Treason Play

CHAPTER THREE

Sometimes Adnan Shahi wondered whether it was worth all the bullshit.

He stood on the balcony of his penthouse and stared at Dubai’s skyline. At that elevation, the sound emanating from the traffic below was muted, broken only by the occasional honking of horns. He barely heard it. Instead, all he heard was the constant chatter of his thoughts as they relentlessly raced through his head. As Nawaz Khan’s second in command, he had plenty of worries and they never seemed to stop battering him, like waves hitting rocks, one after another.

Just running Khan’s business, what essentially was a massive logistics operation, and endless march of trucks and airplanes and ships, was a big enough task. Add to that the fact that every flight contained illegal contraband and the whole thing suddenly exploded into a mammoth pain in the ass. Just thinking about it caused the acid in his stomach to bubble and churn, like a witch’s brew in a cauldron, hot enough that he expected steam to shoot out from between his clenched teeth.

Then Khan decided to kidnap an American. And not just any American, but a damn CIA agent. Suddenly, Shahi found himself waking up in hell on a daily basis. Unconsciously his open hand drifted to his stomach and he patted it. He shook his head in disgust. An American spy. They’d snatched the damn guy off the street and Shahi knew that’d be the end of it. Where they were taking the American, he was as good as dead.

Shahi slid a hand into the right hip pocket of his pants and pulled from it a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. Sliding a cigarette between his lips, he torched the end of it, took a long drag and blew tendrils of smoke through his nostrils. He returned the cigarettes and the lighter back into his pocket and turned his attention back to the traffic below.

There was just nothing good that could come of this, he thought. Normally he trusted Khan, in part because experience told him he could and in part because the guy called the shots. But this time Shahi couldn’t help but wonder whether Khan had miscalculated, whether he was going to walk them off a cliff. Khan’s decision to cozy up to the Russians made Shahi especially nervous.

But surely Khan had thought all this through? Sure, he could be ill-tempered and stubborn, but the man wasn’t a fool. He hadn’t become a major player in the ISI without being able to think strategically.

“He’s no fool,” Shahi muttered, as though saying it out loud would make it a fact.

The crash of glass shattering reached out from inside the apartment and yanked Shahi from his thoughts. That noise was followed by a man’s scream.

What was that? he wondered.

He stepped to the double doors that led from the balcony into the penthouse. He pulled open the door in time to see one of his gunmen stagger toward him. The guy had a hand clutched over his chest. Rivulets of blood seeped through his fingers and rolled down his forearms. He dropped to the ground and released a final death rattle before his body went limp.

A thrill of fear raced down Shahi’s spine. He dropped to one knee next to the fallen man, one of his guards, and rummaged beneath the man’s bloodied coat, looking for his gun. It was gone, as was his mobile phone.

Shahi didn’t want to go inside. But, if he was under attack, he also knew he couldn’t continue to hide on the balcony. If his attackers found him out there, he’d have no place to run. Swallowing hard, he slipped through the door and into his home. Another of his guards was curled up on the floor, his body still, blood pooling around him. Another was draped over the back of the couch, the shirt on his back soaked in blood, the top of his head pressing into a seat cushion.

He saw something else and froze.

A man dressed in black stood several yards away. A pistol was clutched in his hand and aimed directly at Shahi’s head. The Pakistani’s eyes darted to a pistol that lay several yards away on the floor, discarded. The man in black apparently read his intentions and shook his head.

“Don’t,” he said.

Shahi swallowed hard, his mind racing through the numbers one final time as he brought up his hands in surrender. The math didn’t make sense. This son of a bitch had just knocked out three of his guards—and those were the ones he’d seen—and looked none the worse for it. No obvious injuries. No hesitation in his graveyard voice or his eyes.

Instinctively, Shahi knew he couldn’t bridge the distance between himself and the discarded pistol before the other man shot him. The only thing he’d get from that was the satisfaction of knowing he’d gone down fighting. He was too much of a pragmatist to consider that a fair trade for his life. He had to think of another way out.

