Nuclear Reaction

Watching from cover, Bolan saw a handful of soldiers burst from cover, all of them on fire and beating at the flames with blistered hands. They ran instead of dropping to the ground and rolling, partly out of panic, and because the turf around them was on fire, as well. A lake of burning fuel surrounded them, allowing nowhere to go except a mad rush for the tree line that would offer no help, no shelter.

Bolan left them to it, ready with his automatic rifle as the other troops began to reassess their situation. Knowing they were all at risk, the soldiers redoubled the outpouring of their aimless fire into the forest, bullets flaying bark from tree trunks, clipping branches, ventilating leaves.

Bolan was relatively safe from being spotted, in those circumstances, but a stray round through the head or chest was just as deadly as a sniper’s well-aimed killing shot. He stayed low, took advantage of the cover, firing only when he had a target dead to rights and in the clear.

Where was Pahlavi? he wondered.

Never mind.

Survival was the first priority. If he could deal with the remaining soldiers and emerge alive, there would be time enough to look for his elusive contact. In the meantime, it was strictly do-or-die.

The jeeps were destroyed, but the Executioner heard the truck’s big engine cranking, as someone tried to get it started after stalling it.

Bolan rose and sighted on the cab. The soldiers surrounding it were firing wildly. His angle wasn’t optimal, he had no real view of the man in the driver’s seat, but he was lined up on the left-hand door. Taking a chance, he held the autorifle’s trigger down and used the last rounds in his magazine to ventilate that door, spraying the inside of the cab with sudden death.

The engine fell silent, and the troops around the truck’s cab scattered, seeking better shelter from the storm that had enveloped them. Reloading in a rush, Bolan moved on.

4

Darius Pahlavi was no longer terrified. Somehow, somewhere between the death of his two friends and his arrival in the forest clearing with Matt Cooper, he had passed from numbing fear to a sensation that he barely recognized.

Rage was a part of it, for all he’d lost and all his people had endured—the nightmare that they would endure, if he failed to complete his mission. There was guilt, as well, for leading Adi and Sanjiv into the trap that claimed their lives. He vowed to make amends with Adi’s wife and Sanjiv’s parents somehow, someday.

If he lived that long.

Right now, he had to focus on surviving for the next few minutes, which meant ducking bullets in the woods and doing everything he could to stop his enemies.

Kill them, Pahlavi silently corrected himself. It all came down to that. Kill or be killed.

He’d never shot a man before that afternoon—never shot at a man, in fact—and when it happened, the sheer deceptive ease of it surprised Pahlavi. He had practiced with the pistol earlier, knew how to aim and squeeze the trigger slowly, without jerking it, but mortal combat put a different slant on things.

His first shots, on the highway, had been wasted but for one that cracked the windshield of the jeep behind them. Too late, even then, to save his friends, but he’d felt a rush of satisfaction from the simple act of striking back.

It was a different thing, of course, to fire at living men on foot, instead of faceless autos on the highway, but it helped that these men were intent on killing him, had killed his friends already.

Cooper had taken down a number of the enemy already, firing with an automatic rifle, then contriving somehow to destroy their jeeps. Pahlavi found it horrible and fascinating, all at once, as if he had been dropped into the middle of some action film from Hollywood.

Except that there were real bullets whining around him, thunking into trees raising spouts of sod on impact with the ground. Real bullets, too, inside his pistol, waiting to be used against his foes.

Pahlavi found a vantage point where he could watch the soldiers. Several of them were hunkered down behind their truck, waiting for orders or an opportunity to move. Cooper had pinned them down, but he was somewhere on the other side. These troops apparently had no idea there was another enemy watching, on their side of the truck.

Pahlavi took his time, aiming, worried a bit that he was letting Cooper down by not advancing more aggressively. But he knew he would do the tall American no good at all if he was dead. Aiming, he framed a target in his sights as he’d been taught—but then the soldier moved, shifting away, duckwalking toward the rear of the truck. Cursing, Pahlavi tracked him, had him lined up when the soldier rose and stepped around the tailgate, rifle at his shoulder, squeezing off a burst toward the far side of the clearing.

