Bringing up the rear, Davi risked a look around the APC’s left flank and saw two riflemen in robes and turbans, retreating as fast as they could over boulders and crags. The sounds of battle came from farther up the mountain, but not much farther. Say, another fifty yards or so.
“Get after those two!” Davi ordered. “Find out who’s shooting and put a stop to it! Go, now!”
His soldiers moved out, cautiously, while Davi leaned back inside the APC’s open maw and issued further orders. “Close this up and follow them,” he told the driver. Then, he gave a last shout to the turret gunner, “Cover them. I want supporting fire on any hostile targets!”
Having done the best he could, Lieutenant Colonel Davi ran to catch up with his troops. They had a lead on him by now, as he’d foreseen, which meant that they would be the first to meet with any risk, while he brought up the rear.
Davi was new to combat, but he was not stupid. He intended to come out of this alive, victorious, and with enough prestige to carry him through to a promotion.
Flicking off his rifle’s safety, he made sure the weapon had a live round in its chamber and its magazine was firmly seated. Sweating from the brutal heat already, and perhaps from his anxiety, Davi ran toward the din of combat just ahead.
GORSHANI HAD begun to think Matt Cooper was invincible. When Cooper stepped around the outcropping, Gorshani on his heels, there had been three sentries instead of two, but it appeared to make no difference.
Rapid-firing with his pistol, the big American had dropped all three of them before they could react. He swept from right to left, pop-pop-pop, and the turbaned strangers had died with dazed expressions on their faces.
One had gotten a slug through his left cheek, the next above an eyebrow, and the third below his bearded jawline, spouting crimson from a severed artery. They fell almost together, not quite touching, sprawled in boneless postures of death. Gorshani had relaxed his index finger on the trigger of his rifle, realizing that his help was not required.
“This way,” Bolan instructed him, and set off without waiting to see if Gorshani would obey.
Of course, he followed the soldier from sudden death to ever greater danger, and what other choice was there? He could not descend the mountain now and leave him to fight alone, although it seemed to be the tall man’s preference.
Gorshani knew they had to be near the cave, and so was not surprised when Cooper flagged him to a halt, peering around one final outcropping. Below them, at some distance, lay the only road traversing Mount Khakwani, and Gorshani half imagined he could hear vehicles climbing it, right now.
Another moment, inching forward in response to Cooper’s silent gesture, and before he even saw the cave, Gorshani definitely heard vehicles, large ones, two of them at least. He guessed that lorries would not come this way, preferring lower passes, and that made him worry all the more.
The cave’s mouth was approximately seven feet in height, and twice that in width. It was disguised, after a fashion, by a hanging tarp painted to match the mountain’s dark-gray stone. The tarp was pulled aside, permitting riflemen to traipse in and out of the cave, unimpeded.
“This is it,” Bolan advised. “We won’t get in without a fight, and it sounds like company’s coming.”
His nod toward the road confirmed Gorshani’s assessment, and he gave a curt nod in return.
“I am ready,” Gorshani said.
“Short bursts,” Bolan told him. “Make them count.”
And in a sudden rush of movement, he was gone, charging the cave’s mouth and its complement of guards. His AKMS had no silencer, and they were done with anything resembling stealth.
Gorshani saw the first guard fall, his arms outflung, rifle cartwheeling through the air, and then he was rushing after Cooper, picking out a target of his own.
Far to the right he spotted a gunner with a long face, gray streaks in his beard, although he did not seem that old. The man was raising his Kalashnikov, swinging around toward Cooper, when Gorshani hit him with a 3-round burst and dropped him where he stood.
There had been eight or nine guards visible when Cooper had broken from cover. Half of them were down now, and the rest were dodging back into the cave behind them, firing as they went. Gorshani hunched his shoulders, heard their bullets slicing through the mountain air around him, but there was no time for him to be afraid.
He caught one of the sentries running, stitched him from his hip to his armpit and sent him tumbling through a kind of clumsy shoulder roll that ended with the runner stretched out on his back, still.
