Read the book: «Lethal Tribute»
“I don’t believe we’re facing terrorists,” Mack Bolan stated
“No?” Makhdoom set down his cup. “Then what?”
“True believers.”
“I do not understand the difference.”
“Terrorists lash out. There is no real objective that they can hope to achieve other than killing. True believers have an objective, however mad it may be. I believe the people we’re facing have a higher purpose than just lighting off a nuke and killing as many people as they can.”
“What is that higher purpose?”
“I don’t know.” Bolan stared at the Pakistani special forces captain. “But God help us if we don’t stop it.”
Other titles available in this series:
Onslaught
Battle Force
Rampage
Takedown
Death’s Head
Hellground
Inferno
Ambush
Blood Strike
Killpoint
Vendetta
Stalk Line
Omega Game
Shock Tactic
Showdown
Precision Kill
Jungle Law
Dead Center
Tooth and Claw
Thermal Strike
Day of the Vulture
Flames of Wrath
High Aggression
Code of Bushido
Terror Spin
Judgment in Stone
Rage for Justice
Rebels and Hostiles
Ultimate Game
Blood Feud
Renegade Force
Retribution
Initiation
Cloud of Death
Termination Point
Hellfire Strike
Code of Conflict
Vengeance
Executive Action
Killsport
Conflagration
Storm Front
War Season
Evil Alliance
Scorched Earth
Deception
Destiny’s Hour
Power of the Lance
A Dying Evil
Deep Treachery
War Load
Sworn Enemies
Dark Truth
Breakaway
Blood and Sand
Caged
Sleepers
Strike and Retrieve
Age of War
Line of Control
Breached
Retaliation
Pressure Point
Silent Running
Stolen Arrows
Zero Option
Predator Paradise
Circle of Deception
Devil’s Bargain
False Front
Lethal Tribute
Mack Bolan®
Don Pendleton
…we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.
—Ephesians,
6:12-13
My path has taken me face-to-face with the event horizon of human evil. I have dedicated myself to War Everlasting and to staring into the terrible place and telling the evil no. I will take down the deceivers.
—Mack Bolan
Dedicated to the world’s Special Forces
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
Haji Pir Pass, Pakistan-Kashmir Border
Musa Company was moving.
Mack Bolan shadowed them in the inky black of the cloudless night.
The ugly rumor at the Pentagon was that Pakistan had lost control of several of its nuclear warheads. Such a happening had long been an established fear in the West, as nuclear security protocols in Pakistan were a fluid situation at the best of times. The Pakistani government vigorously denied through both public and private channels that any warheads were missing. They claimed the CIA had its own agenda, had fabricated lies so that the United States and her United Nations lackeys could invade Pakistan and wrest away her sovereign power. Such action would, thus, lay Pakistan open to the political and military machinations of their true nemesis, India.
Nuclear warheads passing from Pakistan into the disputed region of Kashmir was a worst-case scenario for a catastrophic meltdown between the two nuclear nations. One that could light a fire throughout all of East Asia.
The rumors in Washington were confusing. Some sources claimed that ultra-fundamentalist factions in the Pakistani government and military had engineered the grab. Other rumors indicated the warheads had been taken, humiliatingly, right out from under the Pakistani military’s nose.
Bolan watched Musa Company move, and he began to think that Pakistan was as worried as the West.
Named for the Prophet Moses, Musa Company was Pakistan’s elite counterterrorist unit. They had received training from the British SAS and in the past had sent personnel to the United States for special warfare and airborne training. Bolan had suspected that whoever came down through the Haji Pir Pass would be involved in transporting and security for the weapons. His first guess had been that the grab had to have been an inside job.
But Musa Company wasn’t transporting nuclear warheads.
They had been instrumental in quelling rioting and dissension between Pakistan’s fractious factions. Musa Company would be the last unit to betray their country and to let Pakistan’s nuclear weapons loose into the world. Their loyalty was unquestionable. Nor were the men below passing themselves off as travelers or pilgrims. They carried no baggage and they were well off the roads. Bolan had watched as they had perilously engaged in a night jump down into the high crags of the pass. They now moved through the nearly vertical terrain, wearing night-camouflage body armor, night-vision goggles and carrying Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD-3 silenced submachine guns. They moved as silently and swiftly as wolves.
Musa Company was definitely on the hunt.
Bolan judged by the way they were fanned out and leapfrogging from cover to cover that their quarry had to be very close. They were being very careful, as they were very close to the disputed border with India. Indian armored and airborne troops were barely two miles away and always on alert. The disputed area was a flashpoint, any mistake could easily lead to a renewal of war.
Bolan subvocalized into his throat mike sat link. “Bear, what have you got?”
Back in Virginia, Aaron and his entire cybernetic team worked furiously. They were directly linked with the “Puzzle Palace” within the National Security Agency. Unless Musa Company had gone rogue, they had to be in touch with someone. “Striker, we are detecting radio communications. Very narrow bandwidth. We are adjusting values. One moment.” Bolan waited while Kurtzman made his moves. Pakistan had nothing much in the way of sophisticated communication satellites. The best they had for special operations was a narrow bandwidth radio using security encryption protocols.
A secure radio channel was far from secure when Aaron Kurtzman and his team were on the job.
Kurtzman paused a moment as several of the National Security Agency’s most sophisticated Signal Intelligence satellites tried to break in to eavesdrop on the Pakistanis’ conversation. “We have it triangulated. One contact point is right below you. Everyone in the Musa Company team is individually wired. The second transmission point is a signal station. Definitely Islamabad. Their orders are coming straight from the capital. NSA says they are using encrypted audio.”
Bolan nodded to himself. Whatever Musa Company’s orders, they were receiving them in real time and they were coming straight from the top. “You’ve broken in?”
“One moment, Striker. Encryption broken. We’re in,” Kurtzman confirmed. “Patching you in passively.”
Bolan’s earpiece crackled as he was connected to the Pakistani secure radio frequency. The Puzzle Palace had done its work. Whatever encryption code the Pakistani military was using wasn’t up to the giant supercomputers in the bowels of the NSA building. Bolan listened as voices spoke in the quiet, clipped tones of soldiers giving and receiving data across a military channel. Bolan frowned slightly. He had been in Pakistan before and could speak enough words in the dominant language to get by as a tourist. He didn’t recognize the language being spoken. “Bear, that’s not Urdu.”
