Assassin's Code

by Don Pendleton

  “I have two, but they’re slim.”

  “Do tell?”

  “One is my rifle. We dressed it up to look like a workhorse,” Bolan said.

  “There’s a tracking device on it!”

  “They probably gave the rifle to someone. The scope has a laser range finder. If someone figured that out, then we have to hope that someone higher up said, “‘Ooh, CIA special, gimme.’”

  “Is it tracking now?”

  “It’s passive. The Radio Frequency Identification Tag doesn’t go active until something, in this case an NSA satellite, hits it with the right frequency.”

  “So how come we haven’t pinged your rifle already?” Keller asked.

  “I figured we’d let it travel for a few days, see where it ends up.”

  “Good thinking. It’s kinda gutsy when you’ve gone dark for three days and we don’t know whether you’re dead, drunk or in jail, but good thinking.”

  “The second option is my phone,” Bolan suggested.

  “Nice.”

  “They probably looked through it for pictures and numbers. If they took it apart then they found the hidden gun function, and then they most likely gave it a hard second look. If they have any kind of counterintelligence operation, they might just have booted it up the food chain.”

  “But they would know if it was sending off a signal.”

  “That’s right. Again, that’s why we don’t fire off the RFID inside until the last second,” Bolan stated.

  “What’s to prevent their people from discovering the RFID even it hasn’t gone active?”

  “The RFID is buried in the metal parts of the phone’s body. We’re just going to have to pray that my people’s hiding skills are better than the enemies seeking.”

  “So when do we activate the RFIDs?” Keller asked.

  “Now.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Islamabad, Pakistan

  A short, very pregnant woman in full burka hurried across the street accompanied by a gruesome individual wearing a turban. Bolan sat on the patio of a bread shop, munching a pastry and drinking Turkish-style coffee out of an ibrik urn. Farkas sat across from him looking nervous. The groomers had done a good job with the beard and local clothing, but it was kind of like putting perfume on a pig. He just didn’t carry himself like a local. Bolan was in full regalia himself, but the scar tissue had been removed and his hair and beard were now brown. With the contact lenses, so were his eyes. The pregnant woman and her companion sat at the bus stop a few yards away from the patio.

  Bolan was mildly surprised when the pregnant woman made eye contact.

  He kept the smile off his face as he recognized the hazel gaze of NCIS Agent Keller flashing at him through the eye slit. Donning a burka made wearing a wire a piece of cake. The soldier whispered his admiration for Keller’s third-trimester couture into his coffee. “Wow, I didn’t know my boys worked that fast.”

  Keller weighed in through the receiver Bolan wore beneath his turban. “It’s an empathy belly pregnancy simulator, jackass, and the damn thing weighs thirty pounds. After Ous’s little lecture on the joys of figure and flow recognition through the folds of a burka I figured it would be the easiest way to change my shape and stride. I borrowed it from a very sensitive young Marine embassy guard who wants to empathize with wife’s joy and pain, and not even the Taliban messes with a pregnant woman.”

  Bolan eyed the bad-ass escorting her. His very real facial scarring made the fake battle damage Bolan had worn look like a shaving accident. The man looked as though he’d French-kissed a claymore mine and lived to tell about it. “Who’s your date?”

  “We are very grateful to receive Subedar Babar on loan from the Black Storks.”

  Subedar was a junior commissioned officer rank in most of the former British colonies in Central and South Asia. Black Storks meant the Subedar was Pakistani Special Service Group. They’d acquired the nickname when the unit had crossed into Pakistan during the Soviet invasion and fought the Russians posing as mujahideen. Bolan had worked with some of their members before. In the world of international special forces, they were considered something of a cowboy outfit. All too often Pakistani army command used them as shock troops rather than genuine spec ops warriors.

  As wild and woolly as they were, they had earned a well-deserved reputation for toughness. They liked to fight, and unlike a lot of high-tech special operations groups around the world that trained often but fought little, the Black Storks had seen nearly continuous action since 1965. Any man above the rank of private had most likely been in-country multiple times, and sadly, and all too often, in-country for the Black Storks was their own backyard. Bolan wasn’t surprised to see a man like Babar operating in the Federally Administered Tribal Area.

