The day had started shortly after dawn with prayers.
The settlement had no electricity, no running water, no telephone; a single lantern provided all the light in the hut where Bolan had slept.
He had observed few signs of modern life: Soviet weapons and a few portable radios.
Bolan and the men had eaten of the traditionally hearty Afghan morning meaclass="underline" chicken, mutton, bread, grapes and yogurt, before most of the villagers left to tend their crops and sheep as if a war did not rage around them.
Social life in the Afghan countryside is dictated by ancient feudal patterns. The Afghans are a diverse people including both Pashto speakers and Dari speakers; several disparate sects of Muslims; political leaders who like the way Iran is governed and would like the same for Afghanistan; and tribes that have always hated each other over blood feuds that have endured for centuries.
Though the differences between such groups are dramatic, their one unifying aspect is the ancient Afghan code of behavior known as pushtanwalli, characterized by clear-cut obligations of hospitality to travelers and fugitives, revenge against enemies of tribe and family and adherence to manly courage.
The most important part of this code is melmasua, which deals with hospitality. And so Tarik Khan's force was given shelter by a tribe other than its own.
Bolan felt restless to move on but appreciated the necessity of a force the size of Tarik Khan's traveling only at night.
The ranks of the mujahedeen had swollen to nearly thirty men since Bolan and Tarik Khan had parted last night outside Kabul. The guerrilla attack force comprised the full spectrum of Afghan society, from former white-collar professionals to farmers and herdsmen. The local jukiabkr, the leader of the village council, and his tribe, ignored Tarik Khan's group. That appeared to be okay with the malik's group, the clear-eyed assault force Bolan would be working with.
The jukiabkr, a barrel-chested man with a handlebar mustache, seemed to live on hashish, like so many of the Afghan hill people. Right after morning prayers Bolan saw the guy take shavings from a block of the resinous drug and smoke it in a water pipe. Bolan saw the jukiabkr the rest of the day smoking his hash mixed with tobacco and rolled into cigarettes. Bolan would feel damn glad to be out of here.
The American ached for action and cursed the slow pace of the sun's progress across the sky.
Katrina stepped up to stand beside him as he stood gazing out over the ruggedly beautiful countryside from an overlook near the outskirts of the village.
"I do not wish to be a burden," she began. "I can feel the hatred in their eyes when they look my way."
Bolan offered her a cigarette but she declined.
"You're Russian. You've got to expect it."
"I expect it. I was a good Russian soldier, you see." Tense, she worried her lower lip between her teeth. "What happened between... the man Lansdale and myself... it had nothing to do with his work. It is right that you should understand this. At first, yes, he met me through Captain Zhegolov when he had the gall to impersonate a Russian officer and attend a dinner party at a general's home."
Some of the tension left and the corners of her mouth tipped in a bittersweet smile.
"I think I fell in love with him at that moment, and when he contacted me later and asked for a dinner engagement I knew the attraction was mutual. From there an attachment blossomed between us, a beautiful thing.
"When he told me who and what he really was it was after we had fallen in love and he trusted me enough to tell me. I told him then I could not betray the position of trust I had been put in. I realize now how they must have learned about me.
"Captain Zhegolov was one of his informers but even this I was never told. His work, my work, had no place between us. I cannot explain it."
"You don't have to. He felt the same way about you. No one can judge what you two had."
"And now that I have no choice, now that I cannot return, I worry about my family in Russia more than ever, and yet I feel a freedom almost as great as love itself. Do you understand this? And yet I am not free of what has happened, of my fate... of the life I carry in my womb."
"Your family may be all right," Bolan said. "For now that's all you can go on. I have many connections, Katrina. Some in Russia. We'll do what we can for them."
"I will accept what help you can give," she said, gazing at the Executioner, "but seeing one's love killed the way I did... I don't know what to think, what to feet, but I know I must do something to... after my acceptance and part in what my country is doing here."
"You're right about one thing, Katrina. You don't know what to think. Not this soon after last night. You may feel normal in some ways, but believe me, you are in shock from what you witnessed and what you were called on to do. You're tough enough to stay hard, I can see that, but call off making any decisions, okay? You owe it to the new life inside you."
"Do I owe his child a coward for a mother?" she asked, and did not wait for his response but touched his arm with fingertips that last night had triggered death from a blazing M-16, but right now transmitted the human touch, nothing sexual, not anything except caring. "The loyalty I felt to my country... I now feel for his memory. That is how it is. Thank you for listening to a woman analyze her soul aloud, Mack Bolan. And for not judging."
He could say nothing to that. He watched her turn and walk away. The village seemed nearly deserted during the day except for Tarik Khan's men who lounged about in attitudes of anticipation; the "hurry up and wait" syndrome of all military operations everywhere, even among guerrillas such as these.
Bolan preferred working alone or with only a small, select team. He had lost too many allies, from his early death squad days against the Mafia when he had enlisted the ill-fated members of his Nam combat team, right up to that terrible moment when April stopped a bullet meant for him.
Bolan felt he would give anything to have that one moment repeated so he could know the bullet was coming and take it instead of her. He found himself realizing more and more as time put distance between now and then that the bullet that killed April had killed a part of Mack Bolan, too.
He still had friends he cared about as human beings, most of them hellgrounders who had served with him in one capacity or another during the Executioner's bloody miles, but Bolan recognized that something within himself had changed, possibly disappeared forever, though he hoped not. A sense of humanness, yeah, that was it. The human fighting machine had risked everything more than once, pulling off the impossible over and over again in battlefields around the world, stopping the cannibals. For love.
It might sound corny but people were the only thing that really mattered, Bolan knew; what they could aspire to and become and the promise of a better world someday, somehow, every time lovers touched. April Rose had been all of that and more to Mack Samuel Bolan, and when she died... yeah, something real big in the big guy named Bolan died, too, and all life held for him now was the fight itself.
But, bet on it, when it came to stopping cannibals and something called the Devil's Rain, this guy's war everlasting was reward enough.
10
The sun eased into the western horizon, splashing the rugged beauty of snowcapped mountains a warm red.