He closed the door behind him, then unlimbered the Browning hi-power from its hip holster. Bolan kept to the wall and moved toward the lighted doorway.
When he was three feet from the doorway, he heard sounds.
A man, a Libyan outfitted in servant's attire, emerged from the room at a leisurely pace. He was still munching the remnants of a sandwich.
The servant saw Bolan. His eyes and mouth widened in alarm.
Bolan stepped forward and chopped the guy hard with a downward snap of the Browning's butt. The step and the chop were one and the same movement. The blow connected at the base of the man's neck.
The Libyan fell to his knees. His eyes rolled back in his head as he pitched forward onto the floor. He did not move. His breathing was an uncertain rattle. He would be out for at least half an hour.
Bolan frisked him. The guy was unarmed. So Bolan would not kill him.
The Executioner grabbed the unconscious figure under both arms. He dragged the servant back to a walk-in closet next to the door. He laid him out on the floor of the closet, then closed the door and walked on.
It took him all of eight minutes to give the sprawling two-story residence a thorough search.
Lenny Jericho was a man who apparently lived in luxury wherever he went. His home in the desert was a living museum of exquisite tapestries, rugs and furniture in various Mediterranean and African styles.
Evidently the servant was the only one home.
There was no sign of Eve Aguilar. There was no sign of any part of the house being used as a place of detention.
Damnation.
Bolan exited the house by the same open door near the unconscious servant.
He hoped that Teckert would assume by now that Rideout had been assigned some other duty during his time below the parapet.
He kept to the shadows and eased out from the corner of the private residence to the rear wall of a one-story building that formed part of the villa's square courtyard.
Bolan's finger stayed curled around the trigger of the Browning hi-power. His senses scanned the darkness around him as he stayed close to the wall, stealthily moving toward another single lighted window.
He bent his knees slightly when he reached it, and edged an eye to the lower corner of the window. He looked in.
The room was an office.
Kennedy and Doyle stood near the office doorway. They were earnestly discussing something that Bolan could not hear. The windows had been double-glazed to facilitate the air conditioning.
Bolan watched.
Doyle snapped a curt salute at Kennedy. The subordinate left the office. When the door was closed, Kennedy turned and crossed over to the window through which Bolan was looking.
Bolan ducked down out of sight. He took care to prevent the barrel of the Galil from poking out over his shoulder.
As he crouched against the cool brick of the building and looked up, he had a good chance to study Kennedy's features.
The merc honcho stared out above him into the blackness.
It looked to Bolan as if Kennedy had plenty on his mind. The merc's too-perfect good looks were intact and unruffled. But Bolan was close enough to see that Kennedy's eyes were not as clear as before. They were heavy lidded, as if important matters were weighing on Kennedy's mind.
Close to two minutes passed before Kennedy turned from the window. Then Bolan took another chance and peered into the room.
Kennedy was locking the office door. Bolan watched him cross to an empty niche in the wall across from the window.
Then Kennedy stooped and pressed the floorboard. The wall slid open.
The head merc stepped briskly into a secret passage. The sliding panel closed shut behind him.
Now what was this?
Bolan straightened from his crouch. He tried the window. It was latched shut.
He used his elbow to tap it with just enough strength to crack the glass, not enough to shatter it. He pressed his fingertips along the crack in the glass. It gave way and fell onto the sill inside, with nothing more than a soft, dull thud.
Bolan reached in with his free hand and swiftly unlatched the window. He pushed the window up, then swung his leg up and over the window ledge, fanning the interior with his eyes and pistol.
It was not a trap.
The office was empty.
Bolan strode without hesitation toward the bare niche in the wall.
The Executioner was going after Kennedy, who would take him to Eve Aguilar.
Before it was too late.
9
Bolan pressed the floorboard.
The wall panel slid open — powered by some soundless automatic mechanism — exactly as it had for Kennedy.
Bolan's pistol was raised and ready for anything that might come out at him. He moved into the opening. He was one and a half minutes behind Kennedy. The panel slid back into place behind him.
He was enveloped in silence.
Low-watt light bulbs were evenly spaced down the angled ceiling of a narrow stairway. At the bottom, the stairway fed into a corridor that bisected the house from Bolan's left to right.
He eased down the stairs toward the shadows at its base. The air was dead and cold. It penetrated his bones. He could hear nothing.
The man he was tracking seemed to be long gone. Seemed to be.
When he reached the second-from-the-bottom stair, Bolan paused again, his pistol up. He stole a look around the corner of the stone wall.
He could see no beginning nor end to the tunnel that stretched away in either direction.
More light bulbs had been installed here, but long distances apart so that patches of stygian gloom gave the passageway an eerie, menacing reality.
Bolan slid around the corner and kept low. He started off down the tunnel to his right.
A cool but barely discernible draft brushed the hairs on his arms. It originated from far up ahead.
He held the slung Galil assault rifle in close against his body to prevent noise from the weapon bouncing against him.
The curved stone ceiling of the passage barely accommodated his 6'3" height. After several hundred yards, the tunnel made a sharp incline. Deeper still.