BOLAN SIGHTED DOWN THE barrel at Shahi, the pistol’s snout locked dead center on the guy’s face.

As grim as hell, the soldier marched toward the Pakistani. Along the way, he bent and picked up the pistol that Shahi was eyeing, shoving it into his belt.

“Who the hell are you?” Shahi sputtered.

“Where’s Lang?”

Fear flickered in the guy’s eyes. He licked his lips.

“That’s what this is about? You’re looking for the reporter? You shoot my place up just to ask me about that?”

Bolan looked left, then right, surveying the carnage. “It appears so.”

“You can’t come in here and shoot my place up. Do you know who I am? I own the fucking police around here. They’ll string you up by your balls.”

“You talk too much, Shahi,” Bolan said, “about all the wrong things. Tell me something interesting.”

“What if I don’t know anything?”

“You do.”

Shahi’s eyes seemed to search Bolan’s face for several strained seconds. Bolan guessed the guy was running a cost-benefit analysis of turning on his boss versus taking a few extra breaths.

The change in Shahi’s expression was almost imperceptible. His eyes drifted from Bolan and looked over the American’s shoulder. Was it a trick?

Spurred by instinct, the soldier spun, the Beretta’s snout looking to acquire a target. He caught sight of a man in a navy-blue business suit, a small submachine gun clutched in both hands. The guy was trying to draw a bead on the Executioner.

Bolan triggered the Beretta and the pistol coughed a trio of 9 mm rounds, two of which drilled into the man’s chest. His legs suddenly went rubbery and he collapsed to the floor in a boneless heap, his hands clutching at the torn flesh of his torso. The SMG skittered across the floor.

A grunt of exertion spurred Bolan to whip back around. In the same motion he fisted the Desert Eagle and cocked back the hammer. By the time he’d come around, he found Shahi had sprung to his feet. The Desert Eagle’s muzzle hovered only inches from the guy’s nose. Shahi’s eyes bulged and he raised his hands in surrender.

“Can you tell how pissed I am?” Bolan asked.

The other man nodded.

“Good. Now, where’s Lang?”

Shahi opened his mouth as if to answer, but checked himself. He shook his head. “Forget it.”

“Loyal to the end, huh?”

“Not even close,” Shahi said. “I just know it’s not worth it. Not worth it for you to know.”

The guy paused. Bolan stayed quiet and stared, letting the uncomfortable silence expand.

“Wherever he is, he’s dead,” Shahi said. “Understand?”

“Where’d they take him?”

Shahi shook his head vigorously. “Forget it. Where he was going, he’s already dead or he will be by the time you get there. Quit wasting your time. Quit killing people for no reason. If you ever find him, he’ll be nothing but a sack of flesh and bones. And I’m not going to tell you anything. Take me to jail and Khan will have me out in twenty-four hours.”

“You have a good line of bullshit,” the soldier said. “But here’s some straight talk. Tell me where I can find Lang or I will fire this thing point-blank at your head. In case you haven’t realized it, I didn’t put handcuffs on any of your guys and they’re not going to jail. “

“You’ll kill me anyway.”

“Not if you answer my questions.”

Shahi heaved a sigh and his shoulders sagged. He muttered the address, which Bolan memorized.

“Why did Khan go after Lang?” Bolan asked.

“I don’t know. Lang had been looking into us, but that’s all I know.”

Bolan nodded. His finger tightened on the Desert Eagle’s trigger and a peal of thunder swelled in the room, then died out. A foot-long tongue of flame lashed from the hand cannon’s barrel. The slug drilled into a wall. Shahi screamed and crossed his forearms over his face protectively. Dropping to his knees, he cupped his hands over his eyes and sobbed.

“Apparently you take me for a saint or an idiot. Either way, you’re wrong. I’m not going to listen to your endless stream of bullshit.”

By now, the soldier was unsure whether the other man could even hear or understand him, having been exposed to the handgun’s roar at such close range. Bolan was used to the weapon, but even his ears rang. For someone exposed to a shot up close and personal, the noise could be disorienting.

