Appointment in Kabul (4 page)

Colonel Pavl Uttkin, ranking GRU officer attached to the 40th Army in Kabul, resented having to wait for Boris Lyalin, his KGB counterpart, before commencing interrogation of Lansdale, the American agent Uttkin had apprehended less than an hour ago. But the Soviet military intelligence boss had no choice and he knew it.

But now it would begin and Uttkin felt the familiar pleasant warmth of anticipation course through him.

The moment Lyalin had arrived in his chauffeured ZIL, they marched Lansdale down along the basement hallway toward the torture chamber where other work had been going on this night.

They had Lansdale in handcuffs clamped too tight behind his back, each of the CIA man's arms in the viselike grip of a stocky raydoviki armed with an AK-47 assault rifle.

Colonel Uttkin hated Afghanistan.

He hated himself.

He knew the Central Committee and the General Staff used him only because he got results even though they loathed him for the methods he used.

His skills had led him to this hellhole of a country that reminded him too much of his childhood home in Bukhara, where the wasteland of desert meets the desolate frontier of the mountains; where he had turned in his parents as enemies of the state when he was thirteen. His parents had killed themselves rather than face slow death in a concentration camp. Pavl Uttkin had existed ever since hoping he would be the next to die, and until then the only pleasure he could find was in the screams and pain of others.

Uttkin led the way to the door of the "interrogation room."

"Brief me," Lyalin snapped irritably. "Can this not wait until morning?"

"It cannot. Not with... General Voukelitch's orders that all such interrogations be carried out immediately. Voukelitch may be in Parachinar but he has eyes and ears in Kabul."

Lyalin glared at Uttkin, with a nod indicating the handcuffed American. "You had, uh, best concentrate on the matter at hand, Colonel."

"Do not worry, comrade," Uttkin assured the KGB man as they reached the door to the torture chamber. "Mr. Lansdale shall not repeat what he hears to anyone. Not in this life, I can assure you. He will not leave this room alive."

They stood aside to allow the soldiers to open the door and forcibly push the American in.

A glare illuminated the room with operating-room brilliance. A long wooden table with foot and wrist straps occupied the center of the room directly beneath tube lights, the table unoccupied at the moment but smeared with fresh blood.

A naked male corpse in a corner had obviously been unceremoniously rolled off the table and kicked away. The dead man had no eyes; they were smeared bowls of horror, the rictus of death indicated he had died screaming. Parts of his body were butchered, his fingers all broken, the ends thing but gory stumps.

The room stank of a sick sweetness that Uttkin loved. He forced his eyes away from what remained of the man he had watched tortured, trying to keep his voice steady so as not to betray the excitement he felt.

"What remains of Captain Zhegolov of the security staff. We discovered he has been passing along secret military information, deployment of troops, comings and goings here at the base, that sort of thing. After some, ah, persuading, we learned from Zhegolov the identity of the man to whom he has been passing this information. Mr. Lansdale."

Lyalin glared at the American.

"It would be far better, far easier for you to voluntarily tell us what we want to know. Surely you can appreciate that. Your life could be spared."

Lansdale returned the stare. He said nothing.

"He will not talk without persuasion," Uttkin opined. "I know his kind." To Lansdale's face he sneered, "These Americans think they are very tough but they all scream and tell me what I want to know before they die."

"Begin then," the KGB man ordered.

"Of course." Uttkin turned to the soldiers holding Lansdale. He snapped his fingers and made a motion toward the blood-smeared table.

The guards understood. They removed Lansdale's handcuffs and roughly strapped him to the table, giving the American no opportunity to resist. Lansdale felt his clothes stick to his skin with sweat. The table felt clammy beneath him; the light above him was blinding. He wondered if he should bite the cyanide pill he carried inside his mouth. He could see no other way out and he was damned if he would die screaming the way poor Zhegolov obviously had. Lansdale knew these butchers could make anyone scream with their knives and scalpels and beg for the mercy of death.

At least Katrina was safe.

Lansdale made his decision.

The pill.

The idling of the two-and-a-half-ton supply carrier was the only sound in the Kabul night between the gate guard's demand and the Executioner's response. Bolan made his voice tired.

