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“Control, do you still have a fix on our position?”
The earpiece responded with an empty hiss. Bolan pulled the device from his ear. There was still the hope that even though he couldn’t communicate Keller could still track him.
Ous stood and steadied himself against a rock. “The gunfire from the top of the gorge has stopped.”
“They’ll be organizing a hunting party.”
“Do you think Saboor could convince our comrades to hunt me, much less the Mighty One?” Ous asked.
“No.” Bolan thought about Zurisaday’s mysterious bodyguards. “They’ll be bringing in ringers.”
Assassin’s Code
Mack Bolan®
Don Pendleton
I have to bring to your notice a terrifying reality: with the development of nuclear weapons Man has acquired, for the first time in history, the technical means to destroy the whole of civilization in a single act.
—Joseph Rotblat
1908–2005
A terrifying reality is how far bad people will go to bring about Armageddon. But a few good people stand ready to defend.
—Mack Bolan
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER ONE
Helmand Province, Islamic Republic of Afghanistan
“Good Luck, sir!” the driver called. Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, nodded as he pulled his shemagh up over the bridge of his nose and his goggles down over his eyes. He shouldered his gear bag and stepped out of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected armored vehicle—MRAP—and into the maelstrom. Except for the watering of the Helmand River, the province was arid and when the wind blew, the dust rose. The dust storm was in its second day, and it turned the world at noon into a howling, hissing peach-colored nightmare of wind and grit.
Bolan turned his head as a wave of dust slapped him in the face. The wind plucked at his clothing as the dust sought every fold and crevice. He slammed the door shut behind him and knocked twice on the fender for thanks and luck. The MRAP 4X4 rumbled off toward the temporary airmobile depot.
The soldier leaned into the wind and walked across the village’s single street to a blast-blackened native house. The wind and dust were making an earnest attempt at scrubbing the face of the house clean. What it couldn’t scour away were the pockmarks in the clay from dozens of bullet strikes and the bigger craters and divots from heavy machine guns and grenade blasts.
A pair of goggled, helmeted and scarf-faced Marines stood hunched at guard outside the door. A designated marksman on the roof was a sand-colored ghost in the gloom. The two Marines below nodded and opened what was left of the shattered, blue-painted wooden door. The wind dropped from a howl to a moan as Bolan stepped out of the storm and into a butcher’s yard.
United States Assistant Attaché Henry “Hank” Millard had died hard. He had risen to the rank of commander in the United States Navy and was a Defense Language Institute Hall of Famer who spoke excellent Dari Persian and Arabic. He had been sent to the blast furnace of Helmand province to deal directly with the tribal chieftains and to woo them away from the Taliban.
Only a few threads of flesh and gristle kept his head attached to his body.
Bolan pushed up his goggles, pulled down his shemagh and set down his bag with a muffled clank. A fully armed and armored member of the Marine Military Police openly scowled at him. A man and woman in plain battle fatigues looked at Bolan suspiciously. The SIG pistols strapped to their thighs told Bolan they were most likely Naval Criminal Investigative Service agents. Of interest was an Afghan man of indeterminate middle age standing slightly off by himself. He wore a mixture of Afghan and Western dress. The pakol on his head said he was probably from the northwest. He smoked a ten-inch church-warden-style briar pipe, and every time he puffed the NCIS agents glared at him, however they seemed unwilling or unable to demand that he cease smoking at a crime scene. The man carried an M-4 rifle crooked in his elbow.
He looked disturbingly like Clint Eastwood if the actor had a broken nose, grew a salt-and-pepper beard with matching long curling hair and had skin the color and complexion of cracked saddle leather. The man gazed at Bolan in open speculation with the inscrutable yellow eyes of a wolf.
