Altered State. Don Pendleton

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      Ahmad-Shah’s CD-ROM dossier identified him as one of Afghanistan’s four largest heroin kingpins. Within his territory, he enjoyed a vertical monopoly, from poppy fields through processing and export from the country. He had agents scattered all over the world, but Ahmad-Shah himself had never left Afghanistan, as far as anyone could say. Imprisoned briefly by the Taliban in 2001, he’d been released and lauded as a “prisoner of conscience” after coalition troops drove his persecutors from Kabul and environs. His number two was a cut-throat named Jamal Woraz, identified by the DEA as Ahmad-Shah’s strong right hand and primary enforcer.

      That left the file on Bolan’s DEA contact, one Deirdre Falk. Bolan had worked with female Feds before and found them more than capable, but he was still a bit surprised to find a woman stationed in Afghanistan, where brutal violence was a daily fact of life and male officials of the Islamic Republic were predisposed to treat females with a measure of disdain.

      The good news was that she’d been handling it for nearly three years now, and showed no signs of cracking up. She’d built some solid cases, although only one of them had gone to trial so far, sending a second-string drug smuggler off to prison for three years. The big boys were protected, and Falk had to know it.

      Which perhaps explained why she was willing to collaborate with Stony Man—or the organization “Matt Cooper” said he represented.

      There was no reason to suppose she’d ever heard of Stony Man Farm or the covert work it performed. If she had , then the Farm’s security needed a major tune-up. The flip side of that coin might be shock, when she realized that Bolan hadn’t come from Washington to help her put the Vanguard gang on trial.

      Officially, the U.S. government did not engage in down-and-dirty vigilante tactics. Since the 1960s, when the CIA’s clumsy attempts to kill Fidel Castro had backfired with disastrous, embarrassing results, no federal agency was authorized to carry out “executive actions”—otherwise known as assassinations.

      Scratch that.

      No agency was publicly authorized to do so.

      Stony Man had been created expressly to do that which was forbidden. A former President, beset by enemies on every side, domestic and foreign, had realized that every nation had to defend itself, by fair means or foul. When the system broke down, when the law failed, clear and present dangers had to be neutralized by other means.

      Deniability was critical.

      If Bolan or some other Stony Man agent—the troops of Able Team and Phoenix Force—were killed on a mission at home or abroad, they did not officially exist.

      If worse came to worst, if one of them was caught alive and cracked under torture or chemical interrogation, providing verifiable details of Stony Man’s operations, the buck stopped with Hal Brognola at Justice. He’d been prepared from the start to fall on his sword, confess to launching and running the program on his own initiative, financing it covertly, without the knowledge or approval of superiors.

      It was a fairy tale that might be hard to swallow, but the Washington publicity machine would sell it anyway. The corporate media—so far from “leftist liberal” that Bolan had to laugh each time he heard the talking heads on Fox News rant and rave—would ultimately join ranks with the state to cover any tracks that led beyond Brognola’s office to respected politicians higher up the food chain.

      The trick, on Bolan’s part, was not to get captured or killed. So far, he’d managed fairly well.

      And this time?

      As he started to erase Brognola’s CD-ROM, he knew that he would have to wait and see.

       CHAPTER FOUR

       Kabul, Afghanistan

      They ditched Falk’s bullet-punctured Ford near the Park-e-Timor Shahi, on the River Rudkhane-ye-Kabul, and found another waiting two blocks over, thanks to one of Falk’s associates who asked no questions when she’d called him on the telephone.

      “The other one will be reported stolen,” she told Bolan as they drove across the city to a safe house in the Shash Darak district.

      “You’ve done this kind of thing before?” he asked.

      “We’re living on the edge, here, Mr. Cooper. No one really wants us in Afghanistan. We get that message from the beat cops, right on up the ladder to the president.”

      “Which one?” Bolan inquired.

      She smiled at that and told him, “Take your pick. Ours has to talk about the ‘evil scourge of heroin’ to get elected, but I swear, sometimes it feels like it’s all talk.” She frowned, then added, “Hey, forget I said that, will you? I still need this job, and I don’t even know who sent you.”

      “Someone who agrees with you and wants to make a difference.”

      “Well, anyway, we gave someone a wake-up call,” she said.

      “They knew where we were meeting,” Bolan countered. “How do you suppose that happened?”

      “Damned if I know. I could swear I wasn’t followed, and I’d guess Edris will say the same.”

      “Indeed,” Barialy said from the backseat. “I was very careful, following all necessary steps of tradecraft.”

      Tradecraft?

      The last time Bolan could remember hearing that was in a movie from the late eighties.

      He let it slide and asked Falk, “Do your people sweep their cars?”

      “We do,” she said. “But that’s not saying someone couldn’t slip a homer past us. It would mean access to the secure motor pool, but with Vanguard, anything’s possible.”

      “And will this car have been checked?” he asked.

      “You put it that way, I can’t swear to anything,” Falk answered.

      “Then we need a rental office, stat.”

      “Jesus. Okay, I know a couple places we can go. I’ve got a credit card, and—”

      “This one is on me,” Bolan said. “If you’re under a sophisticated shadow, using plastic is like sending up a flare.”

      “Shit!” she said. “Do you always shake things up this way?”

      “It wouldn’t be the first time,” he replied.

      Falk found an auto rental agency and Barialy went inside with Bolan, translating his bid for a midsize four-door sedan. They left with a Toyota Avalon, rented by Bolan in his alternate identity as Brandon Stone. The Visa Platinum he used was paid in full and had a $20,000 credit line.

      “No tail on this one,” Bolan said as he slid in behind the steering wheel. “About that safe house, now…”

      “You’re thinking that it might not be so safe,” Falk said.

      “It crossed my mind.”

      “All right. It’s not the only place we have in СКАЧАТЬ