To the true victims of war — the children.

Incoming! One moment Mack Bolan was quietly leading a column of gaunt-faced, turbaned men across the folds and creases of rock-strewn, sloping terrain under a star-filled, moonless night sky. Then came the piercing whistle of a shrieking missile, rocketing in at them from the gloom. The Executioner and the unit of Afghan freedom fighters responded automatically in the heartbeat before the hit, and in that instant Bolan could discern the first sounds of approaching choppers thundering in from the periphery.

Soviet Mi-24 Hind gunships! They would be armed with missiles and rockets. The explosion of the impacting missile thunderclapped with deafening intensity, and the force was enough to lift Bolan off his feet, then hurl him to the ground. Abrupt shrieks of the dying punctuated the roar amid the fiery heat of the blast, and flying shrapnel splattered victims. For a moment red droplets rained over everything as the explosion rumbled away. Then the Soviet gunships zoomed in from the northeast. Bolan landed in a smooth, loose-limbed roll to crouch in the darkness near a granite boulder, tracking his M-16 into firing position.

He heard others scrambling for cover and harsh shouts in Pashto, silenced by the sharper, commanding tones of Alja Malikyar. Bolan knew too little of the language to make out the words. The surviving Afghan guerrilla fighters bolted in every direction as the Hind choppers sailed in low and fast, machine-gun pods winking, spewing rapid-fire ricochets from rock and geysering the earth. Bolan heard projectiles pop open living flesh from nearby and saw dead bodies toppling to the ground.

The attack gunships passed overhead, arcing out into the night sky for more strafing runs at the small group of men. Alja Malikyar's surviving mujahedeen sought whatever cover they could amid the crinkled folds of barren rock and sparse wild apricot trees growing nearby.