He checked the servopneumatic and radar altimeters, scanned the fuel gauges, killing time. The moonlit desert sweeping past his undercarriage called up memories of moonscapes, astronauts with golf clubs. What was the message they had left behind? We came in peace, for all mankind. Grimaldi might have said the same, without excessively distorting truth. The problem was that sometimes, lasting peace could only come about through war.
Negotiation was a great idea, he thought — for politicians, diplomats, committee chairmen. When it came to dealing with fanatic terrorists, however, logic took a holiday, and words had no more impact than they would upon a rabid animal. Swift, decisive action was required, and personal survival was the top priority.
The Phantoms were prepared for swift, decisive action. Each was fitted with a 20 mm cannon in the nose, its cyclic rate of automatic fire fine-tuned to approximately 6,000 rounds per minute. Deadly, it was small potatoes in comparison to the destructive payload the Phantoms carried underneath their wings. This time around, each aircraft carried two Sidewinder missiles, two Sparrows, and four of the big Phoenix blockbusters. They were equipped to demolish their target, with hellfire to spare.
The Israelis were good at search-and-destroy missions, the long years of terrorist warfare conditioning pilots to follow their orders and never look back. If an enemy hit the Israelis, Israelis hit back, and if paybacks appeared to go overboard once in a while, they were speaking a language their enemies understood only too well. If the terrorists plucked out an eye, the Israelis would take the whole head, bump the ante, defying the hostiles to put up or fold.
It was war to the knife, and the knife to the hilt, with a nation besieged on ail sides. It had lasted four decades, with no respite in sight, and occasional cease-fires had not made a damned bit of difference. Grimaldi could feel for them. But this time the war had turned personal; a friend's life was at stake right along with the rest of it.
Scowling, the pilot put thoughts of Bolan behind him. Duty remained, as it always did, guiding him toward the next confrontation with death.
At the moment, his duty was calling him in to ground zero, with seven minutes to spare.
* * *
Coming out of his shoulder roll, Bolan was braced to attack Amal, ignoring the odds. But the gunner was down, bloody tracks on his chest testifying that Kasm had got to him first. Bolan glanced at his ally, watched slow-leaking crimson discolor one sleeve of his tunic.
"How bad are you hit?"
"Just a scratch."
"I'll buy that."
Bolan scooped up the Uzi and wrestled the cartridge belt free of the Arab's lifeless body. He took a moment to buckle it on, double-checking the stuttergun's load, then followed Kasm to the staircase.
"The stables?"
"Beats walking."
Kasm took the steps two at a time, Bolan hard on his heels. They were halfway to ground level when two figures appeared at the head of the stairs, guns in hand, blotting out the dim light from above. Bolan sidestepped and flattened himself against the wall, his finger about to depress the Uzi's trigger.
"Don't shoot! Hold your fire!"
The voice belonged to a woman, familiar despite the distortion of strain. He relaxed slightly, reaching out to rest a hand on the Syrian's tense shoulder.
"It's all right, Hafez. They're friendlies."
Kasm looked confused, but he eased off the trigger, reluctantly following Bolan to meet their new comrades in arms. Bolan half smiled at Sarah and rested a quizzical glance on the other woman.
"This is Mari," she told him. "A friend."
"Fair enough. Any others?"
"No more."
"We've got no time to spare, and we're trying the stables," he told her. "Let's move out."
By his rough calculations, the stables lay nearly a half mile away. Bolan was fully aware that Grimaldi might bring down the roof on their heads at any moment, their margin of safety exhausted. There might be a chance, if they got to the stables in time…
Voices carried to them as they rounded a corner, giving no time for a retreat. Time spent hiding was time they would never regain, and each second was crucial now that they were down to the wire.
Bolan tried for a head count and gave up at seven, eyes locked on the weapons that swiveled to greet him. No time for a warning, as instinct took over, the warrior responding on cue to a threat from the enemy. He was aware of Kasm fading back in a crouch, his Kalashnikov spitting out short, measured bursts. The hostiles returning fire now, muzzle-flashes winking like fireflies as Bolan and the women cut loose with their weapons.
