But first he must escape the trap his enemies had laid for him at Alamut.
His ears picked up a sound like summer thunder, and he felt a faint vibration, a trembling in the stone beneath his feet. Before he had a chance to place it, the sheikh was staggered by a violent tremor, nearly deafened by the roar of high explosives.
He recognized the sounds of thunder now, immediately realized that there would be no saving Alamut. Somehow, his enemies had called an air strike, and it was in progress.
The flying wedge of guardsmen hustled him along the corridor at double-time, brushed past the sentries on the giant doors and bulled their way across the courtyard toward the helipad. His message had been sent ahead, and he could see the rotors turning, gathering momentum, winking at him with reflected firelight.
Alamut was burning, and the midnight sky above his head was ruled by swooping harpies, demons of the air who rained destruction on the fortress that his father had built. An explosion behind him sealed the entryway with fire and tumbling stone, the shock wave driving him and several of his guardsmen to their knees.
The Old Man struggled to his feet, helped up by clutching hands, and staggered toward the helicopter. There were mere seconds left, perhaps, before a lucky — or deliberate — shot destroyed his only hope of getting out alive.
The helicopter was a Cobra, purchased on the international black market and stripped of its original markings. It was fitted with a machine gun, courtesy of the supplier, but an airborne dogfight with the snarling Phantoms would be more than ludicrous. His only hope lay in a swift and unobserved escape.
"No lights!" he ordered the pilot, as he strapped himself into his seat. His riflemen were grappling with seat belts, closing off the entry hatch. He heard the rotors straining into lift-off, knew when they were airborne by the hollow feeling in his stomach.
There was still a chance, with Allah's help and guidance.
Still a chance.
And why, then, did he feel as if a part of him was dead already?
* * *
Jack Grimaldi saw the stationary chopper on his first pass, and he let it go. He used his Sparrow missiles on the castle proper, one eye on the Phantom's situation display indicators as he sent the stingers on their way. They struck what he presumed to be the second story, blossoming in fire and thunder, slinging blocks of jagged stone into the yard below.
The courtyard was illuminated by strategic floodlights, but the Phantoms were not halfway through their run when someone on the ground got wise and pulled the plug. By then, the light from leaping flames was adequate to mark their target, and Grimaldi knew it would be hell down there. He thought of Bolan, trapped inside the mountain like a mole, and pushed the grisly thought out of his mind.
Somehow, the helicopter had lifted off in the interval before his second pass. Grimaldi gave the pilot points for courage under fire. He almost hated to destroy a guy who showed that kind of guts. Almost.
But it was obvious that someone in authority was counting on the chopper as his ticket out, a free ride to the nearest safety zone. Grimaldi had no way of knowing who might be inside, but he couldn't afford to let him slip away. Annihilation was the game plan, and the pilot didn't want a fumble on his record. Not with so much riding on the outcome of the game.
"The chopper's mine," he told whomever might be listening, and then he took the Phantom down. He stroked the target designation switch and froze the Cobra in his sights, his finger tensing on the trigger that would spur his 10 mm cannon into blazing action.
In the fraction of a heartbeat that remained before he made his move, Grimaldi caught a mental image of a tethered goat, staked out as bait for a marauding tiger. There was nothing the goat could do to save itself from rending claw and fang. It could only stand and watch death coming for him with a hungry snarl. He wondered, as he squeezed the trigger, whether anybody in the helicopter might have felt that way.
At nearly a 100 rounds per second, human senses couldn't register the cannon's rate of fire. Grimaldi felt a distant shudder, and imagined that he heard the faintest hint of canvas ripping, but his mind was on the target as it came apart, disintegrating in midair. Its shattered listing body spilled guns, seats and bodies toward the courtyard, where they mingled with the rubble and the dead. Instinctively he let the trigger go and watched what was left of the Cobra — describe an awkward corkscrew spiral toward the earth.
He took the Phantom up to get back into formation for another run. He still had business with the living, and it would not keep. The Sidewinders this time, he thought, for some variety. And Finally the Phoenix fire.
And may the gods of war have mercy on us all.
22
As another shock wave rippled through the tunnel, Tahir Arrani fought to keep his footing, offering a silent prayer for the swift annihilation of his enemies. It was a futile prayer, he knew, because the infidels had aircraft, and Alamut could not compete with horses and a single helicopter.
They were finished, but Arrani was continuing toward his objective with the single-mindedness of a fanatic. At the outset, he had meant to reinforce the stable exit, close it to his prey, but now he had a different goal in mind. Survival was the key, escape from the vindictive thunder of the warplanes overhead. It did not seem appropriate for him to die there, in the tunnels. Arrani knew that he was meant for greater things, and he did not propose to thwart his higher destiny by giving up, allowing his unworthy adversaries to destroy him.
At a glance, the crumpled bodies of the guardsmen scarcely registered. It was the blood, thick rivers on the floor and speckled abstract patterns on the wall, that finally brought him back to grim reality. The stable door yawned open beyond their twisted forms, beckoning. The screaming voices of the jets were much closer here.
