Anvil of Hell

by Don Pendleton

  By ten o'clock it was penetratingly cold.

  During his next halt, he stripped, took the blacksuit from his pouch, put it on and then donned his outer clothing. He hung the parang from his belt, replaced the mess tin at the bottom of the pouch and lowered the water-filled condom gently into it, after he had permitted himself a single sip. He slung the plastic sheet over his shoulders, tied the two top ends beneath his chin and walked on.

  Even with this double insulation, he was still chilled to the bone. Hunger gnawed at his belly. He had not eaten for thirty hours. But it was his preoccupation with thirst that was becoming obsessional.

  In a detached way, he observed the weakening of his body. From time to time his even stride was broken by a stagger, a stumble. If his thoughts wandered to relieve the monotony of his passage through the interminable thorn trees, there was a tendency to veer off course, to lurch away from his correct line. Twice he tripped on some projection piercing the gravel floor of the desert and fell, grazing his hands and knees.

  He knew that the human organism needed salt for survival, that the salt lost in sweat and wasted with physical exertion needed to be replaced. He knew that his excessive fatigue, the occasional twinges of nausea, a muscular cramp that locked his calf, were signs of salt deficiency. He knew that in a normal diet there was a daily intake of half an ounce of salt.

  And he remembered the instructor on the survival course in Hereford. "The remedy for this is to take a pinch of salt in a pint of water."

  There were salt tablets in his medical kit, but he couldn't waste a whole pint of water. Swallowing a tablet whole or taking one with just a sip of the precious water would provoke, Bolan knew, stomach cramps. He gritted his teeth and plodded on.

  The first blister appeared at a quarter after four. It was on his left heel. He lowered himself wearily to the ground, removed his combat boot, peeled off the sock and stuck a Band-Aid over the sore place. He permitted himself a second sip of water. No salt. That — the tiniest fragment of a tablet — would have to wait until he allowed himself something approaching a gulp, then he halted at sunrise to rest for the day.

  It seemed to him that he took a long time to push himself upright, an undue amount of energy to coax his legs into forward motion.

  He stopped when the sky on his right lightened noticeably and the stars began to fade. The spiny silhouettes of the thorn trees surrounded him on every side.

  It was not until thirty minutes later, when the sun had already flared into sight above the eastern horizon, that he found suitable shelter.

  One of the thorn trees had at some time or other become uprooted. There was a slight hollow where the skeletal strands had pulled free of the gravel, and the dead trunk itself, although it was no more than twelve inches in diameter, would provide the smallest vestige of shade.

  Swaying on his feet, Bolan deliberated. Should he use the parang to increase the depth of the hollow?

  He rejected the idea. The amount of energy he would have to expend would be counterproductive.

  He punched holes on one side of the plastic sheet, threaded them onto the dead roots and stretched the sheet over the hollow, securing the lower side with stones. As a tent it was kind of basic: the sheet was only four feet square and he would have to lie curled up all day if he wished to keep every part of his six-foot-plus frame away from the assault of the sun. It would still be intolerably hot. But it was better than nothing.

  He crawled into the hollow, soaked with sweat already.

  Preoccupied as he'd been to find shelter, he'd seen no sign of the trail.

  He had looked for, and failed to find, evidence of desert vegetation that could be chewed for moisture or boiled up for food — the carob with its edible seed pods; wild gourds; stapelia, the fat-spined plant whose star-shaped "carrion flowers" give off the stench of rotting meat.

  There were plenty of thorn trees.

  Period.

  Bolan had no idea how far he had traveled during the night. He had been walking for nine hours. Dare he estimate eighteen miles? Fifteen? Twelve?

  However far it was, he knew it would be less the next night. Less still — if he was able to stand upright and walk — the one after that. Allowing that he had maybe forty miles to cover, and the longest he could hope to survive was three days, the equation matching time against distance against strength and supplies looked increasingly gloomy.

  Hell, there was nothing he could do but press on. He took his gulp of water, his pinch of salt, and prepared to sweat out the day.

