Kitabı oku: «Lethal Tribute»

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.”