Pahlavi squeezed the trigger, rode the sleek Beretta’s recoil, hopeful but still surprised to see his target crumple, back arched, slumping to the earth. The soldier writhed, convulsing, kicking at the sod, then shivered out and moved no more.

Pahlavi had expected nausea, a rush of guilt, something besides the mere sense of a job well done, but nothing came to him. Perhaps it was the moment, he decided, too much going on around him to permit normal emotions coming to the fore.

Or else, perhaps he liked it.

No. Pahlavi wouldn’t, couldn’t think about that now. There would be ample time to psychoanalyze himself if he survived this battle and the mission still to come.

And if he died, what difference would it make?

Soldiers were grouped around the man he’d shot, checking for vital signs. Some of them were firing aimlessly into the woods. They clearly had no sense of where the fatal shot had come from, meaning he could fire again, at least once more, with relative impunity.

Pahlavi chose another target, lined his sights up on the soldier’s chest, and let the hammer drop.

SACHI CHANDAKA HUDDLED underneath the truck and tried to understand exactly what was happening. He’d been pursuing four men, with a force of thirty-one behind him, and he’d seen two of them die. The others should be dead by now, as well, but instead his men were dying all around him, while he cowered in the shadows, trembling and in pain.

He had been splashed with burning fuel, along one sleeve and shoulder of his jacket, when the jeeps exploded moments earlier. Ducking and running to escape the shrapnel and clear the spreading lake of fire behind him, the lieutenant had been pulled down by two privates who smothered the flames and doubtless saved his life. Chandaka reckoned they should both receive citations for their courage and quick thinking, but from where he lay beneath the truck, he saw one of them stretched out dead, almost within arm’s reach.

His pain and fear immobilized Chandaka, shamed him. He knew he should find the strength to rally his remaining troops, lead them to victory, and thus salvage some shred of honor from this day—but how?

At present, he had no idea how many enemies were firing at his soldiers from the forest, whether they were bandits or guerrillas, why they’d sought this confrontation. It was preposterous to think that he had simply stumbled onto them, and any hint that he was only dealing with the two men they had chased into the woods seemed like insanity.

Two men alone could never do all this.

Could they?

But even if there were a dozen shooters in the woods, Chandaka still had them outnumbered. Even with his losses, he could still attack—use “shock and awe,” as the Americans were fond of saying. He should storm the tree line with guns blazing and destroy the bastards who had bloodied and humiliated him.

In fact, there was no other choice. He could not simply lay beneath the truck and wait until his men had all been killed, then wriggle out to face the enemy alone. Nor could he wait and pray for reinforcements to arrive, since none of his superiors knew where he was, or even that he was in trouble.

Right, then, he told himself. He had to act, and swiftly, to redeem the situation and himself.

Groaning, Chandaka dragged himself from underneath the truck, pulling his rifle after him. Some of his soldiers seemed surprised to see him, as if they’d forgotten he was with them, or perhaps assumed that he’d been killed. They huddled under fire, some of them hammering long bursts into the tree line closest to them, seemingly without a hope of scoring any hits.

Chandaka started counting heads, got to fourteen and realized that there were no more left to count. He couldn’t do the simple calculation in his head, so rattled was he by the evidence before his eyes, but the lieutenant understood that more than half his soldiers had been lost.

All dead? Had some of them turned tail and run? he wondered. It made no difference now. He’d have to work with what he had.

Feigning a confidence he didn’t feel, Chandaka told his men, “We cannot stay here. They’ll murder all of us unless we seize the—”

“Who are they?” someone demanded, interrupting him.

“It doesn’t matter,” the lieutenant answered. “We must now seize the initiative. Carry the fight to them. I need you all to follow me and—”

Something dropped out of the sky and landed at Chandaka’s feet. He glanced down at it, blinking. It seemed ludicrous—a bright green apple or a ball, some kind of toy—but one of his men shouted, “Grenade!” and they began to scatter in a panic.

