'Take her with you.' Bolan glanced at Katrina. 'You must go with him.'
She nodded without hesitation.
'I will. A soul has been redeemed here... and I am wiser for it.'
'No more talk. Good luck, both of you. You had best return,' he advised Tarik Khan.
'And so we shall.' The Afghan fighter stalked off.
Katrina looked as if she wanted to say something to the nightfighter who had saved her life but she knew Bolan was right. She followed Tarik Khan into the gloom.
16
Bolan glanced at the ridge of metallic gray inching higher behind the eastern peaks.
Fifteen minutes until the first half-light of dawn started to nibble at the dark, he gauged.
He gestured with the AutoMag to the KGB man.
'In the car, General. In the back like a nice passenger, and no sudden moves.'
Voukelitch walked to the car. He stood aside while Bolan covered him and made a fast, thorough search of the tonneau for any hidden weapon or signaling device.
Bolan stood back and motioned Voukelitch inside.
The Russian general got in without a word.
Bolan hurried to get in behind the steering wheel.
He twisted the rearview mirror so he had a full-length view of the shadowy form of his passenger.
Bolan started the limo, backed it around and drove toward the highway. He holstered the AutoMag, reached to his shoulder holster, now concealed beneath the Soviet uniform, and drew the silenced Beretta 93-R. He hefted the Beretta for emphasis where Voukelitch could see it — 'Here's how it is, General. We roll onto the base and you take me to the Devil's Rain. Keep your mouth shut and do as you're told, do you read me?'
He lowered the Beretta to the seat beside him, his finger on the trigger while he drove with his other hand.
Voukelitch reached with extreme nonchalance for a pocket of his uniform jacket 'May I smoke?'
'You may not.' Ice voice stopped him.
Bolan steered onto the highway in the direction of the fort a mile and a half away. 'The Devil's Rain. Where is it on the base?'
'And why should I tell you?'
'You may not have to. You'll have it in or adjacent to the HQ where you keep an eye on things and still play the bigshot with your own office, if you run to type, General.'
'It seems I do,' bristled Voukelitch, his voice getting more confident the closer they got to the lights of the fort. 'Not that the information will do you much good. Even the fabled Executioner will not penetrate the security with which I have surrounded the lab. You are already a dead man, Mack Bolan.'
'And so are you,' Bolan grunted.
He took his eyes from the road ahead to glance over his shoulder. The Beretta 93-R tracked around on the cannibal in the back seat.
Voukelitch started to cry out, suddenly realizing the mortal mistake he had made in admitting that Bolan had been right about the location of the lab. The silenced Beretta coughed discreetly.
The savage ceased all motion except to relax back into the upholstered corner of the tonneau, remaining in an upright position, the head dropped forward, chin touching the chest as if the general were catching a short nap and not the big sleep.
Bolan returned his attention to his driving.
He holstered the Beretta and drove on toward the floodlit fort.
Bolan steered General Voukelitch's ZIL limo through the front gates, onto the Afghan militia base. The sleepy-eyed militia regulars extended the same courtesy to the officer's car going in as they had when Bolan had watched the car leave the fort earlier.
Apparently the general's zipping out and into town at odd hours was not unusual.
Bolan slowed to a moderate speed, hoping like hell the corpse of the KGB gangster would not choose this precise moment to tip over and draw suspicion from the guardhouse.
But as Bolan drove through he doubted if even that would have aroused any interest from the dullards at the front gate. Any other vehicle would no doubt have received its share of hassle but not the general's wagon coming home at this morning hour. Bolan spotted three sentries, two of them not even rousting themselves from the guard shack to come out; one of the two looked asleep.
Some army the Kabul regime has raised, thought Bolan. Though with the walls and heavy machine guns in those towers and with parapets along the walls set up for more firepower, he read the fort as secure enough from any full-scale standard assault from the outside.
He steered the limo to a stop in front of a two-story plain brick building that had to be base headquarters, judging from the insignias and flag painted above the door, poor cousin to the Soviet base in Kabul. A new-looking one-level prefab structure stood adjacent to the building.
The lab.
The Devil's Rain.
The landing pad in front of HQ still hosted the two Soviet choppers, dark and deserted, and beyond them Bolan saw the two-story barracks building that stretched the width of the far side of the base. No lights shone in the barracks building yet, but that would change any second.
The other structures on the base were dark except for headquarters and the adjacent laboratory.
Bolan turned off the limo's lights and ignition. He grabbed the combat webbing and MAC-10 and started to open his car door to get out when a man emerged from the front entrance to the HQ.
A militia officer, a major, obviously waiting for General Voukelitch's return, strode briskly to the rear door on the passenger side of the limo. The Afghan major opened the door, leaned in and started to speak to a man he did not know was dead.
'General, I must say I had hoped you would forgo your... proclivities at such an auspicious moment,' the Afghan began in a tone of respectful peevishness, then he noted the bullet hole in Voukelitch's uniform over the heart. The Afghan blinked and turned to Bolan. 'What...' he began.
Bolan reached back to clamp iron-hard fingers around the major's throat; the man wore a security clearance badge, no doubt the Devil's Rain project, identifying him as Major Ghazi, Base Commandant. The Executioner applied pressure and tugged the man into the limo with practically no noise at all except for Ghazi's wheeze as he tried frantically, futilely to grab at Bolan's choking hands; then this cannibal, Afghan variety, died before he could do even that. Ghazi's corpse sprawled across Voukelitch's lap.
Bolan closed the passenger door after Ghazi and left the two cannibalg as they were.
He debarked from the ZIL, the webbing of munitions packets slung over his left shoulder, the Ingram MAC- 10 hugged in close to his right side, but in a manner that would not present a suspicious figure to anyone watching as 'the general's driver' left the ZIL to allow Major Ghazi and General Voukelitch to confer.
The veil of darkness had yielded to the first strange half-light of day. The chatter of night insects turned into birdcalls chirping beyond the fortress walls.
'Corporal' Bolan stalked businesslike, all correct military bearing as befitted the driver of a KGB general, toward the prefab structure.
No one appeared to intercept him.
He doubted if anyone paid attention to him except for a militia regular, a kid of no more than fifteen, who was standing sentry duty. Bolan knew there would be plenty heavy security beyond this outside door. This kid had been placed here so as not to draw undue suspicion to where the Devil's Rain was brewed.
The sentry looked like forced draftee material.
He eyeballed the uniform of the approaching driver and did not even bother to unshoulder his AK-47 when he started to ask the 'corporal' something.
