Another scanning searchlight made them hug the ground. A few more tense seconds, passed. Once more, no siren wailed.

  Rambo came to his knees, feeling Mousa and Andreyev rise beside him. Andreyev inched forward.

  “The posts securing the wire to the ground are the key to the mine field,” Andreyev had explained. “We spread the explosives in a pattern out from those posts.”

  “A mine field’s not supposed to have a pattern,” Rambo had said.

  “Yes, if all you want to do is booby trap a field or a road and blow up soldiers or vehicles that come through. But the fort’s a different matter. Suppose rebels get past the barbed wire. Suppose they’re blown up by the mines. Their bodies need to be removed to keep the stench of decay from entering the fort. Soldiers need to enter the field to gather the corpses. They use metal detectors, of course. But to speed the process, it helps if the soldiers have a good idea where the mines were buried. We established a pattern that led out from the posts. The pattern was based on uneven numbers—one, three, five, and seven. The numbers represented the footsteps we took as we—”

  “Hold it.” Rambo had raised his hands. “I’m convinced. I can’t get through the mines unless you lead me.”

  As Andreyev led him now. Crouching in the fierce wind, the Russian felt cautiously along the ground and kept inching forward.

  Rambo and Mousa came directly behind him.

  If he makes a mistake, the blast will kill all of us, Rambo thought.

  But we can’t hang back to protect ourselves. We need to stay close so we know where he’s walking.

  Tension made sweat ooze through the sand-embedded camouflage grease on Rambo’s face as Andreyev moved warily onward. Again a murky searchlight scanned in their direction.

  If we lay on the ground, we might set off a mine. But if we don’t…

  Rambo hunched as low as he could. The pale light scanned closer.

  He knelt. The yellow beam kept coming.

  He eased his stomach toward the ground.

  The beam passed over his head and continued scanning.

  Relaxing his tense muscles, Rambo rose and crouched again. Ahead, Andreyev felt tenderly along the ground and shifted farther into the mine field.

  Rambo’s sense of time became more distorted. We’re taking too long! The men will leave with the horses before we get to the fort!

  But he didn’t dare nudge Andreyev to tell him to hurry. If anything, they ought to be moving slower.

  Andreyev calculated, took another step, another, and stopped.

  Rambo waited nervously. The Soviet must be having trouble making up his mind, he thought. Come on. Don’t get us trapped in here.

  Excitement quickened his pulse as he realized they’d reached more barbed wire.

  The Soviet threw a blanket over it. They climbed across quickly.

  Rambo rushed toward the wall of the fort.

  “Beyond the second stretch of wire, there aren’t any mines,” Andreyev had said. “All we need to worry about are guards.”

  But in this weather, would there be guards outside the fort? If there were, Rambo wouldn’t see them until they loomed next to him.

  He couldn’t let it bother him. There were too many other problems.

  Such as what to do about Andreyev. The Soviet had served his purpose. He’d led Rambo and Mousa through the mine field. From now on, he’d be a liability as much as an asset.

  Could Andreyev be trusted? The question nagged at Rambo. Would the Soviet run toward guards if he was allowed to enter the fort? Would the Soviet shout an alarm? What reason did Rambo have to trust him?

  None.

  And every reason to be suspicious. Andreyev might only have pretended to defect in order to stay alive.

  I’ve got to save Trautman, Rambo thought. Nothing else matters. I can’t let anyone jeopardize the mission.

  Back at the camp, when Rambo had decided to take Andreyev along, he’d understood the implications. Even then, he’d considered the possibility that this moment would come. He’d forced his mind to subdue the thought. He’d told himself there’d be time to weigh his decision while they went to the fort.

  But now there wasn’t time to brood about it anymore. He needed to make his choice. What am I going to do about Andreyev?

  The Soviet was next to him, pressed against the wall.

  Trautman.

  With a motion that Andreyev didn’t detect, Rambo drew his knife. He braced himself to sweep a hand across Andreyev’s mouth and thrust the knife into the Soviet’s renal artery.

