Anvil of Hell

by Don Pendleton

  "A Khartoum official?"

  "Hamid el-Karim. Do you mean you didn't know? He's the head of..."

  "Silence!" el-Karim shouted.

  "I don't believe it," Halakaz said blankly. "That cannot be true."

  "I can prove it to you. Now."

  "I challenge you to do so, old chap."

  Very slowly, his eyes on Courtney's gun, Bolan reached into the breast pocket of the coveralls. With two fingers, he pulled out three small photographs and then the miniaturized recorder he had carried with him all the time in the money belt.

  "These pictures show him in the official reception office at his home in Khartoum," he said. "You can see the arms, the crest, the wording, the Sudanese flag by the wall map..." He tossed the prints onto the desk.

  While Halakaz was staring at them in disbelief, he switched on the tiny recorder. They could hear el-Karim's faint but distinct voice.

  "...one or two cutthroat bands of renegade blacks... We Muslims here in the north...continually being misrepresented by the backward Negroes — The poor fools fancy themselves exploited... There are, I am afraid, various charges... Do not worry, Monsieur Bolan. Discretion is assured..."

  Bolan thumbed the switch. Over the hubbub of angry voices he said to Halakaz, "It could be faked, of course. And so could the photos. But since I knew nothing until today of el-Karim's involvement with your plan, why would I bother? At least they should show you that my warning must be carefully considered."

  "What is this nonsense?" el-Karim's voice rose querulously above the confusion. "What is this fool Russian on about? What has a mineral prospector to do with the spy in the caravan? Why should he be here..."

  "You greedy bloody fool!" Courtney shouted. "This is the spy in the caravan! I hired you to do a specific job — organize that same caravan. You knew I was running the team protecting it. You bloody knew! But you weren't content with the fat sum you were being paid. You had to line your beastly pocket with some dirty deal on the side, and then keep it secret."

  "You don't understand! I didn't..."

  "I understand that your duplicity could have bitched the whole damned operation, for Christ's sake."

  El-Karim had gone a sickly gray color. "I... I don't know what you m-m-mean," he stammered. "I was told there would be a spy traveling with the caravan, that I was to order Ogada and Habibi to identify him, but that he was to be allowed to find and follow the decoy canister. All that was done. It was not my fault that..."

  "I'm not talking about the caravan," Courtney yelled. "Was it part of your job to receive the spy in your own house and let him bribe you? I knew the bastard would be tagging along. I knew he'd be disguised as a pilgrim. If you'd just checked with me as you were supposed to do, I could have told you he was the one to watch. If you'd just mentioned the name Bolan, we'd have guessed he meant to use your papers as well as his Arab ID and the whole ghastly mess could have been avoided."

  "But he was a Russian government mineralogist. I saw no connection with the caravan. It was part of my normal cover activity to issue..."

  "You saw," Courtney grated. "Like all politicians, you saw nothing but the chance to stuff your wallet, and you took it without any heed of the consequences. Bolan will die, but because of your stupidity he has caused us all a fantastic amount of trouble. And for that you're damned well going to pay."

  "I swear that I..."

  "Shoot him," Giovanni said suddenly. His face had been darkening throughout the exchange, and now the flush of anger suffusing his cheeks had spread to his thick neck.

  "A pleasure, my dear fellow," Courtney said. The muzzle of the Beretta shifted from Bolan to the Arab.

  The Executioner tensed. But no, Courtney was too far away: he could bring the gun back and fire before Bolan covered half the distance between them.

  Hamid el-Karim was on his knees, the fine bones of his swarthy face outlined in a dew of sweat. "No!" he cried. "No, no, I beg of you..."

  The Beretta spit fire, its report unexpectedly loud in the rock-walled room. El-Karim jerked back onto his heels, staring with horror at the blood spurting between fingers raised involuntarily to cover his chest. The Englishman fired again, and the impact of the 9 mm slug crashed the man over onto his back. He tried to sit up, groaned then sank to the floor again. Courtney pumped three more shots into the body twitching under the scarlet-stained robes, then trained the automatic back on Bolan.

  When finally the convulsive movements had stopped, Giovanni nodded. "I always told you it would be smarter to stay away from the politicos," he said.

