"Bolan, my friend, my brother. Welcome." The two hellgrounders greeted each other in the Afghan manner, the right arm extended to grasp the other's forearm.
"Malik Tarik Khan, it is good to see you again. You look well."
The leader of the mujahedeen was garbed a bit better than most of his followers. He wore a handsomely embroidered vest, stout riding boots, with two bandoliers crossing his chest and a third wrapped around his waist, exactly as Bolan had last seen him during the Executioner's previous strike into Afghanistan.
The rebel chieftain had dealt the Soviets a number of hard defeats. The area east of Kabul leading to the Khyber Pass to Pakistan had long been one of the rallying points of Afghan resistance.
To the Afghans, Tarik Khan was a symbol of the best they had — conversant in Western ways yet a devout believer in the traditional Afghan values and religion. To the Soviets, the man who now greeted Bolan was the most dangerous foe they faced, his command formed into tactical units rather than loose bands or groups.
"Times here are very hard," Tarik Khan told Bolan matter-of-factly. "The Russian animals from the north show no indication of withdrawing from our land. Yet there is good news, too. My son and wife are safe in Pakistan, my son fully recovered from his burns, thanks to you and Allah's mercy. Join us now, for you are one of us. See, Alja already informs the others of your deeds of bravery."
"With a bit of embroidery, I'm sure." Bolan grunted a chuckle. "I got here fast as I could, malik Khan."
"And there may still be time. Would you care for food?"
The mujahedeen camp was too spread out and it was too dark for an accurate head count, but there were at least twenty men. Alja and his men were already unwinding from the long trek, as the guerrilla leader had pointed out. The mujahedeen squatted about, not lighting fires, maintaining a blackout, conversing in low voices in Pashto, sipping chai or cold tea, wolfing down dried goat and nan, chunks of dry bread.
Bolan had acquired a liking for Afghan food, but at the moment all he could think of was the mission. He felt too keyed for action to have an appetite.
"Thank you but I prefer to discuss the next phase of our operation."
"You feel up to it?" the malik asked. "It has been a long journey for you."
"I'm more than ready."
"This way, then." The mujahedeen leader led Bolan away from the others, up a short incline to a promontory that overlooked the Kabul Valley and the capital of this war-ravaged corner of the world.
Kabul.
Exotic as hell but not much from an overlook at disnight, at a distance of several miles. They might call it a large town back in the States, never a city.
Kabul squatted squarely in a desert basin against one of the most rugged scenic backdrops in the Kush, the contrast of civilization against untenable frontier as harsh as the contrasts of the country itself, a land half desert, half mountain, where the base of the economy, what there was of it, was agricultural with temperatures ranging from 120' in the summer to com200 in the winter.
Still, the Russians wanted Afghanistan.
Another step toward the world domination the cannibals in the Kremlin snickered about, just as Hitler had. And just as in Hitler's time, no one listened.
The Russians wanted Afghanistan, their neighbor to the south. So Russia took Afghanistan.
And no one seemed to give a damn except for a few people in the States and the fighters of the mujahedeen: soldiers of God; holy warriors of Afghanistan. And a man named Bolan.
Bolan cared plenty.
The Russians were closer to the oil fields now, to the Persian Gulf and the warm-water seaports that Russia had sought for centuries. The way things were going now, Iran, Pakistan and Iraq were in the same situation as Poland and Czechoslovakia in the final minutes before Hitler went for total control.
That was the scenario being acted out day by day in Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Iran and, right now, for Mack Bolan in Afghanistan. Arid if the cannibals in the Kremlin played it right they would succeed in attaining their objective before the end of this century. Then everyone would be subjected to a totalitarian society unless something changed and damn fast. The Russians had already expanded the airfields at Khandahar and Shindad to accommodate strategic bombers, putting them within easy striking distance of the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz, through which most of the world's oil must flow.
It had been some journey for Bolan from the States forty-eight hours ago to this promontory overlooking Kabul. But that trip was nothing compared to the hellroad that brought the Executioner to this point in time and space and sudden death from a war in a place called Vietnam where Bolan's odyssey truly began. Mack Bolan earned the title the Executioner for his many successful sniper missions into the north with his top-notch penetration squad, Able Team. Bolan had simultaneously earned the name Sergeant Mercy for his humane treatment of all Vietnamese civilians he encountered; they were what the war was all about as far as Bolan was concerned. This combination of compassionate human being and jungle-warfare expert extraordinaire forged one of the most magnificent human fighting machines ever produced by the United States or any nation.