“Tell your friend Khan I’m coming for him,” Bolan said. “I’ll dismantle his organization piece by piece and put him in the ground.”

Shahi nodded without looking at Bolan.

The soldier backed a few steps away from Shahi and holstered the Israeli-made handgun. He walked out past the indoor pool, through a massive sitting room filled with brightly colored rugs, a plasma-screen television and leather-upholstered furniture. When he reached the front door, he pushed it open and exited the apartment.

Message delivered.

HIS HANDS SHAKING, SHAHI picked himself up from the floor. His cheeks burned hot with shame and anger churned in his gut. The American had gotten the best of him. He became aware of a warm sensation in his crotch. Looking down, he saw that the fabric of the front of his pants was dark where he’d involuntarily urinated, guessed it had happened when the bastard had fired the gun at his head.

The carnage around him was stunning. Dead bodies were sprawled at different points on the floor. Shards of glass littered the floor. Through one of the doors, he saw a corpse bobbing facedown in the pool, blood clouding the water around the body.

His breath came fast as adrenaline raced through him, causing his hands to shake and his heart to pound in his chest until he swore it would explode.

He stumbled to one of the fallen guards, knelt next to him and reached beneath the guy’s sport coat. Shahi found a mobile phone on the guy’s belt, stored in a black leather clip-on case. Picking it up, Shahi pounded in a number. With each ring the anxiety and impatience grew in him.

Finally, on the fourth ring, someone answered the phone.

“Yes?” Khan asked.

“We have trouble,” Shahi replied.

CHAPTER FOUR

Bolan crept up the stairs of the three-story apartment building, screams still echoing in his ears.

He fisted the Beretta 93-R, raised it in front of him, let it lead the way. As he neared the top of the stairs, another scream—this one more frantic and agonized—stabbed into his ears, lingering.

The solider muttered a curse. He already was losing time and likely was at risk of blowing the mission. From the third-floor landing, he heard the rumble of a throat clearing. Hugging the wall, he crept about halfway up the final flight of stairs, stopped and listened for a couple of heartbeats. A throat cleared again and the sole of a shoe scraped against the floorboards.

Bolan surged up the final steps. As he crested the stairs, he spotted a beefy man, his hair slicked straight back, coughing into a clenched fist. The guy apparently sensed the motion and wheeled in Bolan’s direction. His hand grabbed for a pistol holstered on his hip.

The Beretta sighed and a trio of subsonic 9 mm rounds lanced from its barrel. The swarm of slugs stabbed into the man’s mouth and cheek and exploded from the back of his skull in a spray of crimson. The guard’s legs suddenly turned rubbery and his body collapsed to the floor in a boneless heap. A Glock slipped from the man’s lifeless fingers and thudded to the floor.

The soldier cursed under his breath, but continued to march toward the source of the agonized screams.

In a perfect world, he would have preferred to have caught the guard unaware and put him down soundlessly with a knife to the throat.

In a perfect world, yeah. As if the soldier had ever seen such a thing.

Here in the real world, there was every possibility that the noised had alerted the band of killers hiding out in the apartment, every possibility he’d lost the element of surprise. So, okay, it was time to try the direct approach. Kneeling next to the corpse, he dug through the man’s pockets until he found a wallet, which he pocketed, figuring he could comb through its contents for possible intel later, and a ring of keys. Stepping near the door, he pressed his ear against it and listened.

By now the screaming had stopped, but he heard murmurs of conversation. It was impossible to decipher the words or to discern the emotional state of the speaker. As best he could tell, Nawaz Khan or whoever had outfitted this slaughterhouse, had positioned a couple of security cameras on the building’s exterior, but nothing inside, at least nothing he could see. It was possible the guys inside had no idea their comrade had just been gunned down.