Bolan turned his attention back to the decapitated attaché. Millard had been sent in with emergency haste to keep the very delicate and contentious negotiations going after the last envoy had been killed. A lot of peacemakers were being killed. Helmand Province was critical to the war effort. The President himself had asked for Stony Man Farm’s involvement, specifically Bolan’s. It wasn’t his usual activity, and babysitting was the soldier’s least favorite job, but he knew what the stakes were in Afghanistan and he had accepted the mission. He’d been twenty-four hours too late in arriving, and it had taken orders from the Man to keep Millard’s murder quiet for the ensuing twenty-four hours Bolan requested. He had twenty-four hours and counting to make something happen before the whole thing blew wide open.
The Marine MP continued to eyeball Bolan. “And just who the hell are you?”
It wasn’t an unreasonable question, but the Marine just wasn’t going to get a reasonable or what would qualify as a sane answer in his USMC world-view. Bolan gave the man a friendly smile anyway. “I’m your liaison, Captain Yoshida.”
Yoshida wasn’t impressed. “And just which branch of government are you—” the captain sought for a word “—liaising for me for, again, exactly, Mr…?.?” He trailed off as he scanned Bolan’s plain uniform in vain for ID, rank or insignia.
“Which branch of government do you require aid or assistance from, Captain?” Bolan countered.
The captain contemplated this strange offer. The Afghan suddenly smiled in a friendly fashion and stuck out his hand. “My name is Omar Ous.”
Bolan shook his hand. “Pleasure. Call me Cooper.”
The NCIS agents stepped forward. The woman arranged a professional look on her face. It was a nice face, with high cheekbones, a strong chin, big brown eyes and a short ponytail pulled through the back of her fatigue cap. “Kathryn Keller, and this is Agent Neil Farkas.”
Farkas was a gangling Ichabod Crane–looking individual with a slight stoop, a permanent number-four bad hair day haircut graying at the temples and an Adam’s apple that would cut glass. Bolan pressed the flesh all around and then gave the assassination scene a second go-over. The soldier wasn’t a detective, but his War Everlasting had taken him to firefights on every continent on Earth, and he could read a battle scene like an experienced hunter reading trail sign.
“It was an inside job,” he stated.
“You think?” Keller inquired.
“Millard was done execution style. His pistol is still strapped to his thigh,” Bolan continued. He looked at the four other bodies in the room. They’d all had their heads hammered apart at point-blank range with automatic weapons. “The bad guys literally just walked in and did this with complete surprise. How many servants did the attaché have?”
Captain Yoshida crossed his arms over the M-4 carbine slung across his chest. “Eight. We have two in custody. The other six disappeared. I have people—”
“The rest of the servants are dead. Don’t bother.”
For a moment there was no sound but the howl of the wind and the hiss of the dust outside. The motley crew of unlikely allies stood in the charnel house of death, each considering his or her own analysis. Farkas spoke first. “The man was a United States attaché, and he’s three spaghetti strings of gristle short of decapitation.”
Bolan nodded.
“So I got a question for you,” Farkas said.
“Shoot.”
Farkas gave Bolan a very questioning look. “How come this isn’t all over FOX news?”
“Because I asked the President to give me twenty-four hours,” Bolan replied.
That was good for several more moments of silence in the storm. Farkas shook his head. “You aren’t talking about the president of Afghanistan.”
“Well, I’m told he agreed to it,” Bolan said.
Farkas’s face went blank as machines far beyond his pay grade spun their cogs and wheels around him. “Jesus.”
Keller stared. “Buddy, you’re like straight out of a movie.”
Yoshida examined Bolan as if he were a spider the size of Shetland pony that had suddenly dropped into their midst. “More like a comic book.”
“I like him,” Ous opined.
Bolan inclined his head at Ous and got down to business. “Two attachés in two months. Someone’s trying to kill the peace process in Helmand Province. They want a stink. They want an uproar.”
Keller’s eyes widened as she started to understand what Bolan was getting at. “And we’re into day two with nothing on the news.”