"The baby-sitter they sent along asked me to drop him off where he lives on the way through town," he answered the sentry in Russian.

"Don't you know that's against regulations?"

"That's what I told him. Look, comrade, he wasn't my responsibility, was he? I'm only the driver and I'm damned tired, I don't mind telling you." Bolan, the role-camouflage expert, played it with the perfect note and tone.

The sentry saw what Bolan wanted him to think he saw in the less than half-light at the high command's front gate. Bolan kept to the shadows of the truck's cab.

The soldier considered the orders he held a few more seconds, made up his mind and handed the papers back up to the shadowy driver in Soviet jacket and headgear.

"Proceed." The sentry stepped away from the truck and signaled to the men behind the bulletproof glass of the guard station.

The iron-grille gate slid sideways. The sentry waved the truck through. Bolan smiled as he put the vehicle into gear and rolled onto the base.

Piece of cake.

Sure.

Getting out would be the difficult part, but the nighthitter had already formulated a strategy for withdrawal, with plenty of room for improvisation. The Executioner's first, his only, priority right now was to find Lansdale, pull him out and find out where these cannibals manufactured the nightmare they called the Devil's Rain. He steered the truck toward the headquarters building. The grille gate whirred mechanically shut behind him like the jaws of a trap.

Yeah, exactly like the jaws of a trap.

For an instant Bolan wondered if he had trusted Katrina Mozzhechkov too much.

He braked the truck in front of the headquarters' main entrance, which opened onto a lighted hallway the width of the two-story building.

An oblong patch of light fell across the walkway from the doorway. Inside there the Man from Blood knew he would find the orderly room and the answer to where they had taken Lansdale after bringing him here.

The width of the building showed no lighted office windows at this predawn hour. The only light came from the open entranceway. He doused the truck's headlights but left the supply carrier running, then lowered himself from the cab, the truck blocking him from view of the building.

He saw a two-man roving sentry patrol walk in the opposite direction, paying little attention to a military vehicle that had cleared two checkpoints.

Bolan waited an additional second after the guards disappeared from sight around one of the barracks buildings, gave a quick look around to make sure no one could see him, then tugged off the cap and Soviet uniform jacket. He double-timed it around the front of the truck and up the short walkway, in through the front door of Soviet headquarters.

He stepped briskly to the first office doorway, which was open, light streaming out, to his right.

Orderly room.

Bolan nodded when he saw the four Soviet soldiers. They were relaxing as if they didn't have a thing to worry about because they sat under the tightest security lid in Kabul; three raydoviki, bearlike in Russian army uniforms, rifles close at hand, lounged in chairs, waiting for the end of their shift. A younger enlisted man, the orderly, behind a desk to answer incoming calls, at the moment was leafing through an American sex magazine. The four soldiers reacted a heartbeat too late at the sight of the big dude.

The kid behind the desk stood, mouth agape as he reached for a holstered pistol.

The raydoviki recovered enough from their lethargy and grabbed for weapons. Bolan swung the Ingram MAC-10 at hip level and squeezed the trigger, the submachine gun recoiling in his fists, the silenced tube spitting flashes of orange-red flame and 9mm manglers to terminate the three infantrymen.

Two of the Soviets caught the Ingram's stitching fire after they grabbed their AK'S but before they could pull the rifles around on the blacksuited penetrator. Bolan executed these cannibals, both men spinning away under the impact of so many slugs and such sudden death, sprawling across furniture in a tangle against the wall.

The third infantryman's weapon was rising, but only reached halfway up toward Bolan when another 9mm burst raked this one even though he tried to steer away at the last second. The blistering slugs riddled his chest at a different angle.

Only heartbeats had passed since Bolan wasted the trio, but the orderly behind the desk managed to unbutton the flap of his belt holster and clear leather, a pistol tracking toward the Executioner.

Bolan dropped on the punk like a house, pinning this cannibal backward across the desk, swatting the Ingram at the kid's gun wrist. The big warrior heard a snap and the pistol and skin mag skidded off the desk to the floor.

