Altered State. Don Pendleton

And then, “But there’s another one.”

      “Say what?”

      “Across the—”

      “Don’t point, damn it!” she snapped at him as he raised an arm. “Just tell me!”

      And for Christ’s sake think!

      “Across the intersection,” Barialy answered, sounding chastened. “In the black Toyota. I believe the passenger in the front seat may be American.”

      Trying to seem as if she wasn’t searching for the car, Falk found it anyway, and even with the windshield glare she saw four men inside it. Sitting there and watching…what?

      Had she been followed? Had the men trailed Barialy separately? Were they here for some entirely different reason, mere coincidence?

      Falk didn’t like the feel of that, and now that she’d had time to scope him out, she thought the husky white man in the black Toyota’s shotgun seat most likely was American. She’d found that there was something in the Yankee attitude abroad that set Americans apart from Britons, Frenchmen and Scandinavians before they spoke out loud.

      So, an American, a native driver, and two backseat friends she couldn’t really see.

      So what?

      Afghanistan was crawling with Americans, from servicemen and-women through a laundry list of spooks and law-enforcement officers, reporters and photographers, corporate people and their bodyguards—even some freaking tourists, if you could believe it.

      Money-seekers, story-seekers, thrill-seekers, mixed up with warriors and manhunters. Afghanistan absorbed them all, and if some never made it home…well, what was life without a little risk?

      The man she’d marked as their contact was one block out and closing fast, as Falk played catch-up with another quick scan of the scene. Behind her, parked outside a grocery across the street, a Volkswagen with four men in it sat, immobile, waiting patiently for God knew what.

      Eight men, if they were working with the guys in the Toyota. And if any of them even knew Falk was alive.

      Because she planned to stay that way, she would assume that they were enemies and act accordingly. But what, precisely, could she do?

      The tall pedestrian, her maybe-contact, had closed the gap between them to a half-block now. She thought he had his eyes on her, although the mirrored aviator’s glasses made it hard to say for sure, but there was nothing she could do about it.

      Wave him off? Ridiculous. If she was right about him, and he was her contact, she would just be marking him for anyone who hoped to take him out. And if he wasn’t there to meet her, nothing that she did or said would make sense to him anyway.

      “There’s a Toyota,” Barialy said.

      “Saw it the first time, thanks,” Falk answered.

      “No. Another one.”

      “Don’t point,” she snapped. “Just tell me.”

      Barialy did, and there it was. A third car with four men inside, just sitting there, triangulating on the spot where she and Barialy stood. Thus making hash out of her futile hope that they were in the clear.

      The tall, not-so-bad-looking stranger was almost on top of them. Falk hoped she wouldn’t spook him, reaching underneath her lightweight jacket for the Glock pistol that rode her hip.

      “Matt Cooper,” the stranger said as he stopped in front of her.

      Falk stared into his mirrored shades, ignored his outthrust hand and answered, “Pleased to meet you, Matt, but I’m afraid we’re in a world of hurt.”

      “A RE YOU SURE ?” Bolan asked, shifting gears within a heartbeat.

      “Sure as I can be, until they nail us. Three cars, four men each, triangulating.”

      “You were followed, then,” he said. Not quite an accusation.

      “They were here ahead of you,” she said. “So, yeah. Unless they got a tip somehow, they followed one or both of us.”

      She didn’t try to dump it all on her companion, which showed class, but Bolan had no time to parse the etiquette of laying blame. It didn’t matter, at the moment, how twelve hostile men had found him.

      All that mattered was evading or eliminating them.

      “My ride’s a quarter mile behind me,” Bolan said. “Who’s got the closest wheels?”

      “That’s me,” the DEA agent replied. “Four blocks, due north.”

      “Past the VW,” he noted.

      “Right.”

      “Okay. We’ll let them earn their money. Are you packing?”

      “Absolutely.”

      Bolan shot a sidelong glance toward Edris Barialy. “You?” he asked.

      “Me?”

      “Are you armed?”

      After a fleeting hesitation Barialy nodded, and caught the glare from his control agent. He blushed beneath his rich olive complexion.

      “Right, then,” Bolan said. “Try to ignore them as we pass their car. If they get out, let me make the first move.”

      “There are cops and soldiers all around the—” Falk began.

      “None of them can help us now,” he interrupted her. “Our first priority is getting out of here, alive and in one piece.”

      “Okay,” she said.

      Her native sidekick bobbed his head in mute agreement.

      Bolan led the way north, toward the waiting Volkswagen. He didn’t eyeball any of the men inside it, kept his scan of them peripheral and unobtrusive as he closed the gap, seeming to chat with Falk and Barialy about nothing in particular.

      One of the men in the VW was talking on a cell phone, now, asking for orders or receiving them. Whatever happened in the next few seconds would depend upon those orders and the ultimate intent of the watchers.

      If they’d been sent to take their prey alive, Bolan would have an edge. If they were simply triggermen, he’d have to put his trust in speed and hope that Falk, at least, could back his play effectively.

      He put himself at curbside, with Falk on his left and Barialy beyond her, farthest removed from the street. Whatever broke within the next few seconds, Bolan was the front line of defense, trusting an agent he had never met before that day to watch his back.

      Ten yards, and there was stirring in the Volkswagen, to Bolan’s right. As he drew level with the car, both doors came open on his side and two men heaved themselves out of the vehicle. Behind and beyond them, flowing traffic briefly blocked the driver and his starboard backseat passenger from exiting the VW.

      A flash of metal told Bolan that one of his assailants had a weapon held against his right leg, not quite out of sight. The man was speaking to him now, Midwestern accent ruling out a Briton.

      “Hey, you!”

      Bolan drew the Jericho 941 as he turned, squeezing the pistol’s double-action trigger as he found his mark between the stranger’s eyes. The shot slammed home at point-blank range and snapped the dead man’s head back, shattered skull rebounding from the car’s door frame behind him as he fell.

      The second target was Afghani, trying for a crouch and bringing up his automatic weapon as the Jericho swung toward him, already too late to save himself. Bolan’s next shot wasn’t precision-perfect, but it did the job, drilling his target’s cheek below the left eye, angling downward through the sinuses to clip his brain stem, heading off the mental signal to his trigger finger.

      Bolan crouched and lunged, firing twice more into the Volkswagen. He caught the backseat gunner rising