  The day was more hellish than the night.

  Cramped beneath his pint-size, inadequate shelter, Bolan suffered the tortures of the damned while the sun, blazing remorselessly down on the dust-dry plain, inched its way across the colorless sky toward the west.

  Spiderlike, the iron-hard spiky shadows of the thorn trees moved as slowly in the opposite direction.

  Beneath the plastic sheet, the heat was a ferocious living thing, attacking his muscles, sinews and nerves, sapping what little strength he had left, grilling the blood in his veins. His head ached abominably, his belly felt bruised. Each time his swollen tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, he rationed himself a sip of the water, but this served only to emphasize the sandpaper rawness of his throat and increase the pain clawing his guts.

  Four or five times during the inferno of the afternoon he was forced to quit the improvised tent and brave the scorching direct rays of the sun in order to ease the cramps provoked by his hunched position beneath the sheet. Each time the hammer blows of that heat struck him, the ache in his head got worse.

  Once an airplane labored across the sky to the east, but apart from that no living thing disturbed the windless silence of the desert. Bolan was reminded of an Australian sheep farmer he met one time in a bar in Singapore. "Traveling the outback," the old man had said, "I get worried when I see no skulls, no bones... because that means I'm lost."

  Was the Executioner lost? He was almost past caring when at last the sun sank from sight and he rose giddily to his feet.

  Once more he checked over the components of his nightmare trek. Handgun, harness, parang... mess tin in the pouch with knotted condom on top, wadded handkerchief and strip of cloth on one side, medical supplies and basic survival kit in the pockets of the bush shirt...

  He had stripped off the blacksuit at the start of the day because although an extra layer of clothing trapped cooling air, he knew it would have become sodden with sweat and chilled him when the temperature dropped at night. Now, moving slowly with heavy limbs, he undressed and put it on again, then pulled on his pants and bush shirt.

  He applied a fresh Band-Aid to his blistered heel and laced his combat boots.

  Then, checking his direction with the compass, he tied the plastic sheet around his shoulders and lurched off into the gathering dark.

  Bolan's recollection of that second night was never precise. He retained a confused impression of determination struggling to overcome pain and exhaustion — start... stagger... stumble... stop. Rest. One sip of water. Start again... stumble... stop... take five...

  World without end.

  But for the warrior, no "amen."

  When, after countless eternities, the sky finally began to pale in the east, he was plodding on bent almost double, with a pause between each step, the breath rasping in his raw throat.

  This day there was no cloud bank to delay the sun's attack. It rose above the desert like a blazing ball of fire, a huge orb of blinding brilliance that splashed scarlet over a sky reflected in the stones flooring the plain, a furnace dissipating the night mist still shrouding the thorn trees.

  There were still thorn trees all around.

  Bolan cursed the thorn trees. He cursed the whole desert, he cursed his hunger, his thirst, his pain, his total fatigue. He saw with surprise that some of the red staining the stones was blood from his own feet. He cursed the thorn trees again. The spiny, goddamned deadwood...

  But wait!


  Was he hallucinating, or was there finally, after all, a shape ahead that contrasted with the eternal, endless woody spikes?

  He tried to swallow, focusing bloodshot eyes.

  It was no mirage.

  One hundred... ninety... eighty agonizing yards ahead, something square-cut, rectangular loomed through the mist.

  Bolan forced his unwilling limbs to move faster.

  Was it the beginning of an African village? A hut where he could rest up during the hours of daylight? A rock outcrop even?

  He strained his eyes, trying to blink away the iron filings strewn beneath the lids.

  The veils of mist wreathing the shape withdrew.

  Bolan halted in his tracks, aghast. His jaw dropped in astonishment. A croak of disbelief escaped between his cracked lips. Slowly he lowered himself to the ground.

  The silhouette rising above the stunted thorns, unmistakable with its soft top and vertical lines, was that of an abandoned Land Rover.

