COLONEL LAGHARI felt a sudden, heady rush of power as he slammed his clenched fist into the headman’s face. He felt the nasal cartilage implode and watched the old man drop, groaning, shaking his head to clear it.
“Murder is a capital offense!” he shouted at the peasants facing him beneath the glare of spotlights. “Convicted killers may be hanged, or shot by firing squad.”
He let those words sink in, saw peasants stirring in the crowd, exchanging nervous glances while their chief squirmed on the ground in front of them. When he believed they’d had enough time to consider death, Laghari spoke again.
“In cases such as this—” he waved a hand toward Imran Hasni’s cooling corpse “—one man or woman may not bear the penalty alone. Protecting enemies of Pakistan and lying to investigators in a case of national security are crimes against the state. They also make offenders subject to the punishment of death.”
Again, he paused, pleased by the murmuring he heard, although he dared not smile.
“Perhaps only one person stabbed this man,” Laghari said. “But he, the victim, was assisting us, your country’s sworn defenders, in pursuit of enemies who have already killed twelve soldiers and are plainly bent on terrorist activity against the state. Those who protect the murderers, by action or by silence, share their guilt. And I can promise you that those who do not help us now will share the killers’ punishment also.”
The muttering had ended now. Laghari thought the faces of the villagers had hardened, somehow, while he spoke. Instead of being frightened, they now seemed angry. For an instant, he was worried that they might attack and overwhelm him, then he thought of the machine guns mounted on his APCs, the rifles leveled by his soldiers and the SMG in his own hands.
There was no danger here, except to those who actively opposed his will.
“Who will identify the slayers of this man?” he asked the crowd.
A ringing silence answered him. No voice or hand was raised.
“Where are the victim’s wife and children?” he demanded.
Nothing.
Laghari had grown up on jokes about the archetypal village idiot, but never in his life had he imagined a community where all the occupants were idiots.
How else could he explain their stubbornness?
His rage boiled over, surging through Laghari’s veins. If he permitted such defiance by a clutch of worthless peasants, how could he pretend to be a military leader worthy of his rank, much less promotion?
“You leave me no choice,” he told Sanjrani’s residents. “Each person here is guilty by association, both of murder and of crimes against the state. I call upon you to surrender.”
As he spoke, Laghari raised his left hand, whipped it in a tight circle that told his two machine gunners to find their marks and hold their weapons steady. If he spiked his thumb, then dropped his arm, the .50-calibers would blaze away.
Giddy with excitement now, Laghari barked, “I say again—surrender! Your defiance of a lawful order leaves me no alternative but deadly force!”
The peasants looked confused and frightened now. Neither emotion would protect them.
Feeling almost godlike in that frozen moment, Laghari raised his rigid thumb on high, where both machine gunners would see it, while he clutched his SMG in a one-handed grip.
Another second, and—
The first explosion’s shock wave knocked him sprawling in the dust, his back peppered with shrapnel, burning as if half a dozen giant wasps had stung him, all at once.
IT WAS A CLOSE CALL at the final moment. Bolan had considered taking out the officer in charge, a clean shot from behind, but knew that might touch off a deadly firestorm from the two heavy machine guns mounted on the APCs. And that, in turn, would set the other soldiers firing their Kalashnikovs into the crowd.
He used the GP-25 instead, launching a 40 mm high-explosive round toward the nearest APC machine gunner. Bolan was up and moving by the time it blew, stunning the troops and villagers alike, drenching the nearest ranks with crimson rain.
Bolan gave no thought to Gorshani as he rushed the killing ground. Gorshani had been translating the officer’s commands right up until the moment Bolan fired. The man’s words had made it clear that there was no way to prevent a massacre of innocents without armed intervention. Now that it was happening, the guide was on his own.
Like Bolan.
Every soldier for himself.
Bolan’s first priority was putting the remaining .50-caliber machine gun out of commission. Whether it stitched the fleeing villagers or swung around to face him, it was the deadliest weapon in play at the moment.
