He broke surface as debris from the disintegrated Traveler sizzled in the water about him.
A blown-out hulk was all that remained of Lenny Jericho's yacht and those dead men aboard it. The hulk began to sink as Bolan watched.
Grimaldi held the Hughes in a low hover, directly over Bolan's head, with the rope ladder dangling within easy reach. Bolan gripped the ladder and began pulling himself upward from a sea made suddenly choppy by the rotors. Grimaldi eased them away from there with a gentle increase of power.
The waters of Exuma Cay pulled away below him. The sea was a dark turquoise blue, tabletop smooth again in the rising sun as if nothing had happened.
Bolan preferred it that way.
He tugged himself up to the last rung of the rope ladder and hoisted himself into the bubble-front chopper.
"More pestilence of fire, Colonel Phoenix!" beamed Stony Man's premier flyer. "You nearly blasted me away from you forever."
"Should have ducked like I did," smiled Bolan. "You knew I was going to thunder it."
"That I did," said Grimaldi, subtly maneuvering the controls as if the whirlybird was a part of him. He glanced at Bolan through silvered glasses. "You got wet. Anything else?"
"Yes and no," muttered Bolan. "The yes turned out to be a no, so to hell with him." He pushed his damp hair back from his brow, unzipped the top of his blacksuit. "To hell with anyone who comes between me and Eve. To hell with them."
"Got you," nodded Grimaldi, well aware of the grim message in Mack's soft-spoken words. "Just point me where you want me to go."
3
It was late afternoon.
Heavy draperies shuttered out the cool winter sunshine from the Stony Man War Room. The only illumination was reflected off a screen that dominated one wall.
Bolan had returned to Stony Man from the Bahamas a short twenty-five minutes earlier. The lightweight Hughes, equipped with auxiliary fuel tanks for distance, had sped them over reefs of sand and coral, then over the lush tropical forests of scattered islands, at speeds of over 150 knots to a government airfield outside Miami, Florida.
At this moment, Jack Grimaldi was ensuring that the F-14 Tomcat jet, which had flown them to Washington from Miami, was readied for further short notice.
Three people, besides Bolan, were present at the briefing.
Aaron Kurtzman. Hal Brognola. April Rose.
The screen was filled with the image of a male face. The visage was highlighted by hard eyes and a scar down the left cheek.
Kurtzman's well-modulated voice supplied the data.
"Raoul Santos. Lenny Jericho's people found him doing life for a double knife murder in Kingston involving the rasta drug trade. A contract job. The wife and child of a government investigator were tortured before he cut their throats. That was the only time he was ever caught. There's plenty more, if you want to hear it. They call him “The Butcher.”"
"How long has he been with Jericho?" Bolan cut in.
"Jericho paid the guy's way out of the slammer in 1980," supplied Hal. "Jericho takes great care to keep the connection secret. The media image Jericho has created for himself is some sort of a modern Robin Hood. He's almost a folk hero — the smart con artist who got away."
April could not take her eyes away from the face of Santos on the screen.
"A mother and child... What does he do for Jericho?"
"Whatever dirty work needs doing," said Hal, "and there's plenty of that in Jericho's world."
"And Santos has Eve," grunted Bolan. "What about the Thatcher character?"
Kurtzman punched up another head shot, this time front and profile.
It was a craggy face dominated by steely eyes that were impossible to read. The jawline was that of a determined military man in middle age.
"General Arnold L. Thatcher," said Kurtzman. "I put through a tracer when the computer kicked his name out, and the Pentagon's Internal Affairs Division was very interested in what we wanted to know and why. They're in it with us now. The general is chief of security at a classified base in the Rockies, north of Denver. The installation is a storage depot — part of the army's NCB program."
Bolan knew those initials. Nuclear, Chemical and Biological.
He scrutinized the frontal portrait on the screen. He saw a brokenness and a cynicism in the face that stared blankly back.
