Ambush Force

“I was kinda hoping what I heard was true.”

Stanislawski shook his head. “The .38. Old-fashioned. Underpowered.”

“You know, big man? I shot exactly two Iraqis back in the day, and they didn’t complain. As a matter of fact, all they did was fall down. And revolvers? They don’t jam.”

Stanislawski shook his head derisively. “This is why women should not be in combat.”

“This is why you never get laid.”

The big Pole sighed heavily. “She always wins these conversations.”

“Back to business. I had a talk with Dino this morning.” Connie Zanotto took out a speed loader and slid six shells into one of her revolvers. “We got a job.”

Bolan broke down his MAG and began cleaning it. “What kind of job?”

“Babysitting. Local political VIP. Her name is Zahari Ziaee. Her husband was a secular reformist in the Afghan parliament. The Taliban blew his head off. So Mrs. Ziaee decided to run for his seat.”

Dirk frowned. “The Taliban must love that.”

“Word is they have a real hard-on for her. She stands no chance of being elected, but by their code her temerity has to be punished, and she has to be made an example of to other women who might likewise be tempted. They’ve put out the word they want her and her daughters gang-raped and beheaded, but they’ll settle for the whole family perishing in flames.”

Stanislawski spit out onto the range. “Taliban. Animals.”

“She has three kids,” Zanotto continued. “Camila is sixteen, Daywa is ten and the little boy, Gul Mir, is five. Since she’s a single woman with a teenage daughter, I’m going to be the one who stays close to the family. Cooper, you, Dirk, Boner and Frame will be doing roof and perimeter duty on the ranch.”

Dirk perked an eyebrow. “Boner?”

“Bonaventura. Ex-Marine. He’s a newbie with Shield, but he’s solid.”

“Where’s the ranch?” Bolan asked.

“Actually, it’s more of a camel farm. The Ziaee family does a pretty decent trade in livestock when they’re not getting themselves killed in the name of democracy. It’s about twenty klicks outside the city.”

“Anything else we need to know?”

“Yeah, Mrs. Ziaee has some local muscle on location. Supposedly former Northern Alliance vets. Supposed to be real trigger-happy badasses. We have no read on how reliable they may be. I’ll have a file on the entire situation worked up for you by noon. Meantime, I’d grab a nap if I were you. We expect to roll out of here by six.”

Dirk slid his carbine into a leather gun case with the Shield logo on it. “Actually, now that Coop and I are fat with cash, I thought we might buy some threads.”

“Well, most of the contractors around here buy over the Internet or through catalogs, but there’s a decent men’s store downtown.” Zanotto scrawled an address on the corner of a bull’s-eye target and tore it off. “Here, give this to the cabdriver, and come straight back.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Zanotto put on her hearing protectors and a pair of shooting glasses and began methodically punching holes in the black at fifty meters.

Dirk waved his little scrap of paper. “Let’s go shopping!”

“WHAT HAVE YOU GOT for me, Bear?” Bolan typed. He sat in an Internet café in downtown Kabul. He’d taken a workstation with his back to the wall, and Dirk stood guard. Information scrolled down the chat window.

“Dobrus Stanislawski achieved the rank of sergeant and then was accepted into GROM. He achieved the rank of chorazy, which is like a warrant officer but different. Sort of more than a sergeant but less than a lieutenant. He served in Iraq. GROM wanted him to reenlist but he went private, went to Afghanistan and Shield snapped him up. He was also on the Polish army’s Olympic weight-lifting team.”

So far Dob was living up to his profile. “What about the Zanotto woman?” Bolan typed.

