He would have liked to stop and question them, maybe head off a crime in progress, but they had no time for such diversions now. The crime that he had traveled halfway around the world to stop was worse than any holdup, home invasion, or whatever scheme the nine men in the old truck might have planned.
We choose our battles, Bolan thought. And maybe live to fight another day.
He’d likely never see those men again, or know what they were up to in the night. He’d never know their victims, if in fact they planned to victimize a living soul. It wasn’t something he could carry on his conscience, nothing he could remedy at the expense of letting madmen set the world on fire.
“Bad men, I think,” Pahlavi said.
“I think so, too,” Bolan replied.
“Too bad to let them go.”
“Don’t let the uniform confuse you,” Bolan said. “We’re not the army. If the soldiers were here, they’d kill us first, and let those others go.”
Pahlavi nodded. “Still.”
“I hear you,” Bolan said.
One job at a time. Priorities, he thought.
He focused on their target and the threat of Project X. Pahlavi didn’t know how much security would be in place when they arrived, and their surprise informant from the lab had died before they’d had a chance to ask him any questions. They had floor plans for the lab and other buildings in the compound, if their diagrams were still accurate, but otherwise…
No matter.
Bolan had gone in with less at other hardsites and emerged to tell the story. Odds were only part of it. The rest lay in a winner’s skill, the way he played the game.
And Bolan’s enemies at Project X had never played against the Executioner.
19
Darice Pahlavi lay in darkness, weeping. They had left the light on in her cell for several hours following the latest torture session, then had doused it once again from some remote location, plunging her back into the abyss. She had lost track of time again, had no idea if it was day or night, much less how long she had been in captivity.
Her brother had to have been frantic by this time, but there was nothing he could do about it. Was there? Darius was not a fighting man, although against her better judgment he and other members of the group had purchased weapons, practiced with them under the direction of those who had served their military time. Still, it would be a joke to place Ohm in contention with the Pakistani army. They would all be slaughtered in a moment, and would have accomplished nothing with their sacrifice.
No more than I accomplished, Darice thought, with all my clever plans.
She had been foolish, thinking she could outwit Gazsi and the rest, but she had acted on her conscience and was not ashamed of that. Her only shame was failing when her friends and family, her countrymen—perhaps the very world itself—depended on her to succeed.
Too late.
Her future had been hedged and narrowed to a darkened tunnel, lighted only by intense flashes of agony from time to time, which led inevitably to the grave. It was too late for her to spread the word of Project X, but maybe Darius and Ohm could do it, even if they lacked the final proof.
Perhaps someone would listen to the truth, before it was too late.
She heard the footsteps coming back and gasped in fear. It was too soon! They couldn’t have more questions yet, after so short a time.
It had to be Gazsi, she decided. He enjoyed tormenting her in every way he could, because Darice had spurned his amorous advances more than once. He had her at his mercy now, and nothing that he did to her would lead to any form of discipline for him, because he acted in the name of state security.
She braced herself, preparing for the pain and the humiliation. If the light had still been on, she might have grabbed the slop bucket and flung it at him, but she could not find it quickly in the pitch-darkness of her cell. Instead, she sat up trembling on her cot and faced the general direction of the doorway, face set in a grim expression that she hoped would indicate defiance. Naked as she was, the gesture might be wasted, but it was the best that she could do.
A key scraped in the lock, and as the door swung open, so the light above her blazed on, chasing midnight shadows to the corners of the room. Gazsi stood over her, flanked by his men, examining her body with a look of casual disinterest—and something else.
Was that concern? Even a touch of fear?
“Manoj Shankara,” he declared.
It took a moment for Darice to wrap her mind around the words, identify them as a name, then remember that she knew the man whose name it was.
“Is that a question?” she replied.
“It is a name.”
“I know that.”
“You know him.”
“From working only. Yes.”
She hoped that merely knowing her and working with her would not land Shankara in a prison cell, but there was nothing she could do to help him from her cage.
“He fled the plant today,” Gazsi informed her. “Knocked one of my guards unconscious, crashed his car through both the gates, outran pursuit. There was a beacon in his car, but he discovered it. We’ve found it miles away, tossed in a roadside ditch.”
“You’ve had a bad week altogether,” Darice said, smiling for the first time since she had been arrested.
“It amuses you?”
“Why not? Are you a friend of mine?”
“I could be,” Gazsi said, “despite the recent unpleasantness between us. I can help you, maybe even reinstate you, but before that happens you must first help me.”
“Your generosity is overwhelming,” Darice said. “What must I do?”
“Explain Shankara’s role in Ohm, how long he has been spying on the project, who his contacts are. Above all else, tell me where he has gone.”
Darice was startled by the laughter welling out of her. It made her breasts shake, sparked new stabs of pain between her battered ribs and lower down, but she could not contain it. It was simply too hilarious.
“Manoj a spy!” she said at last, when she could draw a breath to speak. “You’ve lost your mind. They’ll come replace you soon, when they discover you’re insane.”
Gazsi leaped forward, punched her in the face, slamming her back across the cot. Dazed though she was, Darice could hear him shouting at her as if from a thousand yards away.
