“I don’t believe we’re facing terrorists,” Mack Bolan stated

“No?” Makhdoom set down his cup. “Then what?”

“True believers.”

“I do not understand the difference.”

“Terrorists lash out. There is no real objective that they can hope to achieve other than killing. True believers have an objective, however mad it may be. I believe the people we’re facing have a higher purpose than just lighting off a nuke and killing as many people as they can.”

“What is that higher purpose?”

“I don’t know.” Bolan stared at the Pakistani special forces captain. “But God help us if we don’t stop it.”

Other titles available in this series:

Onslaught

Battle Force

Rampage

Takedown

Death’s Head

Hellground

Inferno

Ambush

Blood Strike

Killpoint

Vendetta

Stalk Line

Omega Game

Shock Tactic

Showdown

Precision Kill

Jungle Law

Dead Center

Tooth and Claw

Thermal Strike

Day of the Vulture

Flames of Wrath

High Aggression

Code of Bushido

Terror Spin

Judgment in Stone

Rage for Justice

Rebels and Hostiles

Ultimate Game

Blood Feud

Renegade Force

Retribution

Initiation

Cloud of Death

Termination Point

Hellfire Strike

Code of Conflict

Vengeance

Executive Action

Killsport

Conflagration

Storm Front

War Season

Evil Alliance

Scorched Earth

Deception

Destiny’s Hour

Power of the Lance

A Dying Evil

Deep Treachery

War Load

Sworn Enemies

Dark Truth

Breakaway

Blood and Sand

Caged

Sleepers

Strike and Retrieve

Age of War

Line of Control

Breached

Retaliation

Pressure Point

Silent Running

Stolen Arrows

Zero Option

Predator Paradise

Circle of Deception

Devil’s Bargain

False Front

Lethal Tribute

Mack Bolan®

Don Pendleton

…we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.

—Ephesians,

6:12-13

My path has taken me face-to-face with the event horizon of human evil. I have dedicated myself to War Everlasting and to staring into the terrible place and telling the evil no. I will take down the deceivers.

—Mack Bolan

Dedicated to the world’s Special Forces

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

Haji Pir Pass, Pakistan-Kashmir Border

Musa Company was moving.

Mack Bolan shadowed them in the inky black of the cloudless night.

The ugly rumor at the Pentagon was that Pakistan had lost control of several of its nuclear warheads. Such a happening had long been an established fear in the West, as nuclear security protocols in Pakistan were a fluid situation at the best of times. The Pakistani government vigorously denied through both public and private channels that any warheads were missing. They claimed the CIA had its own agenda, had fabricated lies so that the United States and her United Nations lackeys could invade Pakistan and wrest away her sovereign power. Such action would, thus, lay Pakistan open to the political and military machinations of their true nemesis, India.

Nuclear warheads passing from Pakistan into the disputed region of Kashmir was a worst-case scenario for a catastrophic meltdown between the two nuclear nations. One that could light a fire throughout all of East Asia.

The rumors in Washington were confusing. Some sources claimed that ultra-fundamentalist factions in the Pakistani government and military had engineered the grab. Other rumors indicated the warheads had been taken, humiliatingly, right out from under the Pakistani military’s nose.

Bolan watched Musa Company move, and he began to think that Pakistan was as worried as the West.

Named for the Prophet Moses, Musa Company was Pakistan’s elite counterterrorist unit. They had received training from the British SAS and in the past had sent personnel to the United States for special warfare and airborne training. Bolan had suspected that whoever came down through the Haji Pir Pass would be involved in transporting and security for the weapons. His first guess had been that the grab had to have been an inside job.

But Musa Company wasn’t transporting nuclear warheads.

They had been instrumental in quelling rioting and dissension between Pakistan’s fractious factions. Musa Company would be the last unit to betray their country and to let Pakistan’s nuclear weapons loose into the world. Their loyalty was unquestionable. Nor were the men below passing themselves off as travelers or pilgrims. They carried no baggage and they were well off the roads. Bolan had watched as they had perilously engaged in a night jump down into the high crags of the pass. They now moved through the nearly vertical terrain, wearing night-camouflage body armor, night-vision goggles and carrying Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD-3 silenced submachine guns. They moved as silently and swiftly as wolves.

Musa Company was definitely on the hunt.

Bolan judged by the way they were fanned out and leapfrogging from cover to cover that their quarry had to be very close. They were being very careful, as they were very close to the disputed border with India. Indian armored and airborne troops were barely two miles away and always on alert. The disputed area was a flashpoint, any mistake could easily lead to a renewal of war.

Bolan subvocalized into his throat mike sat link. “Bear, what have you got?”

Back in Virginia, Aaron and his entire cybernetic team worked furiously. They were directly linked with the “Puzzle Palace” within the National Security Agency. Unless Musa Company had gone rogue, they had to be in touch with someone. “Striker, we are detecting radio communications. Very narrow bandwidth. We are adjusting values. One moment.” Bolan waited while Kurtzman made his moves. Pakistan had nothing much in the way of sophisticated communication satellites. The best they had for special operations was a narrow bandwidth radio using security encryption protocols.

A secure radio channel was far from secure when Aaron Kurtzman and his team were on the job.

Kurtzman paused a moment as several of the National Security Agency’s most sophisticated Signal Intelligence satellites tried to break in to eavesdrop on the Pakistanis’ conversation. “We have it triangulated. One contact point is right below you. Everyone in the Musa Company team is individually wired. The second transmission point is a signal station. Definitely Islamabad. Their orders are coming straight from the capital. NSA says they are using encrypted audio.”

Bolan nodded to himself. Whatever Musa Company’s orders, they were receiving them in real time and they were coming straight from the top. “You’ve broken in?”

“One moment, Striker. Encryption broken. We’re in,” Kurtzman confirmed. “Patching you in passively.”

Bolan’s earpiece crackled as he was connected to the Pakistani secure radio frequency. The Puzzle Palace had done its work. Whatever encryption code the Pakistani military was using wasn’t up to the giant supercomputers in the bowels of the NSA building. Bolan listened as voices spoke in the quiet, clipped tones of soldiers giving and receiving data across a military channel. Bolan frowned slightly. He had been in Pakistan before and could speak enough words in the dominant language to get by as a tourist. He didn’t recognize the language being spoken. “Bear, that’s not Urdu.”

“Confirmed, Striker. One moment.” Pakistan was a large country split by mountains, deserts and river valleys. The people of Pakistan spoke several major languages and had innumerable dialects. “Switching translators.”

Bolan watched Musa Company creep forward, disappearing and reappearing from behind rocks and boulders below. They were slowing as they approached their target.

“Striker, they’re speaking Sind. Patching in standby translator.” Halfway across the world Kurtzman sat in Virginia and opened a satellite conference call with the NSA translator in Washington, D.C. “Translator is in. I am squelching the dialogue on your end.”

The sound of the Pakistani commandos faded from Bolan’s earpiece and was replaced by a woman’s voice speaking with an English accent. “Striker, this is Translator 2, I am receiving.”

“Affirmative, Translator 2. What are they saying?”

The woman listened for a moment and began translating. “Musa—Approaching objective. Islamabad—What are your observations? Musa—No movement. No activity observed.”

Bolan crouched in the rocks, scanning through the electro-optical sight of his sound-suppressed M-1 A scout rifle. Musa Company was converging on something.

“Musa—Objective in sight. Islamabad—What do you see?” The translator spoke clearly and rapidly in Bolan’s ear. “Musa—No movement. No apparent sentries.”

Bolan scanned for an objective, but the craggy, boulder-strewed terrain showed nothing but rock peaks and shadows.

The translator’s voice rose slightly. “Musa—Bunker found!”

Bolan’s eyes slightly widened and he strained to see a bunker entrance. It was more likely to be a fortified cave. The mountains of Kashmir were riddled with them. “I’m moving closer.”

“Affirmative, Striker,” Kurtzman replied.

Bolan picked his path through the piled mounds and erupting knife edges of rock. “Bear, what can you see?”

“Observation satellite shows twelve individuals below you. Moving in concert.”

That was Musa Company. “Anything else? Any sign of hostiles?”

“Nothing, Striker. Just you and the team below you.”

Bolan scanned everything in a 360-degree arc. His spine spoke to him. “Bear, there’s someone else out here.”

“Satellite shows nothing but you and Musa Company, Striker.”

“There’s someone else out here, Bear.” Bolan trained his sight back on the area Musa Company surrounded. “I can feel it.”

Kurtzman was silent a moment. Through long, hard experience he had learned that a Mack Bolan hunch was to be heeded at all costs. “Acknowledged, but we don’t see them, Striker. Satellite shows no motion and no anomalous heat sources. If they’re hidden, then they are hidden but good.”

“Translator, what are they saying?”

“They are not saying anything.” The translator unsquelched the Pakistani transmission and there was nothing except silence. “They’ve stopped transmitting.”

Bolan gazed hard at their position. “Bear, any motion?”

“Negative, Striker. Musa Company has come to full stop.”

Bolan let out a long breath. Whoever was in command of Musa Company didn’t like it, either.

Something was wrong. The translator spoke again. “Musa—We are going to breach the bunker. Islamabad—Affirmative.”

Bolan waited long moments. There was a sudden quick flare of light in his night-vision goggles. Bolan recognized the hissing crack of flexible-shaped charge detonating.

“Musa—Sending in Number 1 section. Islamabad—Affirmative.”

Half of the Musa Company team disappeared underneath an outcropping while the other half held down the perimeter.

“Section 1—We are inside. No hostiles detected. Islamabad—What do you observe? Section 2—Extensive underground complex. Catacombs, very old stonework. Believe complex predates target occupation. Islamabad—Any sign of the packages?”

Packages. Bolan raised a bemused eyebrow at the code word. His hunch had been right. Musa Company was hunting the same thing he was. If Musa could make a successful retrieval and get the warheads back in Pakistani government hands, Bolan might just be able to call his own mission a wrap.

“Section 1—No sign of packages. No sign of targets. Signs of recent habitation Proceeding. Islamabad—Affirmative.”

Bolan grimaced. Musa Company was no one to mess around with. If the bad guys had gotten wind that the elite commandos were on their trail, they would have hauled ass into India already and the nukes would be gone.

“Section 1—Zia? What happened to Zia? Zia, report! Islamabad—What is happening?”

Bolan’s instincts began to clamor up and down his spine again. “Translator 2, what are you hearing?”

“Intercommunication between individual Musa Company soldiers, Section 1 and 2 and Islamabad. It’s becoming…confused.” The translator’s voice rose just slightly as she translated. “Section 1—Zia! Where is Zia? All units hold position! Section 2—What is happening, Falzur? Islamabad—What is happening? Section 2—Falzur! Falzur! Where is the sergeant! Islamabad—Report!” the Translator swallowed. “I am having difficulty keeping things in order—”

“Keep translating!” Bolan ordered.

“Musa—Section 2 hold positions! By God, I said hold positions! Islamabad—What is happening? Report! Section 1—Where are they coming from! I can’t see any—”

Kurtzman cut in. “Striker, satellite reception shows multiple radio transmission points in Musa Company are now off the air.”

Bolan’s blood went cold.

The translator broke in. “Striker, I hear gunfire.”

“Give me audio.”

“Patching you in, Striker.”

Kurtzman unsquelched Bolan’s end. The soldier’s eyes flared under his night-vision goggles. Someone was firing a semiautomatic handgun as rapidly as he could pull the trigger. The sound was followed by the crack of a hand grenade.

People were screaming.

The translator’s voice was rising close to panic. This wasn’t the sort of mission she had been trained for.

“Islamabad—What is happening! Report! What is happening? I order you to report!”

For a moment there was nothing but silence.

A voice spoke in tightly controlled Sind and the translator spoke over it. “This is Section 2, all contact lost with Section 1. Repeat, all contact lost with Section 1. They are not responding. We are holding position outside. What are your orders? Headquarters—Try them again.”

Section 1’s commander spoke slowly and clearly. It needed little translation. “Section 1, any unit, report. Repeat, Section 1 this is Section 2, any unit report.”

Nothing but static came back.

Section 1 was gone.

Bolan watched Section 2 through his night optics. They were arranged in a crescent around the hidden opening of the catacombs.

