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Greb Steiner watched the Land Rover disappear. Even though his rifle had the range, he wasn’t sure he had the power to punch through the roof of the vehicle. It was festooned with layers of gear and assorted flotsam in an obvious attempt to blunt any effort to shoot through the roof with all but the heaviest of rifles. Even if he could penetrate the big SUV’s top, he wouldn’t be able to hit his target because he didn’t know where she was.
He wished for a moment that he’d brought along a rocket launcher, but then he wouldn’t have gotten into position as quickly.
He blamed himself for not being able to put a bullet into that terrorist-coddling bitch’s back when he’d had the opportunity. A mere second sooner on the pull, and she would be dead, and Soze wouldn’t be lost.
It didn’t look like the enemy had captured his compatriot, which meant that Soze was dead.
He wouldn’t have had time to talk, and from the sound of the explosion inside the building, he might even have chosen to take any secrets to oblivion with him. Steiner fought off a wave of mourning agony and tossed his rifle across the divide to another rooftop. He’d go on foot, far less obvious, back to Abraham’s Dagger. He didn’t want to broadcast anything over the radio in case they had captured Soze’s.
If they were smart enough to take down his partner, they’d be smart enough to get whatever was left of his gear to try to track them down.
Steiner reached the street in time to catch sight of a lone, beardless Arab man. Instincts tingled at the base of his skull and before he realized it, his hand was wrapped around the grip frame of his SIG-Sauer P-228. He hadn’t drawn the gun, and it took every ounce of will he had to pull his fingers from the handle.
Instead, he scrunched his head down between his shoulders, his beard billowing up and almost covering his mouth. He settled down as he realized he recognized the man.
The world of Israeli vs. Palestinian terror and counterterror was a close, insular one, and the best of one side knew who the best of the other side were.
Marid Haytham was one of the enemy’s best. He also was all but untouchable by Abraham’s Dagger because he was the sole survivor of his family—killed by a helicopter rocket attack on a Palestinian police station. An antitank rocket missed the police station and landed right in the middle of Haytham’s kitchen while his wife and three children were preparing dinner. Haytham survived only because he was hunched over the hood of a battered old car in his garage, trying to get the most out of ancient oil filters and spark plugs.
Since then, Haytham had waged his own war against the Israeli military. It wasn’t the same kind of fight that was waged by his fellows in Hamas, but he was still a killing machine when it came to soldiers. He’d engineered the destruction of five of seven helicopters from the air base that launched the assault on his home, killing three pilots and injuring dozens of flight technicians and other pilots in a mortar assault.
He went on record, taunting the Israeli government to quit being cowards and murdering bystanders and fight like men. This didn’t make him popular among his bedfellows, but it earned him some respect from the counterterrorism community. Steiner, however, felt like the man deserved everything he got for throwing in with the murderers of children.
The idea of the “noble savage” had never appealed to the sad-eyed Israeli. These were Israeli lands, not stolen territories, and the unbathed, rotten-toothed primates who dared to seek recognition as humans had no right to bitch when God’s chosen were finally back in the land of their birthright. Steiner’s eyes narrowed as he watched Haytham, revulsion churning inside him.
It would be so easy to take aim and blow Haytham away with two shots to the head, but that wouldn’t be enough for Steiner. It had to be close, and it had to be with the .22 that was his signature. He had chosen the little gun because it was a symbol of what he felt about his enemy. They weren’t worth a real gun—they were pests, rodents to be plinked at and eliminated with a couple of barely audible pops to the skull.
Something else stayed Steiner’s hand. If Haytham was on the scene, that also meant other Hamas terrorists were present. Killing the Palestinian would mean that he couldn’t get hard intel on the new enemy running them down.
It was bad enough that Tera Geren had added to the ranks of her hunting party. Now a second pack was added to the chase. And with the loss of Soze and twenty Taliban mercenaries to date, avoiding ambush and assault was going to be as much a problem as seeking out the UN relief workers and killing them. He fingered the cold metal frame of his radio and contemplated contacting Rhodin. The risk of Geren’s group hearing him was high, but if he didn’t use the frequency that Soze set his radio to, he might get away with a short message in case things turned to shit.
