Frontier Fury. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ force behind two U.S. embassy bombings in 1988, which claimed 223 lives in Kenya and Tanzania, leaving another 4,085 wounded. Rashad had missed a spot on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, but made the Bureau’s roster of Most Wanted Terrorists when that program was created after 9/11.

      Neither target was a combat soldier, though Rashad had done his share of training in assorted desert camps. They weren’t guerrilla fighters in the normal sense, but both had proved themselves die-hard survivors, living on the run for over a decade, while the combined military and intelligence networks of the United States and Great Britain tried to hunt them down.

      That told Bolan that they were determined and had a very strong support system. He wondered, now, if either man suspected that their hideout had been blown. Beyond the knowledge that their deaths obsessed some operatives in Washington and London, did al-Bari or Rashad know that specific plans were in the works to kill them?

      Bolan had no way of knowing for certain if Brognola’s information was correct, but the team at Stony Man Farm had never let him down before. Yet Bolan knew that every operation was a fluid, living thing.

      At least until the final shots were fired.

      Al-Bari and Rashad might know they’d been exposed, or they might simply crave a change of scene and slip away before he got to Pakistan. In which case, Bolan might be able to pick up their trail—or he might not.

      Some of the burden rested on his native contact, one Hussein Gorshani. Brognola’s dossier said that Gorshani would turn thirty-four the following month. He owned a small repair shop in Islamabad, specializing in electronics, and had roughly quadrupled the country’s average per capita income of $2,900 over the past ten years. He also drew a modest paycheck from the CIA, which was a story in itself.

      Pakistan is a self-proclaimed Islamic republic, and while about ninety-seven percent of its people subscribed to the faith, some Muslims were more equal than others. Hussein Gorshani belonged to the Shia minority, outnumbered four-or five-to-one by hostile Sunnis. Still, Gorshani’s dossier claimed that religious persecution had not sparked his decision to work for Langley. Rather, that had come about by slow degrees, as Gorshani observed his nation’s leaders drifting ever closer to covert support for O.B.L. and al Qaeda.

      Gorshani had served four years in Pakistan’s army, rising to the rank of havildar, or sergeant. As a native of the North-West Frontier Province, he had served most of his time there, on border patrols with the paramilitary Frontier Corps. He was also trilingual, rated as fluent in Pashto, Urdu and English.

      An all-around Renaissance man.

      There were, however, two things that Brognola’s dossier could not reveal about Hussein Gorshani. First, despite his military training, there was nothing to suggest he’d ever fired a shot in anger at another human being. When the crunch came—and it would—could Bolan trust Gorshani to pull the trigger on one of his own countrymen?

      The second question was more basic, but equally vital.

      Could Bolan trust Gorshani at all?

      Turncoats, double and triple agents were a dime a dozen in the murky realm of cloak-and-dagger operations. Every nation had its clique of spies, and the U.S. had more than most. Each and every spy network on Earth used bribery and blackmail to recruit from opposition groups, as well as from civilian populations.

      Who could absolutely guarantee that Bolan’s contact wasn’t secretly working for Pakistan’s Intelligence Bureau, its Federal Investigation Agency, or some military outfit under the umbrella of Islamabad’s Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence?

      Answer: no one.

      It was a risk that Bolan ran each time he set foot onto foreign soil, relying on a local contact. He had beat the odds so far, but that just meant that he was overdue to roll snake eyes.

      Bolan’s less-than-comforting thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a cautious rapping on his door.

      “OH, GOOD. You’re decent,” Barbara Price observed, as Bolan stood aside to let her in.

      “Depends on who you ask,” he said.

      “I guess it would.” She nodded toward the open laptop with Gorshani’s mug shot on the monitor’s screen. “We’re pretty sure he’s clean,” she said, as if reading his mind.

      “And he’s the only game in town,” Bolan replied.

      “That, too.”

      “He’s not the one who blew the whistle on al-Bari and Rashad, though.”

      “No,” she said, “he’s not. Langley won’t part with that name. They’ve supposedly got someone deep on the inside.”

      “So, he could do the job himself,” Bolan suggested.

      “That was Hal’s first thought, but Langley doesn’t want to lose him. After all, someone’s bound to replace al-Bari and Rashad after you take them out. As long as Mr. X is still in place, the Company can track al Qaeda’s leadership.”

      “The greater good,” Bolan said.

      “Right. But I’d still be happier if Langley wasn’t in the mix at all.”

      Some people blamed the CIA for al Qaeda’s existence, noting that the Agency had funneled arms to O.B.L. and others in Afghanistan to help them slaughter Russians, back when O.B.L. was still a “patriot” and “friend” of the United States. In fact, some claimed al Qaeda didn’t exist at all, but had been fabricated by the CIA to keep those covert dollars pouring in.

      “We take what we can get,” Bolan replied.

      “Speaking of that,” she said, and reached for Bolan’s hand. But before going any further, Price paused and said, “Listen, this is serious. About Gorshani.”

      “I know.”

      “We’ve checked him out as far as possible, same as we always do—but this is Pakistan.”

      “Meaning they’ve elevated subterfuge to art-form status?” Bolan said.

      “Meaning it’s a bloody can of worms. The North-West Frontier Province makes Medellín look like Utopia. They stopped publishing casualty figures in 2004, when the tally became too embarrassing. And it’s not just the government versus rebels. Every village has at least one illegal arms dealer. In the cities, you can’t walk a block without tripping over Kalashnikovs and RPGs. They’ve logged more than twelve thousand arrests for gun-related crimes over the past three years, and that’s barely scratching the surface.”

      “Sounds like Dodge City,” Bolan said.

      “Dodge City on angel dust,” she replied, “with unlimited ammo and a side order of religious fanaticism. On top of which, if you can make it past the bandits and militias, we suspect the government is covering your targets.”

      “If I didn’t know better,” he said, “I’d think you wanted me to pull the plug.”

      “Who says I don’t?”

      “Sounds to me like a conflict of interest.”

      “You want it straight? I’ve been against this from the start, СКАЧАТЬ