“Confirmed, Striker. One moment.” Pakistan was a large country split by mountains, deserts and river valleys. The people of Pakistan spoke several major languages and had innumerable dialects. “Switching translators.”
Bolan watched Musa Company creep forward, disappearing and reappearing from behind rocks and boulders below. They were slowing as they approached their target.
“Striker, they’re speaking Sind. Patching in standby translator.” Halfway across the world Kurtzman sat in Virginia and opened a satellite conference call with the NSA translator in Washington, D.C. “Translator is in. I am squelching the dialogue on your end.”
The sound of the Pakistani commandos faded from Bolan’s earpiece and was replaced by a woman’s voice speaking with an English accent. “Striker, this is Translator 2, I am receiving.”
“Affirmative, Translator 2. What are they saying?”
The woman listened for a moment and began translating. “Musa—Approaching objective. Islamabad—What are your observations? Musa—No movement. No activity observed.”
Bolan crouched in the rocks, scanning through the electro-optical sight of his sound-suppressed M-1 A scout rifle. Musa Company was converging on something.
“Musa—Objective in sight. Islamabad—What do you see?” The translator spoke clearly and rapidly in Bolan’s ear. “Musa—No movement. No apparent sentries.”
Bolan scanned for an objective, but the craggy, boulder-strewed terrain showed nothing but rock peaks and shadows.
The translator’s voice rose slightly. “Musa—Bunker found!”
Bolan’s eyes slightly widened and he strained to see a bunker entrance. It was more likely to be a fortified cave. The mountains of Kashmir were riddled with them. “I’m moving closer.”
“Affirmative, Striker,” Kurtzman replied.
Bolan picked his path through the piled mounds and erupting knife edges of rock. “Bear, what can you see?”
“Observation satellite shows twelve individuals below you. Moving in concert.”
That was Musa Company. “Anything else? Any sign of hostiles?”
“Nothing, Striker. Just you and the team below you.”
Bolan scanned everything in a 360-degree arc. His spine spoke to him. “Bear, there’s someone else out here.”
“Satellite shows nothing but you and Musa Company, Striker.”
“There’s someone else out here, Bear.” Bolan trained his sight back on the area Musa Company surrounded. “I can feel it.”
Kurtzman was silent a moment. Through long, hard experience he had learned that a Mack Bolan hunch was to be heeded at all costs. “Acknowledged, but we don’t see them, Striker. Satellite shows no motion and no anomalous heat sources. If they’re hidden, then they are hidden but good.”
“Translator, what are they saying?”
“They are not saying anything.” The translator unsquelched the Pakistani transmission and there was nothing except silence. “They’ve stopped transmitting.”
Bolan gazed hard at their position. “Bear, any motion?”
“Negative, Striker. Musa Company has come to full stop.”
Bolan let out a long breath. Whoever was in command of Musa Company didn’t like it, either.
Something was wrong. The translator spoke again. “Musa—We are going to breach the bunker. Islamabad—Affirmative.”
Bolan waited long moments. There was a sudden quick flare of light in his night-vision goggles. Bolan recognized the hissing crack of flexible-shaped charge detonating.
“Musa—Sending in Number 1 section. Islamabad—Affirmative.”
Half of the Musa Company team disappeared underneath an outcropping while the other half held down the perimeter.
“Section 1—We are inside. No hostiles detected. Islamabad—What do you observe? Section 2—Extensive underground complex. Catacombs, very old stonework. Believe complex predates target occupation. Islamabad—Any sign of the packages?”
Packages. Bolan raised a bemused eyebrow at the code word. His hunch had been right. Musa Company was hunting the same thing he was. If Musa could make a successful retrieval and get the warheads back in Pakistani government hands, Bolan might just be able to call his own mission a wrap.
“Section 1—No sign of packages. No sign of targets. Signs of recent habitation Proceeding. Islamabad—Affirmative.”
Bolan grimaced. Musa Company was no one to mess around with. If the bad guys had gotten wind that the elite commandos were on their trail, they would have hauled ass into India already and the nukes would be gone.
“Section 1—Zia? What happened to Zia? Zia, report! Islamabad—What is happening?”
Bolan’s instincts began to clamor up and down his spine again. “Translator 2, what are you hearing?”
“Intercommunication between individual Musa Company soldiers, Section 1 and 2 and Islamabad. It’s becoming…confused.” The translator’s voice rose just slightly as she translated. “Section 1—Zia! Where is Zia? All units hold position! Section 2—What is happening, Falzur? Islamabad—What is happening? Section 2—Falzur! Falzur! Where is the sergeant! Islamabad—Report!” the Translator swallowed. “I am having difficulty keeping things in order—”
“Keep translating!” Bolan ordered.
“Musa—Section 2 hold positions! By God, I said hold positions! Islamabad—What is happening? Report! Section 1—Where are they coming from! I can’t see any—”
Kurtzman cut in. “Striker, satellite reception shows multiple radio transmission points in Musa Company are now off the air.”
Bolan’s blood went cold.
The translator broke in. “Striker, I hear gunfire.”
“Give me audio.”
“Patching you in, Striker.”
Kurtzman unsquelched Bolan’s end. The soldier’s eyes flared under his night-vision goggles. Someone was firing a semiautomatic handgun as rapidly as he could pull the trigger. The sound was followed by the crack of a hand grenade.
People were screaming.
The translator’s voice was rising close to panic. This wasn’t the sort of mission she had been trained for.
“Islamabad—What is happening! Report! What is happening? I order you to report!”
For a moment there was nothing but silence.
A voice spoke in tightly controlled Sind and the translator spoke over it. “This is Section 2, all contact lost with Section 1. Repeat, all contact lost with Section 1. They are not responding. We are holding position outside. What are your orders? Headquarters—Try them again.”
Section 1’s commander spoke slowly and clearly. It needed little translation. “Section 1, any unit, report. Repeat, Section 1 this is Section 2, any unit report.”
Nothing but static came back.
Section 1 was gone.
Bolan watched Section 2 through his night optics. They were arranged in a crescent around the hidden opening of the catacombs.
“Section 2—There is no response. We are holding position. What are your orders?” The pause on the line was lengthy. “Islamabad—Section 1, withdraw to primary extraction point. Section 2—Affirma—”
The translator stopped as the transmission was cut off. Bolan didn’t need translation. He had the man in plain view. The man in Section 1 who was transmitting levitated from where he crouched. His arms flailed and with a convulsive jerk he floated up and over the rock he’d been crouching behind and disappeared.
