Savage Deadlock

by Don Pendleton

  For the past week, Iftikhar and Ayub’s cell had been running missions across the plateaus and ravines of the range, trying to locate the PWLA camp. If they could pinpoint their target before any of the other rebels or Taliban units in the region, then they would hold the whip hand.

  Word of Yasmin’s supposed capture by the PWLA was whispered, and her location sought. Iftikhar and Ayub had, so they thought, drawn the short straw in having to take the sortie that carried them farthest from their base camp. Now, they felt differently.

  They had become aware of the two women as they scuttled across an outcrop of jagged rock that overhung a narrow pathway cut into a hill. The rock formed a kind of roof that seemed to peter out into thin air before achieving a covering arc, and looked far too fragile to take the weight of a man. In truth, it had stood this way for centuries, and the thick strata at the base end gave it a tensile strength that its appearance belied. Iftikhar had lain flat across it when he heard the rattle of loosened rock along the trail followed by unholy cursing in a high, female voice. Holding his breath, gesturing at Ayub to stay back, he had lain still and listened to the exchange between the two women. He couldn’t believe their luck. At the end of a cold, hard and seemingly pointless mission, they had lucked into a situation that would put their cell in a prime position and boost their own standing among their compatriots.

  Now they had to play this right. Iftikhar clung flat to the rock as the two women passed beneath him. He waited as they continued down the narrow passage for a few hundred meters, then he crawled back to the ridge where Ayub lay waiting. Iftikhar could see from Ayub’s face that he, too, had been listening. Without speaking, the two men communicated that they should follow the women at a distance in the hope that they would lead them to the PWLA camp.

  Silently, the two men set off in pursuit of their prey. The women were obviously inexperienced, and their clumsy attempts at keeping their progress quiet were almost laughable. Certainly, if the two rebels had made any noise of their own, it would have been masked by the sound the two women were generating as they blundered forward.

  It soon became apparent that the women were on a regular patrol, and if nothing else, the circumscribed route would give the two rebels a fixed area in which to search for and track down the PWLA camp...if the women did not lead them directly there.

  After several hours of stuttering progress, the two rebels found that the women were novices when it came to covering their own tracks and being aware of their surroundings. On several occasions, the two rebels came within a few meters of the women, who didn’t register their presence.

  If all the women in the PWLA were like this, then it would be simple for a task force to raid their camp and wipe them out, taking the scientist and her cargo. The men exchanged predatory grins as they followed the two women to the edge of their camp.

  As the sun rose, Iftikhar and Ayub withdrew. They were on a plateau above the small valley where the PWLA had pitched camp, and they would be exposed in the light of dawn. They had counted the tents, and based on the number of women who had started to emerge, they estimated the maximum number of PWLA members in camp. When they were at a safe distance, they began to realize the import of what they had stumbled on.

  “They are stupid, my friend,” Ayub murmured. “Do they really think they have any chance of success, with such a small number?”

  “They’ll count on the backing of the West,” Iftikhar replied, spitting to emphasize his disgust. “They don’t need bodies when they have the scientist woman and her nuclear filth. That will be enough to have the idiots in Lahore groveling at her feet.”

  “They’ll have to do more than grovel if we get to it first,” Ayub returned.

  “True. They won’t put up much of a fight, but that would be true no matter who attacked them. The women aren’t the problem here. We must act quickly—if we can find them easily enough by accident, then anyone else could stumble on them in such a way. We must ensure that our men strike tonight.”

  Moving swiftly over the terrain with a sure-footedness that their prey could only hope for, the two rebels made their way back to their own camp.

  * * *

  BOLAN WOULD HAVE been glad to have avoided a few hours in close quarters with Captain Tamara Davis. The woman next to him on the plane to Pakistan was a tall, lean blonde in her mid-twenties with her long hair tied in a tight chignon. The creases on her uniform had creases, all of them razor sharp, as was her manner. She was clipped and brusque in conversation, keeping her comments to a minimum, and she was so reticent as to be almost obstructive. It was obvious that she resented being sent on this mission to extract her old college friend. She had no idea who Bolan was, aside from his rank, and she didn’t seem interested in finding out.

