Ambush Force. Don Pendleton

shoulder to gain some altitude, and rat-face Jones took Dirk’s heel through his teeth.

      “I swear to God!” Dirk boomed. “If one more English asshole so much as—damn it!”

      Four English sailors in full white middy shirts, trousers and hats came roaring forward.

      Bolan stood and scooped up his bar stool. He raised it high and then pitched it low into the leading man’s legs, sending him tumbling to the tiles. The man behind him tripped and fell over his fellow sailor. The third sailor did a credible hurdle over the mass of Englishmen littering the floor, but the second he touched down, he took Dirk’s fist to the jaw and joined them. The fourth sailor took a step back and yelled for assistance to the room at large. “Tommy! Queue up!”

      The UK was the second-largest supplier of coalition troops to the Afghanistan situation. There were a lot of Tommys at the Shishlik Haus at any given time. British soldiers, sailors and airmen rose from their tables.

      Bolan upped the ante. “I need every dogface in this shit hole to stand tall!”

      American soldiers came crawling out of the woodwork.

      This brawl was going to clear the benches. The only thing missing was the piano player diving out the window. Everyone froze as Lars Obiada emptied half a magazine from a Stechkin machine pistol into the roof. “Sit down!”

      The potential gladiators sat back down to their liquor and kebabs. The remaining English sailor pointed a finger at Bolan. “This ain’t over, mate.”

      Bolan ignored the sailor and took his seat as the bouncers arrived to clear the carnage.

      “Not you two. You know my rule about brawls.”

      Dirk shrugged. “Wasn’t a brawl, Lars. More like a friendly beat down between allies.”

      “No fighting.”

      “All right, we’ll go.”

      “No, not out front. Go through back. This way.”

      Bolan and Dirk exchanged looks and followed Obiada through a door behind the bar. A narrow passageway led them past the kitchen, and a turbaned goon stood in front of a heavy wooden door at the end of the hall. He gave Obiada a bow and opened it. The room was small and low, and several games of poker were in progress. A big man pulled in a pile of chips and looked up with a grin. His salt-and-pepper hair was buzzed short on the sides and slightly long on the top like a lot of Eastern European soldiers. It was clear he hadn’t done any PT in a while, but he was built like a refrigerator and radiated strength. He wore the almost universal khaki load-bearing vest of a private contractor, but the pockets were empty at the moment save for the bulge of a cell phone. The big man pointed a thick finger at a row of flat screen TVs on the wall. One was showing FOX news, another an adult film and a third showed security camera feed where Shishlik Haus employees were carrying out British servicemen in various states of disrepair. The man spoke with a Slavic accent.

      “I enjoyed floor show. Much better than belly dancers. Even better than taking money from these losers.”

      Two Italian airmen who sat bereft of chips gave the big man a sour look but wisely kept their thoughts to themselves. Bolan had the man pegged for a Pole. “GROM?”

      “Good!” The man grinned. “Very good!”

      GROM was the acronym for Poland’s Grupa Reagowania Operacyjno-Manewrowego, or Operational Mobile Reaction Group. The acronym also formed the word thunder in Polish. Poland had been one of the first Eastern European nations to sign up for operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and their special forces had been the first people they sent. GROM was their best, and while somewhat inexperienced, their best had the reputation of not being bad, and they were busy soaking up operational lessons the hard way in the fiery crucibles of the Middle East and Asia.

      The Pole turned to the Italians. “Why do you still sit here? What do you intend to wager with? Your pants?” He jerked his head toward the door. “Go!”

      The two airmen stopped just short of running. The big man shook his head as they left and returned to business. “The lieutenant, we know something of. You—” the big Pole shrugged at Bolan “—I do not know, but if you are with Dirk, this speaks well of you.”

      “Thanks. GROM spells badass anyplace I’ve ever been.”

      The Pole smiled modestly. “You are too kind.” He pulled a business card out of his vest. “My name is Dobrus, Dobrus Stanislawski. Why do not you and the lieutenant come by the office tomorrow?”

      Bolan took the card. It read Dobrus Stanislawski, Security Consultant, Shield Security Services and gave a phone number, e-mail and address in Kabul. He handed it to Dirk.

      The former Delta Force commando nodded. “We gonna get lunch out of this? I been in the stockade eatin’ MREs for a week, and I didn’t get my kebabs tonight.”

      Stanislawski waved a hand around the premises. “Take-out from here?”

      “You got a date, sex machine.”

      3

      “Dick Diggler, agent of Shield.” Dirk clearly enjoyed the sound of it. “Think we’ll get our own business cards?”

      “We don’t have the job yet.”

      “Dude, we’re shoo-ins.”

      Bolan and Dirk climbed out of the cab with their hands never far from their concealed Berettas. Shield’s Kabul office was part of the new construction going on in the capital. Prevailing conditions favored thick concrete walls and few windows. The walls were pockmarked with bullet strikes and the occasional deeper crater of an RPG hit. Shield provided private security for businessmen, politicians and foreign dignitaries in war-torn Afghanistan, and that made the office itself something of a target. Strategically placed concrete pylons on the surrounding sidewalk prevented anyone driving a car bomb from getting up a head of steam at the building. The few windows were all upstairs and were more like the firing slits of a medieval castle than ornamentation or sources of natural light.

      Bolan pressed the button on the steel security door and stared up into a camera lens. The intercom crackled and a woman’s voice spoke. “Mr. Dirk and Mr. Cooper?”

      “That’s us.”

      The intercom buzzed and the door unlocked. They had to pass through a switchback series of three Kevlar panels before reaching the foyer. A beautiful young Afghan woman in a gray business suit and skirt sat behind a teak desk with the Shield logo behind her. “Would you gentlemen care for coffee?”

      Stanislawski came through a door behind her. “They have beer and take-out waiting for them upstairs. Follow me, boys.”

      Bolan and Dirk followed the big Pole through a hall. It opened into a fairly spacious gym area with treadmills and weight machines. Dirk muttered appreciatively under his breath. “Goddamn…”

      Dirk had a good eye. A woman in gray sweats was walking sideways on a stair-stepper machine. Wavy brown hair fell around a glowing face sheened with a healthy sweat. Savage work in the gym had turned her hourglass figure into sculpture, but not so much that she had lost any of her curves. She had big blue eyes, and her lips, nose and chin were sensuously sculpted.

      Stanislawski called out jovially. “Connie! How long have you been on that machine?”

      The woman’s eyes never wavered from some middle-distance point of concentration. “Forty-five minutes.”

      “You are sick, little girl.”

      A smile spread across her face. “I still have to do the other side. This old ass just turned forty-two.”

      Bolan was sure many a woman in her twenties would have killed to have Connie’s rock-hard behind, but he kept that to himself for the moment. Stanislawski led them down another hall. The second they turned the corner, Dirk burst out eagerly. “Man! What’s her story?”

      “Connie