Syed scowled.
Bolan’s translator shouted across the link. “Striker! Striker!”
He ignored his linguist and lunged. Syed read Bolan’s thrust correctly as a feint. Syed brought up his blade. Bolan’s torqued the long rifle around for a jaw-breaker buttstroke. His opponent saw that, as well, and leaned away from it with ease. But the buttstroke was a feint, as well. In a knife fight the primary target was the other man’s weapon. At over nine pounds and more than four feet in length the Dragunov was large. To partially offset that, Mr. Dragunov had designed the weapon with a skeleton stock. Bolan’s buttstroke short-arced down over Syed’s blade. The cutout slid over Syed’s knife, his hand and wrist and jammed halfway down his forearm.
For the second time in their brief association, Syed’s eyes flew wide in shock.
Bolan twisted the rifle with every ounce of strength he had.
Syed’s wrist snapped and the blade fell from his hand.
The man’s round kick thudded into Bolan’s thigh. He had been trying to shatter a knee, but the angle and the rifle between threw him off. Bolan turned, dropped to one knee and heaved his adversary over his shoulder by sheer muscular force. Syed went flying. The ninja’s locked and broken arm prevented him from rolling out of the throw or slapping out to break his fall. He bounced with spectacular force.
Syed’s broken bones splintered as Bolan brutally torqued the rifle around again to snap the barrel across the ninja’s throat. That second moment of shock gave Bolan the heartbeat he needed to control the ninja’s free hand. The soldier put a knee and his 220 pounds on the Russian rifle, crushing Syed’s trachea. Bolan saw white as Syed’s knee bounced into his kidney. He took the pain of a second and third blow. Syed contorted like a yoga master and tried to hook a leg around Bolan’s neck to throw him off. The soldier shrugged off the leg and kept pressing down. Cartilage in Syed’s throat crackled but stopped just short of popping.
The light in the canyon turned purple. So did Syed.
The ninja’s struggles went spasmodic. His writhings and attacks slowed as Bolan relentlessly choked him out with the unyielding steel of the Dragunov’s barrel. Syed was turning a nice cyanotic blue. Bolan watched the light of life behind the man’s eyes die.
Bolan let up at the last second.
Syed gave a strangled gasp. Bolan rammed his thumbs into the enfeebled ninja’s carotids. Syed’s brain was already starving for oxygen but Bolan gave him a full ten seconds of compression to make sure the ninja was really unconscious.
Ninjas were tricky. Bolan had learned that long ago, the hard way.
Bolan disengaged the rifle from the ninja’s shattered arm and rose. He had to use the weapon as a crutch to lever himself up. He would be black and blue where the ninja had hit him. His kidneys ached horribly. Bolan gave it fifty-fifty whether he would be peeing blood in the morning. Then again, you didn’t capture a ninja alive every day. As a matter of fact it happened just about never.
Bolan considered his catch.
Tying up Syed was out. Ninjas had a habit of not staying tied up.
The soldier raised the butt of the Dragunov and kneecapped the man. Syed groaned but remained unconscious.
Night was falling fast.
“This is Striker, I’m all right. Put Control on the line.”
“Already here,” Keller replied. “Was waiting on you.”
“You remember what I said about the bad guys buying their assassins off the rack?”
“Yeah.”
Keller couldn’t keep the disbelief out of her voice when he told her. “A ninja?”
“Yeah, and he’s alive. You need to get someone here to pick him up, stat.”
“In this storm?”
“The storm is supposed to last until dawn, and it’s the only cover you’re going to get.”
“Right. I’m on it.”
“And bring me some batteries.”
“Anything else?”
Bolan swiftly checked his rifle. “A new trigger group for a Dragunov SVD.”
“Oh-hh…kay.”
