Killing Ground

Chapter 24

1

Safed Koh Range, Afghanistan-Pakistan Border

Fifty miles southeast of the Afghanistan capital of Kabul, Mack Bolan steeled himself against the harsh, cold wind that swept up through the moonlit mountains, stirring a clot of low-hanging clouds that partially obscured the steep, jagged slopes stretching before him. He was nearly ten thousand feet above sea level, positioned along a battle-scarred ridgeline just below the highest peak in this stretch of the Hindu Kush, lying prone on a bed of pine needles. Under better conditions, he would have had a clear view of the trails below, along which, according to all available intel, Taliban forces would most likely attempt to slip into the country from covert bases in the tribal lands of neighboring Pakistan.

The intermittent cloud cover made this an ideal night for the terrorists to make their move. To tempt them farther into the open, an attractive bait had been set two miles to the north, atop a plateau several thousand feet below where Bolan held his vigil. There, U.S. and NATO forces had begun to erect a new base for their joint military operations. It was a familiar modus operandi for the Taliban to take advantage of such situations, staging predawn raids in hopes of capitalizing on uncompleted fortifications manned by security personnel not yet acclimated to their new surroundings.

In this case, however, the half-built site was merely a red herring. Once the Taliban crossed the border and closed in on its target, their advance would bring them into the crosshairs of a half-dozen Special Ops teams lying in wait at key points along every known access route. Bolan was one of those who would likely sound the first alarm. If he had his way, by the time the ambush was underway, he would have already made his way downhill to lend a hand in helping crush those from whose ranks America had been subjected to the moment of infamy now known, with grim simplicity, as 9/11. Granted, it would take more than one such victory to eradicate the black-turbanned sect once and for all, but after weeks of making little headway against the terrorists, both U.S. and NATO forces were anxious to boost their morale and at least match the recent success of their host confederates, the Afghan National Army.

The Executioner had come to Afghanistan intent on a solo mission against the Taliban, but once apprised of plans for the ambush—which Pentagon spin doctors had optimistically christened Operation Rat Trap—Bolan had quickly realized that prowling alone through the mountains would more likely draw friendly fire from the commando squads than bring him face-to-face with the enemy. He’d grudgingly allowed himself to be thrown into the established mix, and when he’d set out for his lofty surveillance post, it had been in the company of a recon specialist from the Army’s 25th Infantry Division deployed at Bagram Air Base.

The man at his side, as the stakeout dragged into its third hour, was Captain Howard “Howitzer” O’Brien, a beefy, gray-haired veteran halfway through his third tour of duty in Afghanistan. Prior to that, the Cleveland native had served in the Gulf War, and his cumulative experience had brought with it a hardened cynicism surpassed only by the officer’s apparently incessant need to vent his notions as to how the U.S. military brain trust had mismanaged both conflicts.

“Y’know, if we’d done things right from the get-go, we wouldn’t be stuck here doing this kinda shit,” O’Brien murmured as he, like Bolan, peered downhill through night-vision goggles that, for the moment, did little more than deflect grains of sand periodically whipped up by the late-October winds.

“Back in ’91 we had Hussein and his fucking Imperial Army dead to rights,” he went on. “All we had to do was march into Baghdad and finish the job. But what do we do instead? We call it quits and head home so those scumbags can regroup and pick up where they left off. Real smart, huh?”

It was an old argument, one Bolan had tired of the first few dozen times he’d heard it. When he didn’t respond, however, O’Brien took it as a cue to forge on.

“Then, boom, ten years later we blow in here to Binladenstan looking to kick some Taliban ass for 9/11. We rout ’em out of Kabul and have ’em right where we want ’em—running scared up here into the mountains. But do we finish the job? Hell no. Instead we get ourselves sidetracked going back after Hussein. By the time we yank him out of his hidey-hole and see that he gets a necktie party, these dipshits have retrenched themselves so we gotta come back and start from square one again. You see a pattern here?”

Bolan wasn’t about to let himself be dragged into the officer’s diatribe. He kept his eyes trained on the mountains below, looking for signs of movement through the shifting clouds. The only visible stirring was a gentle rippling on the surface of a small glimmering mountain lake situated at the base of a steep slope extending downward from his position. There’d been a time when the entire length of the slope had been a sheer, vertical wall of solid rock, but years of bombing, first by the Soviets and then the U.S., had pulverized sections of the precipice, turning them into collapsed mounds of loose rock and gravel. The ripples were caused by the occasional plop of small stones pulled down into the lake by gravity.

