Lethal Tribute. Don Pendleton

to Bolan. That was the State Department’s nightmare to deal with. Ali Ul-Haq was a righteous target in and of himself, and Bolan wanted those nukes back as much as Hussain.

      He also needed more clues about the invisible assassins that had reached out for his throat.

      Of even more immediate concern were the green tracers streaking upward from the walls of the fortress. Hail seemed to rattle on the Mi-8’s airframe, and a ragged line of holes appeared down the middle of the troop compartment. Makhdoom roared orders into his radio.

      The Hind gunships swept ahead of the transports like avenging dragonflies, their twin automatic cannons hammering in response to the ground fire. Fire blossomed beneath the stub-wings as the rocket pods rippled into life. 57mm rockets swarmed downward in smoking lines. The orange fire of high explosive erupted along the walls of the fortress. The anti-aircraft guns swiftly fell silent as the battlements were bombarded. The transports swooped down toward the inner courtyard. The door gunners hosed down the walls as the helicopters dropped to the cobblestones.

      Captain Ghulam Fareed and his men had changed out of their leisure suits. They now wore camouflaged coveralls and Russian-made titanium body armor. Bolan jumped out beside Makhdoom, cradling his HK automatic rifle.

      The fortress was already falling. Ul-Haq’s stronghold was more for show than anything else. It was deep within his territory and made him inaccessible. His real defenses were the influence he bought and the murder of his rivals. It was well equipped to protect him from assassination or a misguided assault by a fellow warlord. Neither Genghis Khan nor Ali Ul-Haq had ever envisioned repelling a Special Forces helicopter assault.

      Neither of the two warlords, ancient or modern, had envisioned falling under the wrath of Mack Bolan.

      Bolan’s rifle ripped into a crew of men trying to wheel a heavy machine gun around on the wall to fire down into the courtyard. The big .30 caliber rifle pounded them to pieces around their weapon. Makhdoom’s hand slammed down on Bolan’s shoulder, and the Pakistani shouted above the sound of gunfire and the aerial artillery barrage.

      “There!” Doom pointed his rifle and the squat, round-shouldered shape of the fortress’s central tower. “The keep!”

      Bolan nodded as he shouldered his weapon. The HK bucked against him, and a man on the steps of the keep fell in red ruin with a five round burst through his chest. Bolan ejected his spent magazine and slapped in a fresh one. The door to the keep was small and massively constructed of thick oak timbers bound with iron. The structure itself was made of massive blocks of ancient stone. Each floor of the keep had narrow firing slits for the defenders. They had been designed to service bows and crossbows, but they worked equally well for automatic rifles and light machine guns. Charging across the open courtyard would be a suicide mission for anyone trying to breach the door.

      “Doom!” Bolan glanced up meaningfully at one of the orbiting Hind gunships as it swept the walls of the last defenders. “We need that door blown and a rocket run on the keep to keep the gunners down while we assault!”

      “Indeed!” Makhdoom roared rapidly into his radio in Sind. One of the Hinds dropped out of its low circling pattern and dropped out of sight behind the walls. It popped up again directly over Bolan and Doom’s heads. Its five massive, fifty-foot rotors pounded the air of the courtyard into thundering vortices of smoke and dust and vibrated the very cobblestones. A pair of AT-6 Spiral guided anti-tank missiles sizzled off their launch rails trailing their guide-wires. The door disappeared in twin flashes of orange fire. The gunship pilot tilted the nose of his aircraft, and the rocket pods beneath his wings began breathing fire like some terrible pipe organ of destruction. Rocket after rocket hissed into the front of the keep. The guns in the firing slits went silent as explosion after explosion shook the tower.

      Makhdoom sliced down his hand. “Attack! Attack! Attack!”

      “Allah Akbar!” Captain Fareed did not hesitate. His war cry was taken up by his gang of thugs. “God is Great!”

      Bolan and Makhdoom formed the sharp end of the spear as they charged the keep beneath the gunship’s sheltering salvo. The door, the doorframe and about two feet of masonry to each side had been blown out and the breached tower oozed smoke. The world was consumed by the smell of brimstone and the stench of burnt high-explosive. Bolan threw a Chinese -made offensive hand-grenade into the smoking hole. Pale yellow fire flashed as the grenade detonated with a spiteful crack. Someone inside screamed.

      Bolan and Makhdoom strode though the smoldering doorway with their rifles blazing. A pair of gunmen fell and two more threw down their weapons, pleading for their lives in Urdu. The first floor of the tower was done up like an opulent reception hall complete with Persian carpets and a gilt throne. Ul-Haq held court like an ancient pasha. Only, Ul-Haq was nowhere to be seen. Bolan glanced around as the prisoners were bound. The question of the moment was whether Ali Ul-Haq was the kind of modern warlord who would hide in the top of his tower or be burrowed down at the bottom.

      Bolan was betting Ul-Haq was a top tower man.

      “Doom! I’m going up top!”

      “I will arrange it!” Makhdoom spoke into his radio. “Take Captain Fareed with you! I will meet you in the middle.”

      Bolan strode back into daylight. Fareed fell into step behind him. A pair of ropes descended from the cabin of a Hind gunship circling overhead. “We want Ul-Haq alive!”

      “I know something of taking men alive!” Fareed rumbled.

      Bolan grabbed a rope and scissored it with his feet. He waved his hand and the Hind began to rise up into the air. He kept his eyes on the firing slits in the tower and his free hand covered them with his rifle. The big American unclamped his feet as he cleared the crenellations at the top of the tower and his boots touched down on stone as the Hind delivered them. The ropes fell behind them as the Hind cut free and veered off. Bolan examined the top of the tower. It was littered with broken weapons and shattered bodies. The rocket and cannon runs had defoliated the tower of defenders.