Sudden Death

by Don Pendleton

  Riordan had met up with two of his advisers on the sidewalk. There was still five minutes before the session was due to open. Together they walked toward the pressmen, photographers, guides and onlookers gathered on the steps. Riordan was sweating; he mopped his brow and dabbed at his nape with a green handkerchief as he walked.

  The Hispanic sidled up to someone in the crowd — he, too, looked Hispanic — and handed him something small in a plastic bag. The onlooker took the bag in his other hand and put it in his pocket.

  Riordan and his companions began to climb the steps. Cameras clicked, electronic flashes winked in the sun, and a pressman called out a question that the politician brushed aside.

  The two Hispanics were higher up now, as if seeking a clearer view of the celebrities. The man who had been handed the bag pointed out Riordan, holding his arm high and straight in front of him.

  Riordan was still mopping his brow. He raised his other hand and flicked irritably at his nape, as if to chase away a fly that was bothering him.

  The two Hispanics moved away from the crowd.

  Sean Riordan suddenly stumbled. His mouth opened, and he uttered a loud gasp. His legs appeared to be boneless, and he crumpled to the steps, rolled over and down and finally lay on his face with outflung arms.

  The advisers knelt beside him in consternation. The cameramen moved in, and someone ran for a doctor. By the time he arrived Riordan was dead.

  A heart attack, they said; a heavy man with high blood pressure, the fatigue of a long flight, a social program that had been… well, too taxing. Plus the New York climate of course and the strain of an important speech to be made.

  It wasn't until the autopsy that they found the tiny feathered blowpipe dart, with its steel tip smothered in deadly curare, hidden in the curly hair on the nape of Riordan's neck.

  4

  One hour before dawn, Bolan was lowered from a U.S. Navy helicopter onto the flat roof of one of Brognola's safehouses in an area of Algiers projecting out into the ocean on the first of the small islands that encircled the harbor.

  Unusually for that part of North Africa, it was raining. By the time the chopper pilot had finished apologizing to the Oran Area Controller for an "inadvertent" intrusion into the airspace of his sector, the Executioner's skintight blacksuit was sodden and his combat boots squelched at every step as he flitted like a ghost through the narrow cobbled streets behind the old Arab seaport.

  Beyond the new yacht basin, street lamps garlanding the curving waterfront esplanade cast wavering reflections on the wet pavement. Rain bounced knee-high off the deserted streets and ran in streams down the steep lanes and stone staircases that linked the modern city with the age-old houses of the Casbah.

  That was where Bolan was headed. A somber shadow in the downpour, he hurried through colonnades below the high white buildings fronting the harbor, skirted the bright lights of the Place Bugeaud and began the long uphill trek. His own silenced Beretta was holstered beneath his left arm. Big Thunder, his stainless-steel .44 AutoMag, was secreted, together with lightweight Arab robes, in a neoprene pouch clipped to his belt. Both weapons had been supplied by Hal Brognola at the Executioner's request.

  Water gushed and dripped and gurgled on every side as he climbed past stepped alleys and cobblestone squares to reach the huge bazaar that flanked a battlemented mosque on the heights above the city.

  The mosque, crowned by three domes and five minarets, was separated from the market by a covered passageway supported on Moorish arches. Sheltered by these, Bolan stripped off his wet clothes, rolled up the combat suit and stuffed it in the pouch, then dressed himself in the Arab robes. His face was already darkened, and a small black mustache adorned his upper lip.

  The robes were special. The burnoose was bound in black and red; the white djellaba was covered back and front by an embroidered blue apron in the manner of a medieval tabard. Together they distinguished a tribe of Berber nomads whose men towered above the majority of Arabs. Dressed this way, Bolan hoped his own six-foot-plus height would escape attention among the swarms of different tribesmen who would soon be crowding the bazaar.

  Just after dawn the rain stopped, the low clouds scudded away to the northwest, and the sun burned from a clear blue sky.