  Death would be almost immediate. The hand across his mouth would mute any scream.

  I don’t want to do this.

  But I need to.

  Rambo primed his muscles to lunge.

  And couldn’t move. A protesting recess of his consciousness refused to allow his brain to send its deadly message to his limbs.

  He fiercely mustered his will.

  Do it! You can’t risk trusting him! Do it now!

  Rambo’s paralysis broke. His arms moved.

  Too late. Andreyev bolted from the wall.

  Rambo rushed to stop him. His suspicion was justified. All along, the Soviet had meant to escape. I’ll never find him in this storm!

  But Andreyev wasn’t trying to escape. He was charging toward a guard whose shadowy figure emerged from the storm.

  Andreyev whacked his rifle butt against the soldier’s jaw. The guard jolted back.

  Andreyev whacked a second time. The guard went down.

  And didn’t move.

  Just to be sure, Andreyev struck him a third time, then knelt to feel for a heartbeat. When he turned, he saw Rambo holding the knife directly behind him.

  Rambo put the knife away.

  Allah watched over you tonight, Andreyev.

  They dragged the guard toward the wall. Peering up, Rambo chose a spot between the searchlight on the corner and the next searchlight midway along the parapet. The distance between the lights was at least two hundred feet. He unslung the coiled rope from his shoulder, made sure that it wasn’t tangled, and gripped it below the grappling hook tied to one end. He swung his arm and hurled the hook toward the parapet.

  The wind resisted.

  The hook lost its impetus and fell.

  Rambo picked it up and swung his arm again. In this storm, would guards be patrolling the parapet? Or would they stay in the sentry boxes that Andreyev had told him were in the middle and on each corner of the walls? Would the shriek of the wind mute the scrape of the hook against stone?

  Go with God, Rambo thought.

  When he hurled the hook once more, it caught.

  4

  Trautman raised his head from the blood-pooled floor of his spotlit cell and shuddered at the sound of heavy bootsteps marching along the corridor outside. Two sets of them, almost in unison. Their solid impacts echoed harshly. Trautman had heard them too many terrible times before not to be able to identify them, not to wince in apprehension of the agony he soon would suffer.

  But Colonel Zaysan broke the pattern. He didn’t order the guard to unlock the door, didn’t bang the door open, didn’t march inside with Sergeant Kourov.

  Instead he halted in the corridor. Staring through the small barred window, he spoke in a rasp that sounded like a file against the bars. “My superiors have contacted me. They are displeased about recent incidents in this sector. I am displeased because they are displeased. I promise you will be displeased much more than I am. My patience is at an end. Will you answer my questions?”

  Trautman groaned, “If I answer your questions, you’d just have me shot the same as you did those prisoners.”

  “If you choose not to answer my questions, you will wish you had been shot. Your pain until now has been nothing. Tonight, I promise, you will tell me. After that, I also promise, you’ll be rewarded. You’ll be given water. I will turn off the spotlights in your cell. I will send a doctor to administer sedatives for your pain. You have thirty minutes. Think. In the meantime, I will stimulate your motivation.”

  The colonel’s voice stopped rasping. His glaring face disappeared from the small barred window.

  What does he mean in the meantime, I will stimulate your motivation? Trautman wondered. Would the door now bang open and Sergeant Kourov enter, eyes gleaming?

  A door did bang open, but not Trautman’s, instead the door to the cell on his right. Trautman heard the twin set of heavy bootsteps march into that cell.

  “How old are you?” he heard Zaysan ask in English. Zaysan then asked the same question in an Afghan dialect.

  The tremulous voice of a frightened boy responded in dialect.

  “Thirteen?” Zaysan said in English, then repeated in dialect. “Such a pity.”

  Trautman didn’t understand what was going on. Why was Zaysan translating what he said? Trautman suddenly realized.

  He’s translating for my benefit! He wants me to be his audience.

  “Such a pity,” Zaysan said again in English, then in dialect. “There’s a man next door who won’t answer my questions. Because of him, I need to question you. Do you know where the rebel leader Akram Haidar is hiding?”

