Flight 741

by Don Pendleton

  He owed the Raven plenty, and he was anxious to begin repaying all those debts in full.

  * * *

  For Julie Drake, the uniform was better than a suit of armor. It restored a measure of her wounded pride, her dignity. But there was more to her recovery than simply putting on some clothes. She recognized some- thing more each time she raised her eyes and found Steve Korning watching, studying her face with anguish written on his own.

  She didn't know what to say, and so she welcomed ail the countless tasks that went along with the evacuation of a grounded 747. Keeping busy drove the nervousness away, and it would give her time to think, rehearse her words before she bungled everything and made herself seem foolish in his eyes.

  She had to thank him, certainly — but thanks alone were so inadequate for all that he had suffered. She longed to feel his arms around her as she had when they were huddling beneath the guns... but that would have to wait for another time, provided that she got the chance.

  A passenger had tried to help her, too, and she would have to check the roster soon to learn his name and thank him properly — but something in her heart went out to Steven now.

  If she was wrong about her feelings, there was nothing lost.

  If she was right...

  She felt the color rising in her cheeks again, and quickly turned her back to Steven, busying herself with chores. The gunners were relaxed for once, their scrutiny more casual than any other time since they had seized the plane.

  Earlier, it would have been the perfect signal for a break. But now, with freedom in the bag, there seemed no point in trying to antagonize their captors.

  The Raven could have kept them all aboard the 747 until dawn, but Julie thought the darkness might allow him an easier escape. The Lebanese would not attempt to hinder him, of course; her training classes with the airline had included briefings on the several governments that harbor and encourage terrorists while keeping up a civilized facade. Among them, Lebanon was known for its confusion, impotence and willingness to overlook the violent acts of certain Muslim terrorists.

  But it was over now, or nearly so. A few more hours and they would be at liberty. Once home, she would demand a transfer to domestic flights. Surrendering the extra pay was nothing in comparison to living with the fear that Julie knew would never leave her now, if she continued working international.

  It wasn't fair that she should have to live with fear, but life was seldom fair. The good died young, the evil seemed to live forever, and the average man or woman just kept trying to survive. No point in looking for a cosmic plan behind it all, she realized. It was a crapshoot, and if anybody came out even in the end, they ought to count it as a victory.

  She glanced in Steven's direction, found him busy with the passengers and spent a moment studying his face in profile. She saw strength, integrity, a caring.

  Slow down, she warned herself. The past two days had put her through a blender, physically and mentally. She wasn't ready yet to trust her own emotions when it came to the extremes. She needed time to think, to rearrange her life, but nothing said she had to do it all alone.

  But first things first. And number one was getting off this plane as soon as possible. With singleness of purpose, Julie concentrated on her job, responding to the questions of excited passengers as best she could. She didn't have the answers they required, but that was nothing new. God knows, she didn't even have the answers for herself.

  But she would find them, no matter where she had to look.

  And maybe — just maybe — she could find someone to help her with her search.

  * * *

  The airport terminal was jammed with military personnel, police, assorted diplomats and network television crews. Mike Blanski raised a hand to screen his battered face from cameras aimed in his direction, veering away from others who were obviously looking for a chance to share their story with the world.

  An aging man and wife in matching pastel leisure suits were holding forth for NBC, and CBS had fastened on a bronze Adonis who regaled them with his memories of standing up to the Raven and his henchmen. For Blanski, who remembered this Adonis as a whiner, one who cringed whenever one of their abductors passed too close, it was a pitiful display.

  Blanski shook his head and was about to move away when he collided with a pair of roving journalists and found a microphone thrust in his face.

  "You were among the passengers on 741?"

  It was a stupid question, and he answered it reluctantly. "I was."

  The men were staring at his face. "And you received those injuries from terrorists?"

  "No, actually, I always look this way."

  There was a slight hesitation followed by startled laughter as they realized that he was toying with them.

  "Ah, but you retain your sense of humor."

