Frontier Fury

“If I didn’t know better,” he said, “I’d think you wanted me to pull the plug.”

“Who says I don’t?”

“Sounds to me like a conflict of interest.”

“You want it straight? I’ve been against this from the start, but I was overruled. Okay. I’m a team player. But it stinks.”

“A chance to cut the snake’s head off,” he said. “Or close, at least.”

“That’s how they’re selling it. But why can’t the Agency’s man come up with coordinates for an air strike? You want to tell me he can snap a photo of the targets, but he can’t jot down the longitude and latitude? Come on!”

“My guess would be he doesn’t want to go up with the others.”

“And are you supposed to recognize him, when you get there? What’s he gonna do, whip out his CIA decoder ring before you drop the hammer on him? And he’ll still be working as an asset undercover, after that? Somebody’s blowing smoke.”

“Maybe,” Bolan said. “But I can’t see through it till I’m on the ground.”

“I knew you’d say that,” she replied.

“What else can you predict?” he asked.

“A long night for the two of us,” she said, and offered Bolan a slow smile as she led him to the bed.

3

North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan: The Present

Fleeing over open ground meant there was nothing to obstruct the enemy’s sight line or spoil their aim. All Bolan and his contact had going for them now was speed, and the Executioner hoped his driver was equipped to make the most of it.

Crouched on the SUV’s rear deck, Bolan was crowded by a spare tire on his right—the driver’s left—but he had room enough to fight. And room enough to die in, if the APC’s machine gunner was capable of holding steady on a target at the far end of his killing range.

But not just yet.

The Jeep was Bolan’s first concern, though. With only two men inside, and the driver fully occupied with his appointed task, the Executioner had the advantage. At most, the driver might fire pistol shots, but, then again, aiming would be difficult unless he dropped the Jeep’s windshield.

That left the passenger, whom Bolan took to be the officer in charge of the patrol. He couldn’t read the soldier’s face at four hundred yards, much less determine his rank, but the man was holding some kind of rifle, biding his time.

Bolan thought he’d give the lead pursuers something to think about, and began firing from a seated position. With elbows braced on knees, it was the best position next to prone for steady shooting, but that was, of course, from solid ground. Each time his driver swerved or hit a pothole in the pavement, Bolan lurched along with the whole SUV.

His first shot, therefore, may have been a miss. He saw the two Jeep-riders duck their heads, but saw no evidence of impact on their vehicle. The Jeep held steady, barreling along in hot pursuit.

For number two, still set on semiautomatic fire, Bolan aimed at the center of the Jeep’s windshield and squeezed the trigger. This time, it was nearly on the mark but high and slightly to the left, missing the rearview mirror by an inch or so.

Still, Bolan got the physical reaction that he’d wanted, smiling as the Jeep swerved wildly for a moment, slowing at the same time, while its driver tried to choose between the gas and brake pedal, guts or survival.

Bolan saw the shotgun rider turn and shout something at his wheelman. Whatever he’d said convinced the driver to accelerate despite incoming fire.

Behind the Jeep, the eight-wheeled APC was giving all it had to stay in the race. Its twin Russian-made ZMZ-49–05 V-8 engines strained to hit and hold the vehicle’s top speed, around fifty miles per hour. That was good time for patrolling or advancing on a line of rioters, but in a car chase it was almost bound to lose.

Almost.

Bolan observed the shotgun rider in the Jeep half-standing, lining up a rifle shot over the windshield’s upper edge. It wasn’t likely he would score the first time out, but there was always the threat of a lucky shot.

Bolan thumbed the fire-selector switch on his AKMS from single shot to 3-round bursts, then braced the black fiberglass-reinforced polyamide snug against his shoulder. A trained shooter brought the weapon to his face, not vice versa, and Bolan was one of the best. But even so, he couldn’t abrogate the laws of physics.

His first 3-round burst was aimed at the grille, but went low and outside. Not low enough to shred the left front tire, but knocking shiny divots in the fender just above it.

Correcting for the second try, he saw two rounds ricochet from the Jeep’s dusty hood, one scarring the windshield, the other long gone. As for the third round, Bolan couldn’t guess where it had wound up.

