Nuclear Reaction

by Don Pendleton

  There seemed no point in lying, and he’d never used an alias, in any case. “Pahlavi. Darius Pahlavi. Yours?”

  “Matt Cooper. Are we talking business here?” Bolan asked.

  “I think not. It would be unfortunate if a patrol should come along.”

  “Where, then?”

  “In the hills nearby,” Pahlavi said. “I have a safe place there.”

  The Executioner considered it, but only briefly. Making up his mind, he said, “All right. You ride with me and navigate. Give us a chance to break the ice.”

  Pahlavi didn’t hesitate, despite his natural misgivings. This American had traveled halfway around the world to meet him and assist his cause, if such a thing was even possible. Pahlavi knew that he had to draw the line between caution and paranoia at some point.

  “Of course,” he said, then turned and gave instructions to the others in Urdu, telling them to follow closely and be ready if the stranger should betray them. Neither one looked happy with Pahlavi’s choice, but they did not protest.

  As Pahlavi climbed into the Land Rover, he considered the risk he’d taken—communicating with the United States, when Washington supported the regime in power, mildly cautioning its leaders on their worst excesses while refraining from decisive action to control them.

  It had been a gamble, certainly, but once Pahlavi passed on what he knew, via a native said to be a contract agent for the CIA, the answer had been swift in coming. The Americans would send someone—a single man, they said—to see if he could help Pahlavi.

  Not to kill his enemies, per se, or see them brought to ruin, but to see if he could help.

  Whatever that might mean.

  As they pulled out, Pahlavi glanced behind the driver’s seat and saw a duffel bag, zipped shut. He couldn’t tell what was inside it, but he had already glimpsed the slight bulge underneath the man’s windbreaker, which told him the American was armed.

  And why not, in this land where human life was cheaper than a goat’s? Only a fool would face the unknown in the living hell his homeland had become, without a weapon close at hand.

  Above all else, Pahlavi hoped that the American was not a fool. Intelligence and skill were more important than his personality—although it wouldn’t hurt if he dispensed with the persistent arrogance Americans displayed so often in their dealings with “Third World” nations.

  What he needed was a man to listen and to act.

  But what could any one man do, that Pahlavi and his allies had not tried themselves? he wondered.

  “Have you a plan?” he asked, embarrassed by his own impatience, even as he spoke.

  “I need to know the details of your problem, first,” Bolan replied. “My briefing on the other side was pretty…general, let’s say.”

  “Of course.” Pahlavi nodded. “I apologize. You see, my sister—”

  The Executioner had already seen the military vehicles approaching from the opposite direction. He could hardly miss the driver of the lead vehicle slowing to stare at them, while one of his companions leaned in from the back seat, mouthing orders that he couldn’t hear.

  “That’s trouble,” Bolan said, as they rolled past the two jeeps and the open truck behind them, filled with riflemen in uniform.

  “It is,” Pahlavi agreed, turning in his seat to track the small convoy. He was in time to see the lead jeep make a U-turn in the middle of the two-lane highway, doubling back to follow them.

  “I make it six or eight to one,” Bolan remarked. “Smart money says we run.”

  “Agreed.”

  Bolan floored the accelerator, surging forward with a snarl from underneath the Land Rover’s hood. “All right,” he said. “This is the part where you’re supposed to navigate.”

  2

  Lieutenant Sachi Chandaka was often bored on daylight patrol. Encounters with bandits were rare, since the scum did their best to avoid meeting troops or police, and the most he usually expected from an outing in the countryside was some sparse evidence of crimes committed overnight by persons he would never glimpse, much less identify or capture. He supposed some criminals transacted business when the sun was high and scorching hot, but most of them dressed in expensive suits and had plush offices, where they sipped coffee and decided the fate of peasants like himself.

  The fact that he was often bored did not mean the lieutenant’s wits had atrophied, however. On the contrary, his eyes were keen and he could feel malice radiating from an undesirable at thirty paces. More than once, while working in plain clothes or killing time off duty, he had startled his companions by selecting sneak thieves from a market crowd, all ordinary-looking men, then watched and waited while the petty predators moved in to make their snatch.

