Assassin's Code

Bolan turned to Ous. “You have stairs that lead to the roof inside?”

“I do.”

Bolan took out a padded grapnel and coil of rope from his pack. “Cover me. Come quickly when I give you the signal.”

“Indeed.”

The house was the usual Central Asian structure, a hollow cube with a courtyard inside. In Ous’s case it was a cube with smaller cubes attached as outbuildings. Bolan ran across the dead ground waiting for the weapons in hiding to open up, but made it to the side of the house unscathed. Bolan tossed the foam-covered grapnel up and over the roof. The rasp of the rope on the side of the house was louder than its landing. Bolan slowly pulled up the slack and the rope went taut. The grapnel stood horizontal with two tines firmly hooped over the ceiling ledge. Bolan moved up the rope with an alacrity and precision that U.S. Army Rangers, Navy SEALs and Spider-Man would have admired. He motioned Ous to come ahead and the guerrilla fighter moved with impressive silence across the open ground. Bolan peered down into the inner courtyard. Below were the usual fountain, some potted trees and benches. On the other side of the roof Ous had a satellite dish. The tinkling of the fountain competed with the wind in the orchard for the only sounds.

The silence broke as the trapdoor to the roof opened. The intruder wore a turban wound to conceal his face like a desert wanderer. The stock of his AK was folded, and the weapon was slung as he clambered up the roof ladder.

The hatch opened to look upon the road from town rather than toward the orchards behind. Bolan took up the grapnel in one hand and the rope in the other as the sentry stepped onto the roof and peered west. Bolan gave the rope a single gyration like a man tossing a lasso and hurled the grapnel. The rope bent around the man’s neck, and the soldier heaved back with all of his strength. The tine croquette hooked the sentry’s throat. The veiled man gagged and clutched at the unyielding steel as Bolan reeled him in. The Executioner drove a knee into the sentry’s kidney to still his struggles and tossed him off the roof by the iron around his throat.

The sentry made a low thudding noise as he hit the ground two stories below. Bolan heard a single chuff and click as Ous’s sound-suppressed weapon fired once and the action cycled. A moment later the grapnel sailed up again. Bolan caught it and secured it to the roof. Ous scrambled up and the two warriors crouched by the open roof hatch, listening. From within the house a woman sobbed.

Bolan’s slammed his hand down on Ous’s shoulder. “Wait.”

A blow cut off the sob. Ous went rigid beneath Bolan’s hand. A sneering voice called out from below and then laughed.

“What did he say?” Bolan asked.

Ous’s voice was tightly controlled. “From what I can gather, the man you hurled from the roof is named Mehtar. The man below taunts Mehtar, telling him he is a prude, and that he hopes Mehtar enjoys masturbating upon my roof alone while he himself avails himself of the pleasures of my virgin daughter.”

“You want to take point?”

“I do.”

They pushed up their night-vision goggles, and Bolan took Ous’s six as he descended into his home and beelined down a hallway. Their boots made no sound on the Persian carpet. The two men stopped at an open door. Ous’s daughter, Afshan, cringed in a corner with one of her cheeks swollen. One of the veiled men crouched next to her. The teenager cried and flinched as the man ran his fingers through her lustrous dark hair. His other hand held a knife to the girl’s throat as he whispered ugly, cooing endearments in a guttural voice. He had but one moment to widen his eyes in horror as Omar Ous filled the door to his daughter’s bedroom.

Ous burned his entire magazine into the offender.

At that range the sound of the bullets striking flesh and clothing was louder than the coughing and clicking of the silenced weapon. The silenced MP-5 cycled like a sewing machine knitting living flesh. Spent brass fell to the thick carpet. The veiled man shuddered and shook as he took twenty-nine rounds in the chest. Ous’s weapon clicked open on empty, and smoke oozed from the muzzle of the suppressor as he reloaded. He arched one eyebrow at his daughter in a question and she shook her head. Ous nodded once. His daughter nodded back and took the dead man’s pistol from his sash.

Ous spoke very quietly. “This man with me is a friend. We will speak English for his benefit.”

Afshan nodded.

“Where is your mother?” Ous asked.

“Downstairs.”

“Where is your little brother?”

