The runway at Kabul International Airport was riddled with potholes, and the cabin shook violently as the Boeing airliner landed.
Yang Ming walked out of the terminal with a backpack slung over his shoulders, straight into forty-degree heat and a dry blast of air laced with gun smoke and cheap diesel.
There was none of Dubai's decadent extravagance here. Bullet-riddled ruins lined the streets, while heavily armed local soldiers and police, along with the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in armored vehicles, manned checkpoints at the intersections.
Yang Ming did not head for the safe zones set up for international journalists and NGOs. Instead, he hired a battered motorized tricycle and plunged straight into Kabul's most chaotic underground black market.
His first priority was finding an off-road vehicle that could handle long stretches of desert and rocky wasteland.
Several Toyota Hilux pickups, still in fairly good condition, were parked outside a repair shop without even a sign. In war zones, these rugged, hard-wearing vehicles were known as "Middle Eastern war chariots."
The shop owner was a bearded man with a brutish face, wearing a vest stained with engine oil.
He looked Yang Ming up and down, his gaze lingering on the Asian man's spotless trench coat and gold-rimmed glasses. Greed flickered in his eyes.
"Rent a car? Ten thousand dollars a day. Twenty thousand deposit."
The bearded man coughed, spat out a thick gob of bloody phlegm, and named his price in broken English. His thick right hand rested, seemingly casually, on the old Tokarev pistol at his waist.
In a place without the restraints of law, fleecing a mark down to his last scrap was business as usual.
Yang Ming watched him in silence.
"You clearly have liver problems. Coughing up blood is a typical sign of chronic complications. I suggest you cut back on the cheap liquor." Yang Ming's tone was flat, but his words left the bearded man stunned.
"What the fuck are you talking about? Pay up, or leave your bag and get lost!" The bearded man drew his pistol and thrust the muzzle toward Yang Ming's chest.
Before the muzzle could touch the fabric of his coat, Yang Ming moved.
His left hand clenched into a fist and struck swiftly, hitting the inside of the man's gun wrist. Half the man's body went numb, and the pistol slipped from his hand.
Before he could cry out in pain, Yang Ming already had a scalpel in his right hand. The blade slid down along the man's head and came to a steady halt at his neck.
The cold touch of metal made every hair on the bearded man's body stand on end.
"The body's most important arteries and veins are right here." Yang Ming's voice remained utterly level, as though he were lecturing interns in a university dissection room.
"I only need to cut three millimeters deep. Arterial pressure will spray your blood onto the wall two meters away. You'll have about two minutes to receive emergency treatment."
Yang Ming lowered his wrist slightly. The blade pressed into the skin, drawing a tiny bead of blood.
"But in a city with traffic as congested and difficult as Kabul's, an ambulance would take at least half an hour to get here. You'll remain conscious as you feel the blood drain from your body."
The bearded man's eyes bulged almost out of their sockets. His Adam's apple bobbed frantically, yet he did not dare swallow too hard.
A strong stench of urine spread from the crotch of his work trousers, dripping down his trouser legs onto the oil-stained concrete.
Physical threats were always more effective than words.
Yang Ming frowned in disgust, stepped back half a pace, and put away the scalpel. He took a set of car keys from a rusty nail nearby.
"I'm requisitioning the truck. Consider that puddle of piss the car-washing fee you've paid yourself."
Yang Ming opened the door of a black Toyota pickup, climbed into the driver's seat, started it, and shifted into gear. The engine gave a throaty roar.
The pickup's tires cut two deep tracks through the sandy road as it sped away, leaving the bearded man deathly pale and crumpled on the ground.
Once he left Kabul's urban area, signs of habitation quickly dwindled.
Ahead lay the endless foothills of the Hindu Kush Mountains. Yellow sand and loose rock formed the dominant colors of this sea of death.
Yang Ming held the steering wheel with one hand. The dark silver ring at the base of his left index finger warmed slightly. A fully loaded MAC-10 submachine gun appeared out of thin air on the passenger seat, followed by two military fragmentation grenades and several spare magazines.
The military had long since disclosed the location where Stark had been attacked, but the Ten Rings' hideout was undoubtedly in an extremely well-concealed mountain cave.
Searching blindly would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Yang Ming needed to find one of the terrorists' patrols and follow the trail back.
