The MAC-10 in Bolan's hands issued an angry message of death that pulverized the last trooper, the leaden stream chopping off limbs making bloody modern art designs across bullet-riddled walls. Bolan and Lansdale rushed up the stairs to the ground-floor level.

"Things never got this noisy back in the panhandle," Lansdale grunted as they made the top.

Bolan frowned. This was the same guy he had worked with in Libya, no doubt of it.

"Last time we met you had a Boston accent."

"So I get around," the Texan replied in a goodnatured drawl. "A guy's got to have some fun in life."

They left the stairs and raced toward the main entrance, heading for the supply carrier Bolan had left idling.

A Maxon raped the silent night, alerting soldiers all around the HQ building.

Two heads poked out of an office doorway halfway down the hall, soldiers scoping the action.

Bolan blew their heads off before they got any ideas. The Executioner and his CIA sidekick dashed from the building, Bolan to the driver's side of the truck, Lansdale tugging off a stutter from the M-16 that sent three sleepy-eyed troopers back to eternal slumber in the doorway of the nearest barracks. Then Lansdale hopped up into the cab and kept low as more soldiers, responding to the ruckus, poured out of the barracks, their attention on the HQ building and the commotion around the supply carrier. Bolan popped the clutch, upshifting them the hell away from there. Automatic fire from AK-47's and a heavier machine gun opened up on the moving truck but most of those slugs whistled wildly into the night, the rest whizzing through the cab but finding no targets. Bolan wheeled the vehicle into a tight turn toward the main gate. Lansdale saw men racing for vehicles parked by the motor-pool garage. As Bolan steered the truck, continuing to accelerate the closer he got to the closed main gate, Lansdale leaned out his side of the truck cab and rode out a heavy burst from his M-16 that cut down half a dozen men around those vehicles like a scythe cutting wheat, but he knew others would take their place in no time.

The truck ate up the distance to the closed iron gate and the guardhouse. More gunfire stitched the supply carrier but missed the cab. A guard stepped out of the gate house, raised his AK-47 and squeezed off one round that spider-webbed the windshield between the men in the cab, but hit neither. The other two front-gate sentries remained inside their guardhouse, snouts of their machine guns swiveling toward the approaching truck from the turrets built into the bulletproof glass.

The brave fool in Bolan's path almost had time to trigger another shot, but the truck jolted under an impact that sounded like a bug crushed under a heavy foot.

For a few seconds the Russian soldier rode like a mascot with arms outflung across the grillwork of the truck, dead eyes glaring at the man from death behind the steering wheel. Then the nose of the truck plowed on through the iron gate with enough force to rip the gate from its moorings, the upright iron rods making ground meat out of the soldier's body. Bolan gunned the truck away from there under a hail of fire from the guardhouse. He yanked the steering wheel to the left and took the turn onto the street that ran along the walled compound toward the nearest checkpoint; the men stationed there would have less time to respond. The deuce-and-a-half left behind plenty of activity, Soviet officers snapping their well-trained troops into response, engines of vehicles throating to life, loading up with troops to give chase. The sentries inside the gatehouse swung their weapons around as far as the bulletproof window turrets would allow, but could no longer track on the fleeing vehicle. One of the guards stepped outside for a parting shot but he got a farewell deathburst from Lansdale.

The CIA agent plugged a fresh clip into the M-16 as the Executioner powered the two-and-a-half-ton metal monster faster toward the checkpoint. Lansdale leaned out from his side of the truck's cab. The night wind on his face felt good after the fetid stench of Colonel Uttkin's torture chamber. The Texan hammered off more M-16 fire, this time at the group of raydoviki at the checkpoint, cutting down two while another scrambled for cover. Bolan unleathered Big Thunder and straight-arm aimed a head shot that roared in the night, decapitating the communications man by the patrol car. Bolan steered the speeding supply rig on through the checkpoint. Two soldiers opened fire as the deuce-and-a-half clattered by like an express train, but too much was happening at once for their aim to be any good; none of their buzzing bullets found meat in the cab of the racing military vehicle.

Bolan's .44 cannon dropped another raydoviki as the guy tried to swing around a machine gun mounted at the back of one of the vehicles, then Bolan concentrated on steering the rocketing truck, clearing the checkpoint and roaring on into the night.

Three checkpoint soldiers remained alive long enough to trigger some more ill-aimed rounds at the truck before Lansdale fired a goodbye chorus from the M-16, leaning out backward from the passenger side of the cab now. The three soldiers caught the withering hail of 5.56mm hornets and died, spasming in death dances before they toppled.

In the truck's rearview mirror Bolan caught sight of a dozen or more vehicles giving hell-for-leather chase after the supply carrier.

Soviet pursuers poured from the main gate a quarter mile back, many of the vehicles smaller, faster than the military transport vehicle. The Kabul night rumbled with motorized fury.

Bolan kept the carrier's pedal to the metal, giving the deuce-and-a-half everything she had but knowing it would not be enough to outdistance those snapping hounds of hell closing in too damn fast.

Also Bolan played out his only option. He downshifted, pumping the brake at the same time.

When he had the decreased speed he wanted, still moving fast, he wheeled the supply carrier into a bone-rattling sideways skid, gripping the steering wheel to hold himself steady. Lansdale held onto the frame of the truck's cab for dear life.

The truck slewed to a shuddering halt across the narrow street, where it would effectively block the pursuers at least long enough to give Bolan and Lansdale a good start on foot.

Bolan ejected himself from the cab while the vehicle was still sliding, landing in a combat crouch to fan the escape route with Big Thunder. Wary combat senses were on alert, probing the night.

The dark street appeared deserted. For now.

8

Lansdale trotted up.

"Good play, big guy. If it works."

Bolan took off in a rapid, surefooted trot along the road, away from the truck and the rapidly approaching clamor of Soviet pursuers. Lansdale kept pace.

"You're good at ad-libbing a script," Bolan told the guy. The Texan chuckled as they covered distance.

"You oughta hear my one-liners. What have you got in mind now? There's a woman, Katrina... a friend."

"I met her. She's the one who told me where to find you."

"She's a good woman, Bolan. You must know that if you met her. The KGB and the GRU... they found out about her association with me. Damn, I shouldn't have messed with her."

They had gone several hundred yards when they heard the Russian chase vehicles screech to a halt. Shouts in Russian reached Bolan and Lansdale at the far end of the block where a side street intersected. The Executioner and the CIA man dodged around that corner with microseconds to spare before a volley of automatic gunfire blistered the night.

"We can reach Katrina in time to warn her before we leave Kabul," Bolan assured the guy. "Does she have transportation?"

Their jogging picked up. Lansdale kept the pace set by Bolan. "She does," Lansdale acknowledged. "The tough part's gonna be shaking those yahoos back there. That truck won't stop those cowboys but a minute or two. What do you reckon, pard?"