticated undercover operation that spans the borderlands and urban battlefields of Iraq, Pakistan and India, Bolan and a handful of operatives attempt to do the impossible: find and terminate the revitalized Islamic murder cult. Reborn from an ancient sect, the group merges ancient terror with modern technology. As dealers of death for the hard line ruling Mullahs, the Council of Assassins plots a new global caliphate…with a calculated first strike aimed at the heart of the United States.









“Control, do you still have a fix on our position?”


The earpiece responded with an empty hiss. Bolan pulled the device from his ear. There was still the hope that even though he couldn’t communicate Keller could still track him.

Ous stood and steadied himself against a rock. “The gunfire from the top of the gorge has stopped.”

“They’ll be organizing a hunting party.”

“Do you think Saboor could convince our comrades to hunt me, much less the Mighty One?” Ous asked.

“No.” Bolan thought about Zurisaday’s mysterious bodyguards. “They’ll be bringing in ringers.”





Assassin’s Code


Mack Bolan







Don Pendleton







www.mirabooks.co.uk (http://www.mirabooks.co.uk)


I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act.

—Joseph Rotblat

1908–2005

A terrifying reality is how far bad people will go to bring about Armageddon. But a few good people stand ready to defend.

—Mack Bolan




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE




CHAPTER ONE


Helmand Province, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan

“Good Luck, sir!” the driver called. Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, nodded as he pulled his shemagh up over the bridge of his nose and his goggles down over his eyes. He shouldered his gear bag and stepped out of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle—MRAP—and into the maelstrom. Except for the watering of the Helmand River, the province was arid and when the wind blew, the dust rose. The dust storm was in its second day, and it turned the world at noon into a howling, hissing peach-colored nightmare of wind and grit.

Bolan turned his head as a wave of dust slapped him in the face. The wind plucked at his clothing as the dust sought every fold and crevice. He slammed the door shut behind him and knocked twice on the fender for thanks and luck. The MRAP 4X4 rumbled off toward the temporary airmobile depot.

The soldier leaned into the wind and walked across the village’s single street to a blast-blackened native house. The wind and dust were making an earnest attempt at scrubbing the face of the house clean. What it couldn’t scour away were the pockmarks in the clay from dozens of bullet strikes and the bigger craters and divots from heavy machine guns and grenade blasts.

A pair of goggled, helmeted and scarf-faced Marines stood hunched at guard outside the door. A designated marksman on the roof was a sand-colored ghost in the gloom. The two Marines below nodded and opened what was left of the shattered, blue-painted wooden door. The wind dropped from a howl to a moan as Bolan stepped out of the storm and into a butcher’s yard.

United States Assistant Attaché Henry “Hank” Millard had died hard. He had risen to the rank of commander in the United States Navy and was a Defense Language Institute Hall of Famer who spoke excellent Dari Persian and Arabic. He had been sent to the blast furnace of Helmand province to deal directly with the tribal chieftains and to woo them away from the Taliban.

Only a few threads of flesh and gristle kept his head attached to his body.

Bolan pushed up his goggles, pulled down his shemagh and set down his bag with a muffled clank. A fully armed and armored member of the Marine Military Police openly scowled at him. A man and woman in plain battle fatigues looked at Bolan suspiciously. The SIG pistols strapped to their thighs told Bolan they were most likely Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents. Of interest was an Afghan man of indeterminate middle age standing slightly off by himself. He wore a mixture of Afghan and Western dress. The pakol on his head said he was probably from the northwest. He smoked a ten-inch church-warden-style briar pipe, and every time he puffed the NCIS agents glared at him, however they seemed unwilling or unable to demand that he cease smoking at a crime scene. The man carried an M-4 rifle crooked in his elbow.

He looked disturbingly like Clint Eastwood if the actor had a broken nose, grew a salt-and-pepper beard with matching long curling hair and had skin the color and complexion of cracked saddle leather. The man gazed at Bolan in open speculation with the inscrutable yellow eyes of a wolf.

Bolan turned his attention back to the decapitated attaché. Millard had been sent in with emergency haste to keep the very delicate and contentious negotiations going after the last envoy had been killed. A lot of peacemakers were being killed. Helmand Province was critical to the war effort. The President himself had asked for Stony Man Farm’s involvement, specifically Bolan’s. It wasn’t his usual activity, and babysitting was the soldier’s least favorite job, but he knew what the stakes were in Afghanistan and he had accepted the mission. He’d been twenty-four hours too late in arriving, and it had taken orders from the Man to keep Millard’s murder quiet for the ensuing twenty-four hours Bolan requested. He had twenty-four hours and counting to make something happen before the whole thing blew wide open.

The Marine MP continued to eyeball Bolan. “And just who the hell are you?”

It wasn’t an unreasonable question, but the Marine just wasn’t going to get a reasonable or what would qualify as a sane answer in his USMC world-view. Bolan gave the man a friendly smile anyway. “I’m your liaison, Captain Yoshida.”

Yoshida wasn’t impressed. “And just which branch of government are you—” the captain sought for a word “—liaising for me for, again, exactly, Mr…?.?” He trailed off as he scanned Bolan’s plain uniform in vain for ID, rank or insignia.

“Which branch of government do you require aid or assistance from, Captain?” Bolan countered.

The captain contemplated this strange offer. The Afghan suddenly smiled in a friendly fashion and stuck out his hand. “My name is Omar Ous.”

Bolan shook his hand. “Pleasure. Call me Cooper.”

The NCIS agents stepped forward. The woman arranged a professional look on her face. It was a nice face, with high cheekbones, a strong chin, big brown eyes and a short ponytail pulled through the back of her fatigue cap. “Kathryn Keller, and this is Agent Neil Farkas.”

Farkas was a gangling Ichabod Crane–looking individual with a slight stoop, a permanent number-four bad hair day haircut graying at the temples and an Adam’s apple that would cut glass. Bolan pressed the flesh all around and then gave the assassination scene a second go-over. The soldier wasn’t a detective, but his War Everlasting had taken him to firefights on every continent on Earth, and he could read a battle scene like an experienced hunter reading trail sign.

“It was an inside job,” he stated.

“You think?” Keller inquired.

“Millard was done execution style. His pistol is still strapped to his thigh,” Bolan continued. He looked at the four other bodies in the room. They’d all had their heads hammered apart at point-blank range with automatic weapons. “The bad guys literally just walked in and did this with complete surprise. How many servants did the attaché have?”

Captain Yoshida crossed his arms over the M-4 carbine slung across his chest. “Eight. We have two in custody. The other six disappeared. I have people—”

“The rest of the servants are dead. Don’t bother.”

For a moment there was no sound but the howl of the wind and the hiss of the dust outside. The motley crew of unlikely allies stood in the charnel house of death, each considering his or her own analysis. Farkas spoke first. “The man was a United States attaché, and he’s three spaghetti strings of gristle short of decapitation.”

Bolan nodded.

“So I got a question for you,” Farkas said.

“Shoot.”

Farkas gave Bolan a very questioning look. “How come this isn’t all over FOX news?”

“Because I asked the President to give me twenty-four hours,” Bolan replied.

That was good for several more moments of silence in the storm. Farkas shook his head. “You aren’t talking about the president of Afghanistan.”

“Well, I’m told he agreed to it,” Bolan said.

Farkas’s face went blank as machines far beyond his pay grade spun their cogs and wheels around him. “Jesus.”

Keller stared. “Buddy, you’re like straight out of a movie.”

Yoshida examined Bolan as if he were a spider the size of Shetland pony that had suddenly dropped into their midst. “More like a comic book.”

“I like him,” Ous opined.

Bolan inclined his head at Ous and got down to business. “Two attachés in two months. Someone’s trying to kill the peace process in Helmand Province. They want a stink. They want an uproar.”

Keller’s eyes widened as she started to understand what Bolan was getting at. “And we’re into day two with nothing on the news.”

Yoshida gave Bolan an infinitesimal nod. “And criminals can’t help but come back to the scene of the crime.”

“They’re going to want to know what went wrong,” Bolan said, nodding. “And what’s happening.”

Keller popped the retention strap on her holster. “You think they’re going to come snooping back?”

“They’re here now,” Bolan stated.

Ous tapped his pipe empty against the bottom of his boot and put the pipe in his tactical vest. He pushed off the safety of his M-4 with a click. “He is right. Now is the time of ambush. They come.”

Bolan knelt beside his gear bag. “Get your men inside, Captain.”

“Oh, for God’s sake…” Yoshida clicked his com unit and spoke to the guards outside. “Yo! Buzz! Munoz! You got anything suspicious, any movement at all out there?”

Outside the dust hissed against the side of the house like the amplified sound of writhing serpents.

“Buzz? Munoz?” Yoshida’s voice rose. “Come back!” No one came back across the tactical radio. The captain unslung his rifle and spoke to the man on the roof. “Plowman, come back!”

Nothing came back but the wind.

“God…damn it…” Yoshida unslung his carbine.

Bolan unzipped his rifle bag and took out his Beowulf entry weapon. It looked like Yoshida’s M-4 carbine on steroids. The village was just outside the city of Sangin, one of only three major cities in Helmand Province and one that had seen the most brutal urban warfare of almost the entire war in Afghanistan. Bolan’s Beowulf weapon was .500 caliber and was the equivalent of fully automatic buffalo rifle. His also had the unusual modification of a grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel. He had come ready for a battle in the streets.

It seemed the battle was about to be joined.

Farkas scooped up a Joint Service Combat Shotgun leaned in the corner and Keller took a stubby black MP-5 K off the couch and pushed the selector to full-auto. Yoshida changed frequencies. “Camp Two, this is Envoy One, requesting immediate reinforcement. Come back.”

Nothing came back but the same hiss.

Bolan slung a bandolier of grenades and spare mags over his shoulder. “You’re being jammed across all frequencies.”

Yoshida was appalled. “When was the last time the Taliban could jam U.S. military com links?”

Bolan loaded a fragmentation round into his grenade launcher. “Puzzler, isn’t it?”

Yoshida’s face set in a ferocious scowl. “I’m going outside. I have to find my men. Anyone coming with me?”

“Whoever took them in this storm did it point-blank,” Bolan cautioned. “They’re right outside.”

“Plowman’s on the roof. You can’t see from rooftop to rooftop, he’s—”

“They’re on the roof, too.”

“Shit,” Keller observed.

“Crap,” Farkas agreed.

Ous smiled the smile of a warrior who had given himself over to violence and intended to enjoy it. “Shit-crap!”

Bolan took three steps and kicked the front door open.

Shit-crap was right.

The MRAP was roaring straight toward the door. The gears ground as someone unused to driving an MRAP built a full head of steam. Luckily whoever was in charge seemed to have no idea how to use the remote-weapon station and bring the .50-caliber weapon to bear. Bolan vainly wished he’d loaded an antiarmor round, but he sent the frag grenade flying into the armor-glass windshield and lunged back. “Get back! Get back!”

The MRAP hit the house in a forty-mile-per-hour, fourteen-ton car wreck. The door, the jamb and a significant chunk of the wall came down in an eruption of shattering clay. A chunk of wall hit Yoshida in his armored chest and knocked him into the next room. Keller screamed as a section of roof fell in, Plowman’s body falling on top of her. Two screaming, flailing terrorists followed as the ceiling dropped in a cascade. Bolan’s Beowulf thunder-clapped twice as he gave each killer a .500-caliber sledgehammer to the chest.

Ous’s M-4 made a distinctive clack as he pushed the usually deactivated selector switch to full-auto. The glass on an MRAP was rated to stop shell splinters, the blast effect of roadside improvised explosive devices and hits from .30-caliber rifle rounds. Ous’s weapon was .30 caliber, but the range was point-blank and he emptied his 20-round mag on full-auto. Armor glass geysered and cracked beneath the onslaught.

Bolan batted cleanup as he sent his eight remaining rounds through the driver’s window and shattered it. Arterial spray followed the glass shrapnel. The engine died at the same time as the driver, and the vehicle stood stalled in wreckage. Armored doors clanged open and the cry of “Allahu Akbar!” howled above the storm as killers boiled out the back door and made for the breach on either side of the vehicle. Others came over the top.

Bolan racked open his grenade launcher and slid another frag grenade into the smoking breech. Keller rose from the rubble and human wreckage. Her submachine gun bripped as she put bursts into the portside invaders. Farkas’s shotgun boomed aft in rapid semiautomatic. Bolan raised his weapon as gears ground in the MRAP as someone tried to get the vehicle moving while crouching beneath the level of the shattered windshield.

