“Yesuh!” Syed called. “Show them the Russian graveyard, and perhaps you will learn something!”
Bolan didn’t care for Syed’s smile at all.
Yesuh was oblivious as he pulled on his hat and happily ran to join the artillery practice party. The young man’s happiness was short-lived as they walked away from camp and down into the maze of ravines. Despite Yesuh being sent along as a guide, Guwanc took the lead and seemed to know exactly where he was going. Kashgar drifted back to bring up the rear. That didn’t stop the two men from throwing comments back and forth and laughing. Bolan was pretty sure they were speaking Tajik.
Bolan’s translator spoke up. “Okay, it’s a little bit garbled on my end but they’re speaking Tajik, and mostly complaining about things like the food and the company they’re keeping.”
Guwanc looked back and caught Bolan staring at him. He gave Bolan a smile and Yesuh a leer. The youth drifted back to walk beside Bolan. The young man was very aware that something was wrong as they went deeper into the maze. Guwanc looked back and said something to Kashgar, who said something back. Both men laughed.
Yesuh shivered.
The soldier noted they had just switched languages.
Bolan’s translator started to panic. “Oh my God! I think they’re speaking Chinese!” The Executioner was aware of that, and pretty sure they were speaking Mandarin. He walked on in apparent oblivious bliss.
“We’re patching in a Chinese language guy! Hold on!”
Guwanc and Kashgar kept up a steady chatter broken by frequent bursts of unpleasant laughter.
Yesuh cringed closer to Bolan.
A new voice came through the earpiece. It was a female Chinese language expert and she sounded as though she had just been woken up. She spoke with a mild Chinese accent. “Hello, can you hear me?”
Bolan scratched his ear in the affirmative.
“Okay, well, it’s nothing good. They’re frequently referring to you as ‘the retard.’ Um…stuff about your parent’s sexual proclivities, it sounds like they are taking you to a…vehicle graveyard?” The translator grew quiet. “Okay, basically, they’re going to shoot you through the knees and then carve on you to see if they can make you talk, and if you really can’t, they’re going to have fun with you anyway.”
Bolan contemplated the PSM assassination pistol tucked into his sheepskin vest and the Khyber knife thrust through his sash. He was pretty sure he could get the pistol out and kill one. Probably the same story with the knife. Guwanc gave Yesuh another leer and said something choice. Kashgar returned the sentiment in kind.
“Now they are talking about someone named ‘Yesuh.’ They’re saying…” The translator trailed off for a personally disturbed moment. “The way they’re talking, it sounds like he’s a young man, and they’re speculating on whether he is a virgin or not and, the…kinds of fun, they’re going to have with him in the vehicle graveyard, as well.”
Bolan dropped to one knee, put the crosshairs of the Gustav’s optical sight on Guwanc’s upper back and fired.
What Guwanc and Kashgar didn’t know was that when Bolan had stepped behind a boulder during the morning march to relieve himself, he had loaded one of the training rounds into the rocket launcher. The training round was designed to have the same ballistics as the standard High Explosive Anti-Tank round. Thunder echoed in the ravine as Guwanc took an inert seven-pound shell between the shoulder blades at slightly more than eight hundred feet per second.
In all his years of battle Bolan had never seen a Godswat quite like it.
Guwanc flew through the air and partially flew apart at the same time. Behind Bolan, Kashgar screamed as the rocket launcher vented him with the back blast. Yesuh gaped in shock. Kashgar kept screaming as he staggered back, clawing at his head. Bolan pulled his knife. He had to give Kashgar credit. The man was tough. He’d dropped his rifle, but despite having half his face boiled off, he drew his knife. Bolan set down the smoking rocket launcher. Kashgar screamed some Chinese invective at Bolan and lunged. The soldier took off Kashgar’s hand at the wrist for his trouble. The blade hissed across Kashgar’s throat before he could register the loss of his hand. Kashgar gave up his cares and fell dead to the dust.
Bolan glanced at Yesuh.