  Bolan and Babar exchanged barely perceptible nods.

  The United States wasn’t allowed to run independent missions in Pakistan.

  “How’s Ous?”

  “Resting angrily. He wants to be here. The doctors nearly had to use restraints,” Keller said.

  “Bear, what’s the status on my rifle?” Bolan said.

  “No movement, Striker.” Kurtzman’s voice came back over the receiver. “Unfortunately we don’t have satellite eyes on. As you can imagine, most of the satellites we have stationed over this part of South Asia are heavily tasked at the moment.”

  “Can you get me a transient?” Bolan asked.

  “We can get you a two-hour window in eight hours.”

  “What’s the status on the RFID battery? Best estimate? Maybe about the same, maybe a little longer, maybe a little less.”

  “Bear, I say we go in now. Keller?”

  “I agree.”

  “With a four-man team?” Kurtzman asked. The fact that they knew nothing about Subedar Babar was left unsaid.

  “This is a clock-is-ticking situation. I’m willing and so is Keller. I’m calling it a go.”

  “All right. Keller and Babar are going to take the bus ten blocks up to the objective. We own the driver, and their equipment is on board. It will have a no fares sign on it but will stop for them. They’ll get dropped off near the objective and make their approach openly from the street. You and Farkas are going to be picked up in a cab. Your equipment is inside and you’ll be delivered to an alley near the back. Keller and Babar are going to make a small diversion out front. That’s when you and Farkas are go in the back.”

  “What kind of resistance?”

  “Our CIA scouts say one man openly standing guard out front. One in back. We have no idea how many may be inside. No one has come in or out since they began observation. The guard out front switched off with someone inside, so I would assume at least four. Given the nature of the target, I would assume everyone inside is heavy.”

  The cab pulled up to the bakery and the driver grinned and waved. Bolan rose. “We’re a go.” He and Farkas slid into the back of the cab. The driver passed them two small suitcases. Bolan flipped the latches. The contents were definitely old school and acquired from Pakistani sources. He took out his weapon and held it low. The Uzi submachine gun had seen some hard use. The weapon was accompanied by a foot-long, canvas-wrapped suppressor tube, six loaded magazines and an assortment of grenades. There was a second weapon and accessories just like it in the case.

  Bolan looked over at Farkas.

  He really looked like he missed his government-issue weapons. Bolan loaded his pockets with two ancient M-67 fragmentation grenades that still had dust on them, a tear gas grenade with a suspicious dent and, thankfully, a shiny new flash-bang.

  The Toyota cab wound through the back streets of Islamabad. The capital of Pakistan was a major world metropolis and had been built nearly from the ground up in the 1950s. The cab took them beyond the administrative district into the suburbs. Middle Eastern and South Asian housing styles didn’t go in for front yards, backyards or lawns. They liked private courtyards within. That left many houses presenting a solid, often forbidding face to
the sidewalk.

  The cabdriver pulled over. He was Pakistani but a CIA asset. “Down the street, take a left, down the alley. Fourth door on the right. I will be waiting here if you need alternate extraction.” He paused a moment as he listened to his earpiece. “Our spotter says there is currently one man still guarding the back. Definitely armed. We are five minutes from front door diversion.”

  “Thanks.” Bolan and Farkas took their cases and began slowly walking down the street. The avenue had no streetlights, numbers or signs. In the Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures the prevailing theory in most neighborhoods was if you didn’t know your destination, then you most likely weren’t welcome there anyway.

  Bolan palmed a frag grenade as he and Farkas turned the corner and began their approach.

  Their intel was good. Four doors down a large man in a tracksuit who obviously had a weapon under his left arm stood smoking, and he seemed bored as most guards usually were. Bolan timed his pace. The guard instantly came to attention as the two strangers approached. The Executioner broke eye contact as if he were intimidated and mumbled as he closed in, “Salam.”