Whimpering, Chandaka turned to run. He managed two long strides before the antipersonnel grenade exploded. Its concussion plucked him off his feet and punched him through an airborne somersault, while shrapnel tore into his body with the lancing pain of countless razor blades. Chandaka landed on his back, rolled over once and wound up staring at a smoky sky.

Survival was beyond him now. He knew it. It had been too much to hope for. Chasing bandits and guerrillas was a game for better men. He’d failed the army and his soldiers and himself, but none of that seemed relevant. Instead, he focused on the pain and hoped that it would end soon.

There was only so much that a man could bear.

BOLAN WAS READY WHEN the soldiers broke from cover, sprinting to escape the frag grenade. His AKMS had a fully loaded magazine, and even though the weapon’s fire-selector switch didn’t allow for 3-round bursts, Bolan was deft enough to manage on his own.

He led the first runner by three feet, give or take, and stroked the rifle’s trigger lightly, sending three or four 7.62 mm rounds downrange to meet him, take him down and keep him there.

The second man heard firing away to his left and returned it without even looking to see where it had come from, still running, but blasting away with his weapon in hopes of distracting the sniper who’d just nailed his friend. With luck, it might’ve worked, but this one’s luck had run out.

Bolan squeezed off another burst and saw his target stumble, drop his rifle, throwing out both arms as if to catch himself, but they were limp before he hit the turf facedown and plowed it with his chin, doing a spastic little break-dance in the dirt before he died.

How many left?

Bolan could see five runners, guessed there had to be several others out of sight, beyond the truck, but he would have to take them as they came.

Incredibly, two of the soldiers were advancing toward his position at a dead run, high-stepping across uneven ground and making decent speed. He didn’t know if they had spotted him, or if they’d picked a point at random as their destination, but it made no difference.

He shot the nearer of the runners first, a quick burst to the chest that slammed him over backward, head and shoulders touching down before his heels made contact with the earth. That snapped the second soldier out of any trance that may have gripped him, and he started firing from the hip, still charging, mouthing challenges or curses in a language Bolan couldn’t understand.

Bullets were whipping over Bolan’s head when he tattooed the soldier’s chest with four rounds on the fly and spun him, autorifle still blazing away, through a pirouette. His legs started to buckle halfway through it, folding so that he appeared to screw himself into the ground.

Turning on his mark, Bolan lined up another target as the man glanced toward the source of gunfire, making eye contact. He was about to squeeze the rifle’s trigger when another shot rang out, somewhere ahead and to his left. It was a pistol, and the bullet caught his man in midstride, dropping him with an expression of immense surprise upon his face.

Pahlavi?

Bolan didn’t have the time to ponder it, with two soldiers still moving in his field of fire. The farthest from him was about to reach the tree line, all of sixty feet away, but that was nothing for the AKMS in a marksman’s hands. The rifle stuttered briefly, blasting spouts of blood from olive drab fatigues, and Bolan saw his man go down, sliding a few feet on his belly, arms outflung, before his head butted against a tree and stopped him short.

The last soldier Bolan could see was running for his life, his knees and elbows pumping, with the rifle in his fists clearly forgotten. Even with the echoes of the battle ringing in his ears, Bolan could hear the soldier panting, straining toward the finish line that offered momentary safety.

He could let the runner go, grant him the gift of life, but that would jeopardize the mission, Darius Pahlavi and himself. It was a risk Bolan was not prepared to take, this early in a brand-new game.

He fired and caught his target on the fly, a puff of crimson rising from the soldier’s head and shoulder as he tumbled, rolling over once, then shuddering a moment on the grass before his life ran out and left him hollow, still.

There could be others waiting for him on the far side of the truck, but Bolan had to take that chance. He didn’t want to waste another grenade on corpses, without checking first to see if there was any threat. That meant emerging from the trees with caution, making his advance one slow step at a time.

Halfway around the truck, the Executioner saw Pahlavi standing at the tree line opposite, exposed to any soldiers still alive behind the truck. No one was firing at him, which encouraged Bolan to advance more quickly. As he cleared the truck’s tailgate, he found that his second grenade had done its work effectively, if not cleanly. There were no more hostile survivors on the field.