“Downstairs. They beat him and tied him up when he resisted,” Afshan replied.

“Where is your grandmother?”

Afshan’s eyes filled with fresh tears. “She stabbed one of the bad men. They shot her.”

“Where are the servants?”

“They shot them and put their bodies in the stable.”

“Where are my hounds?”

“They shot them, too, Father.”

A mighty scowl passed across Ous’s face. “I see.”

Bolan knelt beside the girl. “How many are they?”

“Twelve or so took the house, I think. Then perhaps half of them left.”

“Are they local?” Bolan asked.

Afshan blinked.

“Ah.” Ous nodded and put a hand on his daughter’s shoulder. “Were they men of Kunduz? Did they speak Tajik? Pashto or Dari Persian?”

“They spoke Arabic among themselves. I believe the men who stayed are southerners. The men who left were foreigners. Forgive me, but from where, I do not know.”

“At least six were left upon the premises,” Ous surmised.

“And between us we’ve taken two.”

Ous rose. “Stay here, little rose.”

Afshan clutched at her father and shook her head. Bolan caught her gaze and held it. “Your father and I are going to fetch your mother and your little brother. I want you to go up on the roof. Take the pistol. If we fail, shoot anyone who comes up the hatch. No matter what happens, in half an hour American soldiers will come, but do not let anyone up unless they say ‘Rambo.’ Do you understand?”

The barest hint of a smile tried to quirk one corner of Afshan’s mouth. “The password is Rambo.”

“Good, now obey your father. Go.”

The Russian-made Gyruza pistol was huge in the girl’s tiny hands as she ran in a whirl of skirts for the roof ladder. Ous’s eyes glimmered. “She is a good girl.”

“An honor to her family,” Bolan agreed.

“What is the plan?”

“We rescue your wife and son,” the soldier replied.

“Do you wish prisoners?”

“Not at your family’s expense.”

“Very good.”

“Half of the raid team left and they haven’t posted any sentries,” Bolan said. “I think they’re waiting for the phone call that I’m dead and you’re dead or captured. If they do have any sentries, they’re down in the village watching the road.”

“An intelligent assessment, I agree.”

“Where would they most likely be in the house on a low state of alert?” Bolan asked.

“If they are like this one—” Ous gestured at the riddled corpse “—and seek diversions? Most likely in my parlor. It has a television and opens into the kitchen.”

“By all means, Ous, show me to your parlor.”

Bolan followed the man downstairs and into the darkened courtyard. They walked across it and glanced through the window into the kitchen. The light was on, and in the summer night the kitchen window was open. Bolan could see where Ous’s daughter got her good looks. Mrs. Ous was stirring something on the stove with a very unhappy look on her face. One of the veiled man sat at the kitchen table. He had uncovered his mouth and busily shoved down yellow rice with raisins and peas with his fingers. From somewhere out of sight Bolan could hear Bollywood-style music playing.

The soldier put a single silenced bullet through the eye slit of the eater’s veil.

Mrs. Ous didn’t notice. She only turned at the sound of the man slumping with his face in his bowl. In an incredible show of calm she walked over to the slumped man, lifted his head by his turban and noted the copious blood flooding into his food. She lowered his head back down and walked to the kitchen window. Ous spoke in English. “Wife, where is our son?”

“Husband, our son is in the parlor with the intruders, to make sure I do not attempt anything with a kitchen knife as my mother did.” Her fists clenched. “Two men are upstairs with our daughter.”

“Our daughter is safe. We have killed the two men upstairs. How many remain here below?”

“Three.”

“They are all in the parlor?”

“Watching television.”

“Let us in.”

Mrs. Ous disappeared and a door to the patio opened. Bolan followed Ous through a laundry room and into the kitchen, which opened into a Western style dining room. The dining room led to a capacious parlor. A series of sofas formed a U shape facing a large-screen TV. Three of the veiled men sat around the sofas watching a Bollywood song-and-dance number on the television with great interest. Ous’s son lay on the floor hog-tied and gagged. One of the intruders was using him for an ottoman.

“Leave the one in the middle,” Bolan whispered.

