“Right on the mark,” Ous observed.
Bolan could hear gunfire on the other side of the link. “Understood. Control, maintain radio silence from now on unless we initiate.”
“Copy that, Batman. Over and out.”
Bolan took up his phone-size tablet and switched frequencies. Aaron Kurtzman’s voice came across the link from Stony Man Farm, the nation’s top counterterrorist organization, half a world away in Virginia. “Batman?”
“Inside joke. You have Convertino?”
“Affirmative. I have him on satellite tracking and satellite visual. My current visual window is two hours. After that I’ll have to switch to a different orbiter. I predict a ten-minute visual lag, but you’ll have constant from the transmitter.”
“Copy that. Give me visual.” Bolan watched as his screen lit up with a gray-green scene observed from overhead by a thermal-imaging satellite. Sangin Base was a constellation of lights, and a vehicle was tearing away from it with reckless speed. There was little to do but wait. Convertino would abandon his vehicle once he had covered some distance and then use his skills as a Marine scout sniper to make his way into the city unseen.
“I might just have something for you, Batman.”
“What’s that?”
“The woman, Reema.” Bolan’s screen split. Ous and Keller leaned over to peer at it. The NCIS sketch took up one-half of the screen and the other was a photo of a woman sitting in a café. She was blonde, wearing oversize sunglasses, and someone who wasn’t a professional surveillance artist had taken the shot from across the street, but there was a similarity.
“Who is she?”
“I called in a few favors and got this from Israeli Intelligence. Last year an Israeli military industrialist was suspected of leaking information. This woman was suspected of being his mistress. The day after that photo was taken the man was found in his office with his brains blown out in an apparent suicide.”
“And the woman?” Bolan queried.
“Disappeared without a trace.”
Bolan had guessed that. “What else?”
“Working backward, the Israelis believe a woman matching her description may be linked to the death of several prominent Israeli and Lebanese citizens, but they can’t prove anything,” Kurtzman stated.
“They have a name?”
“All they have is a first name.”
“Lay it on me,” Bolan said.
“Zurisaday.”
It was a beautiful name for a beautiful woman.
“A few clues lead them to believe she might be Jordanian,” Kurtzman continued. “But they’re not sure.”
Keller echoed Bolan’s thoughts. “A beautiful name.”
“It means ‘over the earth’ in Arabic,” Kurtzman said.
Ous scowled. “It should mean ‘viper.’”
“Well.” Keller sat back. “Convertino got bit, and bit bad.”
“It is said the righteous man cannot feel their sting.” Ous gazed long upon the sketch. “Though I must admit I have yet to meet such a man.”
The feed suddenly switched to the satellite imaging. “The vehicle has stopped. Convertino’s just outside the southern end of the city and proceeding in.”
“We’re moving,” Bolan said. Ous pulled the truck out of the alley and began negotiating the winding, narrow back streets of Sangin. Bolan checked the load of 9 mm subsonic hollowpoint rounds in his machine pistol and screwed the short black tube of a sound suppressor onto the muzzle.
“Be advised the corporal has changed course.”
Bolan grimaced. Convertino had first met the woman at an after-hours club that catered to Western soldiers. That was the first place he was supposed to try. Failing that he would try to establish contact with some of her friends. “Where’s he headed now?”
“North and west. He’s moving toward the outskirts of the bazaar.”
Keller was incensed. “Son of a bitch! Does he really think there’s any place to run? I say we get the chopper in the air and scoop him up. This mission is over.”
Bolan was confident that he had a pretty good read on the young corporal. “He’s not trying to escape.”
“Well, he sure as hell isn’t sticking to the plan!”
Bolan nodded. “He’s still in love. He wants to see his woman one more time, and confront her alone before we pick her up and he goes to jail for the rest of his life.”
“Well, that’s so sweet I might just throw up.” Keller shook her head in disgust. “And you knew he was going to rabbit on us in the name of love all along?”
“I knew there was a chance. It was a chance I was willing to take. We still have him, satellite eyes on and GPS tracking. The mission is still go.”
“I concur,” Ous said.