“Constantina Zanotto achieved the rank of second lieutenant in the U.S. Army. One of the first women to pass the Ranger training school. Also one of the first women rated to fly a Black Hawk helicopter. She flew some pretty hairy missions in Iraq delivering and retrieving Rangers. She also won a few Miss Fitness competitions. Her shtick was to wear a camouflage bikini and combat boots. About ten years ago, she left the Army. She went to Hollywood, did some stunt work and got a few bit parts in some TV action shows. Then she got into celebrity bodyguard work. About five years ago, Shield decided they needed some qualified women on the payroll. I guess she missed the action and flying. She signed up. The other rumor I dug up is that she and Dinatale were an item for the first year or two.”

Bolan filed that one away. “What about Mrs. Ziaee?”

“She’s a marked woman, Striker. The Taliban hated her husband, but her? They consider her a personal affront to God. They want her head, literally. And another thing you should know. I’ve been researching Shield operations over the past two years. There’s a reason every guy who ever served wants to sign up with them. They’re the highest paying and most professional outfit of their type. They go to the worst trouble spots of the world and see a lot of action, but despite their reputation they’ve lost some high-profile clients in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Bolan frowned. “What are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying there’s a pattern here. I can’t put my finger on it, but I don’t like it. And when Shield has lost men, it’s always the newbies who get killed. I’m saying you better be careful.”

Bolan checked his watch. “Dirk and I have to roll. I’ll check back in when I can.”

“Copy that.”

Bolan rose. “Dirk, you ready to roll?”

“Yeah.” Dirk finished his coffee. “So what’s the good news?”

“There’s a good chance me, you and Mrs. Ziaee are gonna get fed to the lions tonight.”

Shorkot village

“CAMELS…” Dirk wrinkled his nose in disgust.

Bolan had been around the beasts on more than one occasion, and they were nothing if not fragrant. “You get used to it.”

“What if I don’t want to get used to it?”

The Ziaee summerhouse was typical old-world Afghan clay cube construction, though on a grander scale than most of the other homes dotting the hillsides. Roughly a hundred camels lowed and groaned behind a ramshackle enclosure that looked as if it had been made out of rope and driftwood. Goats and chickens ranged freely. Dusk was falling. Bolan powered up his night-vision monocular and scanned the hillsides. Camels grunted. Goats bleated. The chickens were roosting for the night. A few children still ran and played as the sky turned purple.

Dirk checked his own night-vision equipment. “Coop?”

“Yeah.”

“I got a bad feeling.”

When a former Delta Force commando got a bad feeling, it was a good idea to listen, and Bolan himself had been having bad feelings for the past hour. “Me, too.”

“Remember what you said about us getting fed to the lions?”

“Yeah.”

“In my experience, when the lions come they bring RPGs.”

“Yeah, that’s my experience, too.”

Dirk reached behind a hay bale and pulled out a pair of Dezamet rifle grenades. “Here, have some lion insurance.”

Bolan took the dual-purpose 40 mm weapon. “How’d you get a hold of these?”

“Stole ’em from Dob’s stash.”

“How’d you sneak them past him?” Bolan considered himself a past master at scrounging, but he was impressed. “Dob was with us the whole time.”

“I shoved them down my pants.” Dirk grinned from ear to ear. “And who’s going to suspect they weren’t just more of me?”

Bolan jerked his head toward the back door. “Stand tall. We got company.”

Camila Ziaee came out bearing a silver tea service. Zahari Ziaee was a handsome woman. Her daughter Camila was nothing short of stunning. She was the kohl-eyed tawny beauty of every merchant sailor’s fevered dream. She spoke in halting English. “The…gentlemen? Will take tea?”

“Oh, hell, yeah,” Dirk replied eagerly.

“Dirk…”

“I mean, yes, please, Miss Ziaee.” Dirk smiled angelically. “That would be lovely.”

Camila blushed charmingly, placed the tray on the hay bale and poured steaming tea into tiny silver cups. Bolan nodded. “Thank you, Camila.”

Camila Ziaee blushed brighter. “Welcome.”

“Camila!” Mrs. Ziaee called out from the back door. “Miss Connie wishes you in the house!”

Bolan knew she was speaking English for his and Dirk’s benefit.