  Perhaps it was a gift. Chandaka couldn’t say and didn’t really care, as long as he could work that magic when he needed it the most.

  From half a mile away, he’d seen the two vehicles standing at the rest stop, on the south side of the highway. At a quarter mile, he’d counted four men idling by the cars, presumably engrossed in conversation. By the time his small convoy rolled past, the men were back in their cars, two passengers in each. Even someone as dull-witted as his driver, Sergeant Lahti, had to have known that they were criminals.

  It wasn’t so much what the four men did, as what they didn’t do. It was unnatural for anyone surrounded by vast tracts of nothingness to keep his eyes averted as a military convoy rumbled past, almost within arm’s reach. And yet, among the four men in the two vehicles, only the driver of the lead car even glanced across the pavement at Chandaka’s jeep.

  One man—and he was not Pakistani.

  European, possibly. Perhaps Australian or American. In any case, Chandaka meant to find out who the four men were, what business brought them to the highway rest stop outside Bela in the middle of the afternoon, and why three of them were determined not to let him see their eyes.

  “Turn back!” he snapped at Lahti. “Follow them!”

  “Follow?” The concept didn’t seem to register.

  “Yes, Lahti. Turn the steering wheel. Reverse direction. Follow them!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Once Lahti understood an order, he would do as he was told. It would not cross his mind to question a superior. Lahti had found his niche in life, performing simple tasks by rote, relieved that someone else was always close at hand to tell him what came next.

  Chandaka braced a hand against the jeep’s dashboard, as Lahti powered through a sharp U-turn. He saw the startled visage of the corporal who drove the second jeep in line. Chandaka pointed after the westbound vehicles, and shouted, “Follow them!”

  There was no time to clarify the order. Lahti stood on the accelerator. Something rattled loosely, underneath the jeep’s drab hood, then power surged and they started gaining ground on the retreating vehicles.

  Chandaka wished he had a rifleman beside him, but if it came to shooting on the highway, he would simply have to do the job himself. He had a Spanish CETME Model 58 assault rifle propped upright in the narrow space between his knees, butt on the floorboard, and now he hefted it, getting its feel.

  He’d never shot a man before, or even shot at one, but training made the difference. When the time came, if it came, Chandaka knew that he would be prepared and would perform as his superiors expected. He was not afraid. Indeed, the feeling he experienced was closer to elation.

  At long last, it appeared something was happening.

  Lahti was bearing down, gaining ground, but the lieutenant felt obliged to chide him for the sake of feeling in control, being a part of it. “Don’t let them get away,” he ordered.

  “No, sir!”

  If Lahti took offense, it didn’t show.

  The two cars were within one hundred yards, and the gap was narrowing. The army jeeps weren’t much to look at, but they had surprising power. No auto manufactured in the country could outrun them, and among the foreign imports, only certain sports cars or a Mercedes-Benz would leave them in the d
ust.

  If that began to happen, Chandaka was prepared to win the race another way. He gripped his rifle tightly, drew the bolt back and released it, chambering a round. He did not set the safety.

  They were already too close for that.

  “Faster!” he urged, leaning forward in his seat, straining at the shoulder harness.

  “Yes, sir!” the sergeant replied.

  Sixty yards. Soon, Chandaka would be able to make out the license number of the second car. At that point, he’d decided he would radio headquarters and report himself in hot pursuit—something he should’ve done already if he had been going strictly by the book. Someone’s secretary could then begin to trace the license and find out who the rabbits were, or more likely come back with the news that he was following a stolen car.

  “Get up there, Lahti, so that I can read the license plate!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  Lahti leaned forward, as if it would help them gain more speed. Chandaka almost smiled at that, but it was frozen on his face as someone in the car ahead of them began firing a submachine gun through its broad rear window, spraying bullets toward Chandaka’s jeep.