Section 2 began firing in all directions. One soldier rose. He heaved and flailed. His silenced submachine gun fell from his hands as he stumbled backward like a spastically moon-walking marionette. He dropped from sight in a crevice between two boulders.
“Bear! What do you have!”
“Movement, Striker!” Kurtzman was also perplexed by what he was seeing via satellite. “Anomalous movement! Musa Company is in a fight with something, but we can’t see it!”
“Bear!” Bolan watched as another man from Musa Company was seized by the invisible and dragged into darkness. “Give me something!”
“Striker, there is nothing! I repeat! Satellite does not pick up any hostiles! All we—Jesus!”
Bolan watched as the waist, legs and then boots of a Musa Company commando were dragged behind a boulder and disappeared.
“Striker, this is Translator 2.” The woman’s voice trembled. “I have nothing. No Musa Company units are transmitting. Only headquarters is on the channel, demanding to know what’s happening. It sounds like they are panicking back in Islamabad.”
Bolan watched through his night optics. Nothing moved but the wind whistling through the rocks.
“Striker, we have nothing.” Kurtzman’s voice went flat. “Musa Company is gone.”
Bolan’s skin crawled.
“Striker?”
Bolan strained all of his senses out into the darkness. “Receiving you, Bear.”
“Get the hell out of there.”
Bolan adjusted the gain on his optics. “I see movement.”
“Confirmed!” Kurtzman was adjusting his own optics from their vantage two hundred miles up in space. “Looks like one of Musa Company, staying low in the rocks and maintaining radio silence.”
Bolan watched the man crawl through the mountain terrain. His submachine gun was cradled in his hands and his head whipped back and forth fearfully. The Executioner’s instincts tingled as he felt the watching presence of the enemy. Something else was out there and it was observing the man from Musa Company, as well. Bolan had ugly thoughts of cats tormenting mice before the kill.
“Bear, can you patch me in to him?”
“I cannot recommend that course of action, Striker.”
“Can you do it?”
“Striker, has it occurred to you whatever the hell is out there achieved total surprise because they were listening to everything that Musa Company was saying? We compromised their secure channel. I’m thinking someone else did, too. Right now I think—and I emphasize think—you’re anonymous because we are communicating via satellite. The minute you transmit on the Musa Company radio frequency you are fair game, Striker.”
“Do it.”
“Striker, I cannot recommend against this strongly enough—”
“Do it!”
Kurtzman acquiesced unhappily. “Patching you in, Striker. Link achieved, you are on the Pakistani secure mission net. The minute we unsquelch you, you are active. Do you want the translator?”
“No.” Bolan turned on his radio and spoke in English. “Surviving Musa Unit Section 2! Move due north! Now! As fast as you can! I will cover you!”
There was a split second’s hesitation, then the man rose and bolted for his life. Bolan’s eyes slitted as something blurred behind the man in his optics. The Executioner pulled his trigger repeatedly and the M-1 A rifle bucked against his shoulder. Bolan couldn’t tell if he had gotten any hits. There was nothing there but shards of rock and boulders the size of men. The Pakistani ran as if hell were on his heels.
Bolan snarled silently. He could feel the enemy. They were all around.
The Musa Company soldier suddenly staggered as if he had run into an invisible wall. His submachine gun flew from his hands as he toppled to one side and then staggered backward. The air around him blurred. Bolan fired three quick shots directly behind the tottering Pakistani.
The Musa Company soldier seemed to be walking backward against his will toward an outcropping.
Bolan spun the sound suppressor from the muzzle of his rifle and aimed just above the Pakistani’s head as he squeezed the trigger repeatedly.
The M-1 A scout ripped into life. Without the suppressor the rifle spit flame in a meter-long muzzle-blast. The rifle cycled through the remains of its 20-round.
Bolan’s position was revealed to the world by the strobing fire of his rifle.
“Striker!” Kurtzman’s voice thundered in Bolan’s ear. “You’re lit up like Christmas!”
Bolan knew it all too well, but the gambit paid off.
The Pakistani stumbled forward, clutching his throat, seemingly released from the grip of the invisible entity. Bolan slapped in a fresh magazine of full power 7.62 mm ammo and began engaging the unseen. His weapon pounded out rounds like a jackhammer out of control as he laid down covering fire to either side of the Pakistani as he began to run again. Bolan’s weapon finally clacked open on empty. He shoved in a fresh magazine and slid a rifle grenade down over the muzzle of his weapon. The grenade clicked into place on the launching rings that the Cowboy had machined into the weapon back in Virginia.
“Musa!” Bolan transmitted as he raised his rifle skyward and fired. “Take off your goggles!”
The rifle boomed against Bolan in recoil and the grenade shot up into the night sky. Bolan ripped off his night-vision goggles as the French Night-Sun illumination munition detonated like a star going supernova. The burning magnesium flare burst into five-million candlepower brilliance. The lunar landscape of the pass was thrown into a shadowless white incandescence. Bolan flicked off the power to his rifle’s light-gathering optics and snapped his rifle down. His muzzle tracked from rock to rock as he searched the unforgiving glare for targets. Bolan began to feel a mounting sense of dread.
There was nothing.
Bolan had been betting that whoever was out there was wearing night-vision equipment, and the intense flare of the burning magnesium would have solarized their optics and temporarily blinded them. Bolan had also hoped to find his enemy blinded, stumbling and exposed by the sudden supernova of light.
Nothing moved.
There was no movement other than the running man from Musa Company. No sound other than the ragged panting of the runner in Bolan’s earpiece, his boots crunching into sand and rock, and the stuttering hiss of the burning flare as it slowly floated to the ground on its parachutes.
Bolan began to engage nothing, firing rapidly into any dark crevice sheltered from the vertical glare of the grenade. He fired for effect, but nothing fired back. Darkness draped down the slopes of the hillsides as the burning grenade drifted low in the sky. The Pakistani clawed his way up the slope. His right hand filled with a Browning Hi-Power pistol. He caught sight of Bolan, who waved him forward and then crouched back down among the rocks.
A moment later the Pakistani piled into Bolan’s position. He collapsed against a boulder in a fit of ragged coughing. The world plunged into darkness once more as the grenade fluttered sputtering to the ground. It landed among blades of rock and sent strobing pulses of light out from the crevices like a beacon. There were only scant seconds left of light. Bolan pulled his night-vision goggles back over his eyes and powered up the optics of his rifle.