"Thatcher is two days into a five-day leave and no one's been able to run him down yet," reported Brognola. "But considering his sensitive position in the NCB program, the Pentagon and the CIA are of course giving this top priority and we should have our hands on this bad general soon enough.
Internal Affairs launched a backtrack investigation and they came up with a bombshell this afternoon that confirms he's the Thatcher we're looking for.
The general took a medical leave late last year. His hospital records showed treatment for stomach problems that were supposedly cleared up. But the Pentagon investigators found more — they asked the right questions of the right people in the right way.
General Thatcher has seven months to live. He's dying of cancer. He's ripe for a sellout. Maybe he's trying to establish financial security for his family after he's gone."
General Thatcher's likeness disappeared from the briefing-room screen. Comfortable indirect lighting filled the room.
Bolan spoke first.
"Jericho bought something from Thatcher, or paid Thatcher to do something.''
"The connection is Libya," said Kurtzman. "Those are the Jericho impostor's words. And Hal's got major information coming up."
Bolan lit a cigarette.
"I think Eve Aguilar pieced the whole thing together," he said. "Manny Mandone was aboard the yacht. There was a lot of strange stuff going on. And she knows all about it."
Kurtzman turned from processing continuing data.
"I'm glad to hear that the woman is thought to be alive. But why is she alive? She should be dead. I don't mean to be brutal, but we must consider this."
Bolan felt the bitter taste in his mouth that he had experienced throughout the flight north from Exuma Cay.
"They've taken her to Libya," he said. "That's where Jericho is and that's where Santos is."
"Then... it dead-ends there, doesn't it?" asked April, sadly.
"Not at all, unfortunately," growled Hal. "In a strange way it ties in with the renegade operation you just busted up, Striker. The Company feels that too many ex-CIA personnel have turned up recently working for Khaddafi, among others who have no love for us. One of the men the Company has been watching is a young retiree, name of Michael Rideout. Rideout served two military tours overseas, the second time with Special Forces. Then came his years with the CIA, out of their Marseilles office. He's been “retired” since the Company turned him loose during a Senate investigation. The man is bored, broke and bitter."
Brognola paused to light the half-done stogie that was wedged between his chubby fingers, thought better of it.
"Rideout is our key to the Jericho operation. Listen to this. Rideout was approached four days ago by people representing Leonard Jericho. He was paid ten thousand dollars and told to stay on call to leave the country. Rideout — and our people who had him wired — received that call last night, Striker, while you and Jack were on your way to the Bahamas to do your own thing with the yacht. He caught the next commercial flight to Libya.
Like the Bear said, all of the agencies are cooperating on this because of the NCB tie-in. The CIA people were notified at the other end and they intercepted Rideout when he landed in Benghazi this morning. They're holding him now.
We could do what Able Team did so successfully in their Texas showdown recently — ride in on a nowhere man.
What I'm saying is, you could take Michael Rideout's place."
Bolan stood. He turned to Kurtzman.
"Bear, I want a full printout on Thatcher, Jericho and the current situation in Libya. I need to study it on the flight over."
"You've got it," said Kurtzman.
Bolan looked back at Hal.
Hal looked from Bolan to April Rose and decided to relight his cigar.
The lovely "boss lady" of Stony Man Farm stood from the couch and walked to Bolan, then wordlessly bowed her face and touched her forehead to his mouth. The natural scent of her was strong in his nostrils, yet subtle and provocative.
His arms encircled her shapely waist and held her to him.
"What is it, lady?" he asked comfortingly. "We should be used to saying goodbye by now. It goes with the job, you know that."
"I do know it," she whispered. "But I also know that this mission is different for you. You've told me how much you and Eve mean to each other."
"What Eve and I had together was before you came along, I've told you that too," he said gently.
"You big, beautiful man," she said. "I'm not jealous, Mack. I'm only trying to tell you that I'm worried about you for the same reason that Hal is. And I think Eve must be a very special human being for you to care about her the way you do."
