Bolan hunched down and waited for the blast

Before it came, one of the soldiers recognized the danger. Calling out to his companions, he rose and turned to run. He wasn’t fast enough. The blast rocked both vehicles, its shrapnel taking down the would-be runner like a point-blank shotgun blast. It also burst the lead jeep’s fuel tank and ignited a spare can of gasoline on the rear deck of the passenger compartment, instantly enveloping both vehicles in flames.

Watching from cover, Bolan saw a handful of soldiers burst from cover, all of them on fire and beating at the flames with blistered hands. They ran instead of dropping to the ground and rolling, partly out of panic, and because the turf around them was on fire, as well. A lake of burning fuel surrounded them, allowing nowhere to go except a mad rush for the tree line that would offer no help, no shelter.

Bolan left them to it.

MACK BOLAN®
The Executioner

#263 Skysniper

#264 Iron Fist

#265 Freedom Force

#266 Ultimate Price

#267 Invisible Invader

#268 Shattered Trust

#269 Shifting Shadows

#270 Judgment Day

#271 Cyberhunt

#272 Stealth Striker

#273 UForce

#274 Rogue Target

#275 Crossed Borders

#276 Leviathan

#277 Dirty Mission

#278 Triple Reverse

#279 Fire Wind

#280 Fear Rally

#281 Blood Stone

#282 Jungle Conflict

#283 Ring of Retaliation

#284 Devil’s Army

#285 Final Strike

#286 Armageddon Exit

#287 Rogue Warrior

#288 Arctic Blast

#289 Vendetta Force

#290 Pursued

#291 Blood Trade

#292 Savage Game

#293 Death Merchants

#294 Scorpion Rising

#295 Hostile Alliance

#296 Nuclear Game

#297 Deadly Pursuit

#298 Final Play

#299 Dangerous Encounter

#300 Warrior’s Requiem

#301 Blast Radius

#302 Shadow Search

#303 Sea of Terror

#304 Soviet Specter

#305 Point Position

#306 Mercy Mission

#307 Hard Pursuit

#308 Into the Fire

#309 Flames of Fury

#310 Killing Heat

#311 Night of the Knives

#312 Death Gamble

#313 Lockdown

#314 Lethal Payload

#315 Agent of Peril

#316 Poison Justice

#317 Hour of Judgment

#318 Code of Resistance

#319 Entry Point

#320 Exit Code

#321 Suicide Highway

#322 Time Bomb

#323 Soft Target

#324 Terminal Zone

#325 Edge of Hell

#326 Blood Tide

#327 Serpent’s Lair

#328 Triangle of Terror

#329 Hostile Crossing

#330 Dual Action

#331 Assault Force

#332 Slaughter House

#333 Aftershock

#334 Jungle Justice

#335 Blood Vector

#336 Homeland Terror

#337 Tropic Blast

#338 Nuclear Reaction

The Executioner®

Nuclear Reaction

Don Pendleton

For James Morton

It is ironical that in an age when we have prided ourselves on our progress in the intelligent care and teaching of our children we have at the same time put them at the mercy of new and most terrible weapons of destruction.

—Pearl S. Buck, 1892–1973

What America Means to Me

Demagogues and terrorists have too many weapons in their arsenal. Somebody needs to draw a line, and this one’s down to me.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Epilogue

Prologue

Darice Pahlavi wondered if this would be the last day of her life. She’d spoken of it with the others, when she’d offered to complete the task that no one else within their circle could perform. The rest were all sincere enough, but none of them had access to the data that was needed.

Only she was inside.

She recognized the irony. A generation earlier, no woman of her nationality or faith would have been educated adequately, much less trusted to participate in such events.

But things had changed. In that respect, at least.

Some things, she feared, would never change. The lust for power that consumed some individuals was as powerful as ever. The egomania that warped their view of life and everything around them, made them believe that only they were fit to make the life-or-death decisions that affected thousands, even millions.

Perhaps Pahlavi herself had shared a measure of that guilt, she thought. But she had woken up in time to save herself. To save her soul.

The question burning in her mind was whether she could save her nation, and perhaps the world at large, from a horrendous nightmare in the making.

It could mean death if she failed, but she felt compelled to try.

Concealing the material had not been difficult. The two computer CD-ROMs were slim enough to hide beneath her clothing. She had taped them to her inner thighs, which were slim enough that she did not produce a plastic scraping sound with every step she took. The tape was uncomfortable, but it would hold its grip.

She’d delayed the taping until she was nearly finished for the day. It would’ve been a dicey proposition, working all day in the lab, with two disks plastered to her thighs, but she could easily endure an hour of discomfort, walking to the bus outside and riding to her home. Once she was there, and safe from prying eyes…

She caught herself relaxing prematurely and cut short her reverie. She wasn’t home yet, wasn’t even close. A hundred things could still go wrong.

Anxiety overwhelmed her, made her wish that she could run back to the washroom, but she couldn’t go again so soon. It might provoke an inquiry. Was something wrong? Was she unwell? Did she require examination by the lab’s standby physician? Had she been contaminated in some way?

Once Dr. Mehran started asking questions, Pahlavi knew she’d be finished. It would mean a physical examination, which would instantly reveal the contraband beneath her skirt. The mere suggestion of an illness in the lab provoked decisive and immediate responses that were carved in stone, a law unto themselves.

If she appeared in any way unusual, Pahlavi would be doomed, as surely as if she had been fatally exposed to the materials they handled every day.

She pinched herself, a cruel twist of her flesh beneath the long sleeve of her lab coat. She had to remain focused. Any small distraction, any deviation from routine, might raise a red flag with security as she was leaving.

There was no innocent excuse for smuggling confidential data from the lab. Taking a box of paper clips was considered serious. Stealing the data at the very heart of their most secret program would be tantamount to suicide.

Pahlavi knew it wouldn’t be a quick death, either. They would want to ask her questions, find out how and why she dared to take such risks. Who was she working for? Had she accomplices? Being a woman, she would not impress interrogators as a ringleader, much less an operative who conceived and executed such activities alone. If nothing else, theft of the disks signaled that she planned to pass them on, reveal their secrets to some third party, whether for ideology or profit.

She wasn’t sure how long she could protect her brother and the rest, once the professionals began to work on her with chemicals or pure brute force. Her pain threshold had never been extraordinary, and fear had weakened her already, as if her own body was conspiring with her enemies.

Biting the inside of her cheek to make her brain focus on simple tasks, Pahlavi went through the same cleanup routine she had followed every day since starting at the lab. There was a place for everything, and everything had to wind up in its proper place before she could depart. Slovenly negligence invited criticism and a closer look from Dr. Mehran, which she definitely didn’t want.

Her fellow lab workers were chatting as they cleared their stations, making small talk that she couldn’t force her mind to follow. What did she care if a certain film was playing at the theater, or if a coworker’s insipid cousin had been jilted by his third fiancée in as many years? She was on a mission vitally important to them all.

After hanging up her lab coat, she retrieved her bag and trailed the others from the lab, toward the security checkpoint where guards routinely opened briefcases and purses, pawing through their contents, but were otherwise content to let the workers pass. Darice couldn’t recall the last time a lab employee had been frisked or asked to empty pockets.

It was with a sense of panic, then, that she beheld the guards in front of her this day. Two extra had been added to the team, a man and woman, both equipped with flat wands she recognized as handheld metal detectors.

Pahlavi was certain she would faint, but she recovered by sheer force of will. She couldn’t pass inspection with the wands, which left two choices. Either she could double back and ditch the CD-ROMs, or she could find another way out of the lab complex.

Was there another way?

Determined to find out, she turned, making a show of searching through her purse as if for something she’d misplaced, and quickly walked back toward the lab.

1

Southwestern Pakistan

“The trick,” they’d warned him, “isn’t getting in or out of Pakistan. It’s getting in and out.” Eight hours on the ground, and Mack Bolan already had a fair idea of what they’d meant. He’d been here before.

Aside from its northwestern quadrant, ruled by Pashto-speaking clans who’d never paid a rupee to the government in taxes and who’d rather strip an unknown visitor down to his skin than offer him the time of day, the bulk of Pakistan was long accustomed to a thriving tourist trade. British adventurers had led the way, when Pakistan was still a part of India, and during modern times there’d never been a dearth of hikers, mountain climbers, or exotic hippie-types who came to groove on Eastern vibes and drugs.