If they made it no further, at least they would go down fighting. The missiles would strike any time now, and Bolan was ready. If this was his time and his place, he would take it, and let the chips fall where they may.
* * *
Tahir Arrani scanned the corpses, searching for the American's companion, finding only loyal Ismailis, the dark blood pooled beneath them bonding them in a kind of grim mosaic. A collage of death.
Somehow, the son of jackals had surprised them, caught them unawares. It was the only explanation, and he grasped it eagerly. One man could not defeat four gunners under normal circumstances. There was little comfort in the thought, but it was better than admitting that his troops were negligent, incapable of running down a single man when the odds were on their side.
Where would he go? It stood to reason that the man would be searching for an exit from the castle, but his track, so far, had led them in the wrong direction, toward the center of the mountain. It was possible that he was merely lost, disoriented by the tunnels, but Arrani did not think so. It would be too pat, an explanation made to order to allay his fears, and innate pessimism kept him from accepting such a tailor-made solution.
The intruder knew where he was going, and that certain knowledge chilled Arrani, made his blood run cold. The little ferret would attempt to free his comrade from the dungeon, might be with him even now, the slaughter in the tunnels serving as a grand diversion to draw off Arrani's troops.
It was a decent plan, all things considered, but it was not foolproof, and Arrani had been wise enough to cover all his bets. Amal would greet the worthless peasant when he arrived to save his friend, and both of them would scream their lives away before Arrani finished with them. They had much to answer for, not least of all the lives of the loyal Assassins stretched out on the floor around his feet.
The infidels would die by inches, pleading for oblivion's release, and he would grant them no mercy. The secrets they cherished would be his; their wildest hopes and dreams would be laid out before him, open to inspection, and he would dissect them, piece by piece, until the jackals realized that there was no hope left, no sanctuary in a universe of pain. He would destroy them utterly. And it would be a pleasure.
Sudden gunfire erupted at his back, from the direction of the dungeons, and he hoped Amal would leave the infidels alive. It would be disappointing if he found them dead when he arrived, and yet, sometimes these things could not be helped. Death was inevitable when the unbelievers set themselves against the will of Allah.
An instrument of Allah's mighty will, Tahir Arrani hoped he might be able to participate in the elimination of the infidels. If not, he would content himself with laying plans for punitive attacks on the Israelis, who had organized this whole fiasco from the outset.
More reports of gunfire, and Arrani thought the point of origin seemed slightly different. How was it possible? How could the little ferret trick Amal and flee the trap they had laid to snare him?
Instantly, as if in answer to his silent question, automatic-weapon fire was heard from two distinct and separate points. Arrani stiffened. Whatever might be happening, the Syrian they sought could not engage Arrani's hunters at two places simultaneously. Somehow, though it seemed impossible, he had enlisted aid.
But how? And who? There were no other strangers in the Eagle's Nest, no infidels he could recruit to do his bidding. It could not happen, but Arran
i's ears did not deceive him: small-arms fire from the direction of the cellar stairs; explosive sounds of combat farther off, but clearly emanating from a tunnel to his right. He had at least two enemies inside the fortress, and he would have to find them both, destroy them before they could inflict more damage on the chosen warriors of jihad.
It was his duty, and he must not fail.
With sudden panic welling in his breast, Arrani barked commands that split his force of riflemen, sent some of them toward the sounds of angry gunfire. The remaining troops would accompany him to the dungeon.
With the bloodsong pounding in his ears, Tahir Arrani hastened off.
20
Abdel al-Sabbah was worried. It was an uncomfortable, unaccustomed feeling, and the lord of Alamut was angered by the weakness he perceived within himself. Sheikh al-Jebal, the Old Man of the Mountain, should be in command of every situation, and the fact that he was not had shaken him.
