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  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Federally Administered Tribal Area

  Bolan shoved Saboor out of the helicopter. The man shrieked in a most unmartyrlike fashion under his hood as he toppled into empty space. His wrists were zip-tied to his belt, his ankles bound. Saboor spasmed against his bonds and did the worm as he tumbled through the ethers. He neither wormed nor tumbled far. The helicopter was hovering only four feet above the ground. The scream of terror tearing out of Saboor’s lungs ended abruptly with a splash as he landed in about six inches of water and hit the mud of the drying creek. Bolan hopped out. When it came to psychological warfare the “throw them out of the chopper” routine was an old one, but a good one. It struck Bolan as a good way to open the bidding. He helped Ous out of the aircraft, and Babar jumped to join them. The three warriors gazed down at the bound and hooded terrorist.

  Saboor had wet himself.

  The whirlwind of the rotor wash prevented Saboor from hearing the crowd of judges, jurors and executioners in front of him. It was very clear by his body language that Saboor knew something was terribly wrong. Bolan clicked open his tactical knife. Babar gave the pilot the thumbs-up, and the helicopter rose out of the canyon. Bolan dragged Saboor to dry ground. He yanked the terrorist to his knees and ripped off his hood for the big reveal.

  Bilal, Ali and the rest of the village down to the smallest child stood assembled in an arc in front of Saboor. Behind them much of the village was still blasted and burned from the attack the man had orchestrated.

  Saboor spasmed backward. Bolan held him firmly in place and spoke in English. “Bilal says he has met you before, Saboor. He didn’t love you then, and I fear he loves you less now.”

  Saboor’s jaw worked but not much sound came out.

  “These people granted Ous and me nanawatai,” Bolan continued, “right in the teeth of your attack. I owe them my life, Saboor. I owe them you.”

  The women of the village were assembled behind the men. All now wore headscarves and veils. Their eyes flashed pure hatred out of the black khol they had lined their lids with. The women began to ululate. It wasn’t the typical sound of celebration, or the all too often heard wail of lament. The tone of the women trilling their voices up and down held an ominous note, and it bounced off the canyon walls in an unsettling fashion. It was the sound of hatred. It was a call for revenge, and it was growing in power. Saboor shook. The Western ideal of women’s rights was nearly unknown in South Asia, but every woman in the FATA owned a dagger.

  The women wore them openly now.

  Saboor shuddered. He knew what was going to happen to him. Bolan told him anyway. “You’re going to meet death without your sexual organs. You’re going to meet God without a head. Your mutilated body will be left as feast for hawks, and your children will not know where the dogs have scattered your bones.”

  Saboor sobbed.

  Bolan was beginning to think his read on Saboor was correct. He cut the man’s left wrist free and coldly paraphrased Rudyard Kipling. “When you’re wounded and left on Pakistan’s plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, just pick up your rifle and blow out your brains, and go face God like a soldier.”

  The women rippled like a wave as they leaned back and forth. The ululating took on a fever pitch as they worked themselves into a killing frenzy.

  Saboor moaned.

  Bolan took out the Pakistani army automatic pistol Babar had loaned him and popped the clip. Saboor stared as Bolan cocked the pistol on the single round in the chamber and tossed it to the ground in front of him. Bolan turned away.

  Bolan heard Saboor pick up the gun, heard the hiss of approximately seventy daggers leave their sheaths. The Executioner looked up and waved at the orbiting helicopter. For a moment he waited, and then he heard the hammer falling on the dud round in the chamber as Saboor pulled the trigger again and again. Suicide was a sin in Islam, and Saboor was a martyr sworn to take unbelievers with him to his grave. Bolan turned, knowing what he would find.

  Saboor fell to his hands wretching as he pulled the gun out of his own mouth.

  The reaction of the villagers was mixed. Some stared in amazement. Some spit in disgust. Others looked away uncomfortably. Saboor’s shame was incalculable. Bolan had read his quarry right. Saboor was an organizer, a planner and a recruiter. He was a brave man who was willing to shoot it out with his enemies. He might even have been willing to strap on a suicide vest and blow himself up for the cause, but he knew the old stories, and in the FATA the old stories were everyday life. Bolan had handed Saboor over to the death that even the bravest of South Asian warriors feared.