Bolan's Vietnam soldiering for his government ended abruptly when the young sergeant was granted an emergency leave to bury his family — mother, father and younger sister — victims of Mafia loan-sharking. After much soul-searching, a highly principled soldier declared an unprecedented, wholly illegal, one-man war against the Mob and actually succeeded during a series of dazzling campaigns in bringing that cancerous growth on society to its knees, where a retoughened legal system could begin dealing with the ones who had somehow escaped the Executioner's sights.
That period of Bolan's life concluded with an off-the-record White House pardon for Bolan if he agreed to channel his superior capabilities toward antiterrorist activities. This had seemed a worthy enough enterprise. Bolan accepted the deal.
During the course of his tenure as head man of America's covert antiterrorist operations, Bolan reached the realization that worldwide terrorism was only a tentacle of an evil even more widespread and world-encompassing than the Mafia ever hoped to be. The KGB.
Bolan had spent enough time on a mission inside the Soviet Union to know that Russians as a people — the working stiffs on the street, in the homes — were not such a bad lot, but the wrong ones, the bad ones, had grabbed all the power the way they often do in dictatorships and democracies alike.
The KGB was the terror of the evil that spread from the Kremlin. The impact of the KGB on world terrorism stabbed home to Bolan like a bayonet through the gut when they killed April Rose. He had fingered the mastermind behind that deed and executed him in the Oval Office, in front of the President of the United States.
Once more the Executioner was beyond sanction.
Bolan had come full circle.
The Executioner had commenced his hottest mile yet against an enemy with seven hundred thousand agents worldwide who had Bolan's name and description at the top of their hit lists, and the same went for his own government's espionage agencies.
The Executioner traveled alone again, fighting impossible odds. But for this man, with this life history, there is no other way: no way of dodging a commitment, a duty, and, yeah, think it all the way through, no way to avoid facing the evil product of an evolutionary process that had nurtured the self-destructive strain personified by the likes of Mafia and terrorists and KGB.
It seemed to Bolan that his own life was War Everlasting, and since the death of April he had rarely allowed anything but his devotion to this duty to occupy his every waking hour as a way of dealing with his loss. Bolan knew that when his violent end came — as he had expected it to every minute of his life since Vietnam — then by God this warrior's life would mean something, for he would have died taking his moment in this continuum and would have bought that evolutionary process maybe just a little more time to find its own way of purging the evil.
A breeze nipping across the observation point made Bolan aware that he and Tarik Khan had been standing together gazing down over the valley and Kabul, not speaking for... Bolan had lost track of the time.
"It is good for a man to contemplate his mortality at a time such as this," Tarik Khan said gravely. "You may meet your death in Kabul this night, my friend. Does this bother you?"
"Who's the man I'm supposed to meet?"
"Very well, we will not speak of it. A CIA man awaits you tonight."
"You know how they feel about me."
"Not this one. His name is Lansdale."
The name clicked. Bolan and an agent of that name had connected in Tripoli during the Executioner's bust-up of a Libya connection when Bolan's work had been government sanctioned.
"I knew a Lansdale from Boston."
"Uh, I believe this gentleman is from your province of Texas. He contacted our people. I have met with him personally. He tells us he is in Kabul to obtain vital intelligence estimates that he has offered to share with us in trade for our help. I trust him, kuvii Bolan."
"If it's the same Lansdale, then so do I. He is a good man. Where do I find him?"
The malik gave Bolan an address, in the Shar-l-Nau quarter near Bebe Magh Boulevard, that Bolan memorized.
"Do not try to call him. No telephone in Kabul is safe from Russian ears."
"Does he know I'm coming to see him?"
"It was Mr. Lansdale's request that we attempt to bring you here. He is expecting you. He knows how important this mission is."
Important.
An understatement.
The Devil's Rain, the Soviet army called it.
The mainstay of Soviet operations in Afghanistan, Bolan knew, had long been the large-scale sweep: an armored force blitzing or pushing through a geographical barrier, the ground-force operations given support by air strikes using chemical or conventional munitions. The objective: to destroy the agriculture, and force the people to flee the area.
Chemical weapons are indispensable for such purposes. The Soviets fly over an area, drop a few bombs of, say, Yellow Rain, the fatal tricothecene toxin, and after the inhabitants have witnessed friends and family die painful, squealing deaths, they are damn well going to leave before the Soviets come back.
Bolan had heard that the Soviets want Afghanistan; they don't want Afghans. The atrocities had begun even before the Soviets arrived. The previous Communist-coup regime of Nur Mohammad Taraki was marked by a reign of terror that resulted in his ouster and execution. The Kabul regime has admitted that twelve thousand Afghans were killed by Taraki; the actual total is doubtless much higher. Many of them were the leaders and educated people of Afghanistan, those whose guidance has been sorely missed. Neither the Soviets nor the Afghan people have given an inch since the Soviet invasion.