Bolan applied pressure, pinning the orderly to the desk top. The Executioner pressed the silencermuzzled snout of the MAC-10 against the punk's chest.

"The prisoner they just brought in," he growled in icy Russian. "The American. Lansdale. Where is he?"

Beads of sweat popped across the soldier's face.

"D-downstairs. Third room on the left! Don't..."

"You should've stayed home, kid." Bolan triggered a burst from the Ingram. The soldier bucked, his feet off the ground, then collapsed to the floor when Bolan released the dead throat. The would-be cannibal's tunic smoldered from the contact shot.

Bolan exited the orderly room thirty seconds after he went in. He started toward the stairway leading to the basement level when combat senses alerted him in time to eyeball a two-man guard unit strolling in through the building's entrance on its appointed rounds, or to gab with their comrades in the orderly room. They found their Executioner, who triggered a silenced burst, and the sentries tumbled backward out of the doorway across the walk, life oozing from them, and Bolan knew he had whittled down his time.

He took the stairway to the basement level four steps at a time. He slapped another clip into the Ingram.

The Bolan Effect, yeah.

Hitting hard.

Lansdale's tongue made contact with the pill wedged against the roof of his mouth.

He loosened it from where it had been specially sealed back in the States. He closed his eyes against the piercing light and what he had got himself into. What a cruddy way to die, he thought.

Colonel Uttkin's face loomed above him, blocking the light. "Perhaps you think you can, how do you say, ah, yes, hold out on us, Mr. Lansdale," the GRU pig purred silkily with a smile that wasn't quite sane. "I can assure you that the longer you force us to continue with this unpleasantness, the more you endanger others. Such as Katrina Mozzhechkov."

Lansdale stopped working the suicide pill loose and tried like hell to register no reaction at all, but he could see the GRU sadist pick up on the tightening he felt.

Uttkin cackled.

"I see the lady's name draws a response. It seems Miss Mozzhechkov was Captain Zhegolov's typist, as you must surely know, and it also seems the unfortunate woman needed a friend. The dear captain told us what he suspected between you and her, before he died. It was that or losing, or principal part of himself. The same thing awaits you, Mr. Lansdale, unless of course you wish to spare yourself. A quick death, so merciful..."

The KGB man, Lyalin, snorted.

"You enjoy this too much. Have your men get on with this foul business. We must learn what he knows and what he has already passed to his people."

Uttkin stepped back from leaning across the table, his face flushed, florid.

"But of course, comrade. I only wanted our silent friend here to realize that if he talks, Miss Mozzhechkov will be spared any of this. We do not have her yet but we shall by morning." Uttkin licked fleshy lips. He addressed Lansdale. "Now then, will you cooperate?"

At least they don't have her, Lansdale thought. If he could only find some way to warn her. Katrina would arrive at her job tomorrow not knowing they were on to her.

Again Lyalin snorted.

"The prisoner seems unimpressed with your threats, Colonel."

Uttkin bristled.

"Very well. He has willed this upon himself." The sadist turned to the two soldiers. "Strip him. Then use your knives. Begin."

The door to the torture chamber exploded inward with shattering force under a powerful kick.

A human grim reaper stalked into that room spewing death from a blazing Ingram MAC-10 that riddled one of the raydoviki with a tight stitch, pulping the guy's heart. His chewed-up body made a splattered mess across the wall, where he stuck for a moment as if pinned, already dead, then his remains slid to the floor.

Lansdale craned his head around on the table.

He recognized Bolan instantly.

He spit out the suicide pill.

The three other Russians in the room fell away from the table. Lansdale started trying to free his wrists and ankles from the leather bindings but found himself immobile, helpless to do anything but watch his own fate unfold.

Uttkin reared away from Lansdale's right side, clawing for his side arm. Boris Lyalin was trying desperately to maneuver away from the tracking Ingram to the other side of Lansdale, at the same time unleathering a Walther PPK.

The uniformed soldier reacted quickest because he had only to swing his shoulder-strapped AK toward the human fire storm in black whose Ingram kept spitting flame, stitching this soldier.

