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  It seemed the Scorpion Jeep had taken some kind of direct hit to the grille from an explosive charge, and had then cart-wheeled from the impact, spilling its passengers in the process. The bodies had been carted off to a morgue, where Laghari could view them later, if he chose to.

  Beyond the Jeep, Laghari saw the burned-out BTR-70 where the rest of the soldiers had died. A grenade through the hatch, he was told, followed by automatic weapons fire when the survivors had scrambled from the APC. As for the means by which the enemy had approached the vehicle and managed to deposit his explosive charge inside, no one had yet suggested to Laghari how such a thing had been possible.

  Despite the late afternoon’s oppressive heat, Laghari felt a sudden chill. He recognized the fear for what it was, tried to suppress it immediately, and hoped he had at least succeeded in concealing it from his subordinates around him.

  The people who had committed this act were long gone.

  Laghari’s mission was to find them and bring them to justice, one way or another. He had no training as a field investigator—a fact well-known to Brigadier Jadoon—but he was not entirely helpless.

  When seeking answers, one asked questions.

  And kept asking, more forcefully each time, until the proper answer was received.

  Turning to a lieutenant on his left, Laghari asked, “Where is the nearest village to this place?”

  Islamabad

  BRIGADIER BAHAAR Jadoon surveyed the street where dozens, perhaps scores of people would be killed the following day, shortly after noon. Not simply killed, in fact, but torn apart by shrapnel, scorched by flames and buried in rubble.

  He wondered whether some of those who passed him on the sidewalk now would be among the dead. Which of them would lose arms, legs, eyes to the bomb blast? Some young fool whom he had never met, whose name Jadoon might never learn, would walk along that very sidewalk with a beatific smile etched on his face and detonate the Semtex charges strapped under his clothes.

  Yet plastique was not the end of it. Such bombs were built for maximum effect, complete with plastic bags of nails, screws, nuts and bolts, ball bearings—anything, in fact, that would extend their killing range. And if that was not bad enough, there might be other plastic bags stuffed full of rancid barnyard muck, to make wounds fester in the survivors.

  The young man who had been chosen for that act of martyrdom would be drifting through the best day of his life. Jadoon knew how the martyrs were pampered during their final hours: bathed, perfumed, well-fed and dressed in freshly laundered clothing. Though security guards were trained to sniff them out, by the time you were able to smell their cologne—or the insecticide sprayed to kill flies on the bags filled with muck—it was likely too late.

  The chosen martyr might spend the night praying, or possibly dreaming of Paradise, where a smiling Allah waited to receive him with thanks, conducting him to a verdant garden occupied by forty beautiful and oh-so-willing virgins. What was an instant of shattering pain, compared to an eternity of avid sex, with breaks for milk and honey?

  “You see the problem?” Brigadier Jadoon asked his companion.

  “The shops, of course, but we can deal with that,” the second man replied. “Begin the quiet warnings about half-past ten. Work crews will be in place by then. Block off access around 11:45.”

  Jadoon’s companion was Husna Chadhar, a captain with the army’s Special Services Group, which operated in the shadow of Military Intelligence, but with a separate command structure and rule book. What the Americans called “dirty tricks” were for the SSG, and many of its operations were banned by Pakistani law.

  As if that mattered.

  Chadhar and Jadoon served the same masters—in more ways than one. While they were both army officers, they had not met until Majabein had introduced them, approximately two years earlier, during a secret meeting outside Rawalpindi. Since that time, they had collaborated on several delicate projects, acting on behalf of al Qaeda, but this would be their first excursion into mass murder.

  “It’s feasible, then?” Jadoon asked.

  “As good as done,” Chadhar replied.

  “And the deniability?”

  “My men don’t carry tales. In any case, they’ll simply think that we’re engaged in a surveillance operation. When the bomb goes off, they will be suitably surprised.”

  “When you say we…?”

  “I shall be here to supervise,” Chadhar explained. “Something this delicate cannot be left to underlings. Imagine, if one of them tried to stop the boy.”

