The Libya Connection (5 page)

Bolan pressed the floorboard.

The wall panel slid open — powered by some soundless automatic mechanism — exactly as it had for Kennedy.

Bolan's pistol was raised and ready for anything that might come out at him. He moved into the opening. He was one and a half minutes behind Kennedy. The panel slid back into place behind him.

He was enveloped in silence.

Low-watt light bulbs were evenly spaced down the angled ceiling of a narrow stairway. At the bottom, the stairway fed into a corridor that bisected the house from Bolan's left to right.

He eased down the stairs toward the shadows at its base. The air was dead and cold. It penetrated his bones. He could hear nothing.

The man he was tracking seemed to be long gone. Seemed to be.

When he reached the second-from-the-bottom stair, Bolan paused again, his pistol up. He stole a look around the corner of the stone wall.

He could see no beginning nor end to the tunnel that stretched away in either direction.

More light bulbs had been installed here, but long distances apart so that patches of stygian gloom gave the passageway an eerie, menacing reality.

Bolan slid around the corner and kept low. He started off down the tunnel to his right.

A cool but barely discernible draft brushed the hairs on his arms. It originated from far up ahead.

He held the slung Galil assault rifle in close against his body to prevent noise from the weapon bouncing against him.

The curved stone ceiling of the passage barely accommodated his 6'3" height. After several hundred yards, the tunnel made a sharp incline. Deeper still.

Then Bolan saw light, faint light, coming from the cracks of an ill-fitting door some ten yards ahead. Surely this was the source of the moving air he had noticed.

He pressed himself against the curving stone of the tunnel. He paused when he was still several feet from the door. He listened intently. There was a room of some sort beyond that wooden door, but it would be empty — Bolan heard no sounds from within. Or... it could be a trap.

He stood against the wall at the very edge of the doorframe. He extended his right foot and gave the door a slight nudge. The door was unlatched. It swung inward.

Bolan looked inside cautiously. The Browning hi-power panned the room, simultaneously with his eyes.

The floor was earthen. It was a storage room, with a door on the opposite wall. A candle emitted the light that had drawn Bolan.

Two people were in the room. Libyan civilians: an old man and a young woman. They were tied to kitchen chairs. Tied and gagged. They were alone in the room. Their eyes watched with puzzlement — and fear — as Bolan stepped toward them.

The man could have been fifty or a hundred years old. He wore a dark robe and white headcloth. The snowy white of his beard was in stark contrast to the dark of his Arabian skin.

The woman was a girl. Bolan judged her to be sixteen, if that. But she was already budding with the sensual-eyed, lush beauty that Bolan knew to be the birthright of the sisterhood of Islam.

He ungagged the girl, then the man.

The girl was fooled by the leathery brown of Bolan's skin hue, which had been acquired over an adulthood of missions to every hotspot under the sun.

She chattered at Bolan in Arabic.

Bolan stepped back. He cautioned her to lower her voice with a waved hand.

"Do you speak English?" he whispered.

"I do. Some," replied the girl quietly. "Who are you?"

"A friend. Tell me why you're here."

"This is our home. My father manages the inn of the village."

Bolan made his decision. He undid the ropes that bound them to the chairs.

"I'm looking for Kennedy." In a hushed voice he described the boss merc to her. "Did he come through here? Do you know where he went?"

The old man muttered something in Arabic. The only word Bolan could make out was "Kennedy."

"He is an evil man," said the girl. She rubbed the burn marks where the rope had chafed her wrists. "At first we thought he was from the villa."

"What are your names?" whispered Bolan. "Tell me what happened here. Quickly."

"I am called Fahima," she said. "This is my father, Bushir. The man you call Kennedy, he has kept us like this for two days now. He keeps us alive in case the owner of the villa should try to contact us."

"What is your employer's name?"

"We have never met him," said Fahima. "He is with an oil company. A Mr. Conrad. An American. A solicitor in Benghazi. He also owns the villa."

"His real name is Jericho," grunted Bolan under his breath. "Has he used this escape route often?"

"Once. Khaddafi's troops were in the area, searching for him." At the word
Khaddafi,
the old man began prattling angrily. "My family was dispossessed during the land reform," explained Fahima. "We are willing to help Mr. Conrad against a common enemy."

"You must trust me," said Bolan. "I'm getting you and your father out of this place. There's going to be killing here tonight. Do you know where Kennedy has gone?"

"He is in the building above. They closed the inn two days ago. We can hear them sometimes. I heard footsteps earlier tonight."

"Where in your inn would be a good place for a secret meeting?"

The girl thought for a moment. "One of two places. There is a dining room away from the lobby, as you approach from the corridor outside. And there is a private room on the floor above that."

"How many men does Kennedy have with him?"

"Only one, I believe. A guard on the door." She pointed at the door opposite to where Bolan had entered. It was massive, most likely of imported oak. Beyond it would be a route into the inn above.

"One last question," whispered Bolan. "Did Kennedy bring a woman with him?"

Fahima shook her head. "No woman. No one. Only the one you call Kennedy, and the man outside."

Bolan started toward the door.

"Let's go," he muttered to the man and his daughter. "Keep low. Do as I say. When you see a chance, run for the nearest cover."

Fahima studied him with soulful, unblinking eyes.

"I understand," she said. She had a surprisingly gentle voice. "You are a brave man for helping us."