  The guard deigned to incline his head slightly. “Sala—” He raised his head at the sound of a scream out front. It was clear at the same time someone had spoken in his earpiece to him. As the sentry raised his head, Bolan hit him with an uppercut that had the weight of the grenade in his hand behind it. The sentry’s jaw broke, and his eyes rolled back in his head as he sagged against the door and fell. The screaming out front continued as Keller made noise like she was being beaten.

  They didn’t have much time.

  The door was heavy, blue-painted wood with a massive brass lock. Security was likely very simple. No one opened the door unless the guard outside gave the call sign. Bolan broke out his picks and swiftly worked the lock. Farkas locked and loaded the Uzis and spun the suppressors over their muzzles. The old brass tumblers turned under the soldier’s torsion wrenches, and the bolt slide back with a click. Bolan took a weapon and a magazine pack from Farkas and opened the door. The interior alcove was tile floor and bare walls.

  He spoke into his wire. “Sentry down, we’re in.”

  “Copy that,” Keller came back.

  Bolan moved down a narrow, dim hall toward the sounds of talking and professional sports. He stopped at the open entryway. It wasn’t unknown to find four men in this part of the world sitting on a sofa watching cricket on television. Back in the FATA the fact that all the men had automatic weapons close at hand wouldn’t have raised many eyebrows, either. The fact that they wore Western clothes and this was suburban Islamabad raised the bar of suspicion slightly. Bolan stepped into the room followed by Farkas. The jaws of the four sports fans dropped in unison. Bolan raised his finger to his lips in the universal gesture. “Who speaks English?”

  The man on the far left of the couch raised a shaky hand. “I—”

  The man on the far right lunged for his weapon, snarling something. The other two followed. Bolan’s Uzi chuffed in three rapid bursts and three of the gunmen sagged into the couch never to rise again. The man on the left screamed and covered his head. Responding shouts echoed through the house.

  Keller spoke across the wire. “Sentry down! We’re in!”

  “Copy that!” Bolan put his foot on the talker’s chest and let him admire the smoke oozing out of the Uzi’s suppressor an inch from the bridge of his nose. “How many more?”

  “Four!” the man gasped. “No! Five!”

  “Where?”

  “Upstairs!”

  “Computer! Where?”

  “Up—” Bolan drove the steel strut of the Uzi’s folding stock into the side of the man’s neck. He went white and went fetal.

  “Farkas, on my six!” Bolan swept the bottom floor. He and Farkas linked with Keller and Babar. Keller had ditched her burka and wore armor and a NCIS windbreaker. Bolan loped up the stairs. “Keller, break right!”

  Bolan broke left, hearing furious activity in the room at the end of the hall. He kicked the door and the man inside screamed. The man was in front of a desktop furiously deleting files. Bolan walked his fire across the desk and put three rounds into the power strip. Computer activity instantly ceased. The technician snarled in rage and went for the pistol on the desk. He screamed in pain as Bolan put a burst through his hand and all quick-draw activity ceased, as well. “Farkas, secure him and the computer!”

  Bolan moved to the other end of the hall.

  Keller and Babar were in the entry position on either side of a heavy wooden door. Babar was getting ready to kick it. Keller jerked a thumb. “We got three hostiles in there.”

  Beyond the door a desk crashed as it was turned over. The bad guys were barricading themselves in. Babar nodded. “On three. One, two—” Bolan recognized a muffled click-clack sound beneath Babar’s countdown, and he held up a hand to wait. Babar frowned. “What?”

  “Squad Automatic Weapon,” the soldier explained, taking out his tear gas grenade.

  Babar frowned.

  The Executioner pointed to the open transom above the door.

  Babar beamed and took out tear gas, as well. The two men pulled pins and two cylinders looped over the transom. The effect inside was immediate. A light machine gun began chewing holes in the door at 800 rounds per minute. Everyone hugged the wall. Two grenades for a single room would very quickly turn into a lethal concentration. Long before that it would become intolerable. The weapon within died as its belt ran dry. A ragged, coughing, “Allahu Akbar!” tore from several throats. Bolan motioned for Keller and Babar to fall back to the bedroom door down the hall. The Executioner stayed plastered against the wall. Tear gas oozed out of the transom and fell down the door like a waterfall of fog. Behind the door, men hacked and screamed. AKs opened up and tore more holes low through the door as someone else pulled the bar. Bolan yanked the pin on his flash-bang and tossed it to the floor. The door flew open in a flurry of AK fire.