The country welcomed everyone, but getting out could be a challenge. Departure meant an exit visa, often challenged by venal immigration officers at the eleventh hour, when they noticed various “irregularities” that triggered new and unexpected fees or fines. Export of anything resembling antiquities could land a tourist in hot water, as much as the drugs and weapons that were sold as freely in most market towns as fresh produce. Rugs purchased in Pakistan required an export permit, even when the local vendors ardently denied it and refused to furnish them.

Getting in was easy, getting out required finesse.

But at the moment, Bolan’s main concern was how to stay alive while he completed his work in Pakistan.

The nation as a whole was dangerous, no doubt about it. Some observers ranked Karachi as the world’s most hazardous city, with an average of eight political murders each day, compounded by the toll of mercenary street crime.

Shopping for hardware in Karachi had been easy, once the Executioner found the dealer recommended to him by his contacts at Stony Man Farm, in Virginia. Many Pakistani arms merchants, like the drug traffickers, would sell to foreigners, then rat them out to the police for a reward on top of what they’d already been paid. Bolan’s contact, he’d been assured, was “straight.” He’d sell to anyone and squeal on no one, understanding that his business depended on discretion as the better part of valor.

In the dealer’s cramped back room, Bolan had surveyed the merchandise and had gone Russian for the rifle, picking out an AKMS with its folding metal stock, together with a dozen extra magazines. For antipersonnel grenades, he chose the reliable Russian RGD-5s. He’d gone Swiss for his side arm, choosing a SIG-Sauer P-226, the 9 mm with a 15-round magazine, its muzzle threaded to accept a sturdy sound suppressor. His final purchase was a fighting knife of uncertain ancestry, with a twelve-inch blade, serrated on the spine, and a brass pommel stud designed for cracking skulls. Once he’d put it all together in a duffel bag, he was good to go.

Go where?

He had directions and a detailed map, and a satellite phone in case he absolutely needed immediate help in English. If that happened, Bolan reckoned it would be before he met his contact.

If he met his contact.

Negotiating the Pakistani countryside was at least as perilous as crossing a chaotic street in downtown Lahore or Karachi. Dacoits—well-organized bandits who often worked straight jobs by day, then moonlighted as highwaymen—posed one potential obstacle to travelers. And local warlords might exact tribute from passersby while drug runners or traffickers in other forms of contraband were prone to spilling blood whenever they encountered a potential witness to their criminal activities. Plus, a thriving black market revolving around kidnapping for ransom, all ensured the backcountry was dangerous indeed.

But so was Bolan.

His potential adversaries simply didn’t know it yet.

The Executioner kept a keen eye out for bandits and for government patrols as he drove north from Karachi toward Bela. He was supposed to meet his contact, maybe plural, at a rest stop west of Bela, and he didn’t want police or soldiers stopping him along the way, perhaps searching his Land Rover and asking why he needed military weapons for a drive around the countryside. The less contact he had with men in uniform, the better for his mission.

Bela was nothing much to look at, once a visitor got past the gaudy marketplace, and Bolan had no need to stop or browse. He headed west from town, and fifteen minutes later saw the rest stop on his right, two hundred yards ahead, precisely where it had been indicated on his map.

Slowing, he pulled into the graveled space and parked beside an old four-door sedan with several shades of primer paint laid on, in something very like a camouflage design. The car was empty, and he sat behind the Rover’s wheel, letting the engine idle while he waited for his contact to appear.

A creak of rusty springs, immediately followed by a scrape of leather soles on gravel from his left rear told Bolan that he’d been suckered. He was half turned toward the sound when he heard someone cock a pistol. Turning more, he could see the weapon pointed at his face, held by a young man with solemn eyes.

The gunman frowned and said, “The weather is not good for travel.”

“But a soldier has no choice,” Bolan replied.

Still cautious, the gunman dropped the muzzle of his Beretta 92 toward the ground and used the decocking lever to release its hammer harmlessly. He did not slip the pistol back into his belt, however. He shifted it to his left hand as he advanced toward the Land Rover, holding out his empty right.

Having correctly answered with the password for their meeting, Bolan stepped from his vehicle, eye flicking toward the old sedan, its trunk ajar. Two more armed men stood watching him. They’d risen from their hiding place on the old car’s floorboards.

“It was hot, I guess, inside that trunk,” Bolan said.

His handshake indicated strength, the gunman thought. “Hot,” he granted, swiping at his sweaty forehead with the back of his right hand. “How was your journey from Karachi?”

“Uneventful,” Bolan replied. “The way I like it.” Nodding toward the two other men, he inquired, “Are they with you?”

“They are,” the contact said. “In these times, we take no unnecessary risks.”

“Unnecessary risk is never wise,” Bolan said. “You want to trust me with a name?”

There seemed no point in lying, and he’d never used an alias, in any case. “Pahlavi. Darius Pahlavi. Yours?”

“Matt Cooper. Are we talking business here?” Bolan asked.

“I think not. It would be unfortunate if a patrol should come along.”

“Where, then?”

“In the hills nearby,” Pahlavi said. “I have a safe place there.”

The Executioner considered it, but only briefly. Making up his mind, he said, “All right. You ride with me and navigate. Give us a chance to break the ice.”

Pahlavi didn’t hesitate, despite his natural misgivings. This American had traveled halfway around the world to meet him and assist his cause, if such a thing was even possible. Pahlavi knew that he had to draw the line between caution and paranoia at some point.

“Of course,” he said, then turned and gave instructions to the others in Urdu, telling them to follow closely and be ready if the stranger should betray them. Neither one looked happy with Pahlavi’s choice, but they did not protest.

As Pahlavi climbed into the Land Rover, he considered the risk he’d taken—communicating with the United States, when Washington supported the regime in power, mildly cautioning its leaders on their worst excesses while refraining from decisive action to control them.

It had been a gamble, certainly, but once Pahlavi passed on what he knew, via a native said to be a contract agent for the CIA, the answer had been swift in coming. The Americans would send someone—a single man, they said—to see if he could help Pahlavi.

Not to kill his enemies, per se, or see them brought to ruin, but to see if he could help.

Whatever that might mean.

As they pulled out, Pahlavi glanced behind the driver’s seat and saw a duffel bag, zipped shut. He couldn’t tell what was inside it, but he had already glimpsed the slight bulge underneath the man’s windbreaker, which told him the American was armed.

And why not, in this land where human life was cheaper than a goat’s? Only a fool would face the unknown in the living hell his homeland had become, without a weapon close at hand.

Above all else, Pahlavi hoped that the American was not a fool. Intelligence and skill were more important than his personality—although it wouldn’t hurt if he dispensed with the persistent arrogance Americans displayed so often in their dealings with “Third World” nations.

What he needed was a man to listen and to act.

But what could any one man do, that Pahlavi and his allies had not tried themselves? he wondered.

“Have you a plan?” he asked, embarrassed by his own impatience, even as he spoke.

“I need to know the details of your problem, first,” Bolan replied. “My briefing on the other side was pretty…general, let’s say.”

“Of course.” Pahlavi nodded. “I apologize. You see, my sister—”

The Executioner had already seen the military vehicles approaching from the opposite direction. He could hardly miss the driver of the lead vehicle slowing to stare at them, while one of his companions leaned in from the back seat, mouthing orders that he couldn’t hear.

“That’s trouble,” Bolan said, as they rolled past the two jeeps and the open truck behind them, filled with riflemen in uniform.

“It is,” Pahlavi agreed, turning in his seat to track the small convoy. He was in time to see the lead jeep make a U-turn in the middle of the two-lane highway, doubling back to follow them.

“I make it six or eight to one,” Bolan remarked. “Smart money says we run.”

“Agreed.”

Bolan floored the accelerator, surging forward with a snarl from underneath the Land Rover’s hood. “All right,” he said. “This is the part where you’re supposed to navigate.”