“Section 2—There is no response. We are holding position. What are your orders?” The pause on the line was lengthy. “Islamabad—Section 1, withdraw to primary extraction point. Section 2—Affirma—”

The translator stopped as the transmission was cut off. Bolan didn’t need translation. He had the man in plain view. The man in Section 1 who was transmitting levitated from where he crouched. His arms flailed and with a convulsive jerk he floated up and over the rock he’d been crouching behind and disappeared.

Section 2 began firing in all directions. One soldier rose. He heaved and flailed. His silenced submachine gun fell from his hands as he stumbled backward like a spastically moon-walking marionette. He dropped from sight in a crevice between two boulders.

“Bear! What do you have!”

“Movement, Striker!” Kurtzman was also perplexed by what he was seeing via satellite. “Anomalous movement! Musa Company is in a fight with something, but we can’t see it!”

“Bear!” Bolan watched as another man from Musa Company was seized by the invisible and dragged into darkness. “Give me something!”

“Striker, there is nothing! I repeat! Satellite does not pick up any hostiles! All we—Jesus!”

Bolan watched as the waist, legs and then boots of a Musa Company commando were dragged behind a boulder and disappeared.

“Striker, this is Translator 2.” The woman’s voice trembled. “I have nothing. No Musa Company units are transmitting. Only headquarters is on the channel, demanding to know what’s happening. It sounds like they are panicking back in Islamabad.”

Bolan watched through his night optics. Nothing moved but the wind whistling through the rocks.

“Striker, we have nothing.” Kurtzman’s voice went flat. “Musa Company is gone.”

Bolan’s skin crawled.

“Striker?”

Bolan strained all of his senses out into the darkness. “Receiving you, Bear.”

“Get the hell out of there.”

Bolan adjusted the gain on his optics. “I see movement.”

“Confirmed!” Kurtzman was adjusting his own optics from their vantage two hundred miles up in space. “Looks like one of Musa Company, staying low in the rocks and maintaining radio silence.”

Bolan watched the man crawl through the mountain terrain. His submachine gun was cradled in his hands and his head whipped back and forth fearfully. The Executioner’s instincts tingled as he felt the watching presence of the enemy. Something else was out there and it was observing the man from Musa Company, as well. Bolan had ugly thoughts of cats tormenting mice before the kill.

“Bear, can you patch me in to him?”

“I cannot recommend that course of action, Striker.”

“Can you do it?”

“Striker, has it occurred to you whatever the hell is out there achieved total surprise because they were listening to everything that Musa Company was saying? We compromised their secure channel. I’m thinking someone else did, too. Right now I think—and I emphasize think—you’re anonymous because we are communicating via satellite. The minute you transmit on the Musa Company radio frequency you are fair game, Striker.”

“Do it.”

“Striker, I cannot recommend against this strongly enough—”

“Do it!”

Kurtzman acquiesced unhappily. “Patching you in, Striker. Link achieved, you are on the Pakistani secure mission net. The minute we unsquelch you, you are active. Do you want the translator?”

“No.” Bolan turned on his radio and spoke in English. “Surviving Musa Unit Section 2! Move due north! Now! As fast as you can! I will cover you!”

There was a split second’s hesitation, then the man rose and bolted for his life. Bolan’s eyes slitted as something blurred behind the man in his optics. The Executioner pulled his trigger repeatedly and the M-1 A rifle bucked against his shoulder. Bolan couldn’t tell if he had gotten any hits. There was nothing there but shards of rock and boulders the size of men. The Pakistani ran as if hell were on his heels.

Bolan snarled silently. He could feel the enemy. They were all around.

The Musa Company soldier suddenly staggered as if he had run into an invisible wall. His submachine gun flew from his hands as he toppled to one side and then staggered backward. The air around him blurred. Bolan fired three quick shots directly behind the tottering Pakistani.

The Musa Company soldier seemed to be walking backward against his will toward an outcropping.

Bolan spun the sound suppressor from the muzzle of his rifle and aimed just above the Pakistani’s head as he squeezed the trigger repeatedly.

The M-1 A scout ripped into life. Without the suppressor the rifle spit flame in a meter-long muzzle-blast. The rifle cycled through the remains of its 20-round.

Bolan’s position was revealed to the world by the strobing fire of his rifle.

“Striker!” Kurtzman’s voice thundered in Bolan’s ear. “You’re lit up like Christmas!”

Bolan knew it all too well, but the gambit paid off.

The Pakistani stumbled forward, clutching his throat, seemingly released from the grip of the invisible entity. Bolan slapped in a fresh magazine of full power 7.62 mm ammo and began engaging the unseen. His weapon pounded out rounds like a jackhammer out of control as he laid down covering fire to either side of the Pakistani as he began to run again. Bolan’s weapon finally clacked open on empty. He shoved in a fresh magazine and slid a rifle grenade down over the muzzle of his weapon. The grenade clicked into place on the launching rings that the Cowboy had machined into the weapon back in Virginia.

“Musa!” Bolan transmitted as he raised his rifle skyward and fired. “Take off your goggles!”

The rifle boomed against Bolan in recoil and the grenade shot up into the night sky. Bolan ripped off his night-vision goggles as the French Night-Sun illumination munition detonated like a star going supernova. The burning magnesium flare burst into five-million candlepower brilliance. The lunar landscape of the pass was thrown into a shadowless white incandescence. Bolan flicked off the power to his rifle’s light-gathering optics and snapped his rifle down. His muzzle tracked from rock to rock as he searched the unforgiving glare for targets. Bolan began to feel a mounting sense of dread.

There was nothing.

Bolan had been betting that whoever was out there was wearing night-vision equipment, and the intense flare of the burning magnesium would have solarized their optics and temporarily blinded them. Bolan had also hoped to find his enemy blinded, stumbling and exposed by the sudden supernova of light.

Nothing moved.

There was no movement other than the running man from Musa Company. No sound other than the ragged panting of the runner in Bolan’s earpiece, his boots crunching into sand and rock, and the stuttering hiss of the burning flare as it slowly floated to the ground on its parachutes.

Bolan began to engage nothing, firing rapidly into any dark crevice sheltered from the vertical glare of the grenade. He fired for effect, but nothing fired back. Darkness draped down the slopes of the hillsides as the burning grenade drifted low in the sky. The Pakistani clawed his way up the slope. His right hand filled with a Browning Hi-Power pistol. He caught sight of Bolan, who waved him forward and then crouched back down among the rocks.

A moment later the Pakistani piled into Bolan’s position. He collapsed against a boulder in a fit of ragged coughing. The world plunged into darkness once more as the grenade fluttered sputtering to the ground. It landed among blades of rock and sent strobing pulses of light out from the crevices like a beacon. There were only scant seconds left of light. Bolan pulled his night-vision goggles back over his eyes and powered up the optics of his rifle.

“Who the hell are you?” the Pakistani wheezed in excellent English.

Bolan saw no reason to lie. “An American.”

The muzzle of the commando’s 9 mm pistol leveled at Bolan’s skull. “How do I know you are not…” The Pakistani’s voice trailed off. He lowered his pistol as he considered the destruction of his unit. The answer was obvious.

Bolan answered him anyway. “If I’d wanted you down, I’d have taken you down.”

The Pakistani commando glanced at Bolan’s telescopic rifle and accepted the truth of the statement. Bolan’s teeth clenched as his eyes told him nothing was out there and his spine told him the enemy was closing in. “You’re Musa Company.”

“Captain Mahmoud Makhdoom.” The Pakistani captain prudently turned his back to Bolan and watched the rear.

Bolan swept his scope across the landscape. There was still nothing to see. “What hit you?”

The Pakistani shuddered and shrugged at the same time. “Djinns?”

Bolan raised an eyebrow without looking up from his scope. Captains of highly professional special forces units didn’t often blame supernatural beings for their misfortunes. Bolan didn’t scoff. What he had seen with his own eyes and, more to the point, what he hadn’t seen, had set his own skin to crawling.

“We have to get out of here.”

“Indeed.” The captain’s hands were shaking. He had lost his entire unit and he, himself, had been assaulted by the invisible opponents.

“Striker!” Kurtzman was far from panic, but his voice had gone up a register. “What is your situation?”

“Situation…” Bolan searched for a way to summarize what was happening. “Bear, this situation has gone X-Files. Enemy unknown. Nature unknown. Numbers unknown. I am with Captain Mahmoud Makhdoom of Musa Company.” Bolan shook his head bitterly. The nukes were in unknown hands and there was no way to get his hands on them. “The nukes are gone. We are extracting.”

Bolan turned to Makhdoom. “You do have extraction?”

“Helicopters will come if I call for them, but I was maintaining silence until you broke into our channel. Our primary extraction point was the plateau above your position.”

Bolan gazed out into the dark. “I think the djinns can hear you.”

Makhdoom nodded unhappily. “I believe you are correct.”

Bolan considered the plateau he had crossed earlier in the evening. It was three hundred yards upslope, and an ugly climb. The only alternative was to stay where they were and wait. “Do it.”

Makhdoom spoke rapid Sind into his radio. Bolan could feel invisible ears pricking up and taking notice of the transmission.

The Pakistani nodded. “The chopper is coming, with gunship escort.”

Bolan took out his two white-phosphorous grenades and pulled the pins. “Go!”

Makhdoom bolted from cover and began to claw his way up the rock slope. Bolan hurled his grenades off to the right and left. The grenades detonated and the incandescent flare of magnesium was replaced by hellish heat of burning phosphorous that shot up into the sky in streamers trailing white smoke. Bolan burned a magazine in an arc in front of him and began loping up the hill. He clicked in a fresh magazine and pounded up the mountainside.

Makhdoom’s voice boomed. “Down!”

Bolan went flat into the rocks as a grenade sailed over his head and detonated with the whipcrack of high-explosive driving razor-sharp bits of metal at supersonic speeds. The fragmentation hissed and sparked off the rocks. Bolan leaped back up and climbed for the plateau. He passed the Pakistani and clawed on upward.

“Allah Akhbar!” The man from Musa Company roared in religious defiance against the unseen. He rose up and began unloading his pistol in rapid double taps in an arc across the way they had come. No cries rang out. No answering fire came back. Makhdoom was firing at shadows.

The shadows were closing in.

Makhdoom’s pistol racked open on a smoking empty chamber. Bolan whirled. “Go! Go! Go!”

The captain turned and ran, reloading his pistol as Bolan pumped covering fire into the trail behind him. The big American searched for flaming figures, unnatural shadows, any break in the landscape, any movement at all.

There was nothing.

Every fiber of Bolan’s being screamed at him that time was running out.

“Go!” Makhdoom roared. “I will cover.”

Bolan and the Pakistani leapfrogged positions up the mountainside. Bolan clambered up beside the captain and stopped. “I think they’re waiting for us up top.”

Makhdoom’s commando knife rasped out into his left hand. “Inshallah.”

God willing.

Bolan smiled grimly. The man from Musa Company wanted payback. Voices spoke in Bolan’s ear in Sind. Translator 2 spoke from Washington. “The helicopters say ETA five minutes.”

The Pakistani spoke. “The helicopters will be here in—”

“Five minutes, I know.”

An eyebrow rose above the captain’s goggles. It was very clear that just about everyone had compromised his communications. “I see.”

Bolan clicked his last rifle grenade onto the muzzle of his rifle. He had one hand grenade left, and he was nearly out of ammo for his rifle. Bolan ground the butt of his gun into the sand and pointed the muzzle skyward. The rifle boomed and the antipersonnel round shot skyward. Bolan took out his last hand grenade. Somewhere up in the dark the rifle grenade lost its upward impetus and nosed over and arced back down toward the plateau like a mortar round.

The rim of the plateau above flashed orange as the grenade detonated. Bolan hurled his last grenade up and over, and Makhdoom followed suit. The two grenades cracked and sent shrapnel hissing across the open ground. Bolan slapped leather. He filled his right hand with his .50-caliber Desert Eagle pistol and his left with a Beretta 93-R machine pistol.

The two men charged up the side of the mountain and went over the top to the plateau. The plateau wasn’t really flat, but just an area of rolling rocky terrain rather than vertically falling hillside. Nothing moved other than a summer-dried shrub that one of the grenades had set on fire. Bolan and Makhdoom went back-to-back as they walked across the open ground.