Lyalin had his Walther PPK out, tracking a bead on the Executioner. Uttkin, responses dulled by the anticipation of torture, barely had his pistol cleared from his belt holster. Bolan bent his knees and moved sideways at the same instant Lyalin triggered a round that slammed into the door frame where Bolan had been a moment before. The Executioner triggered another silenced blast and the KGB officer hurtled backward into hell.

Uttkin, eyes still glazed, tugged his pistol up.

Lansdale sensed the Executioner whirling to respond, but the shackled CIA man could not stay uninvolved a moment longer. He gave the table beneath him a powerful heave to the right, riding the leverage with all his weight, and the table toppled over sideways into Uttkin, knocking the GRU man down with it. The Russian colonel's pistol flew out of his fingers to land a few feet from the naked corpse of the man Uttkin had tortured. Uttkin cursed in Russian and pushed off the weight of the man-laden table, got free and tried to get to his pistol but only made it halfway before Bolan opened fire.

The GRU officer skidded onto his face as if tripped, the back of his head blown in by the burst from the Ingram. The Executioner crossed rapidly to crouch beside the overturned table. He untied the straps that bound Lansdale to the rack. "Thanks, buddy," Bolan grunted as he released the last clasp. Lansdale scrambled to his feet, rubbing his wrists.

"No, my thanks to you, big dude. Sounds like we've got company." The doorway filled with three raydoviki tumbling into the room in response to Boris Lyalin's pistol shot.

Bolan swung the Ingram to take them out, but Lansdale had maneuvered himself into the line of fire so Bolan stepped aside while the Company man erupted into a series of rapid-fire martial arts punches and kicks, taking out two of the soldiers, breaking necks with a couple of stiff-handed blows.

The CIA agent spun with a leg stiffened out in a backward blow, the heel caving in the other soldier's forehead, adding another dead man to the "interrogation room." Bolan tossed his M-16 across the short distance to Lansdale. "Here, this'll be easier." Lansdale caught the rifle.

"Maybe, but not half as much fun. You got any particular plan in mind, pard?"

Bolan hustled them out of the doorway.

"A truck upstairs." They hit the basement hallway and the bottom of the stairway leading up, and they ran into four more Soviet regulars racing toward them. The Executioner took out the two on the right, the Ingram stuttering its silenced dirge, killing men who tumbled to the corridor, posed in death like some weird sculpture.

Lansdale tugged off a burst from the M-16 and a soldier on the left caught the hail of hammering projectiles that twisted and staggered him, life forces bursting red everywhere until the dancing dead tripped and toppled down the steps.

The MAC-10 in Bolan's hands issued an angry message of death that pulverized the last trooper, the leaden stream chopping off limbs making bloody modern art designs across bullet-riddled walls. Bolan and Lansdale rushed up the stairs to the ground-floor level.

"Things never got this noisy back in the panhandle," Lansdale grunted as they made the top.

Bolan frowned. This was the same guy he had worked with in Libya, no doubt of it.

"Last time we met you had a Boston accent."

"So I get around," the Texan replied in a goodnatured drawl. "A guy's got to have some fun in life."

They left the stairs and raced toward the main entrance, heading for the supply carrier Bolan had left idling.

A Maxon raped the silent night, alerting soldiers all around the HQ building.

Two heads poked out of an office doorway halfway down the hall, soldiers scoping the action.

Bolan blew their heads off before they got any ideas. The Executioner and his CIA sidekick dashed from the building, Bolan to the driver's side of the truck, Lansdale tugging off a stutter from the M-16 that sent three sleepy-eyed troopers back to eternal slumber in the doorway of the nearest barracks. Then Lansdale hopped up into the cab and kept low as more soldiers, responding to the ruckus, poured out of the barracks, their attention on the HQ building and the commotion around the supply carrier. Bolan popped the clutch, upshifting them the hell away from there. Automatic fire from AK-47's and a heavier machine gun opened up on the moving truck but most of those slugs whistled wildly into the night, the rest whizzing through the cab but finding no targets. Bolan wheeled the vehicle into a tight turn toward the main gate. Lansdale saw men racing for vehicles parked by the motor-pool garage. As Bolan steered the truck, continuing to accelerate the closer he got to the closed main gate, Lansdale leaned out his side of the truck cab and rode out a heavy burst from his M-16 that cut down half a dozen men around those vehicles like a scythe cutting wheat, but he knew others would take their place in no time.