Bolan shook his head as he reviewed what if any opportunity he’d given the ninja to tamper with his weapon. Probably when they had sent him off to rocket practice. He stared down at the wheezing, temporarily crippled ninja and wondered how the Mighty One was going to get out of this one.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Bolan stepped into camp as the sun rose and the storm abated. He walked in with fresh batteries and a new trigger group for his rifle. He entered camp without Syed. The entire camp was armed, awake, and awaiting who might step out of the storm. Bolan had known when he had been volunteered for guard duty something was up, and he and Ous had worked out their script if Bolan came back alive and alone. He strode straight up to Ous and narrowed his eyes to tell his partner Syed wasn’t coming back. Bolan made a number of angry gestures pointing back the way he had come, pointing toward the tank graveyard and then pointing at Saboor.
Ous watched the performance and turned to Saboor with a sigh. “I believe my disciple is growing weary of your friends insulting him, much less attempting to kill him. I believe he is not convinced that you are our friend.”
Bolan pointed west.
“I believe my friend thinks it would be best if he and I left this camp.”
Saboor gave Bolan a very unhappy look. “I will not stop you should you wish to leave, but I will tell you, our mission is nigh. Indeed, we leave tomorrow at dawn. His skills will be utterly necessary to our success. I beg you to stay.”
“If I stay, he will, but out of loyalty to me.”
“I understand this. Please try to tell him that Guwanc and Kashgar were little more than mercenaries who fought for money, and no one can read the mind of a Hazara. Those who remain in this camp are pure, and their place in heaven assured. We need the Mighty One, and we need you, learned one.”
Agent Keller spoke in Bolan’s ear. “If you feel good about it, I’d really like you to continue the mission. Your ninja has clammed up, like, well, like you’d expect a ninja to clam up. It’s going to take time to turn him into any kind of an intelligence asset, and right now we still have no clue what Saboor, Zurisaday and your giant have in mind.”
Bolan stared at Ous, who went into a very long and involved pantomime while speaking to him very loudly in Dari Persian. When Ous was finished, Bolan grunted and stalked away.
Ous turned to Saboor. “We will stay.”
Saboor clapped his hands. “Excellent, by the way, can either of you drive a truck?”
BOLAN DROVE and Ous rode shotgun. The battered ZIS 151 flatbed lurched and bounced over the mountain track like a ship in heavy seas. The ZIS had once mounted thirty-six tubes for launching Soviet-era 82 mm artillery rockets. The rocket launchers and the mount had been removed, and the ZIS had been crudely converted into a fence truck for livestock. The flatbed bucked as it mounted protruding rocks and dropped as it hit dips and potholes. The road looked like it had taken a recent salvo of Soviet artillery rockets. Bolan knew from experience this was the state of most roads in Afghanistan. There was no shoulder, no guardrail, and the mountain road fell away scant inches from the vehicle’s wheels. “Infrastructure” was a strange and wonderful word that had yet to make much headway in Afghanistan.
Saboor led the convoy in an equally old Volga station wagon that someone had turned into a convertible with a hacksaw. He had Zurisaday and Yesuh with him posing as his wife and son, and two goats in the back for good measure. They were about seventy-five yards ahead. If they were stopped for any reason, they were unrelated travelers and Ous would complain that the car ahead was slowing them. The rest of the suicide squad was staying half a mile back and were evenly spread out between old Toyota Tacomas in fairly decent shape. Zurisaday’s two bodyguards were each in one of the trucks.
“What do you believe our objective to be?” Ous asked.
“Given that we’ve got a twelve-man squad, a flatbed, and a Carl Gustav recoilless rocket launcher, I woul
d say there’s a truck bomb in someone’s future. The Goose is to pave the way for the bomb,” Bolan reasoned. “What’s bothering me is that we’re across the Pakistan border in the FATA region. It’s hard to imagine what our target could be unless we cross west soon. There are no Coalition forces anywhere nearby or any major cities.”
“Perhaps we are going to, as Agent Keller would say, ‘settle the hash’ of some recalcitrant warlord?”
“Hard to imagine getting a bunch of wannabe martyrs motivated with that for an objective.”
“Perhaps that is why we have not been told of our objective?”
“Would you want a palace revolt with this crew?”
“No, and indeed, twice you have brought our happy band of martyrs close to just such a thing.”
