Those who survived his sacrifice would fall another day, when yet another martyr was dispatched to strike in Allah’s name.
His target was the same Crusader church whose leaders had stubbornly refused to heed the message that they were not welcome here. The very name Islamabad should have alerted them to this truth. If that was not enough, they only needed to consult a map, to see that they were laboring in vain. How could their faith take root in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan?
Were mosques permitted in the Holy See of Rome? Were Torahs found in Shinto shrines?
The very thought was ludicrous!
Hamayun walked along Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai Road, past shops and market stalls, eastbound toward Sachal Sarmast Road. Before he reached that second major artery, he would turn left—or north—into the side street where his target was located.
Everything had been arranged to let him strike with maximum effect. His sacrifice was timed to precede worship services, when the Crusaders would be on their way to church, some of them running late and hurrying to get there, others idling on the steps and sidewalks, making small talk.
None of them would recognize him. Hamayun had been sequestered from the time he was delivered to Islamabad, his only knowledge of its streets drawn from the maps he’d studied and a brief glimpse caught as he was hustled from a closed van to the front door of the safehouse where he’d spent the last week of his life. His only contacts in the city had been a group of fellow Shiites who had catered to his every need and prayed for his success.
The hidden vest he wore, bearing its blocks of Semtex A, with plastic bags of dung and shrapnel, weighed nineteen kilos. Hamayun had practiced wearing it for six nights past, learning to walk without betraying his concealed burden. He’d imagined that the walking lessons were like those absorbed by Western “super models” in their filthy glamour schools—except that Hamayun was learning how to save souls, not corrupt them and entice them to damnation.
Now that he was on his own, unsupervised, it was surprising that the deadly vest felt so light on his shoulders. Hamayun was not an athlete—far from it, in fact. Back in Afghanistan, he’d been a bookish child who shied away from sports, even before the Taliban had seized control of Taloqan and banned most decadent amusements.
Still, the nineteen kilos—nearly forty pounds—seemed to weigh almost nothing as he moved along the crowded sidewalk. Though Hamayun knew he was walking, his buoyancy of spirit made it feel like levitation. If he floated any higher, he imagined, he could look down on the people passing by him, busy with their own pursuits, oblivious to his exalted mission.
Most of them were Muslims, he assumed.
Hamayun hoped those would be spared—but if they fell and if their souls were clean, they had nothing to fear.
He found the side street, recognized its name and saw the workmen sweating over picks and jackhammers. Their foreman seemed to spend more time watching the foot traffic on Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai Road than he did supervising his men, dark eyes beneath his turban flicking over faces as they passed.
Those eyes met Hamayun’s and hesitated for an instant, then moved on. No risk of interference with his mission there.
The detonator button dangled from a wire inside the right sleeve of Hamayun’s robe, clutched in the hand he kept inside his pocket. His instructions for the detonation had been simple: wait until he reached the sidewalk outside the Crusader church, then press the button once to arm it. When his thumb mashed down a second time, the Semtex would explode.
And Hamayun would feel no pain. It had been promised to him, time and time again. Of course, his body would be shredded by the blast, but that would be over in an instant. He supposed that it would be like falling on his head and being knocked unconscious, then awakening brief moments later at the gates of Paradise.
And, oh, what rewards awaited him!
Hamayun felt himself begin to stiffen at the thought of forty virgins, servile to his every whim, eternally anxious to please. Was sexual exhaustion possible in Paradise, where everyone was young, healthy and vigorous until the end of time?
The young man passed the barricades erected by the laborers, as if a gap had been deliberately left for him. The foreman looked away, perhaps distracted by some passing vehicle. The church lay half a block ahead, on Hamayun’s right.
It was exactly as it had been described during his briefings. The Crusaders milled about outside, chatting and laughing, as if they had every right to soil the sidewalks of Islamabad. Allowed to spread unchecked, they might lure thousands from the One True Faith and steal their souls from Allah.
