Nuclear Reaction. Don Pendleton

people had endured—the nightmare that they would endure, if he failed to complete his mission. There was guilt, as well, for leading Adi and Sanjiv into the trap that claimed their lives. He vowed to make amends with Adi’s wife and Sanjiv’s parents somehow, someday.

      If he lived that long.

      Right now, he had to focus on surviving for the next few minutes, which meant ducking bullets in the woods and doing everything he could to stop his enemies.

      Kill them, Pahlavi silently corrected himself. It all came down to that. Kill or be killed.

      He’d never shot a man before that afternoon—never shot at a man, in fact—and when it happened, the sheer deceptive ease of it surprised Pahlavi. He had practiced with the pistol earlier, knew how to aim and squeeze the trigger slowly, without jerking it, but mortal combat put a different slant on things.

      His first shots, on the highway, had been wasted but for one that cracked the windshield of the jeep behind them. Too late, even then, to save his friends, but he’d felt a rush of satisfaction from the simple act of striking back.

      It was a different thing, of course, to fire at living men on foot, instead of faceless autos on the highway, but it helped that these men were intent on killing him, had killed his friends already.

      Cooper had taken down a number of the enemy already, firing with an automatic rifle, then contriving somehow to destroy their jeeps. Pahlavi found it horrible and fascinating, all at once, as if he had been dropped into the middle of some action film from Hollywood.

      Except that there were real bullets whining around him, thunking into trees raising spouts of sod on impact with the ground. Real bullets, too, inside his pistol, waiting to be used against his foes.

      Pahlavi found a vantage point where he could watch the soldiers. Several of them were hunkered down behind their truck, waiting for orders or an opportunity to move. Cooper had pinned them down, but he was somewhere on the other side. These troops apparently had no idea there was another enemy watching, on their side of the truck.

      Pahlavi took his time, aiming, worried a bit that he was letting Cooper down by not advancing more aggressively. But he knew he would do the tall American no good at all if he was dead. Aiming, he framed a target in his sights as he’d been taught—but then the soldier moved, shifting away, duckwalking toward the rear of the truck. Cursing, Pahlavi tracked him, had him lined up when the soldier rose and stepped around the tailgate, rifle at his shoulder, squeezing off a burst toward the far side of the clearing.

      Pahlavi squeezed the trigger, rode the sleek Beretta’s recoil, hopeful but still surprised to see his target crumple, back arched, slumping to the earth. The soldier writhed, convulsing, kicking at the sod, then shivered out and moved no more.

      Pahlavi had expected nausea, a rush of guilt, something besides the mere sense of a job well done, but nothing came to him. Perhaps it was the moment, he decided, too much going on around him to permit normal emotions coming to the fore.

      Or else, perhaps he liked it.

      No. Pahlavi wouldn’t, couldn’t think about that now. There would be ample time to psychoanalyze himself if he survived this battle and the mission still to come.

      And if he died, what difference would it make?

      Soldiers were grouped around the man he’d shot, checking for vital signs. Some of them were firing aimlessly into the woods. They clearly had no sense of where the fatal shot had come from, meaning he could fire again, at least once more, with relative impunity.

      Pahlavi chose another target, lined his sights up on the soldier’s chest, and let the hammer drop.

      SACHI CHANDAKA HUDDLED underneath the truck and tried to understand exactly what was happening. He’d been pursuing four men, with a force of thirty-one behind him, and he’d seen two of them die. The others should be dead by now, as well, but instead his men were dying all around him, while he cowered in the shadows, trembling and in pain.

      He had been splashed with burning fuel, along one sleeve and shoulder of his jacket, when the jeeps exploded moments earlier. Ducking and running to escape the shrapnel and clear the spreading lake of fire behind him, the lieutenant had been pulled down by two privates who smothered the flames and doubtless saved his life. Chandaka reckoned they should both receive citations for their courage and quick thinking, but from where he lay beneath the truck, he saw one of them stretched out dead, almost within arm’s reach.

      His pain and fear immobilized Chandaka, shamed him. He knew he should find the strength to rally his remaining troops, lead them to victory, and thus salvage some shred of honor from this day—but how?

      At present, he had no idea how many enemies were firing at his soldiers from the forest, whether they were bandits or guerrillas, why they’d sought this confrontation. It was preposterous to think that he had simply stumbled onto them, and any hint that he was only dealing with the two men they had chased into the woods seemed like insanity.

      Two men alone could never do all this.

      Could they?

      But even if there were a dozen shooters in the woods, Chandaka still had them outnumbered. Even with his losses, he could still attack—use “shock and awe,” as the Americans were fond of saying. He should storm the tree line with guns blazing and destroy the bastards who had bloodied and humiliated him.

      In fact, there was no other choice. He could not simply lay beneath the truck and wait until his men had all been killed, then wriggle out to face the enemy alone. Nor could he wait and pray for reinforcements to arrive, since none of his superiors knew where he was, or even that he was in trouble.

      Right, then, he told himself. He had to act, and swiftly, to redeem the situation and himself.

      Groaning, Chandaka dragged himself from underneath the truck, pulling his rifle after him. Some of his soldiers seemed surprised to see him, as if they’d forgotten he was with them, or perhaps assumed that he’d been killed. They huddled under fire, some of them hammering long bursts into the tree line closest to them, seemingly without a hope of scoring any hits.

      Chandaka started counting heads, got to fourteen and realized that there were no more left to count. He couldn’t do the simple calculation in his head, so rattled was he by the evidence before his eyes, but the lieutenant understood that more than half his soldiers had been lost.

      All dead? Had some of them turned tail and run? he wondered. It made no difference now. He’d have to work with what he had.

      Feigning a confidence he didn’t feel, Chandaka told his men, “We cannot stay here. They’ll murder all of us unless we seize the—”

      “Who are they?” someone demanded, interrupting him.

      “It doesn’t matter,” the lieutenant answered. “We must now seize the initiative. Carry the fight to them. I need you all to follow me and—”

      Something dropped out of the sky and landed at Chandaka’s feet. He glanced down at it, blinking. It seemed ludicrous—a bright green apple or a ball, some kind of toy—but one of his men shouted, “Grenade!” and they began to scatter in a panic.

      Whimpering, Chandaka turned to run. He managed two long strides before the antipersonnel grenade exploded. Its concussion plucked him off his feet and punched him through an airborne somersault, while shrapnel tore into his body with the lancing pain of countless razor blades. Chandaka landed on his back, rolled over once and wound up staring at a smoky sky.

      Survival was beyond him now. He knew it. It had been too much to hope for. Chasing bandits and guerrillas was a game for better men. He’d failed the army and his soldiers and himself, but none of that seemed relevant. Instead, he focused on the pain and hoped that it would end soon.

      There was only so much that a man could bear.

      BOLAN WAS READY WHEN the soldiers broke from cover, sprinting to escape the frag grenade. His AKMS had a fully loaded magazine, and even though the weapon’s fire-selector switch didn’t allow for 3-round bursts,