Don Pendleton - Lethal Tribute

They were approaching their target.

The Mi-8s dropped toward the plateau like stones. The Hind gunships clawed upward into the sky and orbited the site with their machine cannons and rocket pods ready. The red dust of the mountains flew up as the transports landed.

Musa Company debarked the Mi-8s and fanned out by sections across the plateau. Bolan leaped out behind Makhdoom. He had no orders other than to stick to the captain like glue. As Bolan examined the plateau, he could see spalling and bullet strikes scoring the rocks from the previous night’s one-sided battle. Several spots were scorched by the high explosive of rifle grenades. The single, lonesome shrub lay blackened and burned.

Musa Company maintained radio silence. Makhdoom chopped his hand forward and his men went by sections, two by two, to the edge of the plateau and began to descend the mountainside toward their objective.

In the night the land had been a lunar landscape. By day the arid, vertical hillsides could have passed for a bad patch on Mars. The platoon swiftly descended. A man held up the spent flare and parachute of Bolan’s illuminating round. They leapfrogged from cover to cover, constantly sweeping the surroundings, still encountering nothing. They stopped as they reached the area where Section 2 had been lost. Bolan scanned the recent battlefield. Brass shell casings and spent bullets lay in the sand and gravel, deformed where they had struck rock. There were no bodies.

There was no blood.

Makhdoom moved forward, his rifle at the ready. Musa Company followed. They swiftly came upon their target. Bolan examined the objective. Beneath an overhang of rock there was an opening in the mountainside. It was squared off, clearly man-made, and lined with stone. Just inside lay a heavy wooden door reinforced with iron bands. Its hinges were gone where they had been cut with flexible-shaped charge. Bolan stared at the square, black hole in the mountain.

It looked like the back door to hell.

Makhdoom’s eyes burned into the inky blackness within. Bolan quickly looked around at Musa Company. They had joked of djinns on the flight in. Now no one was laughing. Each man here was one of the most trusted soldiers in Pakistan. Each had been briefed about the nuclear warheads that had vanished without a trace and the guards who had disappeared with them, their weapons scattered and unfired. Each man had also heard the radio tapes of the battle the night before, listening as half a platoon of Musa Company had been wiped out to a man, one by one, by an enemy unseen. They had heard the terror in comrades’ voices as they had been taken.

Musa Company stared at the black hole in the mountain and their fear was palpable.

Bolan spoke very quietly just behind Makhdoom. “Captain.”

Makhdoom didn’t look away from the entrance. “Yes?”

“May I make a suggestion?”

The captain peered backward. “I am very open to suggestions at the moment.”

“Have your men fix bayonets.”

Makhdoom’s mustache lifted. His lips skinned back from his teeth in a feral smile. He turned to let his men see it, then snarled in guttural English, “Bayonets!”

Two dozen bayonets rasped from their sheaths in a single motion. Makhdoom snarled again, “Fix!”

The bayonets clicked into place. Cold iron glittered in the afternoon sun. Musa Company’s determination ratcheted up by a factor of ten. Few things centered a soldier’s aggressiveness more than having his commanding officer give the order to fix sharpened steel to the business end of his rifle.

“Lights!” Musa Company pulled miniflashlights from their web gear and affixed them to clips on their rifles’ handguards. “All sections, set rifles on full automatic. Maintain radio silence unless you see something to report. Sections 3 and 4 secure the perimeter. Sections 1 and 2—” Makhdoom stared grimly at the dark doorway “—follow me.”

Bolan followed Makhdoom and Musa Company into the earth.

The passage into the mountain was square, and just large enough for men to walk two by two. Once inside, the heat of desert fell away as if they had stepped into what seemed to be an air-conditioned building—except that the air within was fetid, clammy and cold. Bolan played his light across the walls and examined the stonework. There were places upon the earth, old battlefields, ruins, places in the wilderness, which resonated with what had transpired. Bolan had long ago learned to trust his instincts, and to feel the vibe.

“This place is very old.” Bolan didn’t need to add that terrible things had happened here.

Makhdoom nodded as he shone his light ahead. Niches carved into the walls on either side of the passage stretched down the corridor facing each other. “I have seen the like before,” he stated. “Before the words of Mohammed the Prophet reached these lands, there were many pagan sects. These niches probably once held idols, or the dead.”

Bolan paused as brass shell casings glittered in the light of his rifle. He knelt and picked one up. They were subsonic 9 mms, fired from the weapon of Musa Company the night before. He glanced around, gazing at the niches. They were certainly large enough to hold a man, and it was clear that this spot was where many of Musa Company had met their doom. Bolan dug his bayonet into the dirt floor of a niche.

Musa Company held position while Bolan worked. Makhdoom nodded. “Trapdoors?”

“None that I can find.” Bolan poked at the ceiling of the niche. It was solid rock. “Let’s go a little farther.”

Bolan and Makhdoom led, the points of their bayonets preceding them. The corridor opened into a larger, low-ceilinged room. They paused at the entryway.

“Your men didn’t mention a room.”

Makhdoom kept his muzzle covering the room ahead. “No, I do not believe any of them survived this far.”

Bolan caught the smell of something he didn’t recognize, a bare lingering of something that was both acrid and sickly sweet. The sense of dread solidified as Musa Company entered the room.

A disk of carved stone dominated the middle of the room. Bolan approached it warily, playing his light across it. The stone was three feet tall and nearly six feet around. It was very old. In his rifle light Bolan could see that there were fresh scratches on the top.

“It is an altar.” Makhdoom ran his finger along a scratch in the rocket. “Something was moved.”

“More likely removed.” Bolan tested the stone with his hands. The altar probably weighed several tons. Bolan checked the floor but he could see no sign that the massive stone itself had been moved or rotated. He and Musa Company moved farther back into the dark space.

The only sound was that of their boots and the wind moaning down the corridor behind them.

Bolan pointed. “There.”

In the far corner of the room was an incongruously modern object—a heavy wooden pallet. Musa Company fanned out to surround the object. The pallet was of thick construction, meant to support something heavy. Bolan knelt without touching the pallet and gazed at the dirt around it. In the harsh light of the flashlight beam he could see that the pallet had sunk several inches into the dirt floor. The pallet had recently held something heavy, and whatever the load had been, it was gone.

“I think your warheads were here, Captain, perhaps as recently as last night.”

Makhdoom shook his head wearily. They were too late. “And what of my men?”

“That’s a good question.” Bolan considered the passageway and the single room. “If I were you, I would get a platoon of combat engineers in here and have them go over every inch of the place. I’m thinking there must be a bolt-hole.”

Makhdoom broke radio silence. He spent long minutes speaking with his superiors in Islamabad, then clicked off his radio with a sigh. “Combat engineers are on the way.”