Thirty-foot cement walls rose sheer with brick watchtowers at each corner. Six sentries in each, manning heavy machine guns, scanned the one approach to the fort, crossing fifty yards of flat terrain to a blacktopped two-lane road that bisected the scene from north to south.
Bolan saw a helicopter pad and maintenance area.
The fortress had been constructed on an open plain, the floor of a wide valley.
Occasional structures, private residences, dotted the two-lane at irregular intervals as did the dark shapes of clusters of trees. The fortress, especially the ground at the outside base of the walls, was bright from high-intensity floodlights but the overall impression to Bolan as he scanned with NVD goggles through binoculars was of a world asleep, not in any particular hurry to wake up to the grim realities of another day.
There was no traffic along the road at this hour.
Bolan had sprawled belly down beside Tarik Khan. Both men lowered their binoculars.
"It is one of three fortresses along the highway," Tarik Khan informed him. "This road is one of the army's major supply routes. They know the country belongs to us at night."
"What is their number down there?"
"It changes as the Soviets order the militia redeployed about the country. They will be mostly Afghan regulars. General Voukelitch chooses an unimportant place for his work, much as a spider spins his web where the light of day will not reveal it."
Bolan nodded.
"The spider's web is a trap and that could be a trap down there whether they know it or not. I've got to go in solo again, Tarik Khan. If I can destroy the laboratory where they make and store this Devil's Rain, the attack by you and your men could serve as the diversion I'll need to get clear."
The guerrilla studied Bolan.
"After your work in Kabul I would say it is the way you work best and it is for your abilities that I chose to summon you. There will be much danger for you but you will not be up against Russian soldiers. The militia is made up of untrustworthy draftees who defect daily." Tarik Khan raised his binoculars again to study the fort and its environs. "The landing area must be my men's first target, of course. We are for the most part helpless against Soviet air power, but we will stop these before they get off the ground."
"I see only helicopter gunships," Bolan noted. "They'll have MiGs here within minutes. I'm sure they have a landing strip not far from here."
"They do," the guerrilla said with a nod, "but we still have time to operate. They hope to control too much territory with too little."
Bolan knew the Soviets fought their war here on the cheap, figuring they had time on their side, and they were probably right. Only two percent of Soviet defense spending goes to waging the Afghanistan war; only six percent of their army divisions are deployed in Afghanistan. As for their Kabul-regime allies, Tarik Khan had hit the nail on the head: those kidnapped into military service by an occupying invasion force rarely make good soldiers.
Bolan went through a last-minute check of his weapons and equipment. "Give me ninety minutes, then hit them with everything you've got. Unless you hear fireworks from down there any time before then, which will mean I'm in trouble and need all the firepower I can get."
They synchronized their watches.
Time to move out.
Time to do it.
Bolan and Tarik Khan drew back from the ridge and stood to exchange the traditional handshake of farewell.
"Good luck, brother," the mujahedeen leader grunted solemnly. "May Allah guide you on the right path. And may we meet at the end of this battle. Our cause is just. Allah is with us."
"Live large, malik Tarik Khan," Bolan acknowledged, and he turned to say goodbye to Katrina Mozzhechkov.
The Russian woman had remained at his side until he and Tarik Khan had bellied to the ridge to reconnoiter.
She was nowhere in sight and Bolan cursed inside when he realized it. Katrina was gone.
13
General Pytyour Voukelitch, KGB, studied the Afghan in hospital whites who sat handcuffed to a bed.
"A high fever was the only symptom he showed and it passed of its own accord within days," Dr. Golodkin, head of the technical staff, reported in Russian to his superior. "This man is now perfectly healthy."
The figure in the bed looked fearfully from one Russian towering over him to the other, unable to understand their language but somehow sensing his own existence was at stake.
"Were the others exposed at the same time as this one?" Voukelitch demanded.
"Dead, comrade General, but if the implementation of the, er, program hinges only on determining the intervals at which the solution should be spread, I would conservatively estimate the period of effectiveness at six weeks, based on these experiments. Is that what you need to know?"
The KGB commander stalked toward the door of the sterile room.
"It is. You have done well, comrade Doctor. Your services will be amply rewarded."
"Discreetly, I trust. Uh, what about this one?"
Voukelitch did not pause. He stepped from the room. "Kill him, of course." Voukelitch closed the door behind him and returned to his office at this outpost fifteen kilometers from Parachinar, accompanied as always by a uniformed bodyguard.
Major Ghazi, commandant of this Afghan garrison, waited for Voukelitch as the general had instructed him to in the office that had belonged to Ghazi before the KGB man arrived with orders placing Ghazi and his command at Voukelitch's disposal.
At his superior's entrance, Ghazi rose abruptly from the chair that faced the office desk.
Voukelitch strode to the liquor cabinet camouflaged behind a fake bookcase and spoke as he poured them each a shot of vodka.
"It is done, Major." Voukelitch handed the Afghan a shot glass and hoisted his own. "Operation Devil's Rain will commence with the first light of dawn."
They clinked glasses and downed the shots.
The Afghan chuckled without humor. A sound from the grave. "You have outdone yourself, General Voukelitch. I had heard of your ingenious strategies in the Panjir Valley during last winter's offensive. If I may say so, sir, this surpasses even that. It has been my privilege to be associated with a man of your vision."
Fawning pig, thought Voukelitch, though his pride basked in the compliment. He poured himself another shot without offering one to the Afghan officer, then replaced the bottle and glasses in their hiding place and returned to the desk.
The counterinsurgent operation that Ghazi spoke of concerned — for it was still being used — the air drop from helicopters of camouflaged antipersonnel mines and booby-trapped toys, usually small red trucks, designed not to kill but to injure, blowing off hands.
In this way guerrilla fighters would be demobilized while they transported and attended the victims — in the case of the "toy" bombs, almost always children — who would most likely die anyway from gangrene after days or weeks of atrocious suffering. The objective was to further depress and demoralize those who must watch the victims die.
Voukelitch, who at forty-seven had the physical condition of a man twenty years younger, held the opinion that all is indeed fair in war; to attain the goal, to win, was all that mattered.
To General Voukelitch, morality was but an invention of the weak to defend themselves.