Don Pendleton - The Libya Connection

The Fearless was a floating city. The warship was home to five thousand sailors and airmen for months at a time. The five-deck seagoing airport was a warren of passages, offices, shops, mess halls and crew quarters; a numbering system had been devised to keep people from getting lost. Someone had mentioned to Grimaldi that the Eiffel Tower, if laid on its side, would overhang the flight deck by only five feet.

The Stony Man flyboy was smoking a cigarette, trying to relax.

The angled black flight deck was quiet at this hour. The big flattop's two-hundred-thousand horsepower engines, turning her four shafts with their seventy-thousand-pound propellers, could not be heard up here. The incessant roaring, banging and hissing of steam catapult launches and the thumping and snapping of cable-arrested landings, which had been going on since Grimaldi's airlift to the ship from Tunis via a Sikorsky 70L shipboard helicopter, had only minutes ago been called to a halt until more exercises tomorrow morning.

Grimaldi experienced a momentary sense of oneness with the Med, the alluring but historically much fought-over sea.

He could not relax.

That moon overhead, that same panoply of stars, shone down on Mack Bolan at this moment, wherever he was.

If he was still alive.

No way could Grimaldi relax, knowing what he did.

Grimaldi was joined at the rail by an admiral named Fieldhouse. The task force commander was the only man onboard the Fearless who knew what Grimaldi knew.

"They told me in Communications that you had to speak with me, Mr. Grimaldi."

Jack did not take his eyes away from the panorama of Mediterranean night.

"What are my chances of violating Libyan airspace without detection? I've got to reach him."

Fieldhouse paused to frame a reply, balancing the odds in his mind. He nodded at the moonwashed expanse of sea.

"The Gulf of Sidra is where two of our planes made hot contact with two of Libya's Su-22s a while back. Soviet-built fighter planes. Those Sus are at the bottom of that gulf right now. Our intel is that Khaddafi's training program hasn't kept up with the technology he's been acquiring. Yes, his army and airforce do have the equipment to spot you coming in. But whether they actually spot you, and how quickly they respond... well, I'd say you stand a chance of getting in and out again if you fly low. Not a good chance, but some chance. What do you need?"

Grimaldi tossed his cigarette butt over the rail.

He had needed some few minutes alone after receiving the communique from Stony Man Farm. He came up here from the ship's communications room, had filled his lungs with gulps of ocean air and half a cigarette. It was enough.

He could handle it.

"What have you got that will get me in fast under their radar grid and punch hard when I get there, Admiral?"

"My recommendation would be our new Boeing 1041 multirole V/STOL," said Fieldhouse. "We have two of them below, on twenty-four standby-one of them without markings.''

"What kind of armament?"

"The 1041 has air-to-air and air-to-surface missile capability. Unfortunately it's not equipped with cannon or machine guns. But with a flight speed of about Mach 0.8, I'd say she's your best bet for the kind of hit you seem to have in mind." The navy man studied the Stony Man pilot with a long look. "This is a very bizarre mission, Mr. Grimaldi."

Grimaldi grunted grim acknowledgment. "It's a bizarre world, Admiral. I'll take your advice. The 1041 it is. Lead the way, please."

Fieldhouse moved down to the principal hangar belowdecks.

Grimaldi tossed one last look over his shoulder at the dark beauty of the Med. He wondered if the sea would still sparkle in the moonlight and reflect those stars the way it did right now — after everyone was dead.

Yeah. Everyone.

Strain-7 — No one knew for sure exactly what it was capable of. The worst possible guess, of course, was that it had the capability of killing off every human being on the face of the earth...

It was very literally a matter of life and death for most of the planet that Mack Bolan now held in his hands.

And Mack did not know it.

Ah, friend, soldier, go carefully in this night. This dark night in your endless war.

Jack Grimaldi knew that his best friend was walking a lonely trail now, and that he was risking all because he did not want to further endanger Eve Aguilar's life; and yes, Grimaldi could identify with that. The pilot was a man of well-defined, fiery Italian temperament who appreciated completely the powers of love and caring that were the lifeblood of his race and the driving force of a bigger-than-life dude named Mack Bolan. The guy would've made a damn good Italiano.

Grimaldi and Fieldhouse entered the cavernous hangar of the Fearless. Planes, men, activity, the smell of grease and oil were everywhere. Noise echoed off the towering steel walls.

Fieldhouse angled off to make arrangements for Grimaldi's briefing and takeoff.

Grimaldi walked over to the plane he would be flying into Libya. He checked out the aircraft with a growing sense of approval.

The two-passenger V/STOL boasted a forty-one-foot wingspan, and a fuselage length of about forty-eight feet. The aircraft was shiny and new, without markings, and Grimaldi hoped he could bring her back in the same condition. The Boeing 1041 was excellent. It would do, hell yeah.

Jack Grimaldi was finished sitting on his tail.

Bolan and Hohlstrom moved toward Doyle who awaited them by one of the gun-ships. Four of Kennedy's mercs were already aboard the second gun-ship. Three men had climbed aboard the copter that carried the cargo. Bruner and Teckert were aboard the aircraft that Doyle stood next to. The ground throbbed and the air thundered with the powerful whistling of revving turbines.

As Rideout and Hohlstrom approached, Doyle called out to them loud enough to be heard above the waves of sound.

"Where the hell have you guys been? Queer for each other or somethin'?" With a wave of his arm, the guy gave out the orders. "Get in the fuckin' chopper. You guys are riding with Teckert and Bruner. Move it!"

Doyle turned and jumped aboard the mother ship. He slammed shut the side hatchdoor. Seconds later, the aircraft shuddered and lifted off. It was immediately followed by gunship number two.

Bolan and Hohlstrom climbed into the chopper where Bruner and Teckert were waiting. Bolan closed the side door. The pilot raised his collective pitch control lever and the third big bird lifted off.

Bolan could see the floodlit grounds of the villa recede beneath them. The Huey cleared the walls, then heeled over and slid gently away into the Sahara night, traveling in what Bolan determined to be a southerly direction.

Like the other men, Bolan had grabbed a wallstrap for support. He glanced at Bruner and Teckert, then at Hohlstrom, but the constant high-pitched whine from the copter's transmission directly overhead made any conversation difficult.

The pilot reached the desired altitude, about three thousand feet. The climb leveled off into a smooth forward cruise.

Bolan gazed beyond the Huey's Plexiglas windows and saw that the three choppers were maintaining a loose formation, twelve to fifteen rotor widths apart, with the two gunships slightly higher to either side of the copter that transported Doyle and the cargo.

Bolan's Galil was strapped over his left shoulder. His belt was equipped with grenades. His right hand never drifted far from the Browning hi-power riding low at his right hip.

Each of the other men toted equal fire power. Teckert and Bruner both carried .357 Magnums on the hip in fast-draw holster. Teckert was gripping a Beretta Model 70 assault rifle in his right hand while the German wore his Galil by the shoulder strap, like Bolan. Hohlstrom had his Beretta pistol in a shoulder holster. An AK-47 was strapped across his left shoulder.