To his left, Gorshani was aware of Cooper ducking, dodging, moving ever forward, firing short bursts all the while. His rifle had a larger magazine, requiring fewer reloadings, but Gorshani guessed that his own clip still held ten or twelve cartridges.
And he would make the most of them.
Gorshani fired into the shadows of the cave’s entrance, thought he saw a human figure lurch and stagger, but he wasn’t positive. More fire was coming from the cave now, forcing him off to his right, where tumbled boulders offered an uncertain sanctuary.
From behind him, he heard Cooper shout, “Fire in the hole!” Immediately afterward, Gorshani recognized the cough of the GP-25 grenade launcher, followed almost instantly by an explosion from the cave. A cloud of mingled dust and smoke spewed from the entrance, while within, the cries of wounded men echoed from the rugged walls of stone.
Gorshani found a boulder large enough to shelter him and dropped behind it, flicking nervous glances back and forth between Cooper and the smoky entrance to the cave. Somehow, he knew that they had to get inside to find al-Bari and the others, but he did not see how it would be possible.
And then he heard the sound of heavy vehicles approaching on the narrow road. Gorshani peered in that direction, could not see them yet, but knew that he would be exposed to anyone approaching from his flank.
No time to move, he thought. No time for anything.
Except, perhaps, to die.
AKRAM AL-BARI had considered plunging headlong into battle with the unknown enemy, but the explosion at the cave’s mouth had suggested a more useful and fulfilling course of action. Thus, he had retreated, carrying his captured rifle, to the chamber where munitions were stockpiled.
The squarish room held crates of ammunition and explosives. There was enough, he supposed, to hold a small army at bay for several weeks, but siege warfare had long ago gone out of style. A modern enemy could burn or gas his soldiers in their lair, or simply seal off the entrance and go away, leaving al-Bari and his men to starve and waste away in darkness without end.
Al-Bari had a different plan.
He found a pile of cheap load-bearing vests, with all-over pockets, and selected one that seemed to be about his size. Next, he began to stuff its pouch pockets with oblong bricks of Semtex, relishing the scent of marzipan that had been added by the manufacturer, specifically to aid against detection of the odorless plastique.
When he had filled all but one of the pockets with Semtex, al-Bari placed a dry-cell battery in the final pouch and fastened slim wires to its terminals. He left those dangling as he slipped into the vest and buttoned it, testing its weight.
The ten Semtex blocks, weighing about twenty-two pounds, plus the fat battery, pulled al-Bari’s shoulders down a little, but he didn’t mind. After all, he would only have to bear the load for a few more minutes.
Blasting caps were kept well away from the Semtex, in small plastic boxes. Al-Bari knew where they were, and he took his time pressing one into each cake of explosives, setting them deeply for maximum ignition. The final wiring was the tricky part, connecting the various caps with peripheral wires, bringing them all together with the handheld detonator, and finally attaching the battery’s leads once he had everything else arranged to his liking.
The al Qaeda honcho held the detonator in his left hand, lifting the liberated Kalashnikov with his right, but then decided the gun was too heavy and left it behind
.
He wondered where Ra’id Ibn Rashad had gone, then put it out of mind. There was no secondary exit from the cave, although construction had been underway on two escape tunnels, almost from the moment al-Bari had moved in. But it had proved tough going, and now they would never be finished.
Goodbye, old friend, wherever you are, he thought.
The top man might be angry, but in time he would agree with al-Bari’s decision. Capture meant shame, perhaps torture—and even disgrace, if he broke from the pain.
But sacrifice was beautiful.
Wearing a rare expression of contentment on his face, al-Bari turned back toward the cave’s mouth, where the battle raged. With each step, he felt more content.
Each step brought him another pace closer to Paradise.
BOLAN HEARD THE DRONE of an advancing heavy vehicle behind him, creeping up the narrow mountain road below al-Bari’s cave. Those wouldn’t be al Qaeda reinforcements coming to the rescue in an APC, which meant that Pakistani soldiers were about to join the party.