“What, you think I’m exaggerating?” O’Brien taunted. “Or maybe you think Washington knows what they’re doing and aren’t just dicking around for votes and kickbacks from whoever’s making the money off this fiasco. Is that it?”

Bolan remained silent. Much as O’Brien’s diatribe rankled him, it also took him back to a time when he’d taken issue with his government to the point where he’d gone rogue. It had been a dark period in his life, and though the wounds had healed, the scars remained.

O’Brien broke the silence.

“You know I’m right,” he said.

Bolan felt his patience wearing thin. He also sensed that O’Brien wasn’t about to let up until he got some kind of response out of the man he knew only as Special Agent Cooper—one of several code names the Executioner used to safeguard his identity as well as that of the covert agency he worked for.

Finally Bolan turned to the captain and raised his goggles long enough to level the officer with a cold look.

“I like politicians about as much as I do hindsight,” he replied tersely.

O’Brien stared back into his cohort’s withering blue eyes and chortled, then flashed a begrudging smirk.

“Touché,” he said. “Okay, okay, memo received. I’ll shut up.”

Given that the officer had been ranting almost nonstop since they’d set out from the makeshift base camp shortly after nightfall, Bolan doubted O’Brien would keep quiet. On the bright side, after glancing along the ridgeline that tapered away to their right, the recon officer finally told Bolan something he didn’t mind hearing.

“I’m gonna contact the other teams to see if they’ve spotted anything,” the captain said, rising to a crouch. He reached to his thigh and pulled a checkbook-size Jorson 278 microcomputer from his cargo pocket. “I’ll duck in the bushes to shield the LCD.”

“Good idea.”

O’Brien snickered again, gathering up his M-16. “Just don’t rat me out as a hothead when you report back to CIA or whoever the hell it is you’re working for,” he said. “I’ve got a pension waiting for me at the end of this, and I don’t want it mucked up.”

“Deal,” Bolan promised as he lowered his goggles.

O’Brien hunched low and headed off toward a cluster of overgrown hawthorn shrubs farther down the ridgeline, his thick-soled boots crunching on loose gravel. Clouds spilled up over the crest and within a matter of seconds the officer had vanished into their ethereal mist. Grateful for a moment’s silence, Bolan turned from O’Brien’s location and peered through high-powered binoculars at a patch of mountainside near the lake that had been laid clear by the moving clouds. He was focusing on a narrow ribbon of switchbacks when the night air resounded with a sudden blast, followed quickly by a curdling howl.

O’Brien.

Bolan was quick to his feet, forsaking the binoculars in favor of his Army-issued carbine. He raced down the ridgeline, careful to follow the same route O’Brien had taken. He had a hunch as to what had just happened, and when he came upon the writhing officer, his suspicions were borne out. O’Brien’s right leg had been severed just below the knee and blood spurted from the mangled stump into a fresh, shallow crater gouged out of the soil.

“Land mine,” the officer moaned weakly.

Bolan shed his goggles and reached for the obliterated mess that had once been O’Brien’s right calf. He tugged free the largest available scrap of torn pant leg and pressed it against the officer’s wound, hoping to staunch the blood flow.

“Try to stay put,” Bolan advised. Blood seeped through the compress, warming his fingers.

“Looks like I get that pension sooner than I thought,” O’Brien whispered hoarsely. His ruddy complexion had turned ashen, and he began to shiver. Bolan knew the man was going into shock. He shifted his grip and cupped the severed stump with one hand, freeing the other to reach for the microcomputer O’Brien had dropped. The device had a built-in walkie-talkie, and Bolan knew the captain’s only chance would be a medevac airlift back to the base.

Before Bolan could put out a distress call, a faint popping sounded from atop the peak behind him, followed by an ominous whooosh and the harsh glare of two igniting flares. The clouds turned a bright shade of ochre that illuminated the ridgeline, exposing Bolan and O’Brien. A second later, sniper fire began to chew at the earth around them.

“Go!” O’Brien feebly reached for the compress and pushed Bolan away. “Now!”