Rotor blades thumped in the distance.

Something scraped on rock thirty yards to Bolan’s left.

The Executioner tracked his pistols like a twin gun turret and flame shot from both muzzles as he extended them. Makhdoom showed his professionalism by covering the rear.

“Anything?”

Bolan scanned the darkness with his night-vision goggles.

Nothing moved.

“No.”

Translator 2 spoke. “They say ETA one minute.”

The hammering of rotors shook the night sky.

Kurtzman came online. “Striker, your fireworks have been noticed. Satellite imaging shows Indian army gunships are taking off five miles east of your position.”

“Affirmative, Bear, I—”

God’s own flashlight speared the plateau with light as the Pakistani helicopter swept the broken ground with its searchlight. Bolan kept his eyes on the terrain around him. The light suddenly blasted him and the captain, and the sound of rotors slowed as the Mi-8 Hip helicopter descended to just a few feet above the ground.

Makhdoom jerked his head. “Go!”

Bolan didn’t argue. He turned to board the helicopter.

Something flashed in his vision. It was for but an instant, but in the clouds of dust there was a flash of something. More a flash of nothing. There was a moment of totally incongruent space where the dust fluttered and coalesced against the rotor wind.

As if it were striking something that wasn’t there.

Bolan fired both pistols as rapidly as he could squeeze the triggers. The Pakistani door gunner leaning out of the helicopter couldn’t see what Bolan was shooting at but his PKT light machine gun ripped into life and green tracers streamed into the seemingly empty space.

Bolan stopped firing and strained to see through the whirling dust storm.

“What was it?” Makhdoom slapped a hand on Bolan’s shoulder and roared in his ear over the rotor noise. “What did you see?”

“I don’t know.” Bolan kept his guns leveled. “Something. Nothing.”

“I must apologize, given the debt I owe you.” The uncomfortably warm muzzle of Makhdoom’s pistol pressed behind Bolan’s ear. “But you are under arrest.”

Bolan had expected nothing less. He opened his hands and let his pistols fall forward from his grip, hooked only by a single finger through the trigger guards. “Captain, get us the hell off this hilltop and I’ll be the one in your debt.”

CHAPTER TWO

Islamabad, Pakistan

Bolan had been in worse cells. This one actually had a sunroof. Bolan peered up through the three iron bars in the ceiling. The late-morning sun threw shadows against the western wall of the cell, and he idly wondered what happened to the occupants when it rained. He ate the last bite of mystery meat he had been served and was wiping the remaining couscous from his bowl when someone hammered on the battered steel door of the cell.

“Prisoner! Step away from the door!”

Bolan was already sitting in a half-lotus position on the opposite side of the cell, but he decided cooperation was his best gambit for the moment. “I am away from the door.”

A slot in the steel door shot back and a glowering, bearded face noted his location. “Do not move!”

“I won’t.”

Keys turned in the massive lock and the door swung open. A hulking guard with a pistol on his hip filled the entryway. He carried a three-foot length of roughly turned wood wrapped in leather. Bolan knew that such truncheons were most often used in the Middle East for beating the bottoms of the feet of prisoners. A man with collapsed arches was unlikely to make trouble, much less attempt any escape. The guards had taken his boots upon incarceration. Bolan eyed the club in the man’s hands.

The guard should have brought backup.

The guard moved aside as Captain Makhdoom entered the cell. Bolan nodded. “Captain.”

The Pakistani frowned. “You have put me in a very difficult position.”

“I saved your life,” Bolan countered.

“Yes.” The captain nodded solemnly. “Which puts me in a very difficult position.”

“I see.” Bolan smiled in a friendly fashion. “How may I be of further assistance to you?”

“Um, yes.” The special forces captain shifted uncomfortably. “The United States government denies any knowledge of your existence, much less any legitimate reason for you to be lurking, illegally, and armed, within the borders of Pakistan.”

Bolan shrugged. It was a very old story.

Makhdoom shrugged in return. “And yet, my superiors have received—” the captain raised a troubled eyebrow “—intimations, from very, shall we say, oblique sources, that any consideration shown you will be appreciated.”

Bolan kept the smile off his face. “I’m prepared to assist you in any reasonable fashion within my means.”

The guard stared back and forth between Bolan and Makhdoom. His bludgeon creaked in his fists. He clearly yearned to do away with the pleasantries and beat Bolan into paste.

“Captain, may we speak privately for a moment?”

Makhdoom waved the guard away. “Corporal, you may wait for me down the hall.”

The guard’s face twisted in indignation as he gnashed his teeth and stormed from the cell.

Makhdoom’s voice went grim. “I cannot vouchsafe your safety in this place. There are those who wish to see you dealt with severely.”

“Captain, your government is missing some nuclear warheads. No one’s safety can be guaranteed.”

Makhdoom peered up unhappily through the narrow bars in the ceiling.

Bolan continued. “The United States government is aware of your missing warheads and is gravely concerned. You and I both know that whoever took them is most likely to be a dedicated enemy of the United States, Israel and Europe.” Bolan gazed at the captain critically. “Unless of course, the weapons weren’t stolen, but given away by members of your government to further the agenda of terrorists, or the liberation of Kashmir.”

Makhdoom flared. “The warheads were not given to anyone! They were taken! Despite every security precaution!”

“Taken?” Bolan eyes narrowed. “You mean, by force?”

“Taken,” Makhdoom affirmed. The anger in the Pakistani captain’s eyes was tempered by a certain dread. “As my men were taken last night. As you and I were almost taken. The guards at the facility were taken by something unseen. The warheads taken by the unseen. The guards on duty were gone. The weapons littered the floor, unfired. No trace was left.”

Bolan regarded Makhdoom. Pakistani special forces were nowhere near as sophisticated as U.S. Navy SEALs, the British SAS or the German GSG-9. The Pakistani government often used their special forces as shock troops and a number of their “sensitive” operations had turned into bloodbaths. They did, however, have a well-deserved reputation for toughness. Even Bolan had been disturbed by what he’d seen.

Makhdoom was genuinely afraid, and of more than loose nuclear weapons.

Bolan took the captain’s gaze and held it. “If the missing weapons can’t be contained or accounted for, the United States and others may be forced to take action, drastic action, very possibly within your national borders.”

Makhdoom stared into an ugly future. “There are those who say the first step in avoiding such a confrontation with the U.S. would be getting rid of you. Quickly and quietly.”

“I’m sure it’s been suggested.” Bolan nodded. “But I believe we both know that your first, best recourse would be to go back to the site of last night’s—” he considered the inexplicable events “—incident, pick up whatever information we can and proceed from there.”

Makhdoom’s head snapped around. “We?”

“You and I are last evening’s only two survivors. We also have a mutual problem.” Bolan opened his hands. “It’s only reasonable that we pool our resources.”

Makhdoom stared at Bolan long and hard. “Guard!”

The guard roared back into the room with his club cocked back in his hands for a blow. He seemed as giddy as a schoolgirl with the prospect of beating Bolan into oblivion.

Makhdoom let out a heavy sigh. “Fetch this man’s boots. He is coming with me.”

Northeast Pakistani Border

THE MI-8 HELICOPTER thundered across the sere mountains. It was summer in Pakistan and even up in the mountains the land beneath the aircraft was blast-furnace hot. Bolan sat back and enjoyed the breeze through the open doors. The flight of helicopters carried a full platoon of Musa Company special forces soldiers. A pair of Hind gunships flew in escort of the transports. Bolan wore tan Pakistani fatigues that didn’t quite fit, and a steel-pot helmet woven with camouflage netting. Russian-made body armor of titanium plates sandwiched between spun fiberglass fabric encased his torso. Musa Company was no longer creeping around in the dark. It was in assault mode and wanted payback.

Gone were the silenced submachine guns, night-vision goggles and black balaclavas. Each man carried a G-3 automatic rifle with a 40 mm grenade launcher slaved beneath the barrel. One man in each squad carried a light machine gun and another carried a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Every man was also festooned with a personal assortment of pistols, knives and grenades.

Bolan cradled his own weapon. The German G-3 was long and heavy, but it fired the NATO 7.62 mm high-power rifle round and was hell for tough. While dated, all of the Pakistani equipment was solid kit. Bolan could think of worse weapons, and worse people, for that matter, with whom to assault the unknown. He vainly wished he had his satellite link so he could communicate with the Farm, but that wasn’t forthcoming. Everything he had brought into Pakistan had been confiscated. Still, the fact that they had brought him along, much less armed him, showed just how desperate the Pakistanis were. Bolan glanced up as the copilot leaned back in his seat and yelled at Makhdoom over the rotor noise. Bolan didn’t need translation. He had been watching the terrain fly by beneath them.

They were approaching their target.

The Mi-8s dropped toward the plateau like stones. The Hind gunships clawed upward into the sky and orbited the site with their machine cannons and rocket pods ready. The red dust of the mountains flew up as the transports landed.

Musa Company debarked the Mi-8s and fanned out by sections across the plateau. Bolan leaped out behind Makhdoom. He had no orders other than to stick to the captain like glue. As Bolan examined the plateau, he could see spalling and bullet strikes scoring the rocks from the previous night’s one-sided battle. Several spots were scorched by the high explosive of rifle grenades. The single, lonesome shrub lay blackened and burned.

Musa Company maintained radio silence. Makhdoom chopped his hand forward and his men went by sections, two by two, to the edge of the plateau and began to descend the mountainside toward their objective.

In the night the land had been a lunar landscape. By day the arid, vertical hillsides could have passed for a bad patch on Mars. The platoon swiftly descended. A man held up the spent flare and parachute of Bolan’s illuminating round. They leapfrogged from cover to cover, constantly sweeping the surroundings, still encountering nothing. They stopped as they reached the area where Section 2 had been lost. Bolan scanned the recent battlefield. Brass shell casings and spent bullets lay in the sand and gravel, deformed where they had struck rock. There were no bodies.

There was no blood.

Makhdoom moved forward, his rifle at the ready. Musa Company followed. They swiftly came upon their target. Bolan examined the objective. Beneath an overhang of rock there was an opening in the mountainside. It was squared off, clearly man-made, and lined with stone. Just inside lay a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands. Its hinges were gone where they had been cut with flexible-shaped charge. Bolan stared at the square, black hole in the mountain.

It looked like the back door to hell.

Makhdoom’s eyes burned into the inky blackness within. Bolan quickly looked around at Musa Company. They had joked of djinns on the flight in. Now no one was laughing. Each man here was one of the most trusted soldiers in Pakistan. Each had been briefed about the nuclear warheads that had vanished without a trace and the guards who had disappeared with them, their weapons scattered and unfired. Each man had also heard the radio tapes of the battle the night before, listening as half a platoon of Musa Company had been wiped out to a man, one by one, by an enemy unseen. They had heard the terror in comrades’ voices as they had been taken.

Musa Company stared at the black hole in the mountain and their fear was palpable.

Bolan spoke very quietly just behind Makhdoom. “Captain.”

Makhdoom didn’t look away from the entrance. “Yes?”

“May I make a suggestion?”

The captain peered backward. “I am very open to suggestions at the moment.”

“Have your men fix bayonets.”

Makhdoom’s mustache lifted. His lips skinned back from his teeth in a feral smile. He turned to let his men see it, then snarled in guttural English, “Bayonets!”

Two dozen bayonets rasped from their sheaths in a single motion. Makhdoom snarled again, “Fix!”

The bayonets clicked into place. Cold iron glittered in the afternoon sun. Musa Company’s determination ratcheted up by a factor of ten. Few things centered a soldier’s aggressiveness more than having his commanding officer give the order to fix sharpened steel to the business end of his rifle.

“Lights!” Musa Company pulled miniflashlights from their web gear and affixed them to clips on their rifles’ handguards. “All sections, set rifles on full automatic. Maintain radio silence unless you see something to report. Sections 3 and 4 secure the perimeter. Sections 1 and 2—” Makhdoom stared grimly at the dark doorway “—follow me.”

Bolan followed Makhdoom and Musa Company into the earth.

