He briefly wondered if he should relay another message to Brognola, but decided against it. He knew which camel was carrying the stolen nuclear material, but otherwise nothing had changed since his last transmission. Until he could identify the "consignee," it was best to keep radio silence.
Everything had finally gone his way tonight; he didn't want to push his luck too far.
Once he had stripped off the blacksuit and donned the djellaba, Bolan looked out the front of the tent. Naphtha flares now flamed where the camels were tethered. One of the horses was restive, snorting and rearing on the end of its rope. A group of soldiers lounged beneath the date palms.
Nearer at hand, Mahmoud paced up and down with the tall, dark stranger. "I don't see how he could have gotten away," the camel master was saying angrily. "We had the whole street bottled up." He flung out an arm to encompass the square. "I think it unlikely, but just in case he did come from here, I am ordering the soldiers to waken all these people..." he gestured toward the area where Bolan and the other pilgrims were quartered "...so that we can get them out and have a look at them."
His companion took his arm. "It is not necessary," he said.
"What do you mean, not necessary? We must catch this..."
"There are plans, my friend," the tall man said, "of which you know nothing. Just leave it, all right?"
Mahmoud stared at him, shrugged, shook his head but said no more.
Bolan shrugged too. What the hell? But he would leave that particular mystery for examination tomorrow. Right now he was bushed.
Withdrawing like a tortoise into his shelter, he rolled himself into his blanket and went to sleep.
Chapter Ten
The rendezvous with the cavalry was outside the archway whose watchtowers monitored the only gate leading into Wadi Djarzireh.
From here the pilgrims would continue westward along the right bank of the river, on the first part of their long ride to Lake Kundi and the shrine at Amergu. The pack train was to cross a ford and then climb up into the hills on the left.
Mack Bolan kept his head well down under the hood of his djellaba as Mahmoud rode up and down the long line of camels and horses with a Sudanese officer, separating the travelers and their beasts into two convoys. The dromedary with the red-yellow-and-black-striped blanket roll was one of a string of three led by a bedouin immediately behind the head of the column.
The camel master's features were set in their usual scowl as he maneuvered his horse in among the throng scanning papers and shepherding the riders roughly into the correct line. There was no sign of Yemanja. Perhaps the entertainers were left behind when the caravans traversed a dangerous area.
Bolan kneed his camel as unobtrusively as he could toward the file of pilgrims in an attempt to join them without having his papers — or his face — scrutinized. It would be easier to move off with that section of the train and quit later than it would be to try and stick with the others now.
The moment was well chosen because Mahmoud's back was turned, but the army officer saw him move and called out, "Hey! You there! Where do you think you're going?"
He spurred his horse toward the Executioner, cursing. Mercifully the camel master was arguing with another pilgrim and did not accompany him.
"I wanted to join my fellow pilgrims, that is all," Bolan said meekly, his head bowed, as the Sudanese reined up beside him.
"You wait until you are told. And that is a strange manner in which you speak, friend," the officer added suspiciously.
"I am not of your country. My speech is not as yours because I come from afar, from Al Khureiba, in Saudi Arabia."
"Hmm. Well, see that you do not get out of line again," the soldier grunted. He wheeled his mount and rejoined Mahmoud.
When his turn eventually did come, Bolan showed his papers, still with bent head, and suffered himself to be pushed into the group of pilgrims. The camel with the striped bedroll, as he had expected, was with the other train.
A few minutes later, the pilgrims and their escort moved off along the riverbank while the baggage train with its attendant squadron splashed across the ford and began climbing the rocky trail on the far side.
Bolan deliberately lagged, hoping that he might have an opportunity to break away from the pilgrims and somehow rejoin the other train undetected. Half a mile farther on his chance came. The stream, and the trail beside it, wound through a twisting canyon that cut through the baked rock... and all the escorting soldiers were up at the head of the column.
He brought his camel to a stop behind a group of enormous boulders and allowed the others to move slowly around a corner and out of sight. Then, wheeling, he rode back along the trail as fast as the camel would go.