  The male villagers turned their backs and began walking toward the gate.

  Bolan turned away.

  The women and girls flowed through the male ranks and raised their daggers overhead. Saboor screamed and grabbed Bolan’s ankle. “Anything!”

  Bolan toed Saboor onto his back and stepped over him. The seventy-plus veiled and kholed eyes popped in surprise. The soldier shot out one open hand to halt them. He gave it fifty-fifty whether the women would stop or roll over him and his captive like an avalanche of cube-steaking machines. The women stopped for the Mighty One, but it was a near thing. They stood in an angry, chest-heaving, dagger-wielding arc surrounding him.

  The Executioner raised his voice. “Bilal!”

  The menfolk turned.

  Ous translated for Bolan exactly. “Bilal, this man has information I need. He is yours, but if you are willing, I wish to purchase his life.”

  “This dog has betrayed his faith in God. I have no use for such a creature. If the Mighty One can find both mercy and a use for the wretch, then the Mighty One is a far better man than I.”

  Bilal and the menfolk turned once more. The majority of the women lifted their heads haughtily and turned away, as well. A few shot Bolan looks of jilted bloodlust, but no one stabbed Bolan in an effort to claim any of Saboor’s ears, eyes or other significant organs. He rolled Saboor over and rehooded and bound him.

  Saboor lay weeping, as soft as a boned fish during the process. The helicopter dropped down and Bolan put a foot on the skid as the Pakistani door gunner grinned and gave him an arm inside. Saboor had never seen or heard Keller where she sat in the copilot seat during the flight.

  The NCIS agent gave Bolan a grim but admiring look. “Nice work. So we get Saboor back to base and get an interrogation team on him.”

  “Forget Saboor.”

  Keller drew a blank look. “What?”

  “They know we have him. They’re already doing damage control.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “We send him back, make a fuss over him at base, let everyone know he’s being interrogated. He broke himself, but it will still take time to sweat everything out of him.”

  Keller’s hazel eyes got that predatory gleam. “Saboor is a feint.”

  “That’s right. I’m betting he’s high enough up that his capture is causing some shifting around, and they still don’t know how we took him,” Bolan said.

  “So…?”

  “So put together your strike team.”

  “And?”

  “And I activate the RFID in my phone.”

  Islamabad, industrial district

  GHOLAM DAEI STRODE through the warehouse. The little technician, Afdar, struggled to keep up. He was visibly upset. His friend, business partner and the man who had recruited him to the cause had been captured along with Saboor during the Mighty One’s raid. Daei tried to calm him.

  “Listen to me, your friend Jamshed has been captured by Americans. He is in a clean room, with a bed and clean sheets. He has been given a prayer rug and a Koran, and is receiving three meals a day that adhere to Islamic dietary law. On top of this, what authority do the Americans have in Pakistan? I have already put the machinery in place to have his release demanded.”

  Afdar seemed unconsoled. “As you say.”

  Daei wasn’t as certain as he made out. He had his spies among the
Americans. Rumor had it that despite his predictions, Saboor had been broken in short order, though none of his assets were high enough up in the food chain to know how. Daei also had it on good authority that Jamshed’s right hand had been blown off before he could complete the deletion of all files and that his computer had left the country by courier jet to an unknown destination. Soon, if not at this moment, the CIA or the NSA would be putting their best people on the decryption of Jamshed’s files. Things weren’t going according to plan.

  Daei knew that the Mighty One was in desperate need of killing.

  “I am perturbed that Saboor was found so quickly.”

  Afdar shook his head. “I do not believe he was found.”

  Daei stopped. “And what do you mean by that?”

  “There was no way to find him. Tell me how! Who would talk? Who would know to talk? Who would know whom to talk to?”

  Daei began to get a cold feeling. It wasn’t a feeling he was used to, and he didn’t care for it. “What are you saying, Afdar?”