2

Lieutenant Sachi Chandaka was often bored on daylight patrol. Encounters with bandits were rare, since the scum did their best to avoid meeting troops or police, and the most he usually expected from an outing in the countryside was some sparse evidence of crimes committed overnight by persons he would never glimpse, much less identify or capture. He supposed some criminals transacted business when the sun was high and scorching hot, but most of them dressed in expensive suits and had plush offices, where they sipped coffee and decided the fate of peasants like himself.

The fact that he was often bored did not mean the lieutenant’s wits had atrophied, however. On the contrary, his eyes were keen and he could feel malice radiating from an undesirable at thirty paces. More than once, while working in plain clothes or killing time off duty, he had startled his companions by selecting sneak thieves from a market crowd, all ordinary-looking men, then watched and waited while the petty predators moved in to make their snatch.

Perhaps it was a gift. Chandaka couldn’t say and didn’t really care, as long as he could work that magic when he needed it the most.

From half a mile away, he’d seen the two vehicles standing at the rest stop, on the south side of the highway. At a quarter mile, he’d counted four men idling by the cars, presumably engrossed in conversation. By the time his small convoy rolled past, the men were back in their cars, two passengers in each. Even someone as dull-witted as his driver, Sergeant Lahti, had to have known that they were criminals.

It wasn’t so much what the four men did, as what they didn’t do. It was unnatural for anyone surrounded by vast tracts of nothingness to keep his eyes averted as a military convoy rumbled past, almost within arm’s reach. And yet, among the four men in the two vehicles, only the driver of the lead car even glanced across the pavement at Chandaka’s jeep.

One man—and he was not Pakistani.

European, possibly. Perhaps Australian or American. In any case, Chandaka meant to find out who the four men were, what business brought them to the highway rest stop outside Bela in the middle of the afternoon, and why three of them were determined not to let him see their eyes.

“Turn back!” he snapped at Lahti. “Follow them!”

“Follow?” The concept didn’t seem to register.

“Yes, Lahti. Turn the steering wheel. Reverse direction. Follow them!”

“Yes, sir!”

Once Lahti understood an order, he would do as he was told. It would not cross his mind to question a superior. Lahti had found his niche in life, performing simple tasks by rote, relieved that someone else was always close at hand to tell him what came next.

Chandaka braced a hand against the jeep’s dashboard, as Lahti powered through a sharp U-turn. He saw the startled visage of the corporal who drove the second jeep in line. Chandaka pointed after the westbound vehicles, and shouted, “Follow them!”

There was no time to clarify the order. Lahti stood on the accelerator. Something rattled loosely, underneath the jeep’s drab hood, then power surged and they started gaining ground on the retreating vehicles.

Chandaka wished he had a rifleman beside him, but if it came to shooting on the highway, he would simply have to do the job himself. He had a Spanish CETME Model 58 assault rifle propped upright in the narrow space between his knees, butt on the floorboard, and now he hefted it, getting its feel.

He’d never shot a man before, or even shot at one, but training made the difference. When the time came, if it came, Chandaka knew that he would be prepared and would perform as his superiors expected. He was not afraid. Indeed, the feeling he experienced was closer to elation.

At long last, it appeared something was happening.

Lahti was bearing down, gaining ground, but the lieutenant felt obliged to chide him for the sake of feeling in control, being a part of it. “Don’t let them get away,” he ordered.

“No, sir!”

If Lahti took offense, it didn’t show.

The two cars were within one hundred yards, and the gap was narrowing. The army jeeps weren’t much to look at, but they had surprising power. No auto manufactured in the country could outrun them, and among the foreign imports, only certain sports cars or a Mercedes-Benz would leave them in the dust.

If that began to happen, Chandaka was prepared to win the race another way. He gripped his rifle tightly, drew the bolt back and released it, chambering a round. He did not set the safety.

They were already too close for that.

“Faster!” he urged, leaning forward in his seat, straining at the shoulder harness.

“Yes, sir!” the sergeant replied.

Sixty yards. Soon, Chandaka would be able to make out the license number of the second car. At that point, he’d decided he would radio headquarters and report himself in hot pursuit—something he should’ve done already if he had been going strictly by the book. Someone’s secretary could then begin to trace the license and find out who the rabbits were, or more likely come back with the news that he was following a stolen car.

“Get up there, Lahti, so that I can read the license plate!”

“Yes, sir!”

Lahti leaned forward, as if it would help them gain more speed. Chandaka almost smiled at that, but it was frozen on his face as someone in the car ahead of them began firing a submachine gun through its broad rear window, spraying bullets toward Chandaka’s jeep.

THE BLAST OF AUTOMATIC fire surprised Adi Lusila, nearly made him swerve the car into a roadside ditch. One moment, he was concentrating on the highway and Pahlavi in the car ahead of him, trying his best to leave the soldiers in his wake, and then Sanjiv Dushkriti blew the damned back window out, turning the car’s interior into a roaring wind tunnel.

Lusila shouted at Dushkriti. “What possessed you?”

“A great desire to stay alive,” Dushkriti answered, then craned back across his seat to fire another short burst from his L-2 A-3 Sterling submachine gun. One hot cartridge stung Lusila’s ear, then fell into his lap.

“Take care with that!”

“It’s no good from here,” Dushkriti said, by way of an apology, and turned to scramble awkwardly between their seats, climbing into the back. One of his boots glanced off the gearshift as he made the move. Lusila cursed at the grating sound it made.

The grating sound was followed by a loud clang.

“We’re hit,” Dushkriti said, and sounded almost pleased about it. “Do not worry, Adi.”

Idiot, Lusila thought. They were pursued by soldiers, with a foreign stranger driving Darius ahead of them, and now Dushkriti had provoked a running battle that would likely get them killed.

“Don’t worry?” Lusila said with a sneer.

A sudden laugh surprised him, coming out of nowhere and erupting from his throat. He was hysterical. It was the only diagnosis that made any sense at all. If he pulled over now, right where he was, perhaps there was a chance that he could plead insanity. Laugh all the way to jail and through his trial, praying to land in an asylum, rather than a basement torture cell or execution chamber.

Not a chance, Lusila thought.

The soldiers were already shooting at him, thanks to Dushkriti. Even if he stopped and raised his hands, with an armed madman in the car they wouldn’t grant him any time for pleas or explanations.

He would simply have to run, and when escape was clearly an impossibility, beyond the palest shadow of a doubt, then he would have to fight.

And die, of course.

What other outcome could there be when four men stood against some thirty-five or forty?

And it might not even be four men, Lusila realized. Pahlavi and the tall American might keep on going if he stopped to fight. They could use the distraction to escape and save themselves.

To carry on the mission.

Adi Lusila flinched from that idea, as if it were a stinging slap across his face. Pahlavi wouldn’t ask for such a sacrifice. He would give up his own life first, to save his friends. But losing him was not in the best interest of their cause.

A bitter taste had wormed its way onto Lusila’s tongue, matching the stench of cordite in his nostrils. In between the bursts from Dushkriti’s Sterling, he could hear return fire from the jeep behind them, now and then a bullet slamming home into his vehicle.

“Hang on!” he warned, and began to swerve across the two-lane highway, back and forth, hoping his serpentine progress would make it harder for the soldiers in the jeep to kill him, likewise spoiling any shot they might’ve had at Pahlavi and the American up front.

“My stomach!” Dushkriti cried.

“Are you hit?”

“Car sick!”

“So, puke and keep on firing!”

When a new stink filled the car, Lusila gave thanks that the rear window was gone. Let the foul odors from his friend blow back along the highway toward their enemies and sicken them, instead.

Dushkriti finished gagging, rattled off another burst of automatic fire, then growled, “I need another magazine.”

He hunched down in the back seat, fumbling in his jacket pocket, thereby giving Lusila his first clear view of their pursuers since the chase began in earnest. Even as he glimpsed the lead jeep in his rearview mirror, the officer in its front passenger seat shouldered his rifle, aimed and fired as Lusila swerved the car again.

He nearly outsmarted himself, turning into the shot, rather than away from it. The bullet whistled past Dushkriti’s head and clipped a corner of the rearview mirror, then punched through the windshield with a solid crack. Lusila cursed and started swerving more erratically, letting his fear dictate his moves as much as logic.

“Stop!” Dushkriti shouted. “I can’t load the gun!”

