Appointment in Kabul Read Online Free PDF Page B

with the soldier in the doorway.
    "I know when I leave this room, this place of so many good memories, I will never see him again." Her quavering voice matched with the tortured look in her eyes. "They have him. They will not let him go, ever. And so I am with him here one last time even if I am alone, and I linger to savor the bitter sweetness of it."
    "I can help, Katrina. Come with me and I'll get you to safety away from here. There's hope for Lansdale, too."
    "Not if the KGB have him. And I cannot leave Kabul. I cannot run. I have a mother and father and two sisters in the Soviet Union. What would become of them if I defected and went with you? Perhaps my superiors will not learn of my disloyalty, even if what I see in this country every day, the atrocities committed in the name of my homeland, sickens my soul."
    "At least leave here," he urged. "Quickly. If they don't know about you, you're still safe. Do you live near here?"
    "Nearby." She stood but did not take her eyes from him. "You are right, of course. I overheard him only this evening on his short-wave radio to his superiors in New Delhi. They ordered him not to cooperate with you. He told them he would disobey those orders. You are the man called the Executioner? You will need to kill many tonight, Executioner, if you want to reach him. And you will be killed."
    Bolan switched off the light, plunging the duplex into blackness again but he could still see her, thanks to the goggles.
    "It's been tried before, Katrina." They stepped into the front room. "You'll see your man again."
    She paused when they were at the side door leading out of the house. "I have lived in Afghanistan too long to believe in miracles, American. And..." her hands rested lightly on her stomach "...I have something of his that must be kept safe. I learned of it only yesterday. I carry his child, you see."
    She moved forward slightly and placed a hand on his arm. Then Katrina Mozzhechkov slipped by him out of the house without a sound. He stepped onto the landing to watch her gain the lean-to by the alley. She rounded a corner into the side street that intersected the alley, and other structures blocked her from his infrared vision.
    He closed and locked the door behind him as he had found it and faded into the night in the other direction.
    He could have stayed to search Lansdale's place but he felt certain the Company man would have kept nothing on paper concerning the Devil's Rain. The top priority now had to be getting Lansdale out and that would take some doing, bet on that. But Bolan had turned incredible odds around in his favor before. In fact, it was his specialty.
    During his Mafia campaigns the authorities had dubbed it the Bolan Effect. Tonight the Soviet military high command in Kabul would get a taste of that Effect firsthand.
    And yeah, you could bet on that, too.

5
    The sprawling Soviet headquarters, a quarter of a mile square near the center of Kabul, the command post of the 40th Army, the operations base for all troops in Afghanistan, appeared impenetrable.
    Surrounding the complex were twenty-foot-high concrete walls topped with curled strands of concertina wire, the top ledge of the walls embedded with razor-sharp shards of glass.
    Bolan took a rooftop position on a three-story building higher than the nearby structures, providing him with an unobstructed view of the Soviet fortifications and layout.
    The main HQ building was easy enough to spot even from a distance.
    It could only be the two-story structure with the half-circle drive and the flagpole in front of it, the only building inside those walls with any lights on at this hour.
    Bolan also discerned single-level secondary office buildings, prefab, all without lights or signs of activity.
    They could have Lansdale inside one of those annex buildings with the windows blacked out, thought Bolan, but if the KGB had brought Lansdale here, the GRU, intelligence arm of the Soviet military, must be involved. And that meant