in something very like a camouflage design. The car was empty, and he sat behind the Rover’s wheel, letting the engine idle while he waited for his contact to appear.
A creak of rusty springs, immediately followed by a scrape of leather soles on gravel from his left rear told Bolan that he’d been suckered. He was half turned toward the sound when he heard someone cock a pistol. Turning more, he could see the weapon pointed at his face, held by a young man with solemn eyes.
The gunman frowned and said, “The weather is not good for travel.”
“But a soldier has no choice,” Bolan replied.
Still cautious, the gunman dropped the muzzle of his Beretta 92 toward the ground and used the decocking lever to release its hammer harmlessly. He did not slip the pistol back into his belt, however. He shifted it to his left hand as he advanced toward the Land Rover, holding out his empty right.
Having correctly answered with the password for their meeting, Bolan stepped from his vehicle, eye flicking toward the old sedan, its trunk ajar. Two more armed men stood watching him. They’d risen from their hiding place on the old car’s floorboards.
“It was hot, I guess, inside that trunk,” Bolan said.
His handshake indicated strength, the gunman thought. “Hot,” he granted, swiping at his sweaty forehead with the back of his right hand. “How was your journey from Karachi?”
“Uneventful,” Bolan replied. “The way I like it.” Nodding toward the two other men, he inquired, “Are they with you?”
“They are,” the contact said. “In these times, we take no unnecessary risks.”
“Unnecessary risk is never wise,” Bolan said. “You want to trust me with a name?”
There seemed no point in lying, and he’d never used an alias, in any case. “Pahlavi. Darius Pahlavi. Yours?”
“Matt Cooper. Are we talking business here?” Bolan asked.
“I think not. It would be unfortunate if a patrol should come along.”
“Where, then?”
“In the hills nearby,” Pahlavi said. “I have a safe place there.”
The Executioner considered it, but only briefly. Making up his mind, he said, “All right. You ride with me and navigate. Give us a chance to break the ice.”
Pahlavi didn’t hesitate, despite his natural misgivings. This American had traveled halfway around the world to meet him and assist his cause, if such a thing was even possible. Pahlavi knew that he had to draw the line between caution and paranoia at some point.
“Of course,” he said, then turned and gave instructions to the others in Urdu, telling them to follow closely and be ready if the stranger should betray them. Neither one looked happy with Pahlavi’s choice, but they did not protest.
As Pahlavi climbed into the Land Rover, he considered the risk he’d taken—communicating with the United States, when Washington supported the regime in power, mildly cautioning its leaders on their worst excesses while refraining from decisive action to control them.
It had been a gamble, certainly, but once Pahlavi passed on what he knew, via a native said to be a contract agent for the CIA, the answer had been swift in coming. The Americans would send someone—a single man, they said—to see if he could help Pahlavi.
Not to kill his enemies, per se, or see them brought to ruin, but to see if he could help.
Whatever that might mean.
As they pulled out, Pahlavi glanced behind the driver’s seat and saw a duffel bag, zipped shut. He couldn’t tell what was inside it, but he had already glimpsed the slight bulge underneath the man’s windbreaker, which told him the American was armed.
And why not, in this land where human life was cheaper than a goat’s? Only a fool would face the unknown in the living hell his homeland had become, without a weapon close at hand.
Above all else, Pahlavi hoped that the American was not a fool. Intelligence and skill were more important than his personality—although it wouldn’t hurt if he dispensed with the persistent arrogance Americans displayed so often in their dealings with “Third World” nations.
What he needed was a man to listen and to act.
But what could any one man do, that Pahlavi and his allies had not tried themselves? he wondered.
“Have you a plan?” he asked, embarrassed by his own impatience, even as he spoke.
“I need to know the details of your problem, first,” Bolan replied. “My briefing on the other side was pretty…general, let’s say.”
“Of course.” Pahlavi nodded. “I apologize. You see, my sister—”
The Executioner had already seen the military vehicles approaching from the opposite direction. He could hardly miss the driver of the lead vehicle slowing to stare at them, while one of his companions leaned in from the back seat, mouthing orders that he couldn’t hear.
“That’s trouble,” Bolan said, as they rolled past the two jeeps and the open truck behind them, filled with riflemen in uniform.
“It is,” Pahlavi agreed, turning in his seat to track the small convoy. He was in time to see the lead jeep make a U-turn in the middle of the two-lane highway, doubling back to follow them.
“I make it six or eight to one,” Bolan remarked. “Smart money says we run.”
“Agreed.”
Bolan floored the accelerator, surging forward with a snarl from underneath the Land Rover’s hood. “All right,” he said. “This is the part where you’re supposed to navigate.”
2
Lieutenant Sachi Chandaka was often bored on daylight patrol. Encounters with bandits were rare, since the scum did their best to avoid meeting troops or police, and the most he usually expected from an outing in the countryside was some sparse evidence of crimes committed overnight by persons he would never glimpse, much less identify or capture. He supposed some criminals transacted business when the sun was high and scorching hot, but most of them dressed in expensive suits and had plush offices, where they sipped coffee and decided the fate of peasants like himself.
The fact that he was often bored did not mean the lieutenant’s wits had atrophied, however. On the contrary, his eyes were keen and he could feel malice radiating from an undesirable at thirty paces. More than once, while working in plain clothes or killing time off duty, he had startled his companions by selecting sneak thieves from a market crowd, all ordinary-looking men, then watched and waited while the petty predators moved in to make their snatch.
Perhaps it was a gift. Chandaka couldn’t say and didn’t really care, as long as he could work that magic when he needed it the most.
From half a mile away, he’d seen the two vehicles standing at the rest stop, on the south side of the highway. At a quarter mile, he’d counted four men idling by the cars, presumably engrossed in conversation.
