Don Pendleton - Assassin's Code

“Bear, are you sure?”

“The tracking device is within one hundred yards of you. That’s as exact as it gets. I have eyes on the bazaar and eyes on you, but all the tracker does is put out a low-frequency signal. I have it. It’s nearby, but the device isn’t sophisticated enough to triangulate on an individual without some other target verification.”

“Bear, give me anything.”

“I can’t swear to it, but my gut and dead reckoning tells me the signal seems to be on the southern end of the bazaar.”

Bolan had navigated by dead reckoning many times, and he would literally and figuratively bet the Farm on Kurtzman’s instincts. He moved south. “Ous, find her.”

Ous scanned the packs of swaddled, shopping women and the sellers they were haggling with. “I will try!”

Bolan subvocalized into his throat mike. “Keller, get to the southern end of the bazaar and deploy.”

“I’m already there.”

“Control, get that chopper in the air. I may need backup or fast evac out of the bazaar.”

“Bird is in the air, Batman,” Farkas confirmed.

“Batman,” Kurtzman said, “I can’t swear to it, but I think the signal is now moving westward.”

“She’s meeting someone,” Bolan concluded. “Making a delivery.”

“And now they are here,” Ous agreed.

Bolan picked up his pace. They passed through an open-air alley of rug sellers. The rain had abated, and the bazaar was swiftly filling with shoppers.

The soldier caught sight of a woman in a full-length burka. Similarly clad women surrounded her, but the one he had his eye on carried a woven basket about the size of a hatbox. She wasn’t hurrying but she moved with purpose. Bolan’s instincts spoke to him as he moved through the crowd to intercept her.

“What do you think of that one, Ous?” Bolan asked.

Ous’s smile flashed through his beard. “You have keen eyes, indeed. She walks with purpose, and that purpose is not shopping. On any other day, were I taking tea and watching people pass, I would guess that the basket she carried was a prop, and that she went to meet her lover.”

“You see our suspect’s curves beneath all that fabric?”

“Nothing in life is certain except God’s will and the words of the Prophet. But I would wager on it, my friend. I would wager a great deal.”

Bolan was willing to back Ous’s wager. He spoke quietly into his throat mike. “Bear?”

“I have eyes on you, and you’re right on top of the signal.”

“Keller, we’re moving in,” Bolan said. “Suspect is wearing a burka and carrying a basket, moving due west through the rug sellers.”

“I have visual on you and Ous. Moving to intercept.”

“Ous, hang back a bit. Cover me,” Bolan instructed.

“Of course.”

Bolan caught up to the woman and followed her for just a moment. There wasn’t a speck of blood on her burka or her basket. As an American man, if he stripped the burka off the wrong woman there was likely to be a riot, if not a genuine international incident he might have to shoot his way out of. Bolan spoke very quietly. “Zurisaday.”

Ous spoke in his earpiece at the same moment. “I believe some of the women around her are her escorts. You have been noticed!”

The basket fell from the woman’s hands to the ground. The lid popped off, and Corporal Convertino’s, gray, frozen-in-agony head rolled into the mud. A pair of heavily kohled violet eyes glared pure murder at Bolan, and a slabsided Russian Pernach machine pistol snaked from under the burka.

Bolan’s knife hand chopped the chattering weapon out of the woman’s hand. The bazaar erupted into screams and chaos at the sound of the shots. His back-fist shot at the woman sent Zurisaday’s eyes fluttering like slot machines. He whirled, and a second blow flattened the killer into the mud.

He turned again as a robed woman screamed and plunged a foot-long, blood-crusted Khyber knife at Bolan’s chest. He caught her wrist and continued his turn, hip-tossing the shrieking killer in a windmill of limbs into a rug seller’s table. The soldier caught sight of a woman five yards away cocking a stubby submachine gun.

“Ous!” Bolan called.

The Afghan strode up from behind and clouted her with his pistol.

Another woman struggled slightly to get her Russian submachine gun out of the folds of her burka. Another woman hit her from behind in a flying tackle that sent both of them sliding a good six feet through the mud. Keller rose to one knee and secured her suspect. Bolan scanned for more targets. He waited for whomever Zurisaday was meeting to declare themselves. Cries of outrage and alarm were rippling outward across the bazaar. The remaining enemy had no need to attack just yet. It would be only a matter of moments before the good citizens of Sangin, a good portion of whom owned Kalashnikov rifles, took restoring order into their own hands, and the bad guys could take that opportunity to blend in and launch their attack.

“Control! I need air! Now!”

Farkas’s voice came back over the thudding sound of rotor noise. “Copy that! ETA thirty seconds!”

Bolan tore rope from an awning and bound two of the suspects. “Keller! Get the truck!”

Agent Keller ran for it. Instantly she was one more running figure in the mob wearing a burka. The woman Bolan had thrown rose groggily and he hip-tossed her next to Zurisaday for her trouble. Ous strode forward and threw his captive on the growing pile of women. He scooped a fallen submachine gun and glanced around anxiously.

“In but moments our position will become untenable!”

Bolan knelt and put Corporal Convertino’s head back in the basket.

Salvation came in the form of a USMC UH-1Y Venom helicopter dropping out of the sky like a stone. The chopper hovered over the bazaar like an angry leviathan, its door guns tracking for targets. The rotor wash of its twin General Electric turboshaft engines sent awnings flying like ghosts, and grain and light goods swirling from their baskets. The locals ran crouching and clutching their hats and burkas in the vortex. Unfortunately there was no good place for the chopper to land.

The truck’s horn blared over the roar. Melons exploded into shrapnel rinds as Keller clipped a stall. The lanes between stalls and stands were too narrow for the pickup, and she sent goods of all descriptions flying. Mud sprayed as she slid to a halt. Bolan and Ous tossed the bound women into the bed of the truck and jumped in. Bolan slapped the top of the cab. “Go!”

“Which way!”

There was no way to turn around. “Straight!”

The spinning tires buzz-sawed mud in all directions, and then the truck suddenly lunged forward like a racehorse out of the starting gate. Tables and tents fell in disarray, leaving a wake of commerce carnage. A bullet whined off the top of the cab, but it could have come from anywhere. Keller kept hitting the horn, and shoppers and shopkeepers leaped out of the path of the plunging pickup. Keller found the edge of the bazaar and drove under an ancient arch. The truck burst onto the streets of Sangin with the helicopter above orbiting like a guardian angel.

“Bear, you got eyes on?” Bolan queried.

“Oh copy that, Batman. It was one hell of a show. The Sangin bazaar is officially a riot area.”

“What’s our quickest route out of the city?”

“Head straight for the river.”

“Control, you copy that?” Bolan asked.

“Copy that, Batman.”

“We’re going to abandon the truck in the first open area outside of town. Request evac.”

“Copy that.”

Bolan and Ous both dropped down among the bound, squirming women and relaxed as Keller tore through town. He looked at Zurisaday’s unconscious form and the basket containing Convertino’s head. The corporal was a traitor to his beloved Corps and the United States he had sworn to serve, but he had fallen going forward.