Lethal Tribute. Don Pendleton

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      CHAPTER ONE

      Haji Pir Pass, Pakistan-Kashmir Border

      Musa Company was moving.

      Mack Bolan shadowed them in the inky black of the cloudless night.

      The ugly rumor at the Pentagon was that Pakistan had lost control of several of its nuclear warheads. Such a happening had long been an established fear in the West, as nuclear security protocols in Pakistan were a fluid situation at the best of times. The Pakistani government vigorously denied through both public and private channels that any warheads were missing. They claimed the CIA had its own agenda, had fabricated lies so that the United States and her United Nations lackeys could invade Pakistan and wrest away her sovereign power. Such action would, thus, lay Pakistan open to the political and military machinations of their true nemesis, India.

      Nuclear warheads passing from Pakistan into the disputed region of Kashmir was a worst-case scenario for a catastrophic meltdown between the two nuclear nations. One that could light a fire throughout all of East Asia.

      The rumors in Washington were confusing. Some sources claimed that ultra-fundamentalist factions in the Pakistani government and military had engineered the grab. Other rumors indicated the warheads had been taken, humiliatingly, right out from under the Pakistani military’s nose.

      Bolan watched Musa Company move, and he began to think that Pakistan was as worried as the West.

      Named for the Prophet Moses, Musa Company was Pakistan’s elite counterterrorist unit. They had received training from the British SAS and in the past had sent personnel to the United States for special warfare and airborne training. Bolan had suspected that whoever came down through the Haji Pir Pass would be involved in transporting and security for the weapons. His first guess had been that the grab had to have been an inside job.

      But Musa Company wasn’t transporting nuclear warheads.

      They had been instrumental in quelling rioting and dissension between Pakistan’s fractious factions. Musa Company would be the last unit to betray their country and to let Pakistan’s nuclear weapons loose into the world. Their loyalty was unquestionable. Nor were the men below passing themselves off as travelers or pilgrims. They carried no baggage and they were well off the roads. Bolan had watched as they had perilously engaged in a night jump down into the high crags of the pass. They now moved through the nearly vertical terrain, wearing night-camouflage body armor, night-vision goggles and carrying Heckler & Koch MP-5 SD-3 silenced submachine guns. They moved as silently and swiftly as wolves.

      Musa Company was definitely on the hunt.

      Bolan judged by the way they were fanned out and leapfrogging from cover to cover that their quarry had to be very close. They were being very careful, as they were very close to the disputed border with India. Indian armored and airborne troops were barely two miles away and always on alert. The disputed area was a flashpoint, any mistake could easily lead to a renewal of war.

      Bolan subvocalized into his throat mike sat link. “Bear, what have you got?”

      Back in Virginia, Aaron and his entire cybernetic team worked furiously. They were directly linked with the “Puzzle Palace” within the National Security Agency. Unless Musa Company had gone rogue, they had to be in touch with someone. “Striker, we are detecting radio communications. Very narrow bandwidth. We are adjusting values. One moment.” Bolan waited while Kurtzman made his moves. Pakistan had nothing much in the way of sophisticated communication satellites. The best they had for special operations was a narrow bandwidth radio using security encryption protocols.

      A secure radio channel was far from secure when Aaron Kurtzman and his team were on the job.

      Kurtzman paused a moment as several of the National Security Agency’s most sophisticated Signal Intelligence satellites tried to break in to eavesdrop on the Pakistanis’ conversation. “We have it triangulated. One contact point is right below you. Everyone in the Musa Company team is individually wired. The second transmission point is a signal station. Definitely Islamabad. Their orders are coming straight from the capital. NSA says they are using encrypted audio.”

      Bolan nodded to himself. Whatever Musa Company’s orders, they were receiving them in real time and they were coming straight from the top. “You’ve broken in?”

      “One moment, Striker. Encryption broken. We’re in,” Kurtzman confirmed. “Patching you in passively.”

      Bolan’s earpiece crackled as he was connected to the Pakistani secure radio frequency. The Puzzle Palace had done its work. Whatever encryption code the Pakistani military was using wasn’t up to the giant supercomputers in the bowels of the NSA СКАЧАТЬ