Camila shot Bolan a tentative smile. “You defend us. Thank you.” She left the tray and ran back to the house. Mrs. Ziaee waited until her daughter was ensconced and walked out.

Bolan scanned the perimeter. “Mrs. Ziaee, neither you or your daughter should be outside after dark.”

“This is my home. I will not be a prisoner in it.”

“I’m not saying you’re a prisoner. You’re a target.” Bolan glanced around the rocky hills. “And any Taliban with a telescopic sight can reach out and touch you. Mr. Dirk and I will kill him, guaranteed, but unless we’re very lucky the Taliban will get the first shot. Do you understand?”

Mrs. Ziaee had seen forty years of war and been widowed at gunpoint. Hard lines of suffering had been etched onto her face. She looked into Bolan’s eyes openly. “You are kind to my family. You are kind to our servants. You are a good man, Cooper. I was right to go to Shield.”

Mrs. Ziaee refused to wear the burka, but part of her political strategy was to wear the full robe and apron ensemble of a respectable Afghan housewife when she wasn’t wearing a Western women’s business suit. Beneath the apron Bolan could see the bulge of a pistol. Bolan reached down to his ankle holster and drew his P-64 pocket pistol. “Give this to your daughter. It’s loaded with a round in the chamber. The safety is off. All she has to do is squeeze the trigger. Tell her if they get past us to shoot any man who comes for her in the face.”

Mrs. Ziaee’s jaw set. “You think the Taliban will come tonight.”

“Mr. Dirk has a bad feeling.” Bolan glanced around the little valley. There were a million places to hide. “And I think they are already here. Stay with Connie.”

Mrs. Ziaee took the pistol and drew her own Tokarev pistol from beneath her apron. “As you say, so shall it be done.” Mrs. Ziaee went back into the house with a pistol in each hand.

“Don’t look around or anything, but—” Dirk flicked off the safety of his carbine “—you’re right. They’re here.”

Bolan clicked the tactical radio on his vest. “Boner, I think we got company.”

Arcelio Bonaventura was concealed up on the roof. The former Marine marksman had a full-length Beryl rifle rather than a carbine, and it was equipped with a PCS-6 passive night-vision scope. “Coop, I don’t see nada.”

“Frame?”

Jimmy Frame was out front watching the dirt road that led to the house. Frame was formerly 101st Army Airborne. “Nothing on the road, Coop.”

Connie Zanotto appeared at the door cradling a Glauberyt submachine gun with a laser designator mounted beneath the barrel. “What’s going on, Cooper?”

“I think we’re about to get hit.”

“Anyone see anything?”

“Nope.”

“So…” Zanotto considered this. “What? ‘By the pricking of my thumbs something wicked this way comes’?”

Bolan smiled slightly. It seemed everyone in Afghanistan was quoting MacBeth these days. “Yeah, something like that.”

Zanotto glanced around the ring of hills. Darkness was falling across the little valley like a blanket. “It’s over a thousand yards for a sniper shot. Even Dino would have a problem with this one. What’re you thinking, mortars?”

“No, they’re not outside looking down. They’re inside already.”

“How?”

Bolan gazed at the lights of the village winking on a few hundred yards away. “This valley was owned by the Taliban until the boys from the Tenth Mountain Division kicked them out. I think some of them never left. They just melted back into the population. I’m thinking there’s a Taliban cell here, and they’ve been reactivated.”

“Yeah, so how are they going to come?”

“Hard and fast. Once the firefight starts, gunships can be here from Kabul in twenty minutes. They don’t have time for a siege. I’m thinking a storm of RPGs and then they human-wave the place. With any luck, they take Mrs. Ziaee and her children alive, drag them to some cave and make a movie while they cut off their heads. Ours, too. On the other hand, they don’t think we have any heavy weapons. A car bomb wouldn’t be out of the question.”

Zanotto looked at Bolan quizzically. “We don’t have any heavy weapons.”

