Anvil of Hell

by Don Pendleton

  Half an hour later, he was back in his hotel, reflecting on the night's events. He had lost a gun, and he ached all over, but he knew now without any doubt that there was a contract out for him and hired killers were on his trail.

  But there was a positive that counterbalanced those negatives and then some — he knew where he was going. And with luck he would find out when he got there where the stolen consignment of uranium 235 was going, too.

  Chapter Five

  The Mediterranean at Stanley Bay was no longer blue. Oyster-colored and smooth, the ocean blended with the sky half a mile offshore and the noonday sun, invisible above the haze, transformed the humid atmosphere into a steam bath that left the vacation crowds from the city lying exhausted on the beach.

  Bolan parked the rented Corvette a couple hundred yards from the end of the esplanade and walked the rest of the way to l'Oasis. He was in no hurry, but by the time he made it his clammy shirt was stuck to his back and the damp heat had plastered his hair to his scalp.

  As Tufik had said, the place looked run-down: the peeling stucco walls were stained, grass grew through cracks in the concrete parking lot, the iron terrace tables beneath their faded parasols were marked with rust.

  Half a dozen teenaged Egyptians chattered over gaudy ice creams inside. Bolan ordered his coffee and Izarra, and sat down on the terrace near a large family of French-speaking Lebanese. He watched the sea gather enough strength to flop into a minuscule wave, which sank into the sand before it had time to recede. It seemed a long time before the next wave limped in.

  Bolan was early for the rendezvous. He wanted to take the temperature of the place, to check the atmosphere and options, and, finally, to plan escape routes in case the meet went sour.

  He had strolled the waterfront, all morning sauntering along moss-covered wharves, gazing at the long lines of big ships ranked in Alexandria's huge dockyard, sometimes pausing to stare at a thicket of masts and rigging outside the yacht club overlooking the inner basin. Once a sentry had warned him away from a bay where two coast guard gunboats were refueling. Otherwise nobody came near him.

  Just before eleven-thirty, as briefed by Tufik, he had asked someone where the Esperanto was due to dock, and was told it would be at the far end of a wooden jetty in the outer harbor.

  A traveling crane had been railed into position outside the customs shed, and coils of rope lay ready by the iron bollards. As yet, there were no stevedores in sight.

  Bolan had walked up and down the wharf, playing the part of a rubbernecking tourist. He had bought an inexpensive camera and spent some time maneuvering himself into position to take "artistic" shots of the shipping. It had been a quarter to twelve when a stone wrapped in paper — thrown from somewhere behind him — landed on the wooden deck at his feet.

  Bolan had swung around, but had seen no one.

  He had unwrapped the paper, which contained no words — just a meticulously drawn clock face with the hands pointing to 1:15. He had returned to his car and driven to l'Oasis at once.

  Now it was 1:45. For the twentieth time the Executioner stared over the peeling wooden rail of the terrace at the livid sea. What if there was no contact and Tufik had been stringing him along?

  No, that was crazy: if the Moroccan-Irishman had been conning him, there would have been no message on the wharf.

  Okay, so there was a contact. What if the killers on Bolan's own trail had gotten to him first? Could he pick up a cold trail here in Alexandria, with no names and no addresses? No way.

  He'd have to go back to Marseilles, in the hope of choking intel out of some underworld hood.

  Bolan's sober reflections were interrupted by the rustle of tires on concrete. A small man in a rumpled white suit carried a pedal cycle out of the parking lot and propped it against the terrace railing. Climbing the steps, he looked quickly around him — a ferrety little guy with dark shades and a ragged mustache smudged across his face.

  The Lebanese family was squabbling over which movie to see that evening. Two students who had installed themselves on the terrace ten minutes earlier were ordering mint tea. A crowd of young people inside the restaurant had begun to sing.

  The slight man zeroed in on Bolan's table: the small glass of yellow liquor, the copper pan of coffee. He hurried over and dropped into a vacant chair.

  "Ahmed Ibrahim?" Bolan asked.

  "No names, please," the man said nervously, glancing over his shoulder. "My apologies for the delay. As you can see, someone's blown the whistle." He dragged a folded newspaper from an inner pocket and spread it on the table.