He pressed down on the accelerator, and the pickup raced between the scorching dunes.
At the same time, deep in the mountains a hundred kilometers away.
Inside the underground cave controlled by the Ten Rings, the air was suffocatingly hot and stuffy. The ventilation system was crude, and the furnace's heat mingled with the acrid smell of smelting metal.
Tony Stark wore an undershirt so filthy its original color was impossible to tell. His face was smeared with soot and grease.
A blue glow shone from his chest. The Miniature Arc Reactor kept the electromagnet running, preventing shrapnel from entering his heart.
He gripped a heavy hammer, pounding a red-hot armor plate on the anvil.
The hammering was deafening.
Dr. Yinsen stood a short distance away, pretending to sort discarded cables while keeping his eyes fixed on the surveillance camera slowly turning in the corner.
"The camera's turned away. We have a ninety-second blind spot," Yinsen said quickly, his voice low.
Tony immediately dropped the hammer, picked up the shaped hydraulic leg armor with a pair of tongs, and hurriedly slipped it into a well-hidden compartment beneath the workbench.
Then he pulled over a blueprint covered in specifications for the Jericho Missile's casing, spread it across the table, and pretended to study it.
The leader of the Ten Rings had ordered them to build a Jericho Missile, but the former arms-industry titan was using a pile of scrap metal to handcraft a suit of heavy personal armor capable of tearing this cave apart-the Mark I.
One project in plain sight, another in secret.
Heavy footsteps sounded outside the iron door. Two terrorists carrying AK-47s passed the inspection window and glanced inside. Seeing Tony working on blueprints, they exchanged a few words in Arabic, then turned and left.
The footsteps receded.
Tony let out a long, weary breath. He leaned against the cold rock wall and reached up to touch the reactor in his chest.
His gaze passed over the workbench. The mountain of weapons crates piled in the corner struck a raw nerve. Every crate bore the logo that had once filled him with pride-"STARK INDUSTRIES."
Missiles, land mines, assault rifles.
These advanced weapons, which should have protected national security, had instead become tools for these thugs to massacre civilians and tighten their grip on the region.
"Yinsen." Tony's voice was as hoarse as if he had swallowed sandpaper. "You said your family lived in the village of Gulmira."
Yinsen stopped smelting palladium. He adjusted his glasses, their lenses covered in cracks, and his eyes dimmed.
"Yes. A small village." Yinsen's voice was quiet, but its sorrow was impossible to hide.
"The Ten Rings attacked it with weapons made by your company. My wife, my daughter... they're all gone."
Only the crackle of the furnace remained in the cave.
Tony closed his eyes. For decades, he had been nothing more than a businessman, a playboy, and a brilliant inventor.
He had enjoyed the enormous wealth and limelight that arms sales brought him, yet had never truly confronted the torn flesh and spilled blood those weapons left behind once the trigger was pulled.
Not until a bomb of his own making tore through his chest. Not until he saw with his own eyes that the man who had saved his life had lost his entire family to his products.
The cleansing of a soul often came with excruciating pain.
Tony opened his eyes. The flippancy and arrogance that had once filled them were gone, leaving only absolute coldness and resolve.
"Once we get out of here." Tony picked up a wrench from the table and tightened a pneumatic valve with force. The metal grated with a piercing screech.
"The first thing I'll do is hold a press conference. I'm shutting down Stark Industries' weapons manufacturing division for good."
Yinsen looked at him, startled by how reckless the decision was. Shutting down the weapons division meant stripping Stark Industries of its biggest source of profit. Wall Street's investors would eat Tony alive.
"Are you sure? Your board will kill you," Yinsen warned.
"Let them try." Tony snapped a miniature servomotor into a recess in the armor, his tone leaving no room for argument.
"I made these killing tools, so it's my responsibility to take them back. I don't want to spend the rest of my life seeing nothing but the people I indirectly killed every time I close my eyes."
He looked toward the hidden compartment beneath the workbench. The Mark I was already eighty percent complete.
"We need to move faster, Yinsen. Those idiots are running out of patience. Three days at most, and they'll realize we aren't building a missile at all."
Tony picked up the hammer again, and the sound of forging once more echoed through the cave.
Every blow seemed to toll the death knell for the sins of his past.