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.”
“Americans?” Naqbi gaped in confusion. “Impossible! What Americans?”
Bolan pulled off his mask, locked his gaze with Naqbi’s as he spoke in English. “Me.”
“Oh…” Naqbi’s shoulders and arms clenched in upon himself like a spider that had just been stepped on. His face went as white as a sheet. “Goddess…” He shuddered with the enormity of his betrayal. He clutched his face with his hands. “I…am doomed.”
“You’re in a world of hurt.” Bolan’s voice was as cold as the grave. “Doomed is up to you.”
“Doomed…” Naqbi was swiftly sinking into a robotic stupor of terror.
Makhdoom snapped him out of it with the back of his hand. The captain suddenly glanced up at the lightening horizon. From a minaret beyond the Christian Quarter, an Imam sang forth the call to prayer. Bolan listened as the call rang out against the orange light of dawn. He had fought Muslim opponents many times, but the unearthly beauty of the call and its message had never failed to move him.
Throughout Islamabad, the believers turned westward toward Mecca and knelt in prayer. Makhdoom removed a small, rolled rug from the back seat of the Mercedes. “I must go to prayers. Then we will have breakfast.” His smile was expectant and ugly as he locked his gaze with Atta Naqbi.
“Then we shall have a talk. The three of us.”
Islamabad. The Christian Quarter
MAKHDOOM CONTINUED to surprise Bolan. Christians weren’t popular in Pakistan. That the man had friends in the quarter was interesting. It was the last place in the world one would expect to find a Pakistani special forces captain, much less an American commando and a worshiper of the goddess of death.
“The food here is outstanding.” Makhdoom stated as he deftly slid a massive chunk of lamb from his kabob. The meat steamed in the morning chill and dripped with clarified butter. The captain closed his eyes with a delight bordering on the sensual as he chewed the tender meat and swallowed it. Most people Bolan knew from the Middle East did not take big breakfasts. Makhdoom had ordered them a feast under the rising sun. He smiled at Bolan as if he had read the American’s mind.
“I was sent to train with United States Special Forces in 1989.” He sighed as he speared another piece of meat with his knife. “The Prophet Mohammed, all praises onto him, says a man should be moderate in his eating. But I have been to Fort Bragg, and to my ruin I have learned the joy of a hearty American breakfast.”
Bolan smiled. He had been to Fort Bragg. The boys there took their breakfasts with extreme seriousness. They often didn’t know how long it would be until their next one.
Makhdoom raised a dry eyebrow at Atta Naqbi over the rim of his teacup. “The menu is not to your liking?”
Naqbi said nothing as he stared down at his plate. The sauce around his cubed lamb tongue was congealing.
“Perhaps the prison gruel was more to your taste?” the captain suggested.
Naqbi’s shoulders twitched, but he didn’t look up or respond.
Makhdoom snarled. “Idol worshiper!”
The man jumped in his seat and stared down miserably.
“Ah, I see the problem. Since you are an idol-worshiping disciple of death, you are a vegetarian. Would you care for some vegetables?” He shoved the plate of carrots, celery and cauliflower toward Naqbi.
Makhdoom spoke conversationally. “You know, Islam is the religion of love.” He drank tea reflectively. “However, there are three people my religion tells me I must despise.” The captain withdrew his pistol and set it on the table. “Worshipers of idols, worshipers of fire, and those who engage in human sacrifice. Perhaps I should deposit you back into the prison and explain to the guards you are so far two for three.”
“Atta, if you go back to jail, you’re dead,” Bolan opined. “Then again we could just turn you loose. You have any guess what would happen to you then?”
Naqbi clutched the tabletop to stop himself from shuddering. Everyone at the table knew what would happen to him. He was damaged goods.
He had been compromised.
“There is a third option.” Bolan freshened Atta’s tea, as part of his “good cop” role.
Naqbi glanced up for the first time.
“You cooperate. You help us. You produce results, and we cut you loose. With money, a new identity, and we drop you any place you’d like. Bora Bora, Argentina, South Africa, the North Pole, you name it.”
Naqbi glanced at Bolan and actually met his eyes. The soldier didn’t like what he saw there. He saw the absolute ruin of despair. “You think you can protect me from a god?”
Makhdoom straightened in religious outrage.
“Do you think you can protect yourselves?” Naqbi’s shoulders rose and fell. “Kali will take us. She will take us all. We are all dead men.” His head shook back and forth in a slow-motion movement of helpless horror. “She shall have our flesh, she shall have our blood, she shall have our souls.”
“Speak not of demons!” Makhdoom snarled. “Only tell us where we can find their worshipers and the weapons they stole!”
“Kali is not a demon.” Naqbi no longer looked at Bolan or Makhdoom. He was staring off into the middle distance, into his own personal vision of hell and horror, and he spoke more to himself than anyone at the table. “She is the slayer of demons. When demons ruled Heaven and Earth, and all the gods and all the angels could not stand before them, they summoned Kali. All powerful, all conquering, goddess of the destruction…”
Naqbi received the back of Makhdoom’s hand. “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet!”
“Goddess of the burning ground.” The young technician was unmoved. The world around him ceased to exist. Bolan had seen such expressions before in the faces of religious fanatics in crisis. Naqbi was zombifying himself into his own little insular hell of despair. Given a few more hours, he would lapse into catatonic depression.
Bolan couldn’t afford to let that happen. “What about your family, Atta?”
“My family.” He glanced up with fear sharpened eyes.
“Maybe we can’t stop a god—” Bolan shrugged meditatively “—but we can stop her followers from killing your family.”
“I…”
“You have to make a choice.”
Naqbi’s
