The officer turned with deliberate movement to acknowledge Bolan with a nod.

"The infamous Executioner," Voukelitch returned with cool formality. "You have a habit, it would seem, of appearing when and where you are least expected."

Bolan glanced at Tarik Khan, who reached down almost absently to relieve the dead corporal of his SMG and ammo clips before moving to the car, where an Afghan lay sprawled in death.

"We are a good team, you and I," the mujahedeen leader gruffed. He used one foot to flop the corpse over onto its back so he could get a look at the dead face. "We knew this one, kuvii Bolan. Allah has a sense of justice, you see. It is your friend of the Hash Breath."

Bolan glanced at Katrina.

"Are you okay?"

She nodded, found her H&K automatic where it had fallen and retrieved it. "The jukiabkr is an informer and a smuggler of drugs. They were going to..." Her voice faltered at what had almost happened. She looked to Bolan for understanding. "...I wanted to..."

"The thing that matters now is that you have proved yourself to malik Tarik Khan," Bolan interrupted kindly.

He glanced at the hill chief who sauntered over.

Tarik Khan grunted with a last look at the dead jukiabkr. "She has proved herself," he agreed.

General Voukelitch cleared his throat.

"Pardon my impertinence, gentlemen, but may I inquire what is to become of me? Am I to be murdered like my driver?"

"Not if you cooperate," Bolan white-lied to the cannibal. "There's a reason I suggested my friend use his hands to kill the corporal. You're my ticket onto that fort, comrade. Cover him, Tarik Khan. If he so much as twitches an eye wrong, kill him. We can find another way onto the base."

Tarik Khan centered his rifle on the general's heart. "It will be difficult to restrain myself."

"Do your best." Bolan walked over to the sprawled corpse of the driver. "Looks like a close enough fit to pass."

Voukelitch raised his hands to assure Tarik Khan that he meant to cooperate. The officer retained the expression of a stone wall but his apprehension under malik Khan's close-up loathing said he almost preferred the cool-eyed aim behind the AutoMag.

Bolan hurriedly shed his combat webbing and lightweight munitions and equipment and shucked them through the open driver's window onto the floor of the ZIL, along with his silenced MAC-10.

He made quick work of stripping the trousers and tunic from the dead soldier. He slipped them over his blacksuit. He had instructed Tarik Khan with hand signals to slay the soldier without a weapon so as not to get any blood on the uniform.

Voukelitch watched Bolan.

When the Executioner returned to the group the general risked a snicker as Bolan pulled off his NVD goggles and slid them into a pocket of the blacksuit before buttoning up the tunic.

"You hope to bluff your way onto the installation?"

"With your help, General. Maybe not if it was a Soviet base, but I saw this vehicle slide out of there a while ago without even stopping for the guards at the gate. The militia sentries saw you coming and had the gate open to salute you through as nice as you please. That's the way they'll do it on your way back in."

Voukelitch lowered his upraised hands. Steel prodded his spine. "I am a Soviet officer. I will not betray..." Katrina interrupted.

"He deals in hashish," she said, glaring in accusation. "He has a brick of it on his person. He paid the hillman for it. These pigs barter in all manner of death; violent, and the kind that rots a civilization from within."

"We'll let the general keep his hash," Bolan decided. He unholstered Big Thunder again and the .44's muzzle retracked to the cannibal. "If he dies today, it will give them a little more to cover up and reorganize and panic about and I like that."

Tarik Khan glanced at his wristwatch.

"Has anything... changed?" he asked Bolan, careful not to divulge reference to the scheduled assault.

"Nothing, except spare the choppers at the landing pad. They're mine."

The hillman's brow furrowed but he nodded.

"As you say, my brother. And the woman?"

"Take her with you." Bolan glanced at Katrina. "You must go with him."

She nodded without hesitation.

"I will. A soul has been redeemed here... and I am wiser for it."

"No more talk. Good luck, both of you. You had best return," he advised Tarik Khan.

"And so we shall." The Afghan fighter stalked off.

Katrina looked as if she wanted to say something to the nightfighter who had saved her life but she knew Bolan was right. She followed Tarik Khan into the gloom.

16

Bolan glanced at the ridge of metallic gray inching higher behind the eastern peaks.

Fifteen minutes until the first half-light of dawn started to nibble at the dark, he gauged.

He gestured with the AutoMag to the KGB man.

"In the car, General. In the back like a nice passenger, and no sudden moves."

Voukelitch walked to the car. He stood aside while Bolan covered him and made a fast, thorough search of the tonneau for any hidden weapon or signaling device.

Bolan stood back and motioned Voukelitch inside.

The Russian general got in without a word.

Bolan hurried to get in behind the steering wheel.

He twisted the rearview mirror so he had a full-length view of the shadowy form of his passenger.

Bolan started the limo, backed it around and drove toward the highway. He holstered the AutoMag, reached to his shoulder holster, now concealed beneath the Soviet uniform, and drew the silenced Beretta 93-R. He hefted the Beretta for emphasis where Voukelitch could see it — "Here's how it is, General. We roll onto the base and you take me to the Devil's Rain. Keep your mouth shut and do as you're told, do you read me?"

He lowered the Beretta to the seat beside him, his finger on the trigger while he drove with his other hand.

Voukelitch reached with extreme nonchalance for a pocket of his uniform jacket "May I smoke?"

"You may not." Ice voice stopped him.

Bolan steered onto the highway in the direction of the fort a mile and a half away. "The Devil's Rain. Where is it on the base?"

"And why should I tell you?"

"You may not have to. You'll have it in or adjacent to the HQ where you keep an eye on things and still play the bigshot with your own office, if you run to type, General."

"It seems I do," bristled Voukelitch, his voice getting more confident the closer they got to the lights of the fort. "Not that the information will do you much good. Even the fabled Executioner will not penetrate the security with which I have surrounded the lab. You are already a dead man, Mack Bolan."

"And so are you," Bolan grunted.

He took his eyes from the road ahead to glance over his shoulder. The Beretta 93-R tracked around on the cannibal in the back seat.

Voukelitch started to cry out, suddenly realizing the mortal mistake he had made in admitting that Bolan had been right about the location of the lab. The silenced Beretta coughed discreetly.

The savage ceased all motion except to relax back into the upholstered corner of the tonneau, remaining in an upright position, the head dropped forward, chin touching the chest as if the general were catching a short nap and not the big sleep.

Bolan returned his attention to his driving.

He holstered the Beretta and drove on toward the floodlit fort.

Bolan steered General Voukelitch's ZIL limo through the front gates, onto the Afghan militia base. The sleepy-eyed militia regulars extended the same courtesy to the officer's car going in as they had when Bolan had watched the car leave the fort earlier.

Apparently the general's zipping out and into town at odd hours was not unusual.