Put it another way — and this was what really shook the warrior — there had to be a traitor or a mole in Hal Brognola' scamp...
He straightened up; he could hear shouting. The warble of police sirens was growing louder.
Bolan hurried to the undamaged bike. Hitching up his Arab robes, he sat astride the saddle and kick-started the four-cylinder engine. The motorcycle was a Honda Golden Wing, capable of doing more than 130 mph — fast enough and maneuverable enough to leave any patrol cars behind.
He discarded the bike when he was a block from his hotel and walked the last two hundred yards. He took the stairs to his room, collected the Heckler & Koch then left to start the long walk to the dawn assembly point, south of the city on the banks of the Blue Nile, where the caravan was to start its long journey into the interior.
Let the cops scratch their heads over two dead foreigners, a motorcycle and a bombed Buick Electra by the riverside.
By the time they discovered it was a rental, the guy who hired it would be long gone, on the first stage of his voyage into the unknown.
Chapter Eight
Mack Bolan shielded his eyes against the blazing sun. Under the folds of his djellaba, the Heckler & Koch MP-5 in its improvised sling had worn a sore place on his hip; the Walther and the AutoMag grew heavier in their harness every minute. For the hundredth time he shifted the shoulder rig as the dromedary lurched and swayed, picking its way over the shaie slanting up to a massive sandstone cliff one thousand feet above them.
The caravan was a large one — a long line of camels, horses, men and women, some mounted and some on foot, strung out for almost a mile across the desolate plateau.
It was five hours since they struggled up the steep valley from the last mud-walled village, five hours of sweltering torment. The sun had risen in the sky as the caravan climbed south through barren foothills pockmarked with patches of scrub, along a crest of rock and sand where nothing but thorn bushes broke the monotony of the scorched terrain, and now across this bleak upland plain beyond which, he dazedly hoped, their route would at last tilt downward once more.
The furnace heat was almost insufferable, shriveling the skin, hammering in the veins. He eased the harness again, scanning the plateau with red-rimmed eyes. Below and behind them, the dead land fell away in parallel ridges of ocher and tobacco-brown; above, some geological upheaval had left a thin band of richer rock between the weathered shale and the sandstone, and here a streak of dun-colored vegetation daubed the foot of the cliff.
Squinting against the glare beating back off the hot rock, he gazed ahead. A few hundred yards farther on, the line of stunted bushes followed the strata as they dipped toward a fault gashing the cliff. The leaders of the caravan were moving in the direction of this pass.
Between the towering walls of the cleft, the relief from the sun's assault was immediate. It was still stiflingly hot in the shadowed gorge, but the contrast with the blast of direct heat was as refreshing as a shower.
Bolan moistened his lips with tepid water from a padded bottle slung over his shoulder. He could hardly believe it was less than three days since he had been sipping iced bourbon beneath the striped awning shading David Courtney's balcony.
The meeting with Hamid el-Karim, the bomb in the underground parking lot, the bloody encounters in Alexandria and Khartoum were as unreal as the surrealist sequences of a dream; only the dawn meeting with Nessim, when he had paid for the camel, the bedroll and the other outward signs of his adopted Arab existence, were real — and even they faded in his memory under the relentless assault of the noonday sun.
So far they had skirted the blistering western fringe of the Nubian desert, recrossed the White Nile, traversed the lower reaches of the Sahara and were now laboriously making their way across the gaunt massif that separated the province of Kordofan from southwest Sudan. They were due at Wadi Djarzireh the following day.
After the open wastes of the plateau, the rock walls of the long, twisting defile amplified the incidental noises of the caravan: the camels' stony footfalls, the creak and jingle of pack stays and harness, an occasional whinny from an outrider's horse and the guttural murmurs of Arabic in front and behind. Above them all rose the singsong voice of Mahmoud, the camel master, as he discussed the route with a tall, dark man in Tuareg robes at the head of the column.