Pahlavi wore a slightly dazed expression as he crossed the grass to stand at Bolan’s side. “All dead?” he asked.

“It looks that way,” Bolan replied.

“Now, what?”

“Now,” Bolan said, “we move this truck and see if we can get my rental out of here before the cavalry shows up. And while we’re on the road, we need to talk.”

5

Southwestern Pakistan

The open highway wasn’t safe, but it was all they had. They couldn’t fly, and even as they passed through wooded areas, Bolan knew they could not afford to hide and hope the storm would pass them by.

He didn’t spend much time watching network news broadcasts, but Bolan knew that a loss of thirty-odd soldiers in one firefight would rock Pakistan. Some would mourn the loss, others might cheer it, but the powers that be would most certainly seek to explain and avenge it.

This would be no minor gale. They were fleeing ahead of a full-fledged tornado, the kind of storm that could pluck them off the face of planet Earth and never let them go. The kind that could make them evaporate without a trace.

They have to find us first, Bolan thought.

After he had put two miles between them and the slaughter site, he asked Pahlavi, “So, where are we going?”

“To my village. It’s the only place we will be relatively safe.”

That “relatively” wasn’t very reassuring, but the Executioner would take what he could get, just now.

“How far?” he asked.

“About one hundred miles, due north,” Pahlavi answered.

Bolan checked his fuel gauge. They should make it with a bit of gas to spare, if there were no detours along the way, but any traveling beyond their destination would require a fill-up.

“Right,” he said. “Then we’ve got time to talk. You start, and take it from the top.”

“The top?”

“From the beginning,” Bolan translated.

“Of course. My sister is…she was a nuclear physicist. She made an honor and distinction for my family, not only graduating from the university, but second in her class. The government immediately offered her a post with their new laboratory, working on a program they call Project Future. It’s supposed to harness nuclear power for peaceful applications. Generation of electric power and the like. I don’t pretend to understand it all.”

“And then your sister—that’s Darice?” Bolan asked, reflecting on the meager intelligence he’d been given.

“It was.” A sadness there. Clearly, Pahlavi reckoned she was dead.

“And then Darice found something else,” Bolan suggested.

“Yes! She soon discovered that there was a plan within a plan, involving Sikh extremists. Project X. While some employees at the lab worked on the project everybody knows about, others were put to work behind the scenes, trying to build a compact weapon that would fit inside a piece of luggage. Darice was assigned to that division, banned from talking to the scientists working on Project Future. Banned from talking, period.”

“But she still talked to you,” Bolan suggested.

“Yes. We have been close since childhood, Mr. Cooper. Closer still, since we lost our parents seven years ago. Their bus collided with a train, and…”

Staring out his window into space, Pahlavi briefly lost his train of thought, then came back to it, waving off the lapse without comment.

“In any case,” he said, “she told me what was happening. Together, we decided something must be done to stop it, either halt production on the small bomb or prevent it being passed to other hands. You know the history of Pakistan and India?”

“I’ve just had a refresher course,” Bolan replied.

“Our leaders hate each other. I’m not sure they still remember how or why it started, but the hating has become a way of life for both countries. It’s unhealthy, but I don’t know how to change it. If it even can be changed. Our countries fight like children over lines drawn on a map, who claims this bit of land or that, as if the soil itself is somehow precious. Kashmir, for example, is a situation I will never understand.”

“How’s that?” Bolan asked.

Pahlavi shrugged. “Eighty percent of all the people living there are Muslim, like myself and my government, but it is ruled by Hindu leaders. It reminds me of South Africa, the white and black, or Protestant and Catholic in Belfast. Yes?”

Clearly, Darice Pahlavi hadn’t been the only member of her family to get an education. It was Bolan’s turn to shrug. “It happens. If we’re lucky, governments can work it out.”

“But these two only fight and threaten. Never really talking, never listening. For this, they’ve gone to war three times in forty years, but nothing is resolved. Why either country wants more mouths to feed remains a mystery to me.”

“So, that’s the rub,” Bolan said. “And you’re thinking there may be another war.”