Arrani felt a pang of sudden fear, and knew at once that he could not afford to surrender to his feelings. Instead of backing off and ordering a rifleman to check the stable out, he cocked his automatic pistol, stepped across the bodies of the fallen lookouts, crossed the threshold with his men in tow. If this night brought his death, the least that he could do was to face it as a man.
There was yet more carnage inside the stable, bodies sprawled in awkward positions. He recognized the impostor's Syrian companion, tunic dark with seeping blood, and he was pleased that one of them, at least, had been eliminated. It would please him to destroy the other personally, but his mind was on escape now, and the hunt would only slow him down.
A high-explosive charge was detonated somewhere overhead and to his right, immediately followed by a second and a third. The ancient stone was crumbling; he could hear the slabs and boulders tumbling to the courtyard, impact vibrating like aftershocks from the explosions.
In the end, it was the jets with their rockets, that made up his mind to flee on foot. The horses, trained to tolerate the din of gunfire, were uneasy with the new cacophony of unfamiliar sounds. Some of the stalls, he saw, were empty, their occupants bolting to seek their freedom in the courtyard.
He would have a better chance on foot. Once he was through the gate he could make his way down through the valley unobserved. The peasants, if they dared to show their faces, would be dazzled by the light show on the mountain, and they would not notice him. If someone tried to stop him, he would die, and somewhere on the way, Arrani would acquire a means of transportation for himself.
But on the way to where?
Arrani had no destination in mind, no time to think it out. The riflemen could tag along or stay behind and die; it did not make the slightest difference to him. He briefly thought about the sheikh, decided that the Old Man could get out of this one by himself. A brand-new day was dawning, born in fire, and with the help of Allah, he would take the place of Abdel al-Sabbah as leader of the Assassins. But first, before he could rebuild, he must escape.
Without a word, he passed the empty stalls and skittish horses, stepped across the bodies in his path. The courtyard was in chaos, men with rifles and machine guns f
iring at the planes without a prayer of doing any damage, others scrambling for cover, cut off by explosions any way they turned. A hundred yards distant, he could see the gate, unguarded, waiting for him, and he knew that any further hesitation might be fatal.
He had scarcely cleared the stable when he saw the American, on horseback, with another mounted rider at his side. Unless Arrani's eyes were playing tricks, the second rider was a woman, dressed in harem garb, and while he could not see her face, he thought he recognized the whipping mane of raven hair.
Another chance! He could destroy the infidel and leave this place a hero. Moving with a new determination, he struck off toward the riders, watching as the man raised an Uzi submachine gun, toppling a pair of sentries from the wall above. The woman had a rifle, but he did not care. The odds meant nothing. Allah would protect him as he made his sacrifice of love.
He fired from sixty yards out. The echo of his pistol shot was lost in the confusion of the air strike, but his target seemed to feel the bullet's passage as it missed his head by inches. Turning in his saddle, the impostor picked out Arrani in the milling crowd, swung around his mount and charged.
It seemed like something from a fable, with Arrani self-cast in the role of hero, standing firm against the infidel crusader, offering his life for Allah and the message of His holy word. He held the automatic braced in both hands, sighting down the slide and squeezing off in rapid-fire, his target drawing nearer, growing larger by the second. He could see the muzzle-flash from his opponent's weapon, felt the parabellum manglers eating up the ground around him, knew he was invincible, immortal.
And it came as a complete surprise, therefore, when he was stitched across the abdomen by bullets, impact forcing the air out of his lungs. Collapsing to his knees, Arrani found he could not breathe, but he refused to lift his finger off the automatic's trigger. Kneeling in his own life's blood, he finished off the magazine and was rewarded as the charger faltered, stumbled and began to fall.
Too late.
The animal's momentum had already carried it too far. It was on him, the heaving body flecked with blood and perspiration, looming over him and falling, falling, blotting out the light of soaring flames.
Tahir Arrani was surprised to find he still had time to scream.
* * *
Grimaldi used his first two Phoenix missiles on the upper levels of the castle, taking satisfaction in the rock slides he created, knowing it would be pure hell inside. They might not bring the house down, literally, but with five Phantoms working on it, they would come damned close. They would definitely make the hideout uninhabitable for the survivors.
He would have given anything, just then, to know where Bolan was, be certain that the guy was either dead or running free and clear. Uncertainty was always worst, but he couldn't allow the doubts to cloud his mind or stay his hand. He had a job to do, and he was far from finished.
People were dying in the courtyard. The shrapnel from exploding rockets — shattered chunks of stone that varied from the size of gravel to a few great boulders — was raining down on the courtyard, claiming casualties with every new explosion. Two or three of the Israelis had already tried their hands at strafing runs, the 20 mm cannons spewing death, projectiles cutting trails of blood and dust across the crowded yard.
If Bolan had survived, had managed to escape the castle, it would be grim irony for him to die among his tattered enemies, another of the human silhouettes in Jack Grimaldi's shooting gallery. There had to be a way…
And then he had it.
"Listen up!" he barked into his microphone. "I'm taking down the front gates. If I can't finish it with what I've got, someone will have to help me."
"Why the gates?" one of his wingmen asked, confused.
"You'll let them get away!"
"The gates?"