“Try harder, then!” Lusila snapped. “They almost took my head off!”

With a sharp metallic clacking sound, Dushkriti mated his magazine with the Sterling’s receiver, then cocked it once more and pushed up on his elbows, preparing to fire.

It was a fluke, Lusila thought, the soldier in the jeep behind them choosing just that moment to unleash another shot. What were the odds of it? Much less that he would somehow manage to anticipate Lusila’s movement of the steering wheel.

It was a miracle of sorts that the next bullet drilled Dushkriti’s forehead and exploded through his shaggy hair in back, spraying a gray-and-crimson mist across Lusila and the dashboard gauges.

It was his turn, then, to fight the rising tide of nausea and pray that he could keep his old car on the road while bullets hammered at it from behind.

“WHAT’S HAPPENING?” Pahlavi asked, half turning in his seat.

Bolan glanced at the rearview mirror, then came back to focus on the long, straight two-lane road. “They’re under fire,” he answered. “Taking hits.”

“But fighting back, yes?”

“From the sound of it. You want to tell me where we’re going?”

“Five more miles,” Pahlavi said. “There is a road into the hills. It leads to my safe place.”

“It won’t be safe for long if we lead soldiers to the doorstep,” Bolan told him. “What’s Plan B?”

“Plan B?”

“Your backup. Something else on tap, when things go wrong.”

Pahlavi’s stricken face told Bolan there was no Plan B. “I did not think there would be soldiers here,” the Pakistani said. “They almost never pass this way in daylight.”

“‘Almost’ obviously doesn’t cut it,” Bolan said.

“I’m sorry. Let me think.”

“Think fast!”

More firing erupted from behind them, and the second car was definitely taking hits from one rifle, maybe a couple of them. In his mirror, Bolan saw a bullet chip the windshield from inside, before the driver started swerving like a drunkard. He guessed it was the best the other man could think of, while his partner laid down cover fire but couldn’t seem to score a solid hit.

“There are some woods ahead,” Pahlavi blurted out. “Perhaps three miles. If we can lead them there, perhaps—”

“It’s worth a shot,” Bolan said, even as he thought about the killer odds. He’d counted twenty-four men in the open truck, plus two inside the cab, two in the lead jeep, four more in the second, which meant they were outnumbered eight to one.

Those weren’t the worst odds he had ever faced, granted, but Bolan didn’t know how skilled his companions were at combat. If the one’s wild shooting with the submachine gun was any indication, they might be more liability than help in a firefight.

A tiny splash of color in his rearview mirror drew the warrior’s eye, in time to see the second car in their high-speed procession swerving more erratically than ever. Bolan couldn’t tell who’d been hit, the shooter or the driver, but he worked it out a second later, when the car stayed on the road and didn’t stall.

One down, he thought, judging from all the blood. And since the driver couldn’t likely fight off thirty hostile troops while racing down the two-lane blacktop, Bolan guessed that he would soon be number two with a bullet.

“Adi and Sanjiv!” Pahlavi moaned. “We must stop for them!”

“Get real,” Bolan said.

“We must!”

“Did you drive out here just to die?” Bolan asked. “I had the impression there was something you’ve been trying to accomplish.”

“But my friends—”

Pahlavi turned again and looked down the road in time to see the second car whip through a fair bootlegger’s turn, using a technique requiring fair coordination of the brake and the accelerator, which when executed properly reversed the direction of a vehicle 180 degrees in a fraction of the time required to make a U-turn.

“What’s he doing?” Pahlavi asked.

“Buying us some time,” the Executioner said with approval.

Having reversed himself, Lusila accelerated once again toward the short convoy pursuing him. He had his right arm out the window, blazing at the soldiers with a pistol while he closed the gap between them, taking heavy hits along the way.

Bolan supposed Pahlavi’s comrade might’ve rammed the lead jeep—if he’d lived that long. Instead, the rifle bullets found him when his charger and the jeep were still some twenty yards apart. Maybe his foot slipped off the clutch and let the engine stall, or maybe other rounds had ripped in through the grille and hood. In any case, his vehicle veered off the pavement, coasting to a smoky halt with its blunt nose and front tires in a ditch.

“We’re on our own,” Bolan advised Pahlavi. “How much farther to those woods?”

“Not far,” Pahlavi said, speaking as if he had something caught inside his throat.

“I hope you’re right. “Either way,” the Executioner informed him, “we’ll be running out of time within the next few minutes.”

“We can fight them, yes?” Pahlavi asked. “For Adi and Sanjiv!”

“They’re done,” Bolan reminded his grief-stricken passenger. “Try fighting for yourself.”

“Of course. We must survive to finish what we’ve started.”

“Right,” Bolan replied. “And maybe if we do, you’ll tell me what that is.”

“Fight first, talk later,” Pahlavi said. “Yes?”

“I’ve heard that song before.”

Flicking his eyes between the highway and his rearview mirror, Bolan searched the roadside for a hint of woods. An endless ninety seconds later, he saw shadows on the roadside ahead, and recognized them as a mass of trees.

One smallish forest, coming up.

And thirty-two trained riflemen to make it one more patch of Hell on Earth.

3

The first round from the lead jeep’s shooter ricocheted from Bolan’s trunk and chipped the frame of his rear window prior to hurtling off through space. Instead of weaving crazily across the road, he poured on all the speed he had to offer, hunching lower in his seat to give the rifleman a smaller target.

Beside him, Darius Pahlavi had regained enough control to draw his pistol, swivel in his seat and return fire from his side window. It was awkward, but at least it let him shoot right-handed without smashing out their back window.

Bolan supposed incoming rounds would do that soon enough, unless he reached the woods before the soldiers on his tail improved their aim.

He had a quarter mile to go, and then he had to hope there was some kind of access road into the forest, or he’d wind up parking on the berm and leaping from the car in full view of the soldiers who were primed to kill him. Bolan hoped Pahlavi had more sense than that, but their acquaintance was too brief for him to judge the man’s state of mind.

Rattled was one term that immediately came to mind, but now that he was fighting back, Pahlavi seemed to have a better grip, reaching inside himself somewhere to find his nerve.

After his third shot, Bolan’s passenger gave out a whoop of triumph. Bolan checked the rearview mirror and made out a spiderweb of cracks covering half of the jeep’s windshield. It hadn’t stopped them, but it slowed the soldiers a little. They fell back to blast at Bolan’s car from a position out of pistol range.

It gave Bolan the edge he needed, while his enemies were putting on their brakes, maybe a little shaky in their haste and from the shock of a near-miss. He took advantage of it, burning up the road and gaining back some of the ground he’d lost in the pursuit. It was two hundred yards or so until they reached the first trees, and he was looking for a turnoff, any place where he could leave the two-lane blacktop for a while.

“There, on your left!” Pahlavi urged him, pointing, and the road appeared almost by magic, cut for the convenience of emerging eastbound traffic, but still good enough for Bolan’s exit, heading west.

“Hang on!” he said, and swung the steering wheel to make it, rocking with the vehicle as the tires complained, then found their grip again and powered over gravel, onto rutted, hard-packed soil.

The road would be muddy, miserable in the rainy season, but the day was bright and dry. Bolan hung on as they shuddered along the washboard surface, barely one lane wide. It was too much to hope the army truck might find the road impassable, but maybe its progress would be retarded. Let it fall behind the jeeps a bit, spread out the hunting party, and it might work out to Bolan’s benefit.

“They’re after us!” Pahlavi warned.

“That’s no surprise. Is there another turnoff anywhere ahead?”

“Half a mile, I think. The road begins to circle back, but there’s a branch off to the left.”

Even alert, Bolan almost missed it, braking at the last instant and swerving hard into a narrow access road that cut off to the south-southwest. The surface was rougher, punished by the elements for years without repair or even simple maintenance. Still, Bolan held his steady speed as best he could, praying the shock absorbers and the ball joints wouldn’t fail him.

After roughly a hundred yards, they reached a clearing in the woods, with room enough for five or six pup tents around a campfire. Bolan used the space to turn, tires spitting dirt and gravel, until he was facing the direction of the access road. He killed the engine and sat a moment, listening to the hot metal ticking as it cooled.