Hamayun was smiling as he moved among them, hearing their voices without absorbing a word that was spoken. He found his place, midsidewalk, near the steps that served their church.
Such crowded steps.
He pressed the detonator button once, mouthing a short prayer of his own, and then again, putting his soul to flight.
Hamayun never heard the street fill up with screams.
Rawalpindi
BRIGADIER BAHAAR Jadoon sat at his desk, watching the grim news from Islamabad on PTV News, one of the channels broadcast by the state-owned Pakistan Television Network. He had the sound turned low on his imported Sony nineteen-inch TV, ignoring most of what was said by the reporters on the scene and so-called anchors in the studio.
The images attracted and repulsed Jadoon. Knowing that he had played a role in the disaster—had, in fact, been its facilitator—made him feel…what was the word he sought?
Definitely not proud.
Nor queasy.
Numb.
It struck him, in that instant, that he had no feeling for the victims of the blast, whether their deaths and mutilation had been planned or incidental. It was simply done.
Some measure of his vast debt to al Qaeda had been repaid.
Of course, Jadoon knew he would never be released from that grim obligation. He would never claim the mortgage papers on his soul—strike a match and watch them flare, then curl and crumble into ash.
Some obligations were eternal.
When the phone rang, Brigadier Jadoon was not surprised. He’d fielded several calls already, from superiors demanding action and subordinates requesting his advice on how to cope with the emergency. He had responded properly in each and every case, performing as if he shared their surprise at yet another act of terrorism in the nation’s capital.
“Jadoon,” he said to the receiver’s mouthpiece.
“Sir,” the unfamiliar voice came back at him, “I am Colonel Usama Bhel, assigned to army headquarters in Peshawar.”
“What is it, Colonel?”
“Sir, I am afraid I have bad news.”
“I know,” Jadoon replied. “I’m watching it right now.”
“Sorry? What do you mean, sir?”
“The explosion in Islamabad,” he said, already losing patience with this stranger who was clearly simpleminded.
“Ah, yes, sir. But I’m afraid that bad news is not my bad news.”
Frowning, Jadoon turned from the television set and said, “In that case, Colonel, please explain.”
“Sir, I am calling to inform you that your emissary, Colonel Salim Laghari, has been killed in battle. At a village called Sanjrani, sir. With twenty-five good men.”
“What did you say? Laghari’s dead? In battle?”
“It appears there was some sort of ambush, sir. The colonel’s unit was annihilated. Several peasants from the village also died. Naturally, there will be a full investigation.”
“I plan to participate,” Jadoon replied.
“Sir?”
“I will be sending some of my most trusted officers and men to help with your investigation, Colonel.”
“Yes, sir. As you wish, sir.”
“And I expect to be informed of any evidence that is discovered, as you find it.”
“Absolutely, Brigadier.”
“In that case, carry on.” And with that the brigadier ended the conversa
tion.
Jadoon cradled the telephone receiver, flicked his gaze back toward the television screen, then scooped up his remote control and switched it off.
Laghari, dead!
Jadoon had wanted to be rid of him, if only for a while, but he had not intended the assignment to the North-West Frontier Province as a death sentence. It seemed impossible, despite the recent massacre of soldiers he had sent Laghari to investigate.
But, then again…
Bahaar Jadoon already felt his shock receding, mellowing. Becoming, what? Relief? Pure joy?
He had despised Laghari—worse, had marked him as a spy intent on subverting Jadoon’s rightful authority—so why should he now mourn the man’s passing?
Of course, he’d be required to make the standard noises, voicing outrage at the loss of a valued subordinate, attending the full-dress military funeral where men who’d never met Salim Laghari would sing his posthumous praises.
What hypocrites they were! And yet, Jadoon was well acquainted with the politics involved behind the scenes, in every phase of military life. As much was done for show, as to achieve some verified, legitimate objective. No man reached the rank of brigadier without learning to play the game.
