He fired.
Bolan knew he had scored a hit. He saw the slug strike the plastic, blast it out of Lutfi's feeble grip and then disintegrate the plastic and the electronic parts inside it, destroying forever the box's radio-sending ability. Even though its signals would never have penetrated the lead-lined walls of this part of the ship, the box's very existence had been a ticking bomb. Now it ticked no more. Bolan jammed his hand back inside the protective glove.
Lutfi could not feel his numb hand. He hadn't been able to feel anything for five minutes. He stared at the last bit of the lead shield that had protected his head and torso from the direct power of the fuel rod. The American had tricked him. It did not matter now. Nothing mattered.
He tried to lift himself up. He got halfway up, then fell, his arms outstretched, first touching, then wrapping around the lethal enriched-uranium fuel rod itself. He pulled his body on top of it. Lutfi gave a strangled cry and surged forward, hugging the metal container. And Lutfi at last found his endless, dreamless sleep.
Bolan had no first-hand experience of what direct massive radiation would do to a body. But he had no desire to find out.
He abandoned the unused rifle, then looked at the position of the opened lead casket. The protective bottom was toward him. If he crawled past it toward the door, he should be safe.
His route would keep him at least twenty feet from the back of the casket, and he was betting his life that he would thereby avoid any massive dose of radiation from direct rays. He had no other choice.
The Executioner moved, crawling on his hands and knees in the massive suit, making slow time, moving ponderously.
When he made it past the danger spot, he got to his feet and stumbled toward the door. Once outside the heavy door he slammed it shut. He leaned against it and breathed deeply.
With massive physical effort, Mack Bolan shuffled back to the suiting-up room, located a phone and called the bridge. There was a nasty clean-up to do in the fuel-rod storage area that needed some professional, high-level attention. The Executioner did not want the job.
He did have one more clean-up job to do himself . . . in Paris.
23
The sun was coming up when Bolan walked out the elevator to the Contessa's main deck. He stretched and blinked. The American Navy corpsman at his side had been judiciously careful not to touch him or assist him. But there was deep concern in the young man's eyes. Bolan brushed it aside.
"I told you, I feel fine. Your tests down there showed that I received only trace amounts of radiation on my right hand. So it peels or maybe I get a little blister. Don't worry about it. I'll bill Uncle Sam."
"Yes, sir. Whatever you say."
The man remained at Bolan's side.
"Your boss tell you to stick to me like a second skin?"
"Yes, sir. He isn't sure how much of the tests to believe."
"I won't keel over on you. I promise." He stared at the corpsman. "Lutfi, he was dead?"
"Lord, yes! He was little more than a crisp skeleton when our moon suits got to him. I've never seen anything like it. He was so radioactive they sealed him in a lead barrel. Burial will be in some 15-miledeep sea trench, I'd guess."
"Fair enough. He wanted to go out spectacularly."
Bolan sighed. "Now, would you really like to help me?"
The youth nodded.
"Find the mess shack on this tub and roust me out a quart vacuum bottle of coffee. Hot as hell and just as black. I'll be around."
"Yes, sir!" the sailor came to attention, then hurried away.
It took Bolan another half hour to check with Lieutenant Fisher, the acting captain. The French bomb squad had found and defused the twelve bombs that had been expertly placed. If triggered, they would have split the tanker into four parts and at least half the crude would have been dumped into the Mediterranean.
Bolan checked out with the French major in charge of the troops, then sat on a hold cover to watch the French brigade mount their choppers and fly out.
Grimaldi found him there ten minutes later drinking coffee.
"You were looking for me?" Jack asked, a twinkle in his eye.
"About to. We still have transport?"
"The bus is ready and waiting, and only two bullet holes in her. Them kooks were lousy shots."
IT WAS JUST AFTER LUNCH that same day when Mack Bolan left Grimaldi talking to the French military about ways to improve their attack choppers. They had landed in the Tomcat and had taken care of the niceties with the U.S. diplomats in Paris. Now the Executioner had one last Parisian loose end to tie up—the end of the pipeline, the end of the site and the end of the people who were going to build the atomic bombs for Lutfi.
He rented a small car and headed for the address he had secured earlier. It was not easy to find. After making three fractured French inquiries, Bolan arrived at the right area. It was far north of Paris, in a rural place sprinkled with a few country estates, horse-breeding farms and the occasional cluster of houses.
The address he sought turned out to be at the end of a long lane off a country road. He spotted monitoring cameras at the lane gate. Strange, having a security monitoring system on an innocent country lane leading to three buildings that looked like they might be a small dairy operation. . . .
Bolan drove on, parked the car on a side road in some woods. When dusk fell, he changed into his black nightfighter's suit. He put Big Thunder on his hip and carried the Beretta 93-R on the lanyard around his neck.
With his other surprises and his web-belt gear, he was ready.
He jogged through the dusk, and came in behind the buildings. Two cars in the drive had not moved since he first saw them. Another rig came in and shut down its lights. Someone got out and went into the main building that looked like a farmhouse.