Then Bolan saw light, faint light, coming from the cracks of an ill-fitting door some ten yards ahead. Surely this was the source of the moving air he had noticed.
He pressed himself against the curving stone of the tunnel. He paused when he was still several feet from the door. He listened intently. There was a room of some sort beyond that wooden door, but it would be empty — Bolan heard no sounds from within. Or... it could be a trap.
He stood against the wall at the very edge of the doorframe. He extended his right foot and gave the door a slight nudge. The door was unlatched. It swung inward.
Bolan looked inside cautiously. The Browning hi-power panned the room, simultaneously with his eyes.
The floor was earthen. It was a storage room, with a door on the opposite wall. A candle emitted the light that had drawn Bolan.
Two people were in the room. Libyan civilians: an old man and a young woman. They were tied to kitchen chairs. Tied and gagged. They were alone in the room. Their eyes watched with puzzlement — and fear — as Bolan stepped toward them.
The man could have been fifty or a hundred years old. He wore a dark robe and white headcloth. The snowy white of his beard was in stark contrast to the dark of his Arabian skin.
The woman was a girl. Bolan judged her to be sixteen, if that. But she was already budding with the sensual-eyed, lush beauty that Bolan knew to be the birthright of the sisterhood of Islam.
He ungagged the girl, then the man.
The girl was fooled by the leathery brown of Bolan's skin hue, which had been acquired over an adulthood of missions to every hotspot under the sun.
She chattered at Bolan in Arabic.
Bolan stepped back. He cautioned her to lower her voice with a waved hand.
"Do you speak English?" he whispered.
"I do. Some,"
replied the girl quietly. "Who are you?"
"A friend. Tell me why you're here."
"This is our home. My father manages the inn of the village."
Bolan made his decision. He undid the ropes that bound them to the chairs.
"I'm looking for Kennedy." In a hushed voice he described the boss merc to her. "Did he come through here? Do you know where he went?"
The old man muttered something in Arabic. The only word Bolan could make out was "Kennedy."
"He is an evil man," said the girl. She rubbed the burn marks where the rope had chafed her wrists. "At first we thought he was from the villa."
"What are your names?" whispered Bolan. "Tell me what happened here. Quickly."
"I am called Fahima," she said. "This is my father, Bushir. The man you call Kennedy, he has kept us like this for two days now. He keeps us alive in case the owner of the villa should try to contact us."
"What is your employer's name?"
"We have never met him," said Fahima. "He is with an oil company. A Mr. Conrad. An American. A solicitor in Benghazi. He also owns the villa."
"His real name is Jericho," grunted Bolan under his breath. "Has he used this escape route often?"
"Once. Khaddafi's troops were in the area, searching for him." At the word Khaddafi, the old man began prattling angrily. "My family was dispossessed during the land reform," explained Fahima. "We are willing to help Mr. Conrad against a common enemy."
"You must trust me," said Bolan. "I'm getting you and your father out of this place. There's going to be killing here tonight. Do you know where Kennedy has gone?"
"He is in the building above. They closed the inn two days ago. We can hear them sometimes. I heard footsteps earlier tonight."
"Where in your inn would be a good place for a secret meeting?"
The girl thought for a moment. "One of two places. There is a dining room away from the lobby, as you approach from the corridor outside. And there is a private room on the floor above that."
"How many men does Kennedy have with him?"
"Only one, I believe. A guard on the door." She pointed at the door opposite to where Bolan had entered. It was massive, most likely of imported oak. Beyond it would be a route into the inn above.
"One last question," whispered Bolan. "Did Kennedy bring a woman with him?"
Fahima shook her head. "No woman. No one. Only the one you call Kennedy, and the man outside."
Bolan started toward the door.
"Let's go," he muttered to the man and his daughter. "Keep low. Do as I say. When you see a chance, run for the nearest cover."
Fahima studied him with soulful, unblinking eyes.
"I understand," she said. She had a surprisingly gentle voice. "You are a brave man for helping us."
The Executioner yanked the heavy door open with one hand, gripping his Browning hi-power in the other.
The Bolan Effect had arrived.
Fahima Dohmi watched the big American as he prepared to dispatch to oblivion the sentry in the corridor, who stood with his back to the doorway.
Fahima thought that she had never seen a man move with such grace and determination as the big American. He radiated animal ferocity and strength worthy of a son of the desert.
She had watched as he pulled the door recklessly open.
Now she saw the sentry spin around, reaching for a side arm.
She saw the American warrior grab the sentry around the throat with his forearm before the guard could complete his turn.
A quick snap punch to the temple with a raised pistol and the man slumped to the floor, his skull cracked. She saw blood dribble from one ear.
The big man led the way out of the room, stepping across the corpse that blocked the doorway.
Like a son of the desert, she thought again.
Bolan heard movement from around a corner in the hallway. He motioned a halt.
Fahima and Bushir froze in their tracks. It was too late for any of them to backtrack now.
Three men came around the corner. They were heavyset black men in African military uniforms.