Jadoon’s first move, regardless of his feelings toward Salim Laghari as a corpse or living man, had to be to seek the criminals responsible for killing possibly forty-six soldiers within a single day. The North-West Frontier Province had not seen such frantic action since the early days of the American invasion in Afghanistan.
Jadoon would have to not only appear to hunt the killers, but also find, identify and crush them if he wished to keep his present post, much less advance to higher rank. Such a flagrant challenge to authority, whether by rebels or apolitical outlaws, could not go unpunished.
Snatching up the telephone once more, he first summoned Lieutenant Colonel Raheem Davi. Next, Jadoon began to sketch the outlines of a campaign strategy inside his head.
He would field troops to find the men responsible for slaughtering his soldiers, but at the same time had to be cautious not to trespass on preserves claimed by al Qaeda. Jadoon dared not risk the exposure of his blood debt to al Qaeda, or the work that he had done on its behalf. Such revelations would not only finish his career in uniform, but also undoubtedly send him to the gallows.
Still, the brigadier was not overly concerned about his public mission clashing with his secret life. There was no reason to believe that soldiers of al Qaeda had killed his men. Why would they, when the Pakistani army made no effort to oppose Akram Ben Abd al-Bari and his kind?
Declaring war against the military would be tantamount to suicide, fouling the nest al-Bari and his aides relied upon for sanctuary.
No.
The men Jadoon was hunting now had to be of another breed entirely.
And if he succeeded in identifying them, that breed would soon become extinct.
IT WAS THE BEST part of an hour’s work, loading the APCs with bloody corpses and discarded weapons. By the time they finished, there were twenty-seven bodies stacked inside the two vehicles, with Imran Hasni’s included. Those who’d fallen in the village would be buried there, and Bolan left their handling—as well as the care of any wounded—to Sanjrani’s grim survivors.
It was always difficult to take a reading from impassive faces, but the villagers seemed more resigned than angry over what had happened. Any who resented Bolan’s intervention looked to the headman for their cue, and pitched in with the rest to put their village back in seminormal condition.
Bolan didn’t know what kind of CSI techniques were used in Pakistan. No doubt, the army could discover that a skirmish had been fought here, at Sanjrani, but beyond that he had no idea. If experts tested every weapon carried by the soldiers, they would find that some were killed with other AKMS rifles, similar but not identical to those retrieved. They’d also determine that the rest were taken down by shrapnel and the .50-caliber Browning M2 mounted on one of their own APCs.
Bolan wasn’t concerned about such things as hair and fiber samples, fingerprints, or DNA. His prints had been removed from every law enforcement file that mattered after he was “killed” in New York City, years before, and no lab could match any other form of evidence unless he was arrested and forced to provide samples.
That, he knew, would never happen.
So, the plan was relatively simple: load the APCs and drive them far enough away so that, when they were found, the finger of suspicion did not point immediately to Sanjrani. Let Military Intelligence or the Federal Investigation Agency work out what had happened. By the time they started grilling suspects, Bolan would be done with Pakistan.
One way or another.
By the time both APCs were loaded to capacity, Bolan had learned that only half a dozen of Sanjrani’s residents knew how to drive, and none of them had ever driven heavy vehicles. Gorshani reckoned he could drive one APC, if Bolan took the other, but that left the problem of their SUV and how they would retrieve it from the village.
The headman solved that problem, saying he would follow in Gorshani’s Mahindra Bolero, while one of the villagers trailed him on an ancient motorcycle that served Sanjrani as a form of community transport. That decided, Bolan left Gorshani to his farewells and prepared to put the village behind him forever.
The APCs had no ignition keys. Like military vehicles the world over, push starters kept them mobile in emergencies when tiny, fragile things like keys could be easily broken, lost, stolen, or blown away. The Detroit Diesel 6V53T engine turned over at once and sat grumbling patiently while Bolan waited for Gorshani to fire up his own.