The chase car’s driver swerved again, but brought it back on track this time without a warning from his passenger. The officer had fallen back into his seat when Bolan fired, ducking and covering as best he could while riding in an open vehicle, but now he rose again, aiming his rifle toward the SUV.

It’s coming, Bolan thought, and ducked beneath the SUV’s tailgate. Between the wind rush and the growling engine of the SUV, Bolan had trouble hearing any shots fired from behind him. He didn’t know, therefore, how many times the Pakistani officer had missed before a bullet drilled the tailgate, inches from his sweaty face.

From there, it punched through the backseat, missed Hussein Gorshani’s elbow by a whisper and buried itself in the dashboard.

“They’re shooting at us!” his driver cried.

Bolan didn’t bother answering the obvious. His mind was searching for a way to get the shooters off his back—or send them all to hell.

HUSSEIN GORSHANI cursed in Pashto, gripping the SUV’s wheel with a white-knuckled mixture of fury and fear. The soldiers had damaged his car and were trying to kill him. His hatred for them, in that moment, was boundless.

Never mind that he was technically in the wrong, and that they were only doing their jobs. The gunfire was a product of Gorshani fleeing, and his passenger had started it by firing at the Jeep first.

For all the good that did.

Evasive driving might have helped, but they were speeding down a narrow road, poorly maintained, and he was more likely to spoil his ally’s aim than the enemy’s.

Gorshani had anticipated danger when his CIA contact proposed the operation, but he’d thought they would move toward it gradually, conferring and learning to trust one another before they plunged into hot water.

Now, it seemed, he was at war not only with the hidden leaders of al Qaeda, but also with the soldiers of his homeland.

Traitor, said a small voice in his head.

Gorshani had once been a soldier himself, had ridden in a Talha APC through hostile territory in the North-West Frontier Province of his birth. He had never been in battle—though his APC had twice come under sniper fire. It had been strange, sitting in a metal box, listening to bullets ping against the armored sides.

Gorshani wished he had some of that armor now, but knew he’d have to settle for the SUV’s superior acceleration. He knew his vehicle could literally drive rings around the BTR-70—not that it would be a wise thing to attempt—and Gorshani was confident he could outrun the Jeep if his tail gunner failed to disable it.

Unless a bullet found him, first.

The near-miss had unnerved him, driving home the point—if any emphasis was needed—that Hussein Gorshani was a mortal man. He could be killed or mutilated by a bullet in a heartbeat, leaving his comrade adrift as the SUV swerved, stalled and died.

Not yet, he thought, and glanced at his rifle on the passenger’s seat to his right. If need be, he would stop the car and fight, go out with the American in what was sometimes called a blaze of glory.

Checking his rearview mirror, he could see the nearest chase car gaining ground. The tall American rose and blocked Gorshani’s view, squeezed off another burst of automatic fire, then dropped back out of sight.

The Jeep reacted with a wide swing to Gorshani’s left, then roared back into line behind his SUV. It seemed unstoppable, a monster in its own right that could not be killed.

Ridiculous!

It was a man-made object, just as vulnerable as Gorshani’s car to damage caused by road hazards or bullets. Granted, it had probably been built for driving over worse ground than the SUV, and yet…

An idea flashed into Gorshani’s mind. He called out to his crouching passenger, “I want to lead them off the road.”

“What for?” the American asked. “The Jeep and APC are built for it.”

“The vehicles,” Gorshani said, “but maybe not the men.”

“Can this rig take it?”

“We shall see.”

Just as Gorshani spoke, another rifle bullet struck the SUV a glancing blow and whined off into space. The tall American responded with another 3-round burst and shouted to Gorshani, “Go for it!”

Gorshani gripped the steering wheel, swept anxious eyes along the roadside, left and right, then made his choice. If he chose left, the river would eventually block him. But on his right, the open grassland beckoned.

Done.

He cranked the wheel and stood on the accelerator, slumping in his seat to let his slack body absorb the impact of rough ground beneath his tires and shock absorbers. Ten yards into it, his teeth were clacking and he felt a sudden urge to urinate that almost made him laugh aloud.

I should have gone before the chase, he thought, and then he did laugh.

“What’s so funny?” his passenger asked.

“Nothing!” Gorshani answered, as the Bolero slammed into a low ridge of soil and briefly went airborne. Its landing jarred him, nearly making him release the steering wheel. But he hung on and brought the vehicle under control.

