Lethal Tribute

Bolan took out a flashlight and panned the beam at the far wall. The floor showed fresh scrapes where something very heavy had recently been dragged across the concrete. Other than that, the warehouse was as empty as the cavern above the pass. The lingering sweetness in the air was the only clue they had left. “There’s a truck dock in back?”

“Indeed.” Makhdoom shone his light around the room. “I am currently running a check on the building. This warehouse and the two next to it are owned by a reputable Pakistani cotton merchant. However, a year ago, he rented this space to another company. They are proving much harder to track down.”

Owning all three warehouses on the block would give the enemy a nice quite zone of control where they could do whatever they wanted. It was also a fine tactical setup for an ambush. “The company will be a cutout.” Bolan glanced around the room again. “They’ll be some kind of—”

Bolan froze at the sound of a scraping noise. He and Makhdoom swung their flashlights around the room, but there was nothing to see but bare corrugated walls and the concrete floor. Bolan had known it was a trap, and expected it, but the unknown was an opponent as ugly as they came. An unbidden chill ran down Bolan’s spine as the unseen came for them. Naqbi let out a whimper. Makhdoom clicked on the laser sight of his weapon. “Ready?”

Bolan reached into the pocket of his overcoat. He had reviewed the battle a thousand times in his mind.

And he had formulated a plan. “Now!”

It was time to see how the goddess of death enjoyed something a little stronger than the smell of incense. Bolan and Makhdoom ripped the pins from the CS tear-gas canisters and flung them to the floor. The riot grenades burst apart as they hit and the multiple skip-chaser bomblets skidded across the concrete hissing and spewing thick white smoke. Bolan and Makhdoom pulled their gas masks from under their coats and yanked them over their faces. Naqbi let out a shriek that was instantly choked off as he inhaled the riot gas.

Bolan shouted through his mask as the gas bloomed around them. “Back to back!”

“Striker!” Kurtzman’s voice rose in urgency. “What is your situation?”

“Bear, I need absolute quiet!”

Makhdoom turned and he and Bolan covered each other while Naqbi collapsed weeping and coughing between them. Bolan flicked on his laser and panned it across his section of the building. Once again he found himself searching for the enemies he couldn’t see.

Makhdoom’s snarl was muffled by his mask. “I see nothing!”

Neither could Bolan, but he knew the enemy was here. He listened for another rustle or scrape or any sound of movement. He particularly listened for the hacking or coughing of an enemy.

Naqbi screamed as Bolan cut loose with his weapon. The weapon shuddered in his hands as he ripped off a 20-round burst in a sweeping arc in front of him. The bullets punched holes in the corrugated sheet metal of the walls and rays of sunlight shone in bright shafts through the thickening gas. Behind him Makhdoom fired off a similar burst. When Naqbi wasn’t hacking and coughing, he was screaming.

“Doom!” Bolan desperately tracked for targets. “Shut him up!”

Makhdoom cut off the hysterics by driving his boot into Naqbi’s ribs.

Bolan stared into the gas. There was nothing he could see, but it was something suddenly missing that caught his eye. The shafts of sunlight came through the bullet holes in the walls and crisscrossed the room like lances of light. It could have been a trick of the conditions, but for a moment there seemed to be a shaft of light that stopped, disappeared and then resumed its course two feet away.

Bolan held his trigger down on full-auto. Flames stuttered from the muzzle of his weapon, spitting bullets in line with the laser sweeping the section of gas. The lines of sunlight broke and resumed diagonally toward the ground.

It was as if the invisible man had fallen.

Bolan tracked his weapon, spewing bullets through the projected path. Makhdoom’s weapon continued to chatter in short, searching bursts. Naqbi’s screaming and choking was suddenly cut off.

Bolan whirled.

The cultist was clutching at his throat and walk-flopping backward in a remarkable fashion across the warehouse. Bolan whipped his laser between Naqbi’s flailing legs and fired off a burst. He suddenly collapsed backward as whatever was holding him up failed.

“Doom!” Bolan shouted. The attack on Naqbi had been bait and Bolan had taken it. “Look out—”

The unseen reached out and seized Bolan by the throat. His carotid arteries were instantly cut off and a hard lump crushed into his larynx. Only Bolan’s body armor kept the massive blow he took to his kidneys from buckling him. Sick weakness washed through Bolan’s arms and legs as he was dragged backward. His arteries and air pipe were relentlessly constricted as he was choked and strangled at the same time. Bolan watched helplessly as Makhdoom’s back arched like a bow and the Pakistani’s weapon fell from his hands as he clawed at his throat. Every instinct in Bolan’s body screamed at him to fight the horrible grip on his throat as it bent him backward.

