Lethal Tribute

“Atta,” Makhdoom answered. The Pakistani captain flipped through a file on his lap. “Atta Naqbi. He is a technician, recently graduated from the American University in Egypt. His family fled from East Pakistan during the 1971 war. He had no criminal record and has been working at the Al-Nouri Weapons Facility for six months.”

Bolan considered the information. What was once Eastern Pakistan was now known as Bangladesh. It was about half the size of Kansas and just as flat. Only unlike Kansas, Bangladesh was cut by the mighty courses of the Ganges, the Tista and the Brahmaputra rivers. When the snows of the Himalayas melted, Bangladesh was their final destination. Flooding was endemic. When the mountains didn’t flood the land, the monsoons swept the sea-level nation with tidal waves. Swiftly approaching a thousand people per square kilometer, every disaster took a horrific toll in human life. Bangladesh was an autonomous nation, but she was heavily reliant on the help of India to survive. Of much more interest to Bolan, Bangladesh was also the neighbor of the Indian state of West Bengal.

The traditional home range of the Cult of Kali.

“What city is he from?”

“Chulna, it lies upon the Pusur River, in the Great Mouths of the Ganges,” Makhdoom responded. “Do you know of it?”

“I’ve seen the Mouths of the Ganges,” Bolan responded, “but I’ve never been to Chulna. It’s not on my mental map.” Bolan cocked his head slightly. “How many kilometers is it from Calcutta?”

The captain grinned. “Why, less than one hundred.”

“Does Mr. Naqbi still have family there?”

“Most of his family reportedly came here, to Pakistan. But we have spies in Bangladesh, and in Bengal. I am having it looked into.”

“Does he speak English?”

“Fluently.”

Bolan pulled his black ski mask down over his head. “Let’s go rescue Atta.”

“Indeed.” Makhdoom pulled down his own mask. “Let us go rescue Atta.”

Bolan and Makhdoom got out of the battered 1950s vintage Mercedes and approached the guard at the gate. The guard snapped to attention and saluted. Makhdoom returned the salute. “Corporal?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“You are dead.”

The corporal dropped to the ground, flailed and made expiring noises.

“Less melodrama, Corporal.”

“Yes, Captain,” the corpse whispered.

Bolan and Makhdoom swept through the prison. Guards saluted and fell down “dead” in their wake like human driftwood. The two of them swiftly came to Atta Naqbi’s cell. The guard outside the door stood and turned. Bolan whipped a knotted silk sash around the guard’s neck. The guard went to his knees and made throttling noises as Makhdoom threw open the door.

Naqbi sat in his cell and gaped as Bolan apparently strangled the guard to death. Makhdoom ran in and yanked him up. The man could barely walk with his swollen feet. Makhdoom and Bolan took an arm each and strung him between them as they carried him out of the cell. Despite his pain and fatigue, Naqbi began firing off questions rapidly.

He wasn’t speaking Urdu or Sind.

Makhdoom shushed him. Naqbi spent the next few moments quietly staring in astonishment at the seemingly dead guards strewing the floor of the jail. They gave Naqbi no chance to examine any of the “corpses” too closely. They spirited him outside and deposited him into the waiting car.

Bolan took the wheel and drove off into the night.

The translator spoke in Bolan’s earpiece. “Striker, do you read me?”

Bolan reached up and tapped his earpiece twice in acknowledgment. His satellite rig was in the back seat and he was plugged into the satellite above. There was a microphone in the back seat, as well.

The translator began translating what Naqbi and Makhdoom were saying to each other in Hindi.

Naqbi was chattering a stream of questions, and Makhdoom was playing it close. They jockeyed back and forth with questions and counterquestions. Makhdoom was playing with a deck missing many cards. There had to be call signs and recognition signals, ones that neither Bolan nor Makhdoom knew. They needed to make the man admit something. The only gambit they had was that Naqbi had spent the past forty-eight hours being starved, beaten and sleep deprived and that he wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders.

Makhdoom laid all the money down and rolled the dice. “Are the weapons safe?”

“What?” Naqbi shook his head. “Only the chosen ones could know of that! How could I—”

Chosen ones. Bolan grinned under his mask.

Hook, line and sinker.

“There have been problems,” Makhdoom stated. “Somehow the Americans have become involved.”

“Americans?” Naqbi gaped in confusion. “Impossible! What Americans?”

Bolan pulled off his mask, locked his gaze with Naqbi’s as he spoke in English. “Me.”

“Oh…” Naqbi’s shoulders and arms clenched in upon himself like a spider that had just been stepped on. His face went as white as a sheet. “Goddess…” He shuddered with the enormity of his betrayal. He clutched his face with his hands. “I…am doomed.”

“You’re in a world of hurt.” Bolan’s voice was as cold as the grave. “Doomed is up to you.”

“Doomed…” Naqbi was swiftly sinking into a robotic stupor of terror.

Makhdoom snapped him out of it with the back of his hand. The captain suddenly glanced up at the lightening horizon. From a minaret beyond the Christian Quarter, an Imam sang forth the call to prayer. Bolan listened as the call rang out against the orange light of dawn. He had fought Muslim opponents many times, but the unearthly beauty of the call and its message had never failed to move him.

Throughout Islamabad, the believers turned westward toward Mecca and knelt in prayer. Makhdoom removed a small, rolled rug from the back seat of the Mercedes. “I must go to prayers. Then we will have breakfast.” His smile was expectant and ugly as he locked his gaze with Atta Naqbi.

“Then we shall have a talk. The three of us.”

Islamabad. The Christian Quarter

MAKHDOOM CONTINUED to surprise Bolan. Christians weren’t popular in Pakistan. That the man had friends in the quarter was interesting. It was the last place in the world one would expect to find a Pakistani special forces captain, much less an American commando and a worshiper of the goddess of death.

“The food here is outstanding.” Makhdoom stated as he deftly slid a massive chunk of lamb from his kabob. The meat steamed in the morning chill and dripped with clarified butter. The captain closed his eyes with a delight bordering on the sensual as he chewed the tender meat and swallowed it. Most people Bolan knew from the Middle East did not take big breakfasts. Makhdoom had ordered them a feast under the rising sun. He smiled at Bolan as if he had read the American’s mind.

“I was sent to train with United States Special Forces in 1989.” He sighed as he speared another piece of meat with his knife. “The Prophet Mohammed, all praises onto him, says a man should be moderate in his eating. But I have been to Fort Bragg, and to my ruin I have learned the joy of a hearty American breakfast.”

Bolan smiled. He had been to Fort Bragg. The boys there took their breakfasts with extreme seriousness. They often didn’t know how long it would be until their next one.

Makhdoom raised a dry eyebrow at Atta Naqbi over the rim of his teacup. “The menu is not to your liking?”

Naqbi said nothing as he stared down at his plate. The sauce around his cubed lamb tongue was congealing.

“Perhaps the prison gruel was more to your taste?” the captain suggested.

Naqbi’s shoulders twitched, but he didn’t look up or respond.