He hit the Pakistani gunner with a 3-round burst, just as the big M2 had begun to hammer death downrange. More screaming from the crowd could mean either someone was hit, or they were simply panicked by the gunfire. Whatever the situation, Bolan knew the only way that he could help them was by taking out the other troops.
Who, at the moment, seemed completely, utterly confused.
A few of them—six or seven, of the twenty-odd remaining soldiers—fired short bursts at the retreating peasants, probably believing that some member of the village crowd had tossed a hand grenade. It was the kind of mix-up that occurred with numbing regularity in combat, damned by critics, rarely prosecuted as a war crime, frequently relived in nightmares by survivors on both sides.
The trick was stopping it before the carnage spread.
And that, as Bolan knew, meant drawing fire upon himself.
He found a gap between the idling APCs and squeezed off two short bursts that dropped three uniforms like sacks of rumpled, dirty laundry on the ground. Instead of taking down the men on either side of the fallen soldiers, he hesitated long enough to let them turn and glimpse him, and then predictably shout to alert their comrades as they scrambled in pursuit.
And now Bolan hit the sticky part of his impromptu plan.
Having revealed himself to armed men who would surely try to kill him, how would he stay alive?
He fed the GP-25 another HE round and turned to face the soldiers who suddenly came charging through the gap between the APCs. Crouching, Bolan triggered it, then stitched the posse’s leader with a rising burst before the frag grenade’s blast swept the rest of them away.
So far, so good.
More crackling fire beyond the smoky haze, and spotlights told him that Gorshani had to have joined the fight. Bolan could only wish him well at that point, and continue fighting to survive.
Suddenly he had an idea, and quickly translated it to action as he scrambled for the closest APC. He found a hand grip, vaulted to the fender, then mounted the turret, scuttling toward the .50-caliber M2.
A dead man was slumped over the gun’s spade grips. Bolan easily hauled him clear and jammed him inside the open hatch, which had failed to save him moments earlier. The body crumpled, dropping out of sight, as Bolan took his place behind the gun.
GORSHANI COULDN’T keep up with Matt Cooper in a footrace toward the armored vehicles. The tall American was stronger and faster. Rather than wind up limp and gasping at the finish line, Gorshani struck his own course, veering off from the other man’s track and pounding toward a shallow swale that ran along the east side of Sanjrani.
If he reached it, he would have sparse cover but also a field of fire that included roughly half the soldiers standing near the closer APC. It would be easy for the turret gunner to pivot and kill him, but Gorshani figured that if he shot that soldier first—
But before that thought was fully formed, Cooper seemed to have plucked it from his skull and claimed it for his own. The tall man triggered one of his grenades and sent a fireball leaping from the turret of the APC Gorshani had meant to target himself. The flash narrowed Gorshani’s eyes, while its concussion swept him with a bitter, smoky wind.
Gorshani ducked and rolled, feeling a needle-lance of pain as shrapnel grazed his left thigh. Sliding face-first into cover, he stayed down just long enough to clear his head, then popp
ed back up again, his AKMS rifle shouldered, seeking targets.
The explosion had changed everything.
Gorshani felt as if he was in a trance as he watched the scene before him. Before its echo had died, most of the soldiers had begun to fire upon Sanjrani villagers, who in turn, had broken their formation and were now fleeing for their lives. Gorshani saw some of them lurch and fall as they were hit, but others ducked and crawled beneath the stream of fire, or sprinted for the cover of adjacent homes.
Then Gorshani noticed Cooper, thirty yards off to his left, firing short bursts from his rifle. This action seemed to break his spell, releasing Gorshani to join the fight. Some of his people were escaping, were surviving, and he had to help them if he could.
Gorshani found his first mark close at hand, a young soldier retreating in a crab-walk to the cover of the APC’s blunt nose. He had no inkling of an enemy behind him, and Gorshani gave no warning, simply shot him once between the shoulder blades and dropped him facedown in the sand.
