Ambush Force

“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.”