Appointment in Kabul Read Online Free PDF Page A

got to get to Lansdale and find out what he knows."
    "Allah will protect you," the mujahedeen leader assured the already fading voice.
    No answer. The Executioner was gone. Into Kabul. On foot. It was time to penetrate the belly of the monster. Bolan intended this to be a quick intel gathering probe. But he was ready for anything.

4
    The nighthitter in combat black entered the capital of Afghanistan from the north through the suburb of Lashkar to avoid the bridge that crossed the Kabul River. The waterway would have a Soviet or Afghan military checkpoint or both.
    The dark streets had the aura of a ghost town except for the motorized Soviet patrols, usually jeep-like vehicles with machine guns mounted on the back, crisscrossing the city like hungry animals of prey. Bolan penetrated undetected deeper into a once colorful town that had become one huge concentration camp.
    At Huzkisar Way, a wide street that runs from one end of Kabul to the other, the nightfighter paused longer than he cared to while a truck, the rear enclosed with barbed wire caging the shadows of four young men, motored by slowly with a spotlight probing shadows. The men did not see Bolan.
    The truck moved on in its forcible "recruiting" of Afghans, many of them fourteen— and fifteen-year-olds, into the militia to be herded off to rudimentary training camps and then to the front.
    The vehicle disappeared around a far corner.
    Bolan continued deeper into the city via dark alleys and the shadows of the sprawling squalor of neighborhoods.
    He did not encounter one civilian, yet he dodged half a dozen cruising Soviet or militia patrols.
    The Shar-l-Nau quarter was one of wide, unpaved sidewalks and mud houses.
    Somewhere a dog barked in the night and others took up baying. There came the occasional sound of not-too-distant vehicular traffic, the patrols.
    Everything else seemed quiet, most of the civilian populace asleep, the rest hiding behind locked doors and drawn shades praying to Allah, Bolan was sure, that they would not be next to be taken in for "questioning" as enemies of the state.
    Life under the Soviet regime, reflected Bolan grimly. And a prophecy for the rest of the world if the cannibals had their way. He held to the shadows, since this was Lansdale's turf and he did not want to risk blowing any cover the guy might have worked up. The Executioner took a full ten minutes to circle Lansdale's building twice at a distance, reconnoitering from a series of vantage points before he decided the CIA man's address was not under surveillance. The one-story brick building, set back and separated from the road by pine trees, lindens and poplars, would be called a duplex in the States, each residence taking up one half of the house. The lights of both residences were off.
    Lights should have been on in Lansdale's windows if he expected company. Maybe not, but Bolan felt a sensory tremor that made him swing the silenced Ingram MAC-10 to firing position.
    He cut over past two houses to the alleyway that ran behind the house where Tarik Khan had told Bolan he would find Lansdale.
    Bolan did not care for the idea of taking a Company man on trust, not with that outfit's agents all given orders to Terminate Bolan On Sight; but no, Bolan could not and would not turn back from this mission, and Lansdale was the only card he could play.
    He jogged along the alley toward Lansdale's address. He heard motorized sounds from the road in front of the house and paused against a lean-to structure where a cow stood tied. The vehicle, which sounded like one of the jeep patrols, drove by.
    Bolan waited until the sound died, then continued on. He reached the back of Lansdale's half of the duplex and knelt against the deepest shadows at the base of the wall. He eased along to two windows and paused at each but both had been latched from the inside, shades drawn.
    Damn.
    He catfooted around the corner of the house to the door at the end. The next house stood several meters away and