Читать книгу Lethal Tribute - Don Pendleton - Страница 11

Islamabad

The man in the cell wasn’t happy. He didn’t have a skylight. No one was bringing him barbecued goat kabobs. No one looked to have brought him anything but pain. His clothes were torn and bloodstained. His face was a misshapen lump of hamburger. A pair of guards stood over the miserable man, each with a tapered, leather-bound wooden club.

The bottoms of the prisoner’s feet were masses of purple bruising.

This was the twelfth such prisoner Bolan had seen. Pakistani justice, both military and civilian, was primitive, corrupt and brutal. One’s best hope was to be tried under Sharia—Islamic Law. The men Bolan had seen weren’t being tried. They were simply being tortured for information. Even if they knew nothing, their apparent failure at keeping the nuclear weapons in their charge secure justified their punishment in the minds of their jailers. Most had been wearing Pakistani army uniforms and had been guards at the Al-Nouri Weapons Facility. This man was dressed in civilian rags.

One of the guards looked up, saluted and shrugged at Makhdoom. He muttered a few words in Urdu, which Bolan didn’t need translated. The prisoner had been tortured extensively and he had nothing useful to say. Makhdoom let out a long breath. He clearly wasn’t pleased with the torturing of the prisoners, but neither was he raising any fuss about it. He had lost half a platoon of men and the fate of his nation could depend on what was discovered.

Whatever kid gloves of civility Makhdoom normally wore as an officer and a gentleman had come off in the past twenty-four hours.

Bolan examined the prisoner critically. He sat crumpled and hunched on the stone floor between the two guards, flinching with adrenaline reaction from his most recent beating and fear whenever either of the guards moved. He sniveled as one of the guards prodded him to demonstrate what a useless prisoner he was.

Bolan happened to be wearing the uniform of a Pakistani captain of special forces. His blue eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, even though they were in an underground cell. He had the reassuring weight of a loaded Browning Hi-Power pistol holstered on his hip. Bolan nodded at Makhdoom. It sickened him, but it was the only way.

Makhdoom nodded at the guards.

The prisoner shrieked as the bastinadoes of the guards fell upon him once more like rain. The beating went on for a few moments, then Makhdoom strode into the middle of it. He seized the prisoner by his shirtfront and slammed him against the wall of the cell. Spittle flew as Makhdoom screamed first in Urdu then in Sind. The man flinched and jerked as he was threatened with everything from castration to death. Makhdoom cut off his tirade and hurled the prisoner to the floor.

Bolan took off his sunglasses and strode forward.

The prisoner stared up into Bolan’s burning blue eyes and cringed in terror. The man flinched and pressed himself into the wall as Bolan crouched and cocked his hand back as if he were going to backhand him.

Bolan’s back was to Makhdoom and the guards. He didn’t backhand the prisoner. Instead he quickly passed his right hand down in front of his face. The prisoner’s eyes flew wide. Bolan whispered one of the two phrases in Hindi he had memorized this day.

“Greetings, Ali my brother.”

It was an ancient greeting, that members of the Cult of Kali had once used to identify fellow members in strange cities. The prisoner’s eyes flared wide at the words. Not with fear, nor with confusion, but with recognition.

Bolan had gotten a bite. He yanked on the hook to bury it deep and reeled the man in as he used his second phrase of Hindi. “Be strong. Be ready. We will come for you.”

The big American suddenly stood and yanked the prisoner up with him. He snarled a phrase in Urdu he had learned long ago during a mission in Asia, something about the prisoner enjoying relations with goats and how he particularly enjoyed allowing the goats to assume the dominant position in the relationship. The guards laughed uproariously. Bolan grabbed the prisoner by the throat and shoved him across the room. The prisoner collapsed into a heap in the corner. Bolan hated this aspect of role playing, but it was necessary.

Bolan spit on the man and fell into step with Makhdoom as they left the cell.

“You have a remarkable gift with languages,” the captain acknowledged.

“Thank you. You have a beautiful language filled with poetic metaphor.”

Makhdoom smiled for the first time in seventy-two hours. “And now?”

“Now? Now I think it’s time that you arranged a jailbreak.”

“Ah.”

Bolan cocked an eyebrow. “Do you speak Hindi, by the way?”

“I am a Pakistani special forces captain.” Makhdoom smiled slyly. “Infiltration was one of my specialities.”

Bolan nodded. “I was hoping you’d say that.”

The Prison, 4:00 a.m.

“SO WHO IS THIS GUY and what’s his story?” Bolan watched the bored guard pace outside.

