Don Pendleton - Lethal Tribute

Bolan frowned at the room around them. “Whoever the enemy was had to get out of here fast, taking three warheads and disposing of nearly two dozen bodies.”

“Such a graveyard would take up half of this chamber.” Makhdoom shrugged helplessly. “I see no sign of digging in the floor.”

Bolan gazed around the room until his eyes fell on the pallet once more. He unclipped the light from his rifle and thoroughly scanned around its edges and through the slats for wires or booby traps. Bolan lifted the pallet and pushed it back to lean against the wall.

Beneath the pallet was the same gray dirt as the rest of the chamber. Bolan’s eyes narrowed as he knelt and ran his fingers through the dirt. The walls were wet. If the pallet had been here for any length of time the soil beneath it should have been moist.

“We dig here.”

Makhdoom’s face tightened. “Twenty-three men cannot be buried in such a space.”

Bolan stared back implacably. The Pakistani captain barked out a few words and his men broke out entrenching tools and began to dig. With the first shovelful one of his men looked and spoke in rapid Sind.

The soil was loose, moist and disturbed beneath the thin veil of gray dirt. Musa Company continued to dig. They didn’t have to dig long.

“Bismillah!” A corporal jumped back in fear and outrage. The corporal had encountered a head. The head was wearing a black balaclava from a night raid. The men lifted the body out and more cries of outrage met the discovery. Makhdoom’s face was stone. Many of his men made the sign against the evil eye at what they had found.

The body was one of Musa Company. The body’s shoulders and hips had been shattered, the arms and legs broken, the body folded up around itself like a cricket. The body took up no more space than that of a child. They all knew what lay below.

Beneath the tiny space of the pallet, a full platoon of Musa Company had been mutilated and buried.

Makhdoom swallowed as another and yet another of his men were exhumed. “Have you ever seen such a thing?”

“No. Not exactly.” Bolan watched as the doll-like bodies of Makhdoom’s troops were pulled from their communal grave. “But I think I know someone who has.”

Islamabad

“The Thuggees of Kali?”

Kurtzman was incredulous.

Bolan leaned back in the rickety wooden chair. He was back in his cell, but his satellite link equipment had been returned to him. The guard with the club stood glaring at him, and a man Bolan hadn’t met before stood taping everything Bolan said. “I need everything you have on them.”

“There is no more Cult of Kali, last I heard. The British wiped them out in the seventeenth century.”

“Didn’t Phoenix Force have a run-in with them some years ago?”

“Well, yeah, they did,” Kurtzman admitted. “But the guys Phoenix hit were yahoos. There were less than three hundred of them, a sideshow revival movement, and the whole thing was organized by the KGB. They were little more than Russian stooges, manipulated into killing Americans and Europeans in India. It was a real cute setup. The Russians even had a mechanical idol of Kali with a high-frequency laser built in it to keep the faithful in line. The only people they were fooling were mostly illiterate tribesmen and some well-heeled psychopaths in Bengal. Even their high priest was a fake. Once he was exposed, his own people killed him and the cult disbanded.” Kurtzman sighed. “Stealing nuclear weapons from high-security areas, turning invisible and taking out entire platoons of special forces troops just wasn’t in their repertoire.”

“These won’t be a bunch of barefoot, illiterate tribesman. This will be the real deal. True believers, highly organized, well-funded.” Bolan paused. “With a new agenda.”

“Striker, are you sure?”

“I’m not sure at all. But we found Musa Company’s lost platoon. Their shoulders and hips were broken and folded to fit twenty-three men into a mass grave barely big enough for six, and the autopsies revealed that each one of them had been strangled, to a man, and not a drop of blood was spilled.”

“Well, from what I remember about Thuggee ritual killing, that fits, but—”

“It also goes a long way toward explaining how the men of Musa Company were being jerked up into the air and flailing like marionettes.”

“Okay, but by invisible attackers? Who don’t show up on night-vision or high-resolution satellite imaging? And for that matter, how did they make the bodies instantly disappear?”

Bolan ate a chunk of barbecued goat and followed it with a spoonful of garlic-stewed spinach. His food had improved with his status since morning. “Bear, I’m going to let you figure that one out.”

“Uh-huh.” Kurtzman had seen that one coming a mile away.

“As I recall, Thuggee means ‘deceiver’ in Hindi.”

“That’s correct.”

“I think someone deceived their way into the Pakistani nuclear weapons site. They had to know the layout to make their attack. Invisible or not, they had people on the inside.”

“Well, assuming the bad guys aren’t supernatural in origin, I’d have to agree with you.” Bolan could hear Kurtzman pounding keys on his computer. “Phoenix is deployed right now, but as soon as they are inbound I’ll have the boys that were involved in the India mission get in touch with you. Meanwhile I’ll send you everything on the mission I have on file, though it’s going to have to be redacted for security unless you can guarantee a secure line.”

“Right now I can’t guarantee whether or not I’m going to be shot as spy. I’m going to give you Captain Makhdoom’s fax number. Send everything you can that doesn’t compromise the home team or national security.”

“How do you feel about this Makhdoom guy?”

“He’s good people, but he’s a captain. A highly decorated special forces captain, but he won’t have the final say about my final disposition, and my presence here has rattled the cages of a lot of people above his pay grade.”

“I understand.” Kurtzman stopped multitasking for a moment. “How’s the food?”

Bolan smiled as he ate another bite and washed it down with mint tea. The food was excellent. Pakistanis knew a thing or two about goat shish kebob, but Kurtzman wasn’t asking about the food. He was asking if Bolan wanted him to arrange some kind of extraction. Unfortunately, Pakistan was an ostensible ally of the United States. A U.S. raid on one of their prisons could strain that slender relationship to the breaking point. Frankly, Bolan was fairly sure it was something the U.S. was unwilling to risk. Not that it wasn’t something the men from Stony Man Farm wouldn’t gladly risk anyway if asked. “Food’s not bad. I’m not missing home yet.”

“Glad to hear it. It might be hard to get a Big Mac into Islamabad at the moment.”

“Don’t worry about it, just fax Makhdoom the files. I’m interested to see what he thinks of them.”

“I’m on it. Kurtzman out.”

Bolan clicked off his link and smiled at the guard. The man with the tape recorder took back the communications gear and left without a word. The guard slammed the door shut and the soldier tossed back the last of the tea, then stretched out on his bunk. Thin white clouds passed overhead as he looked up through the grille.

Bolan took a nap and waited to see what developed.

“THE Thuggees of Kali?”

Makhdoom was appalled.

Bolan leaned back in his chair. It was nice to be in a conference room instead of a cell. “You’ve heard of them, I gather.”

“Yes, I have heard of them. Murderers and worshipers of idols.” The captain flipped through the file of information that Kurtzman had anonymously faxed him. “The information you have shared with me is fascinating, but I do not see how it is relevant. The British East India Company wiped out the Thuggees more than a century ago.”