“What are you doing?” Pahlavi asked with a nervous tremor in his voice.

“No way they missed our turnoff,” Bolan said. “No way we can get past them, going back the way we came. That only leaves one option.” He was reaching for the duffel bag behind him as he spoke. “We fight.”

“So many of them?”

“That, or let them take you down.”

Pahlavi didn’t have to think about it. “No,” he said.

“Then I suggest you get out of the car and find some cover while you can.”

Matching his words to action, Bolan stepped out of the vehicle, taking the keys, and started running hard in the direction of the tree line, thirty feet away.

SACHI CHANDAKA WORRIED that he might be following his prey into a trap. It seemed bizarre that bandits would deliberately sacrifice two men, but if he thought about it in another way, it did seem possible that he had stumbled on some small conspiracy, put them to flight, and only now would they attempt to kill him with an ambush.

This was bandit territory, beyond any doubt. Why shouldn’t one gang or another have a stronghold somewhere in the woods around him. Maybe those he was pursuing had a cell phone or a two-way radio, allowing them to call ahead to set the trap.

“Slow down a bit,” he ordered Lahti. “Keep the car in sight, but don’t be hasty.”

“Yes, sir.”

Chandaka couldn’t tell if Lahti was relieved or not, and he did not particularly care. Glancing behind him, the lieutenant saw the second jeep and open truck behind it keeping pace, jerking with every rut and pothole in the miserable unpaved road. There would be aching bladders in the truck, he guessed, but they would have to wait.

Ahead, he saw the car they were pursuing leave the main track, veering left onto another narrow road, its surface even rougher than the one they traveled. Chandaka held his rifle, finger on the trigger, peering through the windshield veined with cracks that radiated from a central bullet hole.

“Sir, shall I follow them?” his driver asked.

“Of course, but cautiously.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lahti slowed a little more, the vehicles behind them doing likewise. By the time they cleared the turn, Chandaka couldn’t see their quarry anymore. He nearly panicked, fearing he had lost the bastards after all this effort and would have to back out of the woods, exposed to hidden riflemen on every side.

“Hurry!” he ordered, contradicting his original instruction. “Find them!”

“Yes, sir.” No enthusiasm whatsoever sounded in the sergeant’s voice.

They jounced along the narrow track, tree branches almost meeting overhead, casting the roadway into shadows that seemed sinister under the present circumstances. Lahti kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, leaving Chandaka to watch out for snipers, booby traps, and any other rude surprises that their enemies might have in store for them.

The clearing took Chandaka by surprise. One moment, they were running through a narrow corridor of trees, the next, they nosed into an open space some sixty feet across, walled in by forest on all sides. He saw the bandit car ahead, its grille aimed toward his jeep, but with the doors open and no one left inside. Which had to mean—

“Look out!” he barked at Lahti. “Stop!”

Lahti slammed on the brakes, heedless of the vehicles behind him, and Chandaka fancied he could hear a short cry of alarm from Corporal Dekhar in the second jeep before it struck the rear of his vehicle with impressive force. A lance of pain tore through Chandaka’s neck and shoulder blades, but he had no time to consider it, as gunfire crackled from the tree line.

“Ambush!” he called out to no one in particular. A glance at Lahti told him that the sergeant couldn’t hear him. He slumped sideways against his shoulder harness, dark blood spilling from a bullet hole above one eye.

Cursing his pain, Chandaka threw himself out of the jeep, clutching the CETME rifle to his chest. He hit the ground running, gunfire ringing in his ears, as bullets filled the air around him.

He had no idea how many bandits were unloading at him from the forest, but his own men were returning fire in awkward fashion, spraying bullets here and there in lieu of finding clear-cut targets. It was a wasted effort, but Chandaka couldn’t blame them. They were panicking, taken completely by surprise.

And it was all his fault.

Chandaka stopped, crouching, and sought a target of his own. Where were the bastards? Had they cut him off? Was it too late to slip away?

The thought shamed him. Chandaka held his weapon in a tight, white-knuckled grip and started edging back in the direction of the jeeps and truck. They were his only cover, short of plunging right into the trees, and that was clearly hostile territory.

He would rally his command, devise a strategy, and make the bandits sorry they had ever crossed his path, or he would die in the attempt.

And at the moment, Chandaka knew it could still go either way.

BOLAN SQUEEZED OFF a burst from his AKMS and watched one of the soldiers topple screaming from the open truck. He hadn’t planned on waging war against the native military quite this soon, but he was in it now, and there was nothing left to do except his best, fighting to stay alive.

He’d lost track of Pahlavi when they separated, no time to coordinate their action, but he hoped the young man would be circumspect, fire only when he had a target, and conserve his ammunition for the shots that he could make. Perhaps he could retrieve another weapon from the field, if he ran out of ammunition for his pistol, but whatever happened, he was on his own.

Bolan kept moving, stopping long enough to fire a short burst from the shadows, constantly in motion when he wasn’t lining up a shot. The duffel bag was slung across his shoulder, riding heavily against his left hip as he moved, but short of pocketing its contents Bolan couldn’t let it go. He needed the spare magazines, the frag grenades, to help him shave the odds against these unexpected adversaries.

He was halfway through a 30-round box magazine and had reduced his distance from the truck by forty feet or so, when he decided it was time to give his enemies another shock. Palming one of the RGD-5s, he pulled the pin, mentally counted down from six seconds to four, then lobbed the green egg toward the jeeps where they sat nose-to-tail, with gunners crouched behind them.

No one saw the grenade coming, not until it landed on the broad hood of the second jeep with a resounding clang and wobbled for a heartbeat, as if making up its mind which way to go. The RGD-5 wasn’t round, and so its path was unpredictable. It bounced, then slipped into the small space left between the two jeeps, where the second one had rammed into the first.

Bolan hunched down and waited for the blast. Before it came, one of the soldiers recognized the danger. Calling out to his companions, he rose and turned to run. He wasn’t fast enough. The blast rocked both vehicles, its shrapnel taking down the would-be runner like a point-blank shotgun blast. It also burst the lead jeep’s fuel tank and ignited a spare can of gasoline on the rear deck of the passenger compartment, instantly enveloping both vehicles in flames.

Watching from cover, Bolan saw a handful of soldiers burst from cover, all of them on fire and beating at the flames with blistered hands. They ran instead of dropping to the ground and rolling, partly out of panic, and because the turf around them was on fire, as well. A lake of burning fuel surrounded them, allowing nowhere to go except a mad rush for the tree line that would offer no help, no shelter.

Bolan left them to it, ready with his automatic rifle as the other troops began to reassess their situation. Knowing they were all at risk, the soldiers redoubled the outpouring of their aimless fire into the forest, bullets flaying bark from tree trunks, clipping branches, ventilating leaves.

Bolan was relatively safe from being spotted, in those circumstances, but a stray round through the head or chest was just as deadly as a sniper’s well-aimed killing shot. He stayed low, took advantage of the cover, firing only when he had a target dead to rights and in the clear.

Where was Pahlavi? he wondered.

Never mind.

Survival was the first priority. If he could deal with the remaining soldiers and emerge alive, there would be time enough to look for his elusive contact. In the meantime, it was strictly do-or-die.

The jeeps were destroyed, but the Executioner heard the truck’s big engine cranking, as someone tried to get it started after stalling it.

Bolan rose and sighted on the cab. The soldiers surrounding it were firing wildly. His angle wasn’t optimal, he had no real view of the man in the driver’s seat, but he was lined up on the left-hand door. Taking a chance, he held the autorifle’s trigger down and used the last rounds in his magazine to ventilate that door, spraying the inside of the cab with sudden death.

The engine fell silent, and the troops around the truck’s cab scattered, seeking better shelter from the storm that had enveloped them. Reloading in a rush, Bolan moved on.

4

Darius Pahlavi was no longer terrified. Somehow, somewhere between the death of his two friends and his arrival in the forest clearing with Matt Cooper, he had passed from numbing fear to a sensation that he barely recognized.

Rage was a part of it, for all he’d lost and all his people had endured—the nightmare that they would endure, if he failed to complete his mission. There was guilt, as well, for leading Adi and Sanjiv into the trap that claimed their lives. He vowed to make amends with Adi’s wife and Sanjiv’s parents somehow, someday.

