Don Pendleton: The Libya Connection

Then Grimaldi's contact with the enemy got hot.

The 1041 fired a missile. Bolan tracked the red flame of its tail, then saw another hellfire eruption of flash and flame that lit up the sky overhead like summer lightning. The sound soon followed.

The night was still reverberating when the V/STOL returned. The unmarked American fighter jet hovered overhead for a few seconds. Then the pilot set her down twenty yards away from where Bolan stood.

The hatch popped open. A familiar figure appeared, tugging off his flight helmet.

Grimaldi, yeah.

The pilot from Stony Man dropped to the ground from the aircraft's wing. The two men approached each other. Grimaldi was all smiles.

Bolan raised his voice to be heard above the noise of the idling V/STOL.

"Welcome to Libya, Jack! Another one I owe you."

Grimaldi seemed not to hear the thanks. He gazed at the scene of carnage around them: the two demolished Hueys and the men who had died. Then he scanned the northern sky.

"I suggest that we haul ass before any more of those Su-22s decide to play backup."

They hoofed back to the V/STOL and got onto the wing.

"Those Libyan planes were sent by Shahkhia," said Bolan as they climbed into the two-man plane and donned their helmets, communicating through the jet's radio setup. "I think we've seen everything he can afford to send — and lose. But get us out of here, Jack. Any word from Hal's intel on where Jericho is supposed to meet with Colonel Shahkhia?"

Grimaldi slammed shut the Plexiglas bubble above their heads.

"Afraid not. Nothing on Eve, either. I'm sorry, Mack."

"She'll be wherever Jericho and Santos are," said Bolan. "Wherever these choppers were originally heading."

It was then that Jack Grimaldi delivered his verbal bombshell. In a few succinct words above the engine roar of the aircraft, the pilot briefed the Executioner on exactly what it was that General Arnold Thatcher had channeled to Leonard Jericho. The facts regarding Strain-7. Just the facts.

Bolan absorbed it in silence. There was plenty to absorb.

With a sudden, mighty thrust, the V/STOL picked itself up off the Sahara sands and kicked forward with body-jarring speed.

The scene of carnage beyond the cockpit blurred into memory. The Boeing 1041 became gone from that place.

"This darling's equipped with computer capability," said Grimaldi through the headset linkup. "I'm playing with coordinates over a satellite map right now. There's Aujila oasis forty miles south of here. That's all there is."

"Could be it," muttered Bolan. He tried to remain wary of the budding hope he felt at the news.

"There's a small military installation at Aujila," the pilot relayed from his computer map. "It's an outpost for desert patrol. No other settlements of any sort for a couple of hundred miles. And this is current satellite observation."

"Then Aujila it is," said Bolan. "How far?"

The V/STOL was skimming the desert at several hundred feet. Grimaldi was proving once again that he was an ace in the cockpit.

"Buddy, we are... here. Those are the lights of the oasis up to your left."

The cluster of light was now clearly visible in the clean desert air from an estimated distance of two miles. The lights were the only thing visible in the darkness.

Grimaldi did not angle the V/STOL in that direction. He held their distance by subtle control of the tilt-jet ability to brake, slip, drop.

"A recon pass is out," said Bolan. "But this is the end of the trail, Jack. That's where they've got Eve. That's where this whole deal is going to go down. How close can you land me without drawing ear or eye to us?"

Another short pause as the aircraft's computer up front fed more data to Grimaldi.

"This is a primary air lane between Benghazi and most of South Africa," reported the pilot as he hovered the plane. "If they did hear anything from the base, they might not think too much of someone zipping along a tad low. I could touch down unnoticed, oh, say, one and a half miles away from there. How would that do?"

"That would do beautifully. Then I want you to hold back with the air support. But watch for me. I'll have Eve with me."

"Down we go," said Grimaldi.

The V/STOL aircraft's jet sounds became muted as the pilot patterned into a landing descent.

Grimaldi had set them down without detection. The inky stillness surrounded them in chill silence.

Bolan went EVA. He made the short drop to the ground from the aircraft's wing, carrying a canvas bag of supplies thoughtfully provided by Grimaldi and left near his seat in the cockpit.

"How long do I wait before I worry?" Grimaldi called down to Bolan.

The Executioner eyed the luminous hands of his watch. He calculated quick mental computations regarding time, distance and what he must accomplish.

"Give me forty minutes, Jack." He was applying black facial camouflage ointment while he spoke. "Come in from this direction. I'll build my play around that." He repacked the tube of ointment and returned it to the satchel. Then he withdrew from the satchel's depths the heavy metal of his familiar armaments, including Starlite scope. "Thanks, Jack. Thanks for everything."

"Mack, wait! Give me word on what to expect. What's your strategy?"

Bolan paused and looked back at the pilot. Time was running out, but Grimaldi's concern was real.

"This one is on the heartbeat, buddy. I've got to find Eve and I've got to put this thing of Jericho's out of business." He thought briefly of Hohlstrom, and of the supreme sacrifice the Mossad agent had made. "For the living, and for the dead. You just give me that forty minutes. If I'm not out by then, I won't be coming out."

Grimaldi grunted. "I'll be there," he promised.

Mack Bolan gave the pilot a raised fist salute that Grimaldi returned.

The Executioner turned and put that place behind him, moving at a fast trot into the night.

Toward Eve.

Toward a confrontation with his own fate.

The figure in torn, cordite-smelling camou fatigues sprinted across the undulating desert terrain. He was one with the night around him. The added weight of weapons and armament strapped across his body did not slow him.

The big .44 AutoMag mini-howitzer and the 9mm Beretta Belle were back where they belonged, leathered on his right hip and in a quick-draw underarm shoulder holster respectively. Bolan was outfitted much as he had been less than two days ago when this mission had begun for him in the waters of Exuma Cay in the Bahamas. Explosives courtesy of both Kennedy and Grimaldi rode securely on his left hip. Knives, garrotes and other instruments of silent death were secured at various points.

Vague, indeterminate sounds, a sense of activity, carried to him across the wide open spaces from the vicinity of the base, more than a mile away, as he made his approach.

Except for this impression of activity, there was silence. Cold shadows hugged the lunarlike landscape. There was no sign of life out here beyond the Aujila oasis and the base situated there.

There was only Bolan.

Alone with his thoughts.

Mack Bolan preferred a combat posture as the quiet infiltrator. Bolan the penetration specialist was in his natural element.

He covered the distance without incident.

Bolan's breathing was steady as he jogged that hilly distance. He was pacing himself for the firefight that lay ahead. His strength would be far from sapped at the end of this run.

He did not try to block his thoughts from touching on the woman he hoped to locate and rescue in that military compound.

In most ways Eve Aguilar was what this mission was all about, symbolically as well as literally.

Thinking about it pushed him on, harder and faster.

He thought about a rustic bungalow on Douglas Lake in the Smoky Mountains of eastern Tennessee, some two hundred miles from Nashville.