The Executioner was swiftly running out of time, and he hadn’t even glimpsed al-Bari yet.
Bolan had known there was no realistic hope of finding his primary targets on the mountain slope. The odds against it had been astronomical, and he’d already primed himself to seek al-Bari and Rashad belowground in the murky labyrinth of caverns, but the military presence closing in behind him threatened even that approach.
He had enough time to unload a few more 40 mm rounds before the troops arrived, but Bolan knew those charges wouldn’t be enough to seal the entrance and entomb his enemies.
It came down to the soldiers now, and to the fact that Bolan couldn’t know if they were here simply to kill him, or to save al-Bari and his minions in the bargain. If they weren’t committed to protecting the al Qaeda base of operations, then—
He got his answer when a couple of al-Bari’s riflemen, apparently bypassed when Bolan and Gorshani had made their move against the cave, fired on the troops advancing from below. A heartbeat later, Bolan heard the unmistakable reply of .50-caliber machine guns hammering the mountainside, joined instantly by what seemed to be dozens of Kalashnikovs.
Whatever their commander’s motive when he brought them up the mountain, hostile fire had moved the soldiers to respond in kind, and there could be no turning back. Al-Bari’s men had set the tone for what had to follow, turned the troops against them in an eye blink—and perhaps, just maybe, aided Bolan in the process.
Would al-Bari and Rashad surrender, when they found themselves outgunned and trapped inside their cave? Could Bolan and Gorshani now withdraw, while there was time, and leave the mopping up to other hands?
Bolan was undecided, when he saw a white-garbed figure shuffle to the entrance of the cave, upright and seemingly oblivious to bullets rattling all around him. Even through the swirl of dust and smoke, he recognized al-Bari and was sighting down the barrel of his AKSM when the man raised one hand overhead, wires trailing from his fist down to a bulky vest.
Al-Bari shouted something Bolan didn’t understand. But Bolan knew what was coming, as he called a warning to Gorshani—likely wasted, drowned in the racket of gunfire—and lurched back under cover of the boulders close by.
The blast verged on apocalyptic, shattering the arch of stone above al-Bari’s head and upraised arm. The mountainside buckled, then thundered down to bury him and his assembled guards, spewing a massive cloud of dust and shattered stone that rolled downhill to blind the cautiously advancing Pakistani troops.
Somehow, Gorshani came to Bolan through the smoke and thunder, limping, barely clinging to his rifle, gagging on the dust. Their downhill track was painfully obscured, forcing the two of them to grope their way along, slipping and scrabbling in their haste, while echoes of the numbing blast merged with the crackle of ongoing gunfire, soldiers and the few surviving sentries killing one another in a last spasm of violence.
Bolan and his guide were far from safe, but it was downhill all the way.
Just like the road to hell.
13
Army Headquarters, Rawalpindi
Lieutenant Colonel Raheem Davi willed himself to sit still in the small waiting room. A low table spread with magazines of military interest stood before him, but he could not focus on their titles, much less sit there and pretend to read the articles.
Behind his practiced poker face, a storm of contradictory emotions raged. Davi was proud, of course, for having won a victory with only two men lost. But there was also apprehension, edging closer to outright fear with each tick of the wall clock.
Would he be punished, after all, for what the terrorists had done to themselves? Would someone higher up the chain of rank, or in the halls of government, resent the bloody dissolution of al Qaeda headquarters in Pakistan?
It was a possibility.
Worse yet, Davi had no proof that any of the dead on Mount Khakwani were the men he had set out to kill or capture in the first place. They might never find Hussein Gorshani’s body, even if it was among the others. As for the foreign soldier, Davi hadn’t seen anyone who looked British or American, but he’d been late arriving on the scene. In fact, he had missed the final blast, only feeling its shock waves and viewing its aftermath.
The cleaning up, as far as he could tell without experience, had been routine. A few guerrillas had been spared by the explosion, trapped outside the cave that had become their master’s tomb. They had fought to the death, killing two of his men, but the outcome was never in doubt.