  It was that day's edition of Al Ahram, turned back to an inside page with a short item ringed in red marker: Bomb Outrages Rock Marseilles.

  Following a mystery explosion that wrecked a cab in a main street of the city yesterday, police were today trying to pinpoint reasons behind a bomb blast that destroyed a coffee shop in the old part of the town during the early hours of the morning. Among the victims were six Arab girls and three men...

  Bolan stopped reading and dropped the paper onto the table. "I suppose it was a matter of time before someone got him."

  Ibrahim's fingers were trembling. "Not someone," he said. "They got him. He... he called me and told me what you wanted to know. I think I can help. I can put you in touch — But I had to find out another way, and it'll cost you."

  "I was told there wasn't any more to pay. Tufik..."

  "No names, please. I know you were told that, but this bomb thing has altered everything." Ibrahim mopped his brow with a large silk handkerchief. "I've got a wife and family. I want out. When I agreed at first, I never expected... It'll cost you," he repeated, looking nervously over his shoulder once more.

  "Okay, so it'll cost me. The point is, can you deliver?"

  "I told you, yes. But it's difficult. They must know somebody's on the trail. In fact I know they do, because they switched plans. I have friends in the police and Movement Control, you see. That's why I was late. I was checking-"

  "Just tell me what you know," Bolan interrupted.

  "The...consignment in which you're interested was taken off the ship the moment it docked. That was less than an hour ago. It was lowered onto a dory on the far side from the quay and rowed to the other side of the harbor."

  "No suspicions on the part of the customs officials?"

  "Everyone was looking the other way. Like I said, these things cost. The stuff was driven out of town on the road to Cairo. There's a helicopter meeting them someplace in the desert to take the consignment aboard."

  "They must be rattled to pull something that obvious. Do you know where the chopper's headed?"

  "I heard it was Khartoum, in the Sudan. There isn't a lot more that I can... What do you want to do?"

  "What happens to the stuff in Khartoum?" Bolan asked.

  "I don't know. I think someone mentioned something about a camel caravan."

  "A camel caravan? You're serious? Where would they be going? The interior?"

  "I tell you I don't know. I can pass on only what I heard."

  Bolan took a sip of cold coffee. Unlikely though it seemed, the information figured. He remembered the emphasis on camels in Brognola's movie clue. A desert caravan would be as good a way as any to shift hot merchandise from one point to another without attracting attention. Maybe that had always been part of the plan; maybe it was just the method of getting the uranium to Khartoum that had been changed.

  "I've got to contact that caravan," he said. "I want the name of someone in Khartoum who can identify it, someone who can fill me in on where it starts from, the assembly point. If possible I want a lead to people who could fix me up with the right kind of disguise, with papers and all that. I need to join that camel train. Can you get me an in?"

  Ahmed Ibrahim thought for a moment, drumming his fingers on the table. "It is not easy," he said at last. "And they have spies everywhere. But there is an Englishman in Khartoum. He is local correspondent for the Madison news agency, I t
hink. He would know about caravans and where they go. I cannot say whether he could identify this particular one, and I'm not sure about the papers. What exactly did you want?"

  "I don't know until I get there. But two separate sets, for sure. One to justify my presence with the caravan..."

  "Oh, Arab papers. The Brit could handle that all right."

  "And another set that could pass muster if I had to leave the caravan and assume the identity of a Westerner."

  "Ah. That would be more difficult. The Sudan is a troubled area, particularly in the south. Strangers are unwelcome."

  "That's why I have to have foolproof ID, the right kind of cover, permits, etcetera."

  "Courtney — that's the Englishman — couldn't help you there. You'd have to go to someone more important, a Sudanese in a high position. From the military, perhaps, or the ministry of the interior. But you would have to be very careful. They have infiltrated..."

  "You keep saying 'they,'" Bolan interrupted. "Who? Who are these people? Who fixed the port authorities? Who transported the stuff in a helicopter? Who has spies everywhere? Are they part of the same organization as the isotope thieves, or just the hired help?"