Technically, she was right. Rifle grenades were light-support weapons, but Bolan wasn’t going to contradict her or let her know they’d been filching Shield ordnance until it became necessary. “Yeah.”

“Well, you’re just full of good news, aren’t you?” Zanotto motioned toward the front of the house. “What are you thinking? We load up the family wagon and bolt?”

Shield bought nothing but the best. The team had arrived in an International Armoring Corporation Ford Expedition. The SUV was armored to Threat Level V and would stop an armor-piercing 30.06 rifle round. A rocket-propelled grenade, on the other hand, would light it up like the Fourth of July.

“No, the village will be a shooting gallery. We’d get greased in the cross fire,” Bolan argued.

“So, what’s the plan?”

“We kill them as they come. I counted four vehicles in the village. Two pickups, an open jeep and a VW Bug. The minute they move, we know.”

Boner spoke from the roof. “Connie?”

“What ya got, Boner?”

“I got headlights. In the village. I—”

Boner was interrupted by a dull thud and a puff of yellow flame from an alley on the edge of town.

“Shit!” Frame shouted aloud, no longer bothering with the radio. “Connie! Someone’s fired some kind of—”

The roof lit up in a yellow halo of fire, and Boner screamed. A pair of headlights tore out of the village, followed by another and another. Bolan raised his rifle but kept his sights on the dark recesses between the closely packed mud houses, scanning for the grenadier. Dirk’s carbine opened up, as well as Frame’s from the front of the house. Tracers streamed toward the oncoming vehicles. The VW was leading the pack down the dirt road, and a pair of pickups bounced and jolted across the rocky terrain like outriders. The jeep followed behind, completing the diamond formation.

Connie Zanotto shouted in her radio. “Shield Home, this is Connie Z at Shorkot village! We are under heavy attack! Boner is down! Alert the military we are under Taliban attack!”

“RPGs!” Dirk shouted. “In the trucks!”

“Forget the trucks.” Bolan slid his rifle grenade over the muzzle of his weapon and kept his eyes on the edge of town. “The car—take the car.”

The VW was burning toward them at fifty miles per hour. Bolan could see only one occupant crouched behind the wheel, and he was pretty sure the driver had no intention of stopping.

“Copy that!” Dirk clicked his own grenade onto his carbine and flipped up the sight. Bullets ripped from the oncoming vehicles, seeking out the team. Dirk crouched immobile as stone, carbine leveled. He had only one shot, and he was waiting for it.

Zanotto’s submachine began ripping long bursts at the oncoming vehicles. An RPG-7 rocket hissed from the back of one of the pickups in response, and the Ziaee family screamed within as the antitank weapon slammed into the side of the house. The ancient construction of the house was their best defense. Antitank weapons were designed to burn through the steel hulls of armored vehicles and incinerate the men within. Thick clay walls were as good a defense as any, save that they were brittle and successive hits would crumble them. Kalashnikov rifles crackled from the jeeps and trucks, and tracers streamed toward the house.

“Taking the shot!” Dirk boomed. The rifle grenade thumped away from his carbine at two hundred feet per second and spiraled between the oncoming VW’s headlights.

The Bug blew sky-high.

Dirk had taken his shot at a hundred yards, but even from that distance Bolan squinted against the wash of heat from the blast wave. There was nothing left of the vehicle. Bolan figured there had to have been at least fifty kilograms of high explosive, but that was the least of his concerns. He was waiting for a shot of his own.

Zanotto’s voice was an angry snarl. “Christ, Cooper! Why aren’t you shooting?”

Bolan’s eyes suddenly went to slits as he caught sight of his target. The grenade’s report was drowned out by the sound of gunfire, but he caught the pale yellow flash from the village. Bolan squeezed his trigger, and the little carbine recoiled brutally against his shoulder as it hurled the grenade toward the village. He had no time to gauge its effect.

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