Altered State

“She and her playmates had disappeared.”

“Yes, sir. They got another Fed mobile then dropped that one after a couple miles. They’re getting wise.”

“I’d say they were already wise enough to run rings around you,” Carlisle observed. “The question now is, whether you’re entitled to a second chance, or if I ought to cut my losses. Starting with your throat.”

Carlisle had no fear of the younger man seated across from him, with nothing but a teakwood desk between them. Scanlon was unarmed, defeated, a spent force. He also had to have known that any move against his boss would bring an armed security detachment charging into Carlisle’s office through the door immediately to his left.

“I saw the shooter, sir. I can identify him, and you know I’m motivated.”

“Motivation’s good,” Carlisle replied. “But he’s already kicked your ass. You lost eleven men and barely got away alive. That kind of failure is expensive and embarrassing.”

“Yes, sir,” Scanlon replied through clenched teeth. “Let me make it up to you.”

Carlisle considered it, then said, “Call me a sentimental fool. I’ll give you one chance to clean up your mess, but use it well. And do it quickly. If you fail a second time, you would be well advised to die trying.”

“Yes, sir!”

Scanlon rose from his chair, snapped to attention and saluted before leaving Carlisle’s office. Carlisle watched him go and wondered if he’d made a critical mistake by letting Scanlon live.

No sweat.

That kind of error, if it was an error, could be easily corrected any time he had the urge. A simple order, and Scanlon would never see it coming.

More important at the moment was the task of covering his tracks and Vanguard’s on the mess that Scanlon had created.

Carlisle would explain that he’d fired Eddie Franks for insubordination and produce back-dated paperwork to prove it, if push came to shove. As for the local talent, Eddie could have found them anywhere. There were no Vanguard payroll records for them, certainly no canceled checks or any other kind of paper trail.

His word would be accepted where it mattered. That was where the bribes Carlisle had paid to various Afghan officials—and his contacts at the U.S. embassy in Kabul—served their purpose. He was an established man of substance, with connections all the way from Afghanistan’s Republican Palace to Pennsylvania Avenue, and adversaries who forgot that did so at their peril.

There was nothing for Carlisle to worry about.

Not just yet.

Shahr-e-Khone, Kabul

T HE RENTAL CAR with Bolan’s hardware stashed inside was lost to him. He knew it when he reached the parking lot where he had left it, in the Old City, and found police milling about like ants on spilled sugar. He waited long enough to see one of them exit with a heavy duffel bag he recognized, then put the Avalon in gear and drove away, not looking back.

“I guess you’re short on gear now,” Falk suggested.

“Not for long,” Bolan replied.

He couldn’t use the same dealer again, in case the cops had traced his hardware or were on their way to doing so, but Brognola and Stony Man had given him directions to four weapons merchants in Kabul, trusting Bolan to find alternatives if all of those went sour.

And as Hal had told him, there was never any hardware shortage in Afghanistan.

He skipped the second armorer on Brognola’s list, no clear reason other than gut instinct, and went on to number three. The dealer’s cover was a pawnshop in the Shar-e-Naw district, near the intersection of streets called Shararah and Shar Ali Khan. It meant driving back across town, to the northwest quarter, but the trip gave Bolan time to question Deirdre Falk in more detail.

He learned that she’d been tracking Vanguard’s operation for a year and change, collecting evidence that no one in authority would take time to review. Her boss in Kabul was a thirty-year man with the DEA who faced compulsory retirement in the fall, and he encouraged her to forge ahead, while warning Falk that he could not protect her, short of sending her back to the States.

So much for the omnipotence of Uncle Sam.

She still seemed ill at ease with Bolan’s plan of action, not that he’d provided any details, but he thought she’d keep her word and go along.

If not…well, she could pull the pin and split at any time, unless the heavies took her down.

He found the dealer’s shop and made a drive-by, trusting Falk and Barialy to help him spot anything odd, out of synch. They told him that the busy street looked normal, so he found a parking place and all three of them walked back to the shop.