  Courtney shrugged. "He had the connections."

  Halakaz was on his feet behind the desk. His face had blanched at the cold-blooded execution. Now, in a hoarse voice, he said accusingly, "Just a minute. Am I to understand, then, that this man..." he gestured at the body on the floor "...was, in fact, a Khartoum government official after all?"

  "Well, natch," Mancini sneered. "Jesus, how do you think caravans mainly composed of Arab mercenaries have been able time and again to pass through the goddamn country unquestioned over the past three years? Who the hell d'you imagine fixed up the escorts that brought them each time as far as the forest?"

  "But in view of the plan, old chap, surely it would have been better..."

  "The plan!" Giovanni's sidekick laughed. "Shit, are you really dumb enough to believe that persons as smart as Don Giovanni and his associates would really spend all that loot, go to all this trouble just to help a handful of self-seeking guerrillas and chisel a couple of two-bit mining concessions out of them? Be your age... General. And don't call me 'old chap.'"

  Giovanni nodded again. "Face it, General," he said. "Now that the base itself is completed, once those missiles blast off, your use is at an end. I mean, like it's curtains for you and yours."

  "But the missiles?" Halakaz whispered. "Where...?"

  "Read the papers," Giovanni said shortly. "If you still got eyes to see with."

  Faced with the ruin of his hopes in a couple of sentences, General Halakaz behaved with restraint. Compressing his lips, he exchanged a glance with the Executioner and subsided quietly into the swivel chair behind his desk.

  Courtney kept the Beretta lined up with Bolan's chest. Bolan eyed it speculatively. Assuming he was using at least the 15-round box magazine, and that this had been fully charged, there were still ten shots left in the gun — too many to risk attempting a decoy move, as he had done with the forest sniper, for a second time. He decided to wait.

  "As we were saying," the Englishman resumed, "before we were interrupted by this jumped-up native boy..."

  "I say, I say! Hardly the way one expects a racially pure English milord to talk!"

  Astoundingly, the voice, with its exaggerated mimicry of Courtney's accent, seemed to come out of the air.

  Courtney kept his eyes on the warrior, but the other three men swung around. No other person had come into the room. For once Giovanni was at a loss. "What the hell...? Who are... Shit, what did you..."

  "I said that's hardly the way for a jolly old Englishman, pillar of the Raj and all that, to talk, by Jove," the voice repeated.

  Courtney's eyes glinted. "I'm not an Englishman," he snapped in spite of himself. "My father was Irish."

  "Ah, that accounts for it then." This time it was Jason Mettner's normal voice. "Went to the IRA backstab and bomb-throwing school, no doubt. I thought all that frightfully frightful and deucedly top-hole blarney was laid on a bit thick/'

  "The grating!" Mancini shouted suddenly, realizing where the voice was coming from. He snatched a Browning automatic from the pocket of his sharkskin jacket.

  At the same time, Courtney, his face black with rage, whipped around and loosed a 3-shot burst at the iron grill-work set in the wall.

  Simultaneously they got wise to the danger. As the slugs spanged off the metal and ricocheted with shrill screams around the office, they hurled themselves to the floor.

  Bolan was the first to recover. He had been expecting
the interruption. Big Thunder was still lying on the general's desk, along with the shoulder rig and waist harness, as they had been when he was taken away to the interrogation cell. Reaching up to seize the belt, he scythed the whole harness across the desk top and swept the AutoMag to the ground in a shower of charts and papers.

  He swooped to retrieve the heavy stainless-steel autoloader — only to find that Courtney was already into a crouch, with the Beretta aimed at his belly.

  Still reclining on one elbow, Bolan blasted off a single round. It was a lucky shot. The 240-grain boattail struck halfway along the Beretta's barrel and spun it from the Englishman's hand.

  Courtney hollered, snatching his hand back as if it had been plunged in molten lead, shaking his fingers to ease the agony.

  Mancini aimed the Browning at Bolan, but the grating had not exhausted its surprises. Before the hood could press the trigger, or Bolan could realign Big Thunder, the muzzle of an M-16 poking between the bars belched flame. At a range of no more than twenty feet the high-velocity 5.56 mm slug drilled Mancini between the shoulder blades, tore away the top of his heart and punched an exit through the sternum that left scarcely a stain on the sharkskin. He went down like a felled tree and didn't move.

