The room stank of a sick sweetness that Uttkin loved. He forced his eyes away from what remained of the man he had watched tortured, trying to keep his voice steady so as not to betray the excitement he felt.
"What remains of Captain Zhegolov of the security staff. We discovered he has been passing along secret military information, deployment of troops, comings and goings here at the base, that sort of thing. After some, ah, persuading, we learned from Zhegolov the identity of the man to whom he has been passing this information. Mr. Lansdale."
Lyalin glared at the American.
"It would be far better, far easier for you to voluntarily tell us what we want to know. Surely you can appreciate that. Your life could be spared."
Lansdale returned the stare. He said nothing.
"He will not talk without persuasion," Uttkin opined. "I know his kind." To Lansdale's face he sneered, "These Americans think they are very tough but they all scream and tell me what I want to know before they die."
"Begin then," the KGB man ordered.
"Of course." Uttkin turned to the soldiers holding Lansdale. He snapped his fingers and made a motion toward the blood-smeared table.
The guards understood. They removed Lansdale's handcuffs and roughly strapped him to the table, giving the American no opportunity to resist. Lansdale felt his clothes stick to his skin with sweat. The table felt clammy beneath him; the light above him was blinding. He wondered if he should bite the cyanide pill he carried inside his mouth. He could see no other way out and he was damned if he would die screaming the way poor Zhegolov obviously had. Lansdale knew these butchers could make anyone scream with their knives and scalpels and beg for the mercy of death.
At least Katrina was safe.
Lansdale made his decision.
The pill.
The idling of the two-and-a-half-ton supply carrier was the only sound in the Kabul night between the gate guard's demand and the Executioner's response. Bolan made his voice tired.
"The baby-sitter they sent along asked me to drop him off where he lives on the way through town," he answered the sentry in Russian.
"Don't you know that's against regulations?"
"That's what I told him. Look, comrade, he wasn't my responsibility, was he? I'm only the driver and I'm damned tired, I don't mind telling you." Bolan, the role-camouflage expert, played it with the perfect note and tone.
The sentry saw what Bolan wanted him to think he saw in the less than half-light at the high command's front gate. Bolan kept to the shadows of the truck's cab.
The soldier considered the orders he held a few more seconds, made up his mind and handed the papers back up to the shadowy driver in Soviet jacket and headgear.
"Proceed." The sentry stepped away from the truck and signaled to the men behind the bulletproof glass of the guard station.
The iron-grille gate slid sideways. The sentry waved the truck through. Bolan smiled as he put the vehicle into gear and rolled onto the base.
Piece of cake.
Sure.
Getting out would be the difficult part, but the nighthitter had already formulated a strategy for withdrawal, with plenty of room for improvisation. The Executioner's first, his only, priority right now was to find Lansdale, pull him out and find out where these cannibals manufactured the nightmare they called the Devil's Rain. He steered the truck toward the headquarters building. The grille gate whirred mechanically shut behind him like the jaws of a trap.
Yeah, exactly like the jaws of a trap.
For an instant Bolan wondered if he had trusted Katrina Mozzhechkov too much.
He braked the truck in front of the headquarters' main entrance, which opened onto a lighted hallway the width of the two-story building.
An oblong patch of light fell across the walkway from the doorway. Inside there the Man from Blood knew he would find the orderly room and the answer to where they had taken Lansdale after bringing him here.
The width of the building showed no lighted office windows at this predawn hour. The only light came from the open entranceway. He doused the truck's headlights but left the supply carrier running, then lowered himself from the cab, the truck blocking him from view of the building.
He saw a two-man roving sentry patrol walk in the opposite direction, paying little attention to a military vehicle that had cleared two checkpoints.
Bolan waited an additional second after the guards disappeared from sight around one of the barracks buildings, gave a quick look around to make sure no one could see him, then tugged off the cap and Soviet uniform jacket. He double-timed it around the front of the truck and up the short walkway, in through the front door of Soviet headquarters.
He stepped briskly to the first office doorway, which was open, light streaming out, to his right.
Orderly room.
Bolan nodded when he saw the four Soviet soldiers. They were relaxing as if they didn't have a thing to worry about because they sat under the tightest security lid in Kabul; three raydoviki, bearlike in Russian army uniforms, rifles close at hand, lounged in chairs, waiting for the end of their shift. A younger enlisted man, the orderly, behind a desk to answer incoming calls, at the moment was leafing through an American sex magazine. The four soldiers reacted a heartbeat too late at the sight of the big dude.
The kid behind the desk stood, mouth agape as he reached for a holstered pistol.
The raydoviki recovered enough from their lethargy and grabbed for weapons. Bolan swung the Ingram MAC-10 at hip level and squeezed the trigger, the submachine gun recoiling in his fists, the silenced tube spitting flashes of orange-red flame and 9mm manglers to terminate the three infantrymen.
Two of the Soviets caught the Ingram's stitching fire after they grabbed their AK'S but before they could pull the rifles around on the blacksuited penetrator. Bolan executed these cannibals, both men spinning away under the impact of so many slugs and such sudden death, sprawling across furniture in a tangle against the wall.
The third infantryman's weapon was rising, but only reached halfway up toward Bolan when another 9mm burst raked this one even though he tried to steer away at the last second. The blistering slugs riddled his chest at a different angle.
Only heartbeats had passed since Bolan wasted the trio, but the orderly behind the desk managed to unbutton the flap of his belt holster and clear leather, a pistol tracking toward the Executioner.
Bolan dropped on the punk like a house, pinning this cannibal backward across the desk, swatting the Ingram at the kid's gun wrist. The big warrior heard a snap and the pistol and skin mag skidded off the desk to the floor.
Bolan applied pressure, pinning the orderly to the desk top. The Executioner pressed the silencermuzzled snout of the MAC-10 against the punk's chest.
"The prisoner they just brought in," he growled in icy Russian. "The American. Lansdale. Where is he?"
Beads of sweat popped across the soldier's face.
"D-downstairs. Third room on the left! Don't..."
"You should've stayed home, kid." Bolan triggered a burst from the Ingram. The soldier bucked, his feet off the ground, then collapsed to the floor when Bolan released the dead throat. The would-be cannibal's tunic smoldered from the contact shot.
Bolan exited the orderly room thirty seconds after he went in. He started toward the stairway leading to the basement level when combat senses alerted him in time to eyeball a two-man guard unit strolling in through the building's entrance on its appointed rounds, or to gab with their comrades in the orderly room. They found their Executioner, who triggered a silenced burst, and the sentries tumbled backward out of the doorway across the walk, life oozing from them, and Bolan knew he had whittled down his time.