The truck ate up the distance to the closed iron gate and the guardhouse. More gunfire stitched the supply carrier but missed the cab. A guard stepped out of the gate house, raised his AK-47 and squeezed off one round that spider-webbed the windshield between the men in the cab, but hit neither. The other two front-gate sentries remained inside their guardhouse, snouts of their machine guns swiveling toward the approaching truck from the turrets built into the bulletproof glass.

The brave fool in Bolan's path almost had time to trigger another shot, but the truck jolted under an impact that sounded like a bug crushed under a heavy foot.

For a few seconds the Russian soldier rode like a mascot with arms outflung across the grillwork of the truck, dead eyes glaring at the man from death behind the steering wheel. Then the nose of the truck plowed on through the iron gate with enough force to rip the gate from its moorings, the upright iron rods making ground meat out of the soldier's body. Bolan gunned the truck away from there under a hail of fire from the guardhouse. He yanked the steering wheel to the left and took the turn onto the street that ran along the walled compound toward the nearest checkpoint; the men stationed there would have less time to respond. The deuce-and-a-half left behind plenty of activity, Soviet officers snapping their well-trained troops into response, engines of vehicles throating to life, loading up with troops to give chase. The sentries inside the gatehouse swung their weapons around as far as the bulletproof window turrets would allow, but could no longer track on the fleeing vehicle. One of the guards stepped outside for a parting shot but he got a farewell deathburst from Lansdale.

The CIA agent plugged a fresh clip into the M-16 as the Executioner powered the two-and-a-half-ton metal monster faster toward the checkpoint. Lansdale leaned out from his side of the truck's cab. The night wind on his face felt good after the fetid stench of Colonel Uttkin's torture chamber. The Texan hammered off more M-16 fire, this time at the group of raydoviki at the checkpoint, cutting down two while another scrambled for cover. Bolan unleathered Big Thunder and straight-arm aimed a head shot that roared in the night, decapitating the communications man by the patrol car. Bolan steered the speeding supply rig on through the checkpoint. Two soldiers opened fire as the deuce-and-a-half clattered by like an express train, but too much was happening at once for their aim to be any good; none of their buzzing bullets found meat in the cab of the racing military vehicle.

Bolan's .44 cannon dropped another raydoviki as the guy tried to swing around a machine gun mounted at the back of one of the vehicles, then Bolan concentrated on steering the rocketing truck, clearing the checkpoint and roaring on into the night.

Three checkpoint soldiers remained alive long enough to trigger some more ill-aimed rounds at the truck before Lansdale fired a goodbye chorus from the M-16, leaning out backward from the passenger side of the cab now. The three soldiers caught the withering hail of 5.56mm hornets and died, spasming in death dances before they toppled.

In the truck's rearview mirror Bolan caught sight of a dozen or more vehicles giving hell-for-leather chase after the supply carrier.

Soviet pursuers poured from the main gate a quarter mile back, many of the vehicles smaller, faster than the military transport vehicle. The Kabul night rumbled with motorized fury.

Bolan kept the carrier's pedal to the metal, giving the deuce-and-a-half everything she had but knowing it would not be enough to outdistance those snapping hounds of hell closing in too damn fast.

Also Bolan played out his only option. He downshifted, pumping the brake at the same time.

When he had the decreased speed he wanted, still moving fast, he wheeled the supply carrier into a bone-rattling sideways skid, gripping the steering wheel to hold himself steady. Lansdale held onto the frame of the truck's cab for dear life.

The truck slewed to a shuddering halt across the narrow street, where it would effectively block the pursuers at least long enough to give Bolan and Lansdale a good start on foot.

Bolan ejected himself from the cab while the vehicle was still sliding, landing in a combat crouch to fan the escape route with Big Thunder. Wary combat senses were on alert, probing the night.

The dark street appeared deserted. For now.