Killing Ground. Don Pendleton

      “Back in ’91 we had Hussein and his fucking Imperial Army dead to rights,” he went on. “All we had to do was march into Baghdad and finish the job. But what do we do instead? We call it quits and head home so those scumbags can regroup and pick up where they left off. Real smart, huh?”

      It was an old argument, one Bolan had tired of the first few dozen times he’d heard it. When he didn’t respond, however, O’Brien took it as a cue to forge on.

      “Then, boom, ten years later we blow in here to Binladenstan looking to kick some Taliban ass for 9/11. We rout ’em out of Kabul and have ’em right where we want ’em—running scared up here into the mountains. But do we finish the job? Hell no. Instead we get ourselves sidetracked going back after Hussein. By the time we yank him out of his hidey-hole and see that he gets a necktie party, these dipshits have retrenched themselves so we gotta come back and start from square one again. You see a pattern here?”

      Bolan wasn’t about to let himself be dragged into the officer’s diatribe. He kept his eyes trained on the mountains below, looking for signs of movement through the shifting clouds. The only visible stirring was a gentle rippling on the surface of a small glimmering mountain lake situated at the base of a steep slope extending downward from his position. There’d been a time when the entire length of the slope had been a sheer, vertical wall of solid rock, but years of bombing, first by the Soviets and then the U.S., had pulverized sections of the precipice, turning them into collapsed mounds of loose rock and gravel. The ripples were caused by the occasional plop of small stones pulled down into the lake by gravity.

      “What, you think I’m exaggerating?” O’Brien taunted. “Or maybe you think Washington knows what they’re doing and aren’t just dicking around for votes and kickbacks from whoever’s making the money off this fiasco. Is that it?”

      Bolan remained silent. Much as O’Brien’s diatribe rankled him, it also took him back to a time when he’d taken issue with his government to the point where he’d gone rogue. It had been a dark period in his life, and though the wounds had healed, the scars remained.

      O’Brien broke the silence.

      “You know I’m right,” he said.

      Bolan felt his patience wearing thin. He also sensed that O’Brien wasn’t about to let up until he got some kind of response out of the man he knew only as Special Agent Cooper—one of several code names the Executioner used to safeguard his identity as well as that of the covert agency he worked for.

      Finally Bolan turned to the captain and raised his goggles long enough to level the officer with a cold look.

      “I like politicians about as much as I do hindsight,” he replied tersely.

      O’Brien stared back into his cohort’s withering blue eyes and chortled, then flashed a begrudging smirk.

      “Touché,” he said. “Okay, okay, memo received. I’ll shut up.”

      Given that the officer had been ranting almost nonstop since they’d set out from the makeshift base camp shortly after nightfall, Bolan doubted O’Brien would keep quiet. On the bright side, after glancing along the ridgeline that tapered away to their right, the recon officer finally told Bolan something he didn’t mind hearing.

      “I’m gonna contact the other teams to see if they’ve spotted anything,” the captain said, rising to a crouch. He reached to his thigh and pulled a checkbook-size Jorson 278 microcomputer from his cargo pocket. “I’ll duck in the bushes to shield the LCD.”

      “Good idea.”

      O’Brien snickered again, gathering up his M-16. “Just don’t rat me out as a hothead when you report back to CIA or whoever the hell it is you’re working for,” he said. “I’ve got a pension waiting for me at the end of this, and I don’t want it mucked up.”

      “Deal,” Bolan promised as he lowered his goggles.

      O’Brien hunched low and headed off toward a cluster of overgrown hawthorn shrubs farther down the ridgeline, his thick-soled boots crunching on loose gravel. Clouds spilled up over the crest and within a matter of seconds the officer had vanished into their ethereal mist. Grateful for a moment’s silence, Bolan turned from O’Brien’s location and peered through high-powered binoculars at a patch of mountainside near the lake that had been laid clear by the moving clouds. He was focusing on a narrow ribbon of switchbacks when the night air resounded with a sudden blast, followed quickly by a curdling howl.

      O’Brien.

      Bolan was quick to his feet, forsaking the binoculars in favor of his Army-issued carbine. He raced down the ridgeline, careful to follow the same route O’Brien had taken. He had a hunch as to what had just happened, and when he came upon the writhing officer, his suspicions were borne out. O’Brien’s right leg had been severed just below the knee and blood spurted from the mangled stump into a fresh, shallow crater gouged out of the soil.

      “Land mine,” the officer moaned weakly.

      Bolan shed his goggles and reached for the obliterated mess that had once been O’Brien’s right calf. He tugged free the largest available scrap of torn pant leg and pressed it against the officer’s wound, hoping to staunch the blood flow.

      “Try to stay put,” Bolan advised. Blood seeped through the compress, warming his fingers.

      “Looks like I get that pension sooner than I thought,” O’Brien whispered hoarsely. His ruddy complexion had turned ashen, and he began to shiver. Bolan knew the man was going into shock. He shifted his grip and cupped the severed stump with one hand, freeing the other to reach for the microcomputer O’Brien had dropped. The device had a built-in walkie-talkie, and Bolan knew the captain’s only chance would be a medevac airlift back to the base.

      Before Bolan could put out a distress call, a faint popping sounded from atop the peak behind him, followed by an ominous whooosh and the harsh glare of two igniting flares. The clouds turned a bright shade of ochre that illuminated the ridgeline, exposing Bolan and O’Brien. A second later, sniper fire began to chew at the earth around them.

      “Go!” O’Brien feebly reached for the compress and pushed Bolan away. “Now!”

      The flares touched down, landing close enough that their sparks made the Americans an even clearer target. Two more rounds rained down on Bolan and O’Brien. One glanced off the Executioner’s M-16 mere inches from his trigger finger. The other tore through O’Brien’s neck, just above his flak jacket. The recon officer went limp, blood spurting from a severed artery.

      Given the trajectory, Bolan knew the shots were coming from the distant peak behind him, well beyond range of his assault rifle. It also seemed a safe bet that there were at least two snipers.

      Bolan had to make a quick decision. Staying at O’Brien’s side meant certain death, but venturing any farther along the ridgeline would only court the chance he’d trip another land mine. That left one option.

      Bolan took it.

      2

      Casting aside the microcomputer, Bolan dived sharply to his left, then rolled on his side until he reached the point where the ridgeline gave way to the steep-pitched incline. He’d abandoned his carbine, as well, leaving both hands free as he went over the side. The dying flares cast light on a few likely footholds and Bolan put them to quick use, lowering himself enough that the next sniper rounds skimmed off the crest and caromed far above his head. O’Brien remained an open target, and as shots continued to rain down, Bolan suspected the assailants were ensuring that the recon officer had joined the ever-growing list of U.S. fatalities in the prolonged Afghan conflict.

      Bolan considered his next move. Off to his right, just beyond reach, a young, hearty spruce jutted through a seam in the precipice. The Executioner looked for a way to inch within reach, but there was nothing between him and the tree but a bald expanse of sheer granite. For that matter, all around him there was little more in the way of footholds, and directly below it was a forty-foot