  "When I can."

  "You met the Raven?"

  Blanski nodded, and the thin, sardonic smile vanished from his face.

  "And what was your impression of him?"

  "He's a lunatic. A germ. He ought to be exterminated like the vermin that he is."

  The vehemence of his reaction seemed to shock his two-man audience. It took a moment for them to compose themselves.

  "I understand your feelings, Mr...uh..." When Blanski failed to take his cue, the man was forced to push ahead. "I understand your feelings," he repeated, "but you must agree that the philosophy behind the Raven's actions here today..."

  "Is total bullshit," Blanski finished for him, almost snarling. "Maggots like the Raven kill for money, sometimes for the pleasure of it. He's a mercenary hit man who accommodates fanatics for a price. He makes their ugly dreams come true."

  "But certainly, the Shiite cause..."

  "Has not moved forward one iota based upon what happened here today. The Raven has his cash in hand. He's gone. Do you see any evidence of an improvement for the Shiite people? Are they better off in any way?"

  "Release of certain prisoners in Israel has been guaranteed."

  "Oh, sure. Assuming that they are released, by someone who's inclined to honor an extorted promise made to savages, precisely who is getting out of jail?"

  "Political detainees?"

  Doubt had found its way into the newsman's voice.

  "I'd call them terrorists, but you decide. You've got the list of names. Go check it out. Find out how many lives each one of those political detainees has destroyed through mindless acts of terrorism. Get the story straight for once, and tell it all, or do the world a favor and go find yourself another line of work."

  "See here..."

  "I see just fine. I'm looking at a pseudoliberal armchair revolutionary, full of crap and misplaced high ideals. You sit behind a desk and crank out reams about the 'people's struggle/ 'liberation armies' and the rest of it. You've come closer to the firing line tonight than either one of you has been before, and you're excited by the smell. But take another whiff before you burst out into purple prose. That's death you smell out there. It's permanent, it's real, and there's enough to go around without encouraging sadistic assholes like the Raven to commit some new atrocity.' *

  The interviewer took a moment to recover from this outburst, and his tone was softer, almost chastened, when he spoke again.

  "Well, at the very least, we can agree to being thankful that this incident is over."

  "Is it?"

  "Why... of course."

  "What makes you think so?"

  "Ransom has been paid, the hostages have been released..."

  "It's not enough," he told them simply, stepping in between them, brushing past.

  "What do you mean?"

  Mack Bolan turned to face the newsmen, staring through them, and his eyes were cold, the color of a winter's morning off Cape Cod. And when he spoke, his voice was like an echo from the grave.

  "It's not enough."

  Chapter Eleven

  Early lunchtime traffic had begun to snarl the New York streets, but for the most part Bolan
escaped it, as he turned off Forsyth onto Hester, piloting his rental deep into the lower Bowery. Here the heavy traffic was pedestrian and most of it was stationary, huddled figures staking out doorways, alley mouths and stoops, examining the stranger with suspicious, rheumy eyes.

  A former haven for immigrants, the Bowery had enjoyed a certain vogue among theatrical producers of the nineteenth century, but the prosperity had been shortlived. The cellar dives and rampant crime had strangled any fledgling aspirations of success, and for a century the neighborhood had simply been skid row.

  The winos, addicts and assorted predators who made their living from the homeless derelicts had staked their claim from Fourth Street on the north to Chatham Square. Anyone foolish enough to walk those streets alone, by day or dark, was risking his life. Bolan felt no apprehension as he found a space at curbside, killed the rental's engine, left it locked.

  The Executioner had business here, and any predator who interfered would live just long enough to rue the day.

  The Makarovs, RGD grenades and the Kalashnikov had been no problem. They were standard issue for assorted terrorists from Northern Ireland to Japan, and all points in between. The KGB was generous with arms, cash, and factories in several of the ComBloc nations were working overtime to arm a horde of Third World dissidents. No matter where the weapons had been forged, Mack Bolan knew the source.

