Don Pendleton: Appointment in Kabul

There is only one way for this cannibal to go.

Bolan lowered his aim and triggered a sideways burst before the baby killer could fire again. Golodkin's legs flailed out from under him. A scream that started from the bad doctor's panicky mouth erupted with new intensity in the eye blink he had to realize he was falling over the railing into the tub of Devil's Rain. The bloodcurdling yell was interrupted by the splash as he went under, and all that came up was a bubbling, dissolving thing that sizzled like frying bacon. The human mess melted into nothing and a foul cloud rose to mark the passing.

Bolan placed a wad of plastic explosive at the base of the tank and timed it.

The wailing of the siren from outside needled him to the dock where the canisters stood. The containers would be pressurized; they would go with the blow from the explosives.

He raced past the canisters and dived from the dock. He had set the explosives by the tank for ten seconds.

His last impression before the explosion was confused shouting as soldiers poured in from the entrance in response to the siren. The blast hurled Bolan into the air and he felt carried along on a hot wind. The earth shook and everything related to the Devil's Rain blew into a maelstrom of sense-reeling destruction that engulfed the soldiers and the lab.

The Executioner landed in a well-practiced somersault, riding the momentum of his leap and the force of the blast, coming out of it into a beeline run around the far corner of the lab building. He had drawn on what he knew about the shit they were brewing back there to set his explosives in such a way that the building would not be destroyed. Contamination from the Devil's Rain seemed to require bodily contact, not inhalation; none of the hellspawners in the lab had been wearing gas masks.

The initial response to the explosion would be for them to work like hell to contain the liquid horror to the lab building, a diversion Bolan hoped would help him.

He continued away from the lab across the rear length of the headquarters building. He came around the front of the far end of the HQ from where army soldiers poured toward the lab exactly as Bolan had hoped. He wasted no time. He cut off on another direct course full speed toward the nearer of the two helicopters.

The eerie visibility of the new dawn etched a surreal sharpness to the shriek of an incoming missile as one of the gun houses exploded into flying mortar, gun parts and airborne bodies everywhere. The echoes of the explosion yielded to heavy machine-gun fire, and more incoming rockets from Tarik Khan's mujahedeen punched at the walls and other watchtowers but not at the landing pad and the gunships, as Bolan had requested.

Confusion reigned across the fort.

On his dash toward the choppers Bolan saw that the bodies of Voukelitch and the camp commandant had been discovered in the ZIL cannibal car. That left a big hole in response coordination, some troopers charging to the parapets to defend the fort, others fanning out around the lab, everyone disorganized and confused.

The only resistance Bolan met was from four Soviet crewmen who had been waiting near the choppers, ready to spread death and then fly safely away. They looked as confused as everyone else at the sudden attack, but their reaction time flared fast when they spotted the Executioner jogging toward them.

But the approaching figure wore a Soviet uniform and so these death merchants held their fire and Bolan exterminated the lice safely into hell.

He tossed a grenade from the cluster of munitions webbing into the hatchway of the chopper several hundred feet away. He scored a bull's-eye, the grenade demolishing the interior of that craft, lifting it off its landing rails, the machine settling back down where it would stay disabled. Bolan leaped through the side hatch door of the other chopper.

He rushed to the cockpit. He had a working knowledge of helicopters dating back to the war in Nam. He got the attention of most every soldier inside the fort when he gunned the big bird to life, filling the cacophony of battle with a rotor throb that grew louder when he skipped the warm-up phase. He felt the chopper wobble about him more than it should, but the bird lifted and Bolan hoped Tarik Khan's force had sense enough to see Bolan pirating the helicopter. They did. The incoming missile fire wrought havoc all around but did not strike the chopper as it gained an altitude of several hundred feet. Bullets punctured the chopper as Bolan banked it around, but most of the firepower down there was still directed at the hills, the parapets filled with soldiers despite the steady toppling of men from incoming fire. Most of the Afghan soldiers Bolan saw beyond the chopper's Plexiglas probably thought the chopper was piloted by one of their own to give them air cover. No such luck. Bolan banked the death bird around in a low sweep, triggering missiles and rockets that streaked from the gunship at anything in his sights.

The intensified holocaust gnawed at man and brick down there like a mountain lion chomping a field mouse, decimating the garrison and the fort into slaughter and pandemonium in less than two minutes of unleashed wrath. The incoming mortar, rocket and heavy machinegun fire continued without letup. Bolan worked the controls to bank the copter away from the fort haloed in black smoke from fires that pillared into the sky. Bolan piloted the bird on a wide swing around Tarik Khan's force along the ridge overlooking the besieged fort. He set the chopper down at a safe distance behind the staggered line of well-hidden mujahedeen who kept hammering nonstop at the fort.

Katrina Mozzhechkov and Tarik Khan hurried to the chopper from where they had watched it land. An occasional explosion geysered earth as return fire from the fort impacted the ground around the mujahedeen's position. But firepower from the garrison had slacked off considerably since there were not that many men and artillery remaining down there. The woman and the leader of the hill fighters crouched under the idling rotors and joined Bolan in the chopper.

"Your men have good aim," Bolan shouted to Tarik Khan over the engine noise. "This machine will get us the short hop to the border."

"The Devil's Rain?"

"Destroyed. Voukelitch had his security tight on this. He had to be sitting on everything connected to the operation. The Devil's Rain and those who spawned it are no more."

"It is good," the hillman intoned. "But there is no time. Soviet fighter jets are scrambling for here as we speak. My force can disperse to nearby caves, but you must be gone." The resistance fighter placed a hand on Bolan's shoulder; one fraternal squeeze that spoke everything. "Until we meet again, Executioner." Then he looked at Katrina. "And my thanks to you, woman. I have learned from you. Goodbye." Tarik Khan left the chopper and stalked away without looking back.

Bolan revved up the engines again. He glanced at Katrina. "Hang on, lady. Get set for a rough ride."

She grabbed a seat and a wall strap next to him. Bolan saw her direct a steady gaze across the scene of battle and it told him this special woman had confronted and defeated her demons. All that was left for her now was the future. "I'm ready," she assured him. "For anything."

The engine rumbled and the copter lifted off. Bolan gave Tarik Khan a last salute from on high that the resistance fighter returned, then the hillman turned to join his men and Bolan control-stacked them up and away from there.

He piloted the chopper at full throttle across the blue sky of a new day, skimming the jagged, treacherous terrain low enough to avoid Soviet radar.

Toward the border frontier. Toward Pakistan.

Mission completed, yeah. And toward the mourning of too many lost in the name of freedom that fired a strange, savage, noble people to resist impossible odds. Lansdale. Alja Malikyar. So many more. They had not died in vain. Their sacrifice kept the flame alive and it would burn longer and more brightly now without Devil's Rain to douse it. Yeah, Tarik Khan, thought Executioner Bolan. Until next time.