  “Saboor could not have been found. He was traced.”

  “It is your supposition that somehow the American or Ous planted a tracking device on Saboor?”

  “It is the only thing that makes sense.”

  “I find this very hard to believe,” Daei stated.

  “Did Saboor take anything from either the American or Ous?”

  “Saboor recovered his rifle.”

  “He kept it?” Afdar pressed.

  “Yes, he said that despite its outward appearance it was in excellent condition. He said the Russian scope body was actually camouflage for a laser range-finding scope.”

  Afdar gaped. “This…laser range-finding telescope. It is a digital device?”

  Daei’s cold feeling turned icy. “I suppose it would be…”

  “The phone!” The little technician broke into a sprint for his lab, followed by Daei. Afdar’s mind whirled. The phone’s processor had been most cleverly devised, but he had found the secret encryption within it. His computer was busily cracking the code. He had disabled the phone’s ability to make or receive calls, and he had scanned it for bugs. However if a bug was inactive, it was inert. If the enemy had somehow implanted a bug into the phone that he had missed, and if a frequency he hadn’t already bombarded the phone with was being transmitted by satellite…

  Afdar flew through the door to his lab and skidded to a halt in front of his workstation. The American’s phone lay on a cloth like a frog on a dissecting table. The pistol barrel and its round of ammo lay off to one side. The antenna was disconnected. A few of its components were still connected by wires. Others were connected to devices of Afdar’s own devising that were working away to break the underwritten encryption in the phone’s small but surprisingly powerful processor. Afdar’s jaw opened in slow horror as he stared at one of his monitors. A small window on the screen had popped up. It displayed a frequency wave pattern that rose and fell in a regular pattern of spikes and valley like a heart-rate monitor.

  The phone was transmitting a signal.

  THE CHOPPER THUNDERED across the rooftops. The late-afternoon sun lay low and waning in the west. Night raids were always preferable, but the window of opportunity was too narrow. There simply was no time. They were going in, and in broad daylight. Bolan sat next to Babar. Eight handpicked Black Storks in full raid gear sat stone-faced on the benches. The military, and particularly the special forces of Pakistan, was staunchly secular. It didn’t appreciate religious extremists misbehaving in the FATA. Pakistan wouldn’t allow the United States to run independent operations in her sovereign territory, but Subedar Babar had given his superiors a full report, and his superiors weren’t pleased with the situation. Babar was in command, but the Americans would be allowed to “observe.”

  Aaron Kurtzman had gotten a full war load delivered to the Islamabad CIA station, and Bolan was armed with state-of-the-art equipment.

  Ous had insisted on coming along, but the old warrior had been forced to admit that he had never fast-roped out of a helicopter and was in no shape to do so. However, he, Keller and four more Black Storks were deploying on the street around the warehouse.

  The copilot spoke across the secure channel. “One minute to target!” The door gunners racked the actions on their weapons and armed their electric triggers. Bolan and his adopted team checked their weapons and gear one final time. Two air crewmen prepped the fast ropes. The helicopter slewed around in a circle over the warehouse. Babar looked at Bolan, who nodded.

  The Pakistani cut his hand through the air. “Now! Full saturation!”

  The starboard door gunner leaned out in his chicken straps and pointed his Mk 19 grenade launcher straight down. The gunner pushed his trigger and began walking a line of tear-gas grenades through the warehouse skylights. He didn’t stop until his 32-round can of ammo was empty. “Gas deployed!”

  “Reload with less than lethal! Everyone! Masks on!”

  Bolan pulled his gas mask down over his balaclava. He checked the seal and strapped his helmet tight.

  “Ropes!” Babar called.

  The air crewmen released the ropes on either side of the fuselage and they spilled down to the cracked and shattered skylights.

  Babar grinned savagely through the lines and craters of scar tissue marring his face. “Go with God!”

