Lethal Tribute

The soldier racked the bolt of his rifle and stepped over the men he had taken out of play.

Makhdoom’s house was very typical of the Middle East and East Asia. The front of the house was a nearly blank wall except for a door and very narrow upstairs windows. Beyond the interior living space was a walled courtyard in back.

A man sat straddling the wall shouting into a cell phone and waving a machine gun.

“Igor! Igor!” the man shouted.

Bolan raised an eyebrow.

Igor.

That wasn’t a typical Pakistani name. Bolan sighted and shot the man through the leg he had thrown over the wall. The assassin howled, clutched his shattered thigh and toppled forward into a rosebush.

Upstairs a shotgun boomed.

The fallen assassin was thrashing and howling in the rose thorns. Bolan shot him through the other leg. The man screamed as Bolan slung his rifle and picked up a pair of the fallen weapons of the men clogging the kitchen doorway. The weapons were Kiparis submachine guns. Bolan flicked their selectors to full auto. The man thrashing along the garden wall looked up and screamed as Bolan charged him with a weapon in either hand.

The man shrieked as the soldier vaulted him. Bolan dropped the commandeered weapons on their slings and caught the wall as he leaped. He swung his leg over the top and dropped to the street below.

Bolan ran down the back alley and rounded the corner of Makhdoom’s house. A black Landrover was parked on the street with a man waiting behind the wheel. In one hand he held a cell phone into which he was talking rapidly. The other held a silenced handgun. He was craned around in his seat, and his attention was fixed on the front door of Makhdoom’s residence and the pitched gun battle going on there. He caught sight of Bolan in the corner of his eye and whipped back around.

Bolan raised both machine pistols and held down his triggers. The windshield of the Landrover went opaque with bullets and then splashed red from the arterial spray within. Three men were in the doorway of Doom’s house. A fourth lay dead on the stoop. They were spraying their weapons like firehoses into the house. Bolan raised his left-hand weapon and burned the rest of his magazine into the back of the rearmost assassin. Bolan dropped the spent machine pistol and raised the weapon in his right hand. One of the remaining killers spun, and Bolan walked a burst up from his belt buckle to his brain.

The fourth man leaped into the house as Bolan tracked his weapon on him. Makhdoom’s rifle thundered within, and the man staggered backward out the door again clutching his chest. Doom’s weapon boomed a second time and the killer was smashed off his feet and sprawled in the gutter.

Bolan scanned the street and the rooftops opposite Makhdoom’s house. People were shouting and screaming in the neighboring houses. But nothing appeared to be moving on the street.

It was what Bolan could not see that made him wary.

Bolan approached the Captain’s door obliquely. “Doom!”

“I hear you!”

“You all right?”

“I am!” shouted back the Captain. “You?”

“The street is clear! I’m coming in the front door!”

“Come ahead!”

Bolan stepped across half a dozen dead bodies as he entered the house and entered the living room. The interior of the house was littered with corpses. Most had one or two high-powered rifle bullet wounds in their chests. One lay spread-eagled further in by the foot of the stairs. A shotgun blast had left his head and shoulders in ruins.

“Everyone all right?”

Makhdoom came out from the hallway. “Kaukab!”

The young man’s voice came from the top of the stairs. “We are all right, father!”

“Stay where you are! Do not move from your post until I tell you!”

“Yes, father!”

Makhdoom stared around his bullet-riddled home. “Do you think the unseen ones come?”

Bolan looked around the living room. His eyes fell upon the low table where he had set his teacup. It was also where he had left the length of strange fabric he had cut from his own throat in the warehouse in Rawalpindi.

The fabric was gone.

“They were here, and they’ve left. They took what they came for.”

Makhdoom straightened in shock. “The fabric! You left it out where they could find it!”

“I did.” Bolan nodded. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a three-inch length he had cut from it. “But not all of it.”

“But did they not also come for our lives?”

“That was what the muscle was for. I remember reading in the intelligence report on the Thugs that their religion forbids them to shed blood except in certain ritual circumstances. The goons were for us. But the Thuggees came for the evidence.

Makhdoom’s smile turned feral. “So, they think they have what they came for.”

“Yeah, and I need to get this to my people in the United States ASAP, and without General Hussain knowing about it.”

“That I can arrange.” Makhdoom glanced around again. The corpses piled around his house were just that, corpses. “But it appears we are without leads once more.”

Mujhid’s voice shouted excitedly from upstairs. “Father! There is a man! Thrashing about in mother’s roses!”

“You saved one,” smiled Doom.

“I figured we’d give him to Hussain.” Bolan shrugged. “We have to let the General do something.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

General Fareed’s office

“I understand there was an altercation in your home, Captain.”

“Yes, General.” Makhdoom nodded. “But it was prosecuted to a fruitful conclusion.”

“Yes, very well and good, and congratulations on taking a prisoner.” The General smiled unpleasantly. Along with performing the function as military yes-man for whoever might be occupying the presidency of Pakistan, Hussain was also firmly entrenched in the highest echelons of Pakistani secret police. The prisoner’s two shattered thighs had probably been the least of his discomforts during the night. Hussain’s smile went smug as he regarded Bolan. “Our guest was correct. The weapons used on the attack on your residence were Kiparis OTS-02 submachine guns.” Hussain paused dramatically. “Of Kazakstani origin.”

Bolan met Hussain’s smile. “And your prisoner?”

Hussain glowed with self-satisfaction. “He is of Kazakstani origin as well, as were most of the confederates, as far as we can tell. His name is Yusef Zagari, a gangster involved trafficking heroin from the poppy fields in Afghanistan and Pakistan that flow into the former Soviet Republics and Russia.”

Bolan nodded. “He’s muscle.”

“Yes.” Hussain savored the English slang. “Yusef is drug muscle. It is my belief he and his men are mercenaries, hired by our enemies.”