Altered State. Don Pendleton

      

       “A report?” Brognola said. “I’d like to see it.”

       “I misspoke. Call it a rumor, if you like.”

       “I don’t like rumors,” the big Fed stated. “Who are these valued contractors?”

       The black eyes pinned him. “Let’s cut the crap. State officially objects to any unauthorized Justice programs you may be running in Afghanistan. That comes from the top. I hope it’s clear enough for you.”

       “It’s crystal clear,” Brognola said, rising to his feet. “I can assure you without fear of contradiction that Justice has no unauthorized programs running in Kabul, or anywhere else. And that comes from the top. Have a good one.”

       Brognola felt them staring daggers at him as he left. He had a problem now, a leak, and he would have to deal with it before he and Bolan landed in a world of hurt.

       Altered State

       Don Pendleton

       Mack Bolan _®

       www.mirabooks.co.uk

      We have to condemn publicly the very idea that some people have the right to repress others. In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousandfold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers…we are ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.

      —Alexander Solzhenitsyn

      It’s time to reproach and punish evil, once and for all. Beginning here and now.

      —Mack Bolan

      For Corporal Jason L. Dunham, USMC

      CONTENTS

       PROLOGUE

       CHAPTER ONE

       CHAPTER TWO

       CHAPTER THREE

       CHAPTER FOUR

       CHAPTER FIVE

       CHAPTER SIX

       CHAPTER SEVEN

       CHAPTER EIGHT

       CHAPTER NINE

       CHAPTER TEN

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

       CHAPTER TWELVE

       CHAPTER THIRTEEN

       CHAPTER FOURTEEN

       CHAPTER FIFTEEN

       CHAPTER SIXTEEN

       CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

       CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

       CHAPTER NINETEEN

       CHAPTER TWENTY

       CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

       EPILOGUE

       PROLOGUE

       Badghis Province, Northwestern Afghanistan

      Black helicopters do exist.

      After all the fervid speculation among UFO-watchers and conspiracy theorists, despite all the official denials and earnest assurances, unmarked whirlybirds of ill omen are seen on occasion.

      And they always bear bad news.

      The two aloft this morning, shortly after dawn, had lifted off from Murghab, heading northwest toward the border of Turkmenistan. They did not mean to cross the border, although such a violation of the law would not be out of character for anyone on board.

      Their destination was a mountain village called Uzra, inhabited by peasants who had caused more trouble than their tiny lives were worth. This day, the men who called the shots were settling old accounts.

      The black choppers were both Sikorsky UH-60L Black Hawks, each with a two-man crew and complement of twelve troops aboard, capable of cruising at 173 miles per hour with a top-end do-not-exceed speed of 222 mph. Their combat radius was 368 miles, but this morning’s jaunt covered only a fraction of that distance.

      Each Black Hawk was armed—one with a door-mounted 7.62 mm M-60D machine gun, the other with an M-134 Minigun that spewed armor-piercing bullets from an electrically driven rotary breech at a rate of 4,000 rounds per minute.

      Beyond that basic airborne armament, each member of the strike team carried either some variant of the M-16 assault rifle or a Mossberg 590-A1 12-gauge shotgun loaded with No. 4 buckshot—averaging seven hits per round on a man-size target at fifty yards. Most carried pistols of their own selection, chambered for 9 mm Parabellum or .45ACP, and all were packing grenades.

      Just in case.

      Most of the villagers in Uzra were awake and eating breakfast when the war birds fell upon them, dropping from the newly risen sun to skim at rooftop level, starting with a solid strafing run to soften up the target. The M-60D was brutally efficient, spitting death at a cyclic rate of 550 rounds per minute, but its stutter was eclipsed by the high-tech buzz of the Minigun shredding roofs, walls and bodies below.

      Uzra was on the smallish side, for an Afghani village. Its population estimates waffled between 150 and 200 residents in winter, when the sheep stayed close to home. But this was spring, so an even hundred would be a closer count.

      The inconvenience caused by Uzra’s citizens was out of all proportion to their numbers and position in Afghan society. Someone had not impressed them with their innate insignificance, and now they had to pay the price for stepping out of bounds.

      Ten seconds, circling once around the place with weapons spraying in full-auto mode, turned Uzra into a chaotic shambles. Men, women and children ran or staggered from their riddled dwellings, seeking shelter they would never find, some of them dropping in their tracks to rise no more.

      “That’s plenty,” said the strike team leader to his pilot. “Put us on the deck.”

      Phase Two was mopping up and making sure that no one lived to profit from the lesson they had learned that morning.

      Uzra, after all, was not a classroom.

      It was an example.

      Touchdown was a gentle bump in the midst of a dusty whirlwind whipped by the Black Hawk’s spinning rotors. Rising from his seat, the strike team leader faced his soldiers and reminded them, “No prisoners!”

      They rushed past him toward the open bay, some snarling, others smiling as they jumped off into Hell on Earth.

       CHAPTER ONE

       Kabul, Afghanistan

      Mack Bolan turned his rented car off Jadayi Maiwand, putting the Rudkhane-ye-Kabul River behind him as he entered the Old City, Sharh-e-Khone. He started looking for a place to park after he passed the giant Abnecina Hospital, aware that driving through the Old City without a guide could get him lost, despite the maps he carried.

      It might even get him killed.

      He found a fenced-in public parking lot, paid the young attendant one hundred Afghanis up front—about two dollars, U.S.—and received a numbered ticket in return. The young man smiled and seemed to wish him well as Bolan left the lot.

      How did you say “good luck” in Dari or Pashto?

      Bolan didn’t have a clue.

      There’d been no time for him to study either of Afghanistan’s official languages, much less the other forty-five in use throughout the country. He would need a skilled interpreter and guide, which brought him to the heart of old Kabul, with