If he lived that long.

Right now, he had to focus on surviving for the next few minutes, which meant ducking bullets in the woods and doing everything he could to stop his enemies.

Kill them, Pahlavi silently corrected himself. It all came down to that. Kill or be killed.

He’d never shot a man before that afternoon—never shot at a man, in fact—and when it happened, the sheer deceptive ease of it surprised Pahlavi. He had practiced with the pistol earlier, knew how to aim and squeeze the trigger slowly, without jerking it, but mortal combat put a different slant on things.

His first shots, on the highway, had been wasted but for one that cracked the windshield of the jeep behind them. Too late, even then, to save his friends, but he’d felt a rush of satisfaction from the simple act of striking back.

It was a different thing, of course, to fire at living men on foot, instead of faceless autos on the highway, but it helped that these men were intent on killing him, had killed his friends already.

Cooper had taken down a number of the enemy already, firing with an automatic rifle, then contriving somehow to destroy their jeeps. Pahlavi found it horrible and fascinating, all at once, as if he had been dropped into the middle of some action film from Hollywood.

Except that there were real bullets whining around him, thunking into trees raising spouts of sod on impact with the ground. Real bullets, too, inside his pistol, waiting to be used against his foes.

Pahlavi found a vantage point where he could watch the soldiers. Several of them were hunkered down behind their truck, waiting for orders or an opportunity to move. Cooper had pinned them down, but he was somewhere on the other side. These troops apparently had no idea there was another enemy watching, on their side of the truck.

Pahlavi took his time, aiming, worried a bit that he was letting Cooper down by not advancing more aggressively. But he knew he would do the tall American no good at all if he was dead. Aiming, he framed a target in his sights as he’d been taught—but then the soldier moved, shifting away, duckwalking toward the rear of the truck. Cursing, Pahlavi tracked him, had him lined up when the soldier rose and stepped around the tailgate, rifle at his shoulder, squeezing off a burst toward the far side of the clearing.

Pahlavi squeezed the trigger, rode the sleek Beretta’s recoil, hopeful but still surprised to see his target crumple, back arched, slumping to the earth. The soldier writhed, convulsing, kicking at the sod, then shivered out and moved no more.

Pahlavi had expected nausea, a rush of guilt, something besides the mere sense of a job well done, but nothing came to him. Perhaps it was the moment, he decided, too much going on around him to permit normal emotions coming to the fore.

Or else, perhaps he liked it.

No. Pahlavi wouldn’t, couldn’t think about that now. There would be ample time to psychoanalyze himself if he survived this battle and the mission still to come.

And if he died, what difference would it make?

Soldiers were grouped around the man he’d shot, checking for vital signs. Some of them were firing aimlessly into the woods. They clearly had no sense of where the fatal shot had come from, meaning he could fire again, at least once more, with relative impunity.

Pahlavi chose another target, lined his sights up on the soldier’s chest, and let the hammer drop.

SACHI CHANDAKA HUDDLED underneath the truck and tried to understand exactly what was happening. He’d been pursuing four men, with a force of thirty-one behind him, and he’d seen two of them die. The others should be dead by now, as well, but instead his men were dying all around him, while he cowered in the shadows, trembling and in pain.

He had been splashed with burning fuel, along one sleeve and shoulder of his jacket, when the jeeps exploded moments earlier. Ducking and running to escape the shrapnel and clear the spreading lake of fire behind him, the lieutenant had been pulled down by two privates who smothered the flames and doubtless saved his life. Chandaka reckoned they should both receive citations for their courage and quick thinking, but from where he lay beneath the truck, he saw one of them stretched out dead, almost within arm’s reach.

His pain and fear immobilized Chandaka, shamed him. He knew he should find the strength to rally his remaining troops, lead them to victory, and thus salvage some shred of honor from this day—but how?

At present, he had no idea how many enemies were firing at his soldiers from the forest, whether they were bandits or guerrillas, why they’d sought this confrontation. It was preposterous to think that he had simply stumbled onto them, and any hint that he was only dealing with the two men they had chased into the woods seemed like insanity.

Two men alone could never do all this.

Could they?

But even if there were a dozen shooters in the woods, Chandaka still had them outnumbered. Even with his losses, he could still attack—use “shock and awe,” as the Americans were fond of saying. He should storm the tree line with guns blazing and destroy the bastards who had bloodied and humiliated him.

In fact, there was no other choice. He could not simply lay beneath the truck and wait until his men had all been killed, then wriggle out to face the enemy alone. Nor could he wait and pray for reinforcements to arrive, since none of his superiors knew where he was, or even that he was in trouble.

Right, then, he told himself. He had to act, and swiftly, to redeem the situation and himself.

Groaning, Chandaka dragged himself from underneath the truck, pulling his rifle after him. Some of his soldiers seemed surprised to see him, as if they’d forgotten he was with them, or perhaps assumed that he’d been killed. They huddled under fire, some of them hammering long bursts into the tree line closest to them, seemingly without a hope of scoring any hits.

Chandaka started counting heads, got to fourteen and realized that there were no more left to count. He couldn’t do the simple calculation in his head, so rattled was he by the evidence before his eyes, but the lieutenant understood that more than half his soldiers had been lost.

All dead? Had some of them turned tail and run? he wondered. It made no difference now. He’d have to work with what he had.

Feigning a confidence he didn’t feel, Chandaka told his men, “We cannot stay here. They’ll murder all of us unless we seize the—”

“Who are they?” someone demanded, interrupting him.

“It doesn’t matter,” the lieutenant answered. “We must now seize the initiative. Carry the fight to them. I need you all to follow me and—”

Something dropped out of the sky and landed at Chandaka’s feet. He glanced down at it, blinking. It seemed ludicrous—a bright green apple or a ball, some kind of toy—but one of his men shouted, “Grenade!” and they began to scatter in a panic.

Whimpering, Chandaka turned to run. He managed two long strides before the antipersonnel grenade exploded. Its concussion plucked him off his feet and punched him through an airborne somersault, while shrapnel tore into his body with the lancing pain of countless razor blades. Chandaka landed on his back, rolled over once and wound up staring at a smoky sky.

Survival was beyond him now. He knew it. It had been too much to hope for. Chasing bandits and guerrillas was a game for better men. He’d failed the army and his soldiers and himself, but none of that seemed relevant. Instead, he focused on the pain and hoped that it would end soon.

There was only so much that a man could bear.

BOLAN WAS READY WHEN the soldiers broke from cover, sprinting to escape the frag grenade. His AKMS had a fully loaded magazine, and even though the weapon’s fire-selector switch didn’t allow for 3-round bursts, Bolan was deft enough to manage on his own.

He led the first runner by three feet, give or take, and stroked the rifle’s trigger lightly, sending three or four 7.62 mm rounds downrange to meet him, take him down and keep him there.

The second man heard firing away to his left and returned it without even looking to see where it had come from, still running, but blasting away with his weapon in hopes of distracting the sniper who’d just nailed his friend. With luck, it might’ve worked, but this one’s luck had run out.

Bolan squeezed off another burst and saw his target stumble, drop his rifle, throwing out both arms as if to catch himself, but they were limp before he hit the turf facedown and plowed it with his chin, doing a spastic little break-dance in the dirt before he died.

How many left?

Bolan could see five runners, guessed there had to be several others out of sight, beyond the truck, but he would have to take them as they came.

Incredibly, two of the soldiers were advancing toward his position at a dead run, high-stepping across uneven ground and making decent speed. He didn’t know if they had spotted him, or if they’d picked a point at random as their destination, but it made no difference.

He shot the nearer of the runners first, a quick burst to the chest that slammed him over backward, head and shoulders touching down before his heels made contact with the earth. That snapped the second soldier out of any trance that may have gripped him, and he started firing from the hip, still charging, mouthing challenges or curses in a language Bolan couldn’t understand.

Bullets were whipping over Bolan’s head when he tattooed the soldier’s chest with four rounds on the fly and spun him, autorifle still blazing away, through a pirouette. His legs started to buckle halfway through it, folding so that he appeared to screw himself into the ground.

