Don Pendleton - Lethal Tribute

Bolan happened to be wearing the uniform of a Pakistani captain of special forces. His blue eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, even though they were in an underground cell. He had the reassuring weight of a loaded Browning Hi-Power pistol holstered on his hip. Bolan nodded at Makhdoom. It sickened him, but it was the only way.

Makhdoom nodded at the guards.

The prisoner shrieked as the bastinadoes of the guards fell upon him once more like rain. The beating went on for a few moments, then Makhdoom strode into the middle of it. He seized the prisoner by his shirtfront and slammed him against the wall of the cell. Spittle flew as Makhdoom screamed first in Urdu then in Sind. The man flinched and jerked as he was threatened with everything from castration to death. Makhdoom cut off his tirade and hurled the prisoner to the floor.

Bolan took off his sunglasses and strode forward.

The prisoner stared up into Bolan’s burning blue eyes and cringed in terror. The man flinched and pressed himself into the wall as Bolan crouched and cocked his hand back as if he were going to backhand him.

Bolan’s back was to Makhdoom and the guards. He didn’t backhand the prisoner. Instead he quickly passed his right hand down in front of his face. The prisoner’s eyes flew wide. Bolan whispered one of the two phrases in Hindi he had memorized this day.

“Greetings, Ali my brother.”

It was an ancient greeting, that members of the Cult of Kali had once used to identify fellow members in strange cities. The prisoner’s eyes flared wide at the words. Not with fear, nor with confusion, but with recognition.

Bolan had gotten a bite. He yanked on the hook to bury it deep and reeled the man in as he used his second phrase of Hindi. “Be strong. Be ready. We will come for you.”

The big American suddenly stood and yanked the prisoner up with him. He snarled a phrase in Urdu he had learned long ago during a mission in Asia, something about the prisoner enjoying relations with goats and how he particularly enjoyed allowing the goats to assume the dominant position in the relationship. The guards laughed uproariously. Bolan grabbed the prisoner by the throat and shoved him across the room. The prisoner collapsed into a heap in the corner. Bolan hated this aspect of role playing, but it was necessary.

Bolan spit on the man and fell into step with Makhdoom as they left the cell.

“You have a remarkable gift with languages,” the captain acknowledged.

“Thank you. You have a beautiful language filled with poetic metaphor.”

Makhdoom smiled for the first time in seventy-two hours. “And now?”

“Now? Now I think it’s time that you arranged a jailbreak.”

“Ah.”

Bolan cocked an eyebrow. “Do you speak Hindi, by the way?”

“I am a Pakistani special forces captain.” Makhdoom smiled slyly. “Infiltration was one of my specialities.”

Bolan nodded. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

The Prison, 4:00 a.m.

“SO WHO IS THIS GUY and what’s his story?” Bolan watched the bored guard pace outside.

“Atta,” Makhdoom answered. The Pakistani captain flipped through a file on his lap. “Atta Naqbi. He is a technician, recently graduated from the American University in Egypt. His family fled from East Pakistan during the 1971 war. He had no criminal record and has been working at the Al-Nouri Weapons Facility for six months.”

Bolan considered the information. What was once Eastern Pakistan was now known as Bangladesh. It was about half the size of Kansas and just as flat. Only unlike Kansas, Bangladesh was cut by the mighty courses of the Ganges, the Tista and the Brahmaputra rivers. When the snows of the Himalayas melted, Bangladesh was their final destination. Flooding was endemic. When the mountains didn’t flood the land, the monsoons swept the sea-level nation with tidal waves. Swiftly approaching a thousand people per square kilometer, every disaster took a horrific toll in human life. Bangladesh was an autonomous nation, but she was heavily reliant on the help of India to survive. Of much more interest to Bolan, Bangladesh was also the neighbor of the Indian state of West Bengal.

The traditional home range of the Cult of Kali.

“What city is he from?”

“Chulna, it lies upon the Pusur River, in the Great Mouths of the Ganges,” Makhdoom responded. “Do you know of it?”

“I’ve seen the Mouths of the Ganges,” Bolan responded, “but I’ve never been to Chulna. It’s not on my mental map.” Bolan cocked his head slightly. “How many kilometers is it from Calcutta?”

The captain grinned. “Why, less than one hundred.”

“Does Mr. Naqbi still have family there?”

“Most of his family reportedly came here, to Pakistan. But we have spies in Bangladesh, and in Bengal. I am having it looked into.”

“Does he speak English?”

“Fluently.”

Bolan pulled his black ski mask down over his head. “Let’s go rescue Atta.”

“Indeed.” Makhdoom pulled down his own mask. “Let us go rescue Atta.”

Bolan and Makhdoom got out of the battered 1950s vintage Mercedes and approached the guard at the gate. The guard snapped to attention and saluted. Makhdoom returned the salute. “Corporal?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“You are dead.”

The corporal dropped to the ground, flailed and made expiring noises.

“Less melodrama, Corporal.”

“Yes, Captain,” the corpse whispered.

Bolan and Makhdoom swept through the prison. Guards saluted and fell down “dead” in their wake like human driftwood. The two of them swiftly came to Atta Naqbi’s cell. The guard outside the door stood and turned. Bolan whipped a knotted silk sash around the guard’s neck. The guard went to his knees and made throttling noises as Makhdoom threw open the door.

Naqbi sat in his cell and gaped as Bolan apparently strangled the guard to death. Makhdoom ran in and yanked him up. The man could barely walk with his swollen feet. Makhdoom and Bolan took an arm each and strung him between them as they carried him out of the cell. Despite his pain and fatigue, Naqbi began firing off questions rapidly.

He wasn’t speaking Urdu or Sind.

Makhdoom shushed him. Naqbi spent the next few moments quietly staring in astonishment at the seemingly dead guards strewing the floor of the jail. They gave Naqbi no chance to examine any of the “corpses” too closely. They spirited him outside and deposited him into the waiting car.

Bolan took the wheel and drove off into the night.

The translator spoke in Bolan’s earpiece. “Striker, do you read me?”

Bolan reached up and tapped his earpiece twice in acknowledgment. His satellite rig was in the back seat and he was plugged into the satellite above. There was a microphone in the back seat, as well.

The translator began translating what Naqbi and Makhdoom were saying to each other in Hindi.

Naqbi was chattering a stream of questions, and Makhdoom was playing it close. They jockeyed back and forth with questions and counterquestions. Makhdoom was playing with a deck missing many cards. There had to be call signs and recognition signals, ones that neither Bolan nor Makhdoom knew. They needed to make the man admit something. The only gambit they had was that Naqbi had spent the past forty-eight hours being starved, beaten and sleep deprived and that he wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders.

Makhdoom laid all the money down and rolled the dice. “Are the weapons safe?”

“What?” Naqbi shook his head. “Only the chosen ones could know of that! How could I—”

Chosen ones. Bolan grinned under his mask.

Hook, line and sinker.

“There have been problems,” Makhdoom stated. “Somehow the Americans have become involved.”