Читать книгу Frontier Fury - Don Pendleton - Страница 8

North-West Frontier Province, Pakistan: The Present

Mack Bolan leaned into the rush of icy wind, his gloved hands clutching the frame of the plane’s open doorway. Ten thousand feet below him, rivers, trees and hills resembled landmarks on a model-maker’s diorama, tiny and remote.

The pilot’s voice came to him through a small earpiece. “On my mark—five…four…three…”

He waited, didn’t bother with the thumbs-up signal or a parting word, but simply launched himself on “Go!” The lurch of falling was immediately countered as the aircraft’s slipstream caught him, whipping him away.

There was a moment during every jump when Bolan felt as if he wasn’t falling, but was rather being blown along sideways, and perhaps he’d keep going in that direction until he had learned to fly on his own power, overcoming gravity itself to soar across the landscape like an eagle. Why should he go down, when all that waited for him on the ground was blood and suffering?

That moment always passed, of course, and as the Earth’s pull reasserted its command, he started calculating where to land.

He could control it, to a point. The wind and Earth’s rotation played a part, of course, but once his parachute had opened, he could use the steering lines and toggle to control his drift and speed, guiding himself toward touchdown at the preselected site.

Wherever that was.

In an exhibition jump, the landing zone would be marked off by colored fabric, smoke bombs, lights, or something. A covert drop, by contrast, was intended not to advertise his landing for the benefit of those he’d come to find—or for the soldiers who, in spite of public statements to the contrary, might very well be guarding Bolan’s targets.

From the moment Jack Grimaldi’s plane had crossed the border into Pakistani airspace, Bolan had been on the wrong side of the law. He was a trespasser, intent on the commission of assorted felonies which could, if he was captured, land him in a prison cell for life—or, as it seemed more likely, send him to the wall before a firing squad.

What else is new? he asked himself, then concentrated on the landscape drawing closer to him by the moment.

There! That river with the hairpin turn and twin hills standing just off to the east defined his target. He would try to land inside the loop formed by the river, seeming only inches wide from where he hung in space, but something like a quarter mile across at ground level.

With any luck at all, his native contact would be waiting for him there.

And if he wasn’t?

In that case, Bolan would go on and do the job alone, somehow.

Granted, it would be impossible to read road signs, and he wouldn’t be able to carry on routine conversations, but he had his maps and GPS device, along with all the killing gear he’d requisitioned for the job at hand.

Think positively, Bolan told himself. There’s no reason your guy shouldn’t be in place, on time.

No reason except being caught, tortured for information, and replaced by shooters who would zero in on Bolan as he floated toward them from on high, the fire-selector switches on their weapons set for full-auto.

But Bolan didn’t worry about what might be. It was a rule he had adopted early in his military service, and it had served him well. Fretting over the possibility of failure would accomplish nothing, but it might become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A glance at the altimeter on Bolan’s right wrist told him he had reached two thousand feet. He found the rip cord, clutched it, counting silently until he knew that he had plummeted five hundred more, then gave the brisk, life-saving tug. The chute rose, deploying overhead, and Bolan felt the shoulder, chest and leg straps of his harness cut into his flesh.

Parachutes had come a long way from the mushroom shapes depicted in films such as Flying Tigers and Twelve O’clock High. They were lozenge-shaped now, more or less, with individual cells, designed for maximum maneuverability. In Bolan’s case, the nylon parachute was colored sky-blue, in the hope that any unintended watchers on the ground below might overlook him.

But it wouldn’t help if they had been forewarned of his arrival.

Weighted by the weapons, ammunition and explosives that he carried, in addition to his rations and survival gear, the Executioner started to accelerate once more and used the right-hand brake to manage it.

The river with its hairpin loop was more than just a line drawn on the landscape now. Bolan could see the sun glint off its running water. He had to steer well clear of landing in its depths and being swept away.

He was a strong swimmer, but there was only so much muscle could accomplish when the current seized a parachute and dragged a jumper over jagged rocks, through rapids and somersaulting over waterfalls. It took only one solid blow to snap a neck or bring unconsciousness and allow the river to flood a pair of helpless lungs.

One thousand feet, and Bolan saw a vehicle below him. Only one, and there appeared to be a single figure standing on the driver’s side.

So far, so good—unless the lookout was reporting back to shooters waiting out of sight.

Bolan would have a chance to fight, if so, but he had no illusions that the odds would favor him in such a circumstance.

He didn’t touch the safety on his AK-47, chosen for deniability if he was caught or killed in Pakistan, like all the other gear he carried. At a thousand feet, he still had time.

But it was swiftly running out.