At last, the strange little convoy was moving. Bolan was in the lead, with Gorshani’s APC behind him, followed by the SUV with the headman driving, and a skinny teenager bringing up the rear on a puttering two-wheeler. They drove six miles from the village, Bolan counting every yard of it on his odometer and hoping that they wouldn’t meet another military unit headed in the opposite direction. He was not prepared to answer any questions on the radio, much less engage in face-to-face debate.
He chose a spot where flooding had created a wide gully on the west side of the road and nosed his APC into it. The M113’s treads provided good traction all the way, and Bolan crawled along the gully for a hundred yards before he stopped and killed the engine. Gorshani pulled up close behind him, shutting down his engine and lights.
Bolan had found thermite grenades inside the APC and instantly made an adjustment to his plan. Instead of simply leaving the vehicles with their loads of carrion, he would incinerate them, thereby rendering whatever tests the army sought to carry out that much more difficult—perhaps impossible.
“I’m scorching them,” he told Gorshani, holding up the two grenades by way of explanation. “You’ve got time for one more alwidaa.”
“Farewell,” Gorshani echoed. “Are you learning Urdu, Mr. Cooper?”
“You just heard my whole vocabulary.”
“I’ll be waiting in the car,” Gorshani said, and turned away.
Bolan primed one grenade and dropped it through the open turret hatch of the APC he’d driven from Sanjrani, then repeated that procedure with the second vehicle. He was retreating at double-time when the first grenade detonated, smoke and white-hot light pouring from every vent and viewing slit the APC had. Inside, the pyrotechnic combination of aluminum powder and metal oxide would have produced temperatures approaching 4,500° Fahrenheit—nearly twice the melting point of steel.
Test that, he thought, as he was climbing from the gully to the road bed where Gorshani stood watching the motorcycle’s taillights dwindling in the night.
“They’ll be all right, if they keep quiet,” Bolan told him, hoping it was true.
“I think so,” Gorshani said, evidently joining in the wishful-thinking game.
“Think you can sleep?” he asked his guide. “It’s pushing three o’clock.”
“Two hours until sunrise,” Gorshani said. “We had planned
to leave Sanjrani by this time, in any case.”
“So, right on time, then,” Bolan said. “Let’s hit the road.”
Mount Khakwani, North-West Frontier Province
AKRAM BEN ABD al-Bari raised his bearded chin, the nod barely perceptible, but the guard saw it, bowed in response, and went off to fetch the unexpected visitor.
Someone had come calling at al-Bari’s cave without an invitation. That the man was still alive meant he was one of only twenty-five or so on Earth who had been favored with the knowledge of al-Bari’s whereabouts. The fact that he risked pleading for a brief, unscheduled audience meant that his business had to be urgent.
It had better be, al-Bari thought.
If someone had disturbed his slumber for some reason he did not deem extremely urgent, then there would soon be one less person on the planet who could find his hideaway.
The guard returned a moment later with the visitor. Al-Bari recognized him instantly, of course. The caller was Karim Faisal, a comrade from the struggle in Afghanistan. His hair had more gray in it that al-Bari remembered, and Faisal’s visage was grave.
“Forgive me for disturbing you,” he said. “I tried to reach Arzou—”
“He is preoccupied,” al-Bari said.
“Of course. Yet I believed that you should hear the news without delay.”
“What news?”
“A military search is under way throughout the province,” Faisal said, “seeking the men who ambushed a patrol and executed twenty soldiers.”
“We were not involved,” al-Bari said with perfect confidence. His warriors might occasionally think for themselves, but they only did what they were told.
“No, sir. But if the search continues, moving northward, they may ultimately reach this place.”
“I think that you will find they are currently distracted in Islamabad.”
Faisal blinked, drawing the connection, but he did not smile. “Perhaps, sir. But if any more soldiers are killed, it may be necessary for…for you…”
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