  Giovanni was unarmed. For a heavy man he could move fast. Before Bolan recovered from the success of his snap shot or took in the fact that Mettner had probably saved his life, the capo, followed closely by Courtney, was through the door and pounding down the corridor toward the caverns.

  Halakaz, in the meantime, had placidly regained his seat. He must have been touched by a ricochet because his right hand was clenched over his left bicep and the fingers were red. He made no move to pick up his Combat Magnum, which still lay on the desk.

  "General," Bolan said urgently, "are you on our side?"

  "I'm afraid I seem to have no side left to be on, old chap," Halakaz said sadly. "From now on, you had better regard us as neutral. And go ahead with whatever it was you came here to do."

  "Okay," Bolan said after a moment's pause. It wasn't what he'd hoped for, but it was better than nothing. "Mettner, can you find your way back to the big cave, where the reactor is?"

  "Can do, or if I can't there's a lady guide," the newspaperman replied through the grating.

  "Right. Go there and we'll join forces. Behind the halftracks, okay? For weapons we've got the M-16 and my own gun. Courtney's Beretta is buckled and useless. I'll see if el-Karim was armed — No, he wasn't. But we do have the torpedo's Browning. And..." he paused and looked inquiringly at Halakaz, who stared impassively back at him "...yeah, we got a Combat Magnum six-shot."

  He picked up the big revolver from the desk and stuffed it, as well as the Browning, into his waistband. "Anything more lethal," he said, "we'll have to win from the other side. See you there."

  "We're on our way."

  Bolan left the office, the AutoMag in his right hand. As he opened the door, Halakaz pressed down a switch and started to speak into a desk mike in front of him.

  "This is General Halakaz," he heard the words boom from PA speakers all over the underground base. "Here is an urgent message for all Anya Nya personnel. There are two groups of Europeans at large in our fortress — our so-called allies and another. There might be fighting between them. You are not — repeat not — to take any part whatever in this conflict. Stop all work immediately and proceed to Oloron. Retain your arms but take no part in any combat. Do not use them unless anyone tries to requisition them. If they do, you may defend yourselves... I repeat: stop work immediately and return to Oloron."

  "So far," Bolan murmured to himself as he stole toward the cavern, "so good. All we've got left is the tough part..."

  Chapter Thirty

  General Hartley was in the control room with Ogada and Azziz Habibi. The American, as well as Habibi and the Mafia physicist killed by Bolan after the helicopter chase, had been responsible for the concept and overall design of the Oloron base — in particular for the installation and programming of the missiles awaiting countdown in their silos. Habibi, a Libyan ex-revolutionary originally financed by Khaddafi, had fallen for the big-money lure after a brilliant hi-tech career had taken him from Leipzig, East Germany, to Silicon Valley via MIT and Oxford University, England.

  Watched by the colonel who had safely shepherded the final installment of the precious U-235 isotope halfway across Africa, the two nuclear experts were now checking out every detail of the prelaunch drill before the countdown started at 2300 hours.

  "It is essential," Hartley said, strutting up and down in his emphatic birdlike way, "that the radio messages, all of them, are beamed at exactly the same time. There must be no chance of any cross-checks until each ultimatum is delivered. So we must verify the coaxial..."

  He stopped in midsentence. The voice of Halakaz was crackling from the PA speaker above the computer console.

  "What's he playing at? What the hell can that mean?" Habibi said blankly.

  "Trouble," Hartley snapped. "I always said the discipline was too damned slack in this outfit." He walked to the control-room window and stared down into the main cavern.

  There was a sound of rushing feet along the gallery that led to the operations center. Giovanni and Courtney burst into the room, panting. "Son of a bitch!" the mafioso gasped. "Somebody's got to go back down there and shut his mouth."

  "What happened?" Hartley demanded. "Who is it? What's this fighting?"