  By six-thirty a sprawl of bivouacs, umbrellas and rattan shelters crammed the open space from wall to wall as merchants arrived and began to set out a profusion of fruit, vegetables, material, garments, brassware and preserved meats. Fifteen minutes later the place was vibrant with color, tiger-striped with dense shadow in the alleyways between the stalls as buyers and sellers mingled in a babel of a hundred different dialects, bargaining, gossiping and joking among the shouts of stallholders crying their wares.

  Around the veiled women shopping for food, Bolan saw Algerians and Moroccans in modern suits, bejeaned students from the Gulf states, fellahin dressed in shift and fez, white-gowned Bedouin from the desert and Tuareg from the High Atlas with fierce, proud eyes beneath their black headdresses.

  Tall Berbers too, wearing robes like his own, moved below the awnings. Once he saw these, the Executioner moved warily out from under the arches and began threading his way through the crowd. Big Thunder and the Beretta were leathered snugly beneath the djellaba, and the pouch with the blacksuit was strapped to the inside of one thigh.

  The contact was on the far side of the bazaar, near a row of wooden vats that were filled with dyes used to color the newly cured hides that were made into belts, purses and slippers for the tourist trade.

  The vats were there all right. He could smell the rancid odor of the skins over the syrupy aromas drifting from a kiosk displaying figs, dates and pastries decorated with honey and nuts. Two men in tarbooshes and striped shifts were stirring the dyes. At a nearby booth a haggard European in a white suit was discussing the merits of a hand-tooled twin-barrel sporting rifle with an Arab gunsmith. It was a vintage Holland & Holland, Bolan's professional eye noted as he passed. Modified to take a Balvar sight. Very nice. He approached the tanners.

  Mutual identification was to be by the well-tried and often-used method of matching two halves of a torn ten-dollar bill. Bolan reached for a pocket on the inside of the robe and took out a slim billfold. He was about to remove the torn half when he was pushed violently in the small of the back.

  He stumbled, tripping over a kneeling figure that had suddenly materialized at his feet, and fell headlong. He felt the practiced fingers snatch the billfold from his grasp before he hit the ground.

  Bolan was on his feet again in an instant. But the thieves — two kids about twelve years old — were already twenty yards away, dodging the knots of buyers surrounding the stalls. One of them was clutching the billfold openly in his hand.

  Bolan was furious at himself for being mugged as easily as any gawking tourist; worse, without the torn ten-spot his rendezvous was scratched and the whole Algiers trip screwed up. He had to get that billfold back.

  He sprinted after the young delinquents.

  The boys scampered along the cloister beside the mosque. Bolan raced after them, the robe hitched up, scattering merchants and buyers right and left as his powerful figure forged through the crowd.

  At the far end of the arched passageway, the thieves ran out into the open air — a blazing white courtyard barred with shadow — and then dashed down a narrow lane between windowless stucco walls. The alley twisted, ran through a gatehouse pierced by a pointed arch and ended in a steep flight of steps curling upward between the mud-walled Arab dwellings. Still breathing effortlessly, the Executioner pounded up in pursuit.

  Beyond the stairs there was another courtyard. There were people in this one: prostitutes with kohl-fringed eyes and red mouths sitting by an open doorway; men in striped shifts, others in robes. Bolan heard guttural murmurings and Arabic expletives as he clattered past. Once again hands plucked at his garments and an outthrust foot almost tripped him again. Then he was through and gaining on the youths along another lane.

>   But now he could hear the sound of running footsteps behind him as well.

  The alleyway turned a corner and divided. The two boys separated, each taking one branch. Bolan followed the one with his billfold. He was less than ten yards behind, his feet striking echoes from the pavement. The kid plunged through an open gateway with the Executioner at his heels. Bolan had a confused impression of flagstones, a small fountain and sun-browned foliage behind iron railings. Then he was in semidarkness, chasing the boy down a corridor inside a tumbledown house.

  The end of the corridor was a black rectangle — an open doorway with a lightless room beyond. The young thief turned and stopped, holding up the billfold with an impudent grin.

  Bolan snatched it back… and as he did so the kid leaped nimbly aside. At the same time Bolan felt himself pushed again.

  He went staggering forward through the doorway, tripped down a short flight of stone steps, barely saved himself from falling, and was finally brought up against a wall on the far side of the room.

  Behind him, the door slammed shut.