“Dagger Two to Dagger One. Double bad news to report,” he called.
“Dagger One, reading you,” Rhodin’s voice answered.
“Keeping it brief. Dagger Five has gone home. The doctor went away on a house call. And we might be having ham for dinner too,” Steiner replied. He hoped his cryptic remarks were clear enough, ham meaning Hamas.
“Fuck a duck,” Rhodin growled.
“No time. I’m going on a walk, you know dear?”
“Wait—” Rhodin began, but Steiner unplugged the radio and stuffed the earpiece into his pocket.
“You know dear” was the pronunciation of a military acronym—UNODIR. Unless Otherwise Directed. It was what Abraham’s Dagger often did when they checked out for a night to keep their activities in the dark from the Mossad. It wasn’t the most foolproof means of slipping off a short leash, but it gave the covert killers a sense of lung-filling freedom.
Steiner followed Haytham, trying to control thoughts of murder until he could get some allies on the scene.
MARID HAYTHAM FIGURED OUT he was being tailed by the end of his fifth block of travel. He didn’t head back to his shot-up gold-colored Peugeot immediately after leaving the hospital. He preferred to approach his vehicle once he was certain nobody was shadowing him, or observing him leaving the scene of a gun and grenade battle in a hospital.
The tail was good, but Haytham was a man who lived on a razor’s edge, having been hunted for three years by the best that the Mossad had to throw at him. He kept walking, leading the tail through a maze of alleys and streets, cutting between buildings when he had the chance. But the hunter seemed to have almost superhuman senses, anticipating his every effort to double back and race for his vehicle.
While Haytham had a Makarov in his pocket, with three spare magazines of potent 9 mm ammunition, he knew a fresh gunfight wasn’t in the cards. Not when he already saw the few police cars from the town assembling at the scene of the previous battle. Making a lot of noise would have only drawn the local cops down on him, for questioning at best, or a chestful of rifle slugs at worst.
Leaving Abraham’s Dagger free from retribution.
Haytham owed his children and wife that much. He clenched his eyes shut, fighting off a wave of tears at the thought of them, trying to slide a wall of ice between his emotions and his conscious mind. It was hard, but as the seconds passed, and the sting of sorrow burned away, he was clear headed and dry eyed.
His hunter stood at the end of a gangway between two buildings, watching him, eyes squinted in cold rage. It took a moment for Haytham to realize his efforts to get his mind under control had cost him his lead, but the hunter was holding back.
Naturally, Haytham thought. You want me to lead you to my comrades.
The enemy stood rooted, glaring, hunched against the cold Afghan night as much as he seemed braced against a wave of revulsion and fury. Perhaps it was body language, or some other subtle sense, but Haytham could feel the anger crawling down the gangway, tendrils creeping through the shadow like wisps of frosted mist, reaching for him, touching him and sending an brittle tingle of unease through his entire being. He had never bought into so-called psychic phenomena, but this night, looking at a man he knew with dead certainty was
from Abraham’s Dagger, he could see how two minds could be linked across a hundred feet.
With a deep breath, Haytham sidestepped around the corner and raced up the street. Each step ate up ground, cutting the distance between him and his bullet-pocked Peugeot. He glanced back, but his enemy wasn’t coming out between the two buildings. His spine tingled with fear. If he wasn’t being chased, that only meant that the hunter was running a parallel course.
It was a mistake using a recognizable car like the Peugeot again, after hard contact with the enemy. It was covered in bullet holes, which marked it as being present at the scene of another battle. But the Hamas team had few enough vehicles, and he wasn’t going to be allowed another. He’d have to make do.
Stealing a new car would be problematic. Few Afghan citizens owned vehicles. Few enough government officials even had vehicles. The Peugeot was as precious as the gold it shared its color with, whether or not it was defaced by the savage wrath of an AK-47’s broadside.