The passage into the mountain was square, and just large enough for men to walk two by two. Once inside, the heat of desert fell away as if they had stepped into what seemed to be an air-conditioned building—except that the air within was fetid, clammy and cold. Bolan played his light across the walls and examined the stonework. There were places upon the earth, old battlefields, ruins, places in the wilderness, which resonated with what had transpired. Bolan had long ago learned to trust his instincts, and to feel the vibe.

“This place is very old.” Bolan didn’t need to add that terrible things had happened here.

Makhdoom nodded as he shone his light ahead. Niches carved into the walls on either side of the passage stretched down the corridor facing each other. “I have seen the like before,” he stated. “Before the words of Mohammed the Prophet reached these lands, there were many pagan sects. These niches probably once held idols, or the dead.”

Bolan paused as brass shell casings glittered in the light of his rifle. He knelt and picked one up. They were subsonic 9 mms, fired from the weapon of Musa Company the night before. He glanced around, gazing at the niches. They were certainly large enough to hold a man, and it was clear that this spot was where many of Musa Company had met their doom. Bolan dug his bayonet into the dirt floor of a niche.

Musa Company held position while Bolan worked. Makhdoom nodded. “Trapdoors?”

“None that I can find.” Bolan poked at the ceiling of the niche. It was solid rock. “Let’s go a little farther.”

Bolan and Makhdoom led, the points of their bayonets preceding them. The corridor opened into a larger, low-ceilinged room. They paused at the entryway.

“Your men didn’t mention a room.”

Makhdoom kept his muzzle covering the room ahead. “No, I do not believe any of them survived this far.”

Bolan caught the smell of something he didn’t recognize, a bare lingering of something that was both acrid and sickly sweet. The sense of dread solidified as Musa Company entered the room.

A disk of carved stone dominated the middle of the room. Bolan approached it warily, playing his light across it. The stone was three feet tall and nearly six feet around. It was very old. In his rifle light Bolan could see that there were fresh scratches on the top.

“It is an altar.” Makhdoom ran his finger along a scratch in the rocket. “Something was moved.”

“More likely removed.” Bolan tested the stone with his hands. The altar probably weighed several tons. Bolan checked the floor but he could see no sign that the massive stone itself had been moved or rotated. He and Musa Company moved farther back into the dark space.

The only sound was that of their boots and the wind moaning down the corridor behind them.

Bolan pointed. “There.”

In the far corner of the room was an incongruously modern object—a heavy wooden pallet. Musa Company fanned out to surround the object. The pallet was of thick construction, meant to support something heavy. Bolan knelt without touching the pallet and gazed at the dirt around it. In the harsh light of the flashlight beam he could see that the pallet had sunk several inches into the dirt floor. The pallet had recently held something heavy, and whatever the load had been, it was gone.

“I think your warheads were here, Captain, perhaps as recently as last night.”

Makhdoom shook his head wearily. They were too late. “And what of my men?”

“That’s a good question.” Bolan considered the passageway and the single room. “If I were you, I would get a platoon of combat engineers in here and have them go over every inch of the place. I’m thinking there must be a bolt-hole.”

Makhdoom broke radio silence. He spent long minutes speaking with his superiors in Islamabad, then clicked off his radio with a sigh. “Combat engineers are on the way.”

Bolan frowned at the room around them. “Whoever the enemy was had to get out of here fast, taking three warheads and disposing of nearly two dozen bodies.”

“Such a graveyard would take up half of this chamber.” Makhdoom shrugged helplessly. “I see no sign of digging in the floor.”

Bolan gazed around the room until his eyes fell on the pallet once more. He unclipped the light from his rifle and thoroughly scanned around its edges and through the slats for wires or booby traps. Bolan lifted the pallet and pushed it back to lean against the wall.

Beneath the pallet was the same gray dirt as the rest of the chamber. Bolan’s eyes narrowed as he knelt and ran his fingers through the dirt. The walls were wet. If the pallet had been here for any length of time the soil beneath it should have been moist.

“We dig here.”

Makhdoom’s face tightened. “Twenty-three men cannot be buried in such a space.”

Bolan stared back implacably. The Pakistani captain barked out a few words and his men broke out entrenching tools and began to dig. With the first shovelful one of his men looked and spoke in rapid Sind.

The soil was loose, moist and disturbed beneath the thin veil of gray dirt. Musa Company continued to dig. They didn’t have to dig long.

“Bismillah!” A corporal jumped back in fear and outrage. The corporal had encountered a head. The head was wearing a black balaclava from a night raid. The men lifted the body out and more cries of outrage met the discovery. Makhdoom’s face was stone. Many of his men made the sign against the evil eye at what they had found.

The body was one of Musa Company. The body’s shoulders and hips had been shattered, the arms and legs broken, the body folded up around itself like a cricket. The body took up no more space than that of a child. They all knew what lay below.

Beneath the tiny space of the pallet, a full platoon of Musa Company had been mutilated and buried.

Makhdoom swallowed as another and yet another of his men were exhumed. “Have you ever seen such a thing?”

“No. Not exactly.” Bolan watched as the doll-like bodies of Makhdoom’s troops were pulled from their communal grave. “But I think I know someone who has.”

CHAPTER THREE

Islamabad

“The Thuggees of Kali?”

Kurtzman was incredulous.

Bolan leaned back in the rickety wooden chair. He was back in his cell, but his satellite link equipment had been returned to him. The guard with the club stood glaring at him, and a man Bolan hadn’t met before stood taping everything Bolan said. “I need everything you have on them.”

“There is no more Cult of Kali, last I heard. The British wiped them out in the seventeenth century.”

“Didn’t Phoenix Force have a run-in with them some years ago?”

“Well, yeah, they did,” Kurtzman admitted. “But the guys Phoenix hit were yahoos. There were less than three hundred of them, a sideshow revival movement, and the whole thing was organized by the KGB. They were little more than Russian stooges, manipulated into killing Americans and Europeans in India. It was a real cute setup. The Russians even had a mechanical idol of Kali with a high-frequency laser built in it to keep the faithful in line. The only people they were fooling were mostly illiterate tribesmen and some well-heeled psychopaths in Bengal. Even their high priest was a fake. Once he was exposed, his own people killed him and the cult disbanded.” Kurtzman sighed. “Stealing nuclear weapons from high-security areas, turning invisible and taking out entire platoons of special forces troops just wasn’t in their repertoire.”

“These won’t be a bunch of barefoot, illiterate tribesman. This will be the real deal. True believers, highly organized, well-funded.” Bolan paused. “With a new agenda.”

“Striker, are you sure?”

“I’m not sure at all. But we found Musa Company’s lost platoon. Their shoulders and hips were broken and folded to fit twenty-three men into a mass grave barely big enough for six, and the autopsies revealed that each one of them had been strangled, to a man, and not a drop of blood was spilled.”

“Well, from what I remember about Thuggee ritual killing, that fits, but—”

“It also goes a long way toward explaining how the men of Musa Company were being jerked up into the air and flailing like marionettes.”

“Okay, but by invisible attackers? Who don’t show up on night-vision or high-resolution satellite imaging? And for that matter, how did they make the bodies instantly disappear?”

Bolan ate a chunk of barbecued goat and followed it with a spoonful of garlic-stewed spinach. His food had improved with his status since morning. “Bear, I’m going to let you figure that one out.”

“Uh-huh.” Kurtzman had seen that one coming a mile away.

“As I recall, Thuggee means ‘deceiver’ in Hindi.”

“That’s correct.”

“I think someone deceived their way into the Pakistani nuclear weapons site. They had to know the layout to make their attack. Invisible or not, they had people on the inside.”

“Well, assuming the bad guys aren’t supernatural in origin, I’d have to agree with you.” Bolan could hear Kurtzman pounding keys on his computer. “Phoenix is deployed right now, but as soon as they are inbound I’ll have the boys that were involved in the India mission get in touch with you. Meanwhile I’ll send you everything on the mission I have on file, though it’s going to have to be redacted for security unless you can guarantee a secure line.”

“Right now I can’t guarantee whether or not I’m going to be shot as spy. I’m going to give you Captain Makhdoom’s fax number. Send everything you can that doesn’t compromise the home team or national security.”

“How do you feel about this Makhdoom guy?”

“He’s good people, but he’s a captain. A highly decorated special forces captain, but he won’t have the final say about my final disposition, and my presence here has rattled the cages of a lot of people above his pay grade.”

“I understand.” Kurtzman stopped multitasking for a moment. “How’s the food?”

Bolan smiled as he ate another bite and washed it down with mint tea. The food was excellent. Pakistanis knew a thing or two about goat shish kebob, but Kurtzman wasn’t asking about the food. He was asking if Bolan wanted him to arrange some kind of extraction. Unfortunately, Pakistan was an ostensible ally of the United States. A U.S. raid on one of their prisons could strain that slender relationship to the breaking point. Frankly, Bolan was fairly sure it was something the U.S. was unwilling to risk. Not that it wasn’t something the men from Stony Man Farm wouldn’t gladly risk anyway if asked. “Food’s not bad. I’m not missing home yet.”

“Glad to hear it. It might be hard to get a Big Mac into Islamabad at the moment.”

“Don’t worry about it, just fax Makhdoom the files. I’m interested to see what he thinks of them.”

“I’m on it. Kurtzman out.”

Bolan clicked off his link and smiled at the guard. The man with the tape recorder took back the communications gear and left without a word. The guard slammed the door shut and the soldier tossed back the last of the tea, then stretched out on his bunk. Thin white clouds passed overhead as he looked up through the grille.

Bolan took a nap and waited to see what developed.

“THE Thuggees of Kali?”

Makhdoom was appalled.

Bolan leaned back in his chair. It was nice to be in a conference room instead of a cell. “You’ve heard of them, I gather.”

“Yes, I have heard of them. Murderers and worshipers of idols.” The captain flipped through the file of information that Kurtzman had anonymously faxed him. “The information you have shared with me is fascinating, but I do not see how it is relevant. The British East India Company wiped out the Thuggees more than a century ago.”

Bolan shook his head. “Not all of them.”

“Granted.” Makhdoom closed the file. “But your file says that the Thuggees encountered were a rather pale revivalist movement and dupes of the Russians.”

“This won’t be the same group. As a matter of fact, I believe whoever we’re dealing with is hard-core, old-school Thuggee.”

Makhdoom blinked. “Old school?”

“Originals. The real deal. Probably a splinter sect of those who were originally operating and driven underground by the British. Their tradition has been practiced unbroken for possibly thousands of years. It is now resurfacing with a new agenda.”

“I see.” The captain nodded.

“But I believe they will have many of the same modes of operation and we can draw a lot of clues from studying what the U.S. team encountered.”

Makhdoom flipped open the file again.

Bolan’s voice hardened slightly. “The theft of your warheads was an inside job.”

The captain frowned. “I suspect so, also.”

“Perhaps we should visit the facility,” Bolan suggested.

“The place where the weapons were stolen from is a high-security area, and secret. It has already been locked down and the people who work there interrogated, vigorously.” Makhdoom raised an eyebrow. “And I suspect my superiors would take a dim view of a renegade American commando examining the premises.”

“They have a dim view of me now,” Bolan countered. “The weapons are already gone and the facility is in high-security lockdown. What could it hurt?”

Makhdoom stared ruefully out the window. The mysterious American had saved his life. Beyond that he was making Makhdoom’s life a living hell and doing nothing to help his career prospects.

But avenging his men was more important to the special forces captain than his career. “Right!” Makhdoom threw up his hands. “Let us go look for Thuggees in one of my country’s top-secret weapons facilities.”

“Don’t you need to clear that with your superiors?”

Makhdoom sighed with infinite fatigue. “Do you really think I should tell my superiors I am going to take a renegade American spy into one of our top-secret nuclear facilities and search for invisible, idol-worshiping assassins?”

“Well, yeah, you should.” Bolan shrugged. “But only afterward, and only then if we produce results.”

The captain nodded. “You and I shall get along splendidly.”

Al-Nouri Weapons Facility

BOLAN WATCHED footage from the facility security cameras. The film was grainy black-and-white. It wasn’t particularly well focused and the video appeared to have tracking problems. Most convenience stores in the United States had security video of better quality. What the footage showed was shocking in the extreme.

