One slug pierced the truck's muffler; another ricocheted off a stone and whined away among the trees. Bolan saw a third strike sparks from the axle casing. Then he was obliged to flatten himself against the earth as a hurricane of lead erupted from the SMGs and zipped through the leaves fractions of an inch above his head.
The reverberations of the fusillade were still ringing in his ears when one of the gunners crawled out the side of the truck and, convinced the Executioner would still have his head down, made a dash for a fallen tree, hoping he could enfilade the big guy.
The miscalculation cost him his life.
From the corner of his eye Bolan saw the fleeing figure, rolled onto his back with one arm stretched above his head and emptied the Walther's magazine. Three shots smashed into the killer, tearing away part of his right arm, fisting through his back and coring his skull. He dropped through a spray of scarlet, as inert as a puppet whose strings have been cut.
Bolan twisted around to face the truck again as the engine roared suddenly to life. The second machine gunner had crawled out the front and climbed into the cab.
There was a whine of hydraulic gear, the ramp retracted and the rear doors of the van swung shut. It was already moving when the driver of the Alfa Romeo dragged himself from between the wheels and ran for the cab, a 3-shot burst chugging from his automatic at Bolan as he leaped for the step and the open door above it.
For the first time, the Executioner got a good look at the guy's face. Swarthy, pockmarked, striped with a hairline mustache, the features were those of the gorilla with the lead pipe who had numbed his arm outside Mustapha Tufik's coffee shop in Marseilles.
The AutoMag thundered, heaving in Bolan's two-handed grip. A driving mirror shattered. A .44 flesh-shredder splashed blood from the killer's left arm. He spun sideways, holding on desperately with his right. But the driver reached across and hauled him into the cab before Bolan could finish him.
The truck swung around in a cloud of dust and lumbered along the dirt road toward the ocean.
Okay, the Executioner thought grimly. Right now they were even, with one damaged arm each. But it wouldn't be long before he chalked up an extra score. He ran for the Corvette.
The engine spun, turned, turned again. But wouldn't fire.
Hurling himself from the cockpit, Bolan stretched out an arm to open the hood... and then allowed it to drop to his side.
His nose supplied the answer before his eyes.
The bottom of the tank had been cored three times by the first volley from the SMGs. Twelve gallons of gasoline, gushing out to sink into the dry earth, were now vaporizing in the heat of the afternoon.
He shrugged. So it would have to wait until he made Khartoum.
He walked across to the dead man. The submachine gun was a Heckler & Koch MP5 — the SD-3 version with a telescopic butt and fitting for a 40 mm silencer.
The muffler itself was in a pouch clipped to the guy's belt, along with a fistful of 9 mm parabellum rounds.
Bolan nodded. A useful weapon. He hoped he'd have the opportunity to use it himself.
He refilled the curved 30-round magazine, stuffed the remaining spares into his pocket, wrapped the SMG in his jacket and started the long hike back to the city.
Chapter Six
The rented car was a Buick Electra sedan. One thousand miles south of Cairo and Alexandria, the scorching dry heat of Khartoum hit Bolan like a hammer and he was happy to trade off a fraction of performance against the Buick's air-conditioning.
He left the car in the underground parking lot beneath David Courtney's modern apartment block and rode up to the eleventh floor in an elevator large enough to hold twenty people.
The British man was tall, thin and immaculate, with iron-gray hair curling just enough at the nape to remain chic. Bolan saw a shrink-wrapped face, a thermonuclear smile and pale suede shoes. He wasn't too happy about what he saw — the guy looked like he was the kind of whiz kid PR type that the Executioner detested — but hell, he was the only lead he had; this was no time to let personal opinions intrude.
What intrigued him about Courtney was the fact that Ahmed Ibrahim was the second person to put forward his name as a contact. The first had been Hal Brognola. It seemed that the Brit was used by the CIA for occasional legwork: in a part of the world where even to be American was to invite hysterical accusations of espionage and dark threats of counterplots, the Company was happy to channel routine information through the nationals of any friendly country.