  Chadhar’s bemused expression told Jadoon exactly what he thought of such benighted foolishness. It made him chuckle as he shook his head.

  “And afterward?”

  “Nothing,” Chadhar replied. “We are construction workers, after all, not doctors. When the smoke clears, we’ll be gone, no one the wiser. Any gear left at the scene by chance will prove untraceable.”

  Jadoon had wondered, many times, how Chadhar had come to serve al Qaeda. Had he been a convert to the cause? Or had he been ensnared by his own weakness, as had happened to Bahaar Jadoon? And did it even matter?

  No.

  The two of them were in this thing together, taking orders from a band of criminals, betraying every oath that they had sworn upon enlisting with the army.

  Well, perhaps not every oath.

  The Pakistani army’s motto was Faith, Piety, to strive in the path of Allah.

  Each member of al Qaeda, each fugitive combatant of the Taliban, believed that he was filled with faith and piety, devoted to pursuing Allah’s path of righteous fury against infidels. Perhaps Chadhar felt just the same.

  For Jadoon’s part, he’d mouthed the motto on enlistment, without ever really giving it a moment’s thought. Who really cared what soldiers believed in, as long as they followed orders, Jadoon surmised.

  Gazing one last time along the street of busy shops, with the Christian church planted halfway down on his right, Jadoon closed his mind to the visions of carnage.

  “Very well,” he said. “Do it.”

  DUSK OVERTOOK Bolan and Gorshani as they entered the guide’s ancestral village. Full darkness was still at least an hour off, but Bolan didn’t fancy scaling mountains after nightfall, when they couldn’t risk using a light and he was unfamiliar with the hostile ground.

  “We’ll need somewhere to stay the night,” he said reluctantly.

  “It is arranged,” Gorshani said. “My mother’s people.”

  “So, you think of everything?”

  “It did not seem so, earlier,” Gorshani said.

  Thinking of how he’d dropped the shooter on the APC, Bolan replied, “You pulled your weight.”

  “I was…surprised,” his driver said.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Bolan allowed, “as long as you survive it.”

  Watched by various Sanjrani residents, Gorshani turned his dusty SUV into a narrow side street, crept along its length, then turned again to park behind some kind of shop. Bolan assumed the news of their arrival would be spread by word-of-mouth, throughout the village and beyond. He only hoped Gorshani’s faith in those who carried it was justified.

  “Wait here, a moment,” Gorshani said, then he climbed out of the car and walked around to knock on the small shop’s back door. A moment passed before the door opened, revealing a gray-bearded man in a turban and peasant garb, wearing what looked like a permanent scowl.

  Gorshani and the older man spoke briefly, then Gorshani beckoned Bolan from the SUV. Bolan made sure the key wasn’t in the ignition, set the door locks as he exited and took his AKMS rifle with him as he ducked into the shop.

  The bearded man did not seem worried or insulted by the sight of Bolan’s weapons. In fact, after a quick preliminary once-over, he managed to ignore Bolan completely, conversing with Gorshani in rapid-fire Pashto as Gorshani read off his shopping list.

  They started off with climbing ropes and static lines, carabiners and belay gloves for b
oth men. Gorshani also chose a pack, canteens and sturdy hiking boots for himself. The shopkeeper directed them and put the items in a duffel bag. Gorshani translated for Bolan as they went along, and quoted him the final price.

  It seemed exorbitant, but as Bolan recalled one Pakistan rupee was roughly equivalent to a cent and a half in U.S. currency. All things considered, the quote of forty thousand rupees wasn’t bad.

  Gorshani walked their gear back to the SUV with Bolan trailing him, checking both ways along the alley set behind Sanjrani’s main street shops. The merchant who had served them didn’t follow the men outside or even watch them leave, as far as Bolan could detect. His door was shut before they pulled away.

  “Where next?” Bolan inquired.

  “We’re going to my uncle’s home. I have arranged for us to spend the night there. It is safe.”

