Altered State

“I misspoke. Call it a rumor, if you like.”

“I don’t like rumors,” the big Fed stated. “Who are these valued contractors?”

The black eyes pinned him. “Let’s cut the crap. State officially objects to any unauthorized Justice programs you may be running in Afghanistan. That comes from the top. I hope it’s clear enough for you.”

“It’s crystal clear,” Brognola said, rising to his feet. “I can assure you without fear of contradiction that Justice has no unauthorized programs running in Kabul, or anywhere else. And that comes from the top. Have a good one.”

Brognola felt them staring daggers at him as he left. He had a problem now, a leak, and he would have to deal with it before he and Bolan landed in a world of hurt.

Altered State

Don Pendleton

Mack Bolan ®

We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers…we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

—Alexander Solzhenitsyn

It’s time to reproach and punish evil, once and for all. Beginning here and now.

—Mack Bolan

For Corporal Jason L. Dunham, USMC

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

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

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Badghis Province, Northwestern Afghanistan

Black helicopters do exist.

After all the fervid speculation among UFO-watchers and conspiracy theorists, despite all the official denials and earnest assurances, unmarked whirlybirds of ill omen are seen on occasion.

And they always bear bad news.

The two aloft this morning, shortly after dawn, had lifted off from Murghab, heading northwest toward the border of Turkmenistan. They did not mean to cross the border, although such a violation of the law would not be out of character for anyone on board.

Their destination was a mountain village called Uzra, inhabited by peasants who had caused more trouble than their tiny lives were worth. This day, the men who called the shots were settling old accounts.

The black choppers were both Sikorsky UH-60L Black Hawks, each with a two-man crew and complement of twelve troops aboard, capable of cruising at 173 miles per hour with a top-end do-not-exceed speed of 222 mph. Their combat radius was 368 miles, but this morning’s jaunt covered only a fraction of that distance.

Each Black Hawk was armed—one with a door-mounted 7.62 mm M-60D machine gun, the other with an M-134 Minigun that spewed armor-piercing bullets from an electrically driven rotary breech at a rate of 4,000 rounds per minute.

Beyond that basic airborne armament, each member of the strike team carried either some variant of the M-16 assault rifle or a Mossberg 590-A1 12-gauge shotgun loaded with No. 4 buckshot—averaging seven hits per round on a man-size target at fifty yards. Most carried pistols of their own selection, chambered for 9 mm Parabellum or .45ACP, and all were packing grenades.

Just in case.

Most of the villagers in Uzra were awake and eating breakfast when the war birds fell upon them, dropping from the newly risen sun to skim at rooftop level, starting with a solid strafing run to soften up the target. The M-60D was brutally efficient, spitting death at a cyclic rate of 550 rounds per minute, but its stutter was eclipsed by the high-tech buzz of the Minigun shredding roofs, walls and bodies below.

Uzra was on the smallish side, for an Afghani village. Its population estimates waffled between 150 and 200 residents in winter, when the sheep stayed close to home. But this was spring, so an even hundred would be a closer count.

The inconvenience caused by Uzra’s citizens was out of all proportion to their numbers and position in Afghan society. Someone had not impressed them with their innate insignificance, and now they had to pay the price for stepping out of bounds.

Ten seconds, circling once around the place with weapons spraying in full-auto mode, turned Uzra into a chaotic shambles. Men, women and children ran or staggered from their riddled dwellings, seeking shelter they would never find, some of them dropping in their tracks to rise no more.

“That’s plenty,” said the strike team leader to his pilot. “Put us on the deck.”

Phase Two was mopping up and making sure that no one lived to profit from the lesson they had learned that morning.

Uzra, after all, was not a classroom.

It was an example.

Touchdown was a gentle bump in the midst of a dusty whirlwind whipped by the Black Hawk’s spinning rotors. Rising from his seat, the strike team leader faced his soldiers and reminded them, “No prisoners!”

They rushed past him toward the open bay, some snarling, others smiling as they jumped off into Hell on Earth.

CHAPTER ONE

Kabul, Afghanistan

Mack Bolan turned his rented car off Jadayi Maiwand, putting the Rudkhane-ye-Kabul River behind him as he entered the Old City, Sharh-e-Khone. He started looking for a place to park after he passed the giant Abnecina Hospital, aware that driving through the Old City without a guide could get him lost, despite the maps he carried.

It might even get him killed.

He found a fenced-in public parking lot, paid the young attendant one hundred Afghanis up front—about two dollars, U.S.—and received a numbered ticket in return. The young man smiled and seemed to wish him well as Bolan left the lot.

How did you say “good luck” in Dari or Pashto?

Bolan didn’t have a clue.

There’d been no time for him to study either of Afghanistan’s official languages, much less the other forty-five in use throughout the country. He would need a skilled interpreter and guide, which brought him to the heart of old Kabul, with soldiers in the streets.