Bolan settled in a patch of willow near a stream 300 yards from the house and took out the Scope from his belt pouch.
The glow that he looked through showed that the place was an armed camp. He could see a guard standing in a specially protected sentry post near the front of the first building on the lane. There was a metal gate on the road, evidently electrically controlled. He spotted three interior guards, two walking posts around the buildings, and one coming in and out of the main building, checking with the roving patrols. A regular little fortress.
The building the guards seemed most concerned about was the one that looked like a barn. Through the scope, Bolan could see it had been extensively modernized. That would be his first recon target.
He moved when the guards did, working softly forward, taking advantage of the meandering creek until he was fifty yards from the barn. He glided in behind the building just as the guard completed his circuit and passed around the corner.
There was no door in back and the windows had been boarded up. Access was from the front or sides. He watched the guards. They were not paramilitary; they were poorly trained, inattentive, sloppy.
Bolan moved up and the next time the guard made his circuit of the barn, he shot him in the shoulder with one silent round from the machine pistol, then jumped in front of him and slammed Big Thunder down on the side of his head, knocking him unconscious.
Bolan dragged the guard back to the creek, took off his jacket and hat, donned them himself, and tied the terrorist securely. Then he picked up the guard's rifle and walked around the building twice. The other guards did not pay any attention to him. The third time around he slipped into the unlocked front barn door.
The building was a clean laboratory, filled with scientific instruments and long tables that looked as though they could be for some kind of assembly. A bomb factory? Bolan worked quickly, pulling quarter pounds of plastique from his pockets and planting half of the packages in four different places. He set timers on the devices for five minutes, then left. He walked his route once more and went to the building that looked like a farmhouse.
He went into a kitchen and heard voices in the next room. Someone was using half French and half
English. Bolan could follow only part of it.
The important elements seemed to be that they had been listening to a television news story about Lutfi's attempt to get 400 million in gold by hijacking the tanker. Nothing was said on the news about the fuel rods.
A gangling youth of about twenty entered the kitchen. He stared into Big Thunder's monster muzzle. His eyes went wide. Before he could yell, Bolan hit him with his fist and knocked him down. When he opened his eyes the .44 AutoMag was touching his mouth.
"Stay alive," Bolan whispered. "How many in there?"
The youth's eyes went wide and he passed out. Bolan stood and looked into the other room. It was a living room. One man sat with his back to Bolan as he stared at the TV set. An older man sat in the next chair pulling on a bottle of red wine.
Bolan casually walked into the room, put the muzzle of Big Thunder against the partly bald head of the closest man and glared at the other one.
"Don't move."
The man in the far chair froze, the wine bottle still on his lips. Below the .44 a voice spoke that was vaguely familiar.
"Ah, yes. I was wondering when you would get here. You really weren't interested in my men's clothes store at all, were you?"
The man turned slowly and nodded at Bolan, then stood.
The man was the small balding store owner from London who fronted the Lutfi bomb factory.
The Executioner centered Big Thunder on the Englishman's chest. "I should have known you'd be in on the payoff for Lutfi's work. Your supply has been short-circuited. Just as the TV told you—no Lutfi, no fuel rods, no enriched uranium."
"A pity," the Englishman shrugged.
They stared at each other for a moment.
"That oversized cannon is a waste of time," the Englishman said. "You'll never get out alive."
"Fine. Neither will you. Who paid for all of this?"
"Lutfi, me—a split, of course."
There was a knock at the door.
"Hold it," Bolan said. "Anybody comes in and you get two chunks of lead through your heart."
The Englishman sucked on his pipe, then nodded. "Yes, I believe you would do it." He raised his voice to the door. "Sorry, old chap, but we're busy now! Give us about fifteen minutes."
Bolan knew he had less than a minute to get away from the barn before it blew. Even here was too close for the amount of C-4 he had used.
"Out," Bolan said softly to the two men. "That way." He pointed toward a door. It led into a ground-floor bedroom. Bolan told one of the men to open the window, jump out and stand still. The older man did. Then the Englishman went through the window and looked at Bolan. The barn was on the far side of the house. The Executioner vaulted out the window, grabbed the leader by the arm and ran with him toward the blackness outside the ring of floodlights that had snapped on, leaving the older man behind. It was the Englishman that Bolan wanted to keep for questioning. The big .44 was in the back of the Englishman's neck.
"Remember if there's any killing, you die first," Bolan muttered.
The top half of the world exploded in one brilliant blood-red ball of fire and flame. The concussion knocked Bolan and the Englishman into the dirt and weeds.
As he tumbled to the plowed ground, Bolan saw the Englishman drawing a weapon from an ankle holster. But the Executioner was falling in the opposite direction to the Englishman's aim. By the time Bolan rolled once and turned, he saw the flash of the other weapon firing.
Bolan triggered twice, his strong right wrist and arm concentrating on holding the recoil action down for the second round.