HUSSEIN GORSHANI watched the stranger plunge toward Earth, while the aircraft that had delivered him turned back and hurried toward the sanctuary of Afghanistan. Most of the Pakistan air force’s twenty-seven front-line squadrons were deployed along the border shared with India, far to the south and east, so the plane managed to escape without pursuit.

Leaving one of its occupants behind, falling through space.

Gorshani wondered—not for the first time, by any means—if he had lost his mind. Meeting the stranger and assisting him was certainly a crime under his nation’s laws. It might not rank as treason, technically, since spokesmen for the government proclaimed themselves allies with the United States in fighting terrorism, but Gorshani knew his private enterprise would not be cheerfully rewarded by the state police or army.

And, once they discovered that he drew a covert paycheck from the CIA, he would most certainly be killed. The best that he could hope for, in that case, would be a clean death without torture, but he realized that notion verged on fantasy.

The state would want to know how long he’d been employed by the Americans, what he had told them, who his contacts were, and where they could be found. And since Gorshani’s sense of honor would not let him answer any such questions, naturally, pressure would be applied.

He knew what that meant, and it gave him nightmares.

Gorshani almost missed the parachute, expecting some dramatic color bright against the washed-out sky, but it was blue, and made him strain his eyes. Even when he had spotted it, the soldier slung beneath it still looked like an insect zigzagging through empty air.

Gorshani took his eyes off the stranger long enough to sweep the road behind him and the open landscape to either side. He knew that he hadn’t been followed from Gilgit. He’d have seen vehicles trailing him, or helicopters in the air. But he knew there were ways of finding men and tracking them that he did not pretend to understand—from satellites, highflying aircraft, even with devices planted in his ancient car.

He’d searched the vehicle before leaving his home, of course, but it was always possible that he’d missed something. New technology didn’t require a large device, and he possessed none of the scanners that would locate hidden bugs or trackers by their emanations of magnetic energy.

He had a pistol tucked under his belt, beneath his Windbreaker, for self-defense. It was a Czech CZ-75, purchased at one of the province’s countless illegal gun markets, along with the AKMS folding-stock rifle concealed in the trunk of his car.

If the army or state police found him, however, the best thing Gorshani could do for himself was to whip out the pistol and fire a 9 mm bullet through his own brain. Spare himself the agony of interrogation that would last days, or even weeks, until the torturers were satisfied that they knew all his smallest secrets.

Or, he could fight to defend the stranger and himself. Try to flee and escape. Depending on the Yankee soldier’s skill, they might just have a chance.

Gorshani saw a subtle glint of sunlight on the nylon parachute, but still had trouble making out its shape against the blue background of sky. No doubt, it was designed that way on purpose, and he hoped that any unseen watchers in the neighborhood would likewise be deceived.

There was no trade route through this portion of the North-West Frontier Province, but some peasants brought their goats and sheep to graze along the hills in spring and summer. None had been in evidence when he made his approach, but still Gorshani watched for them, prepared to warn them off with threats if necessary while his business was accomplished.

Glancing upward, squinting in the sunlight, he supposed the stranger had to be five or six hundred feet above the ground. What would it feel like, falling from the sky like that? he wondered.

Better than plunging from a helicopter during an interrogation, he supposed, a trick the state police had learned from both the CIA and KGB. It was a technique that produced no answers from its chosen subject, but the prisoners who watched one plummet to his death often became quite talkative as a result.

Two hundred feet, Gorshani guessed, and now he could begin to make out details of the stranger: boots, a smudge of face behind goggles, weapons secured by straps and holsters, and he was wearing sand-colored camouflage fatigues.

One man against the State—or two, if Gorshani counted himself.

Of course, he and this stranger weren’t really opposing the government based in Islamabad, simply conducting an end run around its two-faced policy of protecting fugitive terrorists while pretending not to know they existed.

It was a policy that shamed Gorshani’s government, his nation—and, by extension, himself. As a patriot and loyal Muslim, he had determined to work against that policy through any means at his disposal. And if that put him at odds with certain politicians or their lackeys, then, so be it.

He was not the traitor in this case.

Clenching his fists, hearing his pulse pound in his ears, Gorshani stood and watched the stranger, his new ally, fall to Earth.

“THERE, SIR! To the west! I see it!”

Second Lieutenant Tarik Naseer turned in the direction indicated by his havildar—the Pakistan army’s equivalent to a sergeant—and saw a speck descending toward the ground. Naseer raised his field glasses to focus on the falling object.

“Yes!” he said, well pleased. “It is a parachute. One man alone.”

“We’ve lost the plane, sir,” said Havildar Qasim Zohra.