  The boy’s voice shook as he answered in dialect.

  “No?” Zaysan said. “Such a pity. Sergeant, put the acid on his chest.” The scream that followed was so inhuman it made Trautman crawl to the farthest corner of his cell and clamp his festering hands against his swollen ears.

  But no matter how hard he pressed he couldn’t shut out the screams.

  “If the American had only cooperated,” Zaysan said.

  5

  Rambo climbed the rope to the edge of the parapet, glanced both ways in the wind-driven sand, and eased over the edge. Continuing to scan right and left, seeing no one and nothing except the sand, he tugged the rope to let Mousa and Andreyev know he’d reached the top. One of them would begin to climb.

  Before they joined him, he had much to do. He took off his knapsack, removed a time-controlled charge, and crept to the sentry post on the corner of the fort. Through its corrugated metal wall, he heard muffled voices. He set the timer on the charge for fifteen minutes, placed it against the wall, and rushed back to his knapsack. With another charge, he crept to the metal box that enclosed the searchlight and its operator at the middle of the parapet. Again he set the timer for fifteen minutes and placed it against the wall.

  Peering down toward the fortress courtyard, he saw that despite the ferocity of the storm on the parapet, the fortress walls eased the storm’s severity below. Although dust blew across the courtyard, the result was merely a haze, not the chaos of dense flying sand above where Rambo crouched. Lights filtered through the haze, revealing the Russian equivalent of five jeeps parked beside three armored personnel carriers.

  Sure. In case superior officers decide to risk leaving the fort. So they can inspect the results of orders they’ve given.

  Two soldiers stood on duty near the vehicles. Despite the extremely late hour, seven other soldiers walked from a door on the right toward a door across from Rambo. They laughed about something. One offered a cigarette to another and had trouble igniting his lighter.

  Rambo nodded. Returning to his knapsack, he found Mousa and Andreyev waiting for him. A lingering doubt made him wonder if Andreyev could really be trusted. Did he sense I was going to kill him? Did he lunge toward the soldier to make me think I was wrong to suspect him?

  Too late for second thoughts. We’re here. What’s going to happen will happen.

  Fate.

  But he felt uneasy as he assembled his bow and several arrows, pressing the arrows into the seven slots on the quiver attachment bolted to the handle of the bow. Muscles tensing, he followed the diagram he’d memorized and led his companions toward an enclosed stairway adjacent to the sentry post on the right corner of the wall.

  Ignoring the combination of rifle and grenade launcher that he’d slung across his shoulder, he placed an arrow onto the bow. If he needed to defend himself, he didn’t dare use the rifle. Not yet, at least. Until the explosions started, he hoped not to make a sound.

  His logic was confirmed when a Soviet soldier plodded up the staircase, his head down until he saw Rambo’s boots. Raising his eyes, the soldier blinked in shock, tried to raise his rifle, and was killed by an arrow that pierced his forehead with the penetrating force of a copper-jacketed bullet.

  As the soldier toppled, Rambo lunged and grabbed him before the soldier’s rifle had a chance to clatter.

  6

  Afghanistan! Even the name of the country made Major Azov want to vomit. Although he wasn’t religious, no other word occurred to him but hellhole. The windstorm tonight confirmed his revulsion. The chaotic insanity of the storm was matched by only one thing: his commander’s insanity. Colonel Zaysan was so determined to prove his worthiness to his superiors, to redeem himself from this mistaken war, that he’d stop at no outrage.

  Rumors of the colonel’s intention had reached Major Azov only five minutes earlier. At once he’d set down the book he’d been reading and stormed into the bowels of the fort to discover if the rumors were true.

  They were. As his hurried bootsteps echoed along the corridor, passing the captured American’s door, reaching the open door of the adjacent cell, Azov gaped in disgust at the sight of the acid-bubbled skin of the screaming Afghan boy whom Colonel Zaysan was questioning.

  “Answer me!” Zaysan said in English, then in Afghan dialect, bewildering Major Azov. “Where is the rebel leader called Akram Haidar?”