  Chapter Twenty

  The nearest Central African airport to Zemio was at Bangui, the republic's capital, 350 miles to the west. There was a local field at Isiro, only two hundred miles to the south, but that was still in Zaire and there would be land frontiers to cross. Jason Mettner took a chance, overflew the border and put the Beechcraft down on a strip of savannah a couple miles out of town.

  Helmeted police in a jeep arrived before he had time to close the canopy and lock the hatch. What the hell did he think he was doing? Who did he think he was? Didn't he know there were rules?

  Mettner played dumb. A man with dollars in his pocket, but dumb. He hadn't realized, he really thought, since there was no field...

  His papers were okay. And because the Globe was one of the few English language newspapers on sale in the republic, his story about an exclusive on the riches of the diamond mines in the interior was believed. He got a ride into town aboard the jeep.

  The hotel could have been a mirror image of the one he had stayed at in El Da'ein. He saw the same front porch railed with the same cracked and peeling wood, the same sunbaked yard with the same beat-up pickups parked there. He sat under similar fans stirring air that was equally stale while he emptied his hip flask into the tepid Coke that seemed to have ritual significance in central Africa.

  "Funny you should have arrived in a plane," the desk clerk who served the drink said. "Second since the beginning of the month. There's no field here to put down."

  "Oh, yeah?" Meaner feigned indifference. "So who was the other pilot? Another scribe from the New World?"

  "Search me." The clerk figured he was into the American scene. He chewed gum, slicked back his hair, wore a flowered shirt over striped peg-top pants that could have come from a 1940 Cab Calloway movie. "The man said he was a prospector who lost his way checking out minerals in the Sudan. Dropped out of the sky in a bird, but he never claimed back the chopper when he left. Funny that, don't you think?"

  "Very droll," Meaner said. "American guy?"

  "You tell me. I never saw his papers. Tall man with blue eyes, stayed across the street at the Excelsior. Maybe they could even tell you his name."

  They couldn't. The visitor had filled in papers, but they had since disappeared. "Didn't see much of him," the proprietor said. "Man spent half his time around the cable office."

  "No kidding!" Meaner said. "Maybe he wanted to bet on a horse."

  The Watusi kid behind the grille at the cable office counter didn't think so. "Man had something on his mind, all right," he confided, "but it wasn't a horse race. Me, I didn't handle all his business. But Kitty there, she had a time, I'm telling you. Tried not to lose his cool, but you could tell. It was important to him to contact these people — phone, cable, telegram, he tried them all. Just had to reach somebody."

  "And did he?"

  The kid shook his head. "Not a damn one. Musta been something screwy with the communications that week. Sunspots or whatever. Maybe a broken — what you call it? — satellite."

  "And he was mad because you couldn't connect?"

  "Was he ever! But I'm telling you..." the kid leaned across the counter toward the grille "...Zemio, it isn't exactly the hub of the world communications-wise."

  "You said 'people.' How many did he try to reach?"

  The young man scratched his head. "Two? Three? As I said, Kitty handled most of it. I only came on the scene when we were trying to route the stuff through Zaire. Bukama it was. That time, there was one for Khartoum and a couple for the States."

  Meaner lit a cigarette. He stroked his unshaved jaw. Courtney, Brognola, Langley, perhaps? He could buy that. "Could I speak with Kitty?"

  "If you don't mind a six-hour journey in a bus. She went back home to Uganda at the end of last week."

  "Shit!" Meaner said. "How long ago was this?"

  "Middle of last week. Man was here two, three days. I guess he arrived in town maybe nine days ago." He grinned. "They say he flew in from the Sudan in a helicopter!"

  "So they tell me. But it seems he left without it. Would you have copies on file..." the newspaperman peeled a couple of bills from a roll "...of those cables he tried to send?"

  "No. Only those that connect. If we filed the ones that don't make it, we'd have to build a new office."

  Meaner shoved the bills under the grille anyway. "One last question," he said. "Or maybe two. Do you recall the name signed on those cable forms, the sender's name? Would it have been Bolan?"

