The big dude was moving toward him. The rosy glow of the Huey's lights were reflected, even from this distance, by the man's eyes that looked like chips of ice.
He brought up his AK-47 on the imposing combat figure striding toward him, knowing, even as his life survival instincts flared into crystal clarity, that he was too late.
The sharp report of the Galil was the last sound he ever heard.
Bolan heard the exchange of fire between Hohlstrom and the remaining merc, toward the front of the gun-ship.
Then the gunfire stopped. The Sahara night was utterly silent except for the ghostly whooshing of the gunship's rotor blades rotating in idle.
There was no sign of Hohlstrom.
Bolan moved across the field of dead men, jogging cautiously up to the rocky ridge where Hohlstrom had been inflicting his hits.
Bolan felt a sick premonition that was affirmed the moment he topped the ridge.
The "Swede" was prone in a cleft in the rocks, which had given him a clear view of the ground surrounding the second gunship.
The Mossad agent was not moving.
Bolan bit off a curse as he approached the motionless form. He knelt beside his partner in this firefight and turned the man onto his side.
Hohlstrom had stopped at least one bullet before taking out the remaining merc down below. The agent's throat was a pulpy raw mess. This fighter would fight no more. He and the merc may have died at the same time; certainly within seconds of each other.
Bolan stood. He paused there in the cool night, above the body of his fallen ally. Mack Bolan listened. He watched.
Nothing moved.
He shared this desolation with the dead.
But his mind was also on the second gunship, which was operational. It was a slim chance, but he might still be able to trace Doyle to the south, in the mother ship with that mysterious cargo that all of the mercenaries here had died to protect.
Bolan slipped a silent salute to a good man who had sacrificed his life for a good cause. Then the Executioner turned from Hohlstrom's fallen form and started back down the ridge of that sand dune toward the idling helicopter.
When the sky came alive.
A whistling whine was piercing the darkness to the north. Two jets lanced in with their underbelly floodlamps casting quarter-mile pools of light in front of them on the desert floor as they screamed toward him.
When they were about a quarter mile away, the plane to Bolan's right veered sharply off from its mate, in an easterly sweep. Must be that the pilot of the second gunship had radioed ahead that they were going down, but had not had time for the exact coordinates. The jets were searching. From his Stony Man briefings, Bolan figured that the aircraft left for him to contend with was a Soviet-made Su-22.
Bolan hoped he could make it to the protection of the idling gunship before the Su-22 coming his way could spot him. His numbers had tumbled away, however. Another couple of heartbeats and that big warplane would be directly overhead, and Bolan was less than halfway down the sandy ridge that receded toward the Huey. He would be pinned beneath the harsh glare of the big jet's lights. The Libyan pilot was dusting the rolling terrain at a snug eight hundred feet. He would not miss Bolan.
Bolan acted.
He thumbed the Galil onto its grenade launcher mode. He undipped one of the grenades belted to his hip. He fed the grenade into the weapon's launcher apparatus.
The Galil is supposed to be fired from the tripod position when utilizing the grenade launcher. Bolan did not have time for that. He braced himself for the coming recoil. He triggered the assault rifle. Time had run out.
The Galil's recoil practically knocked Mack Bolan backward off his feet. The world screeched of madness from the big Su-22's engines. Armageddon would sound like this.
The HE impacted the Su-22 seconds after it passed over Bolan's head. The Soviet-supplied warplane blossomed into a wildfire flower. The jet disappeared for an instant, swallowed up by explosion. Then the scorched skeletal remains of the aircraft were visible hurtling into the gloom.
Scratch one Su-22.
Bolan scanned the night. Then he continued jogging toward the Huey gunship, still idling eighty yards away. He quickly spotted the other Libyan jet, maybe two miles to the east.
The second jet was responding by heeling around for a run of its own at Bolan.
It was happening in no time at all.
The Libyan jet sailed in with its wing-mounted miniguns blasting wide open.
