and the Caterpillar diesel engine thundered back to life. He shoved the MRAP into Reverse and floored it. The howls of bloodlust turned to screams. Bolan was rewarded by the sound of bodies bouncing off armor.
Ous went flying as the MRAP clipped the side of a house. Gears ground as the vehicle was cranked back into drive, then stalled. Thumps echoed hollowly from the roof as someone leaped from the rooftop and onto the MRAP. Bolan snarled as a hand appeared in the shattered driver’s window and dropped a grenade in his lap. The soldier snatched the grenade and shoved it back out the window.
“Down!” Bolan flung himself below the level of the window as the frag grenade detonated on the hood and sent jagged bits of metal spitting in all directions. He rose to find someone trying to shove the muzzle of an AK through the window, and grabbed the barrel, yanking it aside. The weapon went hot in his hand as the owner fired a long burst into Bolan’s armrest. Drawing his Beretta, the Executioner put a 3-round burst into the attacker’s gun hand. Fingers flew apart and Bolan yanked the weapon away. He hit the starter button and the besieged MRAP coughed into life once again, but the engine didn’t sound good.
People were still on the roof.
Bolan floored it once more. The MRAP roared as it accelerated. When the speedometer hit twenty, the soldier stood on the brakes. Three men went flying into the street ahead as if they had wings. Bolan stomped on the accelerator and ground the killers beneath the vehicle’s massive all-terrain tires. He shoved the Beretta out the window and fired bursts at two men appearing out of an alleyway with AKs. One fell to Bolan’s fire, but the other leaped back. Bullets still struck the MRAP, but they all struck the rear rather than the front, sides and roof.
Bolan burned out of the village and slowed as the storm engulfed them. “Farkas, how’s Yoshida?”
“Bad.”
“The prisoner?”
“Worse.”
“Grab the medical kit from the locker. It’s an hour back to base, and I need you to keep them both alive. Keller, help him.”
Keller put a hand on Bolan’s shoulder. “Mister, you really kicked some ass.”
Bolan grimaced through the dust blasting through the window. The fact was they’d been mauled, and it was thirty miles to the Marine forward base outside Sangin. “Ous, keep an eye out behind us.”
CHAPTER TWO
Sangin City, Base Camp Bravo
Yoshida looked like hell.. He taken two rounds through the neck and trapezius, and a third had relieved him of his left ear. The fact that he still had a head, much less anything below that was still functioning, was a miracle. Bolan smiled down at the wounded warrior. “You look like shit, Captain.”
The Marine gave Bolan a very weary smile back. “Count myself lucky to be looking like anything, Cooper.”
“I’m sorry about your men.”
“Thanks for hauling us out of there.” Yoshida sighed. “How are Farkas and Keller?”
“Just bumps and bruises mostly.”
“Yeah, that was a bumpy ride. How’s the prisoner?”
“He’s stable,” Bolan said. “I’m about to go look in on him.”
The Marine captain’s eyes went icy despite the fog of painkillers. “Yeah, well, you be sure to give him my regards when you do.”
“Ous is dying to give him your regards. It’s been hard to hold him back,” Bolan admitted. “Speaking of which, what do you know about the man?”
Yoshida sagged into his bed. “Not much. Word is he’s a real bad-ass, and he’s been real dark and spooky with the CIA. I hear that the Taliban has a one million afghan bounty on his head.”
Bolan did a little math. At the moment one million afghans was about twenty thousand dollars U.S., plus change. Afghanistan was about as dirt poor as nations got. The Taliban putting that kind of coin on a man’s head said something about Mr. Ous’s reputation and activities. “Can I get you anything?”
“Bourbon,” Yoshida suggested. “And the assholes who did this.”
“You’ll have the bourbon before Taps. You have my word on it.” Bolan smiled. “The assholes will have to be after Reveille tomorrow.”
Yoshida’s eyes glazed over with the combination of wounds, drugs and exhaustion, and slowly closed. “Just get them…?.”
Bolan nodded at the wounded, sleeping Marine. “You got my word on that, too, Captain.”
The Executioner strode from the regular infirmary tent into the storm and walked across the lane to another hospital tent. It was much smaller and guarded by armed Marines. Bolan nodded at the two sentries and walked in the tent. The wind flapped and shuddered the walls. There was only one patient inside. He lay on a bed with tubes sticking out of him and was heavily swathed in bandages, but he was conscious and clearly very agitated. A short, similarly agitated Marine doctor stood between the prisoner and Ous. The Hippocratic oath and naked intimidation fought for the doctor’s soul, but he was a Marine and stood his ground. The doctor’s head snapped around at the new intrusion. When he saw Bolan’s uniform, he looked at him imploringly.
“Can you please get this man out of here?”
“Why?” Bolan asked.
“He wants to interrogate my patient!”
“I want to interrogate your patient.”
The doctor waved his hands at the man on the bed and then toward heaven in mounting outrage. “You think this man is in any kind of condition for interrogation?”
Ous gazed unblinkingly at the prisoner with his disturbingly wolflike eyes. “I believe the prisoner is in an ideal condition for interrogation.”
The man on the bed flinched.
The doctor was appalled. “Oh for God’s sake!”
“I also believe this man speaks English,” Ous added.
The prisoner flinched again. Bolan kept the smile off his face. Ous was good.
“Taliban?” Bolan asked.
The prisoner assumed a stone-faced stare at the roof of the tent.
“It was so much easier when they marched through the streets, proudly wearing their black turbans,” Ous said. “But we killed so many of them they bared their heads so that they might hide in gutters like skulking dogs.”
The prisoner’s cheek flexed.
“Such a shocking lack of faith,” Ous concluded.
Ous was literally inducing a facial tic on the prisoner.
“Taliban?” Bolan asked again.
The doctor was clearly upset. “Listen! I—”
“Dr…?.?”