“Insane, am I? We’ll see about that! Bring the generator and the cables! Now! Goddamn you, move when I say move!”
EXHAUSTED, THROAT SORE from shouting, Gazsi slumped into his office chair, drumming his fingers on the tidy desktop. Waves of anger and frustration made him dizzy, as if he was on a ship at sea, the concrete floor a rolling deck beneath his chair.
His latest session with the traitor had been a total waste of time. The urgency of his superiors’ demands had stolen all the guilty pleasure from it, and on top of that she had known nothing worth the effort. So, she worked beside Shankara on a daily basis and had voiced her reservations about Project X in confidence. Shankara was infatuated with the bitch, and thus had not reported her disloyal remarks, but if he was in fact a member of the group called Ohm, Darice Pahlavi was not aware of it. In fact, she took it as a joke—at least, until the alligator clips had been strategically applied.
But if Shankara wasn’t part of Ohm, why had he fled the plant? Why risk a bullet to the brain or worse, if he was not involved in the conspiracy?
Simrin Amira’s words came back to him. “Today, I think, he heard or learned something that made him desperate.”
But what?
What, in a normal working day, would turn a meek lab rat into a tiger?
Shankara was in love with the girl, Gazsi thought, albeit a one-sided, unrequited sort of puppy love. Her disappearance would have agitated him, but he had appeared to buy the cover story Gazsi had concocted after Darice was arrested.
What had changed his mind?
He heard or learned something that made him desperate.
Heard what? From whom?
What could produce such desperation in a man so meek, unless—
The pieces fell together with such sudden clarity that Gazsi feared he might be ill. He thought about Shankara’s bid to leave the plant that day, pleading an ailment of his bowels. Then Gazsi saw himself, together with an aide, washing their hands together in the men’s room while he blathered on about Darice, his plan to use her for bait to trap her brother and the rest.
Gazsi believed that he had checked the toilet stalls for occupants before he spoke—it was a habit he had cultivated over time—but had he, really? There was no way to be sure, and if Shankara had been listening…
Then he would know Darice was still alive, in danger, likely suffering. And he would know that Gazsi planned to treat her brother much the same.
Something that made him desperate.
And it was Gazsi’s fault.
If he was right, his negligence lay at the root of all their troubles. First, he’d failed to catch Darice consorting with her friends at Ohm, then he had launched a bumbling would-be savior out into the countryside. Shankara could not help Darice, of course, but what if he had some means of contacting Darius Pahlavi and the others? Even if he wasn’t part of Ohm, they might be casual acquaintances. Perhaps Darice had told him where to go and who to see, in the event of an emergency.
If that was the case, it struck a third and fatal blow at Gazsi, since his multiple interrogations had produced no evidence of such a fallback plan, no desperate admission that Darice had roped Shankara into her pathetic web of plotters. Even when Gazsi had asked her the specific questions, she’d denied it.
Could a woman be that strong?
In other circumstances, Gazsi would have relished finding out, but there was no more time to waste on children’s games. He decided no one could ever know how his carelessness had undermined the project, in its most crucial stage. The penalty for failure on that scale would go beyond dismissal, to the dungeon and the execution chamber.
His best hope, all things considered, was to keep the plant secure while Mehran and the others worked their magic in the lab. They had a deadline looming, and if Mehran failed to meet it while the plant stood safe and sound, it would be his neck on the chopping block, not Gazsi’s.
As it should be.
Smiling to himself without conviction, Kurush Gazsi rose and hurried back to work.
“WE’RE ALMOST THERE,” Pahlavi said. “Perhaps half a mile more.”
That meant their headlights would be visible to the compound guards before much longer. “Stop here,” said Bolan. “Kill the lights.”
“Right here?”
“Right here, right now.”
Pahlavi stopped the staff car, switching off its engine and headlights. A signal to the jeep and truck behind them brought the miniconvoy to a halt in darkness, engines ticking as they cooled. The motley troops unloaded, clustered around Bolan and Pahlavi on the shoulder of the two-lane highway.
“Translate for me, will you?” Bolan asked Pahlavi.
“Yes.”
“We haven’t got much time,” he told the others. “Half a mile ahead of us, maybe a little less, they’re waiting at the complex. We don’t know how many guards they have, whether they’re army regulars or private mercenaries, and we only have a general idea of how they’re armed.”
He waited for Pahlavi to catch up. The faces that surrounded them were pale and grim by moonlight, but he didn’t see a quitter in the bunch.
“I won’t pretend that what we’re trying will be easy,” Bolan said. “It won’t. Some of you likely won’t be going home again. You’ve lost friends already, just this afternoon, and there’s no way to cut the losses if you go ahead. This is a killing place. The only question left is who gets killed and who survives.”
Another pause with Pahlavi translating. Bolan saw shifting in the ranks, but no one turned away.
“You all know why we’re here,” Bolan added a moment later. “First, it’s Project X. To stop the bomb. And now, on top of that, we have a search-and-rescue mission.” Glancing toward Pahlavi, he continued. “I want all of you to recognize priorities. If we retrieve the lady, but we miss the bomb, it means we may as well have stayed at home. Because she’ll be dead anyway, along with all of you and everyone you love.”
