Bolan ached all over and his knees, wrists and elbows were grazed, but otherwise he was unharmed.
The fire was sweeping toward the southwest, roiling a cloud of brown smoke tinged with violet before it. Behind it, the searing heat of the day was tainted with the bitter stench of charred brushwood.
Bolan attempted to remount his horse, but the animal was skittish and shied away. Two shocks in one morning was enough. He had to settle for the cavalryman's mount, which was tractable enough.
He rode toward the hills, the Walther reloaded, the AutoMag now bolstered outside his burnoose, the MP-5 on the saddle in front of him. For perhaps two miles, the riderless horse accompanied them, then it careered off across the plain on its own.
At noon, Bolan halted between two monolithic rocks at the top of a cliff in the first range of hills. Allowing the horse to forage for something edible among the desiccated desert scrub, he looked out from the shadows across the great tract of country.
The fire was a smudge of smoke staining the horizon far to the south. Several hundred feet below, the caravan wound its way around the base of a spur projecting beneath the cliff. The camel with the striped blanket still walked just behind the posse of cavalry at the head of the column. It would be twenty minutes or more before the last riders passed out of sight.
He decided to rest the horse and call up David Courtney: Brognola might welcome another progress report, even though the Executioner was still ignorant of the caravan's destination and the identity of the thieves was still a secret.
Sheltered by the rocks from the fierce heat, he sat down, took the transceiver from his pouch and turned the pointer to Receive. He pressed the button that actuated the automatic call sign on their wavelength.
Half an hour later he was still trying.
There was no reply from Courtney.
Chapter Eleven
"Bolan was supposed to funnel messages to me through your man Courtney in Khartoum," Hal Brognola said gruffly.
John Samson, the CIA sector chief detailed to liaise with the Fed, frowned and compressed his lips. "Nothing came in at Langley as of noon today/'
"I know it. I'm not happy about it. That's three days without any news."
Samson sighed. "We can't pass on something we don't get, Hal," he said defensively. Heads could roll fast at Langley when the Man was displeased.
"So why aren't you getting it? Mack wouldn't delay a progress report. Not on anything this important."
"The Brit's not a regular operative," Samson replied. "He's on a retainer, and he files when..."
"I know all that."
"So what do you want me to do? Put in a field agent?"
"Hell, no. Not in that part of Africa! I don't need to tell you what they'd say if..."
"Sure. I know the tune. Imperialist warmonger spies. Fascist interference in the affairs of a sovereign country. All that jazz."
"Right. Especially now that the Sudanese are heavily back into their civil strife routine." Brognola riffled through a stack of newspapers and picked up that day's edition of the Chicago Globe. It had been folded back to an inside page with a boxed news item outlined in red marker. He passed it to the Company man.
Samson saw the headline Sudan Bloodbath Feared and beneath it: By Jason Mettner II, Special Correspondent in Central Africa. He read:
The Sudan government in Khartoum is under strong pressure to investigate a recent massacre in Southern Darfur province and punish those responsible. Administration officials admit that between two and three hundred Dinka tribesmen died, but black leaders reckon the murder toll was more like 1,500.
The incident is the latest in a series of bloody clashes opposing guerrillas of the Sudan Peoples' Liberation Army and pro-government Arab troops. The SPLA, fighting for total autonomy, is drawn mainly from the Dinkas, many of whom are more than seven feet tall.
"What the story doesn't say," Brognola said, "is that the folks wasted in this latest killing weren't guerrillas but Dinka refugees from farther south, who were trying to escape from tribal clashes. It seems that seventy Arab militiamen were killed in such a clash, and the refugees had been rounded up and taken to a police barracks to protect them from Arab reprisals."
"Don't tell me," Samson said. "When the local militia attacked, the police joined in?"
Brognola nodded. "Read the rest of it."
The Company man ran a professional eye quickly down the column of print.