“Who the hell are you?” the Pakistani wheezed in excellent English.
Bolan saw no reason to lie. “An American.”
The muzzle of the commando’s 9 mm pistol leveled at Bolan’s skull. “How do I know you are not…” The Pakistani’s voice trailed off. He lowered his pistol as he considered the destruction of his unit. The answer was obvious.
Bolan answered him anyway. “If I’d wanted you down, I’d have taken you down.”
The Pakistani commando glanced at Bolan’s telescopic rifle and accepted the truth of the statement. Bolan’s teeth clenched as his eyes told him nothing was out there and his spine told him the enemy was closing in. “You’re Musa Company.”
“Captain Mahmoud Makhdoom.” The Pakistani captain prudently turned his back to Bolan and watched the rear.
Bolan swept his scope across the landscape. There was still nothing to see. “What hit you?”
The Pakistani shuddered and shrugged at the same time. “Djinns?”
Bolan raised an eyebrow without looking up from his scope. Captains of highly professional special forces units didn’t often blame supernatural beings for their misfortunes. Bolan didn’t scoff. What he had seen with his own eyes and, more to the point, what he hadn’t seen, had set his own skin to crawling.
“We have to get out of here.”
“Indeed.” The captain’s hands were shaking. He had lost his entire unit and he, himself, had been assaulted by the invisible opponents.
“Striker!” Kurtzman was far from panic, but his voice had gone up a register. “What is your situation?”
“Situation…” Bolan searched for a way to summarize what was happening. “Bear, this situation has gone X-Files. Enemy unknown. Nature unknown. Numbers unknown. I am with Captain Mahmoud Makhdoom of Musa Company.” Bolan shook his head bitterly. The nukes were in unknown hands and there was no way to get his hands on them. “The nukes are gone. We are extracting.”
Bolan turned to Makhdoom. “You do have extraction?”
“Helicopters will come if I call for them, but I was maintaining silence until you broke into our channel. Our primary extraction point was the plateau above your position.”
Bolan gazed out into the dark. “I think the djinns can hear you.”
Makhdoom nodded unhappily. “I believe you are correct.”
Bolan considered the plateau he had crossed earlier in the evening. It was three hundred yards upslope, and an ugly climb. The only alternative was to stay where they were and wait. “Do it.”
Makhdoom spoke rapid Sind into his radio. Bolan could feel invisible ears pricking up and taking notice of the transmission.
The Pakistani nodded. “The chopper is coming, with gunship escort.”
Bolan took out his two white-phosphorous grenades and pulled the pins. “Go!”
Makhdoom bolted from cover and began to claw his way up the rock slope. Bolan hurled his grenades off to the right and left. The grenades detonated and the incandescent flare of magnesium was replaced by hellish heat of burning phosphorous that shot up into the sky in streamers trailing white smoke. Bolan burned a magazine in an arc in front of him and began loping up the hill. He clicked in a fresh magazine and pounded up the mountainside.
Makhdoom’s voice boomed. “Down!”
Bolan went flat into the rocks as a grenade sailed over his head and detonated with the whipcrack of high-explosive driving razor-sharp bits of metal at supersonic speeds. The fragmentation hissed and sparked off the rocks. Bolan leaped back up and climbed for the plateau. He passed the Pakistani and clawed on upward.
“Allah Akhbar!” The man from Musa Company roared in religious defiance against the unseen. He rose up and began unloading his pistol in rapid double taps in an arc across the way they had come. No cries rang out. No answering fire came back. Makhdoom was firing at shadows.
The shadows were closing in.
Makhdoom’s pistol racked open on a smoking empty chamber. Bolan whirled. “Go! Go! Go!”
The captain turned and ran, reloading his pistol as Bolan pumped covering fire into the trail behind him. The big American searched for flaming figures, unnatural shadows, any break in the landscape, any movement at all.
There was nothing.
Every fiber of Bolan’s being screamed at him that time was running out.
“Go!” Makhdoom roared. “I will cover.”
Bolan and the Pakistani leapfrogged positions up the mountainside. Bolan clambered up beside the captain and stopped. “I think they’re waiting for us up top.”
Makhdoom’s commando knife rasped out into his left hand. “Inshallah.”
God willing.
Bolan smiled grimly. The man from Musa Company wanted payback. Voices spoke in Bolan’s ear in Sind. Translator 2 spoke from Washington. “The helicopters say ETA five minutes.”
The Pakistani spoke. “The helicopters will be here in—”
“Five minutes, I know.”
An eyebrow rose above the captain’s goggles. It was very clear that just about everyone had compromised his communications. “I see.”
Bolan clicked his last rifle grenade onto the muzzle of his rifle. He had one hand grenade left, and he was nearly out of ammo for his rifle. Bolan ground the butt of his gun into the sand and pointed the muzzle skyward. The rifle boomed and the antipersonnel round shot skyward. Bolan took out his last hand grenade. Somewhere up in the dark the rifle grenade lost its upward impetus and nosed over and arced back down toward the plateau like a mortar round.
The rim of the plateau above flashed orange as the grenade detonated. Bolan hurled his last grenade up and over, and Makhdoom followed suit. The two grenades cracked and sent shrapnel hissing across the open ground. Bolan slapped leather. He filled his right hand with his .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol and his left with a Beretta 93-R machine pistol.
The two men charged up the side of the mountain and went over the top to the plateau. The plateau wasn’t really flat, but just an area of rolling rocky terrain rather than vertically falling hillside. Nothing moved other than a summer-dried shrub that one of the grenades had set on fire. Bolan and Makhdoom went back-to-back as they walked across the open ground.
Rotor blades thumped in the distance.
Something scraped on rock thirty yards to Bolan’s left.
The Executioner tracked his pistols like a twin gun turret and flame shot from both muzzles as he extended them. Makhdoom showed his professionalism by covering the rear.
“Anything?”
Bolan scanned the darkness with his night-vision goggles.
Nothing moved.
“No.”
Translator 2 spoke. “They say ETA one minute.”
The hammering of rotors shook the night sky.
Kurtzman came online. “Striker, your fireworks have been noticed. Satellite imaging shows Indian army gunships are taking off five miles east of your position.”
“Affirmative, Bear, I—”
God’s own flashlight speared the plateau with light as the Pakistani helicopter swept the broken ground with its searchlight. Bolan kept his eyes on the terrain around him. The light suddenly blasted him and the captain, and the sound of rotors slowed as the Mi-8 Hip helicopter descended to just a few feet above the ground.