Some of them were American, still hunting Taliban and terrorists nearly a decade after the invasion that was meant to punish those responsible for 9/11. Bolan had a diplomatic passport in his pocket that should answer any questions asked by U.S. soldiers who might stop him on the street.

As for the native military and police, if they tried to detain him, he would have a simple choice: either resist or bluff it out.

He definitely needed that interpreter.

The simple map of Sharh-e-Khone that he had memorized included streets and major landmarks, but it didn’t give the flavor of the Old City. It didn’t simmer with the tension Bolan felt around him, didn’t indicate the spots where bullets, fire and bomb fragments had scarred ancient walls.

Passing along the old wall that had once defended Kabul from its enemies outside, Bolan was conscious of the irony. This day, no matter which side you were on, the city’s enemies were all inside . Whether they strapped plastic explosives to their bodies or wore military uniforms, they were combatants in a struggle dating back, at least, to the Soviet invasion of the country in the latter 1970s.

Or should he take it further back, into the early nineteenth century, when British troops had made themselves at home here, in the midst of a society they never really understood? Where did the grim cycle of kill-or-be-killed have its roots?

Passing a line of busy market stalls, Bolan watched for tails, even as he was scouting for his next landmark along the route to locate his interpreter and guide.

The man he sought wasn’t supposed to be alone.

It was a two-for-one deal, this time, which compounded Bolan’s risk. Without even addressing trust issues, two contacts made it twice as likely that they would be followed to the meeting place. If Bolan’s guide was not under surveillance, then it stood to reason that the guide’s control—a DEA spook from the States—would be.

Bolan could only hope that one or both was smart enough to watch their backs and deal with anyone who tried to crash their rendezvous in Sharh-e-Khone.

In case they weren’t, he’d come prepared.

The pistol slung beneath his left arm was a Jericho 941, the simple but elegant Israeli-made 9 mm semiautomatic. It was slightly shorter than his usual Beretta, held one extra Parabellum round, and had its muzzle threaded for a sound suppressor.

Of course, the supressor was back in Bolan’s car, along with all the other martial hardware he’d acquired upon arrival, prior to seeking out his guide.

A soldier had to deal with first things first.

Now, as he passed a bank of aromatic food stalls, keeping track of each turn in his mind, he hoped the day that had begun with jet lag wouldn’t end with blood. A simple meeting and agreement to collaborate would suit him fine.

The killing would come soon enough.

It was, after all, his reason for being in Kabul to start with. The land that his country was making “safe for democracy” still had some serious problems. Negotiation might solve some of them. As for the rest…

Enter the Executioner.

“I WAS AFRAID HE MIGHT be late,” said Edris Barialy.

Deirdre Falk replied, “He isn’t late. Your watch is fast. Again.”

It was a challenge for him, working with a woman. Make that, working for a woman, since the slim brunette American was certainly in charge. She told him where to go and what to do, approved his weekly pay and judged when it was time for him to risk his life.

Like now.

As a strong Muslim—well, an adequate Muslim—Edris Barialy recognized the subordinate state of womankind established by God when He said, “Be” and created all things. Men were supposed to be the rulers of their homes and of the world, but things had changed a great deal in the world outside Afghanistan.

When Barialy had joined his first protest against the growing Afghan heroin trade, he had not expected covert contact from the American Drug Enforcement Administration. And when he accepted the DEA’s offer of part-time employment, using his freedom as a licensed tourist guide to gather intelligence on smugglers, he had not expected that his control officer would be female.

It was strange how things worked out sometimes.

Now here he stood in Sharh-e-Khone, waiting to meet yet another American. A specialist, as Deirdre Falk had described him.

But in what?

Nervous as he was about the meeting and whatever might ensue from it, Barialy had armed himself with a venerable Webley Mk IV .38/200 revolver. It weighed nearly three pounds and pulled down his slacks at the rear, where he wore it tucked under his belt, but Barialy felt better for having the gun close at hand.

He also prayed that he would not be called upon to use it.

Deirdre Falk carried a pistol, too, of course. Barialy had seen it but could not identify the weapon as to brand or caliber. It was some kind of automatic, presumably she had been trained to handle it.

Unlike Barialy himself.

He had served two years in the Afghan National Army, but his firearms training had been limited to practice with Kalashnikov assault rifles. After the basic course, he had been posted to a clerical position in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand Province, and had never fired another shot.

Still, he knew guns as most Afghanis knew them, having grown up in a nation with one of the world’s highest concentrations of firearms per person—one gun for every two of Afghanistan’s twenty-three million citizens, according to estimates from Oxfam and Amnesty International. It had been simple to acquire the Webley and a stash of cartridges.

But as for using them, well, he would have to wait and see what happened next.