Repeated protests by black leaders in the south have been reinforced by the Arab opposition in Khartoum, which has called for a reversal of government policy arming Arab villagers to fight SPLA guerrillas. The situation worsened rapidly after security forces were sent into the southern provinces to root out the guerrillas, driving black peasants to seek refuge in Arab areas, where they are at the mercy of these militiamen.
Foreign diplomats in Khartoum now fear that the SPLA will launch renewed attacks on Arab-dominated provinces to avenge the latest massacre and that this could lead to a further cycle of blood feuds and religious atrocities in a country where more than two-thirds of the twenty million people are Muslims of Arab descent, but most southerners are African Christians or animists.
"Just the kind of situation for rogue shipments of nuclear material to get lost in," Brognola said grimly. "Maybe you can see now why it's so important to renew contact with Bolan."
"Sure I can," Samson agreed. "But I can't see how we can help. If you don't want us to alert Courtney in case he's blown, and you don't want us to send in a personal contact..."
"I think I've got a better idea," Brognola said. "It's a long shot, but right here no news is bad news."
"So?"
"So I'm gonna call a newspaperman I know."
The two men were sitting in Brognola's office at the Justice Department. The Fed lumbered to his feet and crossed to a table littered with photocopied press digests and printouts. He picked up a phone.
"Janice," he said, "I want you to call Chicago, person to person for Allard Fielding at the Globe. Scramble the call, okay?" He replaced the handset.
"Fielding is the editor of that guy Mettner who wrote the Sudan piece," he said to Samson. "Imagine a guy who looks like a cross between W. C. Fields and Wallace Beery, add a temper as mean as a rattler on a bad day, and you got the picture. But he's a good man just the same. And Mettner knows Bolan."
The phone rang. He picked up the receiver. "Al?" he said. "Brognola here. I want you to do something for me. Your man in Central Africa. Yeah, Mettner. I want you to cable him a service message on my behalf..."
* * *
Nine hundred thirty miles to the south, three men sat by a pool in the roof garden of a condo penthouse in Miami, Florida. One of the men was black; both the others were swarthy, black haired, mustached. Each of them had flinty, expressionless eyes, as animated as an electric lamp with the current switched off.
The older of the two, who was around fifty-five, sipped a highball beneath a striped sun umbrella. Bright light reflected off the ocean winked from diamond and ruby rings, a gold identity bracelet and a heavy gold chain circling his neck. He was wearing white loafers, white sharkskin pants and a salmon-colored herringbone jacket over an open-necked sport shirt.
"I don't like loose ends," Giovanni said. "They louse up the smooth running of the act."
If the younger man disapproved of the mixed metaphor, it didn't show. His orange-peel complexion remained impassive as he bit off the end of a Corona Corona, spit it over the roof-garden balustrade and thumbed a gold lighter into flame. "We've got good people down there," he said. "It's just that the reports don't stack up yet."
"I'm not interested in reports, Lou." Giovanni's voice was gravelly and hoarse. "Either I get results or these good people you talk about get replaced."
Louis Mancini glanced across at the black man. He was wearing a pale lightweight suit and a jazzy foulard, but he looked as if he'd be happier in a uniform. "The colonel here is one hundred percent certain his organization
is secure," Mancini said.
"So what am I supposed to do?" Giovanni growled. "Stand up and cheer?"
"You have to understand, sir, that this is a very large tract of land," the black man said. "With communications not always like here. We know there is, or was, a spy with the caravan. We shall find him. He will be interrogated."
"Interrogated? Squeeze the fucker until his heart bursts and he spills all he knows. I want to know who's paying him and why, how they got on to us, who else is in the outfit, the ganz," Giovanni said.
"We shall try our best."
"You better. And your best better be good. There's one hell of a lot of money invested in this operation. You want the big payoff, you've got to come across with results. You read me?"
"My plane leaves in one hour," the African said. "In forty-eight at the latest you shall have positive news."