  This made for an uncomfortable flight as, more than anything, Bolan wanted to find out more about Shazana Yasmin as a person. The files had told him about her achievements and her talents, but if he was extracting her from a situation she had willingly entered, then having a handle on her and knowing how to play her could be invaluable.

  Davis seemed almost to sympathize with Yasmin, and she was unwilling to say anything that she saw as a betrayal of confidence. Eventually, after another stalled attempt at finding out about his target and establishing some kind of working relationship with Davis, he tried a different approach.

  “Listen,” he said in a conciliatory tone, “you’ve been in Afghanistan. You know what the Taliban is like when it comes to women—especially smart ones who won’t accept their supposed place. I don’t know much about the PWLA, but what I do know is that Dr. Yasmin is a prime target and carries a burden that could set fire to the whole of the Middle East and Asia. That’s if it doesn’t kill her along the way.”

  “What do you expect from me, sir?” Davis retorted, biting the last word off with sarcasm.

  “I expect a little more cooperation and information,” Bolan said. “If you care about the U.S. soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, and if you care about your friend, then you’d better realize that we need to get her out of there quick, before she ends up caught in the middle of a firefight she has no way of dealing with. Do you want her to be kidnapped? Tortured? Maybe worse?”

  From the expression that flickered across Davis’s face, he could tell he’d hit home.

  Chapter Five

  Bolan and Davis landed in Lahore, and as they traveled from the air force field into the center of the city, Bolan watched the crush of people in the sultry heat of the afternoon. They were in an air-conditioned car, and outside street vendors and beggars sweat in the heat as cars and motorbikes threaded around them, and around each other. In some sections of the city, large department stores beckoned, with their promise of air conditioning, to the upwardly mobile. Elsewhere, hastily constructed tower blocks housed sweat-shop laborers. Some areas harkened back to the turn of the twentieth century, with crumbling tenements and shacks nestled between old colonial buildings run to seed. Looking at these, it seemed astounding that this nation had the wealth and know-how to run a nuclear program.

  Davis and Bolan did not speak until they reached the barracks, and only then to reply to greetings from the stiff-backed officer who met them. Shown into a meeting room, they were faced with half a dozen men who eyed them with a mix of disdain and barely concealed curiosity.

  “Colonel Stone, Captain Davis,” he began with a sweep of his arm. “These men have been personally picked by Major Malik to serve with you. All have distinguished records and—crucially—have served in Balochistan.”

  Davis gave Bolan a puzzled look, so he filled her in. “You know our target, and you’ve trained with the kinds of material she has with her, but I guess they didn’t give you much background on location.” He waited for her confirmation before continuing. “I’m sure I’ll be corrected if I’m wrong, but Balochistan is a volatile region, and has been for a
long time.”

  He chose his words carefully, and the stiff-backed officer acknowledged this with a gesture as he picked up Bolan’s cue. “The Baloch peoples have always seen themselves as apart from the rest of Pakistan, and have long been fighting for greater autonomy. But of course, there are also those who have taken advantage of the fight for independence in order to aid their own agendas. We suspect that there are many weapon and drug pipelines being run by or with the cooperation of Baloch separatist factions. As a result, we have had to tread very carefully in the region in order to keep some kind of equilibrium.”

  “In other words,” Davis said flatly, “you let them run guns to the Afghans and take drugs from them so that you don’t upset too many Islamic fundamentalists in your country, regardless of how many people those guns might kill.”

  Bolan winced. He agreed with her in some respects, but now was not the time to say so, and certainly not that bluntly.