Turning on his mark, Bolan lined up another target as the man glanced toward the source of gunfire, making eye contact. He was about to squeeze the rifle’s trigger when another shot rang out, somewhere ahead and to his left. It was a pistol, and the bullet caught his man in midstride, dropping him with an expression of immense surprise upon his face.

Pahlavi?

Bolan didn’t have the time to ponder it, with two soldiers still moving in his field of fire. The farthest from him was about to reach the tree line, all of sixty feet away, but that was nothing for the AKMS in a marksman’s hands. The rifle stuttered briefly, blasting spouts of blood from olive drab fatigues, and Bolan saw his man go down, sliding a few feet on his belly, arms outflung, before his head butted against a tree and stopped him short.

The last soldier Bolan could see was running for his life, his knees and elbows pumping, with the rifle in his fists clearly forgotten. Even with the echoes of the battle ringing in his ears, Bolan could hear the soldier panting, straining toward the finish line that offered momentary safety.

He could let the runner go, grant him the gift of life, but that would jeopardize the mission, Darius Pahlavi and himself. It was a risk Bolan was not prepared to take, this early in a brand-new game.

He fired and caught his target on the fly, a puff of crimson rising from the soldier’s head and shoulder as he tumbled, rolling over once, then shuddering a moment on the grass before his life ran out and left him hollow, still.

There could be others waiting for him on the far side of the truck, but Bolan had to take that chance. He didn’t want to waste another grenade on corpses, without checking first to see if there was any threat. That meant emerging from the trees with caution, making his advance one slow step at a time.

Halfway around the truck, the Executioner saw Pahlavi standing at the tree line opposite, exposed to any soldiers still alive behind the truck. No one was firing at him, which encouraged Bolan to advance more quickly. As he cleared the truck’s tailgate, he found that his second grenade had done its work effectively, if not cleanly. There were no more hostile survivors on the field.

Pahlavi wore a slightly dazed expression as he crossed the grass to stand at Bolan’s side. “All dead?” he asked.

“It looks that way,” Bolan replied.

“Now, what?”

“Now,” Bolan said, “we move this truck and see if we can get my rental out of here before the cavalry shows up. And while we’re on the road, we need to talk.”

5

Southwestern Pakistan

The open highway wasn’t safe, but it was all they had. They couldn’t fly, and even as they passed through wooded areas, Bolan knew they could not afford to hide and hope the storm would pass them by.

He didn’t spend much time watching network news broadcasts, but Bolan knew that a loss of thirty-odd soldiers in one firefight would rock Pakistan. Some would mourn the loss, others might cheer it, but the powers that be would most certainly seek to explain and avenge it.

This would be no minor gale. They were fleeing ahead of a full-fledged tornado, the kind of storm that could pluck them off the face of planet Earth and never let them go. The kind that could make them evaporate without a trace.

They have to find us first, Bolan thought.

After he had put two miles between them and the slaughter site, he asked Pahlavi, “So, where are we going?”

“To my village. It’s the only place we will be relatively safe.”

That “relatively” wasn’t very reassuring, but the Executioner would take what he could get, just now.

“How far?” he asked.

“About one hundred miles, due north,” Pahlavi answered.

Bolan checked his fuel gauge. They should make it with a bit of gas to spare, if there were no detours along the way, but any traveling beyond their destination would require a fill-up.

“Right,” he said. “Then we’ve got time to talk. You start, and take it from the top.”

“The top?”

“From the beginning,” Bolan translated.

“Of course. My sister is…she was a nuclear physicist. She made an honor and distinction for my family, not only graduating from the university, but second in her class. The government immediately offered her a post with their new laboratory, working on a program they call Project Future. It’s supposed to harness nuclear power for peaceful applications. Generation of electric power and the like. I don’t pretend to understand it all.”

“And then your sister—that’s Darice?” Bolan asked, reflecting on the meager intelligence he’d been given.

“It was.” A sadness there. Clearly, Pahlavi reckoned she was dead.

“And then Darice found something else,” Bolan suggested.

“Yes! She soon discovered that there was a plan within a plan, involving Sikh extremists. Project X. While some employees at the lab worked on the project everybody knows about, others were put to work behind the scenes, trying to build a compact weapon that would fit inside a piece of luggage. Darice was assigned to that division, banned from talking to the scientists working on Project Future. Banned from talking, period.”

“But she still talked to you,” Bolan suggested.

“Yes. We have been close since childhood, Mr. Cooper. Closer still, since we lost our parents seven years ago. Their bus collided with a train, and…”

Staring out his window into space, Pahlavi briefly lost his train of thought, then came back to it, waving off the lapse without comment.

“In any case,” he said, “she told me what was happening. Together, we decided something must be done to stop it, either halt production on the small bomb or prevent it being passed to other hands. You know the history of Pakistan and India?”

“I’ve just had a refresher course,” Bolan replied.

“Our leaders hate each other. I’m not sure they still remember how or why it started, but the hating has become a way of life for both countries. It’s unhealthy, but I don’t know how to change it. If it even can be changed. Our countries fight like children over lines drawn on a map, who claims this bit of land or that, as if the soil itself is somehow precious. Kashmir, for example, is a situation I will never understand.”

“How’s that?” Bolan asked.

Pahlavi shrugged. “Eighty percent of all the people living there are Muslim, like myself and my government, but it is ruled by Hindu leaders. It reminds me of South Africa, the white and black, or Protestant and Catholic in Belfast. Yes?”

Clearly, Darice Pahlavi hadn’t been the only member of her family to get an education. It was Bolan’s turn to shrug. “It happens. If we’re lucky, governments can work it out.”

“But these two only fight and threaten. Never really talking, never listening. For this, they’ve gone to war three times in forty years, but nothing is resolved. Why either country wants more mouths to feed remains a mystery to me.”

“So, that’s the rub,” Bolan said. “And you’re thinking there may be another war.”

“If Pakistan supplies a suitcase bomb to Sikh extremists and they use it against India?” Pahlavi’s smile was bitter as he shook his head. “The next war will destroy life as we know it here, and possibly throughout the world. There are alliances, support agreements. If one nation uses its atomic bombs against the other—”

Pahlavi shook his head again, slump-shouldered. At a glance, it seemed that he had aged ten years while he was talking, in the time it took Bolan to drive five miles.

“Let us assume,” Pahlavi said, “that the retaliations are confined to the subcontinent. Nearly two billion people live here. That’s about one-fourth of the whole planet’s population. Even if the fallout never drifts beyond our borders—an impossibility, all scientists agree—most of those people will be lost, either in bombings of the cities or through radiation poisoning, starvation and disease. Beyond that, if the fallout spreads…”

“I get it,” Bolan said.

“And don’t forget the various alliances, treaties and nonaggression pacts. Who knows what’s written down somewhere and hidden in some diplomatic vault? Will the Chinese move in? The Russians? Either way, it means reaction from the U.S.A. and Britain, probably the UN, too. Picture the world on fire.”

Bolan had been there in his head, a thousand times. He didn’t like the view.

“What was your plan, at first?” he asked.

“Darice would smuggle out proof of Project X, for distribution to the media. Once the conspiracy was public knowledge, those responsible would either have to stop or face the condemnation of a world united to oppose them.”

“But she never made it out,” Bolan observed.

Pahlavi’s eyes were misty now. “I still don’t know what happened, how they found her out. I’ve been in hiding since the day she…disappeared. The government wants me and everyone involved in our group, Ohm, to silence us. Even the politicians who might once have raised their voices against Project X show a united face against a threat to national security.”

“So,” Bolan asked him, “what’s your alternative plan?”

Pahlavi was quiet.

“What’s your alternative to going public in the media? You can’t do that without the evidence, so what’s up next? Why am I here?” Bolan asked.

Pahlavi swallowed hard. “We have no other choice,” he said. “We must destroy the roots of Project X.”

Although the thought had not been far from Pahlavi’s mind since the loss of his sister, it still intimidated him to speak the words aloud.

“All right,” Bolan said. “Spell it out. What have you got in mind?”

“Perhaps to penetrate the laboratory somehow,” Pahlavi replied. “Once inside, there should be some way to destroy the weapon and its plans.”