Instead Bolan let every ounce of his 200-plus pounds go limp. He hung himself as he dropped into the garrote. Something bumped into his back and a thick veil seemed to enfold him. Bolan’s vision narrowed to blackness as he flipped the muzzle of his Bison submachine gun over his shoulder and burned his magazine dry behind him.

The grip on his throat weakened and Bolan ripped at his throat as he heaved himself forward. He dropped his empty weapon and his knife rang from the sheath on his belt. Fabric bunched beneath Bolan’s hand and parted beneath his blade. Bolan sucked breath through the smothering filters of his mask. He couldn’t quite get enough to fill his lungs, but his vision cleared.

In his fist Bolan held a thick gray piece of dully glittering fabric.

Makhdoom’s knees buckled as his body began to fail him. Bolan lunged up and threw himself like an NFL linebacker at the empty space above Makhdoom’s head. His bones jarred as he slammed into what he couldn’t see. Bolan’s vision skewed as he felt something veil him. Whatever it was couldn’t stop the reinforced point of his combat knife. The blade punched into something solid and Bolan’s lips skinned back from his teeth as he recognized the feel of steel grating on ribs. He smelled human sweat and beneath it the sudden stink of pain and fear. Bolan rammed the blade home and ripped it back out, stabbing three more times rapidly. He heard the groan of a wounded man. Bolan raised his knife for the kill.

His vision exploded into blackness lit with pulsing purple pinpricks of light as something struck him in the back of the head.

Bolan rolled with the blow. His vision was tilting crazily, but his battle instincts had been hard won in conflicts on every continent on the planet. He rolled up to one knee and his hand found Makhdoom’s weapon at his feet. He scooped up the automatic and sprayed lead in an arc in front of him. His vision darkened and he nearly buckled as he stood. Bolan shook his head to clear it and took several tottering steps backward. He was rewarded as he bumped against corrugated steel wall.

The warehouse wall had Bolan’s back. His eyes glared out of the lenses of his mask as he swept his muzzle, looking for any sign of the enemy. Makhdoom was a few feet away. His hands were at his throat and his chest was heaving, trying to suck air past his mask and down his traumatized throat, but he was alive. Naqbi lay unmoving a few yards away. His eyes were rolled back in his head and his blackened tongue lolled out of his mouth.

Sunlight was pouring in from the back of the warehouse. The back door had been opened. Bolan fired a burst out the door and whipped his muzzle back to cover the rest of the room. The enemy had extracted. Bolan scanned the room again. He didn’t believe the enemy had brought gas masks. Anyone in the room would now be weeping and choking. Bolan made a fist around the piece of fabric in his left hand.

Even if they were thickly veiled by something, they would be affected by the gas by now.

“Doom!” Bolan shouted. “Can you hear me?”

The Pakistani captain pushed himself up painfully. His choking and gagging was plain to hear, but his masked head nodded. He crawled across the floor a few feet and scooped up Bolan’s weapon. He unhooked the spent drum and slid in a fresh one from under his jacket. He also picked up Bolan’s fallen knife. The soldier covered Makhdoom as he tottered over and sagged against the wall. The two men kept their weapons aimed into the billowing gas.

“Atta—” Makhdoom’s voice was a rasp “—appears to be dead.”

“Yeah,” Bolan wheezed.

“But we have learned something.”

“Oh?”

“Yes.” Makhdoom nodded. “Our enemies are not djinn.”

Bolan managed a wry smile beneath his mask. “You’re sure about that?”

“Yes.” He held up Bolan’s knife. The shallow curve of the Japanese-style fighting knife was stained to the hilt. The Pakistani’s red eyes glittered beneath his mask. “Djinns do not bleed.”

CHAPTER SIX

Islamabad

“You gave him a gun!” General Iskander Hussain’s voice rose into a scream. He may have been named after Alexander the Great, but the incredibly short, fat, little man in front of Bolan and Makhdoom didn’t meet the mark. When he stood up from his desk, he hardly seemed to have stood at all. He was capable of expanding in the horizontal plane. Hussain seemed to literally inflate with rage. Bolan thought he might burst the seams of his uniform, if he didn’t burst a blood vessel first. He screamed in English for Bolan’s benefit.

Makhdoom stood at ramrod-stiff attention. “Yes, General!”

“You took him to the Al-Nouri weapons site! You took him along on an unauthorized raid into Rawalpindi! You equipped him with automatic weapons and unauthorized war gas! An American saboteur and a spy!”

“A Pakistani ally, involved in a sensitive operation of mutual concern—”

“You gave him a gun!” Hussain’s rage went apoplectic. “Did it not occur to you he could escape! Idiot!”

“Indeed, General, I did give him weapons. It was he who generated the leads we have found so far. The act of arming him saved my life and the lives of my men. I do not regret—”