Makhdoom jerked his head. “Go!”
Bolan didn’t argue. He turned to board the helicopter.
Something flashed in his vision. It was for but an instant, but in the clouds of dust there was a flash of something. More a flash of nothing. There was a moment of totally incongruent space where the dust fluttered and coalesced against the rotor wind.
As if it were striking something that wasn’t there.
Bolan fired both pistols as rapidly as he could squeeze the triggers. The Pakistani door gunner leaning out of the helicopter couldn’t see what Bolan was shooting at but his PKT light machine gun ripped into life and green tracers streamed into the seemingly empty space.
Bolan stopped firing and strained to see through the whirling dust storm.
“What was it?” Makhdoom slapped a hand on Bolan’s shoulder and roared in his ear over the rotor noise. “What did you see?”
“I don’t know.” Bolan kept his guns leveled. “Something. Nothing.”
“I must apologize, given the debt I owe you.” The uncomfortably warm muzzle of Makhdoom’s pistol pressed behind Bolan’s ear. “But you are under arrest.”
Bolan had expected nothing less. He opened his hands and let his pistols fall forward from his grip, hooked only by a single finger through the trigger guards. “Captain, get us the hell off this hilltop and I’ll be the one in your debt.”
CHAPTER TWO
Islamabad, Pakistan
Bolan had been in worse cells. This one actually had a sunroof. Bolan peered up through the three iron bars in the ceiling. The late-morning sun threw shadows against the western wall of the cell, and he idly wondered what happened to the occupants when it rained. He ate the last bite of mystery meat he had been served and was wiping the remaining couscous from his bowl when someone hammered on the battered steel door of the cell.
“Prisoner! Step away from the door!”
Bolan was already sitting in a half-lotus position on the opposite side of the cell, but he decided cooperation was his best gambit for the moment. “I am away from the door.”
A slot in the steel door shot back and a glowering, bearded face noted his location. “Do not move!”
“I won’t.”
Keys turned in the massive lock and the door swung open. A hulking guard with a pistol on his hip filled the entryway. He carried a three-foot length of roughly turned wood wrapped in leather. Bolan knew that such truncheons were most often used in the Middle East for beating the bottoms of the feet of prisoners. A man with collapsed arches was unlikely to make trouble, much less attempt any escape. The guards had taken his boots upon incarceration. Bolan eyed the club in the man’s hands.
The guard should have brought backup.
The guard moved aside as Captain Makhdoom entered the cell. Bolan nodded. “Captain.”
The Pakistani frowned. “You have put me in a very difficult position.”
“I saved your life,” Bolan countered.
“Yes.” The captain nodded solemnly. “Which puts me in a very difficult position.”
“I see.” Bolan smiled in a friendly fashion. “How may I be of further assistance to you?”
“Um, yes.” The special forces captain shifted uncomfortably. “The United States government denies any knowledge of your existence, much less any legitimate reason for you to be lurking, illegally, and armed, within the borders of Pakistan.”
Bolan shrugged. It was a very old story.
Makhdoom shrugged in return. “And yet, my superiors have received—” the captain raised a troubled eyebrow “—intimations, from very, shall we say, oblique sources, that any consideration shown you will be appreciated.”
Bolan kept the smile off his face. “I’m prepared to assist you in any reasonable fashion within my means.”
The guard stared back and forth between Bolan and Makhdoom. His bludgeon creaked in his fists. He clearly yearned to do away with the pleasantries and beat Bolan into paste.
“Captain, may we speak privately for a moment?”
Makhdoom waved the guard away. “Corporal, you may wait for me down the hall.”
The guard’s face twisted in indignation as he gnashed his teeth and stormed from the cell.
Makhdoom’s voice went grim. “I cannot vouchsafe your safety in this place. There are those who wish to see you dealt with severely.”
“Captain, your government is missing some nuclear warheads. No one’s safety can be guaranteed.”
Makhdoom peered up unhappily through the narrow bars in the ceiling.
Bolan continued. “The United States government is aware of your missing warheads and is gravely concerned. You and I both know that whoever took them is most likely to be a dedicated enemy of the United States, Israel and Europe.” Bolan gazed at the captain critically. “Unless of course, the weapons weren’t stolen, but given away by members of your government to further the agenda of terrorists, or the liberation of Kashmir.”
Makhdoom flared. “The warheads were not given to anyone! They were taken! Despite every security precaution!”
“Taken?” Bolan eyes narrowed. “You mean, by force?”
“Taken,” Makhdoom affirmed. The anger in the Pakistani captain’s eyes was tempered by a certain dread. “As my men were taken last night. As you and I were almost taken. The guards at the facility were taken by something unseen. The warheads taken by the unseen. The guards on duty were gone. The weapons littered the floor, unfired. No trace was left.”
Bolan regarded Makhdoom. Pakistani special forces were nowhere near as sophisticated as U.S. Navy SEALs, the British SAS or the German GSG-9. The Pakistani government often used their special forces as shock troops and a number of their “sensitive” operations had turned into bloodbaths. They did, however, have a well-deserved reputation for toughness. Even Bolan had been disturbed by what he’d seen.
Makhdoom was genuinely afraid, and of more than loose nuclear weapons.
Bolan took the captain’s gaze and held it. “If the missing weapons can’t be contained or accounted for, the United States and others may be forced to take action, drastic action, very possibly within your national borders.”
Makhdoom stared into an ugly future. “There are those who say the first step in avoiding such a confrontation with the U.S. would be getting rid of you. Quickly and quietly.”
“I’m sure it’s been suggested.” Bolan nodded. “But I believe we both know that your first, best recourse would be to go back to the site of last night’s—” he considered the inexplicable events “—incident, pick up whatever information we can and proceed from there.”
Makhdoom’s head snapped around. “We?”
“You and I are last evening’s only two survivors. We also have a mutual problem.” Bolan opened his hands. “It’s only reasonable that we pool our resources.”
Makhdoom stared at Bolan long and hard. “Guard!”
The guard roared back into the room with his club cocked back in his hands for a blow. He seemed as giddy as a schoolgirl with the prospect of beating Bolan into oblivion.
Makhdoom let out a heavy sigh. “Fetch this man’s boots. He is coming with me.”