Bolan nodded. “It risked the mission, but both times the alternative was my being tortured until I talked.”
“Yes, the mission continues, and I will admit I prefer both you and Yesuh intact.”
“Something else is going on. I just haven’t figured it out yet.”
Saboor’s brake lights flashed ahead. The Soviet-era handheld radio unit sitting on the dash squawked. “Stop the truck.”
Bolan braked with fifty yards between them.
The radio crackled. “Turn off the engine.”
Bolan kept one foot on the brake, one on the gas and the engine running. Saboor stood in the driver’s seat. Yesuh looked up from between the goats in the back to find himself staring down the barrel of Saboor’s 9 mm pistol. Zurisaday stood in the passenger seat, burka and all, and snapped open the telescoping tube of an RPG-18 anti-tank rocket into the firing position.
Bolan’s earpiece crackled. Keller’s voice came across the line. “What’s happening?”
“We’re made.”
“Oh my God. Cooper, you’re over thirty kilometers on the wrong side of the Pakistan border. I don’t know if I can authorize gunships or extraction. It will take time to coordinate with our Pakistani—”
“Copy that, I’ll get back to you.”
Saboor spoke into his handheld radio. This time he spoke in English. “Turn off the engine and throw out your weapons, or I will shoot the boy.”
“Should he do that,” Ous said, “he risks a blood feud with Yesuh’s village.”
“That won’t be enough to stop him,” Bolan said.
“Because he and the ninja were perfectly willing to let him be raped and tortured?”
“No, that was something guilt and shame would prevent young Yesuh from ever admitting.”
Ous grimaced. “So, Saboor will shoot the boy no matter what we do?”
“Yesuh has only one chance.”
“And what is that?” Ous queried.
Zurisaday gave Bolan a happy wave over her launch tube.
Bolan came to his decision. “We make him irrelevant.”
Ous frowned. “And how does he—”
The soldier stomped on the gas. The ZIS lurched forward and Bolan cranked the wheel.
Zurisaday pumped her trigger and the RPG-18 belched smoke and fire.
Bolan drove off the cliff. It wasn’t truly a cliff, but it was an incline that could be charitably described as precipitous. There was no way to drive down the mountain, and there was no road waiting at the bottom. The best Bolan could hope for would be a controlled crash. He had no time for Zurisaday’s rocket. The fact the he and Ous were not ascending heavenward on a pillar of fire told him she had missed. A tightly contained corner in the back of his mind wondered about whether she had a reload. Bolan chose a line down the mountainside that avoided the worst of the outcropping and scrubby, twisted pines. The worst was all he could avoid.
A prayer tore out of Ous’s mouth as the truck took a horrific bounce.
The wheel went greasy slick beneath Bolan’s hand as the tires beneath him bit into nothing but air. The truck bounced again and went fully airborne as it flew off a ridge of protruding rock. The brown river below flew up at them with sickening speed. Bolan shoved himself across the bench seat to avoid getting impaled by the steering column. “Hold on!”
The flatbed hit the stream bumper-first. Ous lost his bracing and took a good bounce on the dashboard. Bolan partially lost his balance with the impact and Ous got the hammer and anvil treatment as he cushioned the soldier’s bounce. The truck stood teetering on its nose for several groaning seconds and slowly flipped. The homemade iron fencing in the bed bent and lessened the impact. The truck had no seat belts. Bolan and Ous lay wadded upside down on the roof of the cab in about a foot of water.
“Ous!”
The Afghan gasped something unintelligible.
Bolan tried to wriggle himself upright. “We’ve gotta—”
Zurisaday’s second rocket whooshed into the exposed back axle of the flatbed. The chassis shuddered and heat washed past the windows.