  The officer’s back was so rigid that Bolan wondered if he would snap his own spine. “That is one school of thought,” the man said. “Though one that—if I might say—will not find much popularity among the people you will be working with.” He turned to Bolan. “You would, perhaps, tell your subordinate to bear that in mind. Now if you will excuse me, I have matters to attend to. I will leave your briefing in the capable hands of Corporal Jinnah.”

  Barely acknowledging the two Americans, the officer turned on his heel and left the room. Bolan looked around at the six men. Five of them were staring at him, and particularly at Davis, in disbelief. The sixth, a rangy man with graying hair that made him look older than he probably was, was rising to his feet. The ghost of a cold smile flickered across his face.

  Bolan was bemused by Davis’s attitude and behavior. She had been trained in the transportation of delicate materials such as the fissionable flask that Yasmin had taken. This was key to her presence. Although she’d mainly been selected for her relationship with the target, she would also supply specialist knowledge in getting the fragile flask out of the region in one piece.

  So far she hadn’t been acting like a team player, and she’d seemed to go out of her way to alienate the men who would be fighting alongside them. It didn’t make sense, unless she had an unknown agenda of her own. If that was the case, then he needed to find out quickly, even if he could barely afford the time. If not, then Bolan wondered if he’d been saddled with someone who was experiencing a form of battle fatigue.

  As this went through his mind, Jinnah ran through his men, reeling off their combat experience and links to the Balochistan region. Jinnah himself had served in the army for a decade, and had fought in Balochistan against the rebels. He was from Quetta, and knew the hills like a herdsman. He said this in a self-effacing manner, but from his brief description of the terrain they would face, Bolan could tell he was the man for the job.

  The other five had service ranging from three to twenty years. Faiz Ahmed Faiz was a tall, thickset and muscular man with a mustache and a lined face that spoke of his many years in the service. He was Jinnah’s number two, and the most experienced of all the men. By contrast, Omar Jansher was the youngest man, a gangly youth with only three years on the clock and a diffident air. He was openly eyeing Davis with hostility. Bolan was not the only one to notice this, as Jinnah glanced pointedly at the young man while making a reference to his men keeping their heads and following the chain of command. Jansher acknowledged this with the hint of a shrug.

  The other three men fell between these extremes. Ali Asif was growing a nicely rounded belly under his tight uniform shirt, but his arms were bulky with muscle. He had a hard-set face that was difficult to read, but Bolan could tell from the scars on his face and forearms that he was a fighter unafraid to get hurt. Mohammed Zia looked to be a year or two older than Jansher. He watched the proceedings with half-closed eyes, seemingly laid-back, but there was no mistaking his hostility when he glanced at Davis.

  The last man was Vinood Patel. He concentrated intently on everything that Jinnah said, hanging on his every word, though Bolan caught his eyes flickering over both himself and Davis, as though the man was sizing them up. He smoothed back the hair at his temples in a nervous gesture, running his hand over the balding pate almost as an afterthought. He was closer to Faiz in age than any of the others, with the air of a man who had negotiated his army career with a careful choice of allies. Not that Bolan could blame him, given the region they were going to, in which these men had all served. Nonetheless, there was reason here to keep a weather eye on him, also.

  “We’ll kit up here, before we ride out to take the plane to Quetta,” Jinnah continued when he had finished introducing the personnel. “On the journey I’ll run through the area we think the PWLA are hidden in.”

  “Can you be sure of this, or will we be chasing our tails?” Bolan queried.

  Jinnah grimaced. “Can never be sure, Colonel Stone, but the facts are that we know the direction they struck out in, and although there’s no trail and it’s dead air for satellite or GPS, there are only a certain number of trails you can follow through the plateau. We also know where Balochistan rebels and several other militant cells are holed up. They would be difficult to weed out, but they serve our purpose in narrowing the search area for where the PWLA could shelter. A simple process of elimination leads us to the areas we’ll search.”

  Bolan nodded. “Sounds feasible.”