Two strangers, enemies, had wormed their way into his confidence. When he had tried to rectify the situation, one of the men had slipped past his Assassins, vanished into the bowels of the castle. Somehow that single enemy had armed himself, and from reports, he had been raising havoc with the troops.
Humiliation, heaped upon dishonor, seemed to weigh down the Old Man and it was only with a conscious effort that he managed to sit upright on his throne. Aside from breaching the defenses of the Eagle's Nest, his enemies had brought discredit on the proud Ismaili order. First, the infidel who posed as Bryan Harrigan had shown his prowess over twelve trainees, demoralizing all concerned and forcing the sheikh to execute a crop of new Assassins in an effort to save face. No sooner had the tall man's masquerade been revealed, than his companion disappeared and set about annihilating soldiers on his own. Eight men were dead, and almost by the moment there were fresh reports of gunfire here and there throughout the tunnels, seemingly defying any single man's ability to move so far, so quickly.
The possibility of mutiny had crossed the sheikh's mind, but he dismissed it out of hand. His men were trained, indoctrinated in the faith, and each had tasted paradise, renewing personal devotion to their leader. To jihad. If anyone had planned to overthrow him, others would have given up the traitor, vying for the honor of delivering his head to the master.
So Sheikh al-Jebal believed. He gave no thought to female enemies, because a woman's place was in the harem, or the garden of delights, and none would have the courage or resourcefulness, the sheer audacity, to rise against him. Better to believe that his defenses had been penetrated by an outside force, perhaps the SAS, Mossad or CIA. It was a notion he could live with, something that would not shatter his sense of social equilibrium.
He should be hearing from Arrani soon. His second-in-command had been dispatched to gather information from the impostor, but had been interrupted at his task by gunfire in the tunnels, the discovery of slain disciples. With an army at his beck and call, Arrani would eliminate the threat before it went too far… but Abdel al-Sabbah was troubled nonetheless.
He did not wish to leave the Eagle's Nest, but it was painfully apparent that his enemies had found him. Elimination of solitary infiltrators — even raiding parties — posed no great problem, but he had to think beyond the present. Hostile nations might bring pressure on the Ba'ath regime to root him out, deny the Assassins a base of operations.
It grieved him to imagine the ancestral fortress standing empty, the abode of rats and spiders, and he recognized the loss of face that would attend his flight from Alamut. Where would they find another setting so ideal for training and indoctrination purposes? How could another garden of delights be nurtured in the hostile world outside?
If he was forced by circumstances to flee his home, there would be no peace in this life, or in the next, for any of his enemies.
All things considered, exile — within established limits — could be good for business. If the Syrians could not protect him, he might try Khaddafi. It would be difficult, at first, to reconcile their egos, but with time and space — the latter plentiful in Libya — there might be room to grow. Khaddafi's hatred of America and Israel gave them common ground, and Abdel al-Sabbah was fairly confident that he could woo the colonel into offering asylum to the Assassins.
But first there was the business of survival, the elimination of the men who now threatened to destroy him. Evacuation might not be required, if he could wrest victory from defeat. The sheikh smiled. He might be bloodied, but he was not beaten, and he would teach his enemies a thing or two about the risks of tampering with Allah's will. It was a lesson that, unfortunately, none of them would live to pass along.
The Old Man of the Mountain stood slowly, waiting for his bodyguards to flank him. He had reinforced his private guard when it became apparent that Arrani had allowed one of the infidels to slip away, and he was thankful now, with the sounds of battle ringing through the tunnels, offering a stern reminder of his own mortality.
But he was a survivor, and he was not ready to surrender. Before that happened his opponents would be forced to overpower him, demonstrate conclusively that he was not the master of the Eagle's Nest. With Allah's help, that day would never come.
He led his loyal disciples from the throne room toward the sounds of raging combat. It was time for him to join the battle and assert himself as ruler of the Assassins. Sheikh al-Jebal was moving out to face his enemies and to grind them beneath his feet.