The weapons facility was a small, heavily fortified building within a large Pakistani air force base, comfortably outside of Islamabad in case India launched a surgical nuclear strike against the weapons stored there. The weapons themselves were stored in hardened underground bunkers. Underground rail tunnels led out to the airfields, which allowed the weapons to be rapidly transferred to revetted Mirage III/5B supersonic fighter-bombers. If the balloon went up between the two Asian superpowers, the French-made jets would scramble across the border to devastate the Indian subcontinent.

At least, that was the plan.

The current problem with the plan was that three of those nuclear warheads had vanished.

Bolan watched the footage for the fourth time. Bored guards armed with Chinese Type 56-1 assault rifles manned the internal checkpoints. One by one they swiftly rose onto the tips of their toes, flailing, struggling and clawing at their throats. Bolan counted seconds. Each guard went limp at ten and then dropped after another thirty. It took approximately nine to ten seconds to strangle someone unconscious and an approximate total time of thirty to forty seconds of strangulation to make sure that victim never woke up again.

Supernatural or not, whoever had attacked the Al-Nouri facility had strangled each guard in their way with clocklike precision. “Autopsies would show strangulation as the cause of death.”

“Indeed,” Makhdoom agreed. “Except that we have no bodies.”

“The guards worked in pairs at the internal checkpoints within the facility. That would imply two-man elimination teams to eliminate them at the least, and four would be better.”

Makhdoom shook his head in frustration. “Where are these ‘elimination teams’ you speak of?” He waved an angry hand at the monitor. “Where? I see nothing!”

“They’re there.” Bolan pointed at the screen. “We just can’t see them.”

“I can accept that they attacked the video system, somehow erasing themselves from the camera footage, but you and I were out in the pass. You saw what I saw, and with your own eyes you did not see what I did not see, as well. They were not observable in night-vision equipment, nor were they observable to our naked eyes, even in the glare of a magnesium flare.” Makhdoom sagged in his chair. “Explain that.”

“I can’t. Not yet. But the answer is right here.” Bolan hit the rewind button again.

“Did any guards survive?” he went on.

“Most of the guards in the facility survived. Indeed, most were unaware that anything had happened until after the warheads and the men guarding them were discovered to be missing.”

“What about the men who were monitoring the video control area?”

“Gone.” The Pakistani sighed. “Presumed dead.”

Bolan let out a long breath. “There’s a mass grave, like the one we found in the tunnels, probably very nearby. If they were transporting the warheads, they would neither have had the time nor the manpower to drag them far.”

“Yes, I suspect you are right. I will have men sweep the outlying area.” Makhdoom leaned back in his chair. “What else do you suggest?”

“You say the rest of the staff here has already been interrogated?”

“Yes. Vigorously.”

Bolan nodded. “I propose we speak to them again.”

CHAPTER FOUR

Islamabad

The man in the cell wasn’t happy. He didn’t have a skylight. No one was bringing him barbecued goat kabobs. No one looked to have brought him anything but pain. His clothes were torn and bloodstained. His face was a misshapen lump of hamburger. A pair of guards stood over the miserable man, each with a tapered, leather-bound wooden club.

The bottoms of the prisoner’s feet were masses of purple bruising.

This was the twelfth such prisoner Bolan had seen. Pakistani justice, both military and civilian, was primitive, corrupt and brutal. One’s best hope was to be tried under Sharia—Islamic Law. The men Bolan had seen weren’t being tried. They were simply being tortured for information. Even if they knew nothing, their apparent failure at keeping the nuclear weapons in their charge secure justified their punishment in the minds of their jailers. Most had been wearing Pakistani army uniforms and had been guards at the Al-Nouri Weapons Facility. This man was dressed in civilian rags.

One of the guards looked up, saluted and shrugged at Makhdoom. He muttered a few words in Urdu, which Bolan didn’t need translated. The prisoner had been tortured extensively and he had nothing useful to say. Makhdoom let out a long breath. He clearly wasn’t pleased with the torturing of the prisoners, but neither was he raising any fuss about it. He had lost half a platoon of men and the fate of his nation could depend on what was discovered.

Whatever kid gloves of civility Makhdoom normally wore as an officer and a gentleman had come off in the past twenty-four hours.

Bolan examined the prisoner critically. He sat crumpled and hunched on the stone floor between the two guards, flinching with adrenaline reaction from his most recent beating and fear whenever either of the guards moved. He sniveled as one of the guards prodded him to demonstrate what a useless prisoner he was.

Bolan happened to be wearing the uniform of a Pakistani captain of special forces. His blue eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, even though they were in an underground cell. He had the reassuring weight of a loaded Browning Hi-Power pistol holstered on his hip. Bolan nodded at Makhdoom. It sickened him, but it was the only way.

Makhdoom nodded at the guards.

The prisoner shrieked as the bastinadoes of the guards fell upon him once more like rain. The beating went on for a few moments, then Makhdoom strode into the middle of it. He seized the prisoner by his shirtfront and slammed him against the wall of the cell. Spittle flew as Makhdoom screamed first in Urdu then in Sind. The man flinched and jerked as he was threatened with everything from castration to death. Makhdoom cut off his tirade and hurled the prisoner to the floor.

Bolan took off his sunglasses and strode forward.

The prisoner stared up into Bolan’s burning blue eyes and cringed in terror. The man flinched and pressed himself into the wall as Bolan crouched and cocked his hand back as if he were going to backhand him.

Bolan’s back was to Makhdoom and the guards. He didn’t backhand the prisoner. Instead he quickly passed his right hand down in front of his face. The prisoner’s eyes flew wide. Bolan whispered one of the two phrases in Hindi he had memorized this day.

“Greetings, Ali my brother.”

It was an ancient greeting, that members of the Cult of Kali had once used to identify fellow members in strange cities. The prisoner’s eyes flared wide at the words. Not with fear, nor with confusion, but with recognition.

Bolan had gotten a bite. He yanked on the hook to bury it deep and reeled the man in as he used his second phrase of Hindi. “Be strong. Be ready. We will come for you.”

The big American suddenly stood and yanked the prisoner up with him. He snarled a phrase in Urdu he had learned long ago during a mission in Asia, something about the prisoner enjoying relations with goats and how he particularly enjoyed allowing the goats to assume the dominant position in the relationship. The guards laughed uproariously. Bolan grabbed the prisoner by the throat and shoved him across the room. The prisoner collapsed into a heap in the corner. Bolan hated this aspect of role playing, but it was necessary.

Bolan spit on the man and fell into step with Makhdoom as they left the cell.

“You have a remarkable gift with languages,” the captain acknowledged.

“Thank you. You have a beautiful language filled with poetic metaphor.”

Makhdoom smiled for the first time in seventy-two hours. “And now?”

“Now? Now I think it’s time that you arranged a jailbreak.”

“Ah.”

Bolan cocked an eyebrow. “Do you speak Hindi, by the way?”

“I am a Pakistani special forces captain.” Makhdoom smiled slyly. “Infiltration was one of my specialities.”

Bolan nodded. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

The Prison, 4:00 a.m.

“SO WHO IS THIS GUY and what’s his story?” Bolan watched the bored guard pace outside.

“Atta,” Makhdoom answered. The Pakistani captain flipped through a file on his lap. “Atta Naqbi. He is a technician, recently graduated from the American University in Egypt. His family fled from East Pakistan during the 1971 war. He had no criminal record and has been working at the Al-Nouri Weapons Facility for six months.”

Bolan considered the information. What was once Eastern Pakistan was now known as Bangladesh. It was about half the size of Kansas and just as flat. Only unlike Kansas, Bangladesh was cut by the mighty courses of the Ganges, the Tista and the Brahmaputra rivers. When the snows of the Himalayas melted, Bangladesh was their final destination. Flooding was endemic. When the mountains didn’t flood the land, the monsoons swept the sea-level nation with tidal waves. Swiftly approaching a thousand people per square kilometer, every disaster took a horrific toll in human life. Bangladesh was an autonomous nation, but she was heavily reliant on the help of India to survive. Of much more interest to Bolan, Bangladesh was also the neighbor of the Indian state of West Bengal.

The traditional home range of the Cult of Kali.

“What city is he from?”

“Chulna, it lies upon the Pusur River, in the Great Mouths of the Ganges,” Makhdoom responded. “Do you know of it?”

“I’ve seen the Mouths of the Ganges,” Bolan responded, “but I’ve never been to Chulna. It’s not on my mental map.” Bolan cocked his head slightly. “How many kilometers is it from Calcutta?”

The captain grinned. “Why, less than one hundred.”

“Does Mr. Naqbi still have family there?”

“Most of his family reportedly came here, to Pakistan. But we have spies in Bangladesh, and in Bengal. I am having it looked into.”

“Does he speak English?”

“Fluently.”

Bolan pulled his black ski mask down over his head. “Let’s go rescue Atta.”

“Indeed.” Makhdoom pulled down his own mask. “Let us go rescue Atta.”

Bolan and Makhdoom got out of the battered 1950s vintage Mercedes and approached the guard at the gate. The guard snapped to attention and saluted. Makhdoom returned the salute. “Corporal?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“You are dead.”

The corporal dropped to the ground, flailed and made expiring noises.

“Less melodrama, Corporal.”

“Yes, Captain,” the corpse whispered.

Bolan and Makhdoom swept through the prison. Guards saluted and fell down “dead” in their wake like human driftwood. The two of them swiftly came to Atta Naqbi’s cell. The guard outside the door stood and turned. Bolan whipped a knotted silk sash around the guard’s neck. The guard went to his knees and made throttling noises as Makhdoom threw open the door.

Naqbi sat in his cell and gaped as Bolan apparently strangled the guard to death. Makhdoom ran in and yanked him up. The man could barely walk with his swollen feet. Makhdoom and Bolan took an arm each and strung him between them as they carried him out of the cell. Despite his pain and fatigue, Naqbi began firing off questions rapidly.

He wasn’t speaking Urdu or Sind.

Makhdoom shushed him. Naqbi spent the next few moments quietly staring in astonishment at the seemingly dead guards strewing the floor of the jail. They gave Naqbi no chance to examine any of the “corpses” too closely. They spirited him outside and deposited him into the waiting car.

Bolan took the wheel and drove off into the night.

The translator spoke in Bolan’s earpiece. “Striker, do you read me?”

Bolan reached up and tapped his earpiece twice in acknowledgment. His satellite rig was in the back seat and he was plugged into the satellite above. There was a microphone in the back seat, as well.

The translator began translating what Naqbi and Makhdoom were saying to each other in Hindi.

Naqbi was chattering a stream of questions, and Makhdoom was playing it close. They jockeyed back and forth with questions and counterquestions. Makhdoom was playing with a deck missing many cards. There had to be call signs and recognition signals, ones that neither Bolan nor Makhdoom knew. They needed to make the man admit something. The only gambit they had was that Naqbi had spent the past forty-eight hours being starved, beaten and sleep deprived and that he wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders.

Makhdoom laid all the money down and rolled the dice. “Are the weapons safe?”

“What?” Naqbi shook his head. “Only the chosen ones could know of that! How could I—”

Chosen ones. Bolan grinned under his mask.

Hook, line and sinker.

“There have been problems,” Makhdoom stated. “Somehow the Americans have become involved.”

“Americans?” Naqbi gaped in confusion. “Impossible! What Americans?”

Bolan pulled off his mask, locked his gaze with Naqbi’s as he spoke in English. “Me.”

“Oh…” Naqbi’s shoulders and arms clenched in upon himself like a spider that had just been stepped on. His face went as white as a sheet. “Goddess…” He shuddered with the enormity of his betrayal. He clutched his face with his hands. “I…am doomed.”

“You’re in a world of hurt.” Bolan’s voice was as cold as the grave. “Doomed is up to you.”

“Doomed…” Naqbi was swiftly sinking into a robotic stupor of terror.

Makhdoom snapped him out of it with the back of his hand. The captain suddenly glanced up at the lightening horizon. From a minaret beyond the Christian Quarter, an Imam sang forth the call to prayer. Bolan listened as the call rang out against the orange light of dawn. He had fought Muslim opponents many times, but the unearthly beauty of the call and its message had never failed to move him.