Yesuh opened his mouth and then closed it again. It was evident he wanted to run but he was too scared to move. Bolan wiped off his blade on Kashgar’s sash and sheathed it. He picked up the man’s rifle, took his bandolier of magazines and gave them to Yesuh. The youth stared at the gift in awe. Bolan went through Kashgar’s and Guwanc’s clothes but found nothing useful. He laid the rocket launcher back across his shoulder and pointed down the path with a shrug. Yesuh gaped in shock and nodded back.
“Yes, Mighty One!”
Yesuh lead Bolan to the practice range.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
It was a fascinating story. Syed stopped short of turning to stone while he listened to it. The camp stood around in complete silence while Saboor asked Yesuh to tell the tale a third time. It was a simple story and Yesuh didn’t have much problem sticking to it, plus it had the benefit of being the God’s truth as far as Yesuh saw it. Kashgar and Guwanc had repeatedly laughed at the Mighty One. The Mighty One, hard of hearing that he was, had had enough and slain them. Then Yesuh, at the Mighty One’s request, had led him to the valley of slain Russian tanks. Whereupon the Mighty One had put three practice rounds into the rusting hulk of a Soviet invasion-era armored personnel carrier at a range of 700 meters. Then they had taken a light lunch Yesuh had packed and returned. Bolan kept the smile off his face as Yesuh proclaimed that the Mighty One had given him Kashgar’s rifle, and, that since the Mighty One had slain Kashgar, the rifle was the Mighty One’s to do with as he saw fit, and Yesuh intended to keep it.
Bolan stood impassively during the interrogation.
Sohail and Shahid ran back into camp breathlessly. According to Shahid, Kashgar had been burned and slaughtered. The state of Guwanc’s corpse beggared description. Once again Pashtunwali was on Bolan’s side. Perhaps the greatest pillar of “The Way of the Pahstuns” was Badal. Its literal translation was “Justice,” but all too often it was equated with revenge. Even a mere taunt generally required the shedding of blood. Central Asia was a rough place, and the best that the mentally or physically handicapped could hope for was benign neglect. Usually their lot was horrific abuse. However, Bolan wasn’t a drooling idiot. He was the Mighty One, and if the Mighty One was indeed an idiot, then he was an idiot savant when it came to violence.
Kashgar and Gawanc had been foolish enough to taunt the Mighty One. If the Mighty One had slain them in almost biblical fashion, well?
Badal.
All was well with the world.
They were foreign fighters, and no one liked them anyway.
Saboor stared at Bolan as if he had just dropped in from the planet Mars. Syed eyed Bolan with reptilian cold. Yesuh looked up to Bolan like God on High. Everyone else stared in semireligious awe. The Mighty One’s mojo was going through the roof.
Ous shrugged. “Forgive me, brothers, but is this matter finished?”
Saboor opened his mouth and closed it. He turned to Syed, who spun on his heel and walked away. Bolan measured his nemesis. Syed was backing down just a little too much for the soldier’s taste. The translator spoke in his ear. “I have a priority signal coming through from Control.”
Bolan scratched his ear to signal in the affirmative. Agent Keller spoke in his ear. “Okay, Cooper. I’ve got bad news. Zurisaday escaped custody this morning. Without a trace. Not even a blip on the surveillance camera. One second she’s sitting cross-legged in a corner of her cell staring like the psycho she is, and the next she’s just gone. Don’t ask me how. The Pentagon is sending a counterintelligence and containment agent, whatever the hell that is, but currently no one has a clue.”
Bolan didn’t know exactly how Zurisaday had escaped from a U.S. military base, but he did have a clue. The assassin-seductress had
escaped the same way a dagger had been placed on Ous’s and Farkas’s pillows while they slept. “Watch your ass,” Keller concluded.
It wasn’t bad advice.
BOLAN RESTRAINED HIMSELF from scratching, and contemplated the wind. It whipped and plucked at the camouflage netting and the tents. Everyone knew a sandstorm was coming. He kept his fingers away from his beard through sheer force of will. The itch was turning into a little ripple of hell across his features. His genuine beard was coming in. His own hair pushed through the adhesive and fought for space with the fake beard like the slow-motion violence of trees fighting for sunlight in the forest. The battle for Bolan’s face itched like a thousand mosquito bites longing to be scratched. He knew once he started scratching, his camouflage would be a highly suspicious and bloody patchwork within hours. Bolan drank tea and endured.