A quick glance at the rearview mirror showed the Jeep careening after him, and the APC charging along behind.

SECOND LIEUTENANT Tarik Naseer braced himself—legs rigid, one hand pressed against the Jeep’s dashboard, teeth clenched to keep them from snapping together and chipping.

He had fastened his seat belt when they first struck off in pursuit of their targets, then had unlatched it so that he could stand and fire his AKMS over the Jeep’s windshield frame. But as the Jeep left the pavement and sped across rough open ground, he regretted that choice.

Naseer had ordered his driver to follow the SUV when it left the roadway, but now he was trapped in his seat—or rather at risk of being thrown from it. He needed one hand braced against the dash to keep from pitching forward and striking his head on the windshield, while his other hand clutched the Kalashnikov. He could not reach his seat belt and secure it without losing one grip or the other, and the options were unacceptable.

“Watch out!” the driver cried just as he hit yet another deep rut in the earth. The Jeep bounced twice before settling, each leap unseating the lieutenant. For an instant his heart was in his throat. He was terrified of being thrown completely from the vehicle.

He wondered if Qasim Zohra would even notice, should his passenger be catapulted into space. The driver was completely focused on his target, leaning forward in his seat as if such posture might increase the Jeep’s acceleration.

Naseer considered exactly what could happen if he fell out of the Jeep. Would his neck snap on impact with the ground? If he was pitched over the Jeep’s rear deck, somehow, would he be crushed beneath the APC, or could its driver stop in time?

Another vicious jolt, causing Naseer to mouth a curse. The men he was pursuing would have faced enough trouble, had they simply surrendered on the spot. But now…

The driver barked another warning, ducked low in his seat, just as Naseer saw the rear gunner in the SUV rise to fire another burst. Two of the bullets struck the Jeep’s windshield this time, spraying Naseer with shards of broken glass.

Enough!

Releasing his grip on the dashboard, Naseer raised his rifle and aimed through the gap in the shattered windshield. Just as he squeezed the trigger, Zohra hit another deep hole with the Jeep and nearly spilled Naseer out of his seat. His burst of autofire was wasted, with the last round clanging off the windshield’s upper frame.

A bitter curse escaped his lips, and the second lieutenant swung around toward Zohra, shouting, “At this rate, you will kill us before he does!”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Zohra replied. “Shall I slow down?”

Naseer considered it for half a second, glancing back toward the oncoming APC, then said, “Do not slow down. But hold the Jeep steady, so I can aim!”

Even as Naseer spoke the words, they seemed ridiculous to him, a feeling mirrored on his driver’s face. Zohra could not control the contours of the landscape, any more than he could turn the Jeep into a hovercraft and make it fly.

Another short burst from the SUV came in on target, rattling off the Jeep’s curved hood. Naseer ducked, felt a bullet cleave the air beside his face and heard his driver yelp in pain.

“Zohra?”

“It’s nothing, sir. A scratch.”

Naseer saw blood soaking through the short sleeve of Zohra’s summer uniform. It seemed more than a simple scratch to him, but Zohra still clung to the steering wheel with both hands, while his right foot held down the accelerator pedal.

“Nothing, sir, I promise!” he repeated.

At a loss for words of comfort, Naseer barked, “Well, hold us steady, then! I’ll pay them back in kind!”

He raised the AKMS to his shoulder once again, finding his mark, letting his index finger rest against the curved trigger. At the last instant, Naseer hesitated, more than half expecting another jolt to pitch him left or right, forward or back.

When nothing happened, he fired hastily, jerking the trigger, rather than applying steady pressure as he’d been instructed as a young recruit. The AKMS rattled in his ear and spewed out shiny brass, but Naseer would have been surprised if he had hit anything.

Another curse, before he braced himself, aiming. Naseer saw his opponent’s lean face over open sights, already aiming back at him with what appeared to be—

The world exploded suddenly, without a hint of warning, and Tarik Naseer spun into crimson darkness.

THE GP-25 GRENADE launcher was nicknamed Kostyor—“bonfire,” in Russian. The under-the-barrel model attached to Bolan’s AKMS rifle measured about 12.5 inches long and weighed 3.3 pounds with an empty chamber. Breech-loading of a caseless 40 mm VOG-25 fragmentation grenade added half a pound to the deadly package, including 48 grams of high explosives.