Throughout Islamabad, the believers turned westward toward Mecca and knelt in prayer. Makhdoom removed a small, rolled rug from the back seat of the Mercedes. “I must go to prayers. Then we will have breakfast.” His smile was expectant and ugly as he locked his gaze with Atta Naqbi.

“Then we shall have a talk. The three of us.”

Islamabad. The Christian Quarter

MAKHDOOM CONTINUED to surprise Bolan. Christians weren’t popular in Pakistan. That the man had friends in the quarter was interesting. It was the last place in the world one would expect to find a Pakistani special forces captain, much less an American commando and a worshiper of the goddess of death.

“The food here is outstanding.” Makhdoom stated as he deftly slid a massive chunk of lamb from his kabob. The meat steamed in the morning chill and dripped with clarified butter. The captain closed his eyes with a delight bordering on the sensual as he chewed the tender meat and swallowed it. Most people Bolan knew from the Middle East did not take big breakfasts. Makhdoom had ordered them a feast under the rising sun. He smiled at Bolan as if he had read the American’s mind.

“I was sent to train with United States Special Forces in 1989.” He sighed as he speared another piece of meat with his knife. “The Prophet Mohammed, all praises onto him, says a man should be moderate in his eating. But I have been to Fort Bragg, and to my ruin I have learned the joy of a hearty American breakfast.”

Bolan smiled. He had been to Fort Bragg. The boys there took their breakfasts with extreme seriousness. They often didn’t know how long it would be until their next one.

Makhdoom raised a dry eyebrow at Atta Naqbi over the rim of his teacup. “The menu is not to your liking?”

Naqbi said nothing as he stared down at his plate. The sauce around his cubed lamb tongue was congealing.

“Perhaps the prison gruel was more to your taste?” the captain suggested.

Naqbi’s shoulders twitched, but he didn’t look up or respond.

Makhdoom snarled. “Idol worshiper!”

The man jumped in his seat and stared down miserably.

“Ah, I see the problem. Since you are an idol-worshiping disciple of death, you are a vegetarian. Would you care for some vegetables?” He shoved the plate of carrots, celery and cauliflower toward Naqbi.

Makhdoom spoke conversationally. “You know, Islam is the religion of love.” He drank tea reflectively. “However, there are three people my religion tells me I must despise.” The captain withdrew his pistol and set it on the table. “Worshipers of idols, worshipers of fire, and those who engage in human sacrifice. Perhaps I should deposit you back into the prison and explain to the guards you are so far two for three.”

“Atta, if you go back to jail, you’re dead,” Bolan opined. “Then again we could just turn you loose. You have any guess what would happen to you then?”

Naqbi clutched the tabletop to stop himself from shuddering. Everyone at the table knew what would happen to him. He was damaged goods.

He had been compromised.

“There is a third option.” Bolan freshened Atta’s tea, as part of his “good cop” role.

Naqbi glanced up for the first time.

“You cooperate. You help us. You produce results, and we cut you loose. With money, a new identity, and we drop you any place you’d like. Bora Bora, Argentina, South Africa, the North Pole, you name it.”

Naqbi glanced at Bolan and actually met his eyes. The soldier didn’t like what he saw there. He saw the absolute ruin of despair. “You think you can protect me from a god?”

Makhdoom straightened in religious outrage.

“Do you think you can protect yourselves?” Naqbi’s shoulders rose and fell. “Kali will take us. She will take us all. We are all dead men.” His head shook back and forth in a slow-motion movement of helpless horror. “She shall have our flesh, she shall have our blood, she shall have our souls.”

“Speak not of demons!” Makhdoom snarled. “Only tell us where we can find their worshipers and the weapons they stole!”

“Kali is not a demon.” Naqbi no longer looked at Bolan or Makhdoom. He was staring off into the middle distance, into his own personal vision of hell and horror, and he spoke more to himself than anyone at the table. “She is the slayer of demons. When demons ruled Heaven and Earth, and all the gods and all the angels could not stand before them, they summoned Kali. All powerful, all conquering, goddess of the destruction…”

Naqbi received the back of Makhdoom’s hand. “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet!”

“Goddess of the burning ground.” The young technician was unmoved. The world around him ceased to exist. Bolan had seen such expressions before in the faces of religious fanatics in crisis. Naqbi was zombifying himself into his own little insular hell of despair. Given a few more hours, he would lapse into catatonic depression.

Bolan couldn’t afford to let that happen. “What about your family, Atta?”

“My family.” He glanced up with fear sharpened eyes.

“Maybe we can’t stop a god—” Bolan shrugged meditatively “—but we can stop her followers from killing your family.”

“I…”

“You have to make a choice.”

Naqbi’s eyes flicked about in mounting panic. Bolan nodded to himself. Panic in an intelligence asset was good. Turning into a stalk of broccoli wasn’t.

“That’s air in your lungs, Atta. That’s food on your plate. Life is good. It’s worth living. It’s worth fighting for, even in the darkest moment. Your family is worth fighting for. But if you want to fight for them, you’re going to have to help us. You can give up on yourself, that’s your choice, but you have another decision to make.”

Atta Naqbi looked as though he might throw up.

Bolan’s burning blue eyes held Naqbi’s implacably. “Do you want us to try to help your family?”

Naqbi vomited.

Bolan nodded at Makhdoom. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Rawalpindi, Pakistan

“This was the place of worship.”

Bolan kept his eyes on Naqbi for a moment. The young technician was looking green around the gills and his hands were shaking. Once more terror ruled his darting gaze. Bolan noted the man’s fear and was duly satisfied. He was terrified, and of more than just receiving a bullet through his brain from Bolan’s gun. The soldier frowned as he scanned the surroundings for the hundredth time. The problem was that the enemy had to know that Naqbi had been incarcerated. If they observed even the most basic of security protocols, they would have to assume that the man had been compromised.

The city of Rawalpindi was less than twenty kilometers from Islamabad and a light industry center. Naqbi’s place of worship appeared to be nothing more than a warehouse in the textile section of town. Makhdoom cradled a Russian-made Bison submachine gun and peered down the alley. “What do you think?”

“I don’t like it.” Bolan, too, held one of the Russian weapons. The stock had been removed for concealment and a laser sight had been slaved to the barrel. Both were modifications that Bolan didn’t particularly care for. It was a cowboy gun, suitable for little more than slaughtering the unsuspecting in phone booths. But beggars couldn’t be choosers. Operating while still technically under arrest presented unique logistical problems, and he would have to make do with what he was issued. Makhdoom was also operating on his own. He was fairly certain that some of his superiors had been compromised. Bolan was of the same opinion. Makhdoom had liberated the weapons, not requisitioned them, and no one except Kurtzman knew exactly where they were at the moment. The two of them were operating without a net. There would be no backup if things went south. Bolan hefted his weapon. The 64-round helical drum magazine, however, was comforting. Bolan turned to Naqbi. “How many guards?”

“Normally only a man or two at the door.” He shrugged nervously. “Perhaps a lookout up on the roof.”

Bolan held Naqbi’s eyes and was half satisfied. The young technician was telling the truth, as far as he knew, but Bolan suspected there would be one hell of a lot more to security than a couple of bouncers at the door and some guy smoking cigarettes up in the shingles. There was still the matter of invisible killers who could wipe out a platoon of special forces troops without being seen or leaving a drop of blood in their wake.

That was weighing heavily on Bolan’s mind.

It was weighing on Makhdoom’s, as well. “So, we go in?”

“It’s what we came here for. Leave the engine running.” Bolan slid out of the car and kept his Bison beneath his drab overcoat. He spoke into his throat mike. “Bear, we are going in.”

“Roger that, Striker,” Kurtzman acknowledged. “You be careful in there.”

“You!” Makhdoom jabbed Naqbi with the muzzle of his weapon. “Come!”

The cultist’s shoulders slumped in despair as he slid out of the car. The three of them walked down the alley. Pigeons cooed in the eaves. The alley was empty and the sky above the close-set buildings cobalt-blue. The three warehouses faced one another, turning the alley into a cul de sac. No bouncers stood on the steps below the sheet-metal door. No lookout stood upon the roof. Bolan crossed the street and tried the door. “It’s locked.”

Makhdoom shot a glance up and down the street. “How do you want to play—”

Bolan’s weapon stuttered in his hands as he put a burst into the lock. Naqbi nearly jumped out of his shoes. Sparks shrieked off the ancient metal and Bolan’s boot sent the sprung door flying back on its hinges.

“Very well.” Makhdoom nodded. “The direct approach, then.”

Bolan strode into the murky interior of the warehouse. Dim light filtered downward in hazy beams through the filthy skylights high above. “You smell that?” the Executioner asked.

“Sandalwood.” Makhdoom snuffed at the close air. “And nag champa.”

The air was thick with the cloying, sweet scent of devotional incense. “Not the usual smell of a textile warehouse.”

“No.”

Naqbi’s hand trembled as he pointed across the cavernous space. “The altar was there, and the idol behind it.”

Bolan took out a flashlight and panned the beam at the far wall. The floor showed fresh scrapes where something very heavy had recently been dragged across the concrete. Other than that, the warehouse was as empty as the cavern above the pass. The lingering sweetness in the air was the only clue they had left. “There’s a truck dock in back?”

“Indeed.” Makhdoom shone his light around the room. “I am currently running a check on the building. This warehouse and the two next to it are owned by a reputable Pakistani cotton merchant. However, a year ago, he rented this space to another company. They are proving much harder to track down.”

Owning all three warehouses on the block would give the enemy a nice quite zone of control where they could do whatever they wanted. It was also a fine tactical setup for an ambush. “The company will be a cutout.” Bolan glanced around the room again. “They’ll be some kind of—”

Bolan froze at the sound of a scraping noise. He and Makhdoom swung their flashlights around the room, but there was nothing to see but bare corrugated walls and the concrete floor. Bolan had known it was a trap, and expected it, but the unknown was an opponent as ugly as they came. An unbidden chill ran down Bolan’s spine as the unseen came for them. Naqbi let out a whimper. Makhdoom clicked on the laser sight of his weapon. “Ready?”

Bolan reached into the pocket of his overcoat. He had reviewed the battle a thousand times in his mind.

And he had formulated a plan. “Now!”

It was time to see how the goddess of death enjoyed something a little stronger than the smell of incense. Bolan and Makhdoom ripped the pins from the CS tear-gas canisters and flung them to the floor. The riot grenades burst apart as they hit and the multiple skip-chaser bomblets skidded across the concrete hissing and spewing thick white smoke. Bolan and Makhdoom pulled their gas masks from under their coats and yanked them over their faces. Naqbi let out a shriek that was instantly choked off as he inhaled the riot gas.

Bolan shouted through his mask as the gas bloomed around them. “Back to back!”

“Striker!” Kurtzman’s voice rose in urgency. “What is your situation?”

“Bear, I need absolute quiet!”

Makhdoom turned and he and Bolan covered each other while Naqbi collapsed weeping and coughing between them. Bolan flicked on his laser and panned it across his section of the building. Once again he found himself searching for the enemies he couldn’t see.

Makhdoom’s snarl was muffled by his mask. “I see nothing!”

Neither could Bolan, but he knew the enemy was here. He listened for another rustle or scrape or any sound of movement. He particularly listened for the hacking or coughing of an enemy.

Naqbi screamed as Bolan cut loose with his weapon. The weapon shuddered in his hands as he ripped off a 20-round burst in a sweeping arc in front of him. The bullets punched holes in the corrugated sheet metal of the walls and rays of sunlight shone in bright shafts through the thickening gas. Behind him Makhdoom fired off a similar burst. When Naqbi wasn’t hacking and coughing, he was screaming.

“Doom!” Bolan desperately tracked for targets. “Shut him up!”

Makhdoom cut off the hysterics by driving his boot into Naqbi’s ribs.

Bolan stared into the gas. There was nothing he could see, but it was something suddenly missing that caught his eye. The shafts of sunlight came through the bullet holes in the walls and crisscrossed the room like lances of light. It could have been a trick of the conditions, but for a moment there seemed to be a shaft of light that stopped, disappeared and then resumed its course two feet away.

Bolan held his trigger down on full-auto. Flames stuttered from the muzzle of his weapon, spitting bullets in line with the laser sweeping the section of gas. The lines of sunlight broke and resumed diagonally toward the ground.

