He moved on to the photos of the Harana Desert.
"Any luck here?" Bolan asked, surveying the world of Zandesi in miniature.
"Oh, yeah," Brognola replied, "we've had lots of luck. We found Fowler's main hideout right here." He smacked the tip of the pointer on a whirlpool of mountain ridges. Then he smacked the pointer on a narrow canyon. "And here." The pointer moved on again to still another canyon. "And here. The son of a bitch has a small army of men who do nothing but create false trails. Striking camps, setting ambushes, marching to nowhere. Still no sign of where he's keeping President Sabda. The bastard's good, but we'll find his real base sooner or later."
"Sooner, I hope," Bolan said. "That's why I came with a shopping list. If our friends in the desert come through for us, I want to be able to come through for them."
"What do you need?"
"To start with, I want three choppers."
"You don't ask for much."
"We need the replacements to get Serpentine Force back up to snuff. Three Lynx choppers, the army version. That's what Molembe's men are trained on."
"Lynx choppers aren't the flavor of the month, Striker. Maybe you haven't noticed, but the only birds flying from this ship are Sea Knights and Sea Stallions. Not to mention the fact that we can't use them in Zandesi."
"I notice that we got a lot of firepower out here and it's not firing at all," Bolan said.
The American ships still had a heavy presence in the waters of the Atlantic, but the psychological impact was waning. The longer they stayed there the more ineffectual they seemed. Now they were just adrift, waiting until all hell broke loose.
But by then the country itself could be teetering on the brink. According to the insane rules of diplomacy, the U.S. had to refrain from direct military involvement until the death tolls mounted and Zandesi was ripped apart.
Maybe then the ships would go in and evacuate American citizens and friendlies, whomever they could pluck from the ruins.
Another Armageddon in Africa, Bolan thought, picturing the other wargrounds he'd walked through on the continent.
"Like I said," Bolan repeated, "they have to be Lynx choppers so it appears there's no outside help involved. Ask around in the private sector."
"All right, Mack, I'll work on it. See what I can work out with the Brits. They might have something in the area." Brognola then turned back to the photographs laid out before them. "Now let's go over these again."
Both men pored over the photographs, picking out likely targets for Bolan and the probable targets that would be selected by the Desert Knights.
By the time they were finished, the Executioner had mapped out the next stage of his campaign. It would be a brief tour in hell.
"Okay," Brognola said, "before you clue Molembe in on what the little birds have told us, clue me in on his frame of mind. We all know there's no guarantee we'll get Sabda back in one piece. How's Molembe holding up under all of this pressure?"
"He's a survivor. Molembe lived through Nashonge's regime and he's holding things together now."
"But if Sabda doesn't come back, is Molembe of presidential caliber?"
"He's a good man to have on your side in a firefight. He's more at home in the field than working behind a desk or fighting diplomatic war in a suit."
"I know the type," Brognola said, looking hard at Bolan. "Guys like that can stretch if they have to."
"Right. He's a soldier all the way, but if the country calls upon him, his sense of obligation will keep him at the reins."
"Good. He's still got the confidence of the international community, but that could change quick enough if Fowler unleashes any more of his fatal surprises on the Zandesians."
"He's capable of it," Bolan said. "So far he's tried pitched battles in the desert and terror attacks in the city. But he hasn't played all of his cards yet. If things go bad for him, there's always a more crippling kind of sabotage."
They went over some of the possible targets Fowler might hit if he escalated the terror.
He'd been in control long enough to know the weaker links of Zandesi's infrastructure power stations, banks, water and food supplies. His targets were limitless.
So far the only thing that kept Fowler in check was his goal of retaking the reins of power. He didn't want to sit on the throne of a country in ruins. But if he reached the point of no return and realized the throne would stay out of his grasp, he just might try to take the country down with him.
"That's where you come in, Striker," Brognola said. "Don't give him the chance."
"And that's where you come in. Get us the helicopters, Hal. We need them. Fully equipped gunships, ready to roll."
"You're looking for miracles," Brognola told him.
Bolan nodded, rolling up some of the photographs. The Intel would be transferred to ZIS charts, then the photos would be destroyed. "I'll take whatever you can give me. Miracles and machine guns."
* * *
In the harsh light of day, sections of the city resembled a dug-up graveyard.
Remnants of stonewalled houses stood like tombstones marking the death of Zandeville.
Death that had come in the night.
The shooting that had begun along the resort strips quickly spread throughout the city.
Amid the mad bursts of automatic fire, loud explosions could be heard throughout the night as grenades were tossed randomly inside the homes.
Now the city was an armed camp. Houses were barred and locked. Cars were parked directly in front of doors, both as obstacles to intruders and for quick getaways if the war came to the occupants.
Footsteps outside on the street were matched by furtive sounds from inside the houses as the home owners watched anyone who passed by. Often they watched through cross hairs.
The terror had cut a grisly path through some sections of the city, but left others untouched, as if it were massacre by lottery.
Martin Molembe and his men patrolled through the wreckage of the capital, trying to pick up traces of the marauders and at the same time trying to calm down the inhabitants of the city.