  The Afghan boy kept screaming.

  “This is all the American’s fault,” Zaysan said.

  Sergeant Kourov poured more acid. The boy shrieked louder.

  Unable to restrain himself, Major Azov stormed into the cell. “What are you doing?” he demanded in Russian. “The more you torture these people, the more they resist! Reports of these atrocities spread! The rebels fight back harder! We ought to negotiate, not torture! Or leave! It doesn’t make sense to—!”

  “I will decide what makes sense, Major Azov.” The colonel turned to Sergeant Kourov. “Pour more acid.” He glanced at his watch. “Soon we’ll show the American the results of the agony he’s caused.”

  “Suppose the American really doesn’t know where the rebels are!” Azov demanded. “And even if he does, what difference will his answers make? This is only a useless sector in a useless war! What are we doing here? Protecting our homeland? No! These tortures don’t make our families safer! But they do make the enemy more defiant! This country is well-named! The land of the out-of-control!”

  “And you are out of control!” Colonel Zaysan snapped. “It’s obvious you suffer battle fatigue! You’ve been here too long!”

  “For once, I agree! But I’m not as out of control as you!”

  “You’ve gone too far!” the colonel said. “Get out! Tomorrow you will be transferred to Kabul! And after that Moscow! And after that, obscurity!”

  Azov shook with fury as Sergeant Kourov poured more acid and the boy shrieked even louder. Powerless to stop this insanity, Azov raged from the cell, taking long angry strides along the corridor.

  The screams. He needed to get away from the terrible screams.

  7

  Rambo dragged the dead soldier to the top of the stairs. Returning to the parapet and the storm’s dark confusion, he set the body into a niche between the wall and the stairs, where the corpse wouldn’t be noticed until the storm stopped. Quickly he went back down the stairs to join Mousa and Andreyev. They waited just high enough that no one standing at the bottom could see their feet.

  With a nod to one another, they cautiously started down, Rambo at the lead. But Andreyev suddenly touched Rambo’s shoulder and squeezed ahead of him.

  Rambo tensed and almost tugged him back, then stopped the impulse when he understood the Russian’s logic. Andreyev was in uniform. If a soldier saw him appear from the stairwell, there’d be no cause for alarm. Unless the soldier recognized Andreyev and knew he’d been reported missing in yesterday’s battle. In that case, the soldier would wonder how Andreyev had inexplicably returned to the fort. At best, the soldier would approach with suspicious questions. At worst, the soldier would call for assistance. Rambo could only hope that if Andreyev were seen it would be from a distance, his features obscured by the courtyard’s sandy haze.

  Andreyev emerged from the stairwell and surveyed the courtyard. His posture seemed relaxed, but muscles quivered on the back of his neck. He moved his hand behind him and gestured for Rambo and Mousa to follow.

  But what if he’s tricking us? Rambo thought. What if we come down and find ourselves in front of soldiers?

  Again he repressed his misgivings. What happened from now on continued to depend upon fate. He crept down the stairs, saw only the backs of two sentries forty feet away in front of vehicles, and darted toward the cover of a troop truck. Squirming under it, joined by Mousa, Rambo pulled a timer-controlled charge from his knapsack, set it for thirteen minutes and wedged it above the truck’s drive shaft. Mousa took several charges, crawled from beneath the truck, and snuck toward an adjacent row of armored personnel carriers. Rambo followed, staying low, constantly glancing around him, prepared to dive for cover if soldiers appeared.

  For his part, Andreyev strolled nervously along the wall to the right of the stairwell, passed several doors, and stopped in shadows beside the door that Rambo had been told led down to the cells. Mousa finished placing his charges beneath the armored personnel carriers. Rambo did the same beneath the vehicles that looked like jeeps. Because a minute had elapsed, he set the last charge for twelve minutes instead of thirteen, wanting the explosions to be as simultaneous as possible.

  As he crept back toward Andreyev, he saw a large fuel tank beside the last vehicle in the row. The target was too tempting. He changed direction and snuck toward it.