  "Bolan," Giovanni snarled. "He got a helper someplace. At least one. The bastard wasted Lou. Now they got irons, too." He joined Hartley at the window. African workmen were already streaming from the sector that contained the partially completed atomic plant, heading for double steel doors set in the far rock face. Among them were several groups of soldiers, their rifles slung.

  The sounds of hammering had stopped, the forklifts were silent and the only noise to be heard over the shuffling of feet was the diminuendo whine of the generators as they spun to a standstill.

  "Jesus!" Giovanni foamed. He snatched a microphone from the transmitter console and pressed a switch. Now it was his voice that echoed furiously around the underground fortress.

  "Get back to work, all of you. Right now. Any technician leaving his post will be shot... Lanzmann, Delaney, Gianelli, round up these creeps and herd them back. We've got to have them for the prelaunch maneuvers. Plug any that refuse. Get our own boys together and issue the Ingrams. I want this stinking dump working full blast again in fifteen minutes..."

  Colonel Ogada had remained silent throughout the drama. Now he walked to the window. "Maybe I could help, Mr. Giovanni?" he offered. "The soldiers have been under my command for..."

  "Fuck you," Giovanni raged. "You and that tinpot doorman with the chestful of medals. Is this the kind of thanks we get for all we did on account of you punks?"

  "Maybe the colonel's got something, Don Giovanni," Azziz Habibi put in. "The work force would be more likely to listen to orders if they came from him, don't you think?"

  "The important thing is surely to get them back," Ogada said, "so that the Khartoum ultimatum goes out on schedule."

  Giovanni's mouth dropped open. "The Khartoum...? Oh, uh, yeah, sure. Of course. The ultimatum. So okay, you get along out there and tell them who's boss here."

  "Good. Right idea. A voice they trust," Hartley put in.

  "I'll go with him," Courtney said with a meaningful glance at Giovanni. The two men left the control room, the Englishman taking an automatic from Habibi's outstretched hand as he followed Ogada. He dropped the gun into the side pocket of his jacket.

  Two-thirds of the labor force had disappeared through the steel doors before Ogada and Courtney joined a dozen armed Europeans at the far end of the gallery.

  "Stop!" Courtney shouted. "Get back to your work, damn you. Return at once to the machines where you belong."

  The file of Africans below looked up impassively and continued to stream through the doors.

  "Get back, I say," Courtney scr
eamed, "or we shall start shooting to show who's master here."

  The soldiers and workers continued to quietly walk out.

  Ogada shook his head. "That is not the way," he said. "Let me."

  He advanced to the rail. "Our European friends forget themselves," he called. "But there is, after all, much at stake. The general, unfortunately, has been taken ill. He does not know what he is saying. Now, will you please all return to your jobs and perhaps we can get on with what is really important — the subjugation of Khartoum."

  For the first time, the main body of the exodus wavered. Some of the workers halted, milling around the doors. Soldiers stopped and looked up at their officer. A low grumble of questions started at the rear of the crowd and rapidly spread.

  "Don't believe him! General Halakaz is in perfect health. We have been used by these white adventurers, and Khartoum is not the target at all!" The voice this time was Mtambole's; it came from another gallery on the far side of the cavern. "So obey your orders, stay neutral, and return at once to Oloron."

  There was confusion on the shop floor. The workers continued to eddy left and right; the soldiers looked from one colonel to the other. Then Halakaz himself, uniform as resplendent as ever, appeared beside Colonel Mtambole. He was still clutching his left arm, but his voice was strong and authoritative. "There is nothing the matter with me," he roared. "Pay no attention to these foreign racketeers. They have been using us. The missiles are not intended for Khartoum at all. Now do what you are told. Go home and await further orders."

  At once the crowd formed into a single stream, swaying toward the doors.

  Courtney was hysterical with rage. "All right, then, you rebellious buggers," he seethed. "You asked for it!"

  He gestured to the white technicians surrounding him and a ragged burst of fire crackled from the miscellany of revolvers and automatics wielded by the men on the gallery.

  The Africans beneath surged and wavered once more. There were people lying on the ground. But the majority pressed forward to flood through the doors; the soldiers among them wheeled smartly out, unslung their rifles and sank to their knees in the firing position. Their first volley crashed out as Courtney's men were joined by two more technicians carrying half a dozen Ingrams.