"This isn't a debate, goddamn it! I was put in charge of these festivities, and I said hit the gates!"
The air went silent, all dissent cut off immediately as Grimaldi nosed his Phantom into the approach. His wingmen might not understand the order, might resent his pulling rank, and that was fine. He frankly didn't care if they were happy with his leadership, as long as everyone remembered who the boss was on this run. As long as everybody did his job.
He knew that bringing down the gates would give the Assassins a chance to break away, but he was also conscious of the fact that they could never hope for absolute annihilation. Ground support would have been mandatory for a perfect clean-up, and the fact that they were striking deep inside a hostile country meant they had to settle for whatever they could get.
And some of the Ismailis would survive. There was a chance that they might set up shop again, in time, and start the nightmares over, but the pilot was not psychic, and he long ago had given up telling fortunes. There was just a chance that Bolan might be down there, in the milling, shouting crowd, and while that chance remained, Grimaldi would do everything he could to save the big guy's skin.
He had his sights fixed on the gates, his finger on the trigger, ready to release his last Phoenix missiles.
"I hope you're down there, guy," the pilot whispered, feeling sudden tightness in his throat. "God keep."
And then he fired.
* * *
The fall had shaken Bolan, and jarred the Uzi from his hand. It was nowhere to be found as he regained his feet. His mount was clearly dying. Its forelegs pawed weakly at the ground, and Arrani's arm protruded from beneath the animal's bulk. No point in checking for a pulse; the guy was either dead or dying.
A number of Ismailis had observed the duel, had seen Arrani die. Some of them were closing on the soldier now, many curious, a few apparently determined to exact revenge. The screaming Phantoms slowed them, kept them glancing at the heavens — or across their shoulders, toward the castle. But they were advancing, all the same, and they would be upon him in a moment.
Bolan turned to face the rush of footsteps on his flank and had to sidestep as a scimitar sliced through the space where he'd just been standing. Going low, inside the swing, he drove the rigid fingers of his right hand underneath his adversary's rib cage, emptying the man's lungs and leaving him wide open for the knee that spread his nose across his face.
The scimitar felt awkward in his hand, but an exploratory swipe or two convinced him he could handle it. A second cultist rushed him, brandishing his empty rifle like a club. Bolan dropped him with a slice across the abdomen that left him kneeling in the dirt, trying to hold in his intestines.
Bolan was halfway to the gates when one of the attacking Phantoms seemed to veer off course. Its missiles streaked toward the wall, the giant gates, on a collision course with Bolan. There was time for him to hit the dirt, then the world exploded in his face, the shock wave rippling around him, tugging at his hair, his clothes. A flaming timber fell beside him, showering his back with sparks and embers. Bolan wallowed in the dirt to smother them, then scrambled to his feet.
The horse came out of nowhere, Sarah holding the reins with one hand, her AK-47 with the other. As she galloped through the milling crowd, he watched her fire off bursts to left and right, her targets toppling like bowling pins, their passing scarcely noticed in the scene of chaos.
"Hurry!" she commanded, as she reined her charge to a halt in front of him. The lady didn't have to tell him twice. He got one leg across the horse's rump, had slipped an arm around her waist, when yet another Phantom made its pass, unloading rockets on the ruined gates.
This time, one of the missiles struck the juncture of the gate and ground, its detonation clearing half the obstacle in one great burst of fire and flying lumber. Fractions of a heartbeat later, number two impacted on the wall beside the gate, and showered masonry upon the faithful who were close enough to catch the major fallout. As the smoke began to dissipate, Mack Bolan saw that half the gate was gone, the tattered remnants charred and smoking.
"We've got to try it," Bolan told her, shouting to be heard above the noise of droning jets and
automatic-weapon fire.
The woman nodded, took a ragged breath and spurred their mount in the direction of the ravaged gate. She had no way of knowing if the horse would brave the flames or rear and dump them in the dust before it ran for safety, but it was a chance they had to take. Their options were exhausted, and a blowout at the finish line would be no worse, all things considered, than the fate that awaited them if they stood their ground.
Ten yards to go, and Bolan fought the urge to close his eyes. Three of the cultists were approaching, running on a hard collision course to cut them off. Bolan threw his scimitar, was rewarded for the effort when it struck the point man's leg a glancing blow and brought him down, the others tumbling on top of him.
They were at the gate, flames leaping in their faces, and he felt the sudden, searing heat as Sarah urged the horse to greater speed., It would be now or never, and the soldier held his breath, one arm locked around the woman's waist, as they took wing.
Their charger cleared the leaping fire with fractions of an inch to spare. Then, as if by magic, they had crossed the threshold, galloping through darkness with the sights, sounds and stench of mortal combat at their backs, receding as the brave horse carried them away.
Behind them, moments after they had cleared the gate, another Phantom made its run and slammed two rockets into the massive gateposts. Sarah reined in the horse after she had put a hundred yards between themselves and the inferno. They watched as a portion of the high protective wall collapsed, its rubble sealing off the courtyard's only exit.
"Let's go," he urged, placing one hand on Sarah's shoulder, gently turning her until she faced the valley, dark and silent to the south. The trance was broken.
Cold Judgment Page 21