It was as if the invisible man had fallen.

Bolan tracked his weapon, spewing bullets through the projected path. Makhdoom’s weapon continued to chatter in short, searching bursts. Naqbi’s screaming and choking was suddenly cut off.

Bolan whirled.

The cultist was clutching at his throat and walk-flopping backward in a remarkable fashion across the warehouse. Bolan whipped his laser between Naqbi’s flailing legs and fired off a burst. He suddenly collapsed backward as whatever was holding him up failed.

“Doom!” Bolan shouted. The attack on Naqbi had been bait and Bolan had taken it. “Look out—”

The unseen reached out and seized Bolan by the throat. His carotid arteries were instantly cut off and a hard lump crushed into his larynx. Only Bolan’s body armor kept the massive blow he took to his kidneys from buckling him. Sick weakness washed through Bolan’s arms and legs as he was dragged backward. His arteries and air pipe were relentlessly constricted as he was choked and strangled at the same time. Bolan watched helplessly as Makhdoom’s back arched like a bow and the Pakistani’s weapon fell from his hands as he clawed at his throat. Every instinct in Bolan’s body screamed at him to fight the horrible grip on his throat as it bent him backward.

Instead Bolan let every ounce of his 200-plus pounds go limp. He hung himself as he dropped into the garrote. Something bumped into his back and a thick veil seemed to enfold him. Bolan’s vision narrowed to blackness as he flipped the muzzle of his Bison submachine gun over his shoulder and burned his magazine dry behind him.

The grip on his throat weakened and Bolan ripped at his throat as he heaved himself forward. He dropped his empty weapon and his knife rang from the sheath on his belt. Fabric bunched beneath Bolan’s hand and parted beneath his blade. Bolan sucked breath through the smothering filters of his mask. He couldn’t quite get enough to fill his lungs, but his vision cleared.

In his fist Bolan held a thick gray piece of dully glittering fabric.

Makhdoom’s knees buckled as his body began to fail him. Bolan lunged up and threw himself like an NFL linebacker at the empty space above Makhdoom’s head. His bones jarred as he slammed into what he couldn’t see. Bolan’s vision skewed as he felt something veil him. Whatever it was couldn’t stop the reinforced point of his combat knife. The blade punched into something solid and Bolan’s lips skinned back from his teeth as he recognized the feel of steel grating on ribs. He smelled human sweat and beneath it the sudden stink of pain and fear. Bolan rammed the blade home and ripped it back out, stabbing three more times rapidly. He heard the groan of a wounded man. Bolan raised his knife for the kill.

His vision exploded into blackness lit with pulsing purple pinpricks of light as something struck him in the back of the head.

Bolan rolled with the blow. His vision was tilting crazily, but his battle instincts had been hard won in conflicts on every continent on the planet. He rolled up to one knee and his hand found Makhdoom’s weapon at his feet. He scooped up the automatic and sprayed lead in an arc in front of him. His vision darkened and he nearly buckled as he stood. Bolan shook his head to clear it and took several tottering steps backward. He was rewarded as he bumped against corrugated steel wall.

The warehouse wall had Bolan’s back. His eyes glared out of the lenses of his mask as he swept his muzzle, looking for any sign of the enemy. Makhdoom was a few feet away. His hands were at his throat and his chest was heaving, trying to suck air past his mask and down his traumatized throat, but he was alive. Naqbi lay unmoving a few yards away. His eyes were rolled back in his head and his blackened tongue lolled out of his mouth.

Sunlight was pouring in from the back of the warehouse. The back door had been opened. Bolan fired a burst out the door and whipped his muzzle back to cover the rest of the room. The enemy had extracted. Bolan scanned the room again. He didn’t believe the enemy had brought gas masks. Anyone in the room would now be weeping and choking. Bolan made a fist around the piece of fabric in his left hand.

Even if they were thickly veiled by something, they would be affected by the gas by now.

“Doom!” Bolan shouted. “Can you hear me?”

The Pakistani captain pushed himself up painfully. His choking and gagging was plain to hear, but his masked head nodded. He crawled across the floor a few feet and scooped up Bolan’s weapon. He unhooked the spent drum and slid in a fresh one from under his jacket. He also picked up Bolan’s fallen knife. The soldier covered Makhdoom as he tottered over and sagged against the wall. The two men kept their weapons aimed into the billowing gas.

“Atta—” Makhdoom’s voice was a rasp “—appears to be dead.”

“Yeah,” Bolan wheezed.

“But we have learned something.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Makhdoom nodded. “Our enemies are not djinn.”

Bolan managed a wry smile beneath his mask. “You’re sure about that?”

“Yes.” He held up Bolan’s knife. The shallow curve of the Japanese-style fighting knife was stained to the hilt. The Pakistani’s red eyes glittered beneath his mask. “Djinns do not bleed.”

CHAPTER SIX

Islamabad

“You gave him a gun!” General Iskander Hussain’s voice rose into a scream. He may have been named after Alexander the Great, but the incredibly short, fat, little man in front of Bolan and Makhdoom didn’t meet the mark. When he stood up from his desk, he hardly seemed to have stood at all. He was capable of expanding in the horizontal plane. Hussain seemed to literally inflate with rage. Bolan thought he might burst the seams of his uniform, if he didn’t burst a blood vessel first. He screamed in English for Bolan’s benefit.

Makhdoom stood at ramrod-stiff attention. “Yes, General!”

“You took him to the Al-Nouri weapons site! You took him along on an unauthorized raid into Rawalpindi! You equipped him with automatic weapons and unauthorized war gas! An American saboteur and a spy!”

“A Pakistani ally, involved in a sensitive operation of mutual concern—”

“You gave him a gun!” Hussain’s rage went apoplectic. “Did it not occur to you he could escape! Idiot!”

“Indeed, General, I did give him weapons. It was he who generated the leads we have found so far. The act of arming him saved my life and the lives of my men. I do not regret—”

Spittle flew as General Hussain lost his English and began screaming so rapidly Bolan could no longer tell whether he was shrieking in Urdu or Sind.

Makhdoom clearly could understand. He stood like a rock but his cheek muscles flexed with tension as he was dressed down in ever-increasingly personal and inflammatory detail. The general gasped and stopped in midscream. He had to lean over and put both of his hands on his desk as he caught his breath from his outburst. He lifted his right hand after a moment and pointed an accusing finger at Bolan. “And you! You are—”

“Privileged to work with the officers under your command on a matter of mutual concern to my nation and our trusted friend, the Sovereign Republic of Pakistan,” Bolan finished.

Hussain blinked and then began to open his mouth.

Bolan beat him to the punch. “Is it the general’s pleasure to receive our report?”

“No! I do not wish to hear your bloody…” The general suddenly caught himself. “Yes! It is my pleasure to receive your report! Immediately!”

The general slammed his fat frame back down into his chair and glared at them in as menacing a fashion as he could muster. “I await! I am very interested! You have my undivided attention!”

Bolan swiftly sketched out the events in the Haji Pir Pass and everything that had happened subsequently at the Al-Nouri facility and then in Rawalpindi. He left nothing out other than his conversation with Kurtzman and exactly under what auspices of the United States government he was working for. Hussain’s facial expression slowly went from rage, to confusion, to disbelief to just a blank stare as Bolan finished. Hussain gazed off into space a moment, blinked, then turned his gaze to Makhdoom. The general’s head cocked slightly like a dog that has heard a noise it doesn’t understand. “Captain Makhdoom, do you agree with the facts of this report?”

“I do, General,” Makhdoom concurred. “All he says, I have seen with my own eyes and experienced personally.”

Hussain’s voice went flat. “You are saying our strategic nuclear weapons have been stolen by Hindu death worshipers who can turn themselves invisible?”

Makhdoom nodded once. “That is our current and best theory.”

“I do not believe I can have you shot for being insane, Captain, but given your other offenses—”

“General,” Bolan interrupted, “you have seen the videotape of the activity in the Al-Nouri facility when the weapons were stolen?”

“Of course.” Hussain shook his head. “But—”

“Other than djinns, General, how would you account for the disappearance of the weapons?”

“The videotape could have been doctored,” Hussain blustered, “or somehow overcome.”

“We also considered that possibility. However, in light of what happened in Rawalpindi we have reassessed the situation. We have come to grips with the enemy, and I assure you that we are dealing with far more than a doctored videotape. You also heard the radio transmissions from Musa Company during the battle in the pass?”

“You were attacked by invisible Hindu stranglers?” It was more than Hussain could deal with. “This is what you truly wish me to believe?”

Bolan pulled down the collar of his shirt and exposed the purple bruising mottling his throat. “Yes.”

Makhdoom pulled down his own collar. “The traitor, Atta Naqbi, is in the morgue. He bears similar marks, only he did not survive them.”

“Assuming I were to buy into this fantasy of yours, Captain, tell me why? Why would Hindu idol-worshipers do such a thing?”

“Why do idol-worshipers do anything?” Makhdoom shrugged. “Except to please their heathen gods.”

Bolan had a number of acquaintances around the world who worshiped idols, but he kept that to himself. “They have some sort of agenda, General. That is clear. They are also clearly well organized, funded and must have clandestine contacts high up within the Pakistani military.”

Hussain began to purple again with outrage.

Bolan cut off the general before he could detonate. “For that reason, Captain Makhdoom suggested that you were one of the few members of General Staff who can be trusted. He informs me that your service record and your loyalty to your country are unimpeachable.”

General Hussain ceased changing colors and relaxed back in his chair slightly.

This was an outright lie. Somehow, Hussain’s spies within the military had found out about Bolan’s and Makhdoom’s activities, and he had sent his own bodyguards to summon them to his offices. However, Bolan had decided to give Hussain a full report for the simple reason that the general was such a blustering egomaniac that whoever the enemy was, they would clearly not trust his involvement in stealing nuclear weapons.

Hussain made his first intelligent remark of the day. “Do you realize how insane this sounds?”

“I wouldn’t believe it myself, General, had I not seen and experienced what I had under Captain Makhdoom’s command.”

“This is all most unusual. I must admit I—”

“General, this is my suggestion. This conversation does not leave this room. Captain Makhdoom and I will coordinate our investigation through your offices. I will put you in contact with my superiors in the United States. If, indeed, members of the Pakistani High Command have been compromised, we must be able to present incontrovertible evidence to back up our accusations. When we have the proof we need, and the location of the stolen weapons, you will present the evidence to Military Command and the president.”

Hussain blinked at Bolan.

Makhdoom looked at Bolan as if he were insane.

“I…yes.” Hussain’s brows furrowed. “This is a matter of utmost security. The traitors must be ferreted out. Our stolen weapons must be located. We cannot afford incompetence. This effort shall be coordinated out of my offices and under my direct command.”

Makhdoom tried to keep the horror out of his voice. “General, I would like to assemble a picked team of men who I can—”

“No!” Hussain cut him off with a wave of his hand. “Nuclear weapons have been stolen, and it was clearly an inside job. Our enemy is unseen and has unknown contacts.” Hussain began reciting back Bolan’s report as if it were made up of his own experiences and opinions. He nodded to himself. “If we have traitors, they may well be members of the special forces.”

Makhdoom blanched but said nothing. “No, no members of Musa Company or the other special units. They often travel afar and who knows how they may have been corrupted.”

It was Makhdoom’s turn to start purpling.

Hussain was oblivious to Makhdoom’s outrage. “My service record and loyalty are unimpeachable. I choose my own men for the same reason. I will assemble you a team from among the most trusted men in my personal bodyguard.”

Makhdoom looked as though he wanted to shoot himself, if he didn’t shoot Bolan and General Hussain first.

“The contents of this meeting do not leave my office. Do not report back to your headquarters, Captain. Go home. The American will be under your supervision and will be your responsibility at all times. Report none of this to your superiors in special operations. I will contact you in the morning and we will begin our investigation properly.”

Hussain leaned back and steepled his fingers in deep thought. “You are dismissed.”

“YOU ARE INSANE! Do you know that?”

Bolan shrugged. Makhdoom had maintained a granite silence in the car ride all the way back to his house. He had stiffly asked his wife to make tea and bring refreshments. He had sat like a statue and watched Bolan drink a cup of tea and eat a piece of cake. Makhdoom had observed the laws of hospitality.

