Lethal Tribute

Captain Ghulam Fareed fit right in.

In fact, he acted like he owned the place. He was like some terrible scourge from the Book of Revelations that had been edited out the Bible for being too violent.

They had roared up to the outskirts of Shoghot in Pakistani Army Mi-8 transport helicopters loaded with weapons. The stub wings of the aircraft were festooned with rockets, missiles and gunpods. The only nod toward this being an undercover probe was that Fareed and his men had jammed their massive forms into some of the most poorly tailored business suits Bolan had ever seen. Pakistan was famous for its cotton and wool.

Ghulam Fareed and his men were sheathed in garish polyester.

“Where!” roared Fareed as he projected the man across the room. The Captain stopped a moment to adjust his horrifically ugly tie and then stalked after his prey once more. Already broken porcelain and furniture crunched beneath his size seventeen shoes.

The proprietor knelt weeping near Makhdoom, shaking his hands and intermittently pleading mercy and innocence. The teashop owner’s innocence was highly debatable. There was a second shop below the regular tearoom. The patrons there smoked waterpipes, and the air reeked with the sweet stench of opium. The filthy back hallway lined with closet-size niches was a shooting gallery, strewn with the used needles of those who required their opiates stronger and introduced into their bloodstream by more direct methods.

The storage room in back contained bails of opium.

The proprietor whimpered and cringed as his best supplier was systematically demolished. Bolan had to give the Sergeant credit. The man was a force unto himself. When drug-dealer had drawn his pistol, Fareed had slapped it out of his hands and then slapped the teeth right out of his head. The drug dealer had then made the mistake of drawing an immense Khyber-style knife and invoking God. Fareed had broken the drug runner’s wrist and then broken the sixteen-inch blade across his knee before resuming work.

Bolan and Makhdoom stood like stones and watched the ham-fisted hurricane that was Ghulam Fareed’s work. The last patrons fled flinching beneath the gaze of Fareed’s men as more crockery crashed. Apparently the proprietor understood English. Makhdoom spoke it for Bolan’s benefit as he finally deigned to notice the man pleading at his feet.

“You, my friend, have drawn the attention of unreasonable men.”

The proprietor flinched and threw a sickly stare in Fareed’s direction. “…Yes.”

“I, however, am a reasonable man.” Makhdoom opened his billfold. The proprietor’s eyes bugged as the Captain began fanning out American one thousand dollar bills. “Tell me that which I wish to know, and I shall recompense your inconvenience in any way you require within reason.”

The proprietor’s gaze darted back and forth between Makhdoom and Fareed like ping-pong balls.

He was clearly conflicted.

Doom shrugged. “However, should you not wish to cooperate…”

He sighed and glanced over at Fareed. The Captain held the hapless subject of his attention up by the lapels of his coat. The man’s feet did not touch the ground. His head ricocheted against the wall repeatedly as the Captain shook him. Fareed seemed only a hairsbreadth away from sinking his teeth into the suspect and savaging him like a beagle with a bedroom slipper.

“That unreasonable man shall beat you until you die,” Makhdoom stated.

The proprietor turned a sickly pallor as Fareed dropped his suspect and turned. The Captain’s single massive eyebrow bunched as his green eyes glowed hatred at the teashop owner.

The owner went slack-jawed with fear.

“Tell me,” queried Makhdoom. He glanced at the man lying unconscious on the floor. “If that man were conscious, would he able to tell me about the heroin trade within this city?”

The proprietor couldn’t look away from Fareed, but neither could he meet Makhdoom’s baleful gaze. He settled for gazing in fixed horror at Fareed’s massive, hairy, bloodstained hands as they flexed into fists. “…I believe yes.”

Makhdoom cocked his head inquiringly. “Could you?”

“I…don’t…”

“Think very carefully before you answer. How you answer will be very important.”

Fareed lumbered forward.

“I would like to cooperate!” gulped the man.