17
The warplane, still a mile away in the night sky but gaining fast, fired off an air-to-surface missile that fingered out on a smoking trajectory toward the grounded Huey.
Bolan saw it coming, dived, flattened himself to the sand beneath him as the Atoll missile hit and blew the Huey apart with a ground-shivering blast. The heat of the deafening blast pushed down on Bolan's back.
Bolan got to his feet as soon as the fireball rippled the airwaves above him. He swung around to meet the Su-22 that was almost overhead, its machine guns resuming heavy fire. Spurts of rock and sand geysered up in approaching lines, gaining on his position. He was slapping another grenade onto the ARM's launcher attachment when sounds of another approaching jet aircraft split the night.
The Libyan pilot wheeled away, abruptly changing flight course.
The new arrival streaked by low overhead with a slight salutary tip of the wings at the man on the ground.
Bolan saw that this was not another jet with Libyan markings. This was a Short Take-Off and Landing craft. Who else but?
Jack Grimaldi.
For a few moments, both aircraft were swallowed up by the night sky to the west.
Then Grimaldi's contact with the enemy got hot.
The 1041 fired a missile. Bolan tracked the red flame of its tail, then saw another hellfire eruption of flash and flame that lit up the sky overhead like summer lightning. The sound soon followed.
The night was still reverberating when the V/STOL returned. The unmarked American fighter jet hovered overhead for a few seconds. Then the pilot set her down twenty yards away from where Bolan stood.
The hatch popped open. A familiar figure appeared, tugging off his flight helmet.
Grimaldi, yeah.
The pilot from Stony Man dropped to the ground from the aircraft's wing. The two men approached each other. Grimaldi was all smiles.
Bolan raised his voice to be heard above the noise of the idling V/STOL.
"Welcome to Libya, Jack! Another one I owe you."
Grimaldi seemed not to hear the thanks. He gazed at the scene of carnage around them: the two demolished Hueys and the men who had died. Then he scanned the northern sky.
"I suggest that we haul ass before any more of those Su-22s decide to play backup."
They hoofed back to the V/STOL and got onto the wing.
"Those Libyan planes were sent by Shahkhia," said Bolan as they climbed into the two-man plane and donned their helmets, communicating through the jet's radio setup. "I think we've seen everything he can afford to send — and lose. But get us out of here, Jack. Any word from Hal's intel on where Jericho is supposed to meet with Colonel Shahkhia?"
Grimaldi slammed shut the Plexiglas bubble above their heads.
"Afraid not. Nothing on Eve, either. I'm sorry, Mack."
"She'll be wherever Jericho and Santos are," said Bolan. "Wherever these choppers were originally heading."
It was then that Jack Grimaldi delivered his verbal bombshell. In a few succinct words above the engine roar of the aircraft, the pilot briefed the Executioner on exactly what it was that General Arnold Thatcher had channeled to Leonard Jericho. The facts regarding Strain-7. Just the facts.
Bolan absorbed it in silence. There was plenty to absorb.
With a sudden, mighty thrust, the V/STOL picked itself up off the Sahara sands and kicked forward with body-jarring speed.
The scene of carnage beyond the cockpit blurred into memory. The Boeing 1041 became gone from that place.
"This darling's equipped with computer capability," said Grimaldi through the headset linkup. "I'm playing with coordinates over a satellite map right now. There's Aujila oasis forty miles south of here. That's all there is."
"Could be it," muttered Bolan. He tried to remain wary of the budding hope he felt at the news.
"There's a small military installation at Aujila," the pilot relayed from his computer map. "It's an outpost for desert patrol. No other settlements of any sort for a couple of hundred miles. And this is current satellite observation."
"Then Aujila it is," said Bolan. "How far?"
The V/STOL was skimming the desert at several hundred feet. Grimaldi was proving once again that he was an ace in the cockpit.
"Buddy, we are... here. Those are the lights of the oasis up to your left."