Fording the river, he urged the animal on up the steep path the baggage train had followed. The track mounted steadily past tiny squares of cultivation planted with millet, maize and sorghum, through a patch of scrub and across an exposed slope of bare rock, where it turned sharply to follow a dried-up river valley toward the crest of the ridge.
A natural tunnel through the limestone led beneath the saddle, and on the far side he could see, dwarfed by distance, the long line of camels and horses snaking over the desolate plain below.
If he could manage to link up with the caravan without being noticed there was a slim chance that he could stay with it at least until nightfall.
The trail, although dry, threw up very little dust as the camel passed. Bolan rode on down, steering his swaying mount into the shelter of every rock outcrop and pile of boulders the terrain offered.
Sixty minutes later he was within a quarter of a mile of the caravan. He could hear clearly the sounds of its progress and took the chance to get closer when the route began to twist between pebbled regs and areas of thorn.
If only there was no cavalry riding shotgun when he rounded the last bend and tagged on...
But when he urged on the camel as the trail straightened once more he saw that his luck had changed: two horsemen in uniform were riding behind the last pack camel.
Before he had time to retreat, one of them turned and saw him. There was no way he could escape — both men carried rifles across their pommels. Besides, a horse could outrun a dromedary anytime. Cursing inwardly, he rode straight ahead until he caught up with them.
How was he going to handle this? He had changed the yellow, white and black djellaba for his original dun-colored burnoose when he split from the pilgrim train... but the papers he carried were specific: he was on the way to the shrine at Amergu.
Was there any way he could fake it?
No.
"Who are you? What do you think you're doing?" the man who had seen him said roughly. "Show me your papers at once."
Bolan sighed. Okay — he was stuck with the pilgrim routine.
While the second man kept him covered, he reached inside the folds of his robe and produced the documents. "But according to these, you should be with the other train!" the soldier exclaimed. "What are you doing here — and who are you, anyway?"
"You can see who I am. I lost my way. I was wandering around, trying to locate a trail, when I heard the sounds of your caravan, and I thought it might be the one I missed. It was..."
"Impossible. The others are miles away, on the other side of the river. You couldn't possibly have arrived here by mistake." The soldier turned to his companion. "Ali, ride up to the front of the column and fetch Mahmoud and the captain while I keep an eye on this man."
The second cavalryman spurred his horse and rode after the disappearing caravan while Bolan remained motionless under the soldier's watchful guard.
The Heckler & Koch MP-5 was slung beneath his robe, but it was dismantled. The AutoMag and the PPK were holstered, but the soldier could drill him before he even got a hand beneath the cumbersome burnoose.
Soon, four horsemen galloped into sight around a bend in the trail: the soldier, Mahmoud, the officer who had remonstrated with the Executioner before the two caravans separated
and a tall, dark man on a splendid gray mount — the stranger who had told the camel master not to bother locating Bolan the previous night.
"What is the trouble?" the dark man asked curtly.
"This man was attempting secretly to join the caravan, Excellence."
"Who is he?"
"According to his papers, one of the Amergu pilgrims — who should be riding with the other train."
"But I know this man! I had trouble with him before," the officer said. "He was trying then to attach himself to that caravan before it was time. Now he wants this one, you say? And he has changed his clothes. To me that appears suspicious."
"So have I seen him before," Mahmoud snarled suddenly. "I knew the face was familiar, but I had not made the connection." He leaned across and twitched aside the enveloping hood the Executioner wore. "See! The foreign thief is at last unmasked! Foreign thief... and perhaps foreign spy also, eh?"
The cavalry captain looked inquiringly at the dark man, who seemed, out of the four, to carry the most clout.
"I suppose so." The latter sighed. "It was planned otherwise, as you know. But in the circumstances... At least we now have a culprit in connection with the mystery radio transmissions from the caravan. We can search his baggage afterward."
"Dismount," the Sudanese officer ordered Bolan.