It was a mixed caravan, Nessim had told him. There were ivory merchants and dealers in ostrich feathers on their way to the Congo basin, traders leading pack camels loaded with bales of merchandise destined for Bahr el Ghazal and the Central African Republic, tribesmen from as far away as the Atlas Mountains and the usual supernumeraries — individual travelers and nomads tagging on for the ride. For this was, as Courtney had said, dangerous country. Small, isolated groups unprotected by military outriders could easily fall victim to a marauding guerrilla band or even overzealous army details.
The largest single group was formed by the pilgrims. They were on their way to an obscure shrine at Amergu, on the shores of Lake Kundi in southern Darfur. Bolan, in the place of a lone traveler from Saudi Arabia, had changed the anonymous burnoose he had worn in Khartoum for the yellow, white and black djeliaba that distinguished the pilgrims from other travelers.
The pilgrims were under a vow of silence until they reached their destination. But there was always a chance that the sullen Tuareg outriders escorting the column might ask for papers or pose questions. The warrior wondered again if his disguise, his reasons for being with the caravan, his knowledge of nomad customs and of Arabic, would be good enough to protect him when they made camp.
Riding at last out of the long, sinuous cleft and into the dazzle of the afternoon, he saw with relief that the trail did in fact lead downward now, across a wilderness of thorny scrub. Here the oven heat was tempered from time to time by a puff of hot, dry wind. Soon the sun would sink.
Two hours later, on a plateau strewn with huge limestone boulders, they stopped for the night.
The caravan boasted entertainers. As the western sky faded through vermilion to pale green above the rim of the wadi where they were camped, the plaintive tones of Arab pipes and strings rose into the rapidly cooling air.
Squatting like the rest of the pilgrims in the outer ring of figures around the fires, Bolan dipped his fingers into the aromatic food filling the bowl in front of him and watched acrobats and tumblers as he ate.
Soon, however, it was time for the woman to perform. And as he had feared — for the same thing had happened the previous night — she sought him out again. It seemed to him that she was directing her act exclusively at him.
She was a belly dancer. Not a very good one, possibly. But the taut body with its lean shivering breasts and eloquent hips spoke as clearly as if she had tossed a card into his lap with her telephone number on it.
Her name was Yemanja. She was probably, Bolan figured, of mixed Negro and Arab parentage. Certainly the name was that of a Yoruba fertility goddess, and while she had the nubile body and high bridged nose of most Arab women, the full-lipped mouth and smoldering eyes were pure African.
What heightened the danger was the fact that she was the "property" of Mahmoud. And the camel master's sullen and glowering regard had already been drawn toward the Executioner too often for his liking.
He kept his face bent low over his food as Yemanja stopped for the third time opposite him. Her well-muscled abdomen heaved, rotated and jerked as the tempo of the music increased, and her hips writhed seductively.
And then, with a final provocative flash of her eyes, the woman was gone and the dance was over.
Bolan sighed with relief. Desperate as he was to avoid attention of any kind, he found the dancer's nightly attempt to entice him a complication he could do without. As he watched a group dance begin on the far side of the firelit circle, he determined to keep well clear of Yemanja for the rest of the journey.
Striving to concentrate on the performers, he clapped with the rest as the music grew wilder and the f
ires burned low. Then he slipped unobtrusively away to erect his one-man tent beside his tethered camel.
The night was cold. They had come a long way down from the pass, but the wadi was still more than four thousand feet above sea level. Rolling himself into his striped blanket, Bolan eased into the low tent and fingered the miniature transceiver out from the pouch clipped to his belt.
Two minutes later, his head covered by the blanket, he thumbed a button on top of the casing and a faint, barely discernible whine quivered on the cool air. He turned a milled wheel set flush with the back of the instrument, and the noise increased slightly. Rotating the wheel the other way he heard the whine fade, momentarily vanish and then swell once more.
He experimented patiently until he had located the null point, the setting where the noise was tuned right out. Then, lips against the grill piercing the front of the transceiver, he spoke very softly.