  "Could be. I'd like to help you, mister, but to be honest I just don't remember."

  "Okay. Did the guy put through a phone call — did anyone put through a phone call — to Zaire while he was here? To a hotel in Bukama?"

  "Not while I was in the office."

  Mettner resigned himself to legwork. It was an eighty-five to fifteen chance that the "tall man with blue eyes" was Bolan. Even if the kid here couldn't remember it, the girl at Bukama confirmed that at least cables had been signed with that name. But the hotel reservation?

  The newspaperman returned to the Excelsior. The blue-eyed guy whose name had been lost had made no phone calls from the hotel.

  He checked out the other hotels in town. There were only four that rated. He struck pay dirt at the third.

  The owner was a Belgian refugee who had fled from the Congo just before it shook off the colonialist yoke and turned into Zaire. His wife, a faded blonde of fifty, acted as waitress, chambermaid and receptionist. As cashier, too, Mettner suspected. He pushed a little money her way before asking his questions.

  "Impossible, tu sais, de trouver du personnel dans cette ville," she told him — no way can you find help in this town.

  Mettner backed off from the overfamiliar second person singular. Was every female in this part of Africa suffering from hot pants?

  The woman delivered just the same. Everything was written down, logged with two sets of figures against it, one for the tax collector, one for personal use. And, yes, a white foreigner had indeed called through to Bukama some days ago. By chance — quite by chance, you understand; it was not her habit to listen in to calls made by clients, even if, like this one, they were not staying at the hotel; most certainly not — quite by chance she had overheard one end of the conversation. And the man had made a reservation there. And the name? Bolton...? Bolder...? Boston...? Indeed, yes: Bolan, that was it!

  "Tall, dark guy with blue eyes in a rugged face?" Mettner suggested.

  The woman stared at him. "But no. Not at all. He was tall, certainly, this one. But thin, with grey hair and brown eyes. He was very chic, very — how do you say? — elegant, distinguished."

  "An American?"

  She shrugged. "Possibly. I do not think so. More German. Or perhaps Swedish? But he spoke good English. Tres correct."

  "Was he staying in town?"

  "I do not think so, monsieur. He had some business with a flying machine abandoned out on the savannah. But he arrived and left in a Mercedes. Very expensive. Evidently, from the state of the vehicle, he had tr
aveled a long distance."

  Mettner thanked her and left.

  Scattering chickens and a starving dog across the dusty roadway as he strode off, the newspaperman was in a pensive mood. He had been expecting Bolan in Zaire and nobody had shown; now he had two Bolans in this hick town in the armpit of Africa! Was there any connection between them?

  He could find none. Making the round of stores, bars, restaurants and agencies the following day, he ran across a number of people who had seen or done business with the blue-eyed man, very few who had noticed the other, none who had seen them together. The dollar bills he scattered like confetti brought him some interesting intel.

  The nameless blue-eyed guy from the Excelsior had bought a used Hasselblad camera from a retired journalist who had once worked for a propaganda sheet owned by the "Emperor" Bokassa. He had purchased a quantity of small items from a hardware store — items that suggested he was about to start out on a journey overland. He had made a lot of inquiries concerning a printer. Was there a specialized printer in town who was reliable and also discreet?

  Mettner's news nose started at once to sniff: Fake certificates? Diplomas? Passes or ID papers? He didn't flush out any printer admitting to that particular kind of work; in fact everyone became unusually "discreet," almost to the point of reticence, whenever the subject was raised. But it was after he had made a zero score at a back street duplicating and secretarial agency that he struck lucky.

  It was dusk, and the heat of the day still lay heavy beneath the banana trees and date palms at the end of the street, when he heard a cheerful, "Hey! Watcha know!" as he trod down the steps from the agency stoop to the sunbaked roadway.

  He turned and saw the young Watusi he had met at the cable office.

  "Don't know if it would interest you," the kid began, "but there's this buddy of mine who ran across your blue-eyed boy last week. And he wasn't trying to send a cable, either."