“Fire in the hole!” The team crouched as a unit as Bolan fired his grenade through the MRAP’s window and turned the insides of the vehicle into a slaughter box of buzz-sawing shrapnel. Engine activity in the MRAP ceased and desisted.

Bolan roared as he moved back and reloaded. “Move back! Farkas! Check the captain!”

Farkas pulled a fade as Bolan, Keller and Ous knelt and shot. The killers came on crying out God’s name and with their AK-74s spraying as they stumbled over the rubble. Their faith made them fearless, but it didn’t make them accurate or bulletproof. They fell going forward, but they fell. Bolan slammed in a fresh mag and counted a dozen dead. “Cease fire!”

The only noise was the storm beyond the shattered walls and the mechanical noise of weapons being reloaded. They had loaded the MRAP to the gills with holy warriors, but Bolan knew there had to be more in the surrounding houses and alleys. “Farkas! Sitrep!”

“Captain Yoshida’s okay!” Farkas called back. “But we’ve got enemy gunners coming up the alley behind us! I make it a baker’s dozen!”

Keller wiped blood and dust from her face and glared out into the dust storm. “Christ, there must be a platoon of them!”

“We’re out of here!” Bolan shouted.

Keller looked around in confusion. “Where’re we gonna go?”

Bolan clambered over the rubble on the MRAP. “The bus is leaving!”

Farkas shuffled forward, giving Yoshida a shoulder to lean on. Bolan flung open the driver’s door. The interior was painted black with smoke, glinting with shrapnel gouges and swathed in blood spray. He pulled the nearly headless driver from behind the wheel. The man who had tried to replace him was torn up pretty badly from the grenade, but he was still alive. Bolan shoved him out of the way as the rest of the team began to climb in. “Can anyone drive this?”

Yoshida gave a defiant wheeze. “I’ll fucking drive it out of here!”

“Do it!” Bolan moved back into the cabin. “Farkas! Stabilize the prisoner if you can! Keller! Close that back door!”

Bolan slid into the remote-weapon operator’s seat. Ugly scratches scored the monitor and everything was covered with smoke and blast residue, but the screen came to life as he clicked keys. The unmanned turret and the .50-caliber machine gun it carried whirred above him as he traversed rearward. Someone outside with ill intentions noticed the move, and Keller slammed the back door shut just as bullets began whining off the hull.

Yoshida rammed the MRAP into Reverse. Clay and timbers shifted as the armored vehicle backed out of the rubble. Bullets began whining off the hull in bee swarms. Bolan tracked the remote .50-caliber gun through the gloom, silencing the enemy fire shooter by shooter. The soldier’s skin crawled in anticipation of the RPG hit that would turn the cabin into a blast furnace of superheated gas and molten metal. The MRAP lurched forward as Yoshida put the hammer down. Ous leaped from armored window to armored window. “Seven o’clock! Seven o’clock high!”

The remote weapon whirled under Bolan’s command, the big .50-caliber weapon tearing the three men on the rooftop into rags.



BOLAN CAUGHT THE FLASH of fire and smoke as the rocket roared past his gun camera. The rocket impacted a wall in a flash, and then the explosion and smoke was swallowed in the dust storm. Keller shook her head in mounting panic as she scanned out the portside windows. “Christ, they’re everywhere!”

Yoshida roared in pain. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

“The captain’s hit!” Farkas shouted.

Bolan flicked a glance over to see the Marine captain sag, swearing, out of the driver’s seat. “Shit…”

The Executioner was nearly thrown from his position as the MRAP swerved into a wall and stalled.

“Bismillah!” Ous shouted. “Rocket! Rocket!”

Bolan tracked the turret around just in time to see the rocket-propelled grenade fly straight into his crosshairs. “Everybody down!” Keller screamed. The interior lights went black as something seemed to slap the MRAP along its chassis. The turret overhead screamed as metal tore. Sparks flew from the wiring, and everything that wasn’t bolted down went flying. Ous tumbled into Bolan’s position and bounced off him. The Executioner’s ears rang, but battle instincts took over. The vehicle was still upright. The fire-suppression system hadn’t been activated, so they weren’t on fire, and the hull hadn’t been breached.

The remote-weapon system was gone. Bullets continued slamming into the hull. Bolan scrambled over Yoshida and Farkas. One glance told him Yoshida was in bad shape. The driver’s position was a viscous swamp of blood from every man who had driven the vehicle this day.

Bolan pulled down his goggles and slid into the death seat.

The wind blasted dust through the shattered window. The soldier hit the starter button, and the engine grunted then stalled.

“They come!” Ous yelled as he looked out the rear windows.

The Executioner hit the starter again, and the Caterpillar diesel engine thundered back to life. He shoved the MRAP into Reverse and floored it. The howls of bloodlust turned to screams. Bolan was rewarded by the sound of bodies bouncing off armor.

Ous went flying as the MRAP clipped the side of a house. Gears ground as the vehicle was cranked back into drive, then stalled. Thumps echoed hollowly from the roof as someone leaped from the rooftop and onto the MRAP. Bolan snarled as a hand appeared in the shattered driver’s window and dropped a grenade in his lap. The soldier snatched the grenade and shoved it back out the window.

“Down!” Bolan flung himself below the level of the window as the frag grenade detonated on the hood and sent jagged bits of metal spitting in all directions. He rose to find someone trying to shove the muzzle of an AK through the window, and grabbed the barrel, yanking it aside. The weapon went hot in his hand as the owner fired a long burst into Bolan’s armrest. Drawing his Beretta, the Executioner put a 3-round burst into the attacker’s gun hand. Fingers flew apart and Bolan yanked the weapon away. He hit the starter button and the besieged MRAP coughed into life once again, but the engine didn’t sound good.

People were still on the roof.

Bolan floored it once more. The MRAP roared as it accelerated. When the speedometer hit twenty, the soldier stood on the brakes. Three men went flying into the street ahead as if they had wings. Bolan stomped on the accelerator and ground the killers beneath the vehicle’s massive all-terrain tires. He shoved the Beretta out the window and fired bursts at two men appearing out of an alleyway with AKs. One fell to Bolan’s fire, but the other leaped back. Bullets still struck the MRAP, but they all struck the rear rather than the front, sides and roof.

Bolan burned out of the village and slowed as the storm engulfed them. “Farkas, how’s Yoshida?”

“Bad.”

“The prisoner?”

“Worse.”

“Grab the medical kit from the locker. It’s an hour back to base, and I need you to keep them both alive. Keller, help him.”

Keller put a hand on Bolan’s shoulder. “Mister, you really kicked some ass.”

Bolan grimaced through the dust blasting through the window. The fact was they’d been mauled, and it was thirty miles to the Marine forward base outside Sangin. “Ous, keep an eye out behind us.”




CHAPTER TWO


Sangin City, Base Camp Bravo

Yoshida looked like hell.. He taken two rounds through the neck and trapezius, and a third had relieved him of his left ear. The fact that he still had a head, much less anything below that was still functioning, was a miracle. Bolan smiled down at the wounded warrior. “You look like shit, Captain.”

The Marine gave Bolan a very weary smile back. “Count myself lucky to be looking like anything, Cooper.”

“I’m sorry about your men.”

“Thanks for hauling us out of there.” Yoshida sighed. “How are Farkas and Keller?”

“Just bumps and bruises mostly.”

“Yeah, that was a bumpy ride. How’s the prisoner?”

“He’s stable,” Bolan said. “I’m about to go look in on him.”

The Marine captain’s eyes went icy despite the fog of painkillers. “Yeah, well, you be sure to give him my regards when you do.”

“Ous is dying to give him your regards. It’s been hard to hold him back,” Bolan admitted. “Speaking of which, what do you know about the man?”

Yoshida sagged into his bed. “Not much. Word is he’s a real bad-ass, and he’s been real dark and spooky with the CIA. I hear that the Taliban has a one million afghan bounty on his head.”

Bolan did a little math. At the moment one million afghans was about twenty thousand dollars U.S., plus change. Afghanistan was about as dirt poor as nations got. The Taliban putting that kind of coin on a man’s head said something about Mr. Ous’s reputation and activities. “Can I get you anything?”

“Bourbon,” Yoshida suggested. “And the assholes who did this.”

“You’ll have the bourbon before Taps. You have my word on it.” Bolan smiled. “The assholes will have to be after Reveille tomorrow.”

Yoshida’s eyes glazed over with the combination of wounds, drugs and exhaustion, and slowly closed. “Just get them…?.”

Bolan nodded at the wounded, sleeping Marine. “You got my word on that, too, Captain.”

The Executioner strode from the regular infirmary tent into the storm and walked across the lane to another hospital tent. It was much smaller and guarded by armed Marines. Bolan nodded at the two sentries and walked in the tent. The wind flapped and shuddered the walls. There was only one patient inside. He lay on a bed with tubes sticking out of him and was heavily swathed in bandages, but he was conscious and clearly very agitated. A short, similarly agitated Marine doctor stood between the prisoner and Ous. The Hippocratic oath and naked intimidation fought for the doctor’s soul, but he was a Marine and stood his ground. The doctor’s head snapped around at the new intrusion. When he saw Bolan’s uniform, he looked at him imploringly.

“Can you please get this man out of here?”

“Why?” Bolan asked.

“He wants to interrogate my patient!”

“I want to interrogate your patient.”

The doctor waved his hands at the man on the bed and then toward heaven in mounting outrage. “You think this man is in any kind of condition for interrogation?”

Ous gazed unblinkingly at the prisoner with his disturbingly wolflike eyes. “I believe the prisoner is in an ideal condition for interrogation.”

The man on the bed flinched.

The doctor was appalled. “Oh for God’s sake!”

“I also believe this man speaks English,” Ous added.

The prisoner flinched again. Bolan kept the smile off his face. Ous was good.

“Taliban?” Bolan asked.

The prisoner assumed a stone-faced stare at the roof of the tent.

“It was so much easier when they marched through the streets, proudly wearing their black turbans,” Ous said. “But we killed so many of them they bared their heads so that they might hide in gutters like skulking dogs.”

The prisoner’s cheek flexed.

“Such a shocking lack of faith,” Ous concluded.

Ous was literally inducing a facial tic on the prisoner.

“Taliban?” Bolan asked again.

The doctor was clearly upset. “Listen! I—”

“Dr…?.?” Bolan inquired.

“What? Oh, Early. Listen, I—”

“Dr. Early, I understand the Hippocratic oath and I know this man is your patient, but I need a no-bullshit assessment. When will this man be well enough to be sent to the capital?”

Dr. Early made a visible effort to control himself. “He’s torn up pretty badly. I saved his left leg, but I couldn’t save his left testicle. He was very lucky about the shrapnel in his abdomen. It was a miracle it didn’t tear up anything vital, but a lot of his real estate is being held together by stitches. If you put him on the road to Kabul, you’re going to bounce them open. Even if his stitches hold, his brains will most likely be applesauce by the time you get there. I want—hell, I demand that he not be moved for the next twenty-four hours while I monitor his concussion.”

“I agree. He should only be moved by helicopter.” Bolan glanced at the tent walls as they vibrated. The storm was in its third day and showed no signs letting up. “We both know that isn’t going to happen today. But when you release him to me, I will absolutely guarantee his safety.”

Dr. Early walked around to the other side of the bed and stared down at his patient. “More than the son of a bitch deserves, but I believe you when you say he’ll get it.”

“Dr. Early, if it makes you feel any better I can get—” Bolan’s eyes flared as the wall of the tent lifted a few feet away from the doctor and the spherical, olive-drab shape of a U.S. M-67 hand grenade rolled to a stop at Early’s feet. “Grenade!”

Dr. Early echoed the sentiment and promptly threw himself on top of it. Bolan seized the bed-frame. “Ous!”

Ous grabbed the frame at the foot of the bed and together they heaved the bed toward them and dropped prone. The prisoner screamed as his IVs tore and he toppled to the floor. The grenade detonated with a muffled whip-crack and 6.5 ounces of Composition B tried to send its lethal cloud of steel splinters through Dr. Early’s body and fill the tent. It was partially successful. Medical equipment shattered and sparked. In the confines of the tent, the blast effect was like a blow to the head. The mattress bottom rippled and tufted as some splinters made it through.

Bolan was up instantly. His ears rang, but his Beretta was in hand. Dr. Early was nothing but rags. The soldier snarled over his shoulder at Ous. “Guard the patient!”

The Executioner rolled under the tent wall. The fact that it could be lifted told him it had been doctored for the fragging. He lunged up into the storm. Fifty yards ahead the dust swallowed a running figure.