Bolan slid from the dromedary, his mind racing. The tuner for the homing device and his miniature transceiver were safe in the locked belt around his waist. The weapons were beneath his burnoose. The rest of his gear would have to be sacrificed along with the bedroll on the camel. Assuming he could get away at all. Unobtrusively he touched the hard, comforting edge of the AutoMag through a fold in the robe.
As his feet touched the ground, Bolan heard the chilling sound of an old-fashioned rifle bolt being drawn back and slammed home. He knew that he was going to die. There was a bullet in the breech; the soldier behind him was preparing to shoot.
Honed on the hard stone of many years of combat experience, the Executioner's razor-sharp battle instinct took over. Mind and muscle and eye, working in perfect combination, directed his movements without conscious thought as he exploded into action.
He ducked beneath the camel's belly, plunged his right hand through a slit in the burnoose and fired at the soldier through the thick material. The man toppled over his horse's neck, his rifle clattering to the ground.
Before any of the others had time to move, Bolan bobbed up on the far side of the animal, and the big autoloader boomed again. The second man, who had been winged while raising his gun, jerked back violently under the impact of the 240-grain slug and then sagged in the saddle, clutching his pulverized shoulder.
An instant later, in a smooth, continuous flow of movement, the warrior had bounded across the space between the camel and the first soldier's horse, hauled the dead man clear of the harness and vaulted into the saddle.
Then, driving his heels into the animal's flanks, he charged straight at Mahmoud and his two companions.
Their horses had reared at the sound of gunfire, and they were trying to draw their weapons when Bolan scattered them, urged his own mount over a four-foot thorn hedge at the side of the track and galloped away into the scrub.
Mahmoud's revolver boomed behind him, the report followed by the sharp crack of an automatic and the duller, flatter explosion of a rifle.
Bolan rode like the wind, zigzagging among the stunted bushes. He was thankful that the soldier's horse — unlike most Arab steeds — was harnessed and saddled. Crouching low over the animal's flying mane, he glanced back over his shoulder.
Two horses had cleared the hedge — Mahmoud's and the officer's — and were galloping in pursuit. The dark man had stayed behind. His head and shoulders were visible over the thorny branches, one eye squinting along the barrel of a rifle. Four more shots rang out. Then for a long time there was no sound but the drumming of hooves on the iron-hard ground.
Bolan was making a big circle through the tinder-dry scrub, planning to come back on a course parallel with the trail but about one mile distant. He hoped to gain a range of low hills some way ahead and keep watch on the caravan for as long as he could before dropping out of sight and relying on the homer. Meanwhile, he had to outdistance his pursuers.
Next time he looked back Mahmoud had dropped a quarter of a mile behind, but the cavalry officer was no more than one hundred yards away and gaining fast. There was a puff of smoke and a bullet sang over Bolan's head.
More alarmingly, a dust cloud moved above the scrub. It was farther away but vectored on a course that would intersect his own. Clearly it was the remainder of the squadron racing to cut him off.
With the reins between the fingers and knuckles of his left hand, Bolan had been maneuvering the MP-5 away from its sling and out from under his robe. Now, controlling the horse — and his own balance — with the steely pressure of knees and thighs only, he slammed in the magazine, pushed home the retractable butt and flicked the compact killer onto 5-round burst mode.
It was tough for the Sudanese. For the continuing success of the mission, it was vital that he get away.
Regretfully he reined back some, waiting for the officer to close up on a straight stretch between the thorn trees. The guy was firing as he rode, but after three shots Bolan twisted in the saddle and hosed a series of 5-shot bursts his way.
The rip-roaring bellow as the 9 mm deathstream zeroed in on the Sudanese scared Bolan's horse. Rearing with a neigh of alarm, it threw him heavily to the ground.
Bolan rolled with the shock, scrabbling for the SMG. But the immediate danger was over. Horse and rider were lying in a grotesque tangle among the thorn bushes fifty yards away. The bare earth, and parts of the prickly trunks, glistened redly in the glare of the sun.