“No matter,” Naseer said. “We’ll have the man himself. Before we’re finished with him, he will tell us where he came from and whatever else we wish to know.”

The second lieutenant turned and shouted to his soldiers—ten of them standing beside their Russian-made BTR-70 armored personnel carrier.

“Forward with me!” he called. “We go to capture an intruder!”

That said, Naseer took his seat in the open Scorpion Jeep. Havildar Zohra took the wheel and put the Jeep in motion, rolling over open ground toward the area where it seemed likely their target would touch down.

Scanning ahead through his binoculars, Naseer saw that a one-man welcoming committee waited for the parachutist, staring up at the descending jumper from the shadow of a dusty old Mahindra Bolero SUV.

The watcher had not seen them yet. Naseer hoped he could close the gap in time to nab the men without a fight, but there was still a river in his path, its only bridge offset a half mile to his right.

Naseer could try to ford the river in his Jeep, trailed by the APC, but either vehicle could easily bog down, perhaps even be swept away if he misjudged the current. He knew that trying to explain that to headquarters would not be good for his career!

Another possibility was to remain on this side of the river and attempt to kill their targets without questioning the men. The BTR-70 had a 7.62 mm machine gun mounted atop its main cabin, and his soldiers carried AK-107 assault rifles. Their concentrated fire should drop both targets, or at least disable the Mahindra SUV, but Naseer would be held responsible if anything went wrong.

And if he simply shot the two men without first interrogating them, how would he then identify the parachutist, much less learn what brought him to the North-West Frontier Province?

No.

If possible, he needed to procure both men alive. Failing in that, at least the jumper had to be captured and interrogated.

That decided, Naseer made his choice.

“The bridge,” he told Zohra. “As fast as you can reach it!”

“Yes, sir!”

Zohra never disputed orders, though he might suggest alternatives if he believed Naseer—twelve years his junior, and with only eight months as an officer—had made the wrong decision. In this case, however, it was clear they only had one way to cross the river and approach their targets.

Which, unfortunately, gave the enemy more time to spot them and escape.

But first, the watcher had to meet his comrade, who was still at least two hundred feet from contact with the ground.

Naseer picked up the compact two-way radio that lay between the driver’s seat and his, half-swiveled in his seat as he thumbed down the button to transmit, and called out to the APC behind him.

“Lance Naik Shirazi!”

“Yes, sir!” the APC’s gunner replied.

“Prepare to fire, at my command. Take no action without direct orders.”

“Yes, sir!”

Behind Naseer’s Jeep, the young crewman—ranked on par with a lance corporal—rose through a hatch atop the APC’s cabin and readied the vehicle’s machine gun, clearing its belt, jacking a round into its chamber.

Naseer still hoped he would not have to kill the strangers, but he would disable their SUV if they tried to escape. Short bursts aimed at the tires, perhaps, or at the fuel tank.

Though the risk of blowing up the vehicle existed, bullets rarely started gasoline fires in such cases. It happened much more frequently in films than in real life.

Naseer clenched his fists as Zohra swung the Jeep away from their targets, accelerating toward the bridge that now seemed more distant than before. Each yard they traveled in the opposite direction felt like a concession to the enemy, as if they were retreating, rather than advancing by the only route available.

He mouthed a silent prayer—Don’t let them see us—but would Allah hear him and respond? He couldn’t help but wonder if such a trivial request, offered in haste, would even concern Him.

Naseer tried again: for Your great glory and the safety of our nation, let us stop them!

Better, but he could not let the matter shift his focus any further from the mission set before him.

It had been a bland, routine patrol in search of rebels, finding none, until Naseer had heard the distant droning of an aircraft far above their heads. It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere, all at once, like the infuriating whine of a mosquito buzzing past his ear, while he lay hoping merely for a good night’s sleep.

Even with his binoculars, the plane proved difficult to locate, flying at an altitude of two miles, maybe higher. When the parachutist separated from it, Naseer barely glimpsed him, and the jumper’s terminal velocity—around three feet per second, if Naseer recalled his jump-school training accurately—made the falling object difficult to track through field glasses.

The sky-blue parachute, clearly, had also been selected to fool watchers on the ground. More evidence that Naseer needed to interrogate the jumper.

But he had to catch him, first.

“Faster!” he told Zohra.

“Yes, sir!”

The Jeep surged forward, pressing Naseer back into his seat.

He watched the SUV and hoped its driver would not notice them.

Hoped that they would not be too late.

BOLAN TOUCHED DOWN within fifty feet of the waiting vehicle, flexing his knees without pitching a full shoulder roll. Before his contact had covered half the intervening distance, the Executioner was stripping off the chute’s harness, hauling on the suspension lines and reeling in the nylon canopy.