Then he had exploded.

“You are an idiot!”

Makhdoom’s wife, Zarah, was a lovely woman, and she looked on in horror as her husband screamed in rage at their guest.

“You turned our mission over to a man like Hussain?” The captain’s knuckles whitened as his hands clenched into fists. “Hussain is a cabbage! No! He is less than a cabbage! At least a cabbage can be boiled and eaten!”

He shook his fists at the ceiling. “Of what possible use is Hussain!”

Bolan was getting the impression that Makhdoom had had one or two run-ins with the general in the past.

Makhdoom’s roar shook the rafters. “Yet you have put us under his fist! Do you realize what you have done?”

“I do. What do you believe Hussain would have done had we not cooperated with him?”

Makhdoom spent several long moments collecting himself, then a few more considering the question. His hands fell to his sides as his reason overcame his indignation. “At the very least, Hussain would have raised bloody hell with my superiors over my conduct. Our investigation would have been blown wide open. For having taken you, an American, into the Al-Nouri facility, I could have been stripped of my rank. Regardless of the fate of my career, you would have probably ended up being thrown out of the country, though first you would have been extensively tortured. It is not outside the realm of possibility that you could be shot as a spy. Hussain is a toad, but he walks the corridors of power and he has the ear of the president. Though all he ever whispers into it is the word yes, if I am not mistaken.”

Bolan nodded. “That was my take on the situation. I decided it would be better to stroke the man rather than buck him. I apologize if I acted out of turn or superceded your authority. It was a choice that had to be made on the split second, and I stand by my decision.”

“Your actions were correct.” Makhdoom sank down heavily into his chair and picked up his cup of tea. “I do not like them, and I fear their consequences, but at the time, they were correct. I do not begrudge them.”

Two young men in their early teens appeared in the doorway of the living room. They were dark complected like their father but had the light brown eyes of their mother.

“Ah.” The captain visibly brightened. “My sons. Muhjid, Kaukab, come and greet our guest.”

The two young men entered and stared at Bolan wonderingly. Americans were a source of great debate among the Pakistani people. Most considered them godless, an enemy of Islam and unforgivable allies of the Israeli occupiers of the Holy Land. They were also supposed to be perverted, fabulously wealthy and famous. The two young men were somewhat cosmopolitan because their father had trained in the United States and he told very interesting stories about his experiences. They had also listened to their father roar at the stranger for ten minutes, telling him what an idiot he was.

The two young men nodded formally. “Greetings. Welcome to our home.”

“Thank you.” Bolan nodded to Makhdoom. “Fine young men you’ve raised.”

Makhdoom puffed up happily. Zarah beamed. Makhdoom waved them away. “You may go. My guest and I have much to discuss.”

The two young men ran off and Zarah disappeared back into the house.

“Nice family you have.”

“Thank you.”

“Get them the hell out of here.”

Makhdoom glanced up from his tea. “You think they’ll come here.”

It was a statement, not a question.

“I would. We’ve gotten closer than anyone has to them. We bloodied them. They don’t know who I am, but we have to assume they know you. They know we’re after them.” Bolan held up the strange, dully gleaming piece of fabric. “They’ll want this back. They’re coming. Sooner rather later.”

“Muhjid! Kaukab!”

The two young men came skidding into the room at their father’s call. Makhdoom pulled a large wad of notes from his wallet. “Take this money. Take the shotgun. Take the car. Take your mother out of the city.”

The two boys’ eyes widened.

“Do not dally! Evil men are coming. Take care of your mother. Go!”

Muhjid ran to the mantel and took a double-barreled shotgun off the rack and then a box of shells from the chest beneath it. Kaukab ran to find his mother.

Makhdoom rose. “My friend, I want you on the opposite roof. I will give you binoculars and a rifle. When they come, I will be inside and act as bait. When—”

Zarah ran into the room. “There is a car out on the street.”

“What kind of car?”

“A black one.” She glanced fearfully from Makhdoom to his guest. “It is full of men.”

Makhdoom picked up the phone. He clicked the old-fashioned receiver twice and grimaced. Most of Pakistan still used phone lines rather than cell phones. The phone line to the house had been cut. He turned to his boys. “My sons. Take your mother upstairs. Kill anyone either than myself or the American should they attempt to come up.”

Muhjid and Kaukab went wide-eyed, but they hesitated only for a second. They took the shotgun and their mother and ran upstairs.

Bolan polished off his tea and rose. “We need guns.”

General Hussain’s men had demanded they surrender their submachine guns and had not seen fit to give them back.

“Follow me.” Makhdoom strode down the hall and entered his study. Maps of the world covered the walls that weren’t dominated by bookcases. In one corner was a small desk with a computer.

Opposite the desk was a gun cabinet.

He opened the twin glass panels and pulled out a pair of rifles. They were Lee-Enfield bolt-action rifles of WWII vintage. Sporting stocks had replaced the full wood furniture stressed for bayonet fighting. The barrels had been shortened to twenty-two inches and telescopic sights had been fitted. The old battle rifles had been customized for hunting, but both would still hold ten rounds of the powerful British .303 military ammunition.

Makhdoom checked the loads in both rifles and then tossed one of the weapons to Bolan. He removed a box of shells and dumped half of the cartridges into Bolan’s hand, then thrust the rest in his pocket.

They had twenty shots each.

“They’re not coming invisibly this time.”

“No, not during the initial assault.” Bolan flipped on the safety of his weapon. “But they may come sneaking up during it.”

Something struck the front door a tremendous blow. The house shook and wood creaked and splintered. Bolan flicked the safety off of his weapon. “Here they come.”

A heavy piece of pipe rammed the door off of its hinges.

“Here they go,” the captain snarled. They walked to the end of the hall and pointed their rifles across the living room into the foyer. The iron battering ram crushed tile as it was dropped onto the floor and men in long coats waving short automatic weapons spilled into the captain’s home.

The two hunting rifles thundered as one. The first man in shuddered and sagged as Makhdoom’s .303 rifle bullet smashed in his chest. The second man’s head erupted like a melon as it failed to absorb the 2200 footpounds of muzzle energy Bolan delivered into it with the precision of a trained sniper. He flicked the bolt of his rifle and chambered a fresh round. The men in the doorway were screaming in a language Bolan didn’t recognize.

A line of bullets pocked up the wall beside the Executioner as the invaders behind fired their weapons blindly into the house.

“Amateurs,” Makhdoom growled.

“They’ll be coming through the back, as well.”

The captain nodded. “Go kill them. I will stay here and prevent the ones in front from coming in.”

Bolan strode down the hall toward the back of the house. He swept into the kitchen as a man crawled through the shattered window. He perched precariously on the sink, trying not to cut himself on broken shards of glass still in the window frame.

He had a single split second of wide-eyed horror before Bolan blew him back through the window with a bullet through his sternum. The big American flicked his bolt open as the back door to the kitchen smashed inward and charged into the invaders. The throat of the first man in was torn away as Bolan shot him point-blank. There was no time to work the bolt of the ancient weapon for a second shot, but the dying killer had sagged into his companions and clogged the doorway. Bolan swung the butt of his rifle in a brutal arc and shattered the jaw of the second man. The third desperately tried to shove his machine pistol past his broken comrades.

Bolan lunged and rammed his rifle forward in a bayonet thrust.

No blade was mounted on the end of Bolan’s rifle, but the steel muzzle and the front sight of his rifle rammed up through the assassin’s teeth and crushed his upper palate. A muffled mewl of agony bubbled through the shattered remains of the man’s mouth. The assassin’s agony was cut short as Bolan whipped the butt of his rifle around and brought it into the killer’s temple with bone-cracking force.

The soldier racked the bolt of his rifle and stepped over the men he had taken out of play.

Makhdoom’s house was very typical of the Middle East and East Asia. The front of the house was a nearly blank wall except for a door and very narrow upstairs windows. Beyond the interior living space was a walled courtyard in back.

A man sat straddling the wall shouting into a cell phone and waving a machine gun.

“Igor! Igor!” the man shouted.

Bolan raised an eyebrow.

Igor.

That wasn’t a typical Pakistani name. Bolan sighted and shot the man through the leg he had thrown over the wall. The assassin howled, clutched his shattered thigh and toppled forward into a rosebush.

Upstairs a shotgun boomed.

The fallen assassin was thrashing and howling in the rose thorns. Bolan shot him through the other leg. The man screamed as Bolan slung his rifle and picked up a pair of the fallen weapons of the men clogging the kitchen doorway. The weapons were Kiparis submachine guns. Bolan flicked their selectors to full auto. The man thrashing along the garden wall looked up and screamed as Bolan charged him with a weapon in either hand.

The man shrieked as the soldier vaulted him. Bolan dropped the commandeered weapons on their slings and caught the wall as he leaped. He swung his leg over the top and dropped to the street below.

Bolan ran down the back alley and rounded the corner of Makhdoom’s house. A black Landrover was parked on the street with a man waiting behind the wheel. In one hand he held a cell phone into which he was talking rapidly. The other held a silenced handgun. He was craned around in his seat, and his attention was fixed on the front door of Makhdoom’s residence and the pitched gun battle going on there. He caught sight of Bolan in the corner of his eye and whipped back around.

Bolan raised both machine pistols and held down his triggers. The windshield of the Landrover went opaque with bullets and then splashed red from the arterial spray within. Three men were in the doorway of Doom’s house. A fourth lay dead on the stoop. They were spraying their weapons like firehoses into the house. Bolan raised his left-hand weapon and burned the rest of his magazine into the back of the rearmost assassin. Bolan dropped the spent machine pistol and raised the weapon in his right hand. One of the remaining killers spun, and Bolan walked a burst up from his belt buckle to his brain.

The fourth man leaped into the house as Bolan tracked his weapon on him. Makhdoom’s rifle thundered within, and the man staggered backward out the door again clutching his chest. Doom’s weapon boomed a second time and the killer was smashed off his feet and sprawled in the gutter.

Bolan scanned the street and the rooftops opposite Makhdoom’s house. People were shouting and screaming in the neighboring houses. But nothing appeared to be moving on the street.

It was what Bolan could not see that made him wary.

Bolan approached the Captain’s door obliquely. “Doom!”

“I hear you!”

“You all right?”

“I am!” shouted back the Captain. “You?”

“The street is clear! I’m coming in the front door!”

“Come ahead!”

Bolan stepped across half a dozen dead bodies as he entered the house and entered the living room. The interior of the house was littered with corpses. Most had one or two high-powered rifle bullet wounds in their chests. One lay spread-eagled further in by the foot of the stairs. A shotgun blast had left his head and shoulders in ruins.

“Everyone all right?”

Makhdoom came out from the hallway. “Kaukab!”

The young man’s voice came from the top of the stairs. “We are all right, father!”

“Stay where you are! Do not move from your post until I tell you!”

“Yes, father!”

Makhdoom stared around his bullet-riddled home. “Do you think the unseen ones come?”

Bolan looked around the living room. His eyes fell upon the low table where he had set his teacup. It was also where he had left the length of strange fabric he had cut from his own throat in the warehouse in Rawalpindi.

The fabric was gone.

“They were here, and they’ve left. They took what they came for.”

Makhdoom straightened in shock. “The fabric! You left it out where they could find it!”

“I did.” Bolan nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a three-inch length he had cut from it. “But not all of it.”

“But did they not also come for our lives?”

“That was what the muscle was for. I remember reading in the intelligence report on the Thugs that their religion forbids them to shed blood except in certain ritual circumstances. The goons were for us. But the Thuggees came for the evidence.

Makhdoom’s smile turned feral. “So, they think they have what they came for.”

“Yeah, and I need to get this to my people in the United States ASAP, and without General Hussain knowing about it.”

“That I can arrange.” Makhdoom glanced around again. The corpses piled around his house were just that, corpses. “But it appears we are without leads once more.”

Mujhid’s voice shouted excitedly from upstairs. “Father! There is a man! Thrashing about in mother’s roses!”

“You saved one,” smiled Doom.

“I figured we’d give him to Hussain.” Bolan shrugged. “We have to let the General do something.”

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