Northeast Pakistani Border
THE MI-8 HELICOPTER thundered across the sere mountains. It was summer in Pakistan and even up in the mountains the land beneath the aircraft was blast-furnace hot. Bolan sat back and enjoyed the breeze through the open doors. The flight of helicopters carried a full platoon of Musa Company special forces soldiers. A pair of Hind gunships flew in escort of the transports. Bolan wore tan Pakistani fatigues that didn’t quite fit, and a steel-pot helmet woven with camouflage netting. Russian-made body armor of titanium plates sandwiched between spun fiberglass fabric encased his torso. Musa Company was no longer creeping around in the dark. It was in assault mode and wanted payback.
Gone were the silenced submachine guns, night-vision goggles and black balaclavas. Each man carried a G-3 automatic rifle with a 40 mm grenade launcher slaved beneath the barrel. One man in each squad carried a light machine gun and another carried a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Every man was also festooned with a personal assortment of pistols, knives and grenades.
Bolan cradled his own weapon. The German G-3 was long and heavy, but it fired the NATO 7.62 mm high-power rifle round and was hell for tough. While dated, all of the Pakistani equipment was solid kit. Bolan could think of worse weapons, and worse people, for that matter, with whom to assault the unknown. He vainly wished he had his satellite link so he could communicate with the Farm, but that wasn’t forthcoming. Everything he had brought into Pakistan had been confiscated. Still, the fact that they had brought him along, much less armed him, showed just how desperate the Pakistanis were. Bolan glanced up as the copilot leaned back in his seat and yelled at Makhdoom over the rotor noise. Bolan didn’t need translation. He had been watching the terrain fly by beneath them.
They were approaching their target.
The Mi-8s dropped toward the plateau like stones. The Hind gunships clawed upward into the sky and orbited the site with their machine cannons and rocket pods ready. The red dust of the mountains flew up as the transports landed.
Musa Company debarked the Mi-8s and fanned out by sections across the plateau. Bolan leaped out behind Makhdoom. He had no orders other than to stick to the captain like glue. As Bolan examined the plateau, he could see spalling and bullet strikes scoring the rocks from the previous night’s one-sided battle. Several spots were scorched by the high explosive of rifle grenades. The single, lonesome shrub lay blackened and burned.
Musa Company maintained radio silence. Makhdoom chopped his hand forward and his men went by sections, two by two, to the edge of the plateau and began to descend the mountainside toward their objective.
In the night the land had been a lunar landscape. By day the arid, vertical hillsides could have passed for a bad patch on Mars. The platoon swiftly descended. A man held up the spent flare and parachute of Bolan’s illuminating round. They leapfrogged from cover to cover, constantly sweeping the surroundings, still encountering nothing. They stopped as they reached the area where Section 2 had been lost. Bolan scanned the recent battlefield. Brass shell casings and spent bullets lay in the sand and gravel, deformed where they had struck rock. There were no bodies.
There was no blood.
Makhdoom moved forward, his rifle at the ready. Musa Company followed. They swiftly came upon their target. Bolan examined the objective. Beneath an overhang of rock there was an opening in the mountainside. It was squared off, clearly man-made, and lined with stone. Just inside lay a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands. Its hinges were gone where they had been cut with flexible-shaped charge. Bolan stared at the square, black hole in the mountain.
It looked like the back door to hell.
Makhdoom’s eyes burned into the inky blackness within. Bolan quickly looked around at Musa Company. They had joked of djinns on the flight in. Now no one was laughing. Each man here was one of the most trusted soldiers in Pakistan. Each had been briefed about the nuclear warheads that had vanished without a trace and the guards who had disappeared with them, their weapons scattered and unfired. Each man had also heard the radio tapes of the battle the night before, listening as half a platoon of Musa Company had been wiped out to a man, one by one, by an enemy unseen. They had heard the terror in comrades’ voices as they had been taken.
Musa Company stared at the black hole in the mountain and their fear was palpable.
Bolan spoke very quietly just behind Makhdoom. “Captain.”
Makhdoom didn’t look away from the entrance. “Yes?”
“May I make a suggestion?”
The captain peered backward. “I am very open to suggestions at the moment.”
“Have your men fix bayonets.”
Makhdoom’s mustache lifted. His lips skinned back from his teeth in a feral smile. He turned to let his men see it, then snarled in guttural English, “Bayonets!”
Two dozen bayonets rasped from their sheaths in a single motion. Makhdoom snarled again, “Fix!”
The bayonets clicked into place. Cold iron glittered in the afternoon sun. Musa Company’s determination ratcheted up by a factor of ten. Few things centered a soldier’s aggressiveness more than having his commanding officer give the order to fix sharpened steel to the business end of his rifle.
“Lights!” Musa Company pulled miniflashlights from their web gear and affixed them to clips on their rifles’ handguards. “All sections, set rifles on full automatic. Maintain radio silence unless you see something to report. Sections 3 and 4 secure the perimeter. Sections 1 and 2—” Makhdoom stared grimly at the dark doorway “—follow me.”
Bolan followed Makhdoom and Musa Company into the earth.
The passage into the mountain was square, and just large enough for men to walk two by two. Once inside, the heat of desert fell away as if they had stepped into what seemed to be an air-conditioned building—except that the air within was fetid, clammy and cold. Bolan played his light across the walls and examined the stonework. There were places upon the earth, old battlefields, ruins, places in the wilderness, which resonated with what had transpired. Bolan had long ago learned to trust his instincts, and to feel the vibe.
“This place is very old.” Bolan didn’t need to add that terrible things had happened here.
Makhdoom nodded as he shone his light ahead. Niches carved into the walls on either side of the passage stretched down the corridor facing each other. “I have seen the like before,” he stated. “Before the words of Mohammed the Prophet reached these lands, there were many pagan sects. These niches probably once held idols, or the dead.”
Bolan paused as brass shell casings glittered in the light of his rifle. He knelt and picked one up. They were subsonic 9 mms, fired from the weapon of Musa Company the night before. He glanced around, gazing at the niches. They were certainly large enough to hold a man, and it was clear that this spot was where many of Musa Company had met their doom. Bolan dug his bayonet into the dirt floor of a niche.
Musa Company held position while Bolan worked. Makhdoom nodded. “Trapdoors?”
“None that I can find.” Bolan poked at the ceiling of the niche. It was solid rock. “Let’s go a little farther.”
Bolan and Makhdoom led, the points of their bayonets preceding them. The corridor opened into a larger, low-ceilinged room. They paused at the entryway.
“Your men didn’t mention a room.”
