Don Pendleton - Assassin's Code

“Well.” Keller sat back. “Convertino got bit, and bit bad.”

“It is said the righteous man cannot feel their sting.” Ous gazed long upon the sketch. “Though I must admit I have yet to meet such a man.”

The feed suddenly switched to the satellite imaging. “The vehicle has stopped. Convertino’s just outside the southern end of the city and proceeding in.”

“We’re moving,” Bolan said. Ous pulled the truck out of the alley and began negotiating the winding, narrow back streets of Sangin. Bolan checked the load of 9 mm subsonic hollowpoint rounds in his machine pistol and screwed the short black tube of a sound suppressor onto the muzzle.

“Be advised the corporal has changed course.”

Bolan grimaced. Convertino had first met the woman at an after-hours club that catered to Western soldiers. That was the first place he was supposed to try. Failing that he would try to establish contact with some of her friends. “Where’s he headed now?”

“North and west. He’s moving toward the outskirts of the bazaar.”

Keller was incensed. “Son of a bitch! Does he really think there’s any place to run? I say we get the chopper in the air and scoop him up. This mission is over.”

Bolan was confident that he had a pretty good read on the young corporal. “He’s not trying to escape.”

“Well, he sure as hell isn’t sticking to the plan!”

Bolan nodded. “He’s still in love. He wants to see his woman one more time, and confront her alone before we pick her up and he goes to jail for the rest of his life.”

“Well, that’s so sweet I might just throw up.” Keller shook her head in disgust. “And you knew he was going to rabbit on us in the name of love all along?”

“I knew there was a chance. It was a chance I was willing to take. We still have him, satellite eyes on and GPS tracking. The mission is still go.”

“I concur,” Ous said.

“We’ve lost visual,” Kurtzman reported. “He’s entered a building.”

“Vector us in, Bear,” Bolan said, using Kurtzman’s nickname. His screen zoomed and a route appeared in green across a grid of the city. Bolan started calling rights and lefts fast as Ous took the alleys at breakneck speed. “What’s Convertino’s status?”

“Signal hasn’t moved.”

The pickup pulled up in front of a patio. A flowering lemon tree grew in the middle, and a scattering of wrought-iron chairs and tables surrounded it. “Looks like a teahouse.

“Indeed I have taken tea here before,” Ous said.

“Keller, stay here and stay in character,” Bolan ordered. “And get the chopper in the air.”

Keller wasn’t pleased but she got it. “You got it.”

Bolan and Ous spilled out of the truck with their pistols drawn. “Cover me.”

Ous took a firing position over the hood of the truck as Bolan moved across the open area and kicked the door. An old man at a table looked up from a breakfast of tea and rice. A very young man nearby jumped and dropped the broom he was sweeping with. Ous came in through the door a second later and began snarling questions in Pashto. Bolan swept through the tearoom and kicked open the door to the empty kitchen.

“They see an American soldier?” Bolan called back.

“They say not.”

Bolan looked out the back door. It opened onto a blind alley jammed with carts, barrels and clotheslines. He returned.

“You believe them?”

“Indeed not.”

Bolan glanced around the room. The walls, floor and ceiling were all clay. He turned his gaze to the table the old man sat at and the carpet beneath it. He gently but firmly pulled the old man out of his chair and kicked over the table.

The young man screamed as he pulled an ancient Russian Tokarev pistol out of his sash. “Allahu Ak—” Ous cut the cry of faith short by ramming the butt of his rifle into the young man’s belly. A blow to the back of the legs toppled the adolescent and sent the pistol clattering across the floor. Bolan shoved the old man into Ous’s embrace and yanked the carpet aside. The revealed wooden hatch in the floor was a recent construction. Bolan took out his tactical light. “Ask him if it’s booby-trapped.”

Ous asked. “He says not.”

“Do you believe him?”

“I told him I would send his grandson to hell a eunuch if you were blown up opening it.” Bolan glanced at the old man, who was weeping. Ous shrugged fatalistically. “I give you a fifty-fifty chance.”

Bolan rolled his eyes. “You’re a good man, Ous.”

“One tries. I will stand over by the door and cover the prisoners in case of your demise.”

“Thanks.”

“You are welcome.”

Bolan spoke into his com link. “Control, you have my position?”

“Copy that, Batman,” Farkas replied. “We’re receiving the Bear’s feed.”

“I have two suspects, tagged and bagged in a teahouse. I think I’ve found a tunnel.”

“Copy that. I’ll have a unit scoop them up.”

Bolan took out his tactical knife and snapped it open with a flick of his wrist. He probed the edges of the hatch but could find no hidden wires or leads. The soldier grabbed the handle and flung the hatch open. He aimed the muzzle of his Beretta and his tactical light into the tunnel.

“Ous, tie them up and follow me.”

The big American dropped down. It was a very well-dug tunnel, lined with planks, and Bolan could almost stand up. Twenty yards along he came to a side chamber—and Convertino’s corpse. The body lay facedown in a huge pool of blood. That was, if the corpse had still had a face.

Bolan eyed the corpse clinically. He had seen more decapitations than he cared to think about. One look told him the head-taking had been neither clean nor swift. It had been done with a large knife and while Convertino was still alive.

“Bismillah!” Ous exclaimed.

Bolan dropped to a knee beside Convertino’s cadaver. He noted two pinprick tears in the USMC-issue PT shirt the man had escaped in. He tore the T-shirt down the young Marine’s back and examined the two, bee-sting-like marks six inches apart between his shoulder blades. The corporal had been hit with a stun gun before he’d been beheaded.

Ous frowned at the gruesome scene. “What do we do now?”

Bolan rose. Convertino had bought his redemption in the hardest way possible, but he was still sticking it to the enemy. The Marine was a Trojan Horse. They might have taken his head, but the Radio Frequency Identification tracking chip had been implanted behind his ear.

“Bear, do we still have GPS on the Corporal?”

“Of course, why?”

“The corporal’s body is down here in the tunnel, but his head isn’t.”

“Oh, damn it.”

“Do you have visual on the signal?”

“No, I was assuming he was inside, but the signal is still very close to you. I’m saying it is just entering the bazaar,” Kurtzman stated.

“Keller, deploy into the bazaar, in costume. Try to get ahead of us and the signal.”

“Copy that.”

Bolan moved down the tunnel with Ous at his back. There was no blood trail, so the soldier assumed Convertino’s head was packaged for transport. The tunnel dead-ended with another hatch above, which was unbarred. Bolan listened a moment to the silence up top, then flung it open. No grenades or gunfire met the intrusion. He clambered up four iron rungs and found himself in a storeroom laden with burlap sacks of grain. He swept the room as Ous emerged. The storeroom opened into a storefront. No one was around. Bolan tucked his weapon away, pulled on a fatigue cap and a pair of sunglasses, then stepped out into the open air of the bazaar.

He took a moment to scan the early morning activity.

The Taliban had been mostly driven out of Sangin City proper; those who still lurked did so under deep cover. Still, most women in Sangin wore burkas when they left their homes, some out of tradition, many out of a very real and justified fear of reprisal. Groups of hooded women moved around buying milk, eggs and fruit and looking to see if the morning had brought any new goods in the stalls since the day before. Others carried baskets laden with lentils, coffee and grains. Most women wore black burkas, some light blue and a few other colors. They all moved in interlocking streams when they weren’t poking, prodding or bartering. All over the bazaar, eyes were drawn to the Westerner.