the helicopter. They did. The incoming missile fire wrought havoc all around but did not strike the chopper as it gained an altitude of several hundred feet. Bullets punctured the chopper as Bolan banked it around, but most of the firepower down there was still directed at the hills, the parapets filled with soldiers despite the steady toppling of men from incoming fire. Most of the Afghan soldiers Bolan saw beyond the chopper's Plexiglas probably thought the chopper was piloted by one of their own to give them air cover. No such luck. Bolan banked the death bird around in a low sweep, triggering missiles and rockets that streaked from the gunship at anything in his sights.
The intensified holocaust gnawed at man and brick down there like a mountain lion chomping a field mouse, decimating the garrison and the fort into slaughter and pandemonium in less than two minutes of unleashed wrath. The incoming mortar, rocket and heavy machinegun fire continued without letup. Bolan worked the controls to bank the copter away from the fort haloed in black smoke from fires that pillared into the sky. Bolan piloted the bird on a wide swing around Tarik Khan's force along the ridge overlooking the besieged fort. He set the chopper down at a safe distance behind the staggered line of well-hidden mujahedeen who kept hammering nonstop at the fort.
Katrina Mozzhechkov and Tarik Khan hurried to the chopper from where they had watched it land. An occasional explosion geysered earth as return fire from the fort impacted the ground around the mujahedeen's position. But firepower from the garrison had slacked off considerably since there were not that many men and artillery remaining down there. The woman and the leader of the hill fighters crouched under the idling rotors and joined Bolan in the chopper.
'Your men have good aim,' Bolan shouted to Tarik Khan over the engine noise. 'This machine will get us the short hop to the border.'
'The Devil's Rain?'
'Destroyed. Voukelitch had his security tight on this. He had to be sitting on everything connected to the operation. The Devil's Rain and those who spawned it are no more.'
'It is good,' the hillman intoned. 'But there is no time. Soviet fighter jets are scrambling for here as we speak. My force can disperse to nearby caves, but you must be gone.' The resistance fighter placed a hand on Bolan's shoulder; one fraternal squeeze that spoke everything. 'Until we meet again, Executioner.' Then he looked at Katrina. 'And my thanks to you, woman. I have learned from you. Goodbye.' Tarik Khan left the chopper and stalked away without looking back.
Bolan revved up the engines again. He glanced at Katrina. 'Hang on, lady. Get set for a rough ride.'
She grabbed a seat and a wall strap next to him. Bolan saw her direct a steady gaze across the scene of battle and it told him this special woman had confronted and defeated her demons. All that was left for her now was the future. 'I'm ready,' she assured him. 'For anything.'
The engine rumbled and the copter lifted off. Bolan gave Tarik Khan a last salute from on high that the resistance fighter returned, then the hillman turned to join his men and Bolan control-stacked them up and away from there.
He piloted the chopper at full throttle across the blue sky of a new day, skimming the jagged, treacherous terrain low enough to avoid Soviet radar.
Toward the border frontier. Toward Pakistan.
Mission completed, yeah. And toward the mourning of too many lost in the name of freedom that fired a strange, savage, noble people to resist impossible odds. Lansdale. Alja Malikyar. So many more. They had not died in vain. Their sacrifice kept the flame alive and it would burn longer and more brightly now without Devil's Rain to douse it. Yeah, Tarik Khan, thought Executioner Bolan. Until next time.
