Don Pendleton - Line Of Honor

His team had the situation well in hand.

The Executioner turned his head just in time to see Tien Ching relax his hands. Three men lay fallen at his feet in moaning ruin. Ochoa stood over a man who clutched his groin and vomited. Mrda had his man in a stranglehold and was easing him down to the ground. Onopkov rubbed his head and lit a cigarette. His man lay on the ground with an egg-size lump between his rolling eyes. The Kong brothers gleefully stomped the truck driver who lay in a ball trying to cover himself.

Bolan watched with admiration as Ceallach pressed his opponent over his head and hurled him against the grille of the truck. “That’s for you, wee man!” he roared. Wee man bounced brutally off the bumper and fell fetal into the dust.

Bolan waved the Kong brothers off. “Enough.”

Shartai gave the truck driver a last kick for good measure, then the brothers began walking up and down the line of violence, collecting weapons.

Bolan looked at Grimaldi. “Where were you?”

The pilot waggled the manifest. “Someone had to hold the clipboard.”

“Thanks, Jack.”

“No problem.” The pilot looked meaningfully into the mounting storm. “Can I go now?”

“Yeah, you’re out of here.” Bolan turned to his team. “Haitham, Shartai, load their weapons into the back of our truck. Speaking of weapons, Lucky, break ours out. Goose, T-Lo, burn the command vehicle. Who here is good at tying up people?”

Nelsonne smiled winsomely. “I am quite talented at securing men.”

Bolan grinned. He bet she was. “Secure the prisoners. Rad, Val, help her and then load them in the back of the truck. Leave them any water they brought. Confiscate any phones or radios. Sancho, disable the truck engine, and I mean permanently, then help Scotty get the canvas top on over the prisoners. Once you’ve finished your jobs I want everyone to go to the Mog and Lucky will issue you weapons.” Bolan watched as his team set about their tasks with well-oiled precision. “We’re out of here in twenty.”

4

The Sudan

The dust storm died at dusk. The team set up camp for the night in a dry creek bed and strung camouflage netting across the three vehicles to form a covered camp. It was a cold camp, as well. They kept no fire, and the heating elements of the MREs were used in the back of the truck. Bolan walked over to the Unimog. Nelsonne sat in the cab monitoring the radio. Everyone was bundled against the sudden chill. “Any chatter?”

“Nothing on the captain, but I suspect his superiors keep him on a loose leash. He has carte blanche to commit his crimes, and they demand their cut when he reports in. I don’t think anyone will go out looking for him until tomorrow, perhaps the day next.”

“You think he’ll come after us?”

Nelsonne sighed. “You should have killed him.”

“That would have drawn the wrong kind of attention. He was humiliated, and he’s going to have to explain how he got his ass kicked to his superiors. I’m betting he won’t. He’s going to pay off whoever pulls him and his men out of that stalled truck. If he tries to come after us, it’s going to be a private vendetta. I’d like to think I forestalled any official notice of our departure.”

“You have a gorgeous mind.” Nelsonne sighed again longingly. “I would still like to have seen you kill him.”

“It may still come to that.”

Ceallach appeared at the other cab door. He held a couple of steaming coffee mugs and passed them out. “Bit of all right this morning, then.”

“Yeah, you gorilla-slamming one of Osmani’s men was pretty impressive.”

The Briton made a self-deprecating noise. “Call that a ‘potato toss’ back home.”

Bolan knew Ceallach hadn’t come to reminisce about the morning brawl. “What’s on your mind, Scotty?”

“Been talk among the lads.”

“What kind of talk?” Bolan prompted.

“Well, we’re feeling a bit like mushrooms, then, aren’t we?”

It was a mantra invented by U.S. Special Forces during the Vietnam War.

Mushrooms: kept in the dark and fed on shit.

Ceallach sipped coffee and turned a contemplative eye to the Sudanese night. “Well, you wouldn’t hear me saying it… .”

Bolan decided to give a little. “The target is a high-value individual, and may require forcible extraction out of a refugee situation.”

Ceallach nodded knowingly. “You know, Striker? I’ve seen this movie. Wrong part of Africa, but in the end everyone dies but you and the sexy bird.”

“I saw that movie, too.” Bolan nodded. “Wasn’t bad.”

“Is there a sexy bird, then?” He gave Nelsonne a wink. “Besides the one we already brought along?”

“There is,” Bolan stated. He slid out of the cab. “I’m going to check the perimeter.”

“I’ll stay here and guard Russo.”

Nelsonne smirked.

Bolan scooped up his rifle.

Lkhümbengarav had issued weapons just before the convoy had headed out, and grumbling had ensued immediately. Ceallach went so far as to give it the raspberry. Bolan’s team were all spec ops or at least elite-unit veterans. It had been some time since they had seen wood-and-gunmetal-blue weapons rather than black plastic and matte-black Parkerized steel. That wasn’t quite true. They saw it often, but almost always in the hands of the hapless people opposing them.

The Chinese Type 81 rifle looked like a stretched version of an AK. The one nod to the twenty-first century was the forward-mounted optical sight that John “Cowboy” Kissinger, Stony Man Farm’s armorer, had mounted where the rear iron sight used to have been. In its favor, the rifle could fire the ubiquitous Russian .30-caliber ammo littering the Sahel, it came equipped with rifle grenade-launching rings, and Bolan’s team was currently dripping in them.

Mrda was on sentry duty. The Serb spoke quietly across the link. “Striker.”

“Yeah, Rad?”

“Contact.”

“All units, arm up. Prepare to break camp. Everyone get your night-vision eyes on. Drivers, get behind your wheels but do not start your engines. Sancho! Haitham! With me!”

Ochoa appeared at Bolan’s elbow in an eyeblink. He had volunteered for the role of the soldier’s right-hand man, unasked for but with admirable will. Haitham loped out of the darkness. “Striker-man!”

Bolan put a finger to his lips. Haitham fell into formation and the three warriors jogged toward Mrda’s position. They stopped running and quietly climbed the ladderlike clay side of the arroyo. They stretched out on either side of Mrda. The Serb was staring intently through the scope of his Dragunov sniper rifle into the wasteland. “They’re coming straight toward us, Striker.”

Bolan brought up his binoculars.

It was a scene he had seen more times than he could count. The people walked and limped in a small mob. Everything they owned they carried. The lucky ones had blankets wrapped around them against the evening cold. There were far too many women, children and the elderly, and far too few men and boys. They hunched and searched the sky for the sound of jets or rotors. They cast fearful looks behind them for the terror that had driven them into the desert night. Bolan saw no weapons beyond walking sticks and crutches.

“Jesus,” Ochoa muttered. “‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses…’”

“‘Yearning to breathe free,’” Bolan continued. “‘The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.’”

Ochoa turned to Bolan. “Jesus, Striker! You gave me goose bumps!”

“You been to the Statue of Liberty, Sancho?”

“No.” Ochoa grinned beneath his night-vision goggles. “But I’ve been to the Rio Grande.”