Broken windows littered the streets. Doors torn from their hinges lay flat on the ground like entrances to Hades. And in many cases the bullet-ridden corpses of those killed by the death squads were found in their houses.
The hesitant reports of witnesses were all the same — blue-uniformed men looking for terrorists had burst into houses at random, shot up anything that moved, then went on to their next target.
It was a replay of the revolutions and civil wars that hit so many other countries in Africa.
Terrorists would murder civilians, then government troops would come in and murder more civilians, claiming they were terrorists.
Molembe had put out the word that it wasn't government troops who'd committed the murders. Radio and television reports linked the attack to stolen uniforms and an influx of mercenaries into the capital.
But it was hard to believe.
Anyone who encountered the real ZIS teams the day after the slaughter was bound to be spooked at the sight of so many men in uniforms.
Molembe himself was spooked. At the end of the day he was nearly incapable of speech, remembering the dead faces of men he'd known for years, hearing voices from a better time echoing in his head.
When the last ambulance drove off, Molembe climbed into the back of his car and nodded to the driver, who waited for the other armored cars to get in place behind and in front of him, then drove off toward the presidential palace.
Molembe sighed as he glanced back at the ruin. "It can't happen again," he muttered. "They'll try tonight and the next night, but we can't let them beat us. There's only one way to do it…" His fists clenched instinctively, the sharply etched veins rising prominently on his forearms. "I know what to do."
To the driver who caught his image in the rearview mirror, Molembe looked like a man possessed or dispossessed.
The statesman had fled. The warrior had taken control.
<
br /> * * *
Later that night Bolan stood on the rooftop of the presidential palace, scanning the skyline. Two blocks away flares suddenly rained down upon the streets, searing away the blanket of darkness.
Then came the organized roar of a hidden machine-gun nest coming to life. The tripod-mounted SMG's were set up in the upper floors of the buildings surrounding the presidential palace, giving the ZIS gunners control of every inch of the street.
They'd developed a nearly infallible tactic for dealing with the mercenaries prowling the night.
The moment any of Fowler's men appeared in the street, the machine gunners opened up with a barrage at their feet. While the spray of lead kicked up tar and concrete, the gunners strafed the road behind them.
With pieces of earth flying all around, the meres knew in seconds that they were caught in the middle of a trap with steel teeth and were forced immediately to make their choice fight or flight. But both courses led to a quick and bloody death.
The third alternative was surrender, which held the most promise.
In the face of heavy machine-gun fire, most of Fowler's units threw down their weapons and lifted their hands above their heads, as if they were religiously acknowledging a greater power than them the greater glory of guns.
The sporadic gunfire had been erupting all night long as small bands of Fowler's men tried to continue their terror raids from the previous night, many of them heading for the presidential palace. Dressed in stolen ZIS uniforms, they'd figured it would be an easy approach.
But they were dead wrong. The ploy had backfired. There was no confusion on the part of the defenders. They opened up on the hardmen without hesitation, almost as if Fowler's men wore signs that broadcast just who they were.
And in a way they did.
Molembe had forbidden his own troops to wear their uniforms and as an added precaution had given strict orders for them not to leave their posts.
That meant anyone moving on the streets wasn't part of the ZIS, and anyone who was in uniform was one of Fowler's men. Their surprise attack had suddenly turned into a suicide assault against impregnable positions.
Though many of the Desert Knights reached their goal of entering the presidential palace, it wasn't in the way they'd imagined. They came in under guard, were taken to the holding cells below ground and interrogated immediately.
Stunned by the rapidity of their capture, the sudden turnaround of events, they were in the right frame of mind to cooperate with the ZIS.
Especially since the only remaining choice was for them to be put back out on the street in full uniform and in the bright light of flares.
There would be no coming back a second time.
Faced with certain death, they talked, revealing the locations of the safehouses where they'd changed into the stolen uniforms.
The Intelligence mounted as more and more of Fowler's Desert Knights deserted. A steady parade of hardmen were either taken prisoner or taken out of action permanently if they tried to resist.
Bolan walked in the rooftop breeze as echoes of gunfire drifted over the city. It was the sound of war, a sound the warrior was used to.
Perhaps Fowler's troops would be routed, perhaps not. But the bottom line this night was that men would die. And they'd all be one step closer to the final battle.
* * *
Downstairs in his office Martin Molembe was dreaming of a free Zandesi. Emil Nashonge was gone, and in his place freedom had been coming. Until Molembe lost it. How foolish to think he could lead the country through all this madness. A better man could have done it.
But no other man had come forward.
It was up to him to bring about the free Zandesi he'd envisioned ever since he was a young man going into the army. For years it had been just a dream, daydreams and pipe dreams in the back of his mind.
But as he worked his way up through the system, first as a soldier, then as a security officer, he'd seen that those feelings were shared by others. There were fellow travelers in the government and in the army, all of them on the long road to freedom, a road that was now blocked by his indecision.