Yoshida gave Bolan an infinitesimal nod. “And criminals can’t help but come back to the scene of the crime.”
“They’re going to want to know what went wrong,” Bolan said, nodding. “And what’s happening.”
Keller popped the retention strap on her holster. “You think they’re going to come snooping back?”
“They’re here now,” Bolan stated.
Ous tapped his pipe empty against the bottom of his boot and put the pipe in his tactical vest. He pushed off the safety of his M-4 with a click. “He is right. Now is the time of ambush. They come.”
Bolan knelt beside his gear bag. “Get your men inside, Captain.”
“Oh, for God’s sake…” Yoshida clicked his com unit and spoke to the guards outside. “Yo! Buzz! Munoz! You got anything suspicious, any movement at all out there?”
Outside the dust hissed against the side of the house like the amplified sound of writhing serpents.
“Buzz? Munoz?” Yoshida’s voice rose. “Come back!” No one came back across the tactical radio. The captain unslung his rifle and spoke to the man on the roof. “Plowman, come back!”
Nothing came back but the wind.
“God…damn it…” Yoshida unslung his carbine.
Bolan unzipped his rifle bag and took out his Beowulf entry weapon. It looked like Yoshida’s M-4 carbine on steroids. The village was just outside the city of Sangin, one of only three major cities in Helmand Province and one that had seen the most brutal urban warfare of almost the entire war in Afghanistan. Bolan’s Beowulf weapon was .500 caliber and was the equivalent of fully automatic buffalo rifle. His also had the unusual modification of a grenade launcher mounted beneath the barrel. He had come ready for a battle in the streets.
It seemed the battle was about to be joined.
Farkas scooped up a Joint Service Combat Shotgun leaned in the corner and Keller took a stubby black MP-5 K off the couch and pushed the selector to full-auto. Yoshida changed frequencies. “Camp Two, this is Envoy One, requesting immediate reinforcement. Come back.”
Nothing came back but the same hiss.
Bolan slung a bandolier of grenades and spare mags over his shoulder. “You’re being jammed across all frequencies.”
Yoshida was appalled. “When was the last time the Taliban could jam U.S. military com links?”
Bolan loaded a fragmentation round into his grenade launcher. “Puzzler, isn’t it?”
Yoshida’s face set in a ferocious scowl. “I’m going outside. I have to find my men. Anyone coming with me?”
“Whoever took them in this storm did it point-blank,” Bolan cautioned. “They’re right outside.”
“Plowman’s on the roof. You can’t see from rooftop to rooftop, he’s—”
“They’re on the roof, too.”
“Shit,” Keller observed.
“Crap,” Farkas agreed.
Ous smiled the smile of a warrior who had given himself over to violence and intended to enjoy it. “Shit-crap!”
Bolan took three steps and kicked the front door open.
Shit-crap was right.
The MRAP was roaring straight toward the door. The gears ground as someone unused to driving an MRAP built a full head of steam. Luckily whoever was in charge seemed to have no idea how to use the remote-weapon station and bring the .50-caliber weapon to bear. Bolan vainly wished he’d loaded an antiarmor round, but he sent the frag grenade flying into the armor-glass windshield and lunged back. “Get back! Get back!”
The MRAP hit the house in a forty-mile-per-hour, fourteen-ton car wreck. The door, the jamb and a significant chunk of the wall came down in an eruption of shattering clay. A chunk of wall hit Yoshida in his armored chest and knocked him into the next room. Keller screamed as a section of roof fell in, Plowman’s body falling on top of her. Two screaming, flailing terrorists followed as the ceiling dropped in a cascade. Bolan’s Beowulf thunder-clapped twice as he gave each killer a .500-caliber sledgehammer to the chest.
Ous’s M-4 made a distinctive clack as he pushed the usually deactivated selector switch to full-auto. The glass on an MRAP was rated to stop shell splinters, the blast effect of roadside improvised explosive devices and hits from .30-caliber rifle rounds. Ous’s weapon was .30 caliber, but the range was point-blank and he emptied his 20-round mag on full-auto. Armor glass geysered and cracked beneath the onslaught.