The big American broke into a dead sprint through the base’s back alleys, leaping tent ropes like an Olympic hurdler. Up ahead the man became visible again. He had stopped and was leaning on a tent rope to steady himself. Apparently he thought he was safe. He lifted his goggled head and saw Bolan bearing down on him like an avenging angel. The assassin whirled and promptly tripped over the rope. He lurched back up and took three stumbling steps. He shouted despairingly over the howling of the wind. “No! Wait! You don’t understand, man! No! I—” Part of Bolan’s brain noted the man was speaking with a Puerto Rican accent.

The man suddenly seemed to remember the .45-caliber MEU pistol strapped to his leg.

The pistol was half out of its holster when Bolan’s boot slammed up between the guy’s legs. The assassin screamed like a rabbit being killed and collapsed into Bolan’s embrace. The Executioner’s right arm snaked under the man’s chin and heaved upward as the man sagged from the testicular trauma. The big American locked his hands together and squeezed as well as lifted. The carotid artery shut off, and the more brutal trachea compression cut of his air.

Marines charged out of the dust from all directions shouting contradictory orders and waving rifles. “Freeze! Let him go! Don’t move! I said drop him!” Bolan dropped the man as he went limp with unconsciousness.

“On your knees!” a Marine screamed. His bayonet was fixed. “I said, on your knees!”

Agent Keller appeared out of the dust and flashed her badge. “NCIS! Agent Keller! He’s with me!”

Bolan glanced down at the motionless man at his feet. “He’s the one who fragged the infirmary.”

The belligerent Marine lowered his weapon. Even with the wind and dust battering him his face went slack. “Oh…my…God…”

Bolan felt the young Marine’s pain. The U.S. military had seen its share of atrocities: fraggings, crimes and massacres. Rightly or wrongly, the modern United States Marine Corps considered itself above such things. The motto of the Corps was Semper fidelis, Always Faithful.

What this man had done was unthinkable.

The man on the ground gasped as he roused back into consciousness. “Hook him and book him,” Bolan suggested.

“Right.” An MP produced zip restraints. Ous appeared at Bolan’s elbow.

“How’s the prisoner?” Bolan asked.

“He is currently leaking clear fluids out of his eyes and ears, and his pupils are two different sizes. I fear the blast from the grenade was too much for his already beleaguered brain.” Ous sighed. “You are all right?”

“I could use a cup of coffee,” Bolan admitted.

Ous looked at Bolan with great seriousness. “You are a man of the West. I am sure what you require is beer.”

Sangin Bazaar

BOLAN AND OUS drank beer. Islam forbade the drinking of alcohol, however across the Muslim world the laws of hospitality were some of the most powerful on Earth. A large number of Muslim men Bolan had met had come to the happy, contorted conclusion that it would be unforgivable to not offer a Westerner his dissipation, and an even worse breach of honor to make him feel uncomfortable by frowning upon his misguided ways and not partaking.

Ous did everything he could to make Bolan comfortable by keeping the bottles of beer flowing from the battered plastic cooler between them. They sat on stools in a tiny alcove curtained with a pair of rugs. Outside two enormously fat men who appeared to be twins blocked the entrance to the alcove. Their stall was piled high with oranges. Each man had an AK propped by his leg. The storm had died down, but it was still hot, windy, dusty, overcast and miserable outside. The orange trade was slow and the bazaar almost deserted.

“So,” Bolan began, “you were Muj?”

Ous cracked two fresh beers and waited until Bolan had sipped from his. “I answered the call to jihad against the Soviet invaders when I was twelve. My aged father, who resides in heaven, pressed his Lee-Enfield rifle and a bandolier of fifty rounds into my hands and implored me to martyr myself in God’s name. With the bayonet fixed, the rifle was taller than I was at the time. I failed to become a Holy Martyr, but I killed many, many Russians. At one point there was a ten-thousand-ruble reward out for my head.”

“I understand the Taliban has a million on you at the moment,” Bolan observed.

Ous shrugged modestly. “So I am told.”

Bolan gave Ous a knowing look. “You were Northern Alliance?”

“For a time,” Ous conceded. “I truly believed in jihad against the Soviets. God required them to be struck down. However, after liberation, I found that I had no use for the Taliban at all.”

“They’re—”

“They are foreign interlopers, and Wahhabist interlopers at that.” Ous spit. “Destroyers of shrines.”

“You’re Sufi,” Bolan surmised.

“Ismaili,” Ous allowed.

Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab had been an eighteenth-century scholar from Arabia. He considered anything but the strictest adherence to Sunni Islam and Sharia Law to be “innovations” that needed ruthless and violent crushing. The Taliban took much of their doctrine from Abd al-Wahhab’s teachings and had applied it with fanatic zeal during their five-year reign of religious terror as the governing body of Afghanistan.

“The attack in the village yesterday wasn’t exactly what I would call Taliban standard tactical procedure,” Bolan ventured.

“Both the attack against us and the slaying of your envoy were very unorthodox.” Ous puffed his pipe for a contemplative moment. “I have operated with the United States Marine Corps in the past. I found this morning’s incident profoundly disturbing.”

Soldiers refusing to take prisoners during the war on terror wasn’t unknown. Some prisoners had been mistreated. A U.S. Marine fragging an infirmary with U.S. personnel inside was positively anomalous. Ous took another sip of beer. “What have you learned?”

There wasn’t much. “Corporal Saulito Convertino, from New York City, a strict Catholic. The chaplain says he attended services every Sunday. No known radical, terrorist or criminal affiliations. Was recommended for the Bronze Star in action during the surge into Helmand.”

“And his disposition now?”

“In custody, not talking to his appointed lawyer, not talking to anyone.”

Ous eyes narrowed. “You said he was weeping when you apprehended him?”

“Yeah.” Bolan nodded very slowly. “Yeah, he was.”

“You fear he was coerced,” Ous surmised.

“It’s the only thing that makes sense. But he didn’t owe anybody money, wasn’t on drugs, the preliminary FBI investigation back in New York states his family is fine and has no idea how this could have happened.”

“You believe the coercion had to be local,” Ous suggested.

“We brought in the prisoner last night and he got fragged this morning. Corporal Convertino hadn’t been planning this, he was activated.”

“Sleeper cells,” Ous said incredulously, “in the United States Marine Corps?”

“More like a mole.”

“So how was he recruited, locally, as it were?”

“I can think of only one thing, Convertino was an exemplary Marine except for one thing,” Bolan said. “Oh?”

“On three separate occasions he was found AWOL, but each time the statement of charges was dropped.”

“And why should this be?” Ous asked.

“Because Convertino was a scrounger.”

“I am not aware of this term.”

“He was good at getting things,” Bolan explained. “I spoke with a few of the men on his squad. If you wanted beer or liquor in Afghanistan, he’d find a way. If you couldn’t find any Marlboro, he’d get you Tajiki Kahons at half the price. U.S. and European pornography is almost impossible to sneak into Afghanistan, but if you wanted some, he could find you the Russian stuff that flows down through the northern border by the bushel basket. Every unit has a scrounger, and by all accounts Convertino was a scrounger par excellence. He was born in Puerto Rico, and they’re the last bastion of bartering culture in the United States. From what I hear he had the gift of gab, everybody liked him, and he had been to the language school and spoke some Arabic.”

“So why would the statement of charges be dropped if he was dealing in contraband?”

“Because he acquired contraband for his superiors,” Bolan said.

“Ah, yes, I see. Truly the world is the same all over. So, you believe it was in the midst of this scrounging that he was seduced?”

“I’m thinking seduced is exactly the right word. When he was in Iraq, Convertino had the reputation of being one hell of a charming horn dog. Female soldiers and Iraqi women liked him, a lot. Here in Afghanistan the female soldiers are a lot fewer, the Afghanis are far more violent about protecting their women. What little prostitution there is takes place in the big cities, and those are few and far between. A woman in Afghanistan who has been reduced to prostitution has seen a lot of hard miles, and that’s not Convertino’s type. The real brothels are run by Russians and Turks, are stocked with Eastern European and Russian women and cater to rich Afghans and foreign visitors with money. Out of Convertino’s league. After being transferred to Afghanistan I’m thinking Convertino was jonesing pretty hard.”

“Jonesing.” Ous nodded as he pondered this bit of American slang. “I believe I understand what you are saying.” His eyes suddenly went wolflike. “You are saying we must find Corporal Convertino’s sexy girlfriend.”

“Something like that.”




CHAPTER THREE


Sangin Base stockade

“Where the hell have you been?” Agent Kathryn Keller struggled to keep up with Bolan and Ous without breaking into a trot in the hallway.

“Drinking beer,” Bolan replied.

“Hey!” Keller snarled.

Bolan stopped and turned. “What?”

“Well…” Keller suddenly grinned. “How come you didn’t invite me?”

Bolan considered his answer and jerked his head at Ous. “He doesn’t drink beer with women.”

“What in God’s name leads you to conclude that I do not drink beer with women?” Ous asked.

“My mistake,” Bolan admitted. “Can you give me a sitrep, Keller?”

“Convertino talked.”

“What’d he say?”

“Just that he admits to the murder of Dr. Early, the John Doe suspect, and the attempted murder of you and Mr. Ous.”

“Anything else?”

“He’s dismissed his appointed council, says he will plead guilty to all charges and requested the death penalty.”

“He seems dedicated,” Ous said.

“Down right self-sacrificing,” Bolan agreed.

Keller looked back and forth between the two men. “What can I do to help?”

Bolan’s cobalt gaze burned into Keller’s eyes. “NCIS is still in charge of this case?”

“Not for much longer,” Keller said. The MPs outside the cell snapped to attention and saluted the woman as she and her party approached. “And then God only knows who is going to take over. When this goes public, it’s going to turn into a real dog-and-pony show.”

“Then I want you to flash that NCIS badge, say ‘agent in charge’ and give me five minutes with the suspect,” Bolan said.

Keller squeezed her eyes shut as if she had just developed a headache. She opened her eyes and grimly flashed her badge. “Keller! NCIS! Agent in charge! This man is a liaison from the Justice Department to see the prisoner!”

The ranking guard looked upon Keller with grave uncertainty. “Um…yes, ma’am?” The other unlocked the door. “Uh, sir? Just so you know, the prisoner is not currently under restraint but we are on suicide watch.”

“Thank you, Private,” Bolan said.

“And what shall I do?” Ous inquired.

“No one comes in or out, and I mean no one,” Bolan said.

The MPs looked on in alarm as Ous took one of their folding chairs beside the door, pulled a huge Khyber knife and began cleaning his fingernails. Keller just rolled her eyes. “That’s it. I’m dead.”

Bolan stalked into the holding cell and slammed the door shut behind him. There was nothing inside other than a single bunk and chair. Corporal Saulito Convertino jerked erect in his chair. His eyes widened in horror at the sight of Bolan. “Oh God! No!”

Bolan’s open hand cracked across Convertino’s face in textbook bitch-slap perfection.

“You—”

Bolan’s hand cracked across Convertino’s face once, twice, three times. The Executioner didn’t believe in pliers and blowtorch torture. He had been tortured himself, and all it had ever engendered within him was hatred. But crime and terror were slippery slopes that men could find themselves in against their will, sometimes finding themselves ensnared before they knew it, and Bolan could recognize a repentant sinner. Corporal Saulito Convertino’s salvation was between him and his Maker, but Bolan was perfectly willing to take him behind the woodshed and hear his confession. Minor pain and intimidation worked wonders.

Bolan’s blue eyes burned down on the traitor like the embodied anger of an Old Testament God of the desert with no sense of humor. Convertino was a good-looking man. His slightly hooked nose, high cheekbones, curvy lips and Kirk Douglas chin were all set in toffee-tinted skin that bespoke his Spanish, African and Taino Indian blood. His copper-colored hair was cropped into USMC regulation skull-hugging curls, and he was built like an NFL defensive end.

Tears streamed down his face as he pushed himself up to his knees.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” Bolan asked.

Convertino went slack-jawed in horror.

“Your girlfriend? You know, the one who put you up to this?”

“I can’t! They’ll kill h—”

Bolan bodily heaved Convertino to his feet and slammed him against the wall of the cell. “What’s her name?”

“Reema! Her name is Reema!”

The first admission in a situation like this usually opened the floodgates. “Tell me the whole story, Corporal.”

Convertino looked up in despair. “I love her…?.”

“And they’ll kill her if you talk?”

The Marine looked down miserably. Bolan’s eyes went cold. “Did you know I was in that tent?”