  Bolan was taking point.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  The Executioner pushed off the safety on the rifle strapped to his chest. He took the thick strand of fast-rope between his gloved hands and stepped into empty air. His descent speed was just short of suicidal, but he had men behind him and they needed to penetrate the warehouse instantly. Bolan’s boots crunched through broken skylight glass. The rope hitched for just a moment, and then the rest of the coil dropped to the warehouse floor, which was a maze of mounded textiles on pallets. When the soldier touched down, he found himself in a fog of tear gas and the fog of war.

  He took three rounds in the chest.

  Bolan slapped leather for his thigh holsters and filled his hands. The Beretta 93-R’s 3-round burst sent his opponent stumbling backward. A single round from the .50-caliber Desert Eagle took off everything above the terrorist’s eyebrows.

  Two more Black Storks crashed through the skylights and descended the fast ropes like spiders. A man with an AK-47 manifested himself through the gas concentration. He coughed and wheezed and raised his rifle to shoot the Pakistani operators off their ropes. Bolan’s weapons snarled and boomed. A triburst made the man drop his rifle, and a .50-caliber skull-crusher punched the man to the floor.

  Subedar Babar came crashing down through the glass. Good leaders always lead from the front. The exception was jumping out of airplanes and helicopters. Then their job was to make sure their team got down safe, and as last man out, surprise had long since been lost and they were a prime target. Babar’s boots hit the floor. “Team away!”

  The pilot shouted back through the radio. “Black Wing One, resuming station!” The helicopter rose to circle the warehouse and put its support weapons to bear where needed.

  Bolan linked up with Babar. “Teams! Two by two! Begin sweep!” The Black Storks broke into two-man fire teams and began sweeping the warehouse. The soldier and his ally took their sector. The teams began reporting back.

  “Team Three! Sector clear!”

  “Team Two! Sector—!” The interior of the warehouse thundered.

  Bolan and Babar swept in. A Black Stork clutched his bleeding arm and jerked his head at the door to the office suite. There was a surveillance camera over the lintel and a pattern of buckshot through the door. The Pakistani operative grimaced. “The woman! She is in there!”

  Bolan put a 3-round burst into the camera, holstered his pistols and unclipped his rifle. The Black Storks were armed with sound-suppressed MP-5s. The Executioner aimed his SCAR rifle, which had a grenade launcher mounted beneath it, and fired a CS tear gas canister through the door. Two blasts of buckshot answered
in return. Bolan loaded a fresh grenade and kicked the door.

  Na’ama Shushan’s flat, dead, sociopathic shark eyes had been replaced by orbs of burning, red-veined hatred. She had tossed aside her shotgun and like any good, welltrained Mossad agent, she raised her .22-caliber Beretta and drilled three rounds in Bolan’s chest. She snapped her aim up, and Bolan lowered his head as two bullets lit up his helmet like a boxer’s jab. He slid around the trigger of his grenade launcher and fired from the hip. The less-than-lethal round blasted out forty-eight, .48-caliber submunitions. The rubber buckshot rounds hit Shushan in a cloud. She shuddered beneath the mass flailing and fell.

  Bolan stalked into the room. Shushan was in bad shape. It looked like her left eye had been pulped. There was no room for mercy in this place. He drove the butt of his rifle into her guts and saw her cringe into a fetal position. “Prisoner! Zip her! Stabilize her and extract her!”

  Black Stork Team 3 ran into the room. One man began to pat her down for weapons while the other examined her eye and took out zip restraints and called in extraction.

  “All street units converge,” Bolan ordered.

  Bolan kicked over the desk and looked for hidden hatches. “They had tunnels in Afghanistan.”

  “Then every pile of fabric is a possible cover,” Babar said. “All units, look beneath the pallets! We are looking for a hidden—”

  One of the piles blew sky-high, sending fabric ribboning in all directions and two Black Stork’s pinwheeling into the piles. Babar began blaspheming in Urdu as the radio was alive with queries. Bolan frowned at the smoking hole in the warehouse floor. The Pakistani soldiers were lucky. The explosion’s main task was to seal the tunnel, not take out trespassers. The charge had done its job. It would take an hour to dig out the concrete and rebar filling the coffin-size crater.