Don Pendleton - The Libya Connection

Bolan did not pause to verify the hits.

There was no response from the other side of the building, where the two helicopters and Colonel Shahkhia's rebel troops were situated.

The Executioner moved off soundlessly through the night.

He had to find Eve.

He had to find Leonard Jericho.

He had to hijack the cargo of Strain-7 from the center of that parade field in front of headquarters.

Bolan was certain that the container for the live virus was sitting out there, right now, in the well-guarded Huey chopper.

According to Jack Grimaldi, the virus was being transported in a 1-1/2 X 1-1/2-foot metal box, with handles and a warning gauge on the outside, strapped to a shock-absorbing device underneath.

That cargo of Strain-7 would always be Colonel Shahkhia's ace in the hole, no matter how his attempted coup turned out. Shahkhia could whisk the unholy stuff away from here, to someplace where only he would have access to it, and it would be his key to power.

Bolan's starting point was the tarmac, beyond the barracks and motor pool structures to the south, where he had spotted all the Soviet military hardware.

He hustled along the back wall of the motor pool garage until he came around to the massed tarp-covered weaponry.

This cache of hardware would serve Bolan perfectly as a diversion.

Bolan found the T-62 tanks and the BMP armored personnel carriers parked together in their own tight cluster. Not bad at all. It took him all of twenty-seven seconds to plant enough plastique explosive to blow the entire arms cache sky high. The detonators would be radio-triggered from a little black box, the size of a matchbox, which Bolan pulled from its belt location where Grimaldi had stashed it with the plastique and slipped into one of his blacksuit pockets as he moved out. His work here was done.

He had just quit the periphery of tarp-shrouded shadows when he came face to face with two more patrolling guards who entered the scene from the southeast corner of the motor-pool building.

Bolan terminated the rebel soldiers with waist-level shots that pitched both men into a tangle of death.

He zigzagged away from the encounter, retracing his way across the floodlit stretch behind the elongated motor-pool structure, heading back north in the direction of the headquarters building.

He glanced at his wristwatch as he trucked along. Two minutes and forty-two seconds had elapsed since breeching the security of this place.

Six men were already dead and Bolan knew they were only the first.

He swung around the north corner of the motor-pool garage, and several more yards brought him to the back entrance of the HQ building.

Bolan tried the door.

Locked of course.

He stepped back, cocked a foot and kicked the door in at lock height, the metal panel busting off its hinges, flying inward with Bolan the Executioner coming in right behind it.

A foyer. The CQ office was through an open adjoining door. A hallway reached off the length of the building.

Bolan entered the CQ office.

Two Libyan soldiers were manning the Charge of Quarters watch that is military SOP the world over. Both were visible from the doorway and responded to Bolan's sudden entrance.

The man seated behind a desk reached for a holstered pistol that rested on the desktop inches from his fingertips. He never touched it. He took a silenced 9mm death-dealer from the Beretta in the throat. The rebel was already a corpse when he slammed back into a wall map of Libya behind the desk, splattering the map.

Soldier number two had been sitting in a chair next to a coffeepot with his heels hooked on the window sill, gazing out on all the activity on the parade field. He was now drawing a snub-nosed handgun.

Bolan was near enough to chop down his Beretta hand with a sharp slash. Wristbone snapped loudly and the soldier howled in pain, dropping his gun.

The soldier took one look at his dead buddy and forgot his own troubles. He only had shocked eyes for the imposing figure in Executioner black who stood before him.

Bolan eyed the injured rebel down the length of an extended arm that ended with the snout of the Beretta.

"Where is she?"

The soldier's eyes were frantic. He spoke English, as did many Libyans.

"The man, Santos... he has her in the basement... do not kill me!"

"You brought yourself here," said Ice Voice.

The Beretta spat. The cannibal went down to join his dead friend.

Bolan swung away. A quick glance down the hallway that stretched before him showed a stairwell at the far end of the corridor.

He moved toward those stairs, swift and careful, passing other doors, some open, some closed.

He paused when he came to the armory. He stepped inside, reaching for more plastique. There was no one in sight. Most of the long room was row after row of empty racks. The soldiers awaiting Colonel Shahkhia's arrival were armed with the rifles that were kept here. But the rebels had left behind several Sagger AT-3 antitank guided missile launchers and Soviet 82mm mortars, as well as walls of stored ammunition.

Bolan sacrificed another twelve seconds from his numbers to plant one more clump of plastique. When the timer fuse was set, he continued on.

So far, so good.

But still much to do...

The building was silent and lifeless around him, like a tomb. His footfalls echoed faintly.

He approached the stairwell. He eased open the metal door. A lighted stairway slanted downward for fifteen steps, then doglegged to the right.

Santos the Butcher was down there.

With Eve.

Bolan quietly closed the stairwell door behind him, then descended the stone steps, his back to the wall, the Beretta up. The stone wall felt cool, damp against his shoulders. Man and weapon were ready for what ever lay around that dogleg at the bottom.

He heard the murmur of voices speaking English.

He reached the bottom step and eased an eye around the corner for a look.

Three of Kennedy's American mercs stood guard in a boxlike, earthen-floored passageway to a closed door behind them.

These boys weren't outfitted with anything exotic. They carried .357s on their hips. Two toted Thompson submachine guns, the third held a pump shotgun. Back in the States, they would have been cheap Mafia street hoods. Maybe they were.

They certainly weren't expecting anything in Libya like Bolan. Two mercs were leaning back against the wall of the basement. The third man, with a tommy-gun, stood with his back to the wooden door they were guarding.

They were smoking cigarettes, conversing in words too low for Bolan to overhear.

Then he did hear something.

It was a sound more subtle than the murmur of conversation. It was a sound that burned his nerve ends raw.

A barely human sound.

A wailing moan of suffering that had no beginning or end: an eerie, modulating pitch that came as if from some weird musical instrument of the damned. But it came, Bolan knew, from the depths of a living soul in torment.

A woman made those sounds.

Just behind that door.

Eve!

Bolan darted around the corner with the Beretta spitting lead.

The guy nearest to him was the first to spot the Executioner. He emitted a terrified yelp that drew the attention of the others. But he never got a chance to pull up his Thompson machine gun. Bolan's opening round caught him through his open mouth. There was no entry wound, but the 9mm parabellum needed more than skullbone to stop it. The wall behind the man's back-pedaling body was dirtied with a viscous red mess.

The guy with the pump shotgun fell away from the wall, trying to make a smaller target of himself as he tracked up the weapon in Bolan's direction.

Bolan's gunhand also tracked. The Beretta snapped off one chest hit and one head hit.