His fingers curled softly around the knob and he tried to turn it, but found it locked. His mind flitted back to the ring of keys he’d found on the dead guard, but he dismissed the notion immediately. He had no time to test half a dozen keys in the hope that one of them might open the door. To hell with it, he decided. He needed to move now.

The Executioner tapped the Beretta and set loose a trio of slugs that chewed into the doorknob and lock. The tattered lock only held the door closed barely and Bolan hammered it with a kick of his booted foot.

The door flew inward. Bolan followed right behind it. Icy-blue eyes took in his surroundings and he saw he was in a room furnished with a card table, a trio of metal folding chairs and a big blue plastic cooler. Two gunners, one seated, one standing, were also in the room.

A slender man in blue jeans and a red T-shirt who’d had his back turned when Bolan stormed the place, whirled. His hand snaked out, something black gripped in it. The Executioner’s Beretta coughed out a line of bullets that lanced into the thug’s chest, causing him to fall in a boneless heap. The hardman who’d been sitting on a chair simultaneously dived sideways and squeezed off a couple of shots from his automatic pistol. The slugs whistled within inches of Bolan’s skull. The soldier returned the favor with another triburst from the Beretta that pulverized the man’s chest and caused him to slump to the floor in a heap.

As the man hit the floor, the Executioner was in motion. First, he checked a small adjoining room and made sure it was empty. Then, retracing his steps, he returned to the entryway before veering into another corridor that branched off from the open area. Bolan took a step forward and a foul but not unfamiliar smell registered with him, causing his nose to wrinkle.

A pair of doors lined the right side of the corridor and another door stood to the left. Light spilled into the dark hallway from beneath the two doors to Bolan’s right. The soldier snapped a fresh clip into the Beretta and checked through the rooms, but found them unoccupied. He crossed the hallway and, with the Beretta leveled in front of him, and gave the third door a closer look. It had been pulled closed, but not latched.

Standing off to one side, Bolan nudged the door open with a toe. This time the smell smacked him like a sledgehammer. It was a mixture of excrement and charred flesh and God knew what else. The contents of Bolan’s stomach began to push at the top of his throat. He swallowed hard and pushed his way into the room. With a sweeping gaze, Bolan took in the room’s interior.

The plastic painting tarps that covered the floor crunched under the soles of his shoes. A hospital bed, side rails pulled up, stood in the middle of the room. Surgical instruments—scalpels, forceps, a small saw—stood on a wooden nightstand, the top covered with plastic sheeting. Next to the traditional surgical tools lay a soldering iron and a small torch.

Bolan fixed his gaze on the figure on the bed, felt his stomach clench as he took in the horrible sight. Death’s rigor had caused the arms to curl up. Strips of skin, uniform in length and cut with precision, had been peeled from the chest, abdomen and forearms. The exposed tissue, still wet with blood, glistened beneath the big halogen lamps that burned overhead. Flesh seared by the soldering iron was black and puckered. Thick hair soaked with blood was matted against the skull. Blood had soaked the mattress beneath the man and pooled beneath the surgical bed.

The soldier marched around to the other side of the bed and studied the man’s profile. The crazy butcher responsible for this savagery had left the one side of the man’s face untouched. Bolan studied the man’s features so he could confirm his identity.

The soldier set his jaw to hold back the rage that boiled inside him.

He keyed his throat mike. “Eagle One,” he said.

“Eagle One,” Jack Grimaldi replied. “Go, Striker.”

“I found the package.”

“And?”

“Expired,” Bolan stated.

“Damn.”

“I took out multiple targets up here,” the soldier said. “We’re missing at least one. As best I can tell, these guys all are muscle. Whoever did this—” he snapped a look at Terry Lang, then looked away “—isn’t among them.”

“You know this how?”

“The muscle’s clothes weren’t bloody,” he replied. “I heard Lang’s last death screams, so whoever did this likely had no time to wash off. Keep an eye out. The sadistic bastard who did this may still be in the building or will be exiting it soon.”