“We’ve lost visual,” Kurtzman reported. “He’s entered a building.”
“Vector us in, Bear,” Bolan said, using Kurtzman’s nickname. His screen zoomed and a route appeared in green across a grid of the city. Bolan started calling rights and lefts fast as Ous took the alleys at breakneck speed. “What’s Convertino’s status?”
“Signal hasn’t moved.”
The pickup pulled up in front of a patio. A flowering lemon tree grew in the middle, and a scattering of wrought-iron chairs and tables surrounded it. “Looks like a teahouse.
“Indeed I have taken tea here before,” Ous said.
“Keller, stay here and stay in character,” Bolan ordered. “And get the chopper in the air.”
Keller wasn’t pleased but she got it. “You got it.”
Bolan and Ous spilled out of the truck with their pistols drawn. “Cover me.”
Ous took a firing position over the hood of the truck as Bolan moved across the open area and kicked the door. An old man at a table looked up from a breakfast of tea and rice. A very young man nearby jumped and dropped the broom he was sweeping with. Ous came in through the door a second later and began snarling questions in Pashto. Bolan swept through the tearoom and kicked open the door to the empty kitchen.
“They see an American soldier?” Bolan called back.
“They say not.”
Bolan looked out the back door. It opened onto a blind alley jammed with carts, barrels and clotheslines. He returned.
“You believe them?”
“Indeed not.”
Bolan glanced around the room. The walls, floor and ceiling were all clay. He turned his gaze to the table the old man sat at and the carpet beneath it. He gently but firmly pulled the old man out of his chair and kicked over the table.
The young man screamed as he pulled an ancient Russian Tokarev pistol out of his sash. “Allahu Ak—” Ous cut the cry of faith short by ramming the butt of his rifle into the young man’s belly. A blow to the back of the legs toppled the adolescent and sent the pistol clattering across the floor. Bolan shoved the old man into Ous’s embrace and yanked the carpet aside. The revealed wooden hatch in the floor was a recent construction. Bolan took out his tactical light. “Ask him if it’s booby-trapped.”
Ous asked. “He says not.”
“Do you believe him?”
“I told him I would send his grandson to hell a eunuch if you were blown up opening it.” Bolan glanced at the old man, who was weeping. Ous shrugged fatalistically. “I give you a fifty-fifty chance.”
Bolan rolled his eyes. “You’re a good man, Ous.”
“One tries. I will stand over by the door and cover the prisoners in case of your demise.”
“Thanks.”
“You are welcome.”
Bolan spoke into his com link. “Control, you have my position?”
“Copy that, Batman,” Farkas replied. “We’re receiving the Bear’s feed.”
“I have two suspects, tagged and bagged in a teahouse. I think I’ve found a tunnel.”
“Copy that. I’ll have a unit scoop them up.”
Bolan took out his tactical knife and snapped it open with a flick of his wrist. He probed the edges of the hatch but
could find no hidden wires or leads. The soldier grabbed the handle and flung the hatch open. He aimed the muzzle of his Beretta and his tactical light into the tunnel.
“Ous, tie them up and follow me.”
The big American dropped down. It was a very well-dug tunnel, lined with planks, and Bolan could almost stand up. Twenty yards along he came to a side chamber—and Convertino’s corpse. The body lay facedown in a huge pool of blood. That was, if the corpse had still had a face.
Bolan eyed the corpse clinically. He had seen more decapitations than he cared to think about. One look told him the head-taking had been neither clean nor swift. It had been done with a large knife and while Convertino was still alive.
“Bismillah!” Ous exclaimed.
Bolan dropped to a knee beside Convertino’s cadaver. He noted two pinprick tears in the USMC-issue PT shirt the man had escaped in. He tore the T-shirt down the young Marine’s back and examined the two, bee-sting-like marks six inches apart between his shoulder blades. The corporal had been hit with a stun gun before he’d been beheaded.
Ous frowned at the gruesome scene. “What do we do now?”
Bolan rose. Convertino had bought his redemption in the hardest way possible, but he was still sticking it to the enemy. The Marine was a Trojan Horse. They might have taken his head, but the Radio Frequency Identification tracking chip had been implanted behind his ear.