Other grenades were readily available for the GP-25, including a bouncing frag round designated as the VOG-25P, Gvozd rounds filled with CS gas, baton rounds, and GRD smoke grenades designed for use at 50, 100 and 200 meters. Since Bolan’s target was a moving vehicle, he chose the basic impact round for maximum effect.

Bolan slipped his left thumb through a hole provided in the launcher’s stubby pistol grip, steadied his aim as best he could and sent the HE round downrange as one of his pursuers was about to try another autoburst. The Executioner’s grenade got there first, slamming into the Jeep’s grille and detonating on impact.

The result exceeded Bolan’s hopes.

He’d thought that it would trash the Jeep’s engine, shake up the driver and his passenger, granting Hussein Gorshani time to leave them in the dust before the APC caught up. Instead, the Jeep itself seemed to explode, hood airborne on a ball of fire, before it flipped through a clumsy forward somersault.

“Allah be praised!” Gorshani cried, catching the action in his rearview mirror.

Bolan didn’t care who got the credit, and he knew that they weren’t out of danger yet.

“There’s still the APC,” he said. “I won’t crack that with 40 mm frag grenades.”

“I can outrun them,” Gorshani said.

“Now’s the time to do it, then,” Bolan answered.

In response, the SUV seemed to discover extra power somewhere underneath its hood. The truck surged forward, despite the rough ground underneath its tires. Thin carpet on the rear deck failed to cushion Bolan’s spine and buttocks against heavy pounding.

He was lucky to have hit the Jeep at all, much less to stop it cold the way he had. Now Bolan saw the APC pull up beside the Jeep’s wreckage and brake.

“They’re stopping,” he informed Gorshani. “Now’s the time to give it everything you’ve got.”

“I shall!” the Pakistani said, but their speed did not increase—it seemed the SUV had no more left to give. But still, every moment that the APC stayed where it was lengthened their lead.

“They’ve got someone up and moving,” Bolan said. “He’s in the vehicle. They’re coming!”

Bolan did the math in his head. Say the SUV was traveling at sixty miles per hour, pulling steadily away. The APC would soon accelerate to its top speed of fifty miles per hour. It could never catch Gorshani’s ride at that speed, all things being equal.

But they weren’t equal.

The APC was built for travel over this type of terrain. Gorshani’s SUV, despite its four-wheel-drive capacity, could not compete with the military vehicle in the long run.

And there was still the APC’s machine gunner to reckon with. His PKM machine gun had a muzzle velocity of 2,500 feet per second, with a maximum range of 1,000 meters. It could rip through a belt of 650 rounds in 60 seconds and land a fair number of bullets on target at 200 meters.

The bottom line: if something happened to the SUV, or if the gunner in the APC got lucky, they were dead.

It would require a daring move to prevent either one of those events, and while that kind of play was Bolan’s stock-in-trade, he didn’t know whether Gorshani had the nerve to pull it off.

Fleeing from adversaries in a high-speed chase was one thing. Meeting them head-on was something else completely.

“They’re gaining on us,” Bolan said.

Gorshani muttered something Bolan took to be a curse, then said, “It won’t go any faster.”

“I don’t want you to,” Bolan replied.

“What, then?” Gorshani’s eyes, reflected in the rearview mirror, held a hint of desperation.

“Slow down,” Bolan told him. “Let them catch us.”

THE EXECUTIONER knew he couldn’t penetrate the BTR-70’s armor with anything in his mobile arsenal. His 40 mm frag grenades would merely glance off the APC’s nose to explode in midair—no threat to the soldiers inside. But he still had one chance.

“Slow down?” Gorshani questioned, from the driver’s seat.

“And stop, when I give you the word,” Bolan said.

The mirror-eyes met his again, for a heartbeat, then shifted away.

“As you wish.”

Bolan fed the GP-25 another fragmentation round, as Gorshani raised his foot from the accelerator, letting the SUV decelerate without using the brakes. Behind them, the APC was gaining steadily, a juggernaut that seemed intent on running them down.

But that wasn’t how it was done. Bolan knew his adversaries wouldn’t ram Gorshani’s vehicle if they had any other choice.

And they also had a machine gunner, who likely craved an opportunity to see some action.