  THE BLAST OF AUTOMATIC fire surprised Adi Lusila, nearly made him swerve the car into a roadside ditch. One moment, he was concentrating on the highway and Pahlavi in the car ahead of him, trying his best to leave the soldiers in his wake, and then Sanjiv Dushkriti blew the damned back window out, turning the car’s interior into a roaring wind tunnel.

  Lusila shouted at Dushkriti. “What possessed you?”

  “A great desire to stay alive,” Dushkriti answered, then craned back across his seat to fire another short burst from his L-2 A-3 Sterling submachine gun. One hot cartridge stung Lusila’s ear, then fell into his lap.

  “Take care with that!”

  “It’s no good from here,” Dushkriti said, by way of an apology, and turned to scramble awkwardly between their seats, climbing into the back. One of his boots glanced off the gearshift as he made the move. Lusila cursed at the grating sound it made.

  The grating sound was followed by a loud clang.

  “We’re hit,” Dushkriti said, and sounded almost pleased about it. “Do not worry, Adi.”

  Idiot, Lusila thought. They were pursued by soldiers, with a foreign stranger driving Darius ahead of them, and now Dushkriti had provoked a running battle that would likely get them killed.

  “Don’t worry?” Lusila said with a sneer.

  A sudden laugh surprised him, coming out of nowhere and erupting from his throat. He was hysterical. It was the only diagnosis that made any sense at all. If he pulled over now, right where he was, perhaps there was a chance that he could plead insanity. Laugh all the way to jail and through his trial, praying to land in an asylum, rather than a basement torture cell or execution chamber.

  Not a chance, Lusila thought.

  The soldiers were already shooting at him, thanks to Dushkriti. Even if he stopped and raised his hands, with an armed madman in the car they wouldn’t grant him any time for pleas or explanations.

  He would simply have to run, and when escape was clearly an impossibility, beyond the palest shadow of a doubt, then he would have to fight.

  And die, of course.

  What other outcome could there be when four men stood against some thirty-five or forty?

  And it might not even be four men, Lusila realized. Pahlavi and the tall American might keep on going if he stopped to fight. They could use the distraction to escape and save themselves.

  To carry on the mission.

  Adi Lusila flinched from that idea, as if it were a stinging slap across his face. Pahlavi wouldn’t ask for such a sacrifice. He would give up his own life first, to save his friends. But losing him was not in the best interest of their cause.

  A bitter taste had wormed its way onto Lusila’s tongue, matching the stench of cordite in his nostrils. In between the bursts from Dushkriti’s Sterling, he could hear return fire from the jeep behind them, now and then a bullet slamming home into his vehicle.

  “Hang on!” he warned, and began to swerve across the two-lane highway, back and forth, hoping his serpentine progress would make it harder for the soldiers in the jeep to kill him, likewise spoiling any shot they might’ve had at Pahlavi and the American up front.

  “My stomach!” Dushkriti cried.

  “Are you hit?”

  “Car sick!”

  “So, puke and keep on firing!”

  When a new stink filled the car, Lusila gave thanks that the rear window was gone. Let the foul odors from his friend blow back along the highway toward their enemies and sicken them, instead.

  Dushkriti finished gagging, rattled off another burst of automatic fire, then growled, “I need another magazine.”

  He hunched down in the back seat, fumbling in his jacket pocket, thereby giving Lusila his first clear view of their pursuers since the chase began in earnest. Even as he glimpsed the lead jeep in his rearview mirror, the officer in its front passenger seat shouldered his rifle, aimed and fired as Lusila swerved the car again.

  He nearly outsmarted himself, turning into the shot, rather than away from it. The bullet whistled past Dushkriti’s head and clipped a corner of the rearview mirror, then punched through the windshield with a solid crack. Lusila cursed and started swerving more erratically, letting his fear dictate his moves as much as logic.

  “Stop!” Dushkriti shouted. “I can’t load the gun!”

  “Try harder, then!” Lusila snapped. “They almost took my head off!”

  With a sharp metallic clacking sound, Dushkriti mated his magazine with the Sterling’s receiver, then cocked it once more and pushed up on his elbows, preparing to fire.