Bolan batted cleanup as he sent his eight remaining rounds through the driver’s window and shattered it. Arterial spray followed the glass shrapnel. The engine died at the same time as the driver, and the vehicle stood stalled in wreckage. Armored doors clanged open and the cry of “Allahu Akbar!” howled above the storm as killers boiled out the back door and made for the breach on either side of the vehicle. Others came over the top.
Bolan racked open his grenade launcher and slid another frag grenade into the smoking breech. Keller rose from the rubble and human wreckage. Her submachine gun bripped as she put bursts into the portside invaders. Farkas’s shotgun boomed aft in rapid semiautomatic. Bolan raised his weapon as gears ground in the MRAP as someone tried to get the vehicle moving while crouching beneath the level of the shattered windshield.
“Fire in the hole!” The team crouched as a unit as Bolan fired his grenade through the MRAP’s window and turned the insides of the vehicle into a slaughter box of buzz-sawing shrapnel. Engine activity in the MRAP ceased and desisted.
Bolan roared as he moved back and reloaded. “Move back! Farkas! Check the captain!”
Farkas pulled a fade as Bolan, Keller and Ous knelt and shot. The killers came on crying out God’s name and with their AK-74s spraying as they stumbled over the rubble. Their faith made them fearless, but it didn’t make them accurate or bulletproof. They fell going forward, but they fell. Bolan slammed in a fresh mag and counted a dozen dead. “Cease fire!”
The only noise was the storm beyond the shattered walls and the mechanical noise of weapons being reloaded. They had loaded the MRAP to the gills with holy warriors, but Bolan knew there had to be more in the surrounding houses and alleys. “Farkas! Sitrep!”
“Captain Yoshida’s okay!” Farkas called back. “But we’ve got enemy gunners coming up the alley behind us! I make it a baker’s dozen!”
Keller wiped blood and dust from her face and glared out into the dust storm. “Christ, there must be a platoon of them!”
“We’re out of here!” Bolan shouted.
Keller looked around in confusion. “Where’re we gonna go?”
Bolan clambered over the rubble on the MRAP. “The bus is leaving!”
Farkas shuffled forward, giving Yoshida a shoulder to lean on. Bolan flung open the driver’s door. The interior was painted black with smoke, glinting with shrapnel gouges and swathed in blood spray. He pulled the nearly headless driver from behind the wheel. The man who had tried to replace him was torn up pretty badly from the grenade, but he was still alive. Bolan shoved him out of the way as the rest of the team began to climb in. “Can anyone drive this?”
Yoshida gave a defiant wheeze. “I’ll fucking drive it out of here!”
“Do it!” Bolan moved back into the cabin. “Farkas! Stabilize the prisoner if you can! Keller! Close that back door!”
Bolan slid into the remote-weapon operator’s seat. Ugly scratches scored the monitor and everything was covered with smoke and blast residue, but the screen came to life as he clicked keys. The unmanned turret and the .50-caliber machine gun it carried whirred above him as he traversed rearward. Someone outside with ill intentions noticed the move, and Keller slammed the back door shut just as bullets began whining off the hull.
Yoshida rammed the MRAP into Reverse. Clay and timbers shifted as the armored vehicle backed out of the rubble. Bullets began whining off the hull in bee swarms. Bolan tracked the remote .50-caliber gun through the gloom, silencing the enemy fire shooter by shooter. The soldier’s skin crawled in anticipation of the RPG hit that would turn the cabin into a blast furnace of superheated gas and molten metal. The MRAP lurched forward as Yoshida put the hammer down. Ous leaped from armored window to armored window. “Seven o’clock! Seven o’clock high!”
The remote weapon whirled under Bolan’s command, the big .50-caliber weapon tearing the three men on the rooftop into rags.