"She is special, April. So are you, for understanding."
"Just one promise," said April Rose. "Bring the both of you back safely, okay?"
Bolan kissed her forehead.
It was time to commence preparations for the mission to Libya.
Final preparations, as they always were for The Executioner.
April held Bolan's hand for a heartbeat more, then released it.
"On your way if you must, Colonel Phoenix," she said. "And I know you must, Mack."
And she released him.
4
Bolan's fellow passengers from Tunis had included well-dressed European businessmen, casually attired British and American oil-field workers, at least two dozen other professional-looking Westerners, many of whom would have similarly attired welcoming par ties awaiting them at Benghazi.
No one met "Michael Rideout" at the Benghazi airport.
Bolan was wearing worn denim and work shirt, the uniform of the American oil-field worker abroad. He had one carry-on piece of luggage.
He emerged from the air terminal into the arid, 120-plus-degree midday heat. Libya was booming.
A row of shiny new taxis were parked in the terminal loading zone. Bolan hired one for the ride into the city. He observed with curiosity this Mediterranean powder-keg country.
Upon touchdown in the army transport plane at Tunis, Bolan had regretfully entrusted his Beretta and AutoMag to Jack Grimaldi for temporary safekeeping. Mike Rideout would not be carrying heat on a commercial flight.
Bolan knew that he would be provided with firearms as soon as he made contact, as Rideout, with Jericho's people here in Libya. Until then he was armed with a knife, purchased from a street merchant outside the airport, worn concealed at the small of his back.
Most of the houses along the dusty, palm-lined "highway" into Benghazi were timeless mud-brick affairs. Street signs and all advertisements were in Arabic, but indications of Western-style prosperity were everywhere.
In the city proper, the streets became clogged with an uncomfortable number of Japanese, American and European cars.
Traditional Arabic architecture gave way to towering glass-walled office buildings.
Everywhere Bolan looked, there was movement, energy and commerce. And oppressive heat.
The country's oil fields made Libya the world's ninth largest producer. Of all the Arab nations, Libya had used its oil as a political weapon more than any other.
It was incredibly inflated profits that fueled the heavy activity in trade and housing and industrialization that Bolan saw all around him.
Government-owned and -subsidized supermarkets and stores were rapidly replacing the ancient tangled bazaars.
Libya's population, predominantly Arab Muslims, never thought that they would ever have it this good.
Of course, there was a price. And his name was Khaddafi.
The Company's Benghazi cover operation was a small accounting firm that serviced many of the second-string U.S. business concerns in Libya.
The offices of Mid-Am Incorporated were in the old section of the city, on a hillside of narrow, winding lanes that only donkeys and pedestrians could negotiate, where the poor lived crowded together amid occasional small business fronts that shared the crumbling, antiquated stone architecture.
Mid-Am's quarters were behind such a storefront. The glass had been painted black. Only the silver lettering on the painted glass door indicated that this storefront was occupied at all.
The flow of the street scene before the storefront seemed unconcerned and unaware of Mid-Am Inc. The storefront was around the corner from the neighborhood Bah el atouk, the Street of Merchants. The sounds clearly carried of grocers in their open-air stalls, all enthusiastically and simultaneously proclaiming the virtues of green figs, pomegranates, lemons, oranges, almonds. All around, under blue skies but in the shade from the throbbing sun, buzzed the added hubbub of foot traffic in and out of scores of craft shops specializing in jewelry and leatherwork and shoemaking. Berber music from flutes and goatskin drums filled the air.
Even along this narrow side street fronting the offices of Mid-Am, which was little more than a cobbled footpath, the scene bustled with local women clad in traditional veils, on their way to or from the market, and the Arab men — Berbers, Kabyles, Mzabites and Bedouins — wearing the burnous, a hooded mantle, all pushing, shoving, chattering their way about their business.
Within the desultory building, the offices of Mid-Am were a modern complex of "work areas" that housed just one cell in a network of covert CIA operations in Libya.