“No!”

“Mr. Ous?”

Convertino blinked through his tears. “Who?”

“You know there were Marine Corps medical personnel in that tent when you fragged it?”

Convertino sagged again. “I was hoping not.”

Bolan’s voice was merciless. “Dr. Early threw himself on that grenade to save everyone in that tent, including myself and your target. He’s going to get the Congressional Medal of Honor, presented to his widow. What do you think you deserve, Corporal?”

Convertino’s voice dropped to a dead whisper. “Court martial and death by lethal injection.”

“You deserve a lot worse than that. There’s a special place in hell for Marines who kill their own.” Convertino held his head in his hands and sobbed. “Now where’s the girl and who has her?” Bolan continued.

“They’ll kill her, they—”

“They already killed her!” Bolan’s voice thundered in the cell. “She’s the only link! The only chance she has is that a hot piece of tail is a valuable commodity and they might have sold her. That is, if she’s not in on it!”

A flicker of anger kindled in Convertino’s agonized eyes. “What?”

“Don’t you get it? She’s a whore!”

“What did you say?”

“You pussy-whipped son of a bitch! Afghan girls don’t put out! And if they do, they sure as hell don’t risk it for loser corporals like you! She’s Taliban!” Bolan spit, turning the provocation dial all the way up to high.

“No, she loves me! She said yes. She was going to be my wife.” Fresh sobs racked the conflicted young soldier. “She’s pregnant with my kid.”

Bolan relented, just slightly. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to you, Corporal. It’s been a long time since the U.S. Military put anyone to death, but you’re a prime candidate.

“But I’ll tell you this. If you’re the one who’s right, and she’s innocent like you say, I’ll save her, if I can. I’m the only chance either one of you has.”

“What do I have to do?”

“Three things,” Bolan said. “One, NCIS is going to get a sketch artist on a live feed and you’re going to describe Reema. Two, you are going to tell me everything, and I mean everything that happened right up to the point you pulled that pin.”

Convertino nodded. “And three?”

“Three? You’re busting out of here.”

NCIS temporary office, Sangin Base

“NO, NO, NO, and no.” Keller looked about to explode. Farkas stared out the window at the rain with a very unhappy “Don’t know, don’t have an opinion” look on his face. At that time of year Helmand Province averaged about two inches of rain. Right now they were getting three and on the tail of the dust storm it turned the world from a Martian landscape to gray floods and muck.

“Oh, come on, Keller,” Bolan cajoled, “What could happen?”

Agent Keller’s eyes flew wide in outrage. “He fragged a goddamn Marine Corps medical station! He killed a Navy doctor, and my suspect, and I’m personally going to see to it that the Navy reinstitutes death by firing squad! And if they don’t, I’m going to shoot Corporal Convertino myself!”

Bolan shrugged. “Give him to me.”

“No!”

“You can shoot him later.”

“What if he escapes?” Keller asked. Bolan smiled.

“Okay,” Keller acknowledged. “Maybe he can’t escape you, but what if you get your head blown off?”

“Where’ll he go? A Puerto Rican Marine in Afghanistan? He’s dead meat wherever he runs.”

“Yeah, and our boy is borderline suicidal.”

“And he wants redemption. Let him fall going forward,” Bolan said.

“Damn it! You know my orders were to extend you every courtesy! Every courtesy! This? This is pushing it!”

“Give him to me.”

“No!” Keller replied.

“What? You don’t trust me?”

“I don’t know! And stop smiling at me!”

“Give him to me,” Bolan pressed.

“God have mercy on us all…”

“Good.” Bolan nodded. “I’m glad we have that settled.”

“What!”

Bolan switched gears. “What did the sketch artist in D.C. come up with?”

Farkas opened a laptop and clicked an icon. Bolan could almost sympathize with the corporal. “Reema” was something right out of an old Arabian Nights movie: huge dark eyes, sensuous lips, perfect cheekbones and chin. All she was missing was a see-through pink veil and a ruby in her belly button. Bolan flicked through the multiple sketches he had ordered. Reema in Western-style clothes, Reema in the traditional long pants and tunic, Reema naked, Reema with just her eyes and the bridge of her nose peering out of a veil. Bolan downloaded the sketches into his highly modified tablet computer.

“Assuming I agree to go along with this,” Keller said, “which I haven’t, how do you want to play it?”

“Close to the vest. Convertino is on suicide watch. He makes an attempt, and busts out on the way to the infirmary. He steals a Humvee, crashes the gate and tries to contact his woman or whoever has her.”

“Or whoever has her, if anyone has her, takes him out.”

“That’s about it,” Bolan said.

“That’s just about a death sentence, not to mention that during the manhunt, not many of our guys are going to try to bring him back alive.”

“He’s looking at life in prison or the death penalty anyway. He wants redemption, he wants his woman safe, and if his woman was in on it, he wants payback. And he’s volunteered. He’s already sworn he won’t resist if captured.”

“You know how many things can go wrong on this?” Keller asked.

“He’s being implanted with a tracking device as we speak. I had to slap him around a bit to get him intimidated, so he has enough bruises on him no one should notice. The damage should help make his case.”

“You know, even if they bite, the only reason will be to kill him,” Keller said.

“I know.”

“How big a team do you want?”

“Just me, and I’ll take Ous along in case I need to talk to any locals,” Bolan replied.

“No backup? No surveillance?”

“I’ll have my own surveillance, but I’d take it as a favor if you were to pick me a crack team and keep a chopper hot on the pad in case I call. If things get hot, they’re going to get hot fast.”

Keller gave Bolan a very frank look. “I hope to God you’ve got some kind of pull with the Attorney General, or we are looking to get seriously rat-screwed on this one.”

“Never met the man,” Bolan admitted.

Keller just stared.

“But I know his boss,” Bolan stated.

Keller opened her mouth and closed it. The Attorney General of the United States served at the pleasure of the President. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask.”

“Who are you?”

Bolan shrugged. “I’m Batman.”

“I’m not surprised at all.”

He gazed at Keller speculatively. “You speak Arabic?”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m here.” The NCIS agent’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“How’d you like to be a caped crusader, too?”




CHAPTER FOUR


Sangin

“Yeah, nice cape, buddy!” Agent Keller sat in the battered Toyota pickup, mildly outraged, swathed in a full burka and sandwiched between Ous and Bolan. “It suits you,” the soldier said.

“Indeed, you look most fetching,” Ous agreed.

“No woman looks fetching in a pup tent,” Keller muttered.

Ous sighed. “You have no idea how much time and energy we men spend, our eyes attempting to burn through the burka. We gasp at the accidental flash of an ankle, but much more can be told by a moment’s fall or fold of cloth, the change in drape as a woman sits or stands, the sway of it as she moves, and we yearn, burning, to catch a heartbeat’s glance of approval from a pair of shining eyes. I assure you, Agent Keller, our eyes are well practiced, and were you to walk across the bazaar, garbed as you are, all eyes would be upon you.”

Keller turned to Bolan. “You know you could take some charm lessons from him.”

“Actually, I may be the first man in Afghanistan to have charmed a woman into a burka rather than out of one,” Bolan replied.

The radio link crackled with Farkas’s voice. “Batman, this is Control, do you copy?”

“Loud and clear, over.”

“Mission is go.”

Bolan mentally counted down the seconds. Ous sat behind the wheel looking at his watch.

“Batman!” Farkas’s voice rose slightly with excitement across the link, “The rabbit has run!”

“Right on the mark,” Ous observed.

Bolan could hear gunfire on the other side of the link. “Understood. Control, maintain radio silence from now on unless we initiate.”

“Copy that, Batman. Over and out.”

Bolan took up his phone-size tablet and switched frequencies. Aaron Kurtzman’s voice came across the link from Stony Man Farm, the nation’s top counterterrorist organization, half a world away in Virginia. “Batman?”

“Inside joke. You have Convertino?”

“Affirmative. I have him on satellite tracking and satellite visual. My current visual window is two hours. After that I’ll have to switch to a different orbiter. I predict a ten-minute visual lag, but you’ll have constant from the transmitter.”

“Copy that. Give me visual.” Bolan watched as his screen lit up with a gray-green scene observed from overhead by a thermal-imaging satellite. Sangin Base was a constellation of lights, and a vehicle was tearing away from it with reckless speed. There was little to do but wait. Convertino would abandon his vehicle once he had covered some distance and then use his skills as a Marine scout sniper to make his way into the city unseen.

“I might just have something for you, Batman.”

“What’s that?”

“The woman, Reema.” Bolan’s screen split. Ous and Keller leaned over to peer at it. The NCIS sketch took up one-half of the screen and the other was a photo of a woman sitting in a café. She was blonde, wearing oversize sunglasses, and someone who wasn’t a professional surveillance artist had taken the shot from across the street, but there was a similarity.

“Who is she?”

“I called in a few favors and got this from Israeli Intelligence. Last year an Israeli military industrialist was suspected of leaking information. This woman was suspected of being his mistress. The day after that photo was taken the man was found in his office with his brains blown out in an apparent suicide.”

“And the woman?” Bolan queried.

“Disappeared without a trace.”

Bolan had guessed that. “What else?”

“Working backward, the Israelis believe a woman matching her description may be linked to the death of several prominent Israeli and Lebanese citizens, but they can’t prove anything,” Kurtzman stated.

“They have a name?”

“All they have is a first name.”

“Lay it on me,” Bolan said.

“Zurisaday.”

It was a beautiful name for a beautiful woman.

“A few clues lead them to believe she might be Jordanian,” Kurtzman continued. “But they’re not sure.”

Keller echoed Bolan’s thoughts. “A beautiful name.”

“It means ‘over the earth’ in Arabic,” Kurtzman said.

Ous scowled. “It should mean ‘viper.’”

“Well.” Keller sat back. “Convertino got bit, and bit bad.”

“It is said the righteous man cannot feel their sting.” Ous gazed long upon the sketch. “Though I must admit I have yet to meet such a man.”

The feed suddenly switched to the satellite imaging. “The vehicle has stopped. Convertino’s just outside the southern end of the city and proceeding in.”

“We’re moving,” Bolan said. Ous pulled the truck out of the alley and began negotiating the winding, narrow back streets of Sangin. Bolan checked the load of 9 mm subsonic hollowpoint rounds in his machine pistol and screwed the short black tube of a sound suppressor onto the muzzle.

“Be advised the corporal has changed course.”

Bolan grimaced. Convertino had first met the woman at an after-hours club that catered to Western soldiers. That was the first place he was supposed to try. Failing that he would try to establish contact with some of her friends. “Where’s he headed now?”

“North and west. He’s moving toward the outskirts of the bazaar.”

Keller was incensed. “Son of a bitch! Does he really think there’s any place to run? I say we get the chopper in the air and scoop him up. This mission is over.”

Bolan was confident that he had a pretty good read on the young corporal. “He’s not trying to escape.”

“Well, he sure as hell isn’t sticking to the plan!”

Bolan nodded. “He’s still in love. He wants to see his woman one more time, and confront her alone before we pick her up and he goes to jail for the rest of his life.”

“Well, that’s so sweet I might just throw up.” Keller shook her head in disgust. “And you knew he was going to rabbit on us in the name of love all along?”

“I knew there was a chance. It was a chance I was willing to take. We still have him, satellite eyes on and GPS tracking. The mission is still go.”

“I concur,” Ous said.

“We’ve lost visual,” Kurtzman reported. “He’s entered a building.”

“Vector us in, Bear,” Bolan said, using Kurtzman’s nickname. His screen zoomed and a route appeared in green across a grid of the city. Bolan started calling rights and lefts fast as Ous took the alleys at breakneck speed. “What’s Convertino’s status?”

“Signal hasn’t moved.”

The pickup pulled up in front of a patio. A flowering lemon tree grew in the middle, and a scattering of wrought-iron chairs and tables surrounded it. “Looks like a teahouse.

“Indeed I have taken tea here before,” Ous said.

“Keller, stay here and stay in character,” Bolan ordered. “And get the chopper in the air.”

Keller wasn’t pleased but she got it. “You got it.”

Bolan and Ous spilled out of the truck with their pistols drawn. “Cover me.”

Ous took a firing position over the hood of the truck as Bolan moved across the open area and kicked the door. An old man at a table looked up from a breakfast of tea and rice. A very young man nearby jumped and dropped the broom he was sweeping with. Ous came in through the door a second later and began snarling questions in Pashto. Bolan swept through the tearoom and kicked open the door to the empty kitchen.