In the circumstances, Bolan figured it was okay to pretend he was a roving CIA field agent with special responsibility for the North African theater.
"What I want to know, Courtney," he said brusquely, after the formalities had been completed, "is why your name was given to me by an Alexandria stool pigeon. Why were you the first person he thought of when I asked for a contact to help with certain activities that are not exactly legal?"
The Englishman opened his mouth to reply, but Bolan brushed the interruption aside. His exasperation was partly genuine. "How come you're the guy who can fix fake papers for Arabs, who has all the intel on contraband camel trains?" he demanded. "And if you do, why in hell didn't you report it to Langley? What kind of game are you playing, anyway?"
"Why didn't I report?" Courtney flushed slightly. "Well, actually, because I wasn't asked to, if you want to know." He passed a nervous hand over his hair.
"Weren't asked to?" Bolan exploded. "Well, for God's sake! What are you supposed to be doing for us here, if it's not to report things like that?"
"My briefing is to report anything I think would be of interest to Langley. I didn't think this would, that's all."
"Good God, man, if this isn't..."
"By and large," Courtney continued smoothly, "that means a situation report every month. Plus fuller reports on anything specific I'm asked to cover. Plus liaison with people like you, if required. Hell, I'm not on the payroll full time. I'm not a field agent like you."
"I know it. But surely a shipment of uranium 235..."
"I didn't know it was 235. I didn't even know for sure it was uranium. Only that it was some radioactive substance. I mean, it could have been intended for medical research, or for use in a cancer hospital."
'Traveling secretly in a camel train?"
"Perhaps to avoid some kind of import duty... or damn fool questions posed by frontier police."
Bolan contrived a sigh. "I suppose so."
"You said yourself, actually, that you didn't know until yesterday, until Ibrahim told you, that the stuff was coming to Khartoum."
"Yeah. But that doesn't alter the fact that you should have reported it."
"I can't report everything shady that happens in the city," Courtney argued. "That would choke the airwaves every day. I mean, so I made an error in judgment. I'm sorry. End of story."
Bolan looked around the room. Stainless steel and black glass; Persian rugs on a marble floor; white hide armchairs. The place looked as rich as the inside of a Rolls-Royce. He walked to the French windows. Beyond the intense shade cast by an awning over the balcony, concrete buildings across the street shimmered in the glaring heat. A rumble of afternoon traffic drifted up from below.
"As far as Ahmed knowing my name is concerned," the voice drawled behind the Executioner, "I really can't see what's worrying you."
"You can't?"
"Absolutely not. I mean, well, you know my cover is a stringer for a news agency. Well, that's a job I do have to do. I have to file every day. Ahmed is... was... simply one of my informants."
"Did he know you worked sometimes for the Company?"
"Of course not." Courtney's voice was raised. "I'm not that dumb. As I said, he was just a common informer. You lay out the cash, he'll give with the info. Like your man in Marseilles, only on a smaller scale. To him, I was just a client needing inside stuff for my news stories — and of course for other reasons."
"Such as?"
"Well, the sort of questions I som
etimes had to ask, he must have reasoned I had other interests. For all I know, he thought I worked for MI-6, or the West Germans, or even the Russians. But his kind don't ask questions. They just take the money and go. I would think he figured I could help you simply because he knew the kind of stuff that interested me."
"Yeah. But he was wrong this time, wasn't he? Because the stuff didn't interest you. Not enough to report it." Bolan looked around the expensive room again. "This informing business with Ahmed Ibrahim," he said, eyeing Courtney's immaculately cut sharkskin suit, "it wouldn't have been two-way traffic by any chance?"
Courtney flushed a deeper red. "I hardly think that question deserves an answer," he said stiffly.
Bolan grinned, then peeled off his own jacket and dropped it on the floor. He loosened his necktie. "Okay," he said affably. "Question out of order. Sorry, Courtney. I guess the heat's getting me down. Next question: how right was Ibrahim? How much do you think you can help me?"