* * *
Hafez Kasm fired a ragged burst in the direction of his enemies and ducked back into the cover of a slightly recessed doorway. Angry hornets whined around him, gouging chips from the walls and spattering his face with shards of stone. The American had taken cover in another doorway, but Kasm couldn't see the women. For all he knew, they might be dead.
It had seemed easy, at the outset, even though the guards had seemed to come from nowhere. The ismailis had been talking among themselves, and the initial burst of automatic fire had left no more than half of them in fighting condition. The mopping up should have been easy, but they hadn't counted on reinforcements being close at hand.
The second wave had come prepared for battle, drawn by sounds of gunfire in the tunnels, and there were about a dozen of them.
If only he had more grenades, the Arab thought, he might have pinned down their adversaries long enough to risk a countercharge. Instead, they were pinned down, and it wouldn't be long before more troops arrived, perhaps on their flank to crush them in a pincer movement.
It was time to go on, at any cost. He slipped the empty magazine out of his AK-47, fed a fresh one in and worked the action, chambering a live round. It took a moment, but he caught the American's eye and tried to signal his intentions, nodding toward the enemy and brandishing his weapon like a lance. He dared not voice his plan in case one of the enemy might comprehend a smattering of English, and he hoped Belasko understood him well enough to lend a hand.
Across the body-littered corridor, his comrade smiled and nodded, ramming a fresh magazine into the pistol grip of his Uzi. Bolan glanced downrange, flashing a hand signal that told Kasm at least one of the women still survived. And if two guns were good, he knew three guns would be better — as long as the inexperienced women did not panic and shoot him in the back by accident.
He smiled at that. With so much death around him, his survival hanging by a thread stretched across a razor's edge, it would be perfect irony if he was shot down by a member of his own small troop.
He flashed five fingers at the American and started counting down. His heart was in his throat, his stomach churning. He was ashamed to find his hands were trembling.
Four.
The hostile fire had abated, but the Assassins would be waiting, rifles trained along the tunnel, ready for a target. To charge the guns seemed suicidal, but they had no options.
Three.
He braced himself, controlled the trembling in his hands by wrapping them tightly around his weapon. If his time had come to die, at least his enemi
es would never have the opportunity to say that he had died a coward.
Two.
His heart was hammering against his ribs, but Belasko caught his eye, and the American was smiling. Was he frightened? Did the certainty of sudden death weigh heavy on his shoulder as it did upon Hafez Kasm?
One.
He took a breath and held it, braced to run, afraid that he might freeze at the final instant and disgrace himself.
Go!
Adrenaline roaring in his ears, Kasm charged the enemy, his weapon spitting short, selective bursts. One of the Assassins had been rash enough to break from cover, and the Syrian stitched a line of holes across his chest. The straw man was slammed backward, a stunned expression on his face.
Kasm cut down another, and another, sensed the bullets slicing through the air around him, plucking at his clothes. One round inscribed a fiery line across his hip; another burrowed beneath his arm, deflected by his ribs, and very nearly knocked him off his stride.
Nothing mattered now, except a continued advance and the rifle spitting in his hands. The American was beside him holding his own, and he could hear another weapon, two, as both the women joined the sprint toward the gates of hell.
A bullet clipped his shoulder, staggered him, and he went down on one knee. Refusing to release the rifle, stubbornly returning fire, he riddled the Ismaili who had wounded him and struggled to his feet again, aware of warm blood plastering the tunic to his skin.
The women had passed him, and he picked up his pace, refusing to be left behind. The Assassins had broken ranks, were running away like frightened children. But they could not outrun bullets, and one by one they toppled, sprawling to the ground in awkward attitudes of death.
And suddenly they were alone.
He scanned the battlefield for other adversaries, giddy from the loss of blood and the smell of cordite. He realized he had not released his breath since he emerged from cover and gasping like a diver too long out of breath, he fumbled for another magazine.
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