  Ibrahim looked apprehensive. For the third time he stared at the beach, the terrace, the inside of the restaurant. The Lebanese children — three boys and two girls between the ages of five and ten — had finished swimming and were playing some Mediterranean version of cowboys and Indians around the terrace steps. Their parents were lying flat out on the sand with newspapers spread over their faces. The young people inside had stopped singing and started to play a board game.

  "Very dangerous people," Ibrahim said. "They have contacts in many countries. You could find out more, perhaps, from a man called Hamid el-Karim. He is very important. A high post in the interior ministry. He also has a high standard of living. He has a great deal of interest in money."

  "Tell me something I couldn't guess," Bolan murmured.

  "EI-Karim can give you any papers you want — at a price. But you must have a good cover reason for asking. And do not on any account mention to him the caravan angle."

  "Why?"

  "Because he is the man who..."

  The Egyptian stopped in midsentence, brushing a hand irritably over his nape as if a fly was troubling him. One of the kids on the steps shouted something triumphantly.

  "Who what?" Bolan prompted.

  Ibrahim was gazing at him with wide-open eyes. Suddenly his body corkscrewed in the chair and he pitched forward across the table, scattering the Executioner's cup, saucer and glass. The copper pan fell to the wooden deck of the terrace, spilling coffee grounds over the white alpaca suit.

  Bolan was on his feet, leaping to the stricken man's side. The two students ran to join him. "What happened?" one asked. "Is he ill?"

  "Terminally," Bolan rasped. He ran his hand over the back of Ibrahim's lolling head, withdrawing the tiny feathered steel dart that projected from the neck just below the hairline. There would be a lot less trouble — and his wife and kids would come out of it better off — if the death was read as a simple heart attack. If the quick-acting poison was Rycin, an alkaloid much favored by the KGB, Ibrahim's body would show all the signs of coronary thrombosis.

  He ran across to the steps to the boy with the toy pistol, who was crying. "I didn't mean to hurt the man," he sobbed. "It was supposed to be a joke."

  "Who said that? Who gave you the gun?" Bolan asked.

  The child flung out an arm, pointing along the water's edge. "There. The man with the sun hat."

  "The one in the striped shirt?"

  "No! The one wearing jeans and a jacket. He said I c-c-could keep this..." the gun was a long-barreled Webley air pistol "...if I pretended to shoot the man at the t-t-table. He said it was a game. We were supposed to be chasing the bad man from the CIA. He g-g-gave me money." Tears streamed down the boy's face. "But he never said the gun was loaded..."

  Bolan was already running. "Don't worry, kid," he yelled over his shoulder. "It's not your fault. He was the bad man!"

  The guy in the jeans and safari jacket was almost one hundred yards away. He was a chunky man, not very tall, but he looked to be in shape. He was carrying a blue airline bag, and the hat on his head was a wide-brimmed straw.

  He had been picking his way between the prone sunbathers at a fair pace, although not quickly enough to attract attention. As soon as he heard Bolan shout, he began to run.

  He scattered a group of youths playing handball, ran through a family picnic spread out on the sand and bounded up a flight of stone steps to the esplanade.

  Ignoring the shouts of protest, the Executioner followed.

  Up on the pavement, the killer by proxy sprinted for a red Alfa Romeo roadster parked by the curb. He leaped over the cutaway door into the cockpit, twisted a key already in the ignition and, as the engine burst into life, leaned out to blast off a couple of shots at his pursuer.

  Vacationers screamed and flung themselves flat, seeing the tall, grim-faced American leap sideways and draw a large silver automatic. He dropped to one knee and returned the hit man's fire. But the red convertible pulled out into the roadway with a shriek of tires, laying down rubber as the driver tweaked it into a U-turn and roared away toward the outskirts of the city.

  Bolan's Corvette was fifty yards away, and he reached it in Olympic time, flooring the pedal to send the sleek sport coupe howling in pursuit.

  Street traders, kids playing, a mule with bulging panniers stopped him from closing up as the two cars raced through a shantylown behind the seafront. But once clear of the white, flat-roofed suburban houses that lay among the stands of palm and tamarisk beyond, the Corvette began to gain.