The good news was that he now had four live, antitank rounds for the recoilless rocket launcher at his disposal. Bolan watched longingly as Ous gave his own hennaed beard a good, long scratching. Ous leaned back and lit his pipe.
“So, brother. Agent Keller reports Zurisaday has escaped?”
Bolan smiled. Ous had taken to calling him “brother.” It wasn’t a bad sobriquet for the situation. They were brothers in arms, and brothers on a suicide mission to infiltrate a suicide mission. “Seems so.”
“I find this profoundly disturbing.”
Bolan had to admit it wasn’t good news.
“Do you believe she will come here?” Ous asked.
It was an interesting thought. The hearing aid Bolan wore allowed both Keller’s team and the Farm to track his whereabouts. Gunships and marines were waiting for him hot on the pad 24/7. Bolan would give a lot to listen in on a conversation between the giant and Zurisaday. On the other hand the giant wasn’t here and if and when Zurisaday showed up, Bolan didn’t think his role camouflage would fool the female assassin for long.
“Bismillah!” Ous exclaimed. “Who do you think that woman is?”
A woman in full burka walked out of the shadows of the ravine accompanied by two strange men who walked in as though they owned the place. The sight of a woman in a Taliban suicide-mission camp had all eyes front and forward. The woman ignored the looks and stares. Her bodyguards glared bloody murder at anyone foolish enough to let them see their roving eyes. Bolan pulled his pakol low across his brow and nestled deeper into the shadows of the boulders that demarcated his and Ous’s personal space. Ous was right. A burka hid a woman from head to toe, but the discerning eye could see all. Bolan had seen that carriage, that ankle, and that body swaying beneath the folds of a burka before.
A seductress and assassin known by the name Zurisaday was in camp.
She had arrived in the FATA from her escape from the holding cell at Sangin Base in less than forty-eight hours. That implied all sorts of things. One of which almost had to be an airdrop, and that implied a whole other set of hostile well-organized and structured variables. The situation was getting worse by the second. Ous frowned around the stem of his pipe. “God help us, but do you think that young woman could be—”
“Yeah, it’s her.” Bolan tapped his earpiece for attention. “Message for Control, Zurisaday is in camp. I—”
Keller’s voice came back immediately. “No way!”
“Way.”
“I’m arranging immediate extraction! Gunships are inbound! You’re—”
“You’re going to get me, Ous and Yesuh killed.”
“Striker, she’ll make you.”
“That’s possible.”
Keller’s angry silence ensued. “You’re forcing me into a very bad place.”
“You’re going to force me to kill everyone in this camp. Some are excellent intelligence resources. Belay that order.”
“Holding, Striker, but damn it.”
“Copy that,” Bolan agreed. “We’re just going wait and see what dawn brings.”
“Yeah, well, come dawn me and the gunships are still ETA forty-five minutes to your position. If and when the shit comes down, you’ll be temporarily on your own, Striker.”
It wasn’t exactly the first time Bolan had been in this position, but he had to admit it was a slightly more heinous version than usual. “Copy that.”
“You’re awfully damn calm.”
Bolan sighed. “I’m crying on the inside.”
“Oh, F you.”
“You know? I like the way you don’t swear.”
“Jack hole.”
Bolan smiled. “That’s the spirit, soldier.”
“I’m NCIS. I’m a sailor, bum-wipe.”
“I stand corrected.”
“Do you always talk across secure channels like this?” Keller asked.
“What’s the point of a secure channel if you can’t?”
“Speaking of secure channels, how are your batteries?”
“I’m down to the last pair, and since they took my phone I can’t recharge,” Bolan replied.
“I don’t know how I can get you more but I’ll see what I can do. Sneaking someone into camp is going to be next to impossible. We’ll have to do some kind of airdrop.”
Bolan listened as the wind whistled and moaned through the canyons. An airdrop was going to be problematic. The storm was almost upon him, in more ways than one.