“Splendid. Splendid fellow.” Doom rained United States currency down on floor by the proprietor’s knees. Makhdoom took the man by the arm and raised him to his feet before he could begin to scoop up the money. “Come, my friend. Let us take tea together.”

BOLAN’S STOMACH DROPPED as the helicopters fell like stones out of the sky. The fortress loomed ahead like a forbidding mountain sentinel. The crumbling brown walls of the fortress were ancient, and over the centuries they had been patched and shored up with a hodgepodge of brickwork, boulders, heavy timbers and rammed earth. The foundations of the fortress had been laid down by Genghis Khan.

The Russian-made Dshk-38 heavy machine guns emplaced in the battlements were recent additions. Yusef Zagari, the Kazakstani gangster Bolan had captured, had led them to the city of Shoghot and the opium den. Makhdoom had made the proprietor and several other drug kingpins in Shoghot offers they could not refuse.

That information had led them to the heights of Tirich Mir and the fortress of Ali Ul-Haq. In Northern Pakistan the crime did not matter—drugs, guns, prostitutes, slaves, anything that passed illegally across the borders with Afghanistan, Tajikstan, China or India—Ali Ul-Haq had his hand in it. Anyone operating on their own gave Ul-Haq his cut out of respect and fear. Ali was well connected in the highest reaches of the Pakistani government, both locally and in the Capitol. The Pakistani police left him alone. During the 1980s he had used Afghan refugees from the war with the Soviets as muscle. He continued feeding their families and developing a fanatically loyal army of his own. He now gave that same refuge to Taliban refugees who had fled before the US Military might during Operation Enduring Freedom. He was well connected with the mafiyas of the surrounding former Soviet Republics. Ul-Haq ran his little corner of the Hindu Kush range like his own private hunting reserve.

Bolan smiled. Ali Ul-Haq’s hunting license had been revoked. General Iskander Hussain continued to surprise. When Makhdoom had radioed the General the news of who their quarry was, both he and Bolan had fully expected to be told Ul-Haq was a hands-off situation.

General Hussain had declared open season on Ul-Haq. The General appeared to be taking his role as savior of the Pakistani Republic with great seriousness. He wanted the nukes back at any cost. Bolan also suspected that General Iskander Hussain was imagining such a move would a useful step toward the Presidency of Pakistan.

Hussain had sent Hind gunships.

General Hussain’s political aspirations were of no concern to Bolan. That was the State Department’s nightmare to deal with. Ali Ul-Haq was a righteous target in and of himself, and Bolan wanted those nukes back as much as Hussain.

He also needed more clues about the invisible assassins that had reached out for his throat.

Of even more immediate concern were the green tracers streaking upward from the walls of the fortress. Hail seemed to rattle on the Mi-8’s airframe, and a ragged line of holes appeared down the middle of the troop compartment. Makhdoom roared orders into his radio.

The Hind gunships swept ahead of the transports like avenging dragonflies, their twin automatic cannons hammering in response to the ground fire. Fire blossomed beneath the stub-wings as the rocket pods rippled into life. 57mm rockets swarmed downward in smoking lines. The orange fire of high explosive erupted along the walls of the fortress. The anti-aircraft guns swiftly fell silent as the battlements were bombarded. The transports swooped down toward the inner courtyard. The door gunners hosed down the walls as the helicopters dropped to the cobblestones.

Captain Ghulam Fareed and his men had changed out of their leisure suits. They now wore camouflaged coveralls and Russian-made titanium body armor. Bolan jumped out beside Makhdoom, cradling his HK automatic rifle.

The fortress was already falling. Ul-Haq’s stronghold was more for show than anything else. It was deep within his territory and made him inaccessible. His real defenses were the influence he bought and the murder of his rivals. It was well equipped to protect him from assassination or a misguided assault by a fellow warlord. Neither Genghis Khan nor Ali Ul-Haq had ever envisioned repelling a Special Forces helicopter assault.

Neither of the two warlords, ancient or modern, had envisioned falling under the wrath of Mack Bolan.