So far, all he knew was that his enemy was on foot. The Palestinian tore through the night, with not quite reckless abandon, but as fast as he could without losing track of the man on his tail. He hated the fact that he had to turn and run, but he remembered that moment, that second of total contact with the hunter, the feeling of cold dread threatening to strangle him.
This wasn’t the place to wage his fight, not if he was going to have any chance of hunting down the rest of the Dagger cell in Afghanistan.
His car came into sight as Haytham made one final turn. He stopped, scanning up and down the road. His fist filled, unconsciously, with the Makarov pistol, fingers squeezing so tight on the steel he felt he could almost bend the metal in his bare hand. He looked back, then he checked both ways up and down the street, seeing no sign of his assailant. In a mad dash, he charged the final fifty yards to his car, stopping only to unlock the door. He glanced back and saw the Abraham’s Dagger assassin come around the bend, a black looming shape that made Haytham’s heart stop. Two blocks away, at the hospital, Afghan and coalition military were assembling, investigating the gunfire and grenade explosions. Just exactly the kind of crowd that he wanted to avoid getting into a gunfight near.
He shot a glance back toward the Israeli, but he was gone, a shadow lost among the darkened nooks and crannies.
The hunt was over for the moment. Haytham pulled himself into his car, fired up the engine and pulled slowly away from the curb. No one stopped him, and the Abraham’s Dagger killer might well have been a ghost for all the evidence left in his passing.
It was a draw.
But he’d have his chance against the mad dog Israelis.
Blood would flood the streets the next time they met.
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for Captain Blake to show up at the safehouse, but it was as cordial a visit as it was a surprise.
Blake arrived with three Green Berets in full battle dress. Bolan recognized two of them as Jerrud and Montenegro, but wasn’t sure about the other. The Executioner bristled at the thought of coming into conflict with soldiers on the same side. He was certain that there were at least three more Green Berets in position, with full fields of fire and the firepower to blow the little house to hell in the space of a heartbeat should Blake decide to write off these intruders.
There had been enough of a gap between the fight at the hospital and Blake’s arrival for Bolan’s companions to clean off their greasepaint, attend to their wounds and change into fresh clothing. Bolan had traded his blacksuit for a set of dark tan BDUs, which would serve as a decent set of street clothes for the frontierlike streets of Afghanistan and still allow him some stealth. He had a black sweater packed away in his war bag, along with his guns and other gear.
“Captain Blake, welcome,” Geren spoke up. Her voice dripped with sweetness. Bolan could sense the effort she was putting into remaining calm. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
Blake only glared at her as he passed by, closing the distance to Bolan until they were nose to nose. The captain’s pale hazel eyes locked like lasers onto Bolan’s, the pupils tightening to pinpricks, amplifying the red cracklike veins around the corners. The Executioner could smell a hint of alcohol on his breath, though the man stood steady and sober, unwavering and unslurred.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing blowing the hell out of a goddamn hospital, you psychopathic fucking cowboy?” Blake snarled.
“I didn’t,” Bolan answered simply. Hopefully, if he played his cards right, he wouldn’t provoke Blake any further. He regretted the necessity of a raging battle through a building full of bystanders. That it was a hospital full of sick and injured, and the good men and women devoted to helping heal them only made it more difficult.
“Don’t give me this crap. I just came from the hospital. Seems there’s a bunch of Taliban veterans in varying degrees of dead,” Blake explained. “Including one guy in a stairwell who had a grenade dropped on him, conveniently obliterating any chance of identifying his corpse.”
“I didn’t drop a grenade on anyone tonight,” Bolan told him truthfully. He hoped that honesty was the best policy. Bolan had learned long ago that using ninety percent of the truth was the most effective part of role camouflage.
Blake’s eyes narrowed. “Then could you explain a shootout near a burned down garage earlier today? I have command on my ass about all these dead bodies suddenly dropping out of the sky.”
“I’ll claim responsibility for that,” Bolan said. “I’ll even claim responsibility for dead gunmen at the hospital. I didn’t use a grenade. I don’t endanger civilians if I have a choice. And if they are threatened, I don’t hide my head in the sand and claim to be following orders.”