"For the caravan? I fancy we should be able to cope, as a matter of fact," the Brit said, looking Bolan up and down. "You're a little tall, and the blue eyes are a minus point. But you've got fairly deep-set lids, you have a... decided... cast of feature and best of all your hair is dark. With the right sort of overall stain, and a fringe of beard to offset that chin, you should pass after my boy's had a go at you. How's your Arabic?"
"Barely passable."
"You'd better be a pilgrim, then. Perhaps a Berber. They come pretty tall. And they keep to themselves and hardly utter a word on these jaunts."
"A pilgrim," Bolan echoed. "Where to?"
"There's a sect that beetle off to some shrine just north of the Zaire border every two months. Kind of a poor man's Mecca. They go with the trade caravans for safety's sake."
"And there's a party of them with the uranium caravan?"
"So they tell me. In any case, that's the only way you could get away with it. Without arousing suspicion, that is."
"Why?"
"Weil, I'm afraid the only possible in is for you to substitute yourself for some joker already on the list, as it were. No chance of buying your way in. They're much too religious. But there's a police captain who can be bought. The drill is, you get a set of papers to match some chap who's already signed on, and then the police captain runs the chap in on some pretext and keeps him under wraps until the caravan's gone. Meanwhile, there you are in his place."
"It seems a bit tough on the 'chap,'" Bolan said dryly.
"Yes, well, that's a pity. But they let him go after a couple of days, anyway. Too expensive to feed them inside. The locals are used to incomprehensible police behavior in this part of the world," Courtney said apologetically. "I'm afraid it's the only way."
"I don't want to put an innocent man in jail, even for a couple of days."
"Well, leave it to me. I'll see what I can fix."
"Okay. And you know someone who can get me to the right place at the right time? With the right caravan?"
"Absolutely. It's some way south of the city, the assembly point. We'll get you there. Can you, uh, can you ride a camel?"
"If I have to."
"Splendid. I should warn you, though, that if you're caught impersonating a pilgrim, the consequences can be deuced unpleasant. These Arab johnnies are very strong on Allah and the Prophet. You'd have to leg it like hell for the bush if they did unmask you."
"I'll worry about that if it happens."
"Quite. I just thought I'd mention it," Courtney said.
The Executioner was about to ask him for a rundown on the activities of the highly placed Sudanese official, Hamid el-Karim, but he changed his mind at the last minute.
Courtney had yet to prove himself; he had yet to show Bolan that his instinctive mistrust of the man was misplaced. On a need-to-know basis, el-Karim didn't come within the Englishman's orbit. So why make a present of privileged intel to a man whose loyalty was still an unknown quantity?
For a warrior whose three golden rules of combat were identify, infiltrate and destroy, Bolan was in a difficult position.
He was on the trail of a gang of nuclear thieves; the thieves knew he was on their trail; they had killed his contacts, had tried to waste him, too. But he was no nearer knowing who they were than he had been when he was first briefed by Hal Brognola.
And without identification he didn't have a hope in hell of infiltrating the organization — whatever it was.
Destruction, at the moment, was no more than a penciled-in notice of intention, on a date still to be fixed.
But the date would become specific. Because whatever the difficulties, he was damned well going to crack this one. He would find out who these thieves were if it was the last thing he did.
And, once fingered, they in turn would find out, all right, that it took only one man to make a wave of destruction.
End of story.
Chapter Seven
Three miles from David Courtney's apartment building, in a shuttered villa behind tall hedges of tamarisk, Mack Bolan was ushered into a study furnished in ornate luxury.
The black Nubian in flowing white robes who had escorted him from Hamid el-Karim's marble reception hall bowed and withdrew.
The man behind the huge glass-topped desk was lean and dark, a narrow mustache emphasizing the chiseled planes of his mouth. Above his sleek head, a horizontal fan with six-foot blades revolved slowly in the hot, dry air.