“Atta,” Makhdoom answered. The Pakistani captain flipped through a file on his lap. “Atta Naqbi. He is a technician, recently graduated from the American University in Egypt. His family fled from East Pakistan during the 1971 war. He had no criminal record and has been working at the Al-Nouri Weapons Facility for six months.”

Bolan considered the information. What was once Eastern Pakistan was now known as Bangladesh. It was about half the size of Kansas and just as flat. Only unlike Kansas, Bangladesh was cut by the mighty courses of the Ganges, the Tista and the Brahmaputra rivers. When the snows of the Himalayas melted, Bangladesh was their final destination. Flooding was endemic. When the mountains didn’t flood the land, the monsoons swept the sea-level nation with tidal waves. Swiftly approaching a thousand people per square kilometer, every disaster took a horrific toll in human life. Bangladesh was an autonomous nation, but she was heavily reliant on the help of India to survive. Of much more interest to Bolan, Bangladesh was also the neighbor of the Indian state of West Bengal.

The traditional home range of the Cult of Kali.

“What city is he from?”

“Chulna, it lies upon the Pusur River, in the Great Mouths of the Ganges,” Makhdoom responded. “Do you know of it?”

“I’ve seen the Mouths of the Ganges,” Bolan responded, “but I’ve never been to Chulna. It’s not on my mental map.” Bolan cocked his head slightly. “How many kilometers is it from Calcutta?”

The captain grinned. “Why, less than one hundred.”

“Does Mr. Naqbi still have family there?”

“Most of his family reportedly came here, to Pakistan. But we have spies in Bangladesh, and in Bengal. I am having it looked into.”

“Does he speak English?”

“Fluently.”

Bolan pulled his black ski mask down over his head. “Let’s go rescue Atta.”

“Indeed.” Makhdoom pulled down his own mask. “Let us go rescue Atta.”

Bolan and Makhdoom got out of the battered 1950s vintage Mercedes and approached the guard at the gate. The guard snapped to attention and saluted. Makhdoom returned the salute. “Corporal?”

“Yes, Captain?”

“You are dead.”

The corporal dropped to the ground, flailed and made expiring noises.

“Less melodrama, Corporal.”

“Yes, Captain,” the corpse whispered.

Bolan and Makhdoom swept through the prison. Guards saluted and fell down “dead” in their wake like human driftwood. The two of them swiftly came to Atta Naqbi’s cell. The guard outside the door stood and turned. Bolan whipped a knotted silk sash around the guard’s neck. The guard went to his knees and made throttling noises as Makhdoom threw open the door.

Naqbi sat in his cell and gaped as Bolan apparently strangled the guard to death. Makhdoom ran in and yanked him up. The man could barely walk with his swollen feet. Makhdoom and Bolan took an arm each and strung him between them as they carried him out of the cell. Despite his pain and fatigue, Naqbi began firing off questions rapidly.

He wasn’t speaking Urdu or Sind.

Makhdoom shushed him. Naqbi spent the next few moments quietly staring in astonishment at the seemingly dead guards strewing the floor of the jail. They gave Naqbi no chance to examine any of the “corpses” too closely. They spirited him outside and deposited him into the waiting car.

Bolan took the wheel and drove off into the night.

The translator spoke in Bolan’s earpiece. “Striker, do you read me?”

Bolan reached up and tapped his earpiece twice in acknowledgment. His satellite rig was in the back seat and he was plugged into the satellite above. There was a microphone in the back seat, as well.

The translator began translating what Naqbi and Makhdoom were saying to each other in Hindi.

Naqbi was chattering a stream of questions, and Makhdoom was playing it close. They jockeyed back and forth with questions and counterquestions. Makhdoom was playing with a deck missing many cards. There had to be call signs and recognition signals, ones that neither Bolan nor Makhdoom knew. They needed to make the man admit something. The only gambit they had was that Naqbi had spent the past forty-eight hours being starved, beaten and sleep deprived and that he wasn’t quite firing on all cylinders.

Makhdoom 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 eyes flicked about in mounting panic. Bolan nodded to himself. Panic in an intelligence asset was good. Turning into a stalk of broccoli wasn’t.

“That’s air in your lungs, Atta. That’s food on your plate. Life is good. It’s worth living. It’s worth fighting for, even in the darkest moment. Your family is worth fighting for. But if you want to fight for them, you’re going to have to help us. You can give up on yourself, that’s your choice, but you have another decision to make.”

Atta Naqbi looked as though he might throw up.

Bolan’s burning blue eyes held Naqbi’s implacably. “Do you want us to try to help your family?”

Naqbi vomited.

Bolan nodded at Makhdoom. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”