“They see an American soldier?” Bolan called back.

“They say not.”

Bolan looked out the back door. It opened onto a blind alley jammed with carts, barrels and clotheslines. He returned.

“You believe them?”

“Indeed not.”

Bolan glanced around the room. The walls, floor and ceiling were all clay. He turned his gaze to the table the old man sat at and the carpet beneath it. He gently but firmly pulled the old man out of his chair and kicked over the table.

The young man screamed as he pulled an ancient Russian Tokarev pistol out of his sash. “Allahu Ak—” Ous cut the cry of faith short by ramming the butt of his rifle into the young man’s belly. A blow to the back of the legs toppled the adolescent and sent the pistol clattering across the floor. Bolan shoved the old man into Ous’s embrace and yanked the carpet aside. The revealed wooden hatch in the floor was a recent construction. Bolan took out his tactical light. “Ask him if it’s booby-trapped.”

Ous asked. “He says not.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I told him I would send his grandson to hell a eunuch if you were blown up opening it.” Bolan glanced at the old man, who was weeping. Ous shrugged fatalistically. “I give you a fifty-fifty chance.”

Bolan rolled his eyes. “You’re a good man, Ous.”

“One tries. I will stand over by the door and cover the prisoners in case of your demise.”

“Thanks.”

“You are welcome.”

Bolan spoke into his com link. “Control, you have my position?”

“Copy that, Batman,” Farkas replied. “We’re receiving the Bear’s feed.”

“I have two suspects, tagged and bagged in a teahouse. I think I’ve found a tunnel.”

“Copy that. I’ll have a unit scoop them up.”

Bolan took out his tactical knife and snapped it open with a flick of his wrist. He probed the edges of the hatch but could find no hidden wires or leads. The soldier grabbed the handle and flung the hatch open. He aimed the muzzle of his Beretta and his tactical light into the tunnel.

“Ous, tie them up and follow me.”

The big American dropped down. It was a very well-dug tunnel, lined with planks, and Bolan could almost stand up. Twenty yards along he came to a side chamber—and Convertino’s corpse. The body lay facedown in a huge pool of blood. That was, if the corpse had still had a face.

Bolan eyed the corpse clinically. He had seen more decapitations than he cared to think about. One look told him the head-taking had been neither clean nor swift. It had been done with a large knife and while Convertino was still alive.

“Bismillah!” Ous exclaimed.

Bolan dropped to a knee beside Convertino’s cadaver. He noted two pinprick tears in the USMC-issue PT shirt the man had escaped in. He tore the T-shirt down the young Marine’s back and examined the two, bee-sting-like marks six inches apart between his shoulder blades. The corporal had been hit with a stun gun before he’d been beheaded.

Ous frowned at the gruesome scene. “What do we do now?”

Bolan rose. Convertino had bought his redemption in the hardest way possible, but he was still sticking it to the enemy. The Marine was a Trojan Horse. They might have taken his head, but the Radio Frequency Identification tracking chip had been implanted behind his ear.

“Bear, do we still have GPS on the Corporal?”

“Of course, why?”

“The corporal’s body is down here in the tunnel, but his head isn’t.”

“Oh, damn it.”

“Do you have visual on the signal?”

“No, I was assuming he was inside, but the signal is still very close to you. I’m saying it is just entering the bazaar,” Kurtzman stated.

“Keller, deploy into the bazaar, in costume. Try to get ahead of us and the signal.”

“Copy that.”

Bolan moved down the tunnel with Ous at his back. There was no blood trail, so the soldier assumed Convertino’s head was packaged for transport. The tunnel dead-ended with another hatch above, which was unbarred. Bolan listened a moment to the silence up top, then flung it open. No grenades or gunfire met the intrusion. He clambered up four iron rungs and found himself in a storeroom laden with burlap sacks of grain. He swept the room as Ous emerged. The storeroom opened into a storefront. No one was around. Bolan tucked his weapon away, pulled on a fatigue cap and a pair of sunglasses, then stepped out into the open air of the bazaar.

He took a moment to scan the early morning activity.

The Taliban had been mostly driven out of Sangin City proper; those who still lurked did so under deep cover. Still, most women in Sangin wore burkas when they left their homes, some out of tradition, many out of a very real and justified fear of reprisal. Groups of hooded women moved around buying milk, eggs and fruit and looking to see if the morning had brought any new goods in the stalls since the day before. Others carried baskets laden with lentils, coffee and grains. Most women wore black burkas, some light blue and a few other colors. They all moved in interlocking streams when they weren’t poking, prodding or bartering. All over the bazaar, eyes were drawn to the Westerner.

“Bear, are you sure?”

“The tracking device is within one hundred yards of you. That’s as exact as it gets. I have eyes on the bazaar and eyes on you, but all the tracker does is put out a low-frequency signal. I have it. It’s nearby, but the device isn’t sophisticated enough to triangulate on an individual without some other target verification.”

“Bear, give me anything.”

“I can’t swear to it, but my gut and dead reckoning tells me the signal seems to be on the southern end of the bazaar.”

Bolan had navigated by dead reckoning many times, and he would literally and figuratively bet the Farm on Kurtzman’s instincts. He moved south. “Ous, find her.”

Ous scanned the packs of swaddled, shopping women and the sellers they were haggling with. “I will try!”

Bolan subvocalized into his throat mike. “Keller, get to the southern end of the bazaar and deploy.”

“I’m already there.”

“Control, get that chopper in the air. I may need backup or fast evac out of the bazaar.”

“Bird is in the air, Batman,” Farkas confirmed.

“Batman,” Kurtzman said, “I can’t swear to it, but I think the signal is now moving westward.”

“She’s meeting someone,” Bolan concluded. “Making a delivery.”

“And now they are here,” Ous agreed.

Bolan picked up his pace. They passed through an open-air alley of rug sellers. The rain had abated, and the bazaar was swiftly filling with shoppers.

The soldier caught sight of a woman in a full-length burka. Similarly clad women surrounded her, but the one he had his eye on carried a woven basket about the size of a hatbox. She wasn’t hurrying but she moved with purpose. Bolan’s instincts spoke to him as he moved through the crowd to intercept her.

“What do you think of that one, Ous?” Bolan asked.

Ous’s smile flashed through his beard. “You have keen eyes, indeed. She walks with purpose, and that purpose is not shopping. On any other day, were I taking tea and watching people pass, I would guess that the basket she carried was a prop, and that she went to meet her lover.”

“You see our suspect’s curves beneath all that fabric?”

“Nothing in life is certain except God’s will and the words of the Prophet. But I would wager on it, my friend. I would wager a great deal.”

Bolan was willing to back Ous’s wager. He spoke quietly into his throat mike. “Bear?”

“I have eyes on you, and you’re right on top of the signal.”

“Keller, we’re moving in,” Bolan said. “Suspect is wearing a burka and carrying a basket, moving due west through the rug sellers.”

“I have visual on you and Ous. Moving to intercept.”

“Ous, hang back a bit. Cover me,” Bolan instructed.

“Of course.”

Bolan caught up to the woman and followed her for just a moment. There wasn’t a speck of blood on her burka or her basket. As an American man, if he stripped the burka off the wrong woman there was likely to be a riot, if not a genuine international incident he might have to shoot his way out of. Bolan spoke very quietly. “Zurisaday.”

Ous spoke in his earpiece at the same moment. “I believe some of the women around her are her escorts. You have been noticed!”

The basket fell from the woman’s hands to the ground. The lid popped off, and Corporal Convertino’s, gray, frozen-in-agony head rolled into the mud. A pair of heavily kohled violet eyes glared pure murder at Bolan, and a slabsided Russian Pernach machine pistol snaked from under the burka.

Bolan’s knife hand chopped the chattering weapon out of the woman’s hand. The bazaar erupted into screams and chaos at the sound of the shots. His back-fist shot at the woman sent Zurisaday’s eyes fluttering like slot machines. He whirled, and a second blow flattened the killer into the mud.

He turned again as a robed woman screamed and plunged a foot-long, blood-crusted Khyber knife at Bolan’s chest. He caught her wrist and continued his turn, hip-tossing the shrieking killer in a windmill of limbs into a rug seller’s table. The soldier caught sight of a woman five yards away cocking a stubby submachine gun.

“Ous!” Bolan called.

The Afghan strode up from behind and clouted her with his pistol.

Another woman struggled slightly to get her Russian submachine gun out of the folds of her burka. Another woman hit her from behind in a flying tackle that sent both of them sliding a good six feet through the mud. Keller rose to one knee and secured her suspect. Bolan scanned for more targets. He waited for whomever Zurisaday was meeting to declare themselves. Cries of outrage and alarm were rippling outward across the bazaar. The remaining enemy had no need to attack just yet. It would be only a matter of moments before the good citizens of Sangin, a good portion of whom owned Kalashnikov rifles, took restoring order into their own hands, and the bad guys could take that opportunity to blend in and launch their attack.

“Control! I need air! Now!”

Farkas’s voice came back over the thudding sound of rotor noise. “Copy that! ETA thirty seconds!”

Bolan tore rope from an awning and bound two of the suspects. “Keller! Get the truck!”

Agent Keller ran for it. Instantly she was one more running figure in the mob wearing a burka. The woman Bolan had thrown rose groggily and he hip-tossed her next to Zurisaday for her trouble. Ous strode forward and threw his captive on the growing pile of women. He scooped a fallen submachine gun and glanced around anxiously.

“In but moments our position will become untenable!”

Bolan knelt and put Corporal Convertino’s head back in the basket.

Salvation came in the form of a USMC UH-1Y Venom helicopter dropping out of the sky like a stone. The chopper hovered over the bazaar like an angry leviathan, its door guns tracking for targets. The rotor wash of its twin General Electric turboshaft engines sent awnings flying like ghosts, and grain and light goods swirling from their baskets. The locals ran crouching and clutching their hats and burkas in the vortex. Unfortunately there was no good place for the chopper to land.

The truck’s horn blared over the roar. Melons exploded into shrapnel rinds as Keller clipped a stall. The lanes between stalls and stands were too narrow for the pickup, and she sent goods of all descriptions flying. Mud sprayed as she slid to a halt. Bolan and Ous tossed the bound women into the bed of the truck and jumped in. Bolan slapped the top of the cab. “Go!”

“Which way!”

There was no way to turn around. “Straight!”

The spinning tires buzz-sawed mud in all directions, and then the truck suddenly lunged forward like a racehorse out of the starting gate. Tables and tents fell in disarray, leaving a wake of commerce carnage. A bullet whined off the top of the cab, but it could have come from anywhere. Keller kept hitting the horn, and shoppers and shopkeepers leaped out of the path of the plunging pickup. Keller found the edge of the bazaar and drove under an ancient arch. The truck burst onto the streets of Sangin with the helicopter above orbiting like a guardian angel.

“Bear, you got eyes on?” Bolan queried.

“Oh copy that, Batman. It was one hell of a show. The Sangin bazaar is officially a riot area.”

“What’s our quickest route out of the city?”

“Head straight for the river.”

“Control, you copy that?” Bolan asked.

“Copy that, Batman.”

“We’re going to abandon the truck in the first open area outside of town. Request evac.”

“Copy that.”

Bolan and Ous both dropped down among the bound, squirming women and relaxed as Keller tore through town. He looked at Zurisaday’s unconscious form and the basket containing Convertino’s head. The corporal was a traitor to his beloved Corps and the United States he had sworn to serve, but he had fallen going forward.

Someone was going to pay for that.




CHAPTER FIVE


The massive, tapered clubs were half the height of a man. Gholam Daei’s mighty frame was stripped to the waist as he swung the sixty-five-pound clubs rhythmically around his head. A local woodworker had turned the clubs from a pair of sapling trunks to the man’s specifications. Daei noticed his servant, Karim, enter the chamber, but he finished his five hundred swings before he acknowledged him. “Yes?”

Karim ushered in two men. Azimi and Khahari were brothers, and local Taliban. They goggled at the bearded, bare-chested giant who stood in front of them radiating power. Gholam gave them a benevolent smile. “What news, brothers?”

“The news is bad, brother,” Azimi said.

“Oh?”

“Zurisaday has been captured.”

“And what became of the women who were supposed to guard her?”

Azimi lowered his head. “Captured.”

“Captured? They are living martyrs, sworn to die in their duty, sailing to paradise on an ocean of infidel blood. I find such a thing very hard to believe.”

Khahari cleared his throat. “There was an American.”

Gholam nodded sagely. “There usually is.” His smile slowly faded. “So, this American single-handedly took Zurisaday and her escort, while you, your brother and your men watched helplessly?”