“Who is this man, again?” he asked.

“I told you,” Deirdre Falk replied.

“A specialist, I know,” Barialy said. “Could you be more specific?”

“Are you getting cold feet now?” she asked.

“I’m simply curious.”

“I’m told he’s someone who can cut red tape,” she said. “We’re blocked on this end, going nowhere. If he helps us break the jam, more power to him.”

Barialy understood and shared her natural frustration, but the “jam” she spoke of seemed to be, at least in part, a product of the very government that had dispatched her to Afghanistan. Could Barialy trust another agent from that government to set things right? Or would the specialist succeed only in making matters worse, perhaps increasing Barialy’s risk?

Give him a chance, he thought.

And then, the small voice in his head amended, But keep close watch over him.

And then, what, if it seemed that things were getting out of hand? Should he resign, break with the DEA? Or was that even possible?

At least he had the Webley, Barialy thought. And they had taken care not to be followed.

Still, in Kabul’s teeming streets it was impossible to guarantee security. For all he knew, the enemy might be observing them right now.

“I’ M GETTING BORED ,” Farid Humerya said. “They don’t do anything.”

“They brought us here,” Red Scanlon told him. “And they didn’t do it for the tourist thing. Keep watching.”

If the circumstances had been different, Farid Humerya might have told the rude American to do the job himself but Humerya had his orders.

Not from Scanlon and the pigs he served, although their interests coincided with the wishes of Humerya’s master. And Farid Humerya knew enough of life—and sudden death—to follow orders from the man he served.

He did not wish to think of the alternative.

“You think that they are meeting someone?” he asked Scanlon.

“Why else come down here, together?”

“We would know if they were seeing someone from the National Police or the Special Narcotics Force,” Humerya said.

Both agencies were riddled with corruption from top to bottom. They leaked information as if it was water poured into a sieve.

“Most likely,” Scanlon granted. “But we need to find out if it’s someone new.”

They sat watching their targets from a Toyota Prius, with two armed men in the backseat. Two other cars containing four men each—a Camry and a Volkswagen Passat—had the target zone boxed.

Despite their manufacture in Japan and Germany, the Toyotas and the VW were all emblazoned with maple leaf flags, marking them as “Canadian cars.” Imports from Canada were highly prized in Kabul, regardless of their original source or the fact that some had been refurbished after homeland accidents before finding their way to Afghanistan.

If their cars were mock-Canadian, the weapons carried in those cars were strictly Russian. Each man had an AKSU-74 assault rifle with folding metal stock and shortened 8.3-inch barrel, otherwise identical to the standard Kalashnikov assault rifle. The twelve of them together could fire 360 rounds without reloading, all within ten seconds.

And wouldn’t that cause bloody chaos in the Sharh-e-Khone?

“What shall we do if they are meeting someone?” Humerya inquired.

“See who it is, first,” Scanlon answered, none too patiently. “Identify them, if we can. Then make our move.”

“To capture them?”

“To do whatever’s necessary. Are you getting squeamish on me now?” the American asked.

“Of course not.”

It was an insulting question. Farid Humerya was certain he had slain more men than the American had ever dreamed of killing.

Then again, he might be wrong.

These grim-faced mercenaries were a breed apart. Like Humerya himself, they killed for money, but this lot also seemed to possess—or be possessed by—an evangelistic zeal. It seemed almost as if they thought their acts were sanctified he some exalted power beyond cash or earthly politics.

“Whatever happens,” Scanlon said, “we’ll have the edge.”

“I simply thought that with the soldiers all around, perhaps we ought to follow them and find a place less public.”

“It’s a thought,” Scanlon agreed. “But either way, we nip it in the bud. This bitch has caused too much trouble already.”

“Will eliminating her cause further problems for your people in the States?”

“That’s not my worry,” Scanlon answered. “And it’s sure as hell not yours.”

Humerya bore the rudeness, understanding that the arrogant American was simply following the dictates of his character. Coming from a culture fueled by sex and greed, he knew no better.

Which would not prevent Humerya from exacting sweet revenge, if the opportunity presented itself.

They were allies of convenience, which should never be confused with friends. Humerya had his orders to collaborate with Scanlon and the others while it served the purpose of Humerya’s masters. When the day came—and it would come—that the mercenaries served no further purpose in Afghanistan, the soil would drink their blood.

But in the meantime, he would watch and wait.

B OLAN KNEW THAT HE WAS getting close. His briefing on the ancient city had included detailed maps, plus satellite and ground-level photos of Kabul’s crowded streets. He recognized landmarks in passing, even if he couldn’t read their signs or tell exactly what trade they pursued.

The Sharh-e-Khone was a riot of colors and smells, the latter ranging from enticing aromas of food that made Bolan’s mouth water, to auto exhaust, raw sewage and a general musty odor of decay.