Makhdoom kept his muzzle covering the room ahead. “No, I do not believe any of them survived this far.”
Bolan caught the smell of something he didn’t recognize, a bare lingering of something that was both acrid and sickly sweet. The sense of dread solidified as Musa Company entered the room.
A disk of carved stone dominated the middle of the room. Bolan approached it warily, playing his light across it. The stone was three feet tall and nearly six feet around. It was very old. In his rifle light Bolan could see that there were fresh scratches on the top.
“It is an altar.” Makhdoom ran his finger along a scratch in the rocket. “Something was moved.”
“More likely removed.” Bolan tested the stone with his hands. The altar probably weighed several tons. Bolan checked the floor but he could see no sign that the massive stone itself had been moved or rotated. He and Musa Company moved farther back into the dark space.
The only sound was that of their boots and the wind moaning down the corridor behind them.
Bolan pointed. “There.”
In the far corner of the room was an incongruously modern object—a heavy wooden pallet. Musa Company fanned out to surround the object. The pallet was of thick construction, meant to support something heavy. Bolan knelt without touching the pallet and gazed at the dirt around it. In the harsh light of the flashlight beam he could see that the pallet had sunk several inches into the dirt floor. The pallet had recently held something heavy, and whatever the load had been, it was gone.
“I think your warheads were here, Captain, perhaps as recently as last night.”
Makhdoom shook his head wearily. They were too late. “And what of my men?”
“That’s a good question.” Bolan considered the passageway and the single room. “If I were you, I would get a platoon of combat engineers in here and have them go over every inch of the place. I’m thinking there must be a bolt-hole.”
Makhdoom broke radio silence. He spent long minutes speaking with his superiors in Islamabad, then clicked off his radio with a sigh. “Combat engineers are on the way.”
Bolan frowned at the room around them. “Whoever the enemy was had to get out of here fast, taking three warheads and disposing of nearly two dozen bodies.”
“Such a graveyard would take up half of this chamber.” Makhdoom shrugged helplessly. “I see no sign of digging in the floor.”
Bolan gazed around the room until his eyes fell on the pallet once more. He unclipped the light from his rifle and thoroughly scanned around its edges and through the slats for wires or booby traps. Bolan lifted the pallet and pushed it back to lean against the wall.
Beneath the pallet was the same gray dirt as the rest of the chamber. Bolan’s eyes narrowed as he knelt and ran his fingers through the dirt. The walls were wet. If the pallet had been here for any length of time the soil beneath it should have been moist.
“We dig here.”
Makhdoom’s face tightened. “Twenty-three men cannot be buried in such a space.”
Bolan stared back implacably. The Pakistani captain barked out a few words and his men broke out entrenching tools and began to dig. With the first shovelful one of his men looked and spoke in rapid Sind.
The soil was loose, moist and disturbed beneath the thin veil of gray dirt. Musa Company continued to dig. They didn’t have to dig long.
“Bismillah!” A corporal jumped back in fear and outrage. The corporal had encountered a head. The head was wearing a black balaclava from a night raid. The men lifted the body out and more cries of outrage met the discovery. Makhdoom’s face was stone. Many of his men made the sign against the evil eye at what they had found.
The body was one of Musa Company. The body’s shoulders and hips had been shattered, the arms and legs broken, the body folded up around itself like a cricket. The body took up no more space than that of a child. They all knew what lay below.
Beneath the tiny space of the pallet, a full platoon of Musa Company had been mutilated and buried.
Makhdoom swallowed as another and yet another of his men were exhumed. “Have you ever seen such a thing?”
“No. Not exactly.” Bolan watched as the doll-like bodies of Makhdoom’s troops were pulled from their communal grave. “But I think I know someone who has.”
CHAPTER THREE
Islamabad
“The Thuggees of Kali?”
Kurtzman was incredulous.
Bolan leaned back in the rickety wooden chair. He was back in his cell, but his satellite link equipment had been returned to him. The guard with the club stood glaring at him, and a man Bolan hadn’t met before stood taping everything Bolan said. “I need everything you have on them.”
“There is no more Cult of Kali, last I heard. The British wiped them out in the seventeenth century.”
“Didn’t Phoenix Force have a run-in with them some years ago?”
“Well, yeah, they did,” Kurtzman admitted. “But the guys Phoenix hit were yahoos. There were less than three hundred of them, a sideshow revival movement, and the whole thing was organized by the KGB. They were little more than Russian stooges, manipulated into killing Americans and Europeans in India. It was a real cute setup. The Russians even had a mechanical idol of Kali with a high-frequency laser built in it to keep the faithful in line. The only people they were fooling were mostly illiterate tribesmen and some well-heeled psychopaths in Bengal. Even their high priest was a fake. Once he was exposed, his own people killed him and the cult disbanded.” Kurtzman sighed. “Stealing nuclear weapons from high-security areas, turning invisible and taking out entire platoons of special forces troops just wasn’t in their repertoire.”
“These won’t be a bunch of barefoot, illiterate tribesman. This will be the real deal. True believers, highly organized, well-funded.” Bolan paused. “With a new agenda.”
“Striker, are you sure?”
“I’m not sure at all. But we found Musa Company’s lost platoon. Their shoulders and hips were broken and folded to fit twenty-three men into a mass grave barely big enough for six, and the autopsies revealed that each one of them had been strangled, to a man, and not a drop of blood was spilled.”
“Well, from what I remember about Thuggee ritual killing, that fits, but—”
“It also goes a long way toward explaining how the men of Musa Company were being jerked up into the air and flailing like marionettes.”
“Okay, but by invisible attackers? Who don’t show up on night-vision or high-resolution satellite imaging? And for that matter, how did they make the bodies instantly disappear?”
Bolan ate a chunk of barbecued goat and followed it with a spoonful of garlic-stewed spinach. His food had improved with his status since morning. “Bear, I’m going to let you figure that one out.”
“Uh-huh.” Kurtzman had seen that one coming a mile away.
“As I recall, Thuggee means ‘deceiver’ in Hindi.”
“That’s correct.”
“I think someone deceived their way into the Pakistani nuclear weapons site. They had to know the layout to make their attack. Invisible or not, they had people on the inside.”
“Well, assuming the bad guys aren’t supernatural in origin, I’d have to agree with you.” Bolan could hear Kurtzman pounding keys on his computer. “Phoenix is deployed right now, but as soon as they are inbound I’ll have the boys that were involved in the India mission get in touch with you. Meanwhile I’ll send you everything on the mission I have on file, though it’s going to have to be redacted for security unless you can guarantee a secure line.”