  Bolan saw no point in questioning whether Gorshani was sure of that fact. An ambush at his uncle’s home spelled peril for the family, as well as for Bolan himself. He had no wish to jeopardize Sanjrani’s citizens, but from a purely practical aspect, he knew they would be better off sleeping indoors, among the natives, than camping out in the open.

  Angry, frightened soldiers would be searching for the slayers of their comrades by this time, inclined to shoot first and ask questions later—if at all.

  One night was not so much to ask. Was it?

  6

  Qaimkhani, North-West Frontier Province

  The village headman’s name was Aarya Chaudhry. He was middle-aged and slender, bearded, dressed in a freshly ironed version of laborer’s garb. He was six inches shorter than Colonel Salim Laghari, which immediately placed him at a disadvantage while they spoke.

  Laghari liked that.

  He was also pleased to be surrounded by a ring of soldiers, walling off himself and the village headman from the gathered peasants of Qaimkhani.

  “You’ve seen no one from outside the village, since midday?” Laghari repeated his previous question, letting his tone and facial expression reveal his skepticism.

  “No, sir,” Chaudhry answered for the second time. “We have nothing for tourists here. The province has nothing for tourists. We are not on any main highway. Those travelers we see are only going back and forth from Khetran to Buzdaar.”

  “And you saw none of them? All day?”

  Again he replied, “No, sir.”

  The headman’s patience irked Laghari. Was he putting on a bland face for authority, while lying through his small gray teeth? Laghari couldn’t tell, and he was nervous about using any stronger method of interrogation, when he had no evidence that those who’d ambushed the routine patrol had actually passed this way.

  Routine patrol.

  Laghari had confirmed that, to the best of his ability, although he knew it was entirely possible that he had been deceived, either by Brigadier Bahaar Jadoon or someone higher up. Though it struck him as unlikely that Jadoon would order an investigation, then proceed to guarantee its failure by withholding vital information.

  Unlikely, but not unthinkable.

  He tried another tack with Chaudhry. “When did you first learn of the attack on our patrol?”

  “When you informed me of it, Colonel. In Qaimkhani we have only one good radio, and it is broken.”

  “No one brought the news by word-of-mouth?”

  “Only yourself, sir,” the man insisted.

  Laghari was running out of questions. He had been staring at the headman, trying to come up with something else to ask him, when the high-pitched whining of a small engine intruded on his thoughts, completely jumbling them.

  Laghari and his soldiers turned in the direction of the sound. They saw a young man—no, a teenager—approaching from the north along a narrow unpaved track. He rode a small motorcycle that had started life as a Stahlco 70 cc model, adding mismatched bits and pieces over time as its original components rusted out or suffered some irreparable harm.

  The rider braked to a halt in front of Laghari’s men, killed his engine and let the bike drop since it had no kickstand. He stepped closer to the troops, half bowed and told them, “Please, I need to see the officer in charge.”

  “Search him,” Laghari ordered, watching as a pair of soldiers frisked the new arrival, then turned out his pockets, showing their pathetic contents to the colonel.

  When he felt secure from a surprise attack, Laghari stepped forward, rapid-firing questions. “Who are you? Where have you come from? How did you find us? What brings you here?”

  The young man waited for Laghari to run through his list, then started answering the inquiries in order.

  “I am Mahmood Hasni,” he said. “Sanjrani is my village. It lies…there.” He turned and pointed vaguely, back along the route he had followed to reach Qaimkhani. “My purpose is to see the officer in charge of these fine troops.”

  Ignoring the transparent flattery, Laghari said, “I am in charge. What do you want?”

  Hasni made his small half-bow again, then said, “My master sends me from Sanjrani to inform you that we have a stranger in our village. He speaks English, carries weapons. We have not seen him before.”

  Colonel Laghari felt his pulse quicken. An English-speaking stranger, armed! How could he not have some connection to the recent ambush.

  “One stranger only?” he demanded, “How and why has he come to…What is your village called, again?”

  “Sanjrani, sir. The stranger travels with a man well-known to us, whose family still lives among us. It is not our fault that he—”

  “What is the other’s name?” Laghari interrupted Hasni’s clumsy effort to absolve himself, his village, of responsibility for sheltering a terrorist.