He could imagine the Crusaders marching—riding—through the very streets where he now walked, meeting the same looks of curiosity, suspicion or hostility that faced him now. The native clothing would have changed, at least a little, and the weapons that they used against him if their mood turned would be more advanced, but otherwise….

Bolan was well aware that many Muslims, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, still recalled the ancient conflict of religions during the Crusades, the same way many U.S. Southerners still brooded over stories of the Civil War. Throughout the Near East, though, grim memories of the Crusades were aggravated by a Western military presence—in Afghanistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia—and by the saber-rattling on both sides that was too often cast in terms of Muslims versus Christians.

Bolan wasn’t a religious man, by any standard definition of the term, but he knew well enough how faith could bleed into fanaticism with a little push from pastors or imams who had agendas of their own and didn’t mind using their “flocks” as cannon fodder.

Not my problem, Bolan thought, as he drew closer to the designated meeting place.

Despite the setting, his primary targets on the present mission were Americans and self-styled Christians, not Afghani Muslims. Still, it was naive to think that he could pull it off without certain natives who collaborated in the traffic that was poisoning the West.

Come one, come all, he thought. And half smiled as he added to himself, But don’t come all at once.

More soldiers passed, in vehicles painted to match their desert cammo uniforms. They all wore sunglasses, and if they noticed Bolan, none gave any sign of it. Some of the natives watched them pass, scowling or showing poker faces, but the great majority ignored the military vehicle and men in uniform as if they had no substance.

In the long-term scheme of things, Bolan supposed, that was the truth.

He marked a pharmacy ahead and on his left, which meant that he had two more blocks to go. Aside from checking to make sure he wasn’t followed, Bolan now began to watch for indications of a trap.

The problem was, he wasn’t overly familiar with Kabul or its Old City, couldn’t tell whether its normal rhythm was disturbed or right on track. Cars raced and swerved along the narrow streets, parked anywhere they liked, apparently without regard to anything resembling traffic laws, and many of them bore anomalous decals that seemed to mark them as Canadian.

Another mystery.

Nearing the rendezvous, Bolan first checked the obvious. He saw no snipers on the nearby rooftops, no one leaning from an upstairs window with a rifle or an RPG launcher in hand. No one at street level displayed a weapon, and there was none of the war-torn country’s “secret” gun shops within view, where anyone could snatch an AK-47 off the rack.

So far, so good.

Bolan carried no photos of his contacts, but he’d memorized their faces prior to takeoff on his transatlantic flight. The native, his interpreter, was Edris Barialy, twenty-seven, an ex-soldier working undercover with the DEA.

The Yank, and Barialy’s boss—at least, in theory—Deirdre Falk, age thirty-five, with twelve years on the federal payroll. Bolan didn’t know where-all she’d served, but rookies who had never stained their hands with dirty work wouldn’t be posted to Afghanistan.

Well, not unless the brass in Washington was hoping they’d be killed or simply disappear.

Another dozen strides and Bolan had them spotted. They were standing just where he’d been told they’d be, outside a theater whose faded posters showed a wiry old man with a dragon. Bolan couldn’t tell if the old man was feeding the dragon or threatening it with a spear, and he couldn’t care less.

Showtime, he thought, and stepped into the street.

“T HIS COULD BE HIM ,” Deirdre Falk said. “I think it must be.”

Edris Barialy turned to face the same direction.

“Who?” he asked.

“How many Yanks do you see heading this way?” she inquired.

“Sorry.” And then, “But there’s another one.”

“Say what?”

“Across the—”

“Don’t point, damn it!” she snapped at him as he raised an arm. “Just tell me!”

And for Christ’s sake think!

“Across the intersection,” Barialy answered, sounding chastened. “In the black Toyota. I believe the passenger in the front seat may be American.”

Trying to seem as if she wasn’t searching for the car, Falk found it anyway, and even with the windshield glare she saw four men inside it. Sitting there and watching…what?

Had she been followed? Had the men trailed Barialy separately? Were they here for some entirely different reason, mere coincidence?

Falk didn’t like the feel of that, and now that she’d had time to scope him out, she thought the husky white man in the black Toyota’s shotgun seat most likely was American. She’d found that there was something in the Yankee attitude abroad that set Americans apart from Britons, Frenchmen and Scandinavians before they spoke out loud.

So, an American, a native driver, and two backseat friends she couldn’t really see.

So what?

Afghanistan was crawling with Americans, from servicemen and-women through a laundry list of spooks and law-enforcement officers, reporters and photographers, corporate people and their bodyguards—even some freaking tourists, if you could believe it.

Money-seekers, story-seekers, thrill-seekers, mixed up with warriors and manhunters. Afghanistan absorbed them all, and if some never made it home…well, what was life without a little risk?