BOLAN STOOD SENTRY. He stared out into the howling sandstorm through the slit in the shemagh tied around his head, and he hunched deeper into his shawl. He stood at the mouth of a canyon but the wind roared right up it like a funnel. The sun was setting and the world was slowly turning orange. Come night it would be a pitch-black maelstrom. Ostensibly he was supposed to be watching the road. It seemed like a somewhat frivolous activity with sixty-mile-per-hour winds and visibility down to ten feet. It struck Bolan as somewhat strange that Syed would post a sentry who was mute and could barely hear a hundred yards from camp during the worst sandstorm in a decade. The camp wasn’t really expecting any visitors.
Bolan was.
He adjusted his shemagh slightly and turned on his translator-transmitter with the same movement. A new voice came through the earpiece. “Good morning, Striker. Or should I say good evening. Ready on our end.”
Bolan coughed three short coughs to copy that. He was aware that he had company, but he didn’t break role and acknowledge it. The soldier stood sentry and waited. It was Syed’s move.
He didn’t have long to wait.
The Hazara walked into Bolan’s field of vision but without any pretense of stealth. Bolan gave him a slight, startled motion and then resumed staring into the sandstorm. The orange tint faded from the dust and sand filling the air. The sun fell behind the mountains and the world turned pink. Syed stood about ten feet away. He spoke loud enough to be heard above the noise of the wind. He spoke in Arabic.
“I do not believe you are deaf.”
Bolan stared impassively into the storm as the rapidly falling sun took the dust through its spectrum.
“Nor do I believe that you are mute. My first guess is that you are Pakistani special forces, though we have no record of you. You are going to tell me who you are and whom you work for. Should you refuse, I think we both know that I can make you.”
For a brief ephemeral moment the dying rays of the sun turned the little world of the canyon a deep, bloody red. Bolan flexed his limited Japanese. “Excuse me, but are you Iga, or Koga clan ninja?”
Bolan’s translator balked. “What the hell—?”
Syed’s sword-size Khyber knife hissed from its sheath. Bolan shouldered the Dragunov and dropped the hammer on the false Hazara. The hammer fell with an impotent click on an empty chamber.
Syed smiled and spoke in English. “Tell me, have you known many of us?”
“I’ve killed members of various clans.”
Syed nodded slowly. The reptilian look came into his eyes. “I believe you.”
“You tampered with my rifle. I’d love to know how you managed that.”
Syed smiled. “I am ninja.
”
“I don’t suppose we could talk about this?”
“Oh, we are going to spend a very long time talking about this. I suspect you will answer my every question. May I recommend you surrender? Depending how much your government values you, there is chance that you might survive the ordeal as a bargaining chip.”
“I’m afraid I’m expendable.”
“And since my clan has taken money—” Syed stepped forward with his sword-size knife held in low guard in front of him “—so am I.” He smiled as Bolan’s hand went to his own blade. The soldier knew from firsthand experience that what most people believed about ninjas was Hollywood crap. They weren’t mystical, triple backflipping kung-fu warriors. From time immemorial to the modern day, ninjas were primarily spies, saboteurs and assassins, usually in that order. They had been the first in medieval Japan to embrace gunpowder. Modern ninjas embraced the most cutting-edge technologies to accomplish their missions. Oh, they still kept the swords and black pajamas on hand and they practiced assiduously with them, mostly to terrorize people or because they also embraced low-tech answers, as well; however, the fact remained that if a ninja found himself in a stand-up fight he had screwed up or gotten caught with his pants down.
Then again, Bolan had never heard of anybody beating a ninja in a knife fight, and Syed’s pants seemed firmly in place. The dead slack of the Dragunov’s trigger proved who had been caught flat-footed.
Syed still smiled as he came forward.
Bolan knew he wasn’t going to beat Syed blade to blade. So did Syed. The Executioner drew his Khyber knife and flung it. The huge cleaver revolved through the air for Syed’s face. The blades clanged as the ninja slapped Bolan’s weapon out of the air contemptuously.
“Come now, you must—” The throw gave Bolan a moment to jump back a good three steps. He took the heartbeat’s worth of breathing room to draw his bayonet and click it onto the muzzle of the Dragunov. Bolan lowered the blade-mounted rifle between them like a spear.
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