  “Hussein Gorshani, sir,” the youth replied. He stood with eyes downcast, hands clasped in front of him, as if to shield his groin.

  “Those two, and no one else?” Laghari asked.

  “No one,” Hasni answered, adding “sir” in the nick of time.

  “Why did they choose your village?”

  “For Gorshani’s family, perhaps, sir. Also, they have purchased ropes and other things for climbing mountains.”

  What?

  That information seemed to make no sense. Why would they kill twelve soldiers, then prepare to scale a mountain? Were they lunatics?

  Could two men even manage to surprise and kill a dozen soldiers, ten of them riding inside an APC? It seemed improbable, and yet…

  Colonel Laghari faced Hasni and asked, “How far away is this Sanjrani?”

  SLEEP WAS a luxury in Bolan’s world. On missions, it was often hard to come by, sometimes nonexistent. He had long since learned to snatch the rare quiet moments whenever they were granted to him—or to sleep through hell’s own racket, even standing up, until it threatened him.

  Survival in the Executioner’s world meant sleeping lightly and waking in a heartbeat, totally alert, ready to fight or flee. The meal of curry he’d enjoyed helped Bolan fall asleep, but it did not prevent him from snapping awake when a hand came to rest on his shoulder.

  “It is only I,” Gorshani said. His voice was strained by the pressure of Bolan’s pistol, jammed beneath his chin.

  Bolan withdrew the gun but did not holster it. His eyes scoured the small room that had been allotted to him.

  “What’s going on?” he inquired.

  Grim-faced, Gorshani said, “There is a traitor in the village—Imran Hasni. May vultures pick his bones while he still lives.”

  “So, what’s he done?”

  “His oldest son has gone for soldiers, to inform them of us. The youngest of his children, little Lani, cannot bear her father’s shame. She came and told my aunt.”

  Questions filled Bolan’s mind, but he asked only two of them. “How far away’s the nearest military base? How long has Hasni’s boy been gone?”

  “The nearest regular facility is in Mansehra, about eighty miles away. But Hasni’s son went south. Mansehra lies off to the east.”

  B
olan was already on his feet when he said, “Maybe he heard of a patrol nearby. They’re hunting us right now. We knew they would be.”

  “Yes,” Gorshani said. “But I did not expect them to be here so soon.”

  “They aren’t here yet,” Bolan reminded him. “The best way to protect your people is to make sure we aren’t here when they arrive.”

  “Of course.” Gorshani nodded. “We must go at once.”

  Their newly purchased climbing gear was already in the SUV waiting for them. Bolan hauled his military hardware to the car, while his companion said a quick round of goodbyes to his aunt’s family.

  Once they were on the road, Bolan asked, “What happens to the rat?”

  “Imran Hasni will die, but he will answer questions first. Of that, I have no doubt. As for his son, Mahmood…it’s difficult to say. The Koran tells children to obey their fathers in all things, and yet…Well, who knows what will become of him?”

  “Suppose the soldiers come expecting to meet Hasni? What happens if he’s already dead?”

  Gorshani frowned at that in the dashboard’s faint light. “There will be interrogations,” he replied. “Perhaps reprisals.”

  Bolan knew that tune.

  In countries where the rule of law was often strained, at best—or even where it was embodied in a centuries-old code of laws—results were often valued over statutory prohibitions.

  In fact, that was why Stony Man Farm existed.

  “It’s the middle of the night. Where did you plan on going?” he asked Gorshani.

  “We shall find somewhere else to sleep,” the driver said. “Perhaps a side road, where they cannot see us from the highway.”

  “And it’s how far to the mountain we’ll be climbing?”

  “Eighty miles, approximately,” Gorshani said.

  Maybe an hour and a half, if the condition of the roads remained constant. And then add time on top of that, in the event they lost pavement during their approach to Mount Khakwani. Bolan’s watch told him that it was barely midnight, placing sunrise five or six hours away.