“There was an infidel whore, shamefully hidden beneath a burka like a pious woman!” Azimi objected.

Daei raised one bushy brow in displeased question.

“And there was a gunship!” Khahari added.

Daei privately admitted to himself that in his own experience gunships could qualify as mitigating circumstances.

“And Omar Ous!” Khahari cried.

“Omar Ous, indeed?” Gholam grunted at this news. “Indeed, brother!”

“You and your brother are aware that a fatwa has been issued against Omar Ous?”

The brothers looked down at the ground. “Yes, brother.”

“And that it is your holy obligation to kill him?”

“Yes, brother.”

Daei looked for the silver lining. “And what were the civilian casualties of this assault?”

“A few broken bones, as some were trampled fleeing or injured throwing themselves out of harm’s way.”

Daei felt his anger beginning to rise. “Tell me at least this amorous Marine is dead.”

“Yes, Zurisaday herself took his head from his body.”

“Well, at least that is something. Tell me the other bad news.”

“The teashop owner, Abdullah, and his son Razi were both arrested. The tunnel between the tea shop and the bazaar has been compromised.”

“So, during the, abduction, I gather you held back and observed?”

“Yes, brother, we held back, waiting for the crowd to attack them so that our own attack would blend in,” Azimi stated.

It wasn’t the worst of plans. “And then the gunship descended and drove the crowd away?”

“Yes, brother, so we observed.”

“What did you observe?” Daei queried.

Azimi and Khahari both took out their cell phones. Daei took them and examined the video files. He watched the jerky film several times without comment. There were several decent shots of the American except that all Daei could make out was that the man was from the West, wearing a ball cap pulled low and sunglasses that hid his eyes. Daei switched to Khahari’s phone. His device clearly showed Ous knocking down one of Zurisaday’s escorts. Then the helicopter descended and turned the world into a confused maelstrom. He had some very bad footage of the pickup pulling away and Azimi taking several potshots at it.

Daei considered what he had seen.

Omar Ous was a hero among mujahideen veterans and considered a lion of the Northern Alliance. He was also ethnically Tajik. He had no use for southerners, less for Pashtuns, and considered the Taliban and their creed of Islam an abomination to be crushed. Such a man would have no compunction about shooting up the Sangin bazaar, much less gunning down female assassins in burkas. It was also well-known that he didn’t like Westerners and that he considered accepting their soldiers and their assistance a necessary evil. Yet here, digitally captured, he was following the American’s nearly suicidal rules of engagement.

Daei had been fully prepared, even expecting the escaping Marine to be a trap. He had been well prepared in the village, and he had believed so yet here again in the Marine forward base. It was an unprecedented, indeed, anomalous string of failures, one after the other, blowing up in his face like a string of firecrackers. They all had one thing in common.

The same, unknown, American operator.

He watched the video of the big American again, whirling among the living martyrs like a dervish. He was fairly sure he could take the man in hand-to-hand combat, and part of him yearned to lock horns with the American, lock him up and choke him out, only to have him awake, mewling and screaming to the final sensations of having his head sawed from his body with knife. For the moment he was invulnerable. He was surrounded by several thousand United States Marines, had Omar Ous to warn him of dangers Westerners normally couldn’t see, and had the United States Navy and God knew whom else backing his play. The situation was quite simple. Omar Ous needed to be shown the error of his ways, and the American operator needed to be cut from the herd.

Daei’s huge teeth split his black beard.

It was always good when one could kill two birds with one stone.

Sangin Base, Suspect Unit

ZURISADAY’S SKETCHES did her no justice. Even with the left side of her face swollen she was mind-emptyingly erotic. The push into Helmand Province had provided some of the heaviest fighting of the Afghanistan conflict and had provided a great number of enemy captures. The Sangin base had its own unit for processing terror suspects before shipping them out to the Kabul facilities or the United States. Zurisaday sat in a prefab holding cell complete with one-way glass. She sat staring at the glass, unblinking, with an almost reptilian hatred. Bolan had seen such looks many times before. He could feel her eyes on the other side of the glass, and he knew she could feel his. The woman was much more than a religious fanatic.

She was a sociopath.

“She said anything?” Bolan asked.

Keller looked up from a file she was amending on her laptop. “Not a peep since we brought her in.”

Bolan nodded. It would take very advanced interrogation techniques and time they didn’t have to get anything out of her. “What do we know about her escorts?”

“They’ve clammed up. Farkas suggested we leave them together for about an hour before separating them.”

“And?”

“A little bit of pay dirt. They were just dumb enough to whisper to each other. They didn’t say much except ‘say nothing’ and ‘remember your duty,’ but that was enough to determine that they’re Afghani, Pashtun and local.”

“Anything else?”

Keller clicked on the file. “They were armed with cheap-ass, copies of Russian Borz submachine guns. The knife one them attacked you with was the same knife used to murder Corporal Convertino. Zurisaday’s prints were on it, as well. I’m predicting she was the one who actually did the decapitation.”

Bolan looked into the unblinking, inhuman eyes on the other side of the glass. “I’ll buy that.”

“Yeah, but the part I don’t get? You’d think the Taliban would just put some men under burkas and be done with it.”

“For one, even though he was unarmed, Corporal Convertino was a U.S. Marine and a dangerous individual. If he found Zurisaday with only a couple of apparently helpless women with her, he would have let his guard down.” Bolan smiled faintly. “You heard Ous. You can tell a lot about a woman by how she moves in a burka. Practiced eyes, and just about every Afghan male’s eyes seem practiced, would probably spot a man beneath that garment almost instantly, and they wanted to get her and the head to an extraction point.”

“Okay, you got me, but it’s still kinda odd. The Taliban hardly ever uses women for anything except punching bags.” She cocked her head at Bolan. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking about suicide bombers in Moscow.”

Keller blinked. “The Black Widows?”

“Right, women whose husbands were killed fighting the Russians in Chechnya, Dagestan and the Caucasus region republics. They get widowed, they get radicalized, and they go to Moscow and blow themselves up to rejoin their husbands as holy martyrs.”

“I know who they are, but it’s just not Taliban MO.”

“I know. This whole thing stinks of something a whole lot more than the local Taliban.”

“Like a whole lot more what?”

“Like either the local Taliban has had some kind of sea change, or there’s a new player involved.”

“Oh Jesus.” Keller shook her head. “A new player? Like who?”

“I don’t know. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve seen terrorists coopted by an outside party, either knowingly or unknowingly.”

“Thanks. I’m going to sleep a lot better tonight.”

“Where’s Ous?” Bolan asked.

“He pulled a fade. He doesn’t like spending the night on U.S. or coalition bases unless he absolutely has to. He’s got his own safehouses and his own web of informants.” Keller’s eyes narrowed slightly in irritation. “None of which he’s ever shown any inclination to share.”

Bolan could understand. Alliances often shifted and changed in Afghanistan, and those who fought beside the Western Coalition were all too aware of the fact that they were on a timetable to leave. They were lucky Ous was playing ball at all.

Keller shrugged. “He said he’d be back at dawn.”

“All right.” Bolan stretched out his arms and felt his shoulders creak. “I’ll see you then.”

“Yo, mystery man.”

Bolan turned. “Yes?”

“You got a snuggle buddy for the night?” Keller asked.

The left corner of Bolan’s mouth quirked. “Snuggle buddy?”

“I’m a lone female NCIS agent on a base full of horny United States Marines.”

“There’s always Farkas.”

“Farkas already made his move, and he’s married, and I don’t mess around with partners.”

Bolan laid his hands on his chest guilelessly. “We’re not partners?”

“You’re my liaison with every branch of government, with godlike powers.” Keller looked at Bolan seriously. “And Convertino fragged the infirmary. He may not be the only compromised Marine in this camp, and maybe I’d feel better with a tall dark stranger with a machine pistol watching over me tonight.”

“Well, I’m sharing a tent with a couple of lieutenants.”

“And I have an air-conditioned container unit to myself, and the two sergeants who shared it left their DVD collection behind when they were evicted in the name of NCIS.”

“Well…I don’t know.”

Keller’s eyes began to widen in bemused outrage. “I’ve had over a hundred Marines hit on me per day, I choose you, and you’re gonna make me beg?”

“Beg, it’s such an ugly word.”

Keller’s face went flat. “I have popcorn.”

Bolan nodded. “I’ll bring beer.”

Keller clapped her hands. “Yay!”

Ous’s safehouse

COLD SWEAT BROKE OUT across Omar Ous’s body. He stood over his bed bare-chested. His Browning Hi-Power pistol had filled his hand without thought as he had lunged up from slumber. Ous had been a guerrilla fighter since the age of twelve. He knew he could be ambushed, and he knew he could be tricked, for much to his shame such things had happened before. Even in righteous jihad, such were the fortunes of war. He bore many scars both great and small upon his body for every mistake he had made and lived to learn from. However, without unseemly pride, Ous believed it was nearly impossible for someone to sneak up upon him, even in slumber. Like many veterans who had fought hard and lived long enough, he was attuned to that which didn’t belong. The odd smell, the almost subliminal sound, or the lack of those that did belong, all spoke to him consciously and unconsciously. Wherever Ous laid his head he took precautions.

In the case of this night, in this room he had taken over a weaver’s shop, Ous’s precautions were as simple as a chair jammed beneath the doorknob and a length of wire sealing the window. A determined opponent could quickly breach such defenses, but not without waking the warrior slumbering within. His precautions were still in place. Apparently untampered with. Apparently a ghost had entered his room this night.

A ghost, or worse.

Ous looked down upon his pillow and what he saw strained credibility. What it represented had been reduced to old wives’ tales and myth since time out of mind. Nonetheless, Ous knew that he wasn’t mad. He also knew that he wasn’t dreaming.

The blade that lay glittering upon his pillow was very real.

The dagger would be strange to Western eyes. It looked like the dorsal fin of some delicate, exotic fish. The blade started wide at the base and then tapered very quickly through a shallow S curve to a needlepoint. Despite its eight-inch length, the blade almost looked dainty. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The thick T-shaped spine along its back and its acute wedge shape made it utterly rigid. In ancient times it had been designed to exploit the weak points in metal armor and burst chain-mail links. East or west, the ancient, Persian Pesh Kabz was arguably the best armor-piercing dagger design ever to emerge from medieval times, and the Moghul Empire had spread them across South and Central Asia. Ous knew from personal experience that such a blade, driven with enough enthusiasm could plunge through 1980s-vintage Soviet spun fiberglass and titanium body armor to find the life beneath it. He had little doubt that it could pierce the more modern Kevlar armor if required.

Ous looked at the photograph of his wife and his two children lying beneath the blade, and he knew what was required of him.




CHAPTER SIX


Bolan’s machine pistol was instantly in his hand as he sat up. Keller murmured and snuggled closer. Beer was forbidden to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, but it flowed like a river to the German coalition contingent, to the tune of 260,000 gallons a year. Like cigarettes, beer was an excellent bribe and Bolan had made sure a case or two of Bundeswehr beer was available to him to cement the love of the United States Marines. The soldier had allowed himself two bottles and allowed NCIS Agent Kathryn Keller to work her wiles on him. The woman had allowed herself four bottles and had worked her wiles on him with a vengeance. Marine Corps cots were definitely not built for two, so they had made a nest of blankets on the floor and made it exactly halfway through Casablanca. Bolan pushed the 93-R’s selector switch to 3-round burst mode in answer to the quiet knock at the door.

“Who is it?”

“Omar Ous! Are you decent, or shall I come back?”

Bolan flicked his selector to safe. “Give me a minute.”

“Of course.”

Bolan pulled on a pair of boxers and a T-shirt, and tossed his Beretta onto the bare cot. Keller made a tiny noise and took the opportunity to cocoon herself in all of the covers. The container-shelter unit was literally an upgraded cargo container unit with power, AC, and because it was an officer’s unit, its own portable toilet. Bolan found Ous at the door, smiling in the pearly dawn light and holding a steaming mug of coffee.

“Good morning, my friend,” Ous said.

“Good morning, did you—”

Ous struck like a snake.