"MB to DC," he breathed. "MB calling DC. If you receive me do not, repeat not, answer. Give me the signal specified in schedule T7..."
He paused. After a moment the tiny transmitter-receiver emitted three very faint bleeps in rapid succession. Bolan spoke again.
"Okay," he said. "Now listen carefully. I'm not going to repeat, and I can't talk for long. Transmit this message to Langley. Usual code. Slugged Priority ProBrognola and followed by the access code I gave you. Message begins. Post office located. Stop. Hope identify package and consignee's address tomorrow before distribution of mail. Stop. Riding with delivery man. Stop. Signed Striker, repeat Striker. Message ends. Acknowledge on T7."
The receiver emitted a single prolonged bleep.
"Okay," Bolan whispered. "Listen again tomorrow between 2100 hours and 2230. Over and out."
He replaced the instrument in his pouch and rolled himself more tightly in the blanket. The AutoMag lay conveniently within reach, under the folded djellaba that served as his pillow.
In a large tent on the far side of the circle of dying fires, the tall dark-robed man who had been riding at the head of the column leaned back from an open document case packed with electronic equipment. His aquiline features creased into a scowl at once petulant and menacing. "As I thought," he said quietly. "Somebody in this caravan is using a radio transmitter. It's on a different wavelength than ours, quite different, but there's no doubt about it." He glanced down at the tuners and dials in the fake document case as if for confirmation.
"Can you get a — fix, isn't it? — on the transmitter with this equipment?" his companion asked.
The tall man looked at him for a moment. Although he was also dressed in Arab robes, the second man was unmistakably an African. "No, Colonel," the tall Arab said evenly. "Unfortunately we cannot. We have the means to establish its existence, but that is all. For an accurate triangulation... that is to say, there is nothing here that could locate the radio source."
The African nodded. "Too bad."
"Nevertheless, as we believed, this proves there are spies in the caravan. They must be identified and taken care of Perhaps you would be good enough to send Mahmoud tc me, so that I can instruct him to be specially wary. Meanwhile, we shall see if we can pick up anything more definite."
He turned back to his dials as the African left the tent, and began experimentally turning the controls.
But this time there were no signals to pick out of the air Mack Bolan was asleep. Tomorrow the two parts of the caravan would separate, and he would have his work cut out to finger the animal carrying the canister of fissile materia before that happened.
Chapter Nine
The caravan broke camp at dawn and reached Wadi Djarzireh just before dusk.
Bolan saw an ancient fortress village nestling in a ravine whose course through the highlands was marked by a line of stunted trees. There was even a trickle of water sliding yellow over the flat stones of the riverbed.
The village was a compact mass of bleached battlements, walls, domes and watchtowers surrounded by terraced regs of gravel on which nothing grew. Perched above the fringe of vegetation it looked more like a medieval castle than an open community, but as they rode slowly down toward a huge fortified arch protecting the only gateway, the warrior saw it stretch out visually until the course of the narrow streets could be charted by the bands of shadow striping the age-old stone in the setting sun.
The caravan passed beneath the arched gate. There were soldiers armed with modern machine pistols inside and outside — at least a dozen that he could see — and once inside the walls a scene of surprising bustle and activity was visible on all sides. Isolated in its barren environment, the village had from a distance appeared abandoned. But the maze of courtyards and alleyways was thronged with armed tribesmen. Berbers from the High Atlas mingled with nomads, mountain farmers, Tuareg in exotic robes — a dense crowd of figures in white and gray accentuated here and there by individualists dressed in vivid orange, azure, citron or acid green.
In a small central square unexpectedly planted with olive trees, men and women chatted, joked, exchanged news and gossip or bartered the goods they had brought into the village.
As the caravan wound its way through, Bolan saw a Berber warrior dictating a letter to a scribe squatting in a doorway exactly as his ancestors must have done one thousand years before.
