Nuclear Reaction

“Have you a plan?” he asked, embarrassed by his own impatience, even as he spoke.

“I need to know the details of your problem, first,” Bolan replied. “My briefing on the other side was pretty…general, let’s say.”

“Of course.” Pahlavi nodded. “I apologize. You see, my sister—”

The Executioner had already seen the military vehicles approaching from the opposite direction. He could hardly miss the driver of the lead vehicle slowing to stare at them, while one of his companions leaned in from the back seat, mouthing orders that he couldn’t hear.

“That’s trouble,” Bolan said, as they rolled past the two jeeps and the open truck behind them, filled with riflemen in uniform.

“It is,” Pahlavi agreed, turning in his seat to track the small convoy. He was in time to see the lead jeep make a U-turn in the middle of the two-lane highway, doubling back to follow them.

“I make it six or eight to one,” Bolan remarked. “Smart money says we run.”

“Agreed.”

Bolan floored the accelerator, surging forward with a snarl from underneath the Land Rover’s hood. “All right,” he said. “This is the part where you’re supposed to navigate.”

2

Lieutenant Sachi Chandaka was often bored on daylight patrol. Encounters with bandits were rare, since the scum did their best to avoid meeting troops or police, and the most he usually expected from an outing in the countryside was some sparse evidence of crimes committed overnight by persons he would never glimpse, much less identify or capture. He supposed some criminals transacted business when the sun was high and scorching hot, but most of them dressed in expensive suits and had plush offices, where they sipped coffee and decided the fate of peasants like himself.

The fact that he was often bored did not mean the lieutenant’s wits had atrophied, however. On the contrary, his eyes were keen and he could feel malice radiating from an undesirable at thirty paces. More than once, while working in plain clothes or killing time off duty, he had startled his companions by selecting sneak thieves from a market crowd, all ordinary-looking men, then watched and waited while the petty predators moved in to make their snatch.

Perhaps it was a gift. Chandaka couldn’t say and didn’t really care, as long as he could work that magic when he needed it the most.

From half a mile away, he’d seen the two vehicles standing at the rest stop, on the south side of the highway. At a quarter mile, he’d counted four men idling by the cars, presumably engrossed in conversation. By the time his small convoy rolled past, the men were back in their cars, two passengers in each. Even someone as dull-witted as his driver, Sergeant Lahti, had to have known that they were criminals.

It wasn’t so much what the four men did, as what they didn’t do. It was unnatural for anyone surrounded by vast tracts of nothingness to keep his eyes averted as a military convoy rumbled past, almost within arm’s reach. And yet, among the four men in the two vehicles, only the driver of the lead car even glanced across the pavement at Chandaka’s jeep.

One man—and he was not Pakistani.

European, possibly. Perhaps Australian or American. In any case, Chandaka meant to find out who the four men were, what business brought them to the highway rest stop outside Bela in the middle of the afternoon, and why three of them were determined not to let him see their eyes.

“Turn back!” he snapped at Lahti. “Follow them!”

“Follow?” The concept didn’t seem to register.

“Yes, Lahti. Turn the steering wheel. Reverse direction. Follow them!”

“Yes, sir!”

Once Lahti understood an order, he would do as he was told. It would not cross his mind to question a superior. Lahti had found his niche in life, performing simple tasks by rote, relieved that someone else was always close at hand to tell him what came next.

Chandaka braced a hand against the jeep’s dashboard, as Lahti powered through a sharp U-turn. He saw the startled visage of the corporal who drove the second jeep in line. Chandaka pointed after the westbound vehicles, and shouted, “Follow them!”

There was no time to clarify the order. Lahti stood on the accelerator. Something rattled loosely, underneath the jeep’s drab hood, then power surged and they started gaining ground on the retreating vehicles.

Chandaka wished he had a rifleman beside him, but if it came to shooting on the highway, he would simply have to do the job himself. He had a Spanish CETME Model 58 assault rifle propped upright in the narrow space between his knees, butt on the floorboard, and now he hefted it, getting its feel.

He’d never shot a man before, or even shot at one, but training made the difference. When the time came, if it came, Chandaka knew that he would be prepared and would perform as his superiors expected. He was not afraid. Indeed, the feeling he experienced was closer to elation.

At long last, it appeared something was happening.

Lahti was bearing down, gaining ground, but the lieutenant felt obliged to chide him for the sake of feeling in control, being a part of it. “Don’t let them get away,” he ordered.

“No, sir!”

If Lahti took offense, it didn’t show.

The two cars were within one hundred yards, and the gap was narrowing. The army jeeps weren’t much to look at, but they had surprising power. No auto manufactured in the country could outrun them, and among the foreign imports, only certain sports cars or a Mercedes-Benz would leave them in the dust.

If that began to happen, Chandaka was prepared to win the race another way. He gripped his rifle tightly, drew the bolt back and released it, chambering a round. He did not set the safety.

They were already too close for that.

“Faster!” he urged, leaning forward in his seat, straining at the shoulder harness.

“Yes, sir!” the sergeant replied.

Sixty yards. Soon, Chandaka would be able to make out the license number of the second car. At that point, he’d decided he would radio headquarters and report himself in hot pursuit—something he should’ve done already if he had been going strictly by the book. Someone’s secretary could then begin to trace the license and find out who the rabbits were, or more likely come back with the news that he was following a stolen car.

“Get up there, Lahti, so that I can read the license plate!”

“Yes, sir!”

Lahti leaned forward, as if it would help them gain more speed. Chandaka almost smiled at that, but it was frozen on his face as someone in the car ahead of them began firing a submachine gun through its broad rear window, spraying bullets toward Chandaka’s jeep.

THE BLAST OF AUTOMATIC fire surprised Adi Lusila, nearly made him swerve the car into a roadside ditch. One moment, he was concentrating on the highway and Pahlavi in the car ahead of him, trying his best to leave the soldiers in his wake, and then Sanjiv Dushkriti blew the damned back window out, turning the car’s interior into a roaring wind tunnel.

Lusila shouted at Dushkriti. “What possessed you?”

“A great desire to stay alive,” Dushkriti answered, then craned back across his seat to fire another short burst from his L-2 A-3 Sterling submachine gun. One hot cartridge stung Lusila’s ear, then fell into his lap.

“Take care with that!”

“It’s no good from here,” Dushkriti said, by way of an apology, and turned to scramble awkwardly between their seats, climbing into the back. One of his boots glanced off the gearshift as he made the move. Lusila cursed at the grating sound it made.

The grating sound was followed by a loud clang.

“We’re hit,” Dushkriti said, and sounded almost pleased about it. “Do not worry, Adi.”

Idiot, Lusila thought. They were pursued by soldiers, with a foreign stranger driving Darius ahead of them, and now Dushkriti had provoked a running battle that would likely get them killed.

“Don’t worry?” Lusila said with a sneer.

A sudden laugh surprised him, coming out of nowhere and erupting from his throat. He was hysterical. It was the only diagnosis that made any sense at all. If he pulled over now, right where he was, perhaps there was a chance that he could plead insanity. Laugh all the way to jail and through his trial, praying to land in an asylum, rather than a basement torture cell or execution chamber.

Not a chance, Lusila thought.