A snap of his wrist sent hot coffee sleeting for Bolan’s eyes. Most men would have recoiled from the attack. The Executioner dived into it. He closed his eyes as the coffee scalded across his face and hit Ous in a flying tackle down the unit’s three steps. The ground was unyielding dust and gravel, but both men had taken hard falls before and it appeared Ous’s revered father had taught him how to wrestle as well as shoot. As they rolled, Ous took the opportunity to drive two hard right palm heels into his target’s sternum. Bolan took the shots and the opportunity to yank his adversary’s pistol out of his sash. Ous’s hand closed on Bolan’s wrist like a vise as he attempted to drive his knee up between the American’s legs. Bolan had two decades and a good twenty pounds on his opponent but Ous was as hard as nails and grimly determined as they wrestled for the pistol. Ous struggled with all of his strength to keep the muzzle away from his face. Even though he was on top, Bolan’s strength and experience began to tell.

Ous seemed to produce the sinuously curving dagger out of thin air.

The dagger flashed across the top of Bolan’s wrist and the pistol fell from his hand. Ous rose up to drive the dagger into the American’s heart with both hands. Bolan got a foot into the man’s chest and shoved him off. Ous snarled and came back instantly as Bolan rolled up to find him plunging the dagger straight for his heart.

The soldier clapped his hands. For a heartbeat the blade was trapped between the heels of Bolan’s palms just inches from his chest. Before Ous could react to this incredible turn of events, Bolan snap-kicked him in the groin. Ous’s face crumpled and he fell to his knees with a groan.

Bolan took the dagger from Ous’s palsied hand and picked up the pistol. He pushed off the safety and squatted beside the vomiting warrior. “Well, I’m thinking you either got religion or someone got to you.”

Ous looked up at Bolan through tearing eyes. “I…have never…seen…such a thing.”

In Asian martial arts the move was usually called some variation of the name “catching the lightning.” Few styles still taught it. At best, most considered it a desperation move and a relic left over from the days when people carried swords, and in any event a very good way to lose a hand. Bolan was adept at many fighting techniques, and he was always willing to add any new move.

“What did they threaten you with, Omar? Your family?”

“My wife…my children,” Ous said. “They have them.”

“Who’s they?”

Ous ground his brow into the dust. “Those who put the dagger into my hand.”

“Do you know where they are?”

“I believe they are still in my home. They will die if your death is not proved within forty-eight hours, or if any police or military force attempt a rescue.”

Ous’s eyes widened in shock as his pistol and dagger clattered to the gravel in front of his face. Bolan held out his bloody right hand to help him up. “Let’s go get your family.”

Kunduz Province, 20,000 feet

THE C-12 HURON ROARED across the sky. It had crossed the length of Afghanistan from south to north. Omar Ous had never jumped out of plane before. As it turned out, he had never been in a plane before and he was throwing up again. Bolan and Ous shared the cabin with a highly bemused Keller and an equally bemused jumpmaster. Neither Keller nor Farkas were jump qualified, and Bolan could only tandem jump with one amateur. By necessity it had to be Ous.

The copilot’s voice came across the intercom from the cabin. “Five minutes, jumpers. Descending to jump altitude.” They would be jumping high enough that no one on the ground would hear the plane or see it without night-vision and magnification but not so high they would need oxygen. Keller looked askance at Bolan and finally aired the question that had been bothering her the entire day. “So…”

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t this guy try to kill you this morning?”

“That he did.”

Bolan and Keller watched as the jumpmaster solicitously gave Ous a fresh bag. He had stopped vomiting and now he was hyperventilating. Ous was wide-eyed as he worked the barf bag like a bellows.

The jumpmaster gave Bolan a sidelong look. “You jumping into a hot LZ with this guy?”

“He’ll be fine once he has dust beneath his boots,” Bolan replied, “and with luck the LZ won’t be hot until we light it up.” Bolan checked the pair of Navy MP-5 SD-N sound-suppressed submachine guns a final time and then attached the weapon and his pouch of six magazines to his web gear. Ous’s gaze flew around the cabin in mounting panic as Bolan clipped his weapon to his harness. He gasped as Bolan pulled night-vision goggles over the man’s eyes.

“Listen, you’re going to be fine,” Bolan said. “Just remember what I showed you. Arch hard when we go out the door. I’ll take care of everything else.”

The jumpmaster assisted Bolan in buckling in Ous. The soldier could smell the fear oozing off the man. So could the jumpmaster, and he gave Bolan another look as he gave the straps and buckles a second going over. The intercom crackled. “One minute! Going dark!”

The interior cabin lights went off, and the red emergency lights came on. Bolan pulled his goggles over his eyes and adjusted the gain slightly. The jumpmaster opened the door and the wind roared into the cabin.

Keller put a hand on Bolan’s armored shoulder. “Luck!”

“Thanks!”

“One minute!”

Bolan nudged Ous, and the two of them did the awkward tandem-man shuffle to the door. Ous made a terrible noise in the back of his throat.

“Remember,” Bolan said. “A hard arch!”

“Get ready!” the jumpmaster shouted.

The intercom crackled for the final time. “We are on target! Jumpers away!”

“Go! Go! Go!” the jumpmaster called.

Ous’s hands slammed into the door frame in mortal terror.

“Go!” the jumpmaster called.

Bolan spoke above the roar of the wind in the door and tried to take a step forward. “Ous! We gotta go!”

Ous’s body went rigid.

“Go!” the jumpmaster bellowed.

Ous shuddered with horror in the door frame.

“Ous!” Bolan snarled in Ous’s ear. “What’s your wife’s name?”

“What…”

“Your wife! Her name!” Bolan demanded.

“Yamina, my wife’s name is—”

“Your children! Their names!”

“My son, his name is Esfandyar,” Ous replied.

“And your daughter?”

“Afshan.”

“For them, Ous! Yamina! Esfandyar! Afshan! You’ve gotto do this! For them! I’m with you.” Bolan spoke with deadly seriousness. “God is great, Ous, and by God our cause is righteous!”

Ous squeezed his eyes shut, clenched his teeth and released the door frame. “Allahu akbar,” he whispered.

The jumpmaster gave Bolan a helpful slam between the shoulder blades with both hands. “See ya!”

Bolan and Ous flew out into the jet stream. Ous failed to give Bolan a hard arch and they tumbled wildly in the shrieking, streaming darkness with Ous screaming in the Tajik of his youth and flailing his limbs. Bolan idly considered choking him out. He still owed the Afghani for the six surgical stitches in his arm. Bolan let him flail a few moments more. Despite what one saw in the movies, it was almost impossible to have a conversation during free fall. The soldier waited for a few more moments as they fell like stones to the dark Earth below. When Ous momentarily ran out of breath. Bolan slapped him hard on the side of his helmet. Ous stopped his flailing. Bolan slapped the helmet once, twice, three times more.

Ous suddenly got it and managed his arch.

It was enough. Bolan extended his arms and legs to make ailerons of his limbs. It was awkward with a large man strapped to him, but the big American managed to gracefully turn the two of them over into a belly-down position. He pulled the rip cord and the big tandem chute deployed. Ous clenched like a spider about to get stepped on as their straps cinched against them with the sudden pull. The roar of free fall disappeared. The strain was gone and their legs dangled like a carnival ride as Bolan took the toggles. He began a slow, comfortable spiraling descent over Ous’s village. Ous lifted his head slightly and began peering around, taking in the world below him through the greens and grays of night-vision equipment.

“It is not an unpleasant sensation,” he stated.

“No, it’s not,” Bolan agreed. “Which house is yours?”

Ous examined the village beneath them and pointed. “Slightly away from the main village, to the west, among the orchards, there.”

It appeared a life of war hadn’t treated Omar Ous too badly. His house was bigger than most. Not bad for a wanted man. Bolan took in what looked like perhaps four or five hectares of orderly, terraced rows of fruit trees and a corral and stable for horses. It appeared Ous owned a Toyota Landcruiser and an ex-Soviet era GAZ-69 utility vehicle. Bolan picked a lane in the trees about a hundred yards from the house. They were the best source of cover on the valley floor. “Get ready, lift your legs…now!”

The earth swung up beneath Bolan’s boots and he flared his chute. A few cherry branches broke as the shrouds enveloped them, and the trees took the two warriors’ combined weight. The crackings and snappings seemed as loud as gunshots, but no gunfire or shouts of alarm ensued. Ous became a deadweight as they lost all lift. Bolan bent his knees and they both hit the ground in a fairly professional manner. It was cherry-picking season, and a small hail of fruit fell upon them from above. Bolan instantly got him and Ous separated and out of their harnesses. Both men unclipped and checked their weapons. Bolan flicked his selector to full-auto. “On my six.”

“My family—”

“I’m on point, Ous.” Bolan moved through the heavily laden trees. He dropped to a crouch behind the bole of a tree by the edge of the orchard, and Ous knelt next to him. There was a nicker from the stables and a goat ambled past, drawn by the smell of the fallen cherries. “You notice anything?”

Ous stared at his house for long moments, nearly vibrating with the need to burst in with guns blazing. “Yes, my dogs should have already greeted me or attacked you.”

That was enough for Bolan. He clicked his link. “Bear, I’m calling the domicile taken. High probability of hostiles and hostages inside.”

“Copy that, Striker,” Kurtzman came back.

Bolan turned to Ous. “You have stairs that lead to the roof inside?”

“I do.”

Bolan took out a padded grapnel and coil of rope from his pack. “Cover me. Come quickly when I give you the signal.”

“Indeed.”

The house was the usual Central Asian structure, a hollow cube with a courtyard inside. In Ous’s case it was a cube with smaller cubes attached as outbuildings. Bolan ran across the dead ground waiting for the weapons in hiding to open up, but made it to the side of the house unscathed. Bolan tossed the foam-covered grapnel up and over the roof. The rasp of the rope on the side of the house was louder than its landing. Bolan slowly pulled up the slack and the rope went taut. The grapnel stood horizontal with two tines firmly hooped over the ceiling ledge. Bolan moved up the rope with an alacrity and precision that U.S. Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and Spider-Man would have admired. He motioned Ous to come ahead and the guerrilla fighter moved with impressive silence across the open ground. Bolan peered down into the inner courtyard. Below were the usual fountain, some potted trees and benches. On the other side of the roof Ous had a satellite dish. The tinkling of the fountain competed with the wind in the orchard for the only sounds.

The silence broke as the trapdoor to the roof opened. The intruder wore a turban wound to conceal his face like a desert wanderer. The stock of his AK was folded, and the weapon was slung as he clambered up the roof ladder.

The hatch opened to look upon the road from town rather than toward the orchards behind. Bolan took up the grapnel in one hand and the rope in the other as the sentry stepped onto the roof and peered west. Bolan gave the rope a single gyration like a man tossing a lasso and hurled the grapnel. The rope bent around the man’s neck, and the soldier heaved back with all of his strength. The tine croquette hooked the sentry’s throat. The veiled man gagged and clutched at the unyielding steel as Bolan reeled him in. The Executioner drove a knee into the sentry’s kidney to still his struggles and tossed him off the roof by the iron around his throat.

The sentry made a low thudding noise as he hit the ground two stories below. Bolan heard a single chuff and click as Ous’s sound-suppressed weapon fired once and the action cycled. A moment later the grapnel sailed up again. Bolan caught it and secured it to the roof. Ous scrambled up and the two warriors crouched by the open roof hatch, listening. From within the house a woman sobbed.

Bolan’s slammed his hand down on Ous’s shoulder. “Wait.”

A blow cut off the sob. Ous went rigid beneath Bolan’s hand. A sneering voice called out from below and then laughed.

“What did he say?” Bolan asked.

Ous’s voice was tightly controlled. “From what I can gather, the man you hurled from the roof is named Mehtar. The man below taunts Mehtar, telling him he is a prude, and that he hopes Mehtar enjoys masturbating upon my roof alone while he himself avails himself of the pleasures of my virgin daughter.”

“You want to take point?”

“I do.”

They pushed up their night-vision goggles, and Bolan took Ous’s six as he descended into his home and beelined down a hallway. Their boots made no sound on the Persian carpet. The two men stopped at an open door. Ous’s daughter, Afshan, cringed in a corner with one of her cheeks swollen. One of the veiled men crouched next to her. The teenager cried and flinched as the man ran his fingers through her lustrous dark hair. His other hand held a knife to the girl’s throat as he whispered ugly, cooing endearments in a guttural voice. He had but one moment to widen his eyes in horror as Omar Ous filled the door to his daughter’s bedroom.

Ous burned his entire magazine into the offender.

At that range the sound of the bullets striking flesh and clothing was louder than the coughing and clicking of the silenced weapon. The silenced MP-5 cycled like a sewing machine knitting living flesh. Spent brass fell to the thick carpet. The veiled man shuddered and shook as he took twenty-nine rounds in the chest. Ous’s weapon clicked open on empty, and smoke oozed from the muzzle of the suppressor as he reloaded. He arched one eyebrow at his daughter in a question and she shook her head. Ous nodded once. His daughter nodded back and took the dead man’s pistol from his sash.

