The tall shadow materialized right before his eyes
It was as if the battle smoke had breathed the armed figure forth from the night. Braxton hesitated for a split second, as he found his stare riveted on the icy blue eyes framed in the black-streaked face. Eyes that seemed more like orbs of pure fire than anything human.
But there was something about the man Braxton thought he recognized, or maybe it was the stare that burned back, telling him something about himself, as if the shadow had known him all along.
And he was judged.
The distance was twenty yards, nothing too great to overcome, but where he hesitated in bringing his assault rifle to bear, Mack Bolanâs M-16 was already shooting flame.
The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts her in the hour of danger.
âAndrew Jackson,
1767â1845
Itâs gotten so these days that itâs sometimes hard to tell the good guys from the bad. Honor, in some cases, seems to be a thing of the past, integrity just another word. But justice will not fade away, and shall prevail. Judgment is waiting. I consider it a duty.
âMack Bolan
âTheyâre here.â
Hamal Amarshar acknowledged his lieutenantâs grim pronouncement with a flip of the half-eaten oblong date, plunging it into the fire barrel before taking up his AK-74. The sudden current of tension through the cave told him his fighters were braced for the worst, whereas he had to maintain, at the very least, the appearance that he anticipated the best of all possible news. Had there been a significant boost in numbers of Americans or a noticeable upgrade in their hardware, he would have been forewarned, his scouts in the hills keeping the vast wasteland at the eastern edge of the Dasht-e-Kavir under constant surveillance for those on the other side foolish enough to stray outside the arrangement.
He briefly pondered the words of the man who called himself Black Dog, spoken at their first meeting.
âHey, if I wasnât here to deal straight with you, my friend, if I wanted your scalps in a bag as trophiesâand collect enough bounty on your hides in the process that would set me up for my golden yearsâit would be no large feat for me to bring down a Tomahawk or a bunker buster or two on your heads.â
That much may well be true enough, he supposed, having already done the math in terms of geography, as best he could, without, that was, the advantage of the enemyâs high-tech wonder toys. Their hideout was a dozen or so meters up, weathered out by time and the cruelty of the desert in the side of a low-chain of rock that had aeons ago broken off from the Payeh Mountains. Between U.S. Navy warships stationed in the Gulf of Oman, roughly seven hundred kilometers due southâwith Kabul about eight hundred kilometers east as the eagle flew in what was a major surrounding area of occupation by the enemyâthere would be enough cruise missiles and fighter jets on hand and within striking distance to blow him to Paradiseâor seal him up in the side of the mountain.
Amarshar considered both the momentâhopefully the gift his guests would come bearing, as promisedâand the future. The Iranian listened to the rumble of engines, the squeal of timeworn brakes, saw the thinning spool of dust that rose from the floor of the wadi, as doors opened and closed and shadows began to filter up through the gritty sheen of harsh sunlight. It was a bizarre affair, to understate the matter, this striking a bargain with the devil, but an alliance that placed him at the crossroads of destiny. Just what the future promisedâboth immediate and long termâremained to be seen.