How many more remained?
He had stopped counting at twenty, when he saw Cooper make his rush to meet the enemy. Gorshani seemed to recall that this model of APC carried thirteen men, but his memory could have been faulty.
Whatever the total, the big American had killed at least one with his first shot, shredding the turret machine gunner who might have otherwise slain half the villagers present—or turned on Gorshani and riddled him on the spot, in his ditch.
Who next?
The soldiers who’d been visible before Cooper fired his grenade were crouched and hiding now. Gorshani could no longer see them, much less reach them with his bullets, unless he left cover and moved out onto the open killing ground.
He had been about to risk it, when two men in uniform appeared before him, jogging toward the nearest of Sanjrani’s dwellings in pursuit of fleeing villagers. One fired a short burst from the hip and sent a woman tumbling, screaming, to the ground.
Gorshani shot that soldier, nothing but cold rage in his heart as he squeezed off two rounds in semiauto rapid-fire. The first was high and clipped the soldier’s helmet, sending it flying, knocking him off balance. That, in turn, threw off Gorshani’s second shot, but it was not entirely ruined. He saw blood spray from the soldier’s lower face, perhaps a mouth wound, as the man went down.
Gorshani tracked around to find the second soldier, and framed him in his sights, just as the man heard his partner’s cry of pain and was turning to see what had befallen him. Gorshani’s fourth shot of the battle drilled the soldier’s left cheek, snapped his head backward and took out a palm-sized fragment of his skull as it exited.
Meanwhile, the enemy with the face wound had dropped to all fours, groping around for his weapon while blood drizzled from torn lips. Gorshani couldn’t stand to watch him any longer, so he fired a mercy round into the wounded soldier’s scalp and put him down.
COLONEL LAGHARI took a moment to remember who and where he was. The simple act of drawing breath took painful effort, but Laghari could not say if he was actually wounded, or if he’d merely had the wind knocked out of him by the close-range explosion.
It all came back to him within a second and a half.
Sanjrani. Grilling the headman. The discovery of Imran Hasni’s mutilated corpse. Laghari’s judgment rendered on the village populace. And then—
The hammering of automatic weapons told him that the blast that felled him was no accident. A rocket? Were they under fire by rebels? Had one of Sanjrani’s peasants squirreled away a hand grenade?
Laghari was surprised to find that he still clutched his submachine gun. Training paid off—or pure survival instinct?
The colonel struggled to his knees and was about to stand, when he decided that wouldn’t be wise with so many weapons blazing all around him. Though he saw no one but his own soldiers firing at the moment, he knew that proved nothing. He also knew they would not hear him, even if he gave the cease-fire order.
He’d have to reach one of the APCs and get inside, where it was safe, to use the built-in PA system. Then his men would hear and recognize his voice, and they would obey.
Laghari started crawling, staying low, flinching when bullets struck the armored flank of the hulking vehicle beside him. Was it sniper fire, or stray rounds from his panicked men?
Laghari didn’t know—and, at the moment, didn’t care.
The most important thing, right now, was reaching safety. Once inside the ACP, he could survey the field through periscopes, seek hostile gunmen in the shadows, and redirect the spotlights, if need be, to help his men find targets.
And if there were no opponents to be slain, he could command a momentary cease-fire, then rally his remaining troops to sweep Sanjrani clean of human life.
Laghari knew the village harbored traitors to the government. He’d lost his chance to question them about the parachuting stranger and the murder of a dozen soldiers earlier that day—no, yesterday actually, since it was past midnight—but he could still exact revenge.
And in the process, he could silence any inconvenient witnesses who might seek to destroy his promising career.
When he eventually reported this engagement to the officer in charge at Peshawar, and then to Brigadier Bahaar Jadoon, he would describe it as a battle with insurgents. Thanks to Allah, he had casualties and damage to the APCs that would support his claim. There need be no mention of a threat to annihilate Sanjrani’s villagers because they would not talk.