  Bolan opened his mouth to shout. But before he could voice his rage, there was a scraping noise in the dark and then the abrupt flare of a match. A moment later the serene light of an oil lamp widened and spread over the room.

  It was a small room, hung with rugs. He saw two divans, cushions, the obligatory low table, a shuttered window.

  Behind the table stood a middle-aged man with a red face and thin dark hair brushed over a balding scalp. He was dressed in a bush jacket and short khaki pants.

  The Australian gold smuggler — the guy Bolan had come to Algiers to see!

  "What-ho, sport! So glad you managed to make it after all."

  "What the hell is this, Wally?" Bolan demanded, still angry.

  "Sorry about the unconventional intro, mate." The smuggler was unabashed. He shook out the smoking match in his hand and dropped it into an ashtray on the table. "Fact is, I couldn't think of any other way to get you here."

  "But it was arranged. The contact in the bazaar…"

  "Yeah, I know. But my mates working the dye vats were caught by local intelligence a few days ago. The bastards there today work for the secret police. If you'd presented your half of the ten-dollar bill, they'd have had you inside for what they call interrogation. You know, a spot of putting the boot in and then the electrified balls. That's why I sent Hassan to block you before it was too late."

  "Hassan?"

  "Kid who led you here. Smart little nipper. That was a bright idea, pinching the wallet. Gave you an excuse to follow him without anyone suspecting it was a bloody guided tour. Hassan and his mate have done a lot for me." He clapped his hands. "They can do a bit more now and make us some coffee."

  The door opened, and the boy appeared, grinning cheekily at the Executioner. Bolan flipped open the billfold and gave him a whole ten-spot. When the coffee had been served, the Australian poured the fragrant liquid from the long-handled brass pan into frail cups supported in filigree metal cradles and asked, "All right, squire, what can I do for you this time?"

  "There are things I need to know," Bolan said.

  Wally Boardman chuckled. Passing wafers and nuggets and sometimes whole ingots of gold from continent to continent, from country to country, under the eyes of the smartest customs investigators on earth, had left him with an unrivaled knowledge of the underworld and its ways. "Isn't there always?" he said. "Okay, shoot."

  "This latest wave of killings," Bolan said. "The top-brass assassinations. These are not just the usual dime-a-dozen terrorist excesses. There's an organization behind them, a guiding hand — and this time, they tell me, the hand doesn't belong to Ivan."

  Boardman frowned. "There are rumors," he said slowly. "What exactly did you…?"

  "I want to know whose hand the glove fits," Bolan said.

  The smuggler drew in a long breath between his teeth. Most of those were gold, too. He shook his head. "That ain't a question a wise man asks," he said.

  "I want to know."

  "You should try someplace else then. I can't tell you. I don't know meself."

  "You must have heard rumors. You just said so. All I want is a lead. It won't be traceable back to you."

  "It's not that, Mack. This isn't a question of smoking out a nest of expatriate Armenians or a PLO splinter group. This is big-time stuff, sport. And I mean big."

  "So it's big. So give me a big lead, Wally."

  "This is dangerous material," Boardman said seriously. "Forget it. That's the best lead I can give you. Drop the whole idea, whatever it is, and leave things be."

  Bolan tried another tack. "There's a professional killer who calls himself Graziano. He planted that bomb that brought down the plane at Rome, and he almost scored another at Tel Aviv a couple of days ago. We stopped that one, but afterward I lost contact. I believe the guy's part of a band of hired guns used by the organization. Do you have any idea where I might be able to pick up his trail again?"

  Boardman sighed. "Don't say I didn't warn you," he replied. "But this character's very small beer, or so I've heard. There's another one, a loner they call the Marksman. They use him for individual hits, like those politicos in Monte. There are others on the payroll, too. But it seems the one called Baraka is the guy they're training for the big one, the really big one that'll shake the world."

  "Baraka?"

  "It's a code name, of course. An Arab word meaning… well, something like a blend of charisma, star quality and panache."

  "I get the picture. And this… Baraka is being trained…?"

  "I'd want a promise of your help if I was to take it any farther," Boardman said.

  "Just ask."