“Right now I can’t guarantee whether or not I’m going to be shot as spy. I’m going to give you Captain Makhdoom’s fax number. Send everything you can that doesn’t compromise the home team or national security.”
“How do you feel about this Makhdoom guy?”
“He’s good people, but he’s a captain. A highly decorated special forces captain, but he won’t have the final say about my final disposition, and my presence here has rattled the cages of a lot of people above his pay grade.”
“I understand.” Kurtzman stopped multitasking for a moment. “How’s the food?”
Bolan smiled as he ate another bite and washed it down with mint tea. The food was excellent. Pakistanis knew a thing or two about goat shish kebob, but Kurtzman wasn’t asking about the food. He was asking if Bolan wanted him to arrange some kind of extraction. Unfortunately, Pakistan was an ostensible ally of the United States. A U.S. raid on one of their prisons could strain that slender relationship to the breaking point. Frankly, Bolan was fairly sure it was something the U.S. was unwilling to risk. Not that it wasn’t something the men from Stony Man Farm wouldn’t gladly risk anyway if asked. “Food’s not bad. I’m not missing home yet.”
“Glad to hear it. It might be hard to get a Big Mac into Islamabad at the moment.”
“Don’t worry about it, just fax Makhdoom the files. I’m interested to see what he thinks of them.”
“I’m on it. Kurtzman out.”
Bolan clicked off his link and smiled at the guard. The man with the tape recorder took back the communications gear and left without a word. The guard slammed the door shut and the soldier tossed back the last of the tea, then stretched out on his bunk. Thin white clouds passed overhead as he looked up through the grille.
Bolan took a nap and waited to see what developed.
“THE Thuggees of Kali?”
Makhdoom was appalled.
Bolan leaned back in his chair. It was nice to be in a conference room instead of a cell. “You’ve heard of them, I gather.”
“Yes, I have heard of them. Murderers and worshipers of idols.” The captain flipped through the file of information that Kurtzman had anonymously faxed him. “The information you have shared with me is fascinating, but I do not see how it is relevant. The British East India Company wiped out the Thuggees more than a century ago.”
Bolan shook his head. “Not all of them.”
“Granted.” Makhdoom closed the file. “But your file says that the Thuggees encountered were a rather pale revivalist movement and dupes of the Russians.”
“This won’t be the same group. As a matter of fact, I believe whoever we’re dealing with is hard-core, old-school Thuggee.”
Makhdoom blinked. “Old school?”
“Originals. The real deal. Probably a splinter sect of those who were originally operating and driven underground by the British. Their tradition has been practiced unbroken for possibly thousands of years. It is now resurfacing with a new agenda.”
“I see.” The captain nodded.
“But I believe they will have many of the same modes of operation and we can draw a lot of clues from studying what the U.S. team encountered.”
Makhdoom flipped open the file again.
Bolan’s voice hardened slightly. “The theft of your warheads was an inside job.”
The captain frowned. “I suspect so, also.”
“Perhaps we should visit the facility,” Bolan suggested.
“The place where the weapons were stolen from is a high-security area, and secret. It has already been locked down and the people who work there interrogated, vigorously.” Makhdoom raised an eyebrow. “And I suspect my superiors would take a dim view of a renegade American commando examining the premises.”
“They have a dim view of me now,” Bolan countered. “The weapons are already gone and the facility is in high-security lockdown. What could it hurt?”
Makhdoom stared ruefully out the window. The mysterious American had saved his life. Beyond that he was making Makhdoom’s life a living hell and doing nothing to help his career prospects.
But avenging his men was more important to the special forces captain than his career. “Right!” Makhdoom threw up his hands. “Let us go look for Thuggees in one of my country’s top-secret weapons facilities.”
“Don’t you need to clear that with your superiors?”
Makhdoom sighed with infinite fatigue. “Do you really think I should tell my superiors I am going to take a renegade American spy into one of our top-secret nuclear facilities and search for invisible, idol-worshiping assassins?”
“Well, yeah, you should.” Bolan shrugged. “But only afterward, and only then if we produce results.”
The captain nodded. “You and I shall get along splendidly.”
Al-Nouri Weapons Facility
BOLAN WATCHED footage from the facility security cameras. The film was grainy black-and-white. It wasn’t particularly well focused and the video appeared to have tracking problems. Most convenience stores in the United States had security video of better quality. What the footage showed was shocking in the extreme.
The weapons facility was a small, heavily fortified building within a large Pakistani air force base, comfortably outside of Islamabad in case India launched a surgical nuclear strike against the weapons stored there. The weapons themselves were stored in hardened underground bunkers. Underground rail tunnels led out to the airfields, which allowed the weapons to be rapidly transferred to revetted Mirage III/5B supersonic fighter-bombers. If the balloon went up between the two Asian superpowers, the French-made jets would scramble across the border to devastate the Indian subcontinent.
At least, that was the plan.
The current problem with the plan was that three of those nuclear warheads had vanished.
Bolan watched the footage for the fourth time. Bored guards armed with Chinese Type 56-1 assault rifles manned the internal checkpoints. One by one they swiftly rose onto the tips of their toes, flailing, struggling and clawing at their throats. Bolan counted seconds. Each guard went limp at ten and then dropped after another thirty. It took approximately nine to ten seconds to strangle someone unconscious and an approximate total time of thirty to forty seconds of strangulation to make sure that victim never woke up again.
Supernatural or not, whoever had attacked the Al-Nouri facility had strangled each guard in their way with clocklike precision. “Autopsies would show strangulation as the cause of death.”
“Indeed,” Makhdoom agreed. “Except that we have no bodies.”
“The guards worked in pairs at the internal checkpoints within the facility. That would imply two-man elimination teams to eliminate them at the least, and four would be better.”
Makhdoom shook his head in frustration. “Where are these ‘elimination teams’ you speak of?” He waved an angry hand at the monitor. “Where? I see nothing!”
“They’re there.” Bolan pointed at the screen. “We just can’t see them.”
“I can accept that they attacked the video system, somehow erasing themselves from the camera footage, but you and I were out in the pass. You saw what I saw, and with your own eyes you did not see what I did not see, as well. They were not observable in night-vision equipment, nor were they observable to our naked eyes, even in the glare of a magnesium flare.” Makhdoom sagged in his chair. “Explain that.”
The free sample has ended.