The explosion in the barn continued rolling thunderously. Bolan saw that the enemy's shot at him had missed. But Bolan's had not. The Englishman was coiled into a ball with his head flopping grotesquely backward. Brains leaked down his neck, their moistness reflecting the distant lights.
24
Mack Bolan stretched out on the red-and-blue striped blanket and felt gentle hands guide his head into a soft lap. He looked up at luminous eyes. April Rose's silky auburn hair framed her face.
"You've been a thousand miles away," she said. "Way out there." She dropped a ripe olive in his mouth. "I was wondering if you'd ever come back."
He sat up beside the tall, strikingly built woman and kissed her lips gently.
"Two slightly burned hot dogs coming up." He poked at the remains of the small fire he'd built in a ring of rocks near the stream that rippled through the meadow on Stony Man Farm. They had driven the Lazer Wagon off the trail and along the meadow to the very edge of the woods and found a perfect picnic spot fifty yards into the wooded area along the small stream.
And it was secure.
Here the Executioner could relax for a few hours. He pushed broken dry branches on the coals, blew on them and soon had a small blaze going. It burned down to coals in a few minutes, and by then he had the willow shoots ready, one for each hot dog. He turned the weiners and soon they cracked and dripped juices into the spitting coals.
"How's your shoulder?" she asked.
He flexed the left arm, winced and nodded. "Corning along. These hot dogs are either going to turn black or the sticks will burn off. Which way do you want yours?"
She smiled. She brought two plastic plates to capture the splitting franks.
"Time for one small wrap-up on the tanker affair?" she asked.
He nodded as he slid the hot dogs off the sticks.
"The French authorities found quite a bit of radioactive contamination at the remains of the French dairy farm. They estimate the workers there were about halfway through with the production of a series of atomic-bomb parts. All they needed was more enriched uranium. They've cleaned up the area, arrested eight people and found a few dead bodies in the rubble."
"The Englishman?"
"His name was Spencer Whitecliff-Jones. He's been in and out of trouble in Great Britain for years. Apparently he tied up with Lutfi two years ago. The whole atomic terrorism scheme seemed to be Whitecliff-Jones's idea. He did the planning, laid out the island base and the Paris country place as well."
"The French boy on the island?"
"Nobody knows anything about him or his dog. He's about twelve, a drifter who'd been living on the island by himself before Whitecliff-Jones came and made him a watchman."
Bolan slid the hot dog into a bun, smothered it with mustard and chomped off a bite.
"The oil slick," he said finally. "What happened to it?"
"The wind shifted, so most of it was contained in the clean-up collars, and a lot burned off. Less than five hundred feet of the French shoreline were touched by any oil. It was one of the biggest spills on record, and the quickest to be picked up and detoxified. Eight different countries sent equipment."
She touched his shoulder where the bandage was, her fingers light, softly trying to accept some of the hurt as her own.
"Captain Running is fine," she said. "The bullet wound was serious, but he should be back on duty in a month. The Contessa suffered a lot of damage, but she's covered by insurance. The fuel rods were all recovered, replaced in their usual positions, and no major problems seem to exist on the tanker. Was the ship really that big, a half mile long?"
"Largest in the world. Another hot dog?"
She shook her head. Her eyes followed his every move.
He looked at the water. "You ever do any fly fishing?"
She said she never had. She knelt beside him and put her arms around him, holding him tightly.
"You're not going to have any time to fish right now." Color splashed her pretty face as she unbuttoned the fasteners on her white blouse and shed it gracefully, like a beautiful flower opening to the sun.
He sensed his own swift reaction, warm, insistent, in total agreement.
They made love softly, gently on the blanket by the stream, totally free and giving. It was a long moment for themselves in the midst of global conflict.
Don Pendleton on
MACK
BOLAN
Crude Kill has it all. I want to thank Chet Cunningham for handling the story so well. Chet's an ex-infantryman of Korean War vintage, and is the latest addition to my handpicked corps of professional writers.
Chet has a fine feel for Bolan because, as a screen and fiction writer, he has lived all over the United States, gotten to know the country real well and knows a lot about a lot of different subjects (such as, I happen to know, motorcycles and the Wild West!). But the topicality of his latest subject, the SULCC (Super Ultra Large Crude Carrier), gives a scary punch to his storyline, and I detect here a point of view that aims to do something about the critical despoilation of our world's shores. Chet's deep engagement in matters of survival are part of the role he plays in a San Diego writers workshop that has 22 members, 17 of whom are selling novelists.
Mack Bolan's soul continues to be forged, again and again, in the white-hot heat of the hellgrounds, as he moves toward the violent beyond-sanction identity already hinted at in our indispensable Bolan/Phoenix/Able mega novel, Stony Man Doctrine (an international bestseller, by the way). Next month, Mack appears in a slave/mobster story that is one of the hardest-edged Mafia books ever written. Watch for it!
Executioner 059 - Crude Kill Page 13
