Assassin's Code

“Copy that. I’ll have a unit scoop them up.”

Bolan took out his tactical knife and snapped it open with a flick of his wrist. He probed the edges of the hatch but could find no hidden wires or leads. The soldier grabbed the handle and flung the hatch open. He aimed the muzzle of his Beretta and his tactical light into the tunnel.

“Ous, tie them up and follow me.”

The big American dropped down. It was a very well-dug tunnel, lined with planks, and Bolan could almost stand up. Twenty yards along he came to a side chamber—and Convertino’s corpse. The body lay facedown in a huge pool of blood. That was, if the corpse had still had a face.

Bolan eyed the corpse clinically. He had seen more decapitations than he cared to think about. One look told him the head-taking had been neither clean nor swift. It had been done with a large knife and while Convertino was still alive.

“Bismillah!” Ous exclaimed.

Bolan dropped to a knee beside Convertino’s cadaver. He noted two pinprick tears in the USMC-issue PT shirt the man had escaped in. He tore the T-shirt down the young Marine’s back and examined the two, bee-sting-like marks six inches apart between his shoulder blades. The corporal had been hit with a stun gun before he’d been beheaded.

Ous frowned at the gruesome scene. “What do we do now?”

Bolan rose. Convertino had bought his redemption in the hardest way possible, but he was still sticking it to the enemy. The Marine was a Trojan Horse. They might have taken his head, but the Radio Frequency Identification tracking chip had been implanted behind his ear.

“Bear, do we still have GPS on the Corporal?”

“Of course, why?”

“The corporal’s body is down here in the tunnel, but his head isn’t.”

“Oh, damn it.”

“Do you have visual on the signal?”

“No, I was assuming he was inside, but the signal is still very close to you. I’m saying it is just entering the bazaar,” Kurtzman stated.

“Keller, deploy into the bazaar, in costume. Try to get ahead of us and the signal.”

“Copy that.”

Bolan moved down the tunnel with Ous at his back. There was no blood trail, so the soldier assumed Convertino’s head was packaged for transport. The tunnel dead-ended with another hatch above, which was unbarred. Bolan listened a moment to the silence up top, then flung it open. No grenades or gunfire met the intrusion. He clambered up four iron rungs and found himself in a storeroom laden with burlap sacks of grain. He swept the room as Ous emerged. The storeroom opened into a storefront. No one was around. Bolan tucked his weapon away, pulled on a fatigue cap and a pair of sunglasses, then stepped out into the open air of the bazaar.

He took a moment to scan the early morning activity.

The Taliban had been mostly driven out of Sangin City proper; those who still lurked did so under deep cover. Still, most women in Sangin wore burkas when they left their homes, some out of tradition, many out of a very real and justified fear of reprisal. Groups of hooded women moved around buying milk, eggs and fruit and looking to see if the morning had brought any new goods in the stalls since the day before. Others carried baskets laden with lentils, coffee and grains. Most women wore black burkas, some light blue and a few other colors. They all moved in interlocking streams when they weren’t poking, prodding or bartering. All over the bazaar, eyes were drawn to the Westerner.

“Bear, are you sure?”

“The tracking device is within one hundred yards of you. That’s as exact as it gets. I have eyes on the bazaar and eyes on you, but all the tracker does is put out a low-frequency signal. I have it. It’s nearby, but the device isn’t sophisticated enough to triangulate on an individual without some other target verification.”

“Bear, give me anything.”

“I can’t swear to it, but my gut and dead reckoning tells me the signal seems to be on the southern end of the bazaar.”

Bolan had navigated by dead reckoning many times, and he would literally and figuratively bet the Farm on Kurtzman’s instincts. He moved south. “Ous, find her.”

Ous scanned the packs of swaddled, shopping women and the sellers they were haggling with. “I will try!”

Bolan subvocalized into his throat mike. “Keller, get to the southern end of the bazaar and deploy.”

“I’m already there.”

“Control, get that chopper in the air. I may need backup or fast evac out of the bazaar.”

“Bird is in the air, Batman,” Farkas confirmed.

“Batman,” Kurtzman said, “I can’t swear to it, but I think the signal is now moving westward.”

“She’s meeting someone,” Bolan concluded. “Making a delivery.”

“And now they are here,” Ous agreed.

Bolan picked up his pace. They passed through an open-air alley of rug sellers. The rain had abated, and the bazaar was swiftly filling with shoppers.

The soldier caught sight of a woman in a full-length burka. Similarly clad women surrounded her, but the one he had his eye on carried a woven basket about the size of a hatbox. She wasn’t hurrying but she moved with purpose. Bolan’s instincts spoke to him as he moved through the crowd to intercept her.

“What do you think of that one, Ous?” Bolan asked.

Ous’s smile flashed through his beard. “You have keen eyes, indeed. She walks with purpose, and that purpose is not shopping. On any other day, were I taking tea and watching people pass, I would guess that the basket she carried was a prop, and that she went to meet her lover.”

“You see our suspect’s curves beneath all that fabric?”

“Nothing in life is certain except God’s will and the words of the Prophet. But I would wager on it, my friend. I would wager a great deal.”

Bolan was willing to back Ous’s wager. He spoke quietly into his throat mike. “Bear?”

“I have eyes on you, and you’re right on top of the signal.”

“Keller, we’re moving in,” Bolan said. “Suspect is wearing a burka and carrying a basket, moving due west through the rug sellers.”

“I have visual on you and Ous. Moving to intercept.”

“Ous, hang back a bit. Cover me,” Bolan instructed.

“Of course.”

Bolan caught up to the woman and followed her for just a moment. There wasn’t a speck of blood on her burka or her basket. As an American man, if he stripped the burka off the wrong woman there was likely to be a riot, if not a genuine international incident he might have to shoot his way out of. Bolan spoke very quietly. “Zurisaday.”

Ous spoke in his earpiece at the same moment. “I believe some of the women around her are her escorts. You have been noticed!”

The basket fell from the woman’s hands to the ground. The lid popped off, and Corporal Convertino’s, gray, frozen-in-agony head rolled into the mud. A pair of heavily kohled violet eyes glared pure murder at Bolan, and a slabsided Russian Pernach machine pistol snaked from under the burka.

Bolan’s knife hand chopped the chattering weapon out of the woman’s hand. The bazaar erupted into screams and chaos at the sound of the shots. His back-fist shot at the woman sent Zurisaday’s eyes fluttering like slot machines. He whirled, and a second blow flattened the killer into the mud.

He turned again as a robed woman screamed and plunged a foot-long, blood-crusted Khyber knife at Bolan’s chest. He caught her wrist and continued his turn, hip-tossing the shrieking killer in a windmill of limbs into a rug seller’s table. The soldier caught sight of a woman five yards away cocking a stubby submachine gun.