Inside, a man who looked like Gandhi with a port wine birthmark on the left side of his face greeted them enthusiastically. He introduced himself as Izat Khan and listened carefully as Barialy translated for Bolan, spelling out his needs and specifying that the payment would be made in cash.

If dealing with a group of total strangers bothered Khan, he didn’t let it show. Smiling, he locked the front door to his shop, reversed a dangling sign—presumably changing Open to Closed—and led them through a screen of softly clacking plastic beads to reach a storeroom at the back.

Bolan saw no weapons in evidence, and had already braced himself to shoot his way out of a trap, when Khan opened a door in the west wall, revealing stairs that vanished into darkness. Finding a switch beside the door jamb, he illuminated bright fluorescent fixtures that revealed a spacious basement. The familiar scent of gun oil wafted up to Bolan’s nostrils from below.

Bolan let Khan go first, followed by Barialy, then himself, with Deirdre Falk watching their backs. He no longer suspected that police or Vanguard mercs had found the shop ahead of him, but there was still a chance that Khan might plan to double-cross these strangers who had showed up without warning on his doorstep.

In the dealer’s spotless basement, guns were mounted on the walls and racked in standing rows across the floor, with crates of ammunition, magazines, grenades, and other such accessories positioned like the specials in a supermarket. Bolan took his time, examining Khan’s wares, and told Falk she could pick out something for herself, to supplement the Glock.

At length, bearing in mind that he couldn’t predict what situations might still lay ahead of them, Bolan chose a range of weapons suitable for all occasions.

They already had the captured AKSU automatic rifles, but he took a third one, plus spare magazines, and stocked up on the 5.45 mm ammunition they devoured. With distance work in mind, he also chose a 7.62 mm Dragunov SVD sniping rifle, fitted with a Russian PSO-1 scope whose features included an elevation adjustment knob for bullet-drop compensation, an illuminated range-finder grid, a reticle that permitted target acquisition in low-light conditions, and an infrared charging screen that served as a passive detection system. He found spare 10-round magazines for the Dragunov, and picked up more 9 mm Parabellum ammo for his pistol. While he was at it, he added hand grenades for balance.

Bolan reckoned that he was done, then changed his mind and selected a 40 mm MGL grenade launcher, the South African spring-driven, double-action weapon that resembled an inflated 1920s Tommy gun. The launcher measured twenty-eight inches with its folding stock collapsed and weighed thirteen pounds empty. Its revolving 6-round cylinder could launch two rounds per second in rapid-fire, with an effective range of four hundred yards. To cover all eventualities, Bolan picked out a mix of HE, thermite, smoke and triple-aught buckshot rounds for the launcher.

Falk was prepared to settle for the second AKSU rifle, then decided Barialy might need it to supplement his vintage wheelgun, so she chose a mini-Uzi for herself, with a suppressor and a stack of 32-round magazines, plus more 9 mm Parabellum rounds.

Pleased with his payday, Khan furnished the duffel bags required to carry their new acquisitions at no extra charge. He counted Bolan’s money, smiling all the while, then led them back upstairs and showed them to a rear exit that let them walk most of the distance back to the Toyota Avalon along an alley hidden from the street.

When they had stowed the gear and Bolan had the car in motion, Falk said, “That was strange, you know?”

He smiled at her and said, “You ain’t seen nothing, yet.”

Vanguard International Branch Office, Kabul

“Y OU LET R ED HAVE a pass?” Dale Ingram asked.

“He’s on a leash,” Clay Carlisle said. “He isn’t going anywhere, except to clean up his own mess.”

“And then?”

“Then, nothing. If he does the job, he’ll have redeemed himself. If not, he pays the price.”

“Which doesn’t help us, either way,” Ingram replied.

“It settles his account,” Carlisle said.

“But we’re still out eleven men, three cars, the lost hardware.”

“The locals are a dime a dozen, Dale. Their paychecks stopped when they quit breathing, so they cost us nothing. Eddie Franks had no dependents, just a barfly brother in Kentucky. If we can’t find him, we scrub the life insurance payment. I regret the cars, of course, but we have others. Most important, we’ve preserved deniability.”