A quick search of the mountainside revealed no living stragglers, and Davi had contacted Brigadier Jadoon by satellite phone, before he radioed the news to Peshawar. Despite the bloodshed and excitement, he had kept his personal priorities in line.
The rest of it had been like riding on a whirlwind. First, a statement to the officer in charge at Peshawar, and then a flight back to the Rawalpindi airfield. There was time to don his new dress uniform, before his audience with Brigadier Jadoon, but even that was rushed.
Such trouble just to sit and wait like some lowly job applicant, while Jadoon dawdled and delayed.
At last, the havildar in charge of Jadoon’s office summoned Davi, leading him along the short hallway to Jadoon’s private sanctum. Davi noted that the havildar did not salute him, wondering if he should draw some inference from that. Perhaps he should make an excuse—the men’s room, anything—and flee the building, find a vehicle outside, run for his life.
But Brigadier Jadoon was smiling as he greeted Davi, offering his right hand in a rare gesture of greeting. Davi shook it gratefully, but remained on edge as Jadoon steered him to a chair facing the brigadier’s large desk.
Jadoon sat down behind the desk, leaned forward on his elbows and said, “So, you come home a hero from the wars.”
It was a time for cautious modesty, even if feigned. “Hardly a hero, sir,” Davi replied.
“You were successful, were you not?”
“Yes, sir. I was.”
“In all respects?” Jadoon inquired.
There was the trap, yawning before him. Was it already too late to sidestep, or should Davi plunge headlong into its maw?
“Sir,” he replied, “as you’re aware, a great explosion sealed the cave. It will require a team of army engineers to open it, and even they may fail. Under those circumstances, and considering your urgent summons, I did not complete a full inspection of the site.”
“Meaning?”
“Simply, that we have not identified Hussein Gorshani’s body, sir. Or that of his anonymous companion.”
Jadoon leaned back in his chair, not quite relaxing, as he asked, “How confident are you, Raheem, that you have solved our problem?”
Now came the backroom diplomacy, like walking barefoot on a razor’s edge.
“Sir, I believe Hussein Gorshani and the foreigner are dead,” Davi replied. “But even if I am mistaken, they have nothing more to do in Pakistan. Their mission, as we have determined, was to k
ill Akram Ben Abd al-Bari and his aides. That task has been completed.”
“So?”
“Sir, even if the subjects are alive, the foreigner can only seek to flee the country. I submit that he had to take Gorshani with him, since the traitor’s name and face are known to us. He can no longer safely live in Pakistan. We do, however, have another chance to catch them at the border, if they live.”
“And if we miss them, somehow?” Jadoon asked.
“Sir, who will ever know it? If the Brits or the Americans were certain of al-Bari’s whereabouts, they would have sent cruise missiles, blown the mountain down around him and announced their triumph to the world on CNN. Sending a single man tells us they were uncertain.”
Once again, the brigadier said, “So?”
“Remember Libya? Baghdad? Afghanistan? These Westerners love toys. Their bombs and missiles all have cameras mounted on them, to broadcast their final moments and proclaim their accuracy as a gloating show of force. With one man on the ground, hunted, perhaps already slain, what do they have to show? Where is their proof?”
Jadoon considered that, his lips forming the bare suggestion of a smile.
“You may be right, Raheem. I hope so, for your sake…and mine.”
“Sir?”
“I am recommending your promotion to full colonel. I am also recommending the Sitara-e-Jurat.”
Davi blinked twice at that. The Sitara-e-Jurat was Pakistan’s third-highest military decoration for gallant and distinguished combat service.
Davi found his voice at last. “Sir, thank you! I can only say—”
“Say nothing, for the moment,” Jadoon cautioned. “There are some—perhaps you even know them—who are not exactly overjoyed by the results of your excursion. I suspect they will be bashful about openly attacking you, but they have sharp knives and long memories.”
“I understand, sir.”
“Do you? Well, perhaps. I’m turning in the paperwork for your promotion and the rest tomorrow, but you know that these things can’t be rushed.”
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