Assassin's Code

“That’s just about a death sentence, not to mention that during the manhunt, not many of our guys are going to try to bring him back alive.”

“He’s looking at life in prison or the death penalty anyway. He wants redemption, he wants his woman safe, and if his woman was in on it, he wants payback. And he’s volunteered. He’s already sworn he won’t resist if captured.”

“You know how many things can go wrong on this?” Keller asked.

“He’s being implanted with a tracking device as we speak. I had to slap him around a bit to get him intimidated, so he has enough bruises on him no one should notice. The damage should help make his case.”

“You know, even if they bite, the only reason will be to kill him,” Keller said.

“I know.”

“How big a team do you want?”

“Just me, and I’ll take Ous along in case I need to talk to any locals,” Bolan replied.

“No backup? No surveillance?”

“I’ll have my own surveillance, but I’d take it as a favor if you were to pick me a crack team and keep a chopper hot on the pad in case I call. If things get hot, they’re going to get hot fast.”

Keller gave Bolan a very frank look. “I hope to God you’ve got some kind of pull with the Attorney General, or we are looking to get seriously rat-screwed on this one.”

“Never met the man,” Bolan admitted.

Keller just stared.

“But I know his boss,” Bolan stated.

Keller opened her mouth and closed it. The Attorney General of the United States served at the pleasure of the President. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask.”

“Who are you?”

Bolan shrugged. “I’m Batman.”

“I’m not surprised at all.”

He gazed at Keller speculatively. “You speak Arabic?”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m here.” The NCIS agent’s eyes narrowed. “Why?”

“How’d you like to be a caped crusader, too?”

CHAPTER FOUR

Sangin

“Yeah, nice cape, buddy!” Agent Keller sat in the battered Toyota pickup, mildly outraged, swathed in a full burka and sandwiched between Ous and Bolan. “It suits you,” the soldier said.

“Indeed, you look most fetching,” Ous agreed.

“No woman looks fetching in a pup tent,” Keller muttered.

Ous sighed. “You have no idea how much time and energy we men spend, our eyes attempting to burn through the burka. We gasp at the accidental flash of an ankle, but much more can be told by a moment’s fall or fold of cloth, the change in drape as a woman sits or stands, the sway of it as she moves, and we yearn, burning, to catch a heartbeat’s glance of approval from a pair of shining eyes. I assure you, Agent Keller, our eyes are well practiced, and were you to walk across the bazaar, garbed as you are, all eyes would be upon you.”

Keller turned to Bolan. “You know you could take some charm lessons from him.”

“Actually, I may be the first man in Afghanistan to have charmed a woman into a burka rather than out of one,” Bolan replied.

The radio link crackled with Farkas’s voice. “Batman, this is Control, do you copy?”

“Loud and clear, over.”

“Mission is go.”

Bolan mentally counted down the seconds. Ous sat behind the wheel looking at his watch.

“Batman!” Farkas’s voice rose slightly with excitement across the link, “The rabbit has run!”

“Right on the mark,” Ous observed.

Bolan could hear gunfire on the other side of the link. “Understood. Control, maintain radio silence from now on unless we initiate.”

“Copy that, Batman. Over and out.”

Bolan took up his phone-size tablet and switched frequencies. Aaron Kurtzman’s voice came across the link from Stony Man Farm, the nation’s top counterterrorist organization, half a world away in Virginia. “Batman?”

“Inside joke. You have Convertino?”

“Affirmative. I have him on satellite tracking and satellite visual. My current visual window is two hours. After that I’ll have to switch to a different orbiter. I predict a ten-minute visual lag, but you’ll have constant from the transmitter.”

“Copy that. Give me visual.” Bolan watched as his screen lit up with a gray-green scene observed from overhead by a thermal-imaging satellite. Sangin Base was a constellation of lights, and a vehicle was tearing away from it with reckless speed. There was little to do but wait. Convertino would abandon his vehicle once he had covered some distance and then use his skills as a Marine scout sniper to make his way into the city unseen.

“I might just have something for you, Batman.”

“What’s that?”

“The woman, Reema.” Bolan’s screen split. Ous and Keller leaned over to peer at it. The NCIS sketch took up one-half of the screen and the other was a photo of a woman sitting in a café. She was blonde, wearing oversize sunglasses, and someone who wasn’t a professional surveillance artist had taken the shot from across the street, but there was a similarity.

“Who is she?”

“I called in a few favors and got this from Israeli Intelligence. Last year an Israeli military industrialist was suspected of leaking information. This woman was suspected of being his mistress. The day after that photo was taken the man was found in his office with his brains blown out in an apparent suicide.”

“And the woman?” Bolan queried.

“Disappeared without a trace.”

Bolan had guessed that. “What else?”