Bolan found a discarded pile of clothes lying in one corner of the room. He guessed they were Lang’s and searched the pockets, but found nothing inside them. Exiting the torture room, the soldier returned to the hallway. From outside the building, he could hear the murmur of car traffic and the hum of an air conditioner.

He took a couple more steps and suddenly his combat senses screamed for his attention, followed by the grunt of someone exerting himself. The soldier whirled and glimpsed a large shape hurtling toward him. Metal glinted, a knife blade poised to fall on the soldier. Bolan reacted, taking a step back. The blade whistled through the air just an inch or so from his face. The attacker pressed his advantage and stabbed at Bolan twice more, the frenzied action forcing the soldier to take a couple of steps back.

The guy slashed wildly at the Executioner and continued to press forward. Bolan sidestepped the attack and drove his fist into the guy’s floating ribs. The man grunted and fell back, his eyes bulging with fear. His free hand flew up to cover his injured ribs. A scream of pain and fear exploded from his mouth as he renewed his attack. He lunged at Bolan, the tip of the knife hurtling at the Executioner’s midsection. The soldier stepped aside and the gleaming blade whooshed past his torso, slicing open the nylon windbreaker he wore, but leaving his flesh intact. The soldier drove another fist into the guy’s now-injured ribs and heard his opponent gasp with pain. The man dropped the knife and spun away.

Bolan drew the Beretta and leveled it at the man. The knife fell to the floor with a clatter and the man brought his hands up.

“You and I,” Bolan said, “are going to talk.”

BOLAN WENT TO THE stainless-steel sink in the torture room. He filled a white foam cup with cold water from the tap and returned to the hallway where Ayub Sharif lay in the hallway.

By now, Grimaldi had arrived. He leaned one shoulder into the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. Bolan stood over Sharif and threw the contents of the water into the guy’s face. Sharif’s eyes popped open and his expression quickly flashed through shock, fear and finally rage as he took in his surroundings and assessed his situation. He looked at Bolan, then at Grimaldi and finally back at the Executioner.

“Hello, Ayub,” Grimaldi said, his voice irritatingly bright. Sharif raised his forearm, dragged it across his face to wipe away the water that had been splashed on him.

“You know my name,” he said. Though Bolan knew from his intel that the guy was a native of Pakistan, he spoke English with no trace of an accent. “How do you know my name?”

“Big fans,” Grimaldi said.

“Your work speaks for itself,” Bolan said. “Best cutter this side of Jack the Ripper. Besides, we have a file on you.”

“Who are you?”

“Why don’t you let me ask the questions?” Bolan said. “That’s what I’d do if I were in your position.”

“My position. And just what position might that be?” Sharif asked.

“Royally fucked.”

“You don’t scare me.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Bolan said. He jerked a thumb at the room where Lang had been tortured to death. “You killed Terrence Lang. Did it in cold blood. Kidnapped him. Tortured him. For God knows what reason. I could put a bullet in your head, dump your body in the river and celebrate with a steak dinner.”

Sharif licked his lips. A sheen of perspiration had formed on his forehead and had beaded on his upper lip. “You can’t prove I killed him.”

Bolan knelt in front of Sharif. He rubbed his chin and studied the guy for several seconds. Finally he shook his head slowly, as though overwhelmed with disbelief.

“Sharif,” he said, “I can’t tell whether you’re brave or stupid. Truth be told, I don’t care which it is. You have blood under your fingernails. Your clothes and shoes are splattered with blood. Your file says that your best skills are torture and interrogation. So if you want to tell me you didn’t kill Terry Lang, fine. I can live with that.” Bolan slipped the Beretta from his shoulder holster. “I’m not here to put you on trial. The burden of proof I require before blowing your head off is light. I mean, life’s too short for heavy burdens. Am I right?”

“What’s in it for me?”

Bolan shook his head. “One breath, two breaths. Who knows?”

Grimaldi chimed in. “Best speak truth to power, Sharif.”

Sharif scowled. Bolan watched as the cutter stared at his lap, thumbnail of one hand digging under the other while he considered his situation.