"We better have our own tame soldier check out the other end," Mancini said when the black officer had gone. "See if there's any relation between this and the fuck-up in Marseilles."
"Why would there be? We wasted the bastards, didn't we? But check it out if it makes you feel good."
"I guess so," Mancini said. "You figure he really believes that big payoff routine?"
"Who? The African? People will believe anything, if you string them along and promise a big enough prize."
Chapter Twelve
Bolan guided his horse between the stones of a rubbled slope that led gradually down to a plain. Somewhere ahead of him, the caravan with the camel carrying the container of uranium 235 was winding its way among the tall grasses and scrub oak that had supplanted the interminable thorn trees. At last, it seemed, they had crossed the southern fringe of the desert and were heading for a less desolate tract of land.
The Executioner rode slowly, the homing device open on the saddle in front of him. At first, turning the pointer to check that he was vectoring in on the sector where the bleeps were loudest, was almost a formality: the trail was well marked and there was no other route the caravan could have taken. Later in the afternoon, when he was climbing yet another of the limestone ridges with which the country was barred, he was forced to concentrate, for the track petered out in a wilderness of rock outcrops and it took a lot of effort to check and recheck the route.
Hunger clawed at his belly: the small amount of dried food he carried had been abandoned with the camel. His water bottle was empty. And he was anxious about the horse: apart form a few dried-up leaves on top of the cliff, the animal had neither eaten nor drunk since he escaped from Mahmoud and the soldiers.
Ripping a length of cloth from his burnoose to improvise a turban that would protect him from the scorching rays of the sun, he had buried the rest of his Arab disguise along with the "pilgrim" ID.
Thankful that he had been wearing a bush shirt and khakis beneath the robe, he was again beardless, in the person of Mack Bolan, a mineralogist who was equipped with a laissez-passer countersigned by His Excellency Hamid el-Karim, big wheel in the Sudanese administration in Khartoum.
The blacksuit was in the pouch clipped to his belt, both handguns were accessible in their quickdraw leather and the submachine gun was slung across his back. Only the stained skin remained to connect him with the mysterious traveler from Al Khureiba in Saudi Arabia.
Several times during the afternoon he stopped and tried to contact Courtney, but the radio remained obstinately silent.
On the crest of the ridge he reined in the horse and scanned the country beyond, which was becoming definitely less barren. He could see occasional squares of cultivation in the distance; vegetation covered the rolling contours more thickly. Far off toward a line of wooded hills that reared, blue-hazed, against the horizon, a long smear of dust marked the position of the caravan.
He passed the sweat-stained sleeve of his shirt across his brow and headed down. It wasn't often that he found himself in such rough terrain.
This was the exception that proved the rule.
Twice he had to skirt villages — no longer the mud-walled Arab variety but circles of African huts standing in the sweltering heat — but he saw nobody. Once, though, he thought he heard the rattle of distant rifle fire.
He was within a mile of the tree-covered hills when he saw a column of smoke rising above a mealie plantation off to the right. Soon afterward hooves thundered on hard ground and he trotted the horse out of sight behind a corn patch just before a squadron of Arab soldiers galloped past in a cloud of dust.
There were about thirty men, shouting, laughing and waving their rifles above their heads as they rode. Two of them carried the bound bodies of African women across their saddles; a third dragged behind his horse on a length of rope the twisting, lacerated corpse of a man.
Bolan waited in his hiding place until the dust had settled. He switched on the homer again. He was still receiving the bleeps loud and clear. He could afford the time to investigate.
Walking the horse warily between scattered trees, he advanced toward the column of smoke, the AutoMag in his right hand.
When he was about two hundred yards away he found a grassy hollow where the horse could graze. He tethered the animal to a sapling and continued on foot.
The village was completely hidden in a shallow depression. As he made his way down the slope Bolan smelled the bitter, familiar odors of burning and death.
