Lethal Tribute. Don Pendleton

that Musa Company was saying? We compromised their secure channel. I’m thinking someone else did, too. Right now I think—and I emphasize think—you’re anonymous because we are communicating via satellite. The minute you transmit on the Musa Company radio frequency you are fair game, Striker.”

      “Do it.”

      “Striker, I cannot recommend against this strongly enough—”

      “Do it!”

      Kurtzman acquiesced unhappily. “Patching you in, Striker. Link achieved, you are on the Pakistani secure mission net. The minute we unsquelch you, you are active. Do you want the translator?”

      “No.” Bolan turned on his radio and spoke in English. “Surviving Musa Unit Section 2! Move due north! Now! As fast as you can! I will cover you!”

      There was a split second’s hesitation, then the man rose and bolted for his life. Bolan’s eyes slitted as something blurred behind the man in his optics. The Executioner pulled his trigger repeatedly and the M-1 A rifle bucked against his shoulder. Bolan couldn’t tell if he had gotten any hits. There was nothing there but shards of rock and boulders the size of men. The Pakistani ran as if hell were on his heels.

      Bolan snarled silently. He could feel the enemy. They were all around.

      The Musa Company soldier suddenly staggered as if he had run into an invisible wall. His submachine gun flew from his hands as he toppled to one side and then staggered backward. The air around him blurred. Bolan fired three quick shots directly behind the tottering Pakistani.

      The Musa Company soldier seemed to be walking backward against his will toward an outcropping.

      Bolan spun the sound suppressor from the muzzle of his rifle and aimed just above the Pakistani’s head as he squeezed the trigger repeatedly.

      The M-1 A scout ripped into life. Without the suppressor the rifle spit flame in a meter-long muzzle-blast. The rifle cycled through the remains of its 20-round.

      Bolan’s position was revealed to the world by the strobing fire of his rifle.

      “Striker!” Kurtzman’s voice thundered in Bolan’s ear. “You’re lit up like Christmas!”

      Bolan knew it all too well, but the gambit paid off.

      The Pakistani stumbled forward, clutching his throat, seemingly released from the grip of the invisible entity. Bolan slapped in a fresh magazine of full power 7.62 mm ammo and began engaging the unseen. His weapon pounded out rounds like a jackhammer out of control as he laid down covering fire to either side of the Pakistani as he began to run again. Bolan’s weapon finally clacked open on empty. He shoved in a fresh magazine and slid a rifle grenade down over the muzzle of his weapon. The grenade clicked into place on the launching rings that the Cowboy had machined into the weapon back in Virginia.

      “Musa!” Bolan transmitted as he raised his rifle skyward and fired. “Take off your goggles!”

      The rifle boomed against Bolan in recoil and the grenade shot up into the night sky. Bolan ripped off his night-vision goggles as the French Night-Sun illumination munition detonated like a star going supernova. The burning magnesium flare burst into five-million candlepower brilliance. The lunar landscape of the pass was thrown into a shadowless white incandescence. Bolan flicked off the power to his rifle’s light-gathering optics and snapped his rifle down. His muzzle tracked from rock to rock as he searched the unforgiving glare for targets. Bolan began to feel a mounting sense of dread.

      There was nothing.

      Bolan had been betting that whoever was out there was wearing night-vision equipment, and the intense flare of the burning magnesium would have solarized their optics and temporarily blinded them. Bolan had also hoped to find his enemy blinded, stumbling and exposed by the sudden supernova of light.

      Nothing moved.

      There was no movement other than the running man from Musa Company. No sound other than the ragged panting of the runner in Bolan’s earpiece, his boots crunching into sand and rock, and the stuttering hiss of the burning flare as it slowly floated to the ground on its parachutes.

      Bolan began to engage nothing, firing rapidly into any dark crevice sheltered from the vertical glare of the grenade. He fired for effect, but nothing fired back. Darkness draped down the slopes of the hillsides as the burning grenade drifted low in the sky. The Pakistani clawed his way up the slope. His right hand filled with a Browning Hi-Power pistol. He caught sight of Bolan, who waved him forward and then crouched back down among the rocks.

      A moment later the Pakistani piled into Bolan’s position. He collapsed against a boulder in a fit of ragged coughing. The world plunged into darkness once more as the grenade fluttered sputtering to the ground. It landed among blades of rock and sent strobing pulses of light out from the crevices like a beacon. There were only scant seconds left of light. Bolan pulled his night-vision goggles back over his eyes and powered up the optics of his rifle.

      “Who the hell are you?” the Pakistani wheezed in excellent English.

      Bolan saw no reason to lie. “An American.”

      The muzzle of the commando’s 9 mm pistol leveled at Bolan’s skull. “How do I know you are not…” The Pakistani’s voice trailed off. He lowered his pistol as he considered the destruction of his unit. The answer was obvious.

      Bolan answered him anyway. “If I’d wanted you down, I’d have taken you down.”

      The Pakistani commando glanced at Bolan’s telescopic rifle and accepted the truth of the statement. Bolan’s teeth clenched as his eyes told him nothing was out there and his spine told him the enemy was closing in. “You’re Musa Company.”

      “Captain Mahmoud Makhdoom.” The Pakistani captain prudently turned his back to Bolan and watched the rear.

      Bolan swept his scope across the landscape. There was still nothing to see. “What hit you?”

      The Pakistani shuddered and shrugged at the same time. “Djinns?”

      Bolan raised an eyebrow without looking up from his scope. Captains of highly professional special forces units didn’t often blame supernatural beings for their misfortunes. Bolan didn’t scoff. What he had seen with his own eyes and, more to the point, what he hadn’t seen, had set his own skin to crawling.

      “We have to get out of here.”

      “Indeed.” The captain’s hands were shaking. He had lost his entire unit and he, himself, had been assaulted by the invisible opponents.

      “Striker!” Kurtzman was far from panic, but his voice had gone up a register. “What is your situation?”

      “Situation…” Bolan searched for a way to summarize what was happening. “Bear, this situation has gone X-Files. Enemy unknown. Nature unknown. Numbers unknown. I am with Captain Mahmoud Makhdoom of Musa Company.” Bolan shook his head bitterly. The nukes were in unknown hands and there was no way to get his hands on them. “The nukes are gone. We are extracting.”

      Bolan turned to Makhdoom. “You do have extraction?”

      “Helicopters will come if I call for them, but I was maintaining silence until you broke into our channel. Our primary extraction point was the plateau above your position.”

      Bolan gazed out into the dark. “I think the djinns can hear you.”

      Makhdoom nodded unhappily. “I believe you are correct.”

      Bolan considered the plateau he had crossed earlier in the evening. It was three hundred yards upslope, and an ugly climb. The only alternative was to stay where they were and wait. “Do it.”

      Makhdoom spoke rapid Sind into his radio. Bolan could feel invisible ears pricking up and taking notice of the transmission.

      The Pakistani nodded. “The chopper is coming, with gunship escort.”

      Bolan took out his two white-phosphorous grenades