More than half a million Afghans have been slaughtered in the years of Soviet occupation. More than three million of a prewar population of sixteen million are refugees in Pakistan and Iran, the largest refugee population anywhere in the world.
The Soviets continue to maintain their strategy of methodically clearing large areas of the countryside of any people, agriculture and infrastructure that can support a guerrilla war.
And now the Soviets had the Devil's Rain.
Western intelligence sources did not have enough information to give it an official tag and knew only what Lansdale had heard and passed on.
A regional KGB gangster, a General Voukelitch, was overseeing the development of a new strain of chemical weapon that supposedly made Yellow Rain a child's toy by comparison.
The formula had been worked into an easily mass-produced horror only in the past month or so, but the first batch was said to be nearly complete in a special laboratory kept top secret in one of the Soviet outposts that dot the Afghan countryside.
The first batch of Devil's Rain was said to be within days of being ready for use, if it wasn't already, and the result under General Voukelitch's direct supervision would be any Afghan's nightmare: the large-scale dousing of the mountains of the Khyber Pass. This access way was the principal escape route for refugees fleeing their devastated homeland carrying with them all manner of intelligence data for Western espionage agencies eager to know details of the war raging in Afghanistan. If the Afghans left their strategic homeland, good; if they left dead, all the better, went Soviet thinking. The Devil's Rain was said to be a colorless, odorless gas that would not only kill its victims on contact but would also contaminate a widespread area even amid atmospheric turbulence like the high altitudes of the pass. The contamination would last for up to a month and would affect anyone not wearing protective garb, which only the Soviets possessed. The objective of General Voukelitch's plan was to slaughter all future refugees fleeing to Pakistan through the Khyber Pass.
Cannibals needed killing in Afghanistan and countless innocent lives needed saving.
If the secret lab making the stuff could be identified and hit, the plan would be stopped.
Voukelitch was said to be sitting on the whole thing, unknown even to his superiors, so that if the project succeeded he could claim full credit, and if it somehow went awry, the general felt confident he could cover up.
America's official position on the war in Afghanistan is that it is an indigenous insurgency with no direct U.S. involvement. But any person on any street around the world knows the CIA has covert operations bankrolling, training and supplying intelligence to rebel forces. And despite their skills as fighting men and their unquestionable courage against incredible odds, most of the mujahedeen— ninety thousand to one hundred twenty-five thousand in the field at any one time — still use bolt-action rifles rather than Kalashnikovs.
Soviet losses, Chinese aid, raids and theft from arms depots provide better weapons to some, but a general disorganization between tribal factions results in lapses in tactics, causing a significant weakness in operational and strategic thinking.
Tarik Khan had been wise enough to recognize that under the circumstances his forces needed the assistance of the very best available military penetration specialist to aid them in stopping Voukelitch. No way could Bolan turn away from this one. No way. The Executioner felt honored Tarik Khan had summoned him here via channels Bolan had set up with these people during his previous mission among them.
At this moment in this soldier's life, there was no other place Bolan would rather be.
A cool mountain wind ruffled Bolan's hair and the Executioner turned to the mujahedeen leader.
"Lansdale must have some pretty good contacts."
"Very good." Tarik Khan nodded. "Very high in the Soviet command-office help and officers."
"And tonight he's to have the exact location of where the Soviets are making the stuff?"
"If Allah wills it. We cannot afford any more time if Lansdale's other reports are true. We cannot travel into the city. The Soviets have imposed a strict curfew and those picked up are not heard from again. One of the reasons, kuvii Bolan, we require a man of your specialties. When you have learned the location of the laboratory from Lansdale, we march and attack."
"I must begin now."
"You will be on your own from here into the city and back. You will need all of your cunning and stealth. The KGB is responsible for security in Afghanistan. They have three hundred agents in the city. There are twelve thousand Soviet troops stationed in and around Kabul."
"If I'm not back by dawn," Bolan told his ally, "don't wait around for me."
"If you arrive and we are gone," the mujahedeen leader said, "look for us in the village of Charikar, to the north." Tarik Khan's expression creased with concern. "Do you think, kuvii Bolan, that the attack on Alja's team by badmash and the Soviet helicopters means that they know of our plans? Or your presence here? Or was it what you call a coincidence? If they know about us and you and our plans, you step into a trap the moment you enter Kabul."
"If it is a trap it hasn't sprung yet," Bolan countered. He lowered the night vision goggles over his eyes again and seemed to dematerialize into the gloom before Tarik Khan.
"Either way, I've got to get to Lansdale and find out what he knows."
"Allah will protect you," the mujahedeen leader assured the already fading voice.
No answer. The Executioner was gone. Into Kabul. On foot. It was time to penetrate the belly of the monster. Bolan intended this to be a quick intel gathering probe. But he was ready for anything.