Don Pendleton: The Libya Connection

They exited the building and did as they were told. Bolan covered them from the rear.

They almost made it.

The crunch of several pairs of footsteps came from around the corner of the building when Bolan's group was less than two yards from it.

Four of Jericho's free-lance terrorist troopers, black and burly and uniformed like the men Bolan had killed inside, came into sight at a leisurely clip.

Everyone saw everybody else at the same instant.

Bushir and his daughter knew they would only be in Bolan's way. Father and daughter went low, wisely falling away from the hellground that would be the airspace above. Bushir moved with an agility surprising for a man his age.

Bolan was diving into a prone firing position. The rifle was right for night killing like this.

He pumped off two rounds, was rewarded with the sight of one soldier flopping back, open armed, as if kicked by a mule.

The Galil's report echoed like a thundercrack in the tight confines of the village street.

The soldiers were scattering. They appeared untrained. But they were pulling their weapons around fast enough.

Bolan sighted in on one guy dodging to the side. The Galil pumped two more lead destroyers that flipped the man into a forward somersault, minus his face.

The two survivors had held flank positions in their original formation. Both men opened fire with their rifles. But they could not see Bolan. They were firing at where they thought he was.

Saffron flashes of gunfire knifed the darkness.

Bolan was rolling in a sideways fling, wide and wild to his left. He heard bullets chunking into the dirt where he had been moments before.

He came out of the roll, sighted at the man to his left and squeezed the trigger. The guy jackknifed with an ugly grunt and pitched to the ground. Bolan had heard clearly the thwack-suck as the heavy round splattered through living matter. That soldier was dead.

The remaining man of the group tossed a fast trio of parting shots and started to turn.

Bolan heard a gasping noise to his right. He concentrated immediately on taking out the soldier who was two paces from gaining cover at the corner of the building.

The assault rifle thumped once, twice more. The target was twisted around and slammed into the corner of the building he had been trying to hide behind. His corpse slumped slowly to the ground. Bolan had heard those hits, too. The guy was dead.

The night was responding with a hum of activity. The babble of awakened villagers merged with something else.

Bolan heard two separate engines gunning to life. He heard voices raised in alarm. He heard the sound of men mobilizing.

Bolan hurried to where Fahima knelt beside the body of her father.

Bushir had caught one high in the chest. The old man had not been quite agile enough. He was sprawled onto his back with a gaping, pulpy hole above his heart that still pumped blood. His legs extended straight, his arms were flung out. He looked like a man crucified. He was dead.

Fahima was wringing her father's hand. She was in anguish, wailing in Arabic.

Bolan stooped, placed an arm around the young woman, and gently yet forcefully guided her to her feet.

"Fahima. Listen to me. You must run. Get away from here."

"My father!" she cried. Her features were twisted. "He's all I have... They've killed him..."

He slapped her gently, but sharply.

She snapped to attention, hysteria forgotten.

"You can come back," he pressed. "But stay now and you'll be killed. Get away from here, Fahima. It's me they want. I'll engage them. You go. Now!"

He did not wait for her response. He turned and stalked back toward the rear entrance of the inn. He held the Galil with a finger on the trigger, his eyes constantly probing.

He heard soft words, carried on the night wind. Fahima's woman-child voice:

"Thank you, American. May Allah protect you."

He sensed Fahima moving off along the stone wall of the building, away from her father's body. Away from the killing ground.

Bolan regained the doorway that he and the others had just left. He hustled swiftly into the hallway that cut through the building. The Executioner hurried on soundless feet.

The merc terrorists over at Jericho's villa had undoubtedly heard the sounds of weapon fire out here in the bleak nowhere.

How would they respond?

As he hurried down the hallway and approached the stairs leading up to the main room, Bolan ran a quick review of what he had seen here so far.

Kennedy has ideas of his own. He's got a market for the cargo he's supposed to be guarding. The buyers are here tonight. The computation lacked one answer: Where is Eve?

Bolan heard raised voices as he approached the stairs to the main room. He paused and listened.

Kennedy was shouting.

"You can't do this, goddammit! We had a deal, you black bastards!"

"Watch your tongue, Mr. Kennedy." A heavily accented African voice; silky but with cold steel in it. "I do not know what is happening outside. But I suggest we leave here at once."

"You're damn right we'll leave here," snarled Kennedy. "And I'm taking my money with me." Then, over his shoulder, he called out: "Hymie — get in here fast!"

Bolan figured Kennedy was calling to the merc who had been guarding Fahima and Bushir. Bolan was about to respond when a door across the hallway burst open and two more African soldiers leveled AK-47s at the Executioner.

Bolan fell to one knee, pumped off two fast rounds from the Galil but not fast enough to stop one of the soldiers firing his own fast round.

But accurate enough to nail both black troopers with head hits that sent them toppling back into the room in a deadfalling tangle.

Bolan mounted the steps two at a time. He entered the inn's main room, Galil searching for targets.

There were four men in the dining room. A bodyguard, in the same uniform as the men outside; two chunky blacks who looked uncomfortable in their Italian suits. And Kennedy.

The gunfire from the corridor had interrupted their confrontation. All four men spun their attention to the doorway Bolan had burst through.

The bodyguard was already pulling up his rifle.

Bolan took the bodyguard first.

The Galil bucked death as Bolan squeezed the trigger. The bodyguard was tagged out with a rupturing throat hit that tossed him tumbling back to the floor, taking a table and two chairs with him on the way down.

Someone blew out the candle on the table where the principals of the meeting had been sitting. The room was pitched into darkness. There was a scuffling of movement. Mad and fast.

Bolan sidestepped away from where he had stood, went into a deep crouch. He heard a door opening on the other side of the large room.

He fired two rounds at where he determined the sound was. He heard a groan of pain, desperate in the dark.

Bolan dodged again. A handgun opened up from the far corner of the room. He heard the hiss of a bullet slice past him.

Bolan fired to the right of the pistol shot. He darted sideways himself a microsecond after triggering the round. He was not rewarded with the sound of a hit. Bolan's opponent knew how to handle a fire-fight in the dark, too. Bolan's target was constantly moving. On the offensive.

Two heartbeats. The open doorway was now visible, a deep gray. And empty. Another pistol shot slammed through the darkness. Another tongue of dirty flame across the room.

Bolan heard the darkness as if it were breathing, and divined through a mix of gambling and the intense will of the air itself that his opponent would choose to dodge to the right again. That is where he fired.

He knew he was on the money when a wet rattle bubbled from a body with a sound that no man can fake. The sound of death.