Reaching the gap between the APCs, Laghari rose at last on cramping legs, reached for the nearest handhold on the second vehicle, and dragged himself laboriously toward the hatch on top. From there, unless a bullet found him, he could simply slide through the hatch and make himself secure inside the armored shell.
Laghari reached the summit of the APC and froze, staring at the stranger crouched behind the .50-caliber machine gun. Who was this? What did it mean?
All questions vanished from his mind as the intruder swung the forty-four-inch barrel to his right, and trained its gaping muzzle on Laghari’s face.
UNLIKE THE .44 Magnum pistol immortalized by Hollywood, the Browning M2 .50-caliber machine gun really was powerful enough to blow a human head clean off—and when Bolan thumbed down the butterfly trigger, it did precisely that.
The Pakistani colonel didn’t even have a chance to scream before his skull was vaporized by 647-grain bullets traveling at 3,044 feet per second, meeting flesh and bone with 13,144 foot-pounds of destructive energy. The headless body fell away, and Bolan swung the M2 back around toward the patrol’s remaining soldiers.
It was commonplace to say that men cut down in combat never knew what hit them, and that was precisely true for some of those whom Bolan strafed with the Browning M2, firing short bursts to conserve ammunition at the standard cyclic rate of 600 rounds per minute. Those who were not facing Bolan when he found them likely felt only an instant’s stunning pain, as bullets meant to pierce armor shredded their flesh and bones. They dropped like puppets with their strings cut, rarely making any sound beyond the thud of their bodies striking the earth.
But others definitely saw it coming, knew exactly what was happening—even if they could not grasp how or why it was happening. Those who’d seen their comrades cut down from behind and turned to see what madness had possessed the friendly turret gunner gaped in shock or cursed before they died. Some bolted; others stood their ground, returning fire.
Each man’s death was his own. He may not choose the time or place, he may not even realize that he was dying, but no two departures from this life were ever perfectly identical.
Each man had to ultimately die alone.
And so it was for these.
The Executioner claimed each of them in turn, sweeping his scythe from left to right and back again, across the killing field. He felt no more or less for those who died with their backs turned, or running hopelessly for cover, than he did for those who spent their final seconds bent on killing him.
At the last instant, two of the soldiers almost escaped.
Almost.
They had sprinted out of Bolan’s view, around the nose of the first APC, where he could neither track nor drop them. The Executioner was ready to dismount and follow them, root them out and drop them with his rifle—or by hand, if that was what it took—when both came reeling back, twitching and jerking through a clumsy death dance.
Bolan saw the bullets rip into their bodies, heard the crack-crack-crack of a Kalashnikov in semiauto mode, and then watched Gorshani step from hiding, firing two more rounds before the dying soldiers fell.
One of the fallen men was still moving, perhaps without conscious volition, but Gorshani swiftly ended it. He stepped in close, bent and pressed the muzzle of his AKMS to the wounded soldier’s forehead, triggering a point-blank mercy round.
“That’s all, I think,” he called to Bolan from the ground below the APCs.
He had it right. No enemies remained in need of killing. It was time to see how many friendlies had been slain or wounded in the short, chaotic firefight—and to also learn if they were still friendlies.
Bolan dismounted from the APC and joined Gorshani on the field of death.
8
Islamabad
The martyr’s name was Sabeir Hamayun. He was originally from Taloqan, Afghanistan, and on his next birthday he would have been eighteen years old.
The fact that he would never see that birthday did not frighten Hamayun. He had been chosen for a sacred role in the jihad and promised entry into Paradise, with all its wonders, if he played his part successfully.
He’d been told that Allah judged the intent of martyrs and did not weigh success in earthly, human terms. It would not matter, therefore, if he failed to kill huge numbers of demonic infidels this day.
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