“Bear, do we still have GPS on the Corporal?”
“Of course, why?”
“The corporal’s body is down here in the tunnel, but his head isn’t.”
“Oh, damn it.”
“Do you have visual on the signal?”
“No, I was assuming he was inside, but the signal is still very close to you. I’m saying it is just entering the bazaar,” Kurtzman stated.
“Keller, deploy into the bazaar, in costume. Try to get ahead of us and the signal.”
“Copy that.”
Bolan moved down the tunnel with Ous at his back. There was no blood trail, so the soldier assumed Convertino’s head was packaged for transport. The tunnel dead-ended with another hatch above, which was unbarred. Bolan listened a moment to the silence up top, then flung it open. No grenades or gunfire met the intrusion. He clambered up four iron rungs and found himself in a storeroom laden with burlap sacks of grain. He swept the room as Ous emerged. The storeroom opened into a storefront. No one was around. Bolan tucked his weapon away, pulled on a fatigue cap and a pair of sunglasses, then stepped out into the open air of the bazaar.
He took a moment to scan the early morning activity.
The Taliban had been mostly driven out of Sangin City proper; those who still lurked did so under deep cover. Still, most women in Sangin wore burkas when they left their homes, some out of tradition, many out of a very real and justified fear of reprisal. Groups of hooded women moved around buying milk, eggs and fruit and looking to see if the morning had brought any new goods in the stalls since the day before. Others carried baskets laden with lentils, coffee and grains. Most women wore black burkas, some light blue and a few other colors. They all moved in interlocking streams when they weren’t poking, prodding or bartering. All over the bazaar, eyes were drawn to the Westerner.
“Bear, are you sure?”
“The tracking device is within one hundred yards of you. That’s as exact as it gets. I have eyes on the bazaar and eyes on you, but all the tracker does is put out a low-frequency signal. I have it. It’s nearby, but the device isn’t sophisticated enough to triangulate on an individual without some other target verification.”
“Bear, give me anything.”
“I can’t swear to it, but my gut and dead reckoning tells me the signal seems to be on the southern end of the bazaar.”
Bolan had navigated by dead reckoning many times, and he would literally and figuratively bet the Farm on Kurtzman’s instincts. He moved south. “Ous, find her.”
Ous scanned the packs of swaddled, shopping women and the sellers they were haggling with. “I will try!”
Bolan subvocalized into his throat mike. “Keller, get to the southern end of the bazaar and deploy.”
“I’m already there.”
“Control, get that chopper in the air. I may need backup or fast evac out of the bazaar.”
“Bird is in the air, Batman,” Farkas confirmed.
“Batman,” Kurtzman said, “I can’t swear to it, but I think the signal is now moving westward.”
“She’s meeting someone,” Bolan concluded. “Making a delivery.”
“And now they are here,” Ous agreed.
Bolan picked up his pace. They passed through an open-air alley of rug sellers. The rain had abated, and the bazaar was swiftly filling with shoppers.
The soldier caught sight of a woman in a full-length burka. Similarly clad women surrounded her, but the one he had his eye on carried a woven basket about the size of a hatbox. She wasn’t hurrying but she moved with purpose. Bolan’s instincts spoke to him as he moved through the crowd to intercept her.
“What do you think of that one, Ous?” Bolan asked.
Ous’s smile flashed through his beard. “You have keen eyes, indeed. She walks with purpose, and that purpose is not shopping. On any other day, were I taking tea and watching people pass, I would guess that the basket she carried was a prop, and that she went to meet her lover.”
“You see our suspect’s curves beneath all that fabric?”
“Nothing in life is certain except God’s will and the words of the Prophet. But I would wager on it, my friend. I would wager a great deal.”
Bolan was willing to back Ous’s wager. He spoke quietly into his throat mike. “Bear?”
“I have eyes on you, and you’re right on top of the signal.”
“Keller, we’re moving in,” Bolan said. “Suspect is wearing a burka and carrying a basket, moving due west through the rug sellers.”