The cluster of light was now clearly visible in the clean desert air from an estimated distance of two miles. The lights were the only thing visible in the darkness.
Grimaldi did not angle the V/STOL in that direction. He held their distance by subtle control of the tilt-jet ability to brake, slip, drop.
"A recon pass is out," said Bolan. "But this is the end of the trail, Jack. That's where they've got Eve. That's where this whole deal is going to go down. How close can you land me without drawing ear or eye to us?"
Another short pause as the aircraft's computer up front fed more data to Grimaldi.
"This is a primary air lane between Benghazi and most of South Africa," reported the pilot as he hovered the plane. "If they did hear anything from the base, they might not think too much of someone zipping along a tad low. I could touch down unnoticed, oh, say, one and a half miles away from there. How would that do?"
"That would do beautifully. Then I want you to hold back with the air support. But watch for me. I'll have Eve with me."
"Down we go," said Grimaldi.
The V/STOL aircraft's jet sounds became muted as the pilot patterned into a landing descent.
Grimaldi had set them down without detection. The inky stillness surrounded them in chill silence.
Bolan went EVA. He made the short drop to the ground from the aircraft's wing, carrying a canvas bag of supplies thoughtfully provided by Grimaldi and left near his seat in the cockpit.
"How long do I wait before I worry?" Grimaldi called down to Bolan.
The Executioner eyed the luminous hands of his watch. He calculated quick mental computations regarding time, distance and what he must accomplish.
"Give me forty minutes, Jack." He was applying black facial camouflage ointment while he spoke. "Come in from this direction. I'll build my play around that." He repacked the tube of ointment and returned it to the satchel. Then he withdrew from the satchel's depths the heavy metal of his familiar armaments, including Starlite scope. "Thanks, Jack. Thanks for everything."
"Mack, wait! Give me word on what to expect. What's your strategy?"
Bolan paused and looked back at the pilot. Time was running out, but Grimaldi's concern was real.
"This one is on the heartbeat, buddy. I've got to find Eve and I've got to put this thing of Jericho's out of business." He thought briefly of Hohlstrom, and of the supreme sacrifice the Mossad agent had made. "For the living, and for the dead. You just give me that forty minutes. If I'm not out by then, I won't be coming out."
Grimaldi grunted. "I'll be there," he promised.
Mack Bolan gave the pilot a raised fist salute that Grimaldi returned.
The Executioner turned and put that place behind him, moving at a fast trot into the night.
Toward Eve.
Toward a confrontation with his own fate.
18
The figure in torn, cordite-smelling camou fatigues sprinted across the undulating desert terrain. He was one with the night around him. The added weight of weapons and armament strapped across his body did not slow him.
The big .44 AutoMag mini-howitzer and the 9mm Beretta Belle were back where they belonged, leathered on his right hip and in a quick-draw underarm shoulder holster respectively. Bolan was outfitted much as he had been less than two days ago when this mission had begun for him in the waters of Exuma Cay in the Bahamas. Explosives courtesy of both Kennedy and Grimaldi rode securely on his left hip. Knives, garrotes and other instruments of silent death were secured at various points.
Vague, indeterminate sounds, a sense of activity, carried to him across the wide open spaces from the vicinity of the base, more than a mile away, as he made his approach.
Except for this impression of activity, there was silence. Cold shadows hugged the lunarlike landscape. There was no sign of life out here beyond the Aujila oasis and the base situated there.
There was only Bolan.
Alone with his thoughts.
Mack Bolan preferred a combat posture as the quiet infiltrator. Bolan the penetration specialist was in his natural element.
He covered the distance without incident.
Bolan's breathing was steady as he jogged that hilly distance. He was pacing himself for the firefight that lay ahead. His strength would be far from sapped at the end of this run.
He did not try to block his thoughts from touching on the woman he hoped to locate and rescue in that military compound.
In most ways Eve Aguilar was what this mission was all about, symbolically as well as literally.
Thinking about it pushed him on, harder and faster.