  Jinnah ushered his men out of the building and toward a truck that was waiting to take them back to the airfield. The soldier joined the party as they gathered weaponry from the armory at the barracks, then he took on a full pack of food, water, first-aid supplies, a tent, a sleeping roll and short-range radio equipment designed to work within the confines of their intended territory. The weapons were American; perhaps for reasons of diplomacy, the ordnance the Pakistani army received from China was ignored. With a wry smile, Bolan figured this was the military mind at work.

  They boarded the truck to the airfield, back the way Bolan and Davis had traveled only a couple of hours previously. The soldier wanted to get Davis on her own, away from the men she had already alienated, and try to get inside her head. One way or another, he had to straighten her out before they reached Quetta, or she would become a liability he could ill afford.

  His chance came when they reached the airfield. As the Pakistani men moved toward the troop transport that would fly them to Quetta, Bolan hung back and took Davis aside.

  “So how does it feel to be going into combat with a group of guys who have no reason to watch your back?” he asked bluntly.

  Davis returned a cold stare. “Does that include you, sir?”

  “No, it doesn’t. I’ll have your back, but I’m figuring you won’t have mine.”

  “Why would that be, sir?” She could barely keep the sarcasm from her voice.

  “I don’t know, Captain. But unless you level with me, all that attitude will go to waste. I’m willing to risk myself for you and any allies in battle, but the stakes are too high for both of us if we go in without the support and respect of those men. If you don’t turn it around, I’ll have to leave you here.”

  “Let’s be honest,” she said. “Those guys don’t give a shit about us. They’re probably glad that the rebels get guns through to kill our guys. They don’t care about Shaz, either. She’s just a woman, so she doesn’t matter.”

  “She matters to the U.S. government, and that means she matters to me, Captain. She’s a U.S. citizen in trouble.”

  “That’s very noble,” she sneered. “Thing is, Colonel, what happens when those guys get the flask and decide an uppity woman isn’t worth the bother? You know what happens here. I’ll tell you something else, too—they won’t want witnesses, and there are more of them than us. Who’s going to watch our backs then?”

  Bolan glanced over at the transport, which the military party was boarding
. Jinnah had turned back toward them. Even at this distance, Bolan could read the suspicion in his face.

  “Davis, let’s get one thing straight. I don’t care that Dr. Yasmin is a woman. I don’t care that some of those guys might sympathize more with the rebels than with the U.S. government, or maybe even their own. I don’t even care whether or not they want that flask back for NCA, for the Taliban and Iran, or to make some cash on the open market—”

  “Iran?” Davis interrupted him.

  “Sure,” Bolan shrugged. “If we’re going to play paranoid mind games then why not assume that the flask and Yasmin’s knowledge would advance Iran’s nuclear program while keeping their neighbors at a disadvantage. The point is that I’m not interested in what anyone else wants—only what we want,” he said.

  “And that is?”

  “For a start, we need to get a U.S. citizen out of danger and make sure that the precious cargo she carries doesn’t fall into hands that could harm her, any innocent people or the interests of the U.S. Everything else is secondary. Do you read me?”

  Davis looked him in the eye, and then over her shoulder. Jinnah was approaching them with purpose in his stride.

  “Okay,” she said, nodding briefly. “For now we forget everything else and concentrate on getting Shaz and the nuclear material out of the danger zone. But if anything happens to change the nature of our mission, then don’t expect me to play dumb and just go along with it.”

  “I’ll count on your honesty,” Bolan replied. “Come on, he’ll already have questions,” he added, pulling her toward Jinnah and the transport.

  But if the Pakistani mission leader did have anything to say, he held his peace as he followed them onto the aircraft. Even after takeoff he elected not to ask any questions that may have been awkward for Bolan to answer, preferring to gather the whole party and study the topographical maps of the search region. When he had completed this, he dispersed his men and ordered them to get some rest. Bolan suggested that Davis do the same, and he was both surprised and pleased when she acquiesced without argument.