The head man of the Benghazi facility was an amiable Bostonian named Lansdale. At least, that was what he said his name was. Bolan met the guy after passing through two separate security checkpoints that blocked his path in the facility.
Grim-faced men and some women hurried busily about their errands, answering phones, checking files.
Lansdale showed "John Phoenix" to the soundproofed cell in one of the basement work areas where the real Michael Rideout was being detained.
Bolan gazed in upon the Spartanly furnished, not uncomfortable, room and saw the renegade American stretched out in a sedated sleep.
Ten minutes after his arrival at the Company offices, Mack Bolan was alone with Lansdale in the head agent's office in the back of the building.
"The first piece of classified news I have for you is that Pentagon investigators tracked down General Thatcher stateside," said Lansdale. "Unfortunately, the general is not doing any talking. The coded communique we received says he got his hands on a gun and blew his brains out. Before any questioning got underway."
Bolan fired a cigarette. He had hoped that Thatcher would have the best clue to the whereabouts of Eve Aguilar. But that hope was now dead, like the general himself.
"Tell me about Rideout," said Bolan. "What did you learn from him?"
"Ah, truth serum, it's wonderful stuff," said Lansdale. "Jericho owns a villa forty miles southeast of here in Bishabia. Rideout says that's where he was headed. He was supposed to contact the villa when he landed in Benghazi."
"That was this morning?"
"Yes. Rideout told us that a mercenary named Kennedy is honchoing the operation at the villa. They'll want to know why you're late. But air travel is notorious in these parts, and you can build a story around that."
"Does Rideout have any idea what Jericho's operation is all about?"
"Negative. He was told stateside that Jericho Industries needs a temporary security force for one of their Libyan business concerns. That's all he knows except that they told him he'd be back home by the end of the week."
Bolan tried to fit what he was hearing into the puzzle.
"So we've got a paid-off general in the States and a covert security force here in Libya," he said. "I think that Jericho has been supplied by Thatcher with something big, has had it transported here, and now he needs his own force to safeguard it. But if Khaddafi is Jericho's bu
yer, why does Jericho need a civilian outfit with people like Rideout? Why aren't Khaddafi's own forces taking over security?"
Lansdale answered immediately, but there was something of a weariness in his young man's voice.
"Khaddafi is not Jericho's buyer. There is bad blood between Jericho and Khaddafi. Remember when Reagan cut off Libyan oil imports to the U.S.? Khaddafi went through the roof. He instigated reprisals at the time against most American interests in Libya. These reprisals never made the world media for a variety of reasons. We still don't know everything that happened. But the Libyan government shut down several U.S. business concerns here, including several that were clearing big profits for Jericho. Three of Jericho's top men in Libya disappeared in the middle of the night and were never heard from again. That was Khaddafi's work and Jericho knows and resents it."
The agent flipped open a folder on his desk and handed a 12x13-inch glossy photograph across to Bolan.
"Here is the man we're fairly certain Jericho is doing business with. Colonel Ahmad Shahkhia. Shahkhia and Khaddafi have been close friends since childhood. Shahkhia is second-in-command, under Khaddafi, of the Libyan army."
Bolan studied the Arab face in the picture. The photo had evidently been snapped without the colonel's knowledge. Shahkhia was in uniform, sipping from a cup at a sidewalk cafe. Even from a photograph, in repose, the military commander emanated an aura of forceful ambition. Bolan memorized the face and handed the picture back to Lansdale.
"A coup?"
Lansdale nodded.
"We tumbled to it thanks to our tap on the Russian Embassy in Tripoli."
"I thought Khaddafi was in Moscow's pocket."
"He was and still is, for the time being," said Lansdale. "But that old boy's been getting mighty uppity lately and the Kremlin's looking for a new puppet hereabouts. Shahkhia seems to be it. We've only been onto this since last night.
The Libya Connection te-48 Page 2
