Assassin's Code. Don Pendleton

men are upstairs with our daughter.”

      “Our daughter is safe. We have killed the two men upstairs. How many remain here below?”

      “Three.”

      “They are all in the parlor?”

      “Watching television.”

      “Let us in.”

      Mrs. Ous disappeared and a door to the patio opened. Bolan followed Ous through a laundry room and into the kitchen, which opened into a Western style dining room. The dining room led to a capacious parlor. A series of sofas formed a U shape facing a large-screen TV. Three of the veiled men sat around the sofas watching a Bollywood song-and-dance number on the television with great interest. Ous’s son lay on the floor hog-tied and gagged. One of the intruders was using him for an ottoman.

      “Leave the one in the middle,” Bolan whispered.

      The Executioner and Ous gunned down the two men on the flanking couches. The last intruder stared up their smoking suppressor tubes and made a small unhappy sound.

      “Take your feet off my son before I cut them off.”

      The man obeyed and Ous nodded at Bolan. “This one speaks English.”

      Ous kept the intruder covered while Bolan cut the boy free, then gave the twelve-year-old a hand up. “Esfandyar, I am a friend of your father’s.”

      The young man rubbed his wrists. “I am very pleased to meet you, sir.”

      “My son,” Ous said, “your mother is in the kitchen. I wish you to take her upstairs. Go to the roof, where you shall knock and say ‘Rambo’ lest your sister shoot you.”

      “Yes, Father.” Esfandyar looked around at the carnage. “And you?”

      The old warrior’s eyes bored into the surviving intruder. “Our friend and I wish to speak with this man.”

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      Ustad Ghulz was a very unhappy man. The United States Marines had come to Omar Ous’s house, rescued his family and removed the dead. Ghulz had been taken from the parlor, bound hand and foot and thrown into the cellar until the Marines had left. He now sat tied to a chair beneath the glare of the cellar’s single bare bulb. Ghulz was a fountain of useless information. He had been a hired thug most of his life. He had worked for the opium lords as a gunman and leg-breaker. When the Taliban had taken over, he had adopted the black turban and shot people and broken legs for the Taliban drug lords with fanatic zeal. When the Taliban had been driven out of the north, he had taken off his turban and shot people and broken legs for the new drug lords. Ustad Ghulz was a man who had found his niche.

      Now he found himself tied to a chair in the cellar of Omar Ous, the Lion of Kunduz.

      Ghulz shook like a leaf.

      “Powerful men” whom he couldn’t readily identify had hired Ustad and half a dozen like-minded souls. These powerful men claimed to have the Lion of Kunduz on a leash. Another half dozen men who remained veiled joined them. Other than that, they were foreign and scared him. Ghulz had no idea who they were.

      “Did they act like soldiers?” Bolan tried.

      “Yes!” Ghulz leaped at the question like a lifeline. “Very much like soldiers!”

      “They spoke Arabic?”

      “Yes! I was asked if I spoke it before I was hired! It was the tongue in which they gave us orders! But among themselves they spoke some foreign tongue!”

      Ous drew the sinuously curving Pesh Kabz he had found on his pillow just twenty-four hours earlier. Ghulz flinched as Ous pointed the blade at him. “Do you know what this is, dog?”

      Ghulz leaned back in his chair and gazed at Ous as if expecting a lethal trick question. “A…dagger?” he ventured.

      Ous rolled his eyes and replaced the blade in his sash. Ghulz had no idea what the weapon represented. Bolan continued on the “good Cop” line. “So the strangers left some hours after the house and Mr. Ous’s family were secured?”

      “Yes!”

      “And you were to wait?”

      “Yes! I was to receive a phone call, that the American was dead.”

      Ghulz flinched as Bolan’s eyes narrowed. “And?”

      “After that we were to finish off…” Ghulz’s voice trailed off in terror beneath Ous’s unforgiving glare.

      “So we gather,” Bolan said. “You weren’t supposed to contact anyone?”

      “Only…if something went wrong.”

      Bolan had Ghulz’s cell. He considered the timetable and what the contact number in Ghulz’s phone might be worth. He took out his own phone and connected to Ghulz’s while Ous watched with interest. Bolan downloaded everything in the phone’s memory, but there wasn’t much. The security software in Bolan’s special-issue phone detected no viruses or subroutines. In fact, the entire memory of the phone issued to Ghulz was the single number he was to call in an emergency. The phone had never made or received a call, text, email or image. If it had, the data had been wiped clean by a professional. “If you called, what was the code word?”

      Ghulz swallowed. “I was to ask, is the lion free?”

      “And then?” Bolan probed.

      “And then I would receive instructions.”

      It wasn’t subtle, but Ghulz was obviously a cutout. “In Arabic?”

      “Yes.”

      Bolan dialed the Farm. He owned one of the most powerful cell phones on Earth. Kurtzman and his cyberteam had designed it from the ground up, and nine times out of ten it was bouncing its signal through National Security Agency satellites.

      “Bear, I need a trace on a call. I’m going to make a call to the enemy. I’ve linked my phone with the suspect’s.”

      “That could take a minute,” Kurtzman replied. “Keep them talking if you can.”

      Bolan held Ghulz’s phone to his face, then nodded at Ous. “If he says a single syllable you find suspicious, cut his throat.”

      Ous drew the dagger and placed the blade just below Ghulz’s Adam’s apple. “Should he be so foolish, I will cut off his head, and send it to my Christian cousins in Tajikistan, whereupon they shall toss it to their dogs. When they have finished savaging it, the eyes of Ustad Ghulz shall be filled with pig’s blood and sewn shut, his mouth stuffed with the pig’s genitals and sealed. Then shall his head be wrapped in the pig’s offal and encased in its carcass to be buried without a marker, and, clad in such raiment, shall Ustad Ghulz go to explain his sins to He who made him.” Lightning stopped just short of flashing from Ous’s eyes and smiting Ghulz where he sat. “This I swear.”

      Ghulz looked like he might throw up.

      Bolan pressed Send. The phone rang three times and the line clicked on.

      Ghulz spoke a sentence in Arabic. Bolan raised an eyebrow at Ous and the warrior shrugged. A voice spoke back. Ous mouthed words in translation. “Ustad Ghulz has failed.”

      Ghulz whimpered something back. “He tells his co-conspirator that the United States Marines came.”

      The voice on the phone spoke again.

      Ous’s eyes flew wide as he translated. “Ustad Ghulz is a liar. A lion and an eagle came.”

      The symbolism was pretty heavy-handed.

      The line clicked dead.

      “What’d you get, Bear?”

      Kurtzman grunted unhappily. “Not enough time.”

      Bolan clicked off Ghulz’s phone. “Bear, I got a feeling that the moment