Bolan’s rifle ripped into a crew of men trying to wheel a heavy machine gun around on the wall to fire down into the courtyard. The big .30 caliber rifle pounded them to pieces around their weapon. Makhdoom’s hand slammed down on Bolan’s shoulder, and the Pakistani shouted above the sound of gunfire and the aerial artillery barrage.

“There!” Doom pointed his rifle and the squat, round-shouldered shape of the fortress’s central tower. “The keep!”

Bolan nodded as he shouldered his weapon. The HK bucked against him, and a man on the steps of the keep fell in red ruin with a five round burst through his chest. Bolan ejected his spent magazine and slapped in a fresh one. The door to the keep was small and massively constructed of thick oak timbers bound with iron. The structure itself was made of massive blocks of ancient stone. Each floor of the keep had narrow firing slits for the defenders. They had been designed to service bows and crossbows, but they worked equally well for automatic rifles and light machine guns. Charging across the open courtyard would be a suicide mission for anyone trying to breach the door.

“Doom!” Bolan glanced up meaningfully at one of the orbiting Hind gunships as it swept the walls of the last defenders. “We need that door blown and a rocket run on the keep to keep the gunners down while we assault!”

“Indeed!” Makhdoom roared rapidly into his radio in Sind. One of the Hinds dropped out of its low circling pattern and dropped out of sight behind the walls. It popped up again directly over Bolan and Doom’s heads. Its five massive, fifty-foot rotors pounded the air of the courtyard into thundering vortices of smoke and dust and vibrated the very cobblestones. A pair of AT-6 Spiral guided anti-tank missiles sizzled off their launch rails trailing their guide-wires. The door disappeared in twin flashes of orange fire. The gunship pilot tilted the nose of his aircraft, and the rocket pods beneath his wings began breathing fire like some terrible pipe organ of destruction. Rocket after rocket hissed into the front of the keep. The guns in the firing slits went silent as explosion after explosion shook the tower.

Makhdoom sliced down his hand. “Attack! Attack! Attack!”

“Allah Akbar!” Captain Fareed did not hesitate. His war cry was taken up by his gang of thugs. “God is Great!”

Bolan and Makhdoom formed the sharp end of the spear as they charged the keep beneath the gunship’s sheltering salvo. The door, the doorframe and about two feet of masonry to each side had been blown out and the breached tower oozed smoke. The world was consumed by the smell of brimstone and the stench of burnt high-explosive. Bolan threw a Chinese -made offensive hand-grenade into the smoking hole. Pale yellow fire flashed as the grenade detonated with a spiteful crack. Someone inside screamed.

Bolan and Makhdoom strode though the smoldering doorway with their rifles blazing. A pair of gunmen fell and two more threw down their weapons, pleading for their lives in Urdu. The first floor of the tower was done up like an opulent reception hall complete with Persian carpets and a gilt throne. Ul-Haq held court like an ancient pasha. Only, Ul-Haq was nowhere to be seen. Bolan glanced around as the prisoners were bound. The question of the moment was whether Ali Ul-Haq was the kind of modern warlord who would hide in the top of his tower or be burrowed down at the bottom.

Bolan was betting Ul-Haq was a top tower man.

“Doom! I’m going up top!”

“I will arrange it!” Makhdoom spoke into his radio. “Take Captain Fareed with you! I will meet you in the middle.”

Bolan strode back into daylight. Fareed fell into step behind him. A pair of ropes descended from the cabin of a Hind gunship circling overhead. “We want Ul-Haq alive!”

“I know something of taking men alive!” Fareed rumbled.

Bolan grabbed a rope and scissored it with his feet. He waved his hand and the Hind began to rise up into the air. He kept his eyes on the firing slits in the tower and his free hand covered them with his rifle. The big American unclamped his feet as he cleared the crenellations at the top of the tower and his boots touched down on stone as the Hind delivered them. The ropes fell behind them as the Hind cut free and veered off. Bolan examined the top of the tower. It was littered with broken weapons and shattered bodies. The rocket and cannon runs had defoliated the tower of defenders.

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