Don Pendleton - The Libya Connection

The killing machine continued its course to the rear environs of the Moorish white stone structure.

He gained the back wall of the house and moved to a door. It was unlocked. He stepped inside. A short hallway. He heard voices and a shuffle of activity beyond a closed swing door in front of him. The killing machine pushed on through.

The big .44 AutoMag came unleathered as he covered the distance through an archway into what had been the dining room by original design.

It was now a command post in the process of hurriedly breaking camp.

The Executioner recognized Leonard Jericho. Two men were with Jericho. Doyle was toting a Largo-Star. The third man had a slick, simonized American lawyer look about him. The lawyer and Jericho carried briefcases and all three were on their feet; they had been in the process of moving toward an entranceway at the front of the house.

All sensed the Executioner's presence and spun as one to confront him.

"I... I'm not armed!" screamed the lawyer.

"That's your problem," said the machine.

The AutoMag roared. The slickster died.

The giant handgun tracked next to Doyle. The number two merc's slate eyes registered panic as they realized he was about to die. He yanked the hi-power up from its holster. That was all. Doyle caught two rounds from Big Thunder. He died on his feet.

The body was still thumping to the floor when the last man, Leonard Jericho, raised his arms.

The renegade moneyman was in disarray. His eyes were rabid. The upraised hands trembled, as if trying to wave off his tab with eternity.

"No! Stop! I can buy you! Name your price!"

The killing machine in a single fluid movement holstered the AutoMag and swung the Thompson around into play by its shoulder strap.

"That's what the other Jericho said. The one I killed in the Bahamas."

This Lenny Jericho brightened. His breathing came faster.

"Carlyle. Yeah, I knew him. Hey, guy — wait! What makes you think I'm the real Jericho?"

"You'll do for now," grunted the Executioner.

The Thompson bucked.

And this particular Leonard Jericho was spun around by a flaming stream of millimeters that chewed his body into bits amid a curdling death cry. The steel-jacketed projectiles ate away at Jericho's death-jigging body, sections at a time, though the guy's final jig lasted less than ten seconds to pile his corpse into the corner.

This kill was for Eve.

Maybe machines could feel, sometimes.

Mack Bolan swung away from the execution. He quit the dining room, moving into the front entranceway, punching off every light switch that he passed, plunging the house of death into blackness.

When he reached the front door, he stationed himself against the inside wall.

He reached over and unlatched the door, drawing it inward several inches; enough to allow him a view of the panorama of parade ground and the raging fire beyond.

The two Bell Huey copters still sat side by side in the center of the parade field, thirty yards from him.

The Executioner centered his attention on the chopper carrying the cargo of Strain-7. Colonel Shahkhia still had not arrived. Jericho still had his security on tight.

Seven mercs stood guard near the aircraft that carried the living virus, their rifles held at port arms.

The killing machine quit the doorway of that house in a full frontal assault, Thompson yammering.

He must commandeer the helicopter.

He must lift the cargo of Strain-7 up and out, away to safety.

No matter what the odds.

The killing machine kept right on killing.

He blitzed five men between the house and the Huey. Two mercs were stitched in a tight pattern of blood before they even saw their executioner. Another came running and the Thompson sent him back-flopping across the paradise field with his head lifted away. Two mercs tried running for cover. They could not outrun the Thompson.

The Executioner reached the chopper as the pilot tried to slam home the door and aim his .45 at Bolan at the same time. He accomplished neither. The Thompson erupted one more time and the pilot was ripped nearly in half by the hail of slugs. He dropped onto the ground beside the Huey.

Bolan leaped into the aircraft, slammed shut the side door on its runners and bolted to the controls.

He could see some Libyan troops across the parade field, by the burning equipment, who understood that a hijacking was taking place and were shouting out an alarm.

He gunned the engine and listened to the rising high-pitched scream of the revving transmission and the blades activating overhead. His fist tightened around the collective pitch-control lever to his left and he powered the big bird into a lift-off.

The commotion outside the Huey was lost below him.

He just might make it.

The pilot of the Soviet-furnished Libyan army helicopter, transporting Colonel Ahmad Shahkhia and two of his generals, controlled the aircraft into a hover position one half mile from the scene of battle raging below them to the north. The bodies of General Pornov and one of his aides were stretched out in the rear of the aircraft, with their throats slit from ear to ear.

Colonel Shahkhia recalled the icy premonition he had felt that afternoon when Jericho's people had informed him of the paramilitary hit on a Jericho base in the Bahamas.

He had felt concern that this action around the world might cause local repercussions in his dealings with these people. That was why he was being so cautious concerning his rendezvous with Jericho tonight, in spite of his whetted appetite for the female slave that Jericho had promised.

And of course there were Colonel Shahkhia's other plans for Leonard Jericho...

Now a curt radio report from Aujila base had confirmed the earlier premonition. The communique sent word only that a sabotage team appeared to have them under attack.

Colonel Shahkhia had responded by ordering that all radio communications be cut and the full company of men down below be deployed to pinpoint this "team" of paramilitary penetrators.

Shahkhia was certain that the action had to be connected with whatever happened two days ago on Leonard Jericho's yacht in Exuma Cay.

The fires on the base below were spreading. Shahkhia watched with a constricting throat as the barracks and motor-pool structures caught fire.

Then the colonel saw an American Huey helicopter rising from the flames of Aujila oasis like some mechanical phoenix of war rising from the ashes of battle.

The virus.

The saboteurs were escaping with the virus!

Colonel Shahkhia pointed in his helicopter and bellowed a command that had his pilot goosing the aircraft into full-ahead thrust on a course of hot contact with that copter.

Ahmad Shahkhia understood the appalling chance he was taking. There was no way to ensure that the Huey chopper could be stopped without rupturing the container of Strain-7 aboard that machine. But the chance had to be taken. Shahkhia needed that cargo for what he planned...

When their aircraft was some seventy yards to the Huey's starboard side, Colonel Shahkhia ordered his pilot to open fire with the Libyan copter's 40mm cannons.

The generals and pilot understood what was at stake. There was dead silence around the cockpit.

The pilot obeyed the command to attack.

The Libyan warplane sailed in on the Huey with both 40mm cannons firing steady.

The mighty hammering of the cannons in Colonel Shahkhia's ears sounded to him like the deafening approach of Armageddon.

The Executioner held the Huey at hover for a brief moment, once the copter had gained enough altitude to put him out of effective range of the rebel troops firing at him from the ground.