  The Ingrams were a different story altogether. They were made in the United States, exported on occasion, but the majority remained at home among the several thousand law-enforcement agencies from coast to coast. The military had its share, of course, and semiautomatic versions, legally available to anyone, could be converted easily enough to automatic mode.

  There had been no conversion of the weapons used on Bolan's flight from Frankfurt to New York. One piece was left behind for reasons still unclear, but Bolan marked it off to carelessness. The sear mechanism had been intact, according to an FBI report leaked to Bolan by way of Leo Turrin in Washington, D.C. The bureau made its registration number, too, and verified that it was one of several automatic weapons stolen from the New York waterfront last spring.

  It was a quantum leap from dockside in New York to airborne over Germany, and Bolan didn't have a shred of evidence to help him trace the weapon's transatlantic progress. But he had a fair idea of where to start.

  A pair of sullen black youths stood watching Bolan from a shadowed doorway. When he was directly opposite, the soldier paused and turned to face them squarely, giving them the opportunity to make their move. A moment passed in lethal silence, then the older of them nudged his sidekick and they faded back, ingested by the ancient brownstone. He put them out of mind at once, intent upon his mission now.

  Bolan's target was another brownstone halfway down the block. On the third floor he would confront the man whom he had traveled seven thousand miles to see.

  He had called ahead for an appointment, but he wasn't taking any chances. The dealer might have smelled a setup, taken on some extra help for the occasion, and the Executioner did not intend to let himself be taken by surprise.

  Inside the doorway of the brownstone, Bolan paused to double-check the special quick-draw rig beneath his arm. The sleek Beretta 93-R was secure and instantly accessible at need. Satisfied, the soldier moved past a pair of doors that hadn't locked in years, ignoring the decrepit elevator and proceeding toward the stairs.

  The staircase doubled back upon itself repeatedly inside the narrow, musty stairwell. Bolan recognized the danger, if they had an ambush waiting for him upstairs, if the dealer had a hideout team prepared to close the exit at his back. There wouldn't be much way for them to miss him on the stairs, but he would take some of the bastards with him, if it came to that.

  He put the morbid thoughts away and concentrated on the task at hand. He had arranged to meet the dealer as a customer, but what he sought was information, and he didn't plan to lay out any cash. The dealer had a last-ditch chance to clear himself, and Bolan would provide him with the simplest of choices.

  Life or death.

  The gunrunner's name was Tommy Noonan, and his normal stock-in-trade was paramilitary weapons. Having paid his dues — and done his time, on more than one occasion — Noonan properly eschewed the junkies and the greenhorn stickup men who sought a cheap revolver or a sawed-off shotgun for a bang-up one-night stand. His clients now included mafiosi, bigots black and white, well-heeled political fanatics... and the Raven. If the information passed to Bolan was correct, it would be Tommy Noonan who supplied the Ingrams used aboard Flight 741.

  Bolan reached the third floor and hesitated on the landing, marking the single sentry posed at the far end of the corridor. It was too warm inside for any kind of coat, and Bolan recognized its purpose as concealment of some heavy hardware.

  He would have to watch the outside gunner as he left... It would be risky, but the whole damned operation was a gamble, and the Executioner had nothing left to do but raise.

  He rapped the designated signal on a freshly painted door approximately halfway down the corridor. The standard, flimsy wooden door had been replaced — at Noonan's own expense, no doubt — with a substantial one constructed out of steel. It would require a ram and some determined SWAT team personnel to get inside the dealer's shop if Noonan chose to make them wait outside.

  A moment passed, and Bolan was about to knock again when someone threw the bolt inside and opened up a crack just wide enough to accommodate one eye. It studied Bolan briefly, and a disembodied voice demanded, "You the guy?"

  "Mike Breslin."

  "Got some paper?"