The Executioner yanked the heavy door open with one hand, gripping his Browning hi-power in the other.

The Bolan Effect had arrived.

Fahima Dohmi watched the big American as he prepared to dispatch to oblivion the sentry in the corridor, who stood with his back to the doorway.

Fahima thought that she had never seen a man move with such grace and determination as the big American. He radiated animal ferocity and strength worthy of a son of the desert.

She had watched as he pulled the door recklessly open.

Now she saw the sentry spin around, reaching for a side arm.

She saw the American warrior grab the sentry around the throat with his forearm before the guard could complete his turn.

A quick snap punch to the temple with a raised pistol and the man slumped to the floor, his skull cracked. She saw blood dribble from one ear.

The big man led the way out of the room, stepping across the corpse that blocked the doorway.

Like a son of the desert, she thought again.

Bolan heard movement from around a corner in the hallway. He motioned a halt.

Fahima and Bushir froze in their tracks. It was too late for any of them to backtrack now.

Three men came around the corner. They were heavyset black men in African military uniforms.

Bolan could not identify their political origin in the instant that eyeball recognition was made on both sides.

The three Africans toted AK-47s by slung shoulder straps. The troopers had evidently been headed toward the room where the father and daughter had been held. There was purpose in their marching stride.

When they saw Bolan and the others, the three of them registered identical surprise. They fell away from each other and fought to sling their weapons around in a race for survival. The movements provoked grunts, a curse.

The pistol in Bolan's fist chugged a death cough. Hot millimeters of parabellum lead lanced through space.

The soldier on Bolan's left caught a round that smashed his head sharply backward against the wall, splashing the wall with bloody brains. The dead cock slid down the wall into a heap, the AK spilling useless alongside him.

Of the other two soldiers, the one directly before Bolan was the immediate threat. The trooper's big hands guided his rifle into a smooth underhand arc, pulling aim on Bolan.

The Browning had already spat. Twice this time. Two head shots. The soldier never completed target acquisition. He was kicked instead into Infinity in a backward halo of exploding head.

Bolan crouched and twisted, one movement, as he swung the kill piece around and at the lone remaining soldier.

This last soldier had a firm grip on his AK. He too was bringing it around with commendable speed toward Bolan.

The soldier's movement was halted by a whirling short-bladed knife that whistled through the air to Bolan's right. It embedded itself to the hilt in the soldier's throat.

The man gagged frantically, released the rifle, started to grab his ravaged throat. Blood bubbled from the mouth. The knees buckled. The corpse collapsed to the floor.

"Allah wa-akbar!"
intoned old Bushir.

A ubiquitous Muslim phrase that Bolan recognized. God is great. Yeah. Bolan understood that.

Fahima's father had pulled the military knife from the equipment belt of the dead sentry who had been the first to die. Mack Bolan need not have purchased his.

Bolan flashed an appreciative smile. The old man returned it.

The Executioner led the two Libyans along the hallway toward a doorway leading outside.

The killing here had only just begun

The nightfighter palmed a fresh clip into the Browning. He unscrewed the low-watt bulb near the door. The hallway bisected the stone building. There had been noise tonight, from the Browning. But security at this level, deep beneath a secret meeting place, was spacious — sparse and unassuming like a secret itself.

At the opposite end, stairs led up to the main room of the structure where Bolan would find his primary targets. His concern, too, was to get Fahima and Bushir out of the killing zone.

Bolan inched the door inward a few inches. He scanned the narrow, rutted dirt street outside the doorway.

The scene was deserted, cloaked in darkness. The village of Bishabia dozed beneath the desert night.

Bolan could sense the tension of the father and daughter who stood close behind him.

He also sensed an electricity out there in the night. There was a crackle to the air. Bolan knew in his gut that others were roaming. On the kill. He did not know how many or who. But they were there.

He holstered the Browning and spun the Galil into readiness. He toed the door further open and stepped into the night like a shadow. A shadow in combat crouch.

He surveyed the scene: he saw nothing but the night.

"Move along the wall away from me," commanded Bolan over his shoulder to Fahima and her father. "When we get to the end of the building, you're on your own. Good luck."

They exited the building and did as they were told. Bolan covered them from the rear.

They almost made it.

The crunch of several pairs of footsteps came from around the corner of the building when Bolan's group was less than two yards from it.

Four of Jericho's free-lance terrorist troopers, black and burly and uniformed like the men Bolan had killed inside, came into sight at a leisurely clip.

Everyone saw everybody else at the same instant.

Bushir and his daughter knew they would only be in Bolan's way. Father and daughter went low, wisely falling away from the hellground that would be the airspace above. Bushir moved with an agility surprising for a man his age.

Bolan was diving into a prone firing position. The rifle was right for night killing like this.

He pumped off two rounds, was rewarded with the sight of one soldier flopping back, open armed, as if kicked by a mule.

The Galil's report echoed like a thundercrack in the tight confines of the village street.

The soldiers were scattering. They appeared untrained. But they were pulling their weapons around fast enough.

Bolan sighted in on one guy dodging to the side. The Galil pumped two more lead destroyers that flipped the man into a forward somersault, minus his face.

The two survivors had held flank positions in their original formation. Both men opened fire with their rifles. But they could not see Bolan. They were firing at where they thought he was.

