Don Pendleton - The Libya Connection

Bolan felt the cyclic control stick vibrate wildly in his fist. That was the first warning.

Abrupt silence replaced the screaming whine of the Huey's transmission above and behind Bolan. All engine gauges on the flight-control instrument panel plummeted to zero.

Bolan's chopper had sustained an engine hit. The engine was dead. Bolan had only seconds to react.

To his left side in the cockpit was a collective pitch-control lever that controlled the pitch of the rotors. He rammed it down. With the pitch of the blades flattened, even the whistling outside died away.

Bolan was aiming for autorotation of the blades from the copter's downward momentum.

It was an old trick that worked... sometimes.

It was the only trick he had right now.

The silent Huey went into a descending glide, the air from its downward speed rushing up through the blades, keeping them spinning.

The other gunship opened fire with its machine guns, sending a twin stream of tracer bullets that arced only inches from the plexiglas near Bolan.

All of Bolan's attention centered on the flight controls and life-or-death gauge readings of the aircraft he was attempting to land.

His Huey was sailing in at a fast, steady, dangerous descent.

He glanced at the tachometer. As the speed of his chopper's drop increased, the autorotation of the blades registered as climbing rpm. The needle edged back into the safe zone.

Bolan's copter angled downward at about seventy knots. The trickiest part was yet to come.

Bolan closely monitored those rpm. The collective pitch-control lever to his left and the cyclic-control stick to his right both gouged deep furrows into Bolan's palms.

The mother ship of the mission, carrying Kennedy's official number two, Doyle, plus the cargo and the knowledge of Eva Aguilar's whereabouts, was long gone. Gunship number two was probably aiming to land on the desert floor close below, waiting for Bolan and Hohlstrom to crash — and waiting to kill them if they survived.

Bolan flicked on his landing lights, illuminating the first traces of rocky sand dunes beneath him. Once Bolan had fixed his position, he punched off the lights.

At some fifty feet from the ground, still descending with gut-wrenching speed, Mack Bolan ripped back on the cyclic lever.

The Huey nosed sharply upward until the helicopter almost stood on its tail. The rate of dive was arrested as if a tug wire had been yanked, bringing Bolan's tipped machine to a momentary midair stop.

This was the critical point of a dead-engine landing.

Truth time.

At the precise moment that the Huey had air-braked with its nose at a new upward forty-five degree angle, the warrior in the cockpit shoved the cyclic forward again.

The chopper's rounded nose dropped into a level position. Bolan was fiercely aware of the blood pounding in his ears from the pitching rate of descent followed by the sudden halt.

The Huey was now only fifteen, twenty feet above the desert floor. Hanging there. The rotors still going.

Bolan eased in on the collective once more, very gently.

The ground came up toward the ship like a hurtling wall. The helicopter hit zero with a crunch, a stunning stop made mad by all the framework and the components and the carried objects continuing on down as if headed for the center of the earth.

It was a stubbornness of physics that led to a grinding, screeching crash as a full load of metal-toting gravity collided with the surface of that earth.

Carried objects included Bolan and Hohlstrom, who were pounded into their crash positions as if by a giant fist. Bolan was winded, his perceptions temporarily shattered, his side bruised by the controls as the wrecked helicopter tilted forward brutally, suddenly burying its undernose in a sand dune.

The smell of gasoline filled the cockpit. Actual vapor stung Bolan's nose.

"Out of here! Out, out!" he called, as if automatically overcoming shock and pain with roaring movement.

Hohlstrom was lifting himself once more from the helicopter's floor. The impact of the landing had knocked him down and damn near out again, then the nose-tilt had sent him sprawling.

Like a man skilled at being big, he had moved through the ordeal with a relaxed rolling motion that had spared him major hurt or rupture. Any puncturing was reserved for the gas line.

Now Hohlstrom was up and leaping from the gas-reeking wreck. But Bolan had already moved clear, was indeed returning for Hohlstrom, his mouth forming further commands to get the hell out.

The vapor seemed to sizzle before it suddenly burst into a mighty whump, blasting a fireball of broiling red and orange out across the crash site, spreading a wave of scorching acrid hell that gobbled at the back of the Mossad agent.

Hohlstrom nose-dived toward Bolan, the heat mushrooming over him. He was safe — and his face was half-buried in gritty sand.

Mack Bolan, his features ablaze from the glow that illuminated the environment like sunrise in a gray dawn sky, reached Hohlstrom and hauled him to his feet.

"Here comes whatever's next," he said, glancing up. The two men were near a ridge that would hide them from what was soon to be a landing zone. And a kill zone.

Gunship number two now touched down there. The pilot brought his engine to ground idle. The only sound in the night was a lazy, sibilant swoosh as the rotors of the healthy Huey continued to turn. Its lights came on, revealing the barren Sahara topography around it.

Behind Bolan, the injured Mossad agent stood steady. He slammed a fresh clip into his AK-47.

"Get down!" growled Bolan.

He had discerned movement around the open hatch of the other Huey.

A volley of automatic weapons fire suddenly rattled in the desert quiet. Projectiles whistled by inches above the sprawled figures of Bolan and Hohlstrom, buzzing like a cloud of angry hornets.

Hohlstrom's face was inches from Bolan's on the sand. The Mossad man's eyes were hard and steady.

"We're pinned good," he said.

"Only on our right flank," responded Bolan. "I saw a ridge to our left before I cut the landing lights. Let's make it there before those men swing around behind us."

"I'm with you!" growled Hohlstrom. "Lead the way."

Bolan did exactly that.

The gunfire from the other chopper ceased. Obviously the gunship commander was trying to decide how to play this.

Bolan and Hohlstrom hustled in a low jog toward the sand dune that Bolan had indicated. Both men carried their weapons, ready to use them on anything that moved in the shadows cast in weird, multicolored hues from the other copter's landing lights.

Nothing physical came at them; only the magnified voice of the pilot from the other gunship.

"ARE YOU ALIVE OVER THERE?"

The demand was firm and authoritative.

Bolan's impression of the surrounding terrain, briefly glimpsed as he had brought down the chopper, proved accurate.

The ridge of sand dune that he and Hohlstrom now held visibly, extended to their left in a lazy sweep around and slightly above the open ground separating the two copters. It embraced the rear flank of the pilot's position.

Bolan considered whether the pilot was aware of this.

Whether he was baiting a trap.

Hohlstrom spoke in a whisper, reading Bolan's mind.

"Okay, it just might work. I'm with you, Phoenix. Let's take those bums out."

The two fighting men were already moving at a low trot, beneath cover of the stony ridge.

They had not gone five yards before more weapons fire erupted from the vicinity of the second gunship The rocky ground seemed to pound beneath Bolan's feet as orange silver strobelike flashes wildly illuminated the wilderness.

Mack Bolan and Hohlstrom continued along their course beneath cover of the ridge, swinging around to the other force's side flank