Ous spoke very quietly. “This man with me is a friend. We will speak English for his benefit.”

Afshan nodded.

“Where is your mother?” Ous asked.

“Downstairs.”

“Where is your little brother?”

“Downstairs. They beat him and tied him up when he resisted,” Afshan replied.

“Where is your grandmother?”

Afshan’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “She stabbed one of the bad men. They shot her.”

“Where are the servants?”

“They shot them and put their bodies in the stable.”

“Where are my hounds?”

“They shot them, too, Father.”

A mighty scowl passed across Ous’s face. “I see.”

Bolan knelt beside the girl. “How many are they?”

“Twelve or so took the house, I think. Then perhaps half of them left.”

“Are they local?” Bolan asked.

Afshan blinked.

“Ah.” Ous nodded and put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Were they men of Kunduz? Did they speak Tajik? Pashto or Dari Persian?”

“They spoke Arabic among themselves. I believe the men who stayed are southerners. The men who left were foreigners. Forgive me, but from where, I do not know.”

“At least six were left upon the premises,” Ous surmised.

“And between us we’ve taken two.”

Ous rose. “Stay here, little rose.”

Afshan clutched at her father and shook her head. Bolan caught her gaze and held it. “Your father and I are going to fetch your mother and your little brother. I want you to go up on the roof. Take the pistol. If we fail, shoot anyone who comes up the hatch. No matter what happens, in half an hour American soldiers will come, but do not let anyone up unless they say ‘Rambo.’ Do you understand?”

The barest hint of a smile tried to quirk one corner of Afshan’s mouth. “The password is Rambo.”

“Good, now obey your father. Go.”

The Russian-made Gyruza pistol was huge in the girl’s tiny hands as she ran in a whirl of skirts for the roof ladder. Ous’s eyes glimmered. “She is a good girl.”

“An honor to her family,” Bolan agreed.

“What is the plan?”

“We rescue your wife and son,” the soldier replied.

“Do you wish prisoners?”

“Not at your family’s expense.”

“Very good.”

“Half of the raid team left and they haven’t posted any sentries,” Bolan said. “I think they’re waiting for the phone call that I’m dead and you’re dead or captured. If they do have any sentries, they’re down in the village watching the road.”

“An intelligent assessment, I agree.”

“Where would they most likely be in the house on a low state of alert?” Bolan asked.

“If they are like this one—” Ous gestured at the riddled corpse “—and seek diversions? Most likely in my parlor. It has a television and opens into the kitchen.”

“By all means, Ous, show me to your parlor.”

Bolan followed the man downstairs and into the darkened courtyard. They walked across it and glanced through the window into the kitchen. The light was on, and in the summer night the kitchen window was open. Bolan could see where Ous’s daughter got her good looks. Mrs. Ous was stirring something on the stove with a very unhappy look on her face. One of the veiled man sat at the kitchen table. He had uncovered his mouth and busily shoved down yellow rice with raisins and peas with his fingers. From somewhere out of sight Bolan could hear Bollywood-style music playing.

The soldier put a single silenced bullet through the eye slit of the eater’s veil.

Mrs. Ous didn’t notice. She only turned at the sound of the man slumping with his face in his bowl. In an incredible show of calm she walked over to the slumped man, lifted his head by his turban and noted the copious blood flooding into his food. She lowered his head back down and walked to the kitchen window. Ous spoke in English. “Wife, where is our son?”

“Husband, our son is in the parlor with the intruders, to make sure I do not attempt anything with a kitchen knife as my mother did.” Her fists clenched. “Two men are upstairs with our daughter.”

“Our daughter is safe. We have killed the two men upstairs. How many remain here below?”

“Three.”

“They are all in the parlor?”

“Watching television.”

“Let us in.”

Mrs. Ous disappeared and a door to the patio opened. Bolan followed Ous through a laundry room and into the kitchen, which opened into a Western style dining room. The dining room led to a capacious parlor. A series of sofas formed a U shape facing a large-screen TV. Three of the veiled men sat around the sofas watching a Bollywood song-and-dance number on the television with great interest. Ous’s son lay on the floor hog-tied and gagged. One of the intruders was using him for an ottoman.

“Leave the one in the middle,” Bolan whispered.

The Executioner and Ous gunned down the two men on the flanking couches. The last intruder stared up their smoking suppressor tubes and made a small unhappy sound.

“Take your feet off my son before I cut them off.”

The man obeyed and Ous nodded at Bolan. “This one speaks English.”

Ous kept the intruder covered while Bolan cut the boy free, then gave the twelve-year-old a hand up. “Esfandyar, I am a friend of your father’s.”

The young man rubbed his wrists. “I am very pleased to meet you, sir.”

“My son,” Ous said, “your mother is in the kitchen. I wish you to take her upstairs. Go to the roof, where you shall knock and say ‘Rambo’ lest your sister shoot you.”

“Yes, Father.” Esfandyar looked around at the carnage. “And you?”

The old warrior’s eyes bored into the surviving intruder. “Our friend and I wish to speak with this man.”




CHAPTER SEVEN


Ustad Ghulz was a very unhappy man. The United States Marines had come to Omar Ous’s house, rescued his family and removed the dead. Ghulz had been taken from the parlor, bound hand and foot and thrown into the cellar until the Marines had left. He now sat tied to a chair beneath the glare of the cellar’s single bare bulb. Ghulz was a fountain of useless information. He had been a hired thug most of his life. He had worked for the opium lords as a gunman and leg-breaker. When the Taliban had taken over, he had adopted the black turban and shot people and broken legs for the Taliban drug lords with fanatic zeal. When the Taliban had been driven out of the north, he had taken off his turban and shot people and broken legs for the new drug lords. Ustad Ghulz was a man who had found his niche.

Now he found himself tied to a chair in the cellar of Omar Ous, the Lion of Kunduz.

Ghulz shook like a leaf.

“Powerful men” whom he couldn’t readily identify had hired Ustad and half a dozen like-minded souls. These powerful men claimed to have the Lion of Kunduz on a leash. Another half dozen men who remained veiled joined them. Other than that, they were foreign and scared him. Ghulz had no idea who they were.

“Did they act like soldiers?” Bolan tried.

“Yes!” Ghulz leaped at the question like a lifeline. “Very much like soldiers!”

“They spoke Arabic?”

“Yes! I was asked if I spoke it before I was hired! It was the tongue in which they gave us orders! But among themselves they spoke some foreign tongue!”

Ous drew the sinuously curving Pesh Kabz he had found on his pillow just twenty-four hours earlier. Ghulz flinched as Ous pointed the blade at him. “Do you know what this is, dog?”

Ghulz leaned back in his chair and gazed at Ous as if expecting a lethal trick question. “A…dagger?” he ventured.

Ous rolled his eyes and replaced the blade in his sash. Ghulz had no idea what the weapon represented. Bolan continued on the “good Cop” line. “So the strangers left some hours after the house and Mr. Ous’s family were secured?”

“Yes!”

“And you were to wait?”

“Yes! I was to receive a phone call, that the American was dead.”

Ghulz flinched as Bolan’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

“After that we were to finish off…” Ghulz’s voice trailed off in terror beneath Ous’s unforgiving glare.

“So we gather,” Bolan said. “You weren’t supposed to contact anyone?”

“Only…if something went wrong.”

Bolan had Ghulz’s cell. He considered the timetable and what the contact number in Ghulz’s phone might be worth. He took out his own phone and connected to Ghulz’s while Ous watched with interest. Bolan downloaded everything in the phone’s memory, but there wasn’t much. The security software in Bolan’s special-issue phone detected no viruses or subroutines. In fact, the entire memory of the phone issued to Ghulz was the single number he was to call in an emergency. The phone had never made or received a call, text, email or image. If it had, the data had been wiped clean by a professional. “If you called, what was the code word?”

Ghulz swallowed. “I was to ask, is the lion free?”

“And then?” Bolan probed.

“And then I would receive instructions.”

It wasn’t subtle, but Ghulz was obviously a cutout. “In Arabic?”

“Yes.”

Bolan dialed the Farm. He owned one of the most powerful cell phones on Earth. Kurtzman and his cyberteam had designed it from the ground up, and nine times out of ten it was bouncing its signal through National Security Agency satellites.

“Bear, I need a trace on a call. I’m going to make a call to the enemy. I’ve linked my phone with the suspect’s.”

“That could take a minute,” Kurtzman replied. “Keep them talking if you can.”

Bolan held Ghulz’s phone to his face, then nodded at Ous. “If he says a single syllable you find suspicious, cut his throat.”

Ous drew the dagger and placed the blade just below Ghulz’s Adam’s apple. “Should he be so foolish, I will cut off his head, and send it to my Christian cousins in Tajikistan, whereupon they shall toss it to their dogs. When they have finished savaging it, the eyes of Ustad Ghulz shall be filled with pig’s blood and sewn shut, his mouth stuffed with the pig’s genitals and sealed. Then shall his head be wrapped in the pig’s offal and encased in its carcass to be buried without a marker, and, clad in such raiment, shall Ustad Ghulz go to explain his sins to He who made him.” Lightning stopped just short of flashing from Ous’s eyes and smiting Ghulz where he sat. “This I swear.”

Ghulz looked like he might throw up.

Bolan pressed Send. The phone rang three times and the line clicked on.

Ghulz spoke a sentence in Arabic. Bolan raised an eyebrow at Ous and the warrior shrugged. A voice spoke back. Ous mouthed words in translation. “Ustad Ghulz has failed.”

Ghulz whimpered something back. “He tells his co-conspirator that the United States Marines came.”

The voice on the phone spoke again.

Ous’s eyes flew wide as he translated. “Ustad Ghulz is a liar. A lion and an eagle came.”

The symbolism was pretty heavy-handed.

The line clicked dead.

“What’d you get, Bear?”

Kurtzman grunted unhappily. “Not enough time.”

Bolan clicked off Ghulz’s phone. “Bear, I got a feeling that the moment I turned on Ghulz’s phone and pressed Send, I got GPSed.

“Striker! Get out of there!”

“Hold that thought.” Bolan dialed another number.

Keller answered on the first ring. “Yo!”

“How soon can you and the Marines get back here?”

“Half an hour, why? Did you get anything out of Ghulz?”

“Not much, but I think we’re about to get something courtesy of Ghulz.”

“You’re going to get hit?”

Something the size of a 155 mm howitzer round hit the house. Ghulz screamed as dust sifted down from the floor above. The second impact blew the cellar door inward, and heat and smoke roared down the stairs in a wave. Ous slashed Ghulz’s bonds and ran to the other end of the cellar.

“Come!” He overturned two barrels to reveal a hatch. He pulled it open and dropped down. Between the Soviet invasion and the war on terror, Afghanistan had become a veritable termite’s nest of tunnels.

Bolan shoved the shrieking Ghulz into the dark as the power cut out. The world plunged into darkness that relit Halloween orange and hell red as the third shell impacted. Bolan tossed Ghulz’s phone back behind him as he dropped down and gave the cowering Ghulz a shove to motivate him onward. The soldier pulled out his tactical light. The tunnel was just big enough to move at an uncomfortable crouch. Ghulz crawled, sobbing, on hands and knees. Ous scrambled ahead. Heat seared the back of Bolan’s neck, and a second later the tunnel hatch filled with rubble as the floor of the house above failed. Bolan’s internal compass told him they were heading northwest in a line that was taking them to Ous’s stable. His sense of direction bore out as the tunnel dead-ended with a hatch leading above.

Ghulz whimpered and Ous cuffed him to silence. Bolan and Ous crouched and listened for long moments. The shelling had stopped. Ous’s tone was dangerously conversational. “Do you know? I was not aware of an artillery emplacement in the hills above my home.”

“It wasn’t artillery.” The explosion pulse and Bolan’s sense of smell told him what happened. “They’re using thermobaric weapons.”

Ous gave Bolan a look.

“Fuel-air explosive,” Bolan explained. “I smelled the stench of the fuel over the burnt high explosive. I’d bet they’re hitting us with Russian-made Shmel or Shmel-M shoulder-fired recoilless grenade launchers.”

“Truly you are a fountain of knowledge. What else does this mean?”

“It means three hundred meters is the effective range and seventeen is the maximum. They’re aiming at a large house and they’re up in the hills firing down, so it’s plunging fire. I’m guessing if they have training and want hits they’re at five hundred meters or less.”




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