“I have visual on you and Ous. Moving to intercept.”
“Ous, hang back a bit. Cover me,” Bolan instructed.
“Of course.”
Bolan caught up to the woman and followed her for just a moment. There wasn’t a speck of blood on her burka or her basket. As an American man, if he stripped the burka off the wrong woman there was likely to be a riot, if not a genuine international incident he might have to shoot his way out of. Bolan spoke very quietly. “Zurisaday.”
Ous spoke in his earpiece at the same moment. “I believe some of the women around her are her escorts. You have been noticed!”
The basket fell from the woman’s hands to the ground. The lid popped off, and Corporal Convertino’s, gray, frozen-in-agony head rolled into the mud. A pair of heavily kohled violet eyes glared pure murder at Bolan, and a slabsided Russian Pernach machine pistol snaked from under the burka.
Bolan’s knife hand chopped the chattering weapon out of the woman’s hand. The bazaar erupted into screams and chaos at the sound of the shots. His back-fist shot at the woman sent Zurisaday’s eyes fluttering like slot machines. He whirled, and a second blow flattened the killer into the mud.
He turned again as a robed woman screamed and plunged a foot-long, blood-crusted Khyber knife at Bolan’s chest. He caught her wrist and continued his turn, hip-tossing the shrieking killer in a windmill of limbs into a rug seller’s table. The soldier caught sight of a woman five yards away cocking a stubby submachine gun.
“Ous!” Bolan called.
The Afghan strode up from behind and clouted her with his pistol.
Another woman struggled slightly to get her Russian submachine gun out of the folds of her burka. Another woman hit her from behind in a flying tackle that sent both of them sliding a good six feet through the mud. Keller rose to one knee and secured her suspect. Bolan scanned for more targets. He waited for whomever Zurisaday was meeting to declare themselves. Cries of outrage and alarm were rippling outward across the bazaar. The remaining enemy had no need to attack just yet. It would be only a matter of moments bef
ore the good citizens of Sangin, a good portion of whom owned Kalashnikov rifles, took restoring order into their own hands, and the bad guys could take that opportunity to blend in and launch their attack.
“Control! I need air! Now!”
Farkas’s voice came back over the thudding sound of rotor noise. “Copy that! ETA thirty seconds!”
Bolan tore rope from an awning and bound two of the suspects. “Keller! Get the truck!”
Agent Keller ran for it. Instantly she was one more running figure in the mob wearing a burka. The woman Bolan had thrown rose groggily and he hip-tossed her next to Zurisaday for her trouble. Ous strode forward and threw his captive on the growing pile of women. He scooped a fallen submachine gun and glanced around anxiously.
“In but moments our position will become untenable!”
Bolan knelt and put Corporal Convertino’s head back in the basket.
Salvation came in the form of a USMC UH-1Y Venom helicopter dropping out of the sky like a stone. The chopper hovered over the bazaar like an angry leviathan, its door guns tracking for targets. The rotor wash of its twin General Electric turboshaft engines sent awnings flying like ghosts, and grain and light goods swirling from their baskets. The locals ran crouching and clutching their hats and burkas in the vortex. Unfortunately there was no good place for the chopper to land.
The truck’s horn blared over the roar. Melons exploded into shrapnel rinds as Keller clipped a stall. The lanes between stalls and stands were too narrow for the pickup, and she sent goods of all descriptions flying. Mud sprayed as she slid to a halt. Bolan and Ous tossed the bound women into the bed of the truck and jumped in. Bolan slapped the top of the cab. “Go!”
“Which way!”
There was no way to turn around. “Straight!”
The spinning tires buzz-sawed mud in all directions, and then the truck suddenly lunged forward like a racehorse out of the starting gate. Tables and tents fell in disarray, leaving a wake of commerce carnage. A bullet whined off the top of the cab, but it could have come from anywhere. Keller kept hitting the horn, and shoppers and shopkeepers leaped out of the path of the plunging pickup. Keller found the edge of the bazaar and drove under an ancient arch. The truck burst onto the streets of Sangin with the helicopter above orbiting like a guardian angel.
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