Most of the inhabitants had fled, but there were a dozen bodies sprawled in the dusty space enclosed by a ring of gutted huts. The lucky ones had been shot. Others had been hacked almost to pieces with saber strokes. Two of the men had been castrated. Muslim fundamentalists, the Executioner knew, believed that this grisly rite barred the victim from entry into Paradise. He wondered what kind of nirvana they expected for themselves.
Compressing his lips, he strode farther into the sacked village. The flames had died down, but half a dozen of the smoldering huts still spiraled smoke into the air. The only structure standing was the stone-built end wall of a shack considerably larger than the others.
He walked around the corner of the wall... and stopped dead in his tracks.
The African — the village headman? a teacher? — had been wearing a white linen jacket with a shirt and necktie. His pants had been removed and lay crumpled in the dust. He had been impaled on a sharpened stake planted in the ground with his wrists wired together behind his back, and small sacks filled with stones had been roped to his naked feet. The stake was about eight feet high. Once the pointed end had been forced into his body, the killers had left him there, certain that his frenzied struggles, plus the weights on his feet, would gradually force the wooden staff up through his intestines and belly until the point pierced a vital organ.
Blood stained the insides of his thighs, glistened on the peeled wood of the stake and lay congealed on the earth below. The pitiless sun flashed from a pair of spectacles still perched on the nose above the man's soundlessly screaming mouth. The reddened point of the stake had pierced the linen jacket near the center button.
Bolan reckoned it had taken him a long time to die, and that the final release must have been within the past fifteen minutes. Gritting his teeth, he surveyed the remains of the building beyond the wall.
It had been made of wood, but all that remained was a tangle of charred embers from which wisps of smoke still rose. It had clearly been some kind of school. Hardwood desks with iron frames had escaped the conflagration and still stood upright among the debris.
The Executioner turned to look at the end wall.
A scorched teacher's desk had fallen forward among the smoldering timbers of a rostrum. Behind it a slate board was still attached to the plaster. Glancing at the chalked letters and figures, Bolan drew in his breath with a hiss of surprise. The top line read: Explosive power derived from energy liberated by (noncontrolled) chain reaction.
Beneath this was a diagram accompanied by the deadly Einsteinian equation that lay at the root of all atomic power: E= mc2.
And then the line: If
beryllium is used to slow down the neutron bombardment when the fission of uranium is...
The writing tailed off halfway down the board, presumably when the teacher had been interrupted by the Arab attack and dragged out to the stake.
Bolan whistled as he took in text and formulae. "Nuclear physics out here!" he murmured. "I guess the trail's warming up at last!"
Hurrying back to the horse, he rounded the smoking remains of a burned-out hut and came upon the body of a woman sprawled on her back. She had a slip of paper clutched in one hand.
Gently Bolan disengaged it from the dead fingers. It was a sheet from a looseleaf notebook. He smoothed it out and read:
Radium Family: Clearly the teacher so cruelly impaled had been giving a course in advanced physics when the village had come under attack.
Bolan had a lot to think about as he remounted and rode off along the trail.
Wherever the nuclear thieves were conveying the stolen uranium 235, it looked as if they were organizing courses of instruction in its use among the dissident Africans. It followed then that the thieves, overtly or covertly, were hostile to the official Sudanese government in Khartoum. Whether the sack of this particular village by the Arab cavalry had anything to do with this, or whether it was merely a coincidence, he had no way of knowing.
Remembering that it was the teacher who had been most brutally killed, the Executioner figured the odds were on the former choice: the raid could have been part of a systematic campaign to "discourage" tribes considered backward from advancing their scientific education.
Whatever, it was an even bet that the final destination of the lead canister and its sinister cargo was not too far away.
A few miles farther among the wooded hills, Bolan stopped once more on a crest and took a small but powerful pair of binoculars from the pouch at his waist. Three ridges away, he could clearly spot the caravan traversing a clearing. The Zeiss lenses showed him the striped blanket still in position on the camel he was trailing.
Anvil of Hell Page 11