A gunner who could only fire his weapon if he first revealed himself.

Bolan was ready when the hatch opened, a soldier’s head and shoulders rising into view behind the pintle-mounted PKM. The Executioner fired his 40 mm round, then shouted at Gorshani, “Stop! Stop now!”

The SUV slid to a halt and Bolan rolled over the tailgate, conscious of the HE detonation eighty yards in front of him. He didn’t see the nearly headless soldier topple backward, dropping through the hatch and almost landing in the driver’s lap. Success was measured by the fact that no one riddled him with bullets as he charged the APC.

That vehicle slowed for a moment, lurching. It was just enough of a delay for Bolan to sprint across the intervening distance and launch into a leap from ten feet out.

The APC was nine feet tall, from ground level to the apex of its turret, but the fenders were about waist-high. Bolan’s leap put him there, but it was not his final destination. Taking full advantage of the shock his 40 mm round had caused, he scrambled upward, toward the open hatch.

And as he reached it, Bolan held an RGD-5 frag grenade in his left hand. He yanked its safety pin at the last instant, dropped the bomb through the open hatch, then crouched and found a handhold on the turret’s flank.

The grenade had a four-second fuse, granting zero time for anyone inside the APC to pick it up and throw it back. The blast reminded Bolan of a cherry bomb inside an oil drum, multiplied to the tenth power. Smoke and screams poured from the open hatch, as the APC lurched to a halt.

Bolan waited, knowing that one of two things had to happen next. The soldiers who could move would spill out through the APC’s exit doors, or someone would lurch forward to take over from the mangled driver.

In the latter event, he would feed them another grenade. If they bailed—

Bolan heard the rear doors open, soldiers cursing as they scrambled from the smoky, blood-spattered interior. Their boots crunched on sand, losing traction as the men stumbled out.

The BTR-70 had room inside it for a three-man crew, plus seven passengers. Bolan had killed one of the crew with his first shot, and guessed the other two were dead or dying from the RGD-5’s blast. How many others had been hit by shrapnel from the frag grenade? And how many of those were still fit to fight?

He strode across the flat top of the APC and caught the soldiers as they tried to organize—four men armed with Kalashnikovs, two of them with bloodstains showing on their desert-camo uniforms.

Their blood, or someone else’s?

Bolan didn’t care.

His AKMS raked the four men from left to right, then back again, making them dance as bullets ripped through flesh and fabric, dropping them before they could return fire. Bolan waited for another moment, covering the exit hatch. When no one else emerged, he readied himself for the nine-foot drop, prepared to check out the interior. Just as he flexed his knees to jump, he heard a scraping sound behind him.

One of the shell-shocked soldiers had been strong and smart enough to flank him. Now, unless Bolan could spin and drop at the same time, fire from the hip and nail the man who meant to kill him—

Halfway through his turn, Bolan flinched at the report of a Kalashnikov on autofire. Already braced to take the bullets that he knew were coming, the big American blinked, surprised to see his would-be slayer sprawled across the APC’s gun turret, facedown in a spreading pool of blood.

“He’s dead, I think,” Gorshani called up to him from the ground.

“I’d say you’re right,” Bolan replied. “Now, let’s get out of here.”

4

Mount Khakwani, North-West Frontier Province

The messenger’s name was Harata Bhutani. At thirty-four, he was the youngest man permitted access to the leaders of al Qaeda in hiding. All of the command staff’s other aides were ten or twelve years older—and, of course, they all were men.

Akram Ben Abd al-Bari would not trust a woman—even his own mother, were she living—with the knowledge of his whereabouts, much less his current plans. To him and those around him, granting any power to a woman reeked of sacrilege.

Bhutani drove his battered motorcycle up a narrow, winding mountain road that was, at least in theory, wide enough for a small sedan. He didn’t like to think about what might occur if two cars traveling in opposite directions met each other on the road. There was no room to pass, much less to turn around, and driving in reverse, he thought, would have been tantamount to suicide.

It’s not my problem, he consoled himself. Bhutani did not own a car and never would. He had a driver’s license, chiefly for delivery of martyrs to the towns where they would detonate the vests of high explosives hidden underneath their robes. On such occasions the car was always provided by his masters, and then discarded after it had served its purpose.