  The killer was a good driver: he knew just how fast he could hurl the little roadster into a corner without braking; he could judge to an inch the gaps in the traffic through which he could safely squeeze.

  Bolan was as good, if not better. His big, brown muscled hands lay easily on the wheel as he slid around curves, shifted down, gunned the engine and slowly narrowed the gap between them.

  Until they made a stretch of higher ground five miles outside the city on the coastal strip, the Alfa Romeo was gaining on the corners and the 233 hp Corvette forged ahead each time there was a straightaway.

  But the American car came into its own once the sinuous grades leading up from the plain flattened out. Here the road arrowed straight as a die through orange groves and plantations of cotton, and the Executioner was able to make full use of his vehicle's powerful 5.7-liter V8.

  The warm, damp wind screamed past the steeply raked shield and the bellow of the exhaust beat back from stone walls on either side of the road as the coupe surged forward.

  The gap between them was reduced to eighty yards, sixty, fifty. Bolan took a hand from the wheel and loosed off a couple of experimental shots from the AutoMag. But they were doing more than ninety, both cars slewing left and right over the poor road surface, and accurate shooting was impossible. If either of the slugs zeroed in on the Alfa, it made no difference to the car's performance.

  Bolan was no more than thirty yards behind when the roadster's brake lights blazed, the sloping tail swung out, and the killer wrenched the Alfa onto a dirt road that twisted away between rows of fig trees.

  The maneuver was too abrupt for Bolan to follow. He stamped on the brake pedal, fighting the wheel to keep the Corvette straight. The coupé's tires shrieked in protest, streaking black marks along the pavement. Fifty yards beyond the turnoff, the vehicle had slowed enough for him to lock the wheel hard over, haul up on the hand brake and slide the car around in a one-eighty degree turn.

  He raced back to the turnoff and swung into the dirt road in a shower of gravel. The Alfa Romeo was no longer in sight. The road breasted a slight rise in the land and then dipped into a valley brimming with acacia, pine and wild cherry. Beyond the trees, the leaden sea reflected a faint gleam of sunshine.

  The Corvette hurtled over the brow
of the hill and bumped down into a depression. A ten-ton covered truck with the rear doors open and a ramp slanting to the ground stood beneath the pines. The Alfa Romeo had already climbed the ramp and parked inside the truck. As Bolan wrestled the car to a halt at the edge of the clearing, the driver jumped down and joined the two guys with submachine guns, who were lying between the rear wheels.

  They opened fire a fraction of a second after the warrior hit the door handle and dived to the ground on the passenger side of the Vette. He could hear the slugs thwacking into the fiberglass bodywork like steel hail.

  From where he lay, sheltered by one of the vehicle's front wheels, Bolan could see the flicker of flame blossoming in front of the SMGs, the occasional sharp stab as the Alfa driver choked out a shot from his handgun. Bullets scuffed the din beside the Executioner, throwing up chips of stone that stung his cheek.

  Bolan held the AutoMag in one hand, and withdrew the Walther PPK automatic he had bought from Marseilles's black market to replace the lost Beretta. He didn't like it as much as the Italian pistol, but it was useful enough at short range, and the 7.65 mm rounds — as the German army had found in World War II — were as lethal as anything that could be fired despite their small bore.

  The glade echoed to the sharp stammer of the SMGs and the deeper, single bark of autoloaders. Birds screeched and flapped away from the treetops. Leaves ripped from the lower branches of bushes floated to the ground. Sighting through a hole in the Corvette's alloy wheel, Bolan inserted the Walther's slender 3.5 inch barrel and blasted off three of the magazine's seven skullbusters at the rear of the truck. While the gunmen ducked back into the shelter of the ramp, he shuffled quickly from behind the Corvette on elbows and knees and flung himself into a shallow depression behind a clump of cistus. From there he had a wider angle on his targets without being any more vulnerable himself.

  There was now a gap of seven or eight feet between the ramp and the nearest pair of wheels, and the killers had to ease themselves farther back beneath the truck to avoid the punishing 240-grain deathstream being pumped at them from the AutoMag.