There remained the menace presented by the rest of the squadron. The dust cloud was still half a mile away, but if the cavalry continued on its course they would cut off the Executioner before he could make the hills.
Standing with his horse's bridle in one hand he stared across the desert scrub. The yellow cloud was streaming away behind the squadron. The puffs of hot, dry wind he had noticed the day before were increasing in strength. He spit on one finger and held it up. The wind was blowing from the northeast, scouring the arid wasteland between him and the Sudanese.
He nodded. They were downwind enough for it to work.
He drew the heavy bronze cigarette lighter-camera from his pouch and approached the thickest stand of thorn bushes he could see.
Shielded from the breeze by one of his hands, the flame shot up beneath a desiccated branch, and an instant later the whole bush blossomed with flowers of fire.
The flames spread, teased out by the wind, until the whole stand was blazing.
Burning twigs floated away and ignited the next clump of thorn bushes; brown smoke billowed and roiled toward the cloud of dust. And two minutes later there was a blazing firefront crackling fast toward the distant cavalry.
In a moment Bolan would be safely hidden from them, but he still had to get to the far side of the smoke screen before he made the range of hills. Remounting, he cantered along the sunbaked earth in back of the leaping points of flame.
He was halfway there, and the shouts of the frustrated horsemen were dying away behind the increasing roar of the blaze when a single rider burst through the smoke ahead of him and wheeled his mount to face the Executioner.
There was a Kalashnikov AKM automatic rifle resting across the man's saddle, and before Bolan had time to react to the unexpected apparition, the guy had raised the weapon to shoulder level and blasted a stream of lead his way.
Bolan's response was instinctive. The Arab was more than a hundred yards away — too far for accurate shooting when the marksman was astride a horse, and certainly way out of range of the Executioner's own armory when he, too, was riding. He attempted a maneuver he had learned from the fearless equestrian gymnasts of Turkestan, when he had been on mission for three months in the S
oviet Kazakh region.
Flattening himself along the horse's back, he urged the animal into a gallop, heading straight for his antagonist. At the same time, locking his left hand in the harness and gripping fiercely with his left thigh, he slid down the heaving flank until he was inverted beneath his mount's chest.
From there, gritting his teeth, he extended his right arm between the horse's pistoning front legs.
His right hand was wrapped around the butt of the Walther PPK, the forefinger caressing the trigger.
The premise — again he was regretful, but he had no choice if he wanted to stay alive — was that no Arab cavalryman would shoot deliberately at a horse, but only at its rider if he was a visible target.
The Sudanese was hesitating, the barrel of his assault rifle wavering. Bolan squeezed the trigger. He emptied all seven rounds from the pistol's magazine when there was less than forty yards between him and the Arab.
The 7.65 mm cartridges made much less noise than the deafening blast of the AutoMag, but the series of reports cracking rapidly out beneath its tossing head frightened the horse as much as Bolan's earlier volley from the H&K MP-5.
It lowered its haunches, hooves scrabbling to a halt in a shower of gravel on the pebbly ground, reared up, neighing, then bucked with its heels thrown into the air.
Bolan lost his grip and fell, rolling swiftly out of reach of the tattooing legs, allowing the empty Walther to go with the tide, sliding over the rough terrain as he felt for the AutoMag.
He came up with the big gun in his hand, but he didn't need to use it.
Four of the shots from the Walther had flown wide, but the fifth had nicked the sling of the Kalashnikov. The two remaining rounds had scored — one splintering through the horseman's breastbone, the other punching a hole in his throat below the Adam's apple.
Hurled backward off his mount by the impact of the slugs, he lay spread-eagled on the spines of a thorn bush.
The Executioner scrambled to his feet and limped across i to the bush. By the time he reached it, the scarlet stream throbbing from the soldier's chest and neck had ebbed and '. died; the man's sightless eyes had glazed, and even the blood staining his uniform and pooled on the hard ground below had filmed over with dust.
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