  "I've got to get out of here, see. I told you that the local fuzz nabbed my mates. They know I'm someplace here in the old town, but they don't know exactly where. So right now I can't move. I can't even send out for a bloody drink. Dead stop on the alcoholic beverages. Religion forbids the locals to touch a drop."

  "It's a deal," Bolan said. "You help me, and I'll get you out of here."

  The lines of anxiety tightening the flesh around the Australian's mouth slackened a little. "Good man," he said. "You were asking about this Graziano. Small-timer, like I said. But Paris, France, is the place if you want to catch up with him again. Belleville, La Villette — he's always around one or the other, between hits. Can't tell you about the Marksman. He moves about. Very thin guy with one of those lived-in faces."

  "You were telling me about the one they call Baraka," Bolan prompted.

  "Yeah. Well, I only know what I heard, of course."

  "You said he was being trained for a big one."

  "Not so much trained, sport — they say he's some kind of an expert anyway — but groomed, rather. Briefed and rehearsed."

  "What is the big one? Who or what is the target?"

  "Search me. I'm only repeating hints and gossip. But big enough to make even the pros scared. Tell you who might be able to help, though." Boardman picked up the filigree cradle and sipped from the cup. "You'd have to be crafty, but if you could get around Friedekinde…"

  "Friedekinde?"

  "You know — the old triple-F. After all, it was from their work, their labo…"

  The sentence was never completed.

  A storm of glass splinters exploded into the room as the shutter over the window was kicked violently in. At the same time there was an appalling clamor of shots from outside — the deadly, deafening rattle of a machine pistol punctuated by two single, deeper reports.

  The cup and its cradle disintegrated in Boardman's hand. Coffee splashed the white wall, to be blotted out instantly by a mist of blood and brain tissue as the smuggler's body jerked obscenely under the impact of a hail of slugs.

  Slammed back against the wall, the carcass slid to the cushions, leaving a smear of crimson on the pale partition.

  At the first sound of smashing glass, Big Thunder was out and tracking. Bolan had whipped the .44 AutoMag from
beneath his robes. But as he whirled toward the window, there were shouts in the passageway outside. He heard the shrill cries of the boy, Hassan, over the stamp of feet on the flagstones.

  The door burst open, and Bolan saw Hassan backing into the room and leaping down the short flight of steps with a huge six-chambered .455 Webley service revolver held in his two hands.

  The big handgun roared once, twice, a third time.

  In the corridor someone screamed. Ears ringing with the concussions, Bolan had overturned the marble-topped table onto its side and dropped behind it. "Here, kid! Quick! Down!" he shouted urgently.

  But before the boy could turn or fire a fourth time, an Uzi submachine gun opened fire in a single, long, lethal burst from outside the door. Bolan could hear the 9 mm parabellums smacking into Hassan's frail young body as he heaved frantically at the table to move it into a position from which he could command the passageway.

  The boy was no more than a bundle of bloodstained rags on the cushions beside his master. Choking with fury, the Executioner raised himself from behind the table long enough to let loose three rounds from the AutoMag.

  There were four men in the corridor. One was sprawled on the ground nursing a shattered shoulder. Two more held some kind of automatic weapon. Bolan took out the hardman with the Uzi. Big Thunder's boattails smashed into his chest, the impact drilling him back. The automatics came up to spit flame as Bolan dropped back behind the tabletop. The marble shivered, cracked and split as the slugs flattened against it, but none came through.

  Okay, the warrior thought, seething. Small-bore stuff — 5.62 mm perhaps — or low muzzle velocity, or both. He'd risk a shot around the end of the table instead of over the top. But first he'd fire one blind and hope to scare them momentarily with a ricochet.

  He could see the top half of the doorway above the edge of the marble. He raised his arm and squeezed the trigger. Big Thunder belched fire. Plaster dust blossomed from the vaulted ceiling of the corridor, and someone yelled.

  Before the echoes of the answering volley had died away, Bolan was at the table end with a wide-angle view on one of the gunners. Once more the blast of the AutoMag rocked the room. The guy dropped his automatic and pitched forward, both hands clutching at the blood pumping from the hole in his thigh.