Blake’s eyes widened to the point where Bolan thought they’d pop out of his skull. Shock froze the man’s face. He finally recovered his senses, turned and stepped away from Bolan.
“Who else was with you?” Blake asked, voice harsh from the struggle to contain the fury within him.
“Just me. I went to see Dr. Bronson. There was an attempt on her life, and I fought my way out of the area, bringing her to safety with me,” the Executioner explained.
“You’re making my life very difficult right now, Colonel Stone,” Blake snarled.
“That wasn’t my intention,” Bolan answered. He never intended to interfere with the work of lawmen or anyone fighting the good fight. But a soldier’s duty was to protect his country. Bolan’s sense of duty expanded far beyond simple nationality, though, and that often brought him to cross-purposes with those who just had a job to do.
Blake glanced back at him, breathing deeply to try to keep himself calm. “So where is the doctor now?”
“She’s in safe hands,” Bolan answered. This was where he was going to either completely sever ties with the Special Forces team or find out how far Blake was willing to go, how much he was willing to bend the rules.
“Where?” Blake repeated.
“You aren’t on my need-to-know list, Captain,” Bolan told him. “She’s in safe hands.”
Blake looked at Geren, voice straining, cheeks reddening. “Do you know?”
The woman shook her head. “I honestly don’t.”
“And where’s Laith Khan?” Blake asked. “That little smart-ass—”
Blake spun, glaring at Bolan. “You sent them off together.”
Bolan remained impassive. He had his answer about Blake’s compliance.
“I can’t believe how arrogant you are. You come into my area of operations, you start a shooting war that is piling up an enormous body count, and now you’re kidnapping noncombatants?” Blake asked. “Who do you think you are?”
“Someone who’s protecting those noncombatants. If I hadn’t been at the hospital, that team would have killed dozens of people to cover up the murder of Dr. Bronson, perhaps after they tortured her,” Bolan explained. “I saved lives tonight.”
Suddenly, the rage drained from Blake’s face. It was as if he’d blown out the conne
ction between his emotions and his body, all that remained being a simple automaton. “Arrest this man,” he said to the Green Berets.
Bolan shook his head. “We don’t want that.”
“Take him. We’re going to put him in the stockade,” Blake said.
Bolan sighed. This was what he’d hoped to avoid, but being a consummate soldier, he was always prepared and ready to act. He crossed the distance to Blake in one step and grabbed him by his combat vest, swinging the captain in front of him like a human shield. The three soldiers brought up their weapons at the sudden flash of movement, but swung the muzzles of their rifles up at the ceiling when they realized any gunfire would perforate their captain.
The Executioner took advantage of their pause. Lifting Blake off his feet and using him as a battering ram, he threw the captain against two of the Special Forces soldiers before swinging a kick into the groin of the third Green Beret. He’d learned long ago that surprise was an advantage that could not be matched in any combat scenario. It was the one weapon that never ran out of ammunition.
Geren moved to act against the Green Berets, but Bolan shook his head. He needed her to stick with their plan.
He’d need someone who was still on speaking terms with the local military forces, even after alienating Blake and his Special Forces team this way. Bolan snaked his arm around the head of the man he’d kicked in the groin, grabbing a fistful of web belt.
Blake and his two men were rising fast, and the Executioner swung the stunned Green Beret, boots crashing across the chests of the charging men and stopping them in their tracks. With a flip, Bolan dropped his burden on one of the soldiers with a meaty thump. A sidestep brought his elbow hard into the face of another American soldier, a stunning blow that set him up for a second strike that impacted under the man’s ear, sending a shock wave through his central nervous system.
Felled with the blow, the soldier dropped out of Bolan’s way, leaving only Blake, clutching his chest, blocking his escape. Not that the Special Forces captain could do much more than accept a punch in his stunned state. Caught on the point of the chin, Blake’s head snapped back, shock doing the rest in dumping the man on his back. Bolan stepped over him, crossing to where he’d stashed his war bag.
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