They halted in an open space before the mosque. The camels were watered, fed and tethered in rows beneath a line of date palms, and then most of the travelers vanished into the narrow streets. Only the women, a few old men and the pilgrims — sitting quietly among their bedrolls — were left in the dusty square.
Bolan took stock. When the train split into two sections the following morning, he knew that each part was to be escorted through rebel country by a squadron of Sudanese cavalry. So it was vital that he locate the canister that night and identify the animal carrying it. Tomorrow could be too late.
In the center of the square, Mahmoud was talking to Yemanja, the belly dancer, and the dark man who had been riding at the head of the column. Beyond them, one of the armed outriders was having his head shaved beneath the wicker canopy of a traveling barber. Bolan saw the dancer looking his way and turned his back.
If he wanted to check out the lines of tethered camels unnoticed, he would have to get past them and enter the square from the other side, near the mosque.
Should he stay as he was or remove the pilgrim rig while he searched?
He was stuck with the facial, that was for sure. He would never be able to duplicate it once it was removed. And the clothes? The robe would help him remain anonymous. On the other hand his movements would be restricted if he was spotted... and, identifying him as a pilgrim, the garment would lead any pursuers back to the caravan. In the privacy of his small tent, he shrugged out of the djellaba and drew on his skintight combat blacksuit.
The bivouac was close to a crumbling wall on the side of the open space farthest from the camels. Cautiously lifting the rear flap of the tent, he crawled out and stood between it and the wall, listening. Leaping light from naphtha flares was reflected from somewhere over the rooftops, and he could hear a gabble of voices from the bazaars. Nearer at hand in the darkness, only an occasional murmured conversation punctuated the movement of the tethered camels. It was now or never.
Flexing his knees, Bolan sprang lightly upward and grasped the top of the wall. A moment later he had dragged himself over and dropped to an evil-smelling lane choked with refuse on the far side.
He ran swiftly between the wall and the rear of a line of mud-walled houses. One hundred yards farther on, the lane twisted away from the square, around the bulk of the mosque, to emerge in a narrow street. Bolan paused, looking right and left.
To the left, the street curved away into the shadows. The right-hand branch led toward the hubbub and bright lights of a market. If he turned left, and then left again someplace, he should be able to double back and reach the square on the side farthest from his bivouac. He turned and hurried on.
There were people in the
street, Koran fundamentalists in bush shirts bristling with cartridge belts, merchants carrying baskets of food, soldiers and refugees from the southwest. Most of them were on their way to the bazaar; few gave more than a glance at the bearded Arab in black.
Bolan plunged down another alley on his left, squeezed past a veiled woman leading a donkey with bulging panniers and ran on. Soon he was back in the square, crouched behind the nearest line of recumbent camels.
Mahmoud, the woman and the tall stranger had gone. Fortunately many of the traders in the caravan had already unpacked their rolls to take samples to the market, and that made Bolan's task easier: the lead canister would be hidden somewhere in an untouched bale.
Furtively, crawling on hands and knees across the beaten earth between the animals, he searched, prodded and investigated with exploring fingers. After an hour, he was halfway along the third line of camels. The great beasts chewed noisily, turning their eyes to gaze incuriously at the doubled-up human. He was enveloped in the rank odor of their fetid breath.
Toward the end of the line, he pitched forward as his wrist turned under him on a loose stone, and lurched against a bale of merchandise still harnessed to a dromedary. The bulging pack swung away from him in an odd manner. It looked too light; it didn't move the way a tightly folded wad of material should...
Suppressing an exclamation of triumph he gave it his full attention. Fifteen seconds later its secret was revealed. The thin layer of cloths on the outside was stretched over a wicker cage. Inside, the bale was bulked out with some superlight substance such as cottonwool — and buried in the center, his fingers slid down the cool, greasy surface of a lead container.
The canister was as heavy as hell, but because the weight was concentrated in one place the bulk as a whole didn't move as sluggishly as the genuine bale balancing it on the camel's other flank.
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