Bolan could not identify their political origin in the instant that eyeball recognition was made on both sides.
The three Africans toted AK-47s by slung shoulder straps. The troopers had evidently been headed toward the room where the father and daughter had been held. There was purpose in their marching stride.
When they saw Bolan and the others, the three of them registered identical surprise. They fell away from each other and fought to sling their weapons around in a race for survival. The movements provoked grunts, a curse.
The pistol in Bolan's fist chugged a death cough. Hot millimeters of parabellum lead lanced through space.
The soldier on Bolan's left caught a round that smashed his head sharply backward against the wall, splashing the wall with bloody brains. The dead cock slid down the wall into a heap, the AK spilling useless alongside him.
Of the other two soldiers, the one directly before Bolan was the immediate threat. The trooper's big hands guided his rifle into a smooth underhand arc, pulling aim on Bolan.
The Browning had already spat. Twice this time. Two head shots. The soldier never completed target acquisition. He was kicked instead into Infinity in a backward halo of exploding head.
Bolan crouched and twisted, one movement, as he swung the kill piece around and at the lone remaining soldier.
This last soldier had a firm grip on his AK. He too was bringing it around with commendable speed toward Bolan.
The soldier's movement was halted by a whirling short-bladed knife that whistled through the air to Bolan's right. It embedded itself to the hilt in the soldier's throat.
The man gagged frantically, released the rifle, started to grab his ravaged throat. Blood bubbled from the mouth. The knees buckled. The corpse collapsed to the floor.
"Allah wa-akbar!" intoned old Bushir.
A ubiquitous Muslim phrase that Bolan recognized. God is great. Yeah. Bolan understood that.
Fahima's father had pulled the military knife from the equipment belt of the dead sentry who had been the first to die. Mack Bolan need not have purchased his.
Bolan flashed an appreciative smile. The old man returned it.
The Executioner led the two Libyans along the hallway toward a doorway leading outside.
The killing here had only just begun
10
The nightfighter palmed a fresh clip into the Browning. He unscrewed the low-watt bulb near the door. The hallway bisected the stone building. There had been noise tonight, from the Browning. But security at this level, deep beneath a secret meeting place, was spacious — sparse and unassuming like a secret itself.
At the opposite end, stairs led up to the main room of the structure where Bolan would find his primary targets. His concern, too, was to get Fahima and Bushir out of the killing zone.
Bolan inched the door inward a few inches. He scanned the narrow, rutted dirt street outside the doorway.
The scene was deserted, cloaked in darkness. The village of Bishabia dozed beneath the desert night.
Bolan could sense the tension of the father and daughter who stood close behind him.
He also sensed an electricity out there in the night. There was a crackle to the air. Bolan knew in his gut that others were roaming. On the kill. He did not know how many or who. But they were there.
He holstered the Browning and spun the Galil into readiness. He toed the door further open and stepped into the night like a shadow. A shadow in combat crouch.
He surveyed the scene: he saw nothing but the night.
"Move along the wall away from me," commanded Bolan over his shoulder to Fahima and her father. "When we get to the end of the building, you're on your own. Good luck."
They exited the building and did as they were told. Bolan covered them from the rear.
They almost made it.
The crunch of several pairs of footsteps came from around the corne
r of the building when Bolan's group was less than two yards from it.
Four of Jericho's free-lance terrorist troopers, black and burly and uniformed like the men Bolan had killed inside, came into sight at a leisurely clip.
Everyone saw everybody else at the same instant.
Bushir and his daughter knew they would only be in Bolan's way. Father and daughter went low, wisely falling away from the hellground that would be the airspace above. Bushir moved with an agility surprising for a man his age.
Bolan was diving into a prone firing position. The rifle was right for night killing like this.
He pumped off two rounds, was rewarded with the sight of one soldier flopping back, open armed, as if kicked by a mule.
The Galil's report echoed like a thundercrack in the tight confines of the village street.
The soldiers were scattering. They appeared untrained. But they were pulling their weapons around fast enough.
Bolan sighted in on one guy dodging to the side. The Galil pumped two more lead destroyers that flipped the man into a forward somersault, minus his face.
The two survivors had held flank positions in their original formation. Both men opened fire with their rifles. But they could not see Bolan. They were firing at where they thought he was.
Saffron flashes of gunfire knifed the darkness.
Bolan was rolling in a sideways fling, wide and wild to his left. He heard bullets chunking into the dirt where he had been moments before.
He came out of the roll, sighted at the man to his left and squeezed the trigger. The guy jackknifed with an ugly grunt and pitched to the ground. Bolan had heard clearly the thwack-suck as the heavy round splattered through living matter. That soldier was dead.
The remaining man of the group tossed a fast trio of parting shots and started to turn.
Bolan heard a gasping noise to his right. He concentrated immediately on taking out the soldier who was two paces from gaining cover at the corner of the building.
The assault rifle thumped once, twice more. The target was twisted around and slammed into the corner of the building he had been trying to hide behind. His corpse slumped slowly to the ground. Bolan had heard those hits, too. The guy was dead.
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