“I’ll help you,” the Pakistani said, fumbling for a set of lines, snaring them on his second try.

“We ought to bury it,” Bolan replied—then glanced across the river toward a pair of speeding military vehicles and added, “But I guess we won’t have time.”

His contact turned to stare in the direction Bolan faced, and blurted out what sounded like a curse.

“Leave it,” Bolan ordered. “We need to go right now.”

They dropped the tangled lines, leaving the parachute a plaything of the breeze, and ran back toward the SUV. Bolan was faster, got there first, ignored the shotgun seat and climbed into the rear.

The Pakistani threw himself into the driver’s seat and reached for the ignition key as Bolan asked him, “Do you have a weapon?”

Reaching for his hip, where Bolan had observed a pistol’s bulge beneath the Windbreaker, the man reconsidered. “Underneath the hatch in back,” he said. “A rifle.”

Bolan found it, recognized an older model of the AKSM he was carrying and passed it forward. His companion dropped it on the empty shotgun seat and put the SUV in motion, fat tires churning dirt and gravel in their wake as he accelerated from a standing start.

How long before the soldiers reached the bridge, then doubled back along the route to overtake them? Bolan made the calculation in his head and guessed that they had five minutes to put more ground between themselves and their pursuers now, before the race turned into life or death.

Five minutes wasn’t much.

He doubted it would be enough.

“Where are we going?” Bolan asked his driver.

“North, eventually. If we are not killed or captured.”

“Let’s avoid that, all right?”

“I will do my best.”

And Bolan wondered whether that was good enough.

His plans hadn’t included taking on the Pakistan army—which, with some 700,000 personnel and another half million in reserve, outnumbered that of the United States. However, since the rulers in Islamabad permitted terrorists to hide in Pakistan and operate with virtual impunity from Pakistani soil, he had anticipated opposition from the military.

And he’d come prepared.

Bolan’s AKMS assault rifle came equipped with a stubby GP-25 40 mm under-the-barrel grenade launcher, and he carried a variety of munitions to feed it. His 75-round drum magazine gave him extended firepower for the Kalashnikov, backed up for closer work by a Belgian FN Five-seveN semiauto pistol, chambered for the high-powered 5.7 mm cartridge tailored for long range and superior penetration, with a 20-round box magazine and no external safety. His hand grenades were Russian RGD-5s, with 110 grams of TNT and liners scored to fling 350 lethal fragments over a killing radius of sixty feet.

With that gear, and his companion’s AKMS rifle, Bolan was up against a light machine gun with a range around 860 yards, and ten or twelve Kalashnikov assault weapons, likely firing 5.56 mm NATO rounds, with an effective range of 650 yards. Put all that hardware together, and his pursuers could lay down a blistering screen of some eleven thousand rounds per minute.

In theory.

In fact, however, none of the APC’s soldiers could fire while their vehicle was rolling in hot pursuit. That left the APC’s machine gunner and the Jeep’s shotgun rider, for a maximum of two weapons engaged, and the APC’s weapon had a 210-yard advantage over anything the Jeep’s rider was carrying.

Say five hundred rounds per minute for the 7.62 mm MG, and allowing for spoilage of aim, as the eight-wheeled, 11.5-ton BTR-70 pitched and rumbled on its way at top speed, and they might be all right.

Might be.

The safer plan was to remain outside the machine gunner’s 860-yard effective range, thus rendering his task that much more difficult, but that was down to Bolan’s driver—whom he’d never seen in action previously, and whose vintage SUV was subject to the same foibles as any other man-made vehicle.

Call it a race for life, then.

He was barely on the ground in Pakistan, and Bolan’s mission already hung in the balance.

They should be able to outrun the APC, with its factory-standard top speed of fifty miles per hour, but bullets were faster, and that still left the Jeep on their tail.

No matter how well his driver managed to perform, Bolan would have to derail the soldiers in the Jeep—and hope they hadn’t radioed ahead for reinforcements to establish roadblocks on the highway leading northward.

One thing at a time, Bolan thought, as he focused on the military vehicles behind him. The Jeep had just crossed the river bridge and was accelerating after them, its shotgun rider hanging on for dear life as his driver put the pedal to the floor. Another moment and the APC was after them, its turret gunner rocking helplessly behind his MG, still too far away to sight and fire.

How long could Bolan’s driver hold that slim advantage? Were his tires in decent shape? Had he maintained his engine? Was the gas tank full?

Too many questions.

Bolan crawled over the SUV’s backseat, onto the rear deck in the hatchback section. He would play tail gunner when the enemy closed in behind them.

And with any luck, he just might live to fight another day.