The flares touched down, landing close enough that their sparks made the Americans an even clearer target. Two more rounds rained down on Bolan and O’Brien. One glanced off the Executioner’s M-16 mere inches from his trigger finger. The other tore through O’Brien’s neck, just above his flak jacket. The recon officer went limp, blood spurting from a severed artery.

Given the trajectory, Bolan knew the shots were coming from the distant peak behind him, well beyond range of his assault rifle. It also seemed a safe bet that there were at least two snipers.

Bolan had to make a quick decision. Staying at O’Brien’s side meant certain death, but venturing any farther along the ridgeline would only court the chance he’d trip another land mine. That left one option.

Bolan took it.

2

Casting aside the microcomputer, Bolan dived sharply to his left, then rolled on his side until he reached the point where the ridgeline gave way to the steep-pitched incline. He’d abandoned his carbine, as well, leaving both hands free as he went over the side. The dying flares cast light on a few likely footholds and Bolan put them to quick use, lowering himself enough that the next sniper rounds skimmed off the crest and caromed far above his head. O’Brien remained an open target, and as shots continued to rain down, Bolan suspected the assailants were ensuring that the recon officer had joined the ever-growing list of U.S. fatalities in the prolonged Afghan conflict.

Bolan considered his next move. Off to his right, just beyond reach, a young, hearty spruce jutted through a seam in the precipice. The Executioner looked for a way to inch within reach, but there was nothing between him and the tree but a bald expanse of sheer granite. For that matter, all around him there was little more in the way of footholds, and directly below it was a forty-foot drop to a boulder-strewed stretch of land separating the cliff from the small lake. Bolan realized he’d reached a dead end.

Eventually the flares were spent and darkness once again settled over the mountains. The sniper fire trailed off as the clouds fell back on themselves and wisped past Bolan, increasing his cover. He stayed put but shifted his weight until he felt secure enough to free his right hand. Unsnapping the clasp on his web holster, the Executioner unsheathed a 9 mm Beretta. Much as he loathed fighting battles on the defensive, there was little for him to do now but wait for the enemy to come to him. He stayed put, forcing himself to remain patient.

Bolan’s eyes had readjusted to the darkness when a gust of wind swept across the ridgeline, stirring up loose dirt and showering it down on him. Forced to avert his gaze, the Executioner turned his head and glanced downward. Doing so, he caught a fortuitous glimpse of activity thirty yards past the rubble heap trailing down into the lake. Three men armed with assault rifles were stealing their way up the winding trail by which O’Brien and the Executioner had reached the ridgeline. Their backs were to Bolan, but he knew they had to be Taliban.

The Executioner slowly torqued his body to give him more range with the Beretta. When one of the footholds gave way under his shifting weight, Bolan scrambled to keep his balance. Dislodged bits of rock clattered down the facing and thunked ominously off the larger rocks below.

The gunmen down on the trail were about to make their way around a bend that would have carried them out of view when the last man in the column stopped and glanced over his shoulder, raised his AK-47 and shouted to the men in front of him. Bolan didn’t need a translator to realize he’d been spotted.

The Executioner had secured himself enough that he was able to unleash a 3-round burst before the other man could fire. The shots were hurried, but one of them struck home and his would-be assailant crumpled to his knees, carbine slipping from his lifeless fingers. When the next closest Taliban dropped to a crouch and drew a bead on Bolan, the Executioner fired again. There were no kill shots this time, but he drew blood and the other man wailed as he staggered backward. The third gunman reached out and quickly pulled his colleague to cover behind an escarpment buttressing the bend in the trail.

Overhead, far up near the top of the peak from which the original shots had been fired, Bolan heard more muffled shouts, followed by the rattle of falling stones he’d been listening for earlier. At least one of the snipers was coming down after him. When the clamor grew louder and small rocks began to tumble over the edge of the ridgeline, Bolan figured the attacker had bypassed trails and was sliding down the loose bed of choss. If that was the case, he’d reach the ridgeline in a matter of seconds.

The Executioner hadn’t emptied his Beretta, but he quickly swapped out the semiautomatic’s half-spent magazine for a fresh one, certain he’d need all the firepower he could muster should he find himself locked in a cross fire. If it came to that, he knew his chances were slim. The clouds had moved on, leaving him splayed against the rock, every bit as vulnerable a target as O’Brien had been after the land mine had taken him down.