  Bolan passed the phony license through to greasy fingertips. It disappeared, the door was tightly shut — and just as quickly opened wide, permitting him to enter. Noonan's doorman was a slender Hispanic in a greasy lab coat, open to reveal the Smith & Wesson Magnum tucked inside his belt.

  "Dis way."

  He led the Executioner around a plasterboard partition, erected, from appearances, to screen the inner room from outside scrutiny. When they had made the circuit, Bolan understood the need for privacy.

  The two-room flat could not really be called a warehouse, but it made a handy showroom for the dealer's wares. And Tommy Noonan dealt in quality. His stock on hand included handguns, automatic rifles, shotguns, submachine guns, with a scattering of heavy iron among the small arms. Bolan spied an MM-1 projectile launcher and an Armbrust throwaway bazooka in among the Colts and Armalites and foreign brand-name weaponry, before he was distracted by a figure on the far side of the crowded room.

  His host was just emerging from the tiny bathroom, toweling off his hands. "This goddamn Cosmoline," he growled. "I never get it out from underneath my fingernails."

  "I know the feeling," Bolan told him.

  "Do you now?" Suspicion in the dealer's voice, beneath a touch of brogue. "You're Breslin?"

  "Right."

  "You don't look Irish."

  Bolan didn't smile, but Noonan spent a moment waiting for it, finally giving up and punching Bolan on the shoulder playfully.

  "A joke, okay? Hey, come on inland take a look around the inventory. Must be something here our friends in Belfast would appreciate."

  The Executioner was posing as a runner for the IRA, and Noonan hadn't blanched at doing business with the Irish terrorists. If anything, the thought of stirring up some extra blood and thunder in old Ireland seemed to make his day.

  "Try this one."

  He chose a CAR-15 and passed it over with a flourish. Bolan liked the weapon's feel, familiar from the Asian hellgrounds and some later missions stateside — and he knew at once that it was empty.

  Certainly.

  No self-respecting dealer was about to hand a loaded weapon over to a stranger. Not if he intended to survive.

  "You like it?"

  "Yes, I do."

  Bolan was already gauging distance, angles, probabilities.

  "I knew you'd like it," Tommy Noonan said, and he was stepping closer, r
eaching out to rest a hand on Bolan's shoulder.

  The Executioner jammed the carbine's muzzle into Noonan's solar plexus, hard enough to take his breath away. The dealer doubled over, retching, dropping to his hands and knees at Bolan's feet.

  The soldier was already moving, wheeling on the Hispanic as his secondary target recognized the danger and clawed for his Smith & Wesson in a practiced, fluid motion. And he would have made it against a lesser man, but Bolan had anger and determination, speed and dexterity, on his side.

  He whipped the carbine up and over, drove its butt against the Hispanic's nose, and was rewarded with a muffled crack and double sets of crimson sprinkling the lab coat. Bolan's target folded instantly, unconscious, and Bolan plucked the Magnum from its place inside his jeans.

  Behind him, Tommy Noonan was recovering slowly, already back to kneeling now.

  "I dunno what the fuck you're tryin' to prove," he gasped. 'That piece ain't loaded, anyway."

  "You're right." He dropped the carbine back among its mates and bent to press the Magnum's muzzle square between the dealer's eyes. "But this one is."

  "Some kinda rip-off, right? Okay, you see a piece you like, go on an' take it, on the house."

  It didn't work that way, of course, and Bolan knew that any customer emerging from the showroom with a sample in his hand would be cut down by Noonan's lookout in the corridor. He crouched in front of Noonan, wedged the Smith & Wesson underneath his captive's chin and held it there.

  "I don't want any of your iron," he growled. "I'm looking for information."

  Noonan glowered at him. "Try the yellow pages, sport."

  Bolan cocked the Magnum. "Wrong answer," he told the dealer. "One more chance, before I decorate the ceiling with your brains."

  "I ain't no stool."

  "I'm not the heat. That makes us even."

  "Yeah?" The cunning had returned to Noonan's eyes. "So what's the beef?"

  "I need to trace some merchandise."