The Executioner and Ous gunned down the two men on the flanking couches. The last intruder stared up their smoking suppressor tubes and made a small unhappy sound.

“Take your feet off my son before I cut them off.”

The man obeyed and Ous nodded at Bolan. “This one speaks English.”

Ous kept the intruder covered while Bolan cut the boy free, then gave the twelve-year-old a hand up. “Esfandyar, I am a friend of your father’s.”

The young man rubbed his wrists. “I am very pleased to meet you, sir.”

“My son,” Ous said, “your mother is in the kitchen. I wish you to take her upstairs. Go to the roof, where you shall knock and say ‘Rambo’ lest your sister shoot you.”

“Yes, Father.” Esfandyar looked around at the carnage. “And you?”

The old warrior’s eyes bored into the surviving intruder. “Our friend and I wish to speak with this man.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

Ustad Ghulz was a very unhappy man. The United States Marines had come to Omar Ous’s house, rescued his family and removed the dead. Ghulz had been taken from the parlor, bound hand and foot and thrown into the cellar until the Marines had left. He now sat tied to a chair beneath the glare of the cellar’s single bare bulb. Ghulz was a fountain of useless information. He had been a hired thug most of his life. He had worked for the opium lords as a gunman and leg-breaker. When the Taliban had taken over, he had adopted the black turban and shot people and broken legs for the Taliban drug lords with fanatic zeal. When the Taliban had been driven out of the north, he had taken off his turban and shot people and broken legs for the new drug lords. Ustad Ghulz was a man who had found his niche.

Now he found himself tied to a chair in the cellar of Omar Ous, the Lion of Kunduz.

Ghulz shook like a leaf.

“Powerful men” whom he couldn’t readily identify had hired Ustad and half a dozen like-minded souls. These powerful men claimed to have the Lion of Kunduz on a leash. Another half dozen men who remained veiled joined them. Other than that, they were foreign and scared him. Ghulz had no idea who they were.

“Did they act like soldiers?” Bolan tried.

“Yes!” Ghulz leaped at the question like a lifeline. “Very much like soldiers!”

“They spoke Arabic?”

“Yes! I was asked if I spoke it before I was hired! It was the tongue in which they gave us orders! But among themselves they spoke some foreign tongue!”

Ous drew the sinuously curving Pesh Kabz he had found on his pillow just twenty-four hours earlier. Ghulz flinched as Ous pointed the blade at him. “Do you know what this is, dog?”

Ghulz leaned back in his chair and gazed at Ous as if expecting a lethal trick question. “A…dagger?” he ventured.

Ous rolled his eyes and replaced the blade in his sash. Ghulz had no idea what the weapon represented. Bolan continued on the “good Cop” line. “So the strangers left some hours after the house and Mr. Ous’s family were secured?”

“Yes!”

“And you were to wait?”

“Yes! I was to receive a phone call, that the American was dead.”

Ghulz flinched as Bolan’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

“After that we were to finish off…” Ghulz’s voice trailed off in terror beneath Ous’s unforgiving glare.

“So we gather,” Bolan said. “You weren’t supposed to contact anyone?”

“Only…if something went wrong.”

Bolan had Ghulz’s cell. He considered the timetable and what the contact number in Ghulz’s phone might be worth. He took out his own phone and connected to Ghulz’s while Ous watched with interest. Bolan downloaded everything in the phone’s memory, but there wasn’t much. The security software in Bolan’s special-issue phone detected no viruses or subroutines. In fact, the entire memory of the phone issued to Ghulz was the single number he was to call in an emergency. The phone had never made or received a call, text, email or image. If it had, the data had been wiped clean by a professional. “If you called, what was the code word?”

Ghulz swallowed. “I was to ask, is the lion free?”

“And then?” Bolan probed.

“And then I would receive instructions.”

It wasn’t subtle, but Ghulz was obviously a cutout. “In Arabic?”

“Yes.”

Bolan dialed the Farm. He owned one of the most powerful cell phones on Earth. Kurtzman and his cyberteam had designed it from the ground up, and nine times out of ten it was bouncing its signal through National Security Agency satellites.

“Bear, I need a trace on a call. I’m going to make a call to the enemy. I’ve linked my phone with the suspect’s.”