Some of the Ohm members were exchanging glances, but they all stood firm. Pahlavi’s voice was steady, making Bolan wonder if he’d translated verbatim, but he had no way to double-check it. If his guide was substituting other words for Bolan’s, they were well and truly screwed.
“You’ve proved that you can fight. I’m satisfied with that,” Bolan said. “And I know you’re not afraid to die. Remember, though, that martyrs never won a war. They just get in the way. You trip over their bodies and get killed, yourself. We don’t need corpses. We need soldiers.”
Several of the young commandos nodded at that, while others muttered what Bolan took for assent. Once again, none retreated.
“When we pull up to the gates,” he told them, “I expect floodlights to hit us right away. We’ll have a moment, give or take, before they realize that something’s wrong. We need to use that time and take them by surprise. I’ll take the first shot, and we’ll rush the gate in the staff car. Take out the lights and any tower guards as best you can with the machine gun. After that, when we’re inside, you know the drill.”
They had been over it enough, using the floor plans. If they didn’t know it now, they never would.
“Don’t worry if it feels like Hell in there tonight. It always feels like that in combat. It’s supposed to feel that way. You need to be the biggest, baddest devils in the mix. Roll over anybody in your way and keep them down. All right?”
This time, his fighters answered with a single voice, albeit on a time delay, after Pahlavi gave them the translation. There were words he couldn’t understand mixed in there, but the tone and the expressions on their faces told him they were ready.
At least, as ready as they’d ever be.
He didn’t think about which ones of them would die within the next half hour, or whether any of them would survive. That kind of thinking was defeatist, and it had no place in combat other than a mission recognized from the get-go as suicide.
That wasn’t Bolan’s game. Not in the past, and not this night. He wanted to survive, to bring as many of these people out alive as possible. He’d even like to meet Pahlavi’s sister and escort her from the hell where she’d been caged for days on end.
But at the bottom line, he’d come to scuttle Project X, and nothing took priority over that goal. Not damsels in distress, not youngsters playing soldier for the first time in their lives.
Not even life itself.
20
As Bolan had expected, the lab compound was ablaze with lights as they approached. From one mile out, it sparked his memory of clips from science-fiction films—a lonely outpost in the desert, lit with candlepower that would make it visible from outer space, technicians waiting for first contact with a master race from who knew where. Unlike the movie scientists, however, those in charge of Project X were moving toward a close encounter of the Bolan kind.
And none of them would ever be the same again.
There was no point trying to conceal the convoy as it rolled toward the site. Quite the reverse, in fact. The benefit of stealing army vehicles was the advantage of surprise. They left the headlights on and made a straight run toward the gates, where soldiers armed with automatic weapons waited to receive them.
Bolan wasn’t sure how such things worked in Pakistan, but in the United States, an officer would typically announce his visit to a top-secret facility—unless there was some reason why he needed to surprise the folks in charge. Arriving in the middle of the night, completely unexpected, Bolan’s convoy thus would tweak the paranoia of the plant’s defenders, make them wonder if they had a problem.
And by the time they recognized the trick, with any luck, it would already be too late.
A sentry left t
he gate to intercept them while the beams of two searchlights converged on Bolan’s vehicles. He reckoned that the tower guards would need binoculars to spot the bloodstains on the uniforms Pahlavi’s people wore, and even if they had field glasses, he was not about to give them time for searching scrutiny.
The guard approached, gun drawn, to ask Pahlavi what was going on, and Bolan shot him in the face. They had discussed the plan, but still Pahlavi flinched for just an instant, then recovered, gripped the staff car and stamped on the accelerator pedal.
They shot forward, engine snarling, even as the big machine gun on the jeep behind them started chattering. One of the searchlights instantly went dark, and Bolan glimpsed one of its operators tumbling from his high perch like a rag doll, cartwheeling through space. He didn’t track the body all the way to impact, though, for they were smashing through the gate by then, chain link scraping along the staff car’s flanks and leaving claw marks on the paint.
The second gate was just a wooden arm that raised and lowered on command. Pahlavi snapped it off and sent it flying, while the soldiers stationed at the checkpoint dived for cover, two or three of them unleashing wild shots as they fled.
Bolan caught one of them retreating, ripped him with a burst from his Kalashnikov and sent the dead man sprawling. In his mirror, he could see the jeep and truck already through the gate and following, lit up with muzzle-flashes, raising hell with the defenders who came rushing out to stop them.
By agreement, they were racing toward the building labeled “B” on Pahlavi’s map of the compound. It was supposed to be the main lab where the techs of Project X worked overtime to make their corner of the world a bleak, irradiated wasteland.
Bolan didn’t bother analyzing people so committed to the spread of pain and death. He didn’t judge their motives or attempt to read their minds. If they were someone’s father, brother, uncle, cousin, it was all the same to him. Their crimes against humanity outweighed the rest of it.
He simply killed them and moved on.
But first, he’d have to get inside the lab, and that would be no easy task. Already, guards were spilling out of doorways everywhere he looked, racing to intercept the convoy of intruders, firing as they ran. The car was taking hits, and Bolan knew the truck behind him made an even better target.
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