He thought about a rustic bungalow on Douglas Lake in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, some two hundred miles from Nashville.
That was the last time Mack Bolan had been with Big Eve. He remembered it now with vivid, aching clarity.
At the time, Bolan had just completed shaking up the Nashville operation of Nick Copa as part of the Executioner's war against the Mafia.
At the windup of that Music City action, Hal Brognola had approached Bolan with an incredible offer: Presidential pardon, full amnesty for past illegalities, a new identity and a chair on the National Security Council... ifMack Bolan would redirect his capabilities toward a newly defined cause.
Bolan and Evita Aguilar had already made arrangements for a rendezvous back then, a plan for some R & R together at the close of Bolan's Tennessee Smash, since both he and Eve were between missions.
The secluded cabin, which had been theirs for a day and a night, had commanded a view of a breathtaking pine valley. This was Davy Crockett country. Old Andy Jackson, too. Hero country, yeah. The backbone of the American spirit, set amid some of the most spectacular natural beauty east of the Mississippi.
For much too short a time, it had seemed as if that paradise had belonged to two soldiers named Mack Bolan and Eve Aguilar.
They had pleasured themselves with each other sexually, sure, and with each other's intellect. But every bit as important was the sense of shared space that they had experienced, even while allowing each other their separate, personal thoughts during their brief time together.
Eve obviously had things on her mind as much as Bolan did. They had planned on spending more than a scant twenty-four hours together. But now Brognola was waiting for Bolan's response, and the plans had to be alerted.
During those twenty-four hours in their Smoky Mountain paradise, Bolan and Eve had separated for some five hours.
Bolan hiked to a secluded cove for some solitary roaming and thinking. When he returned to their cabin near dusk, he had found Eve sitting on a rock formation overlooking the lake.
She was dressed in light blue sweater and slacks, her midnight-black hair ruffled by the pine-scented breeze. She looked stunning.
I walked up to her and though I could tell she heard me approach, she did not turn from gazing out over the expanse of water that was silver with the reflection of the setting sun.
' 'It's beautiful,'' I said.
She nodded gently.
"Si. Very beautiful."
At the last word, a tear leaked from the lady's eye and fell down her cheek.
/> I sat on the rock beside her. She leaned into me and my arm went around her. To this day I can still feel the natural warmth of her.
I told her, quietly and gently, "Sometimes it's tougher pulling back and getting way from what we do, than it is to live the lives we are committed to..."
She nodded, straightened and brushed away the tear. But she did not leave my side.
"I am sorry, my dear. Sometimes I feel things too much."
"That's what these times are for, Eve— meditating, trying to make some sense out of it all."
"If that can bring the mind to a better place, yes," she said. "You a re very good for me, my warrior. "
"We're good for each other," I grinned at her "I'm going inside to build a fire."
She arose with me. We walked back to the rental cabin, along a winding trail that climbed from the water, strolling hand-in-hand like first lovers.
It had been that pure.
"Most people can never reach out and touch what is here like you can," she said. "But you have these matters that have been troubling your mind?" Her golden Latin countenance beamed with all the sexuality and good humor of her race: ' I see that my big norteamericano is no longer plagued by thoughtful silence. Have your own troubles resolved themselves?"
That was Eve, yeah.
Always caring.
"I'm going to accept a deal that's been offered," I told her. Then we went into the cabin and made love.
An evening to remember, yeah.
A woman Bolan could never forget.
He had decided that accepting Hal Brognola's offer was not a shifting of priorities, merely a broadening of the Executioner's scope.
Mack Bolan became John Phoenix and the Executioner's new world war against fanaticism was born.
Since that time, and the formation of the Stony Man Farm operation, the missions handed over by Hal Brognola had come hot and heavy. There had thus far been sixteen assignments for Colonel Phoenix and company, including the fledgling Phoenix Force.
But yeah, Mack Bolan still remembered that last time with Eve Aguilar, with clarity and yearning.
The Libya Connection te-48 Page 9