“That could take a minute,” Kurtzman replied. “Keep them talking if you can.”

Bolan held Ghulz’s phone to his face, then nodded at Ous. “If he says a single syllable you find suspicious, cut his throat.”

Ous drew the dagger and placed the blade just below Ghulz’s Adam’s apple. “Should he be so foolish, I will cut off his head, and send it to my Christian cousins in Tajikistan, whereupon they shall toss it to their dogs. When they have finished savaging it, the eyes of Ustad Ghulz shall be filled with pig’s blood and sewn shut, his mouth stuffed with the pig’s genitals and sealed. Then shall his head be wrapped in the pig’s offal and encased in its carcass to be buried without a marker, and, clad in such raiment, shall Ustad Ghulz go to explain his sins to He who made him.” Lightning stopped just short of flashing from Ous’s eyes and smiting Ghulz where he sat. “This I swear.”

Ghulz looked like he might throw up.

Bolan pressed Send. The phone rang three times and the line clicked on.

Ghulz spoke a sentence in Arabic. Bolan raised an eyebrow at Ous and the warrior shrugged. A voice spoke back. Ous mouthed words in translation. “Ustad Ghulz has failed.”

Ghulz whimpered something back. “He tells his co-conspirator that the United States Marines came.”

The voice on the phone spoke again.

Ous’s eyes flew wide as he translated. “Ustad Ghulz is a liar. A lion and an eagle came.”

The symbolism was pretty heavy-handed.

The line clicked dead.

“What’d you get, Bear?”

Kurtzman grunted unhappily. “Not enough time.”

Bolan clicked off Ghulz’s phone. “Bear, I got a feeling that the moment I turned on Ghulz’s phone and pressed Send, I got GPSed.

“Striker! Get out of there!”

“Hold that thought.” Bolan dialed another number.

Keller answered on the first ring. “Yo!”

“How soon can you and the Marines get back here?”

“Half an hour, why? Did you get anything out of Ghulz?”

“Not much, but I think we’re about to get something courtesy of Ghulz.”

“You’re going to get hit?”

Something the size of a 155 mm howitzer round hit the house. Ghulz screamed as dust sifted down from the floor above. The second impact blew the cellar door inward, and heat and smoke roared down the stairs in a wave. Ous slashed Ghulz’s bonds and ran to the other end of the cellar.

“Come!” He overturned two barrels to reveal a hatch. He pulled it open and dropped down. Between the Soviet invasion and the war on terror, Afghanistan had become a veritable termite’s nest of tunnels.

Bolan shoved the shrieking Ghulz into the dark as the power cut out. The world plunged into darkness that relit Halloween orange and hell red as the third shell impacted. Bolan tossed Ghulz’s phone back behind him as he dropped down and gave the cowering Ghulz a shove to motivate him onward. The soldier pulled out his tactical light. The tunnel was just big enough to move at an uncomfortable crouch. Ghulz crawled, sobbing, on hands and knees. Ous scrambled ahead. Heat seared the back of Bolan’s neck, and a second later the tunnel hatch filled with rubble as the floor of the house above failed. Bolan’s internal compass told him they were heading northwest in a line that was taking them to Ous’s stable. His sense of direction bore out as the tunnel dead-ended with a hatch leading above.

Ghulz whimpered and Ous cuffed him to silence. Bolan and Ous crouched and listened for long moments. The shelling had stopped. Ous’s tone was dangerously conversational. “Do you know? I was not aware of an artillery emplacement in the hills above my home.”

“It wasn’t artillery.” The explosion pulse and Bolan’s sense of smell told him what happened. “They’re using thermobaric weapons.”

Ous gave Bolan a look.

“Fuel-air explosive,” Bolan explained. “I smelled the stench of the fuel over the burnt high explosive. I’d bet they’re hitting us with Russian-made Shmel or Shmel-M shoulder-fired recoilless grenade launchers.”

“Truly you are a fountain of knowledge. What else does this mean?”

“It means three hundred meters is the effective range and seventeen is the maximum. They’re aiming at a large house and they’re up in the hills firing down, so it’s plunging fire. I’m guessing if they have training and want hits they’re at five hundred meters or less.”

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