“If Pakistan supplies a suitcase bomb to Sikh extremists and they use it against India?” Pahlavi’s smile was bitter as he shook his head. “The next war will destroy life as we know it here, and possibly throughout the world. There are alliances, support agreements. If one nation uses its atomic bombs against the other—”

Pahlavi shook his head again, slump-shouldered. At a glance, it seemed that he had aged ten years while he was talking, in the time it took Bolan to drive five miles.

“Let us assume,” Pahlavi said, “that the retaliations are confined to the subcontinent. Nearly two billion people live here. That’s about one-fourth of the whole planet’s population. Even if the fallout never drifts beyond our borders—an impossibility, all scientists agree—most of those people will be lost, either in bombings of the cities or through radiation poisoning, starvation and disease. Beyond that, if the fallout spreads…”

“I get it,” Bolan said.

“And don’t forget the various alliances, treaties and nonaggression pacts. Who knows what’s written down somewhere and hidden in some diplomatic vault? Will the Chinese move in? The Russians? Either way, it means reaction from the U.S.A. and Britain, probably the UN, too. Picture the world on fire.”

Bolan had been there in his head, a thousand times. He didn’t like the view.

“What was your plan, at first?” he asked.

“Darice would smuggle out proof of Project X, for distribution to the media. Once the conspiracy was public knowledge, those responsible would either have to stop or face the condemnation of a world united to oppose them.”

“But she never made it out,” Bolan observed.

Pahlavi’s eyes were misty now. “I still don’t know what happened, how they found her out. I’ve been in hiding since the day she…disappeared. The government wants me and everyone involved in our group, Ohm, to silence us. Even the politicians who might once have raised their voices against Project X show a united face against a threat to national security.”

“So,” Bolan asked him, “what’s your alternative plan?”

Pahlavi was quiet.

“What’s your alternative to going public in the media? You can’t do that without the evidence, so what’s up next? Why am I here?” Bolan asked.

Pahlavi swallowed hard. “We have no other choice,” he said. “We must destroy the roots of Project X.”

Although the thought had not been far from Pahlavi’s mind since the loss of his sister, it still intimidated him to speak the words aloud.

“All right,” Bolan said. “Spell it out. What have you got in mind?”

“Perhaps to penetrate the laboratory somehow,” Pahlavi replied. “Once inside, there should be some way to destroy the weapon and its plans.”

“Perhaps? Somehow? Some way?” Bolan glanced over at him, then back toward the road. “That’s not a plan. It’s wishful thinking.”

Embarrassed by the truth of the American’s words, Pahlavi said, “I grant you that I do not have full knowledge of the laboratory, how to get inside, or what to do there. I was counting on Darice to help us. She…we talked about the lab, of course. Security precautions, all the measures they employ to keep strangers out. I know where the lab is located, the best way to approach it, but I’m not a soldier. Until recently, I never thought that I would have to be.”

“Sometimes it sneaks up on you,” Bolan said. “But once you come to the decision, there’s no turning back.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“I know that it may mean my death,” Pahlavi said.

“But not just yours. How has the rest of Ohm been taking this?”

“You saw Adi and Sanjiv die for us. The others feel the same.”

Bolan frowned. “Can you be sure of that?” he asked.

Pahlavi felt his hackles rising. “Ask me what you mean to say.”

“It’s SOP—standard operating procedure—for a government to infiltrate opposing groups whenever possible, keep track of what they’re planning.” Bolan spared another quick glance from the two-lane highway. “It may be an absolute coincidence that a patrol with thirty-odd soldiers came along just at the time we were supposed to meet, but then again, maybe it wasn’t.”

“You believe there is a traitor in the group?” Pahlavi asked.

“I don’t believe or disbelieve,” Bolan replied. “I’m saying it’s a possibility you should consider, if it hasn’t crossed your mind already.”

“You’re wrong,” Pahlavi answered stubbornly. “Darice and I joined Ohm. They did not come to us with flattery, pretending to believe as we did. As I do.”

“All the more reason to consider who your friends are,” Bolan said. “The group has been around a while. Presumably it’s known to the security police, maybe G-2.”

“I do not understand.”