  Bolan covered his eyes with his hands and stuck his thumbs in his ears.

  The terrorists came through the door like Butch and Sundance in Bolivia. The flash-bang went off, the blast effect sending the CS whirling in crazy eddying gas devils. The first two men out the door staggered like drunks, blinded from the flash and their inner ears overcome from the blast wave and the decibels. Bolan let them go past firing blindly.

  The third man charged out.

  He’d reloaded his SAW and he came out blazing, hosing down the hallway as well as his sensory compromised compatriots. Bolan stuck out a leg, and the terrorist went flying, swan-diving to the tiles. Bolan was on him instantly. He rolled the gasping, wheezing, stunned terrorist over and put a knee in his chest. Despite the tear gas stinging his eyes and beginning to burn his lungs, Bolan smiled down into the swollen, weeping bearded face beneath him. “Saboor.”

  GHOLAN DAEI wasn’t amused. “This is a joke.”

  Azimi and Khahari wrung their hands. It was Khahari who held up a DVD. “I assure it is not. The safehouse outside Islamabad was attacked.”

  Daei loaded the disk into his laptop. Every safehouse he used was wired for sight and sound. The disk itself was proof that the safehouse had been attacked and what was recorded on a daily basis had been transmitted. The chance of the transmission being traced was infinitesimal, and even if U.S. spy satellites had picked up on the encrypted transmission and located the receiver site, all they would find would be a gutted and abandoned room clear on the other side of the capital. Even that assumed that they would receive military and police permission and assistance in the investigation.

  Daei had spread immense sums of money throughout the capital to prevent such assistance. He frowned as he watched the men guarding the front and back doors be taken. He raised an eyebrow as he realized three men and a woman were taking the house. “Keller.”

  “Yes, great one,” Azimi agreed.

  Daei raised an eyebrow as the feed covered the assault from room to room. “Scarface Babar.”<
br />
  Khahari nodded. “Yes.”

  Daei had initially suspected that “Scarface” Babar might have been the Mighty One. All doubt on that score was erased as Daei watched a tall, forbidding man lope through the safehouse like a wolf; that was when he wasn’t striding through the building as though he owned it. Daei had heard that a true master of anything showed it in everything he did. Even in a grainy, black-and-white surveillance tape, the man’s room-clearing tactics and situational awareness were something to see if one knew what one was looking at. “The Mighty One.”

  “We think it can be no other.”

  Daei’s knuckles creaked. Once again he wanted to lay his hands on the Mighty One. Once again they were in the same city. Once more they were almost within arm’s reach. “Copies of this have been sent to the appropriate people?”

  “I thought you might wish to see it first.”

  Daei nodded. Despite the movement’s unity, it pleased Daei that his minions first loyalty was to him. “Send the copies.”

  “As you wish.”

  “Leave me now, I need to make a phone call,” Daei ordered.

  Khahari tarried a moment. “Great One?”

  Daei tolerated the question. “You are concerned.”

  “The Americans, they have Saboor,” Khahari stated.

  “It is most unfortunate,” Daei conceded.

  “But won’t they…” Khahari left the implication hanging between them.

  “Tell me, young brother. Why is it that we shall win?”

  Khahari stood straighter. “Because we are strong, and our enemies are weak.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because our enemies worship life, and we worship death.”

  “How can this be?”

  “Our enemies will fight to preserve their corrupt way of life. We will die to spread the True Faith.”

  “That is correct.”

  Khahari nodded. “They cannot break him.”

  Daei gazed upon his young suicide soldier. “All men can be broken. Always remember that. It comes down to the nature of our enemy. We are stronger than they are. We are willing to do what they are not.” Daei folded his arms across his massive chest, “The Americans have neither the will nor the wherewithal to do what it would take to break Saboor. Even if they try to succeed with the methods the United States Military can stomach, it will take far too long, and they will be too late.”