"Bolan?" he said, glancing at the card the Executioner had presented. "That is an unusual name, monsieur."
"It's Russian." Bolan lied smoothly. As an in, he had claimed acquaintance with the Soviet general in charge of the KGB's Eighth Directive. "From the Don basin, originally."
"You know Major General Asimov well?"
"At one time we were very close," Bolan said truthfully. In fact they had been firing at each other over the rubble of a bombed building in West Beirut, where Bolan had foiled a KGB plan to patch in to satellite communications linking the French embassy there with Washington. "The general has been a great help to me."
"I must say that I do not customarily receive visitors unknown to me personally. However, since you mentioned the name of — shall we say? — a mutual friend of great eminence, and since, to be honest, your own name intrigued me, I made an exception."
"It is an honor to receive such flattering consideration from a highly placed person," Bolan said fulsomely. "And in particular that he should permit himself to be intruded upon at home."
"There are certain... transactions... better approached in the informality of the home, monsieur."
"Precisely."
"In what way may I assist you. Monsieur Bolan?"
"I have a desire to visit the southern part of your agreeable country."
"Indeed? May one ask why?"
"Of course. It's said there may be certain mineral deposits," Bolan said carefully, "to the southwest of the El Marra massif. It seems that these might be well worth exploiting — by those, of course, with practically unlimited resources. The lignite veins, for example, are said to be by no means as poor as the reference books would have us believe. The bauxite, too, is rich enough to interest those with a need for aluminum. To say nothing of more, uh, esoteric ores."
"And you represent such an interest?"
"I do. And might I add that those who cooperate with my gov... with my principals, would find themselves well rewarded. There is a great deal of money involved. A very great deal."
Hamid el-Karim leaned back in his steel-and-leather chair. His tongue flicked once rapidly around his well-shaped lips. "Your, ah, principals have charged you with the task of verifying these reports?" he asked.
"Yes. I guess I don't have to elaborate?"
"No, no. Indeed not. But in this exploratory stage, how can I help you?"
"They tell me there's a certain amount of dissidence down there. I wouldn't want, during my researches, to mix it with rebels. Or for that matter with your efficient troops policing the region. Apart from wh
ich, in the normal way, I imagine you would hardly welcome strangers there."
"There are one or two cutthroat bands of renegade blacks," el-Karim said carelessly, flicking a speck of dust from his lapel. "We Muslims here in the north are continually being misrepresented by the backward Negroes of the south. Agitators are sent in to stir up trouble, and the poor fools fancy themselves exploited. But there is nothing that could be called a rebellion proper... Nevertheless, it is true that a foreigner wandering there without the benefit of official accreditation could run into trouble."
"Just so." Now that he had been dealt the card, Bolan played it. "And since it was not considered desirable at this early stage to make an official approach at governmental level, I'm here to ask your help in my getting some sort of laissez-passer, which would at once identify me, justify my presence in that area and assure those it might concern that I am, as it were, under your distinguished protection."
The Sudanese rose from behind the desk, moving elegantly across the big room to a wall map flanked by a coat of arms and the national flag. "I gather the areas in question would be, roughly, here... and here... and perhaps here?" he said, tapping the map with a manicured finger.
"Right. And also, maybe, in the province of Western Equatoria, nearer the Zaire border," said Bolan, who had pored over maps as well as mineralogical reports in the library. "Would you care for a Russian cigarette?"
"Thank you, I do not smoke. Please do so yourself, if you feel so inclined."
Bolan murmured a polite acknowledgment as he placed the brown tube between his lips. He seemed to have some trouble manipulating his heavy bronze lighter, for it took several attempts before the spark produced a flame.
El-Karim waited by the map, tapping his teeth with a gold pencil. "I see no problem in arranging that," he said when the cigarette was drawing properly.
"You understand why it is preferred to make this initial approach at a... personal... level? An official demarche would inevitably draw attention to the project."
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