The soldier grabbed at the strap of his rifle, but it was trapped behind the seat. He pulled his Stechkin and began hauling on Ous. The man groaned. An object clattered off the bumper. The soldier watched as the Russian frag grenade landed on the large flat rock the truck had barely missed. Bolan flipped his machine pistol to full-auto, shoved his hand out the window and fired. His burst sent the oval grenade into a violent spin. Luckily, high explosive, Russian or otherwise, it wasn’t detonated by impact. The soldier’s second burst skipped the grenade off the rock and into the water. A geyser fountained into the air with the detonation. A second later several small fish and a turtle floated by belly-up.
“Brother!” Bolan yelled. “We have to go!”
Ous’s groans turned to gasps of effort as he followed Bolan’s pull. Another grenade landed behind the front tires and clattered into the engine compartment. Smoke and sparks blasted from the vents as it detonated. Bolan kicked open the driver’s door and rose with his Stechkin leveled. Two bullets from Saboor’s pistol whined into the bowels of the truck. The Executioner burned the rest of his magazine on full-auto toward the top of the cliff. Saboor ducked back.
Bolan grabbed Ous and dragged him out of the truck. The Afghani sagged against the driver’s side wheel. Throwing him into a firemen’s carry, the Executioner broke into a labored run. Water splashed around him knee-deep.
He reached shore, staggering forward, determined to put an outcropping between himself and Saboor’s unrelenting fire.
Bolan unloaded Ous to the ground. “You all right?”
“Just…the wind…knocked from me,” Ous spluttered. “I will be fine.”
The soldier wasn’t so sure. “Control, do you still have a fix on our position?”
The earpiece responded with an empty hiss. Bolan pulled the equipment from his ear. The dunking hadn’t done it any good. There was still a tiny hope that even though he couldn’t communicate Keller could still track him.
Ous stood and steadied himself against the rock wall. “The fire from the top of the gorge has stopped.”
Bolan put his gear in his pocket. He would fiddle with it later. Right now they needed to do some distance. “They’ll be organizing a hunting party.”
“Do you think Saboor could convince our comrades to hunt me?” Ous smiled wanly. “Much less the Mighty One?”
“No.” Bolan glanced up at the sun. It was around ten o’clock in morning. He thought about Zurisaday’s two mysterious bodyguards. “They’ll be bringing in ringers.”
Sangin
GHOLAM DAEI WASN’T pleased. “They drove off the cliff?”
Daei could almost hear Saboor cringing. “Yes, the truck flipped at the bottom of the gorge. Then Zurisaday put a rocket into it.”
“And yet they live?”
“Yes, we dropped grenades on them and myself and the Mighty One exchanged fire.”
“The Mighty One…” Daei shook his massive, shaggy head. The huge muscles of his chest, arms and shoulders flexed of their own volition. Daei yearned to show this unfortunate freak that had fallen into their midst what might truly was. “Describe him to me again.”
Daei frowned in thought. “Tell me about his eyes again.”
“He looks at you and you cannot meet his gaze! Never have I seen such eyes! He—”
“Put Zurisaday on the line.”
The woman’s dulcet, alto voice spoke in Arabic. “Yes?”
“The Mighty One, did you see him?”
“Only from a distance, and we were all dressed against the storm. I regret to say at the time I had many things on my mind, and the story of a retarded rifleman in the ranks was one of the least of them.”
“That is understandable. Tell me. Do you have a paper and pencil handy?”
“I always keep a pad nearby.”
Daei smiled. Zurisaday was a trained assassin, and to ensure her ends she had a very diversified set of skills. “Have Saboor describe the Mighty One to you. In detail, and sketch him.”
“That will take some minutes.”
“I have the time.” Zurisaday had initially been trained as an espionage agent. Her skill at sketching people she had met from memory was astounding. Saboor rattled off his litany of the Mighty One’s attributes a third time. Ten minutes later Zurisaday spoke.
“A formidable man. I am sending you a picture.”
Daei’s phone toned and he opened the picture message. A very dangerous smile passed over his face. “Now I want you to imagine his cobalt-blue eyes, removed the hair, the mustache, the beard and the scar tissue. Imagine him.”
“He is the man who captured me.” Zurisaday’s voice was cold with certainty. “It is the man who is assisting Agent Keller’s investigation.”
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