“Perhaps? Somehow? Some way?” Bolan glanced over at him, then back toward the road. “That’s not a plan. It’s wishful thinking.”

Embarrassed by the truth of the American’s words, Pahlavi said, “I grant you that I do not have full knowledge of the laboratory, how to get inside, or what to do there. I was counting on Darice to help us. She…we talked about the lab, of course. Security precautions, all the measures they employ to keep strangers out. I know where the lab is located, the best way to approach it, but I’m not a soldier. Until recently, I never thought that I would have to be.”

“Sometimes it sneaks up on you,” Bolan said. “But once you come to the decision, there’s no turning back.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I know that it may mean my death,” Pahlavi said.

“But not just yours. How has the rest of Ohm been taking this?”

“You saw Adi and Sanjiv die for us. The others feel the same.”

Bolan frowned. “Can you be sure of that?” he asked.

Pahlavi felt his hackles rising. “Ask me what you mean to say.”

“It’s SOP—standard operating procedure—for a government to infiltrate opposing groups whenever possible, keep track of what they’re planning.” Bolan spared another quick glance from the two-lane highway. “It may be an absolute coincidence that a patrol with thirty-odd soldiers came along just at the time we were supposed to meet, but then again, maybe it wasn’t.”

“You believe there is a traitor in the group?” Pahlavi asked.

“I don’t believe or disbelieve,” Bolan replied. “I’m saying it’s a possibility you should consider, if it hasn’t crossed your mind already.”

“You’re wrong,” Pahlavi answered stubbornly. “Darice and I joined Ohm. They did not come to us with flattery, pretending to believe as we did. As I do.”

“All the more reason to consider who your friends are,” Bolan said. “The group has been around a while. Presumably it’s known to the security police, maybe G-2.”

“I do not understand.”

“Army Intelligence,” Bolan explained. “I don’t know what you call it here. I guarantee your government has one or more departments dedicated to collecting information on its opposition, doing everything it can to bring them down.”

“Of course.” Pahlavi thought about it for a moment, suddenly uneasy. “But if what you say is true, then we are doomed.”

“Not necessarily,” Bolan replied. “First thing, remember that I’m only saying if. What if there was a mole inside. Then he or she may not know where we’d go, in case the setup fell apart. Be careful who you trust, is all I’m saying.”

“But you ask me to trust you,” Pahlavi said in challenge.

“The difference is that you called me, and I’m from the outside. You’ve also seen me stand against your enemies. A double agent wouldn’t do that. Couldn’t risk it.”

To that logic, there was no response. Pahlavi knew that the American was correct. No traitor working inside Ohm would kill soldiers to keep his cover story solid. His superiors surely would punish such an act with death, perhaps the execution of the man’s whole family.

Or woman’s, Pahlavi thought, riven with suspicion. His mind had moved along those lines before, of course, but each time he’d found some excuse to tell himself it was impossible. No traitors could exist within the group he’d come to trust with everything—his life, his sister and his sanity.

Pahlavi would have cursed Cooper for raising all those ugly doubts again, but the American was simply speaking honestly, forcing Pahlavi to confront a possibility that he had been remiss in overlooking previously.

“Now, I’ll ask again,” Bolan said. “What’s our destination?”

“Still my village,” Pahlavi said. “It is not Ohm that we run to, but the people I grew up with. If they betray me, then it’s better that I simply die.”

“Your call on that,” Bolan remarked. “But if it’s not too much to ask, try not to take me with you, okay?”

“You need not fear my people, Mr. Cooper.”

That brought no response from the American, but it suddenly occurred to Pahlavi that if the people of his village failed him, they might have something to fear from the American. He had already seen the man in action, killing all but three or four of the soldiers who had been slain that afternoon.

It hit Pahlavi full force that he was not the same man he had been that morning. In the meantime, he had killed and watched friends die. He was a fugitive now, from whatever passed for justice in his homeland. The authorities could not stop heroin from passing through the country on its way to Europe, and they might be scheming to ignite another war with India for no good reason, but they would be out in force to find him, because of this day’s bloody work.

And now, he might be bringing sudden death into the very village where he had been born and raised.

But where else could he go?

Nowhere.

“You have nothing to fear,” Pahlavi said again. And hoped that it was true.

“Another thing you need to think about,” Bolan remarked. “We don’t know when they’ll find the bodies, but it may not be too long. For all we know, they may have sent out bulletins while they were chasing us, before we led them off the road. If they know how to run a search, they’ll work out from the killing ground and won’t give up until they find something. If you’re already on a list, and they know where you came from, well…”

He left the statement dangling, let Pahlavi finish it himself. There was another risk to which he would expose his people, but he still had no alternative. If he could not run back to Ohm, which had no central headquarters in any case, then only in his native village could he hope for sanctuary.

“We will not stay long,” Pahlavi said. A compromise. “Just long enough to get supplies, and then…”

Pahlavi hesitated. He was fresh out of ideas. It shamed and angered him that he could not present a finished plan to the American. But if he’d known exactly what to do and could complete the mission on his own, the American would not be there.

“Let’s try a different angle of attack,” Bolan said. “Tell me what you know about the lab and Project X.”

6

“Explain to me what happened,” Cyrus Shabou said. “I wish to understand how such a thing occurs.”

A grim-faced man in full-dress military uniform sat opposite the deputy minister for defense, separated from Shabou by the wide teak plateau of his handmade desk. The gleaming emblems on his collar marked him as a colonel. He was, in fact, Anish Dalal, commander of all counterterrorism actions in the western third of Pakistan. And clearly, he did not enjoy a summons from the civilians who controlled the very life or death of his career.

“Deputy Minster,” Dalal began, “I am unable to supply as full an explanation as you might expect, and as I would prefer to give. From all appearances, Lieutenant Sachi Chandaka was leading a routine patrol when he encountered someone on the highway west of Bela.”

“Someone?” Shabou interrupted. “He encountered someone?”

“If I may continue, sir?”

“By all means, do so. And explain yourself.”

“At 1420—that would be—”

“I know the military clock, Colonel. Proceed.”

“Yes, sir. At 1420, Lieutenant Chandaka broadcast a brief message, reporting himself in pursuit of two unidentified vehicles, each with two or more male occupants. They were reportedly proceeding northward, but there were no further bulletins. At 1900, Lieutenant Chandaka’s patrol was officially late, without word of progress or location. Radio queries went unanswered. We finally received a call from a police outpost in Balochistan. They’d located a civilian vehicle with two dead men inside and evidence of gunfire. We launched a local search immediately and we found the rest.”

Shabou frowned and tapped a manicured index finger on the printout set before him, on his desktop. “Thirty-two men dead, including the lieutenant, and three military vehicles destroyed. Is that correct?”

“Essentially,” Dalal replied. “The truck was not destroyed, as I’m given to understand the term, but it was damaged. Yes, sir.”

“And you still have no idea at all who may have been responsible for this?”

“Sir, we’ve begun with the assumption that the dead civilians on the highway are related to the massacre.”

“That seems a logical conclusion, Colonel,” Shabou replied.

“Yes, sir. Both were armed, of course. Their weapons had been fired, but further tests will be required to tell if any of their bullets actually struck Chandaka’s vehicles. In any case, their car was found roughly three miles away from where the others died.”

“Have you identified these two?”

“We have, sir. Their names were Sanjiv Dushkriti and Adi Lusila. Both in their twenties, the first born in Karachi, the other in Hyderabad. Dushkriti served six months as a student for hashish possession. Lusila was clean. They were driving his car. Nothing else in the vehicle, besides their weapons, to suggest a criminal intent.”

“And what of politics?”

“They’re not on file, Deputy Minister. There were no manifestos in the vehicle. No drugs or extra weapons, as if they were trafficking. My guess would be that they were highway bandits, interrupted by the sight of a patrol. They run, Chandaka chases them, and there’s a fight.”

“A fight? Is that how you describe the loss of thirty-two trained men, with only two dead on the other side?”

“Perhaps my choice of words—”

“I would describe it as a massacre,” Shabou pressed him. “Do you agree?”

“In retrospect…yes, sir.”

“And is it common for a pair of highwaymen to massacre so many soldiers, then escape unharmed?”

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