BOLAN CAUGHT THE FLASH of fire and smoke as the rocket roared past his gun camera. The rocket impacted a wall in a flash, and then the explosion and smoke was swallowed in the dust storm. Keller shook her head in mounting panic as she scanned out the portside windows. “Christ, they’re everywhere!”
Yoshida roared in pain. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”
“The captain’s hit!” Farkas shouted.
Bolan flicked a glance over to see the Marine captain sag, swearing, out of the driver’s seat. “Shit…”
The Executioner was nearly thrown from his position as the MRAP swerved into a wall and stalled.
“Bismillah!” Ous shouted. “Rocket! Rocket!”
Bolan tracked the turret around just in time to see the rocket-propelled grenade fly straight into his crosshairs. “Everybody down!” Keller screamed. The interior lights went black as something seemed to slap the MRAP along its chassis. The turret overhead screamed as metal tore. Sparks flew from the wiring, and everything that wasn’t bolted down went flying. Ous tumbled into Bolan’s position and bounced off him. The Executioner’s ears rang, but battle instincts took over. The vehicle was still upright. The fire-suppression system hadn’t been activated, so they weren’t on fire, and the hull hadn’t been breached.
The remote-weapon system was gone. Bullets continued slamming into the hull. Bolan scrambled over Yoshida and Farkas. One glance told him Yoshida was in bad shape. The driver’s position was a viscous swamp of blood from every man who had driven the vehicle this day.
Bolan pulled down his goggles and slid into the death seat.
The wind blasted dust through the shattered window. The soldier hit the starter button, and the engine grunted then stalled.
“They come!” Ous yelled as he looked out the rear windows.
The Executioner hit the starter again, and the Caterpillar diesel engine thundered back to life. He shoved the MRAP into Reverse and floored it. The howls of bloodlust turned to screams. Bolan was rewarded by the sound of bodies bouncing off armor.
Ous went flying as the MRAP clipped the side of a house. Gears ground as the vehicle was cranked back into drive, then stalled. Thumps echoed hollowly from the roof as someone leaped from the rooftop and onto the MRAP. Bolan snarled as a hand appeared in the shattered driver’s window and dropped a grenade in his lap. The soldier snatched the grenade and shoved it back out the window.
“Down!” Bolan flung himself below the level of the window as the frag grenade detonated on the hood and sent jagged bits of metal spitting in all directions. He rose to find someone trying to shove the muzzle of an AK through the window, and grabbed the barrel, yanking it aside. The weapon went hot in his hand as the owner fired a long burst into Bolan’s armrest. Drawing his Beretta, the Executioner put a 3-round burst into the attacker’s gun hand. Fingers flew apart and Bolan yanked the weapon away. He hit the starter button and the besieged MRAP coughed into life once again, but the engine didn’t sound good.
People were still on the roof.
Bolan floored it once more. The MRAP roared as it accelerated. When the speedometer hit twenty, the soldier stood on the brakes. Three men went flying into the street ahead as if they had wings. Bolan stomped on the accelerator and ground the killers beneath the vehicle’s massive all-terrain tires. He shoved the Beretta out the window and fired bursts at two men appearing out of an alleyway with AKs. One fell to Bolan’s fire, but the other leaped back. Bullets still struck the MRAP, but they all struck the rear rather than the front, sides and roof.
Bolan burned out of the village and slowed as the storm engulfed them. “Farkas, how’s Yoshida?”
“Bad.”
“The prisoner?”
“Worse.”
“Grab the medical kit from the locker. It’s an hour back to base, and I need you to keep them both alive. Keller, help him.”
Keller put a hand on Bolan’s shoulder. “Mister, you really kicked some ass.”
Bolan grimaced through the dust blasting through the window. The fact was they’d been mauled, and it was thirty miles to the Marine forward base outside Sangin. “Ous, keep an eye out behind us.”
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