Michael Belasko had offered several courses of action that would take them farther down that road. Courses of action that, once started, would force Fowler's hand. There would be no turning back.
Molembe sat at his desk.
Until now he'd been waiting for others to act. But the American was right. They could no longer wait for the mercenaries to attack and hope they could stop them. Now it was time for them to make a move.
A time for war.
11
Steel-guitar music whined into the night, filtering through the open windows of the off-hours clubs in the Joyhouse District of Zandeville.
With the capture of so many of the mercenaries responsible for the terror, the city had almost returned to normal. And Joyhouse had bounced back in all of its decadent glory.
Bars, bordellos and private clubs flourished side by side on the crowded cobblestoned streets that wound down toward the waterfront in rickety grandeur. The style of buildings was chaotic, looking as if an architect on a binge had worked his way down the streets designing whatever came to mind.
Wild West-style saloons with wraparound balconies stood side by side with modest whitewashed buildings that looked like thousand-year-old monasteries. Two- and three-story buildings with railingguarded porches leaned toward the street like wooden avalanches.
While many of the buildings were drab, dull affairs, some of them were splashed with heavily detailed murals that depicted the history of the house or highlighted its current offerings, mostly gambling or girls.
The more-profitable ones sported neon signs over their picture windows.
No matter how well they were doing, most of the clubs shared something in common they were illegal. During the day they were homes or small businesses, but at night they transformed themselves into joy houses.
Authorities seldom bothered them. The Joyhouse District had a long and glorious tradition in Zandeville. Civil war or not, the tradition was hard to break. Though it was a poor cousin to the strip of exclusive clubs glowing like harbor lights along the south end of Zandeville Bay, Joyhouse was the place of choice for most of the locals.
That included Martin Molembe, who led Mack Bolan down a winding street full of slanting clubs that tilted toward the sea. It was shortly past midnight, and their target was a sprawling two-story saloon with loud music and laughter that drifted into the street.
Judging from the crowd, it was the Hilton of after-hours clubs. Several couples sat hunched over small round tables on the wide street-level porch, sharing bottles of wine and making plans for the evening.
A quartet of unattached women in tight tube tops and short skirts leaned over the spindle railing. They looked young but worldly as their shadowed eyes scanned the two approaching men.
"Cops or customers?" said a young woman in a shocking pink top that showed off the impressive contours of her bust.
"Maybe both," the woman next to her replied.
Their laughter floated on a fan-fed breeze of perfume, smoke and sweat.
Bolan and Molembe pushed through the doors and stepped into the comfortable darkness. Several hardmen were sitting at a long wooden bench off to one side of the room. The unofficial doormen turned and watched the newcomers.
A bullnecked man with a gleaming shaved skull sat at the end of the table, a scowl etched on his face. He was obviously in charge of the reception crew. He altered the scowl into a neutral grimace and nodded slightly at Molembe. Then he gave Bolan a cursory glance and looked away.
"Don't ted me," Bolan said. "That was the mutter and we passed inspection."
Molembe laughed. "His name is Saint-Denis, and he's a lot of things to a lot of people."
"Patron saint of the bar-front bouncers," Bolan suggested, sliding a ladder-back chair across the floor, then sitting at a black-laquered table with a maze of beer rings.
"He is th
e best," Molembe said, dropping into the chair across from Bolan. "When you get bounced by Saint-Denis you don't always get up. Fortunately he's on the right side."
A tanned blonde with a braid of hair reaching halfway down her bare back materialised by the table. Her thin white cotton top was a concoction of wire-thin straps, and had a low-cut bodice that showed a generous expanse of flesh. Her eyes were as blue and as cold as the sea.
They had to be, Bolan realized, to survive in a place like this.
Taking out a pen and pad, she looked down at Molembe. "The usual?" she asked.
"Not tonight. I'll just have a pot of tea. I'm working."
"A shame," she said. "Him, too?"
"Ask him."
"A pleasure." She turned toward Bolan, her eyes flickering with warmth for a moment as she looked at him. Whether it was genuine or just part of her hostess routine, he couldn't tell. "What'll you have?"
"What's available?"
"Ask me again at closing time and we'll see. Right now you can pick your poison." She rattled off a list of beers, whiskeys and exotic drinks.
"Tea sounds fine."
"Sure," she said, raising her eyebrows. "Coming right up. But be careful. It's real strong."
Bolan smiled and watched her glide away through the crowd. "Who is she?"
"She's not part of the decor," Molembe warned. "She's a friend."
"She have a name?"
"Lorraine."
"How does she fit in with all this?"
"She runs this place," Molembe replied, "with a little help from some silent partners." He glanced over at Saint-Denis and his crew.
"Just one big deadly family," Bolan said. "Is this your home away from home?"
"It's one of the safest places I know."
"Relative to what? It looks like a lot of other clip joints I've seen. For the right price you get whatever you want. Drinks, drugs was the warrior looked around at the available women was women."
"Drinks, yes. Drugs, no. As far as women go, who knows? That's not my affair. Besides, so far I've seen nothing that makes me suspicious in that regard."
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