  It was a fluke, Lusila thought, the soldier in the jeep behind them choosing just that moment to unleash another shot. What were the odds of it? Much less that he would somehow manage to anticipate Lusila’s movement of the steering wheel.

  It was a miracle of sorts that the next bullet drilled Dushkriti’s forehead and exploded through his shaggy hair in back, spraying a gray-and-crimson mist across Lusila and the dashboard gauges.

  It was his turn, then, to fight the rising tide of nausea and pray that he could keep his old car on the road while bullets hammered at it from behind.

  “WHAT’S HAPPENING?” Pahlavi asked, half turning in his seat.

  Bolan glanced at the rearview mirror, then came back to focus on the long, straight two-lane road. “They’re under fire,” he answered. “Taking hits.”

  “But fighting back, yes?”

  “From the sound of it. You want to tell me where we’re going?”

  “Five more miles,” Pahlavi said. “There is a road into the hills. It leads to my safe place.”

  “It won’t be safe for long if we lead soldiers to the doorstep,” Bolan told him. “What’s Plan B?”

  “Plan B?”

  “Your backup. Something else on tap, when things go wrong.”

  Pahlavi’s stricken face told Bolan there was no Plan B. “I did not think there would be soldiers here,” the Pakistani said. “They almost never pass this way in daylight.”

  “‘Almost’ obviously doesn’t cut it,” Bolan said.

  “I’m sorry. Let me think.”

  “Think fast!”

  More firing erupted from behind them, and the second car was definitely taking hits from one rifle, maybe a couple of them. In his mirror, Bolan saw a bullet chip the windshield from inside, before the driver started swerving like a drunkard. He guessed it was the best the other man could think of, while his partner laid down cover fire but couldn’t seem to score a solid hit.

  “There are some woods ahead,” Pahlavi blurted out. “Perhaps three miles. If we can lead them there, perhaps—”

  “It’s worth a shot,” Bolan said, even as he thought about the killer odds. He’d counted twenty-four men in the open truck, plus two inside the cab, two in the lead jeep, four more in the second, which meant they were outnu
mbered eight to one.

  Those weren’t the worst odds he had ever faced, granted, but Bolan didn’t know how skilled his companions were at combat. If the one’s wild shooting with the submachine gun was any indication, they might be more liability than help in a firefight.

  A tiny splash of color in his rearview mirror drew the warrior’s eye, in time to see the second car in their high-speed procession swerving more erratically than ever. Bolan couldn’t tell who’d been hit, the shooter or the driver, but he worked it out a second later, when the car stayed on the road and didn’t stall.

  One down, he thought, judging from all the blood. And since the driver couldn’t likely fight off thirty hostile troops while racing down the two-lane blacktop, Bolan guessed that he would soon be number two with a bullet.

  “Adi and Sanjiv!” Pahlavi moaned. “We must stop for them!”

  “Get real,” Bolan said.

  “We must!”

  “Did you drive out here just to die?” Bolan asked. “I had the impression there was something you’ve been trying to accomplish.”

  “But my friends—”

  Pahlavi turned again and looked down the road in time to see the second car whip through a fair bootlegger’s turn, using a technique requiring fair coordination of the brake and the accelerator, which when executed properly reversed the direction of a vehicle 180 degrees in a fraction of the time required to make a U-turn.

  “What’s he doing?” Pahlavi asked.

  “Buying us some time,” the Executioner said with approval.

  Having reversed himself, Lusila accelerated once again toward the short convoy pursuing him. He had his right arm out the window, blazing at the soldiers with a pistol while he closed the gap between them, taking heavy hits along the way.

  Bolan supposed Pahlavi’s comrade might’ve rammed the lead jeep—if he’d lived that long. Instead, the rifle bullets found him when his charger and the jeep were still some twenty yards apart. Maybe his foot slipped off the clutch and let the engine stall, or maybe other rounds had ripped in through the grille and hood. In any case, his vehicle veered off the pavement, coasting to a smoky halt with its blunt nose and front tires in a ditch.