Suicide Highway. Don Pendleton

back, hands at his sides, head tilted just slightly, watching Bolan studiously. His body language was calm and observant, even more so than Aleser. While Aleser did his best to show the strength and power of a commander, Laith staked no claims of dominance. Bolan looked slyly to Aleser.

      “You anticipated me?” he asked.

      Aleser nodded. “You were regarded as a wise and skilled man. Such wisdom is written that a man has to know his limitations, and the wisest of such men is truly intimate with his limitations and accepts them.”

      Bolan caught Laith’s slight smile. His shoulders straightened and he untilted his head. It was the first show of pride he’d noted in the younger Khan, and it was a subtle one.

      “Come on, Laith. It’s time to go hunting,” Bolan said.

      ROBERT WESLEY CROUCHED behind the wreckage of the burned-out Volkswagen, casting a nervous glance back at the woman in fatigues he was supposedly guarding. From everything he’d seen of Theresa Rosenberg, she needed a bodyguard like a pit bull needed a switchblade.

      It wasn’t that she was particularly rough or hard around the edges. She had a flinty gaze, but that was due to alertness, and her round face was soft and attractive, with full lips. Staff Sergeant Welsey couldn’t explain it. While she didn’t look anything like a soldier, she looked exactly like some of the best soldiers he’d ever met as a Special Forces A-Team member. Not in appearance, but the way she moved, the way her eyes were always in motion, never settling on any one thing.

      Theresa Rosenberg had the warrior mentality, and Wesley doubted she could have gained it easily. You got that kind of alertness only by having walked through the valley of the shadow of death, and proving yourself one bad mother.

      Wesley idly wondered if you could refer to a woman that way, but then movement outside the collection of battered buildings drew him back into the moment. He had been silently complimenting the Israeli woman on her ability to be one with her surroundings, and he nearly let his attention wander fatally.

      “Couple more guards, side one, moving toward side four,” Staff Sergeant Luis Montenegro spoke up through their LASH radio set. The terminology was developed by the LAPD long ago, side one being the front, and turning in a clockwise manner. In a situation where north and south were confusing, people could determine which side was “front.” And front was always the place to start.

      “We see it,” Rosenberg whispered. She slid prone, resting on her elbows. The stock of her M-4 carbine pressed her left cheek. Only now did Wesley realize that she was a southpaw.

      Odd details bubbled to the surface when the adrenaline hit the bloodstream, and Wesley remembered the term called tache-psyche syndrome. In some instances, it meant that time seemingly slowed down for people. In others, people could count the ridges on the front sights of their pistols. At its most dangerous, peripheral vision blacked out and noises and speech sounded like they were trying to pierce pillows stuffed over the ears.

      The Green Beret took a few deep breaths, oxygenating his blood. His fingers tingled despite the fact that he had them crushed down hard on the pistol grip and forearm of his Special Operations Modification M-4 carbine. The SOPMOD was outfitted with all kinds of things to make a firefight easier, from big holographic dot sights, recoil-reducing muzzle brakes and forearm pistol grips to flashlights, lasers and infrared illuminators. Wesley’s rifle was painted in desert camouflage patterns.

      The Israeli woman, on the other hand, had her carbine wrapped with burlap and twine. Sand and dust caked into the weave of the heavy cloth, making it better camouflaged than the sleek lines of the heavily customized rifle Wesley had. Rosenberg’s only concession to “modern” technology was an Aimpoint sight.

      “They haven’t noticed us, yet,” she said finally. She spoke without any hint of an Israeli accent.

      “Only a matter of time,” Wesley answered. “Hush the chatter.”

      She glanced over at him, then gave him a wink, her emerald green eyes twinkling. She took a breath to speak, then paused, thinking better of it, and just nodded.

      Wesley loosened his grip on the SOPMOD, laying it down gently. Through binoculars, he scanned the men walking around the corner. They looked woozy and were leaning against each other. One passed the other a pipe, and he took a deep hit from it, holding in his breath for a long time before streaming white smoke out of his nostrils. Wesley shook his head and swept the binoculars over to the front of one home. Amber firelight spilled through the portal, backlighting two men standing out front. One shook his head with the same disbelief Wesley had at the two pipe smokers.

      The Green Beret took these two men seriously. The AK-47s they held were all business, and at only one hundred yards out, he was well within range of those deadly, efficient man killers. Too many American soldiers, from Vietnam to the streets of Tikrit had learned how dangerous those weapons were, even in the hands of rag tag thugs.

      According to Rosenberg, these weren’t just ragtag thugs. They had connections with a Middle Eastern group and had received training, weaponry and funding. Wesley had asked who. He was in intelligence and operations, after all. Knowing who they’d be up against could be vital, life-saving information. Rosenberg kept those cards close to her vest. She said it was suspected that they might be Syrians. Rich, powerful, well-armed and willing to share all kinds of training…

      “We have movement coming in from side four,” Montenegro’s voice whispered over the LASH. “Two figures.”

      Wesley brought his binoculars back to the two pipe smokers. Hashish, heroin or marijuana, he didn’t know what the pair was smoking, but they were not so buzzed as to fail to react to a pair of shadows rising from the scrub brush that reclaimed shattered town roads. As the Green Beret was about to take action, he watched the two smokers stiffen, jerking in response to silent, but lethal impacts. For a moment, he could have sworn he’d seen the flicker of reflected steel and the red-pencil flare of a suppressed handgun’s muzzle-flash. The hashed-up thugs collapsed into lifeless piles of limbs and robes. As quickly as the shadows had appeared, they were atop the dead men.

      The smaller man wrenched something wicked, curved and metallic from one corpse while the other covered him with a large pistol, a suppressor on the muzzle.

      “Are they friendlies?” Montenegro asked. Perched atop the M240 light machine gun, even with the barrel shaped and steel-drum tough ECLAN scope atop it, he was watching all the action from the cheap seats.

      Wesley glanced at Rosenberg, whose mouth gaped with surprise. Then she smirked.

      “Get ready to watch a show,” she whispered.

      MACK BOLAN WAS IMPRESSED with Laith Khan’s stealth and skill with a thrown blade, but he didn’t let it get in the way of going about the grim and silent business of bringing death and getting prisoners. Laith’s skills simply reinforced the Executioner’s confidence that Aleser had given him a reliable backup.

      They slipped quickly around the corner and Bolan put away his pistol, exchanging it for the head weapon for this assault. Entering Afghanistan with his faithful signature weapons was a task that would have required more official support than the Executioner wanted for this mission. He’d opted for a low profile, at least in terms of ties to the West. A diplomatic pouch for his Beretta and Desert Eagle were out of the question, and a war bag full of larger weapons, grenades and ammunition was impossible.

      Instead, Bolan set down with nothing more than his Applegate-Fairbairn folding knife, a .32-caliber Beretta Tomcat hidden inside the guts of a camera and plenty of spending money to give to the Peshwar gun dealers in Pakistan.

      Bolan’s silenced pistol was a NORINCO NP228, a Chinese knockoff of the 9 mm SIG-Saur P-228 autoloader. He also managed to get a Taurus Model 44 with a 6.5-inch barrel and a 6-shot capacity. It didn’t reload as fast or hold as many shots as his Desert Eagle, but it was accurate, and more importantly, it was with him.

      The head weapon was a severely cutdown version of the AK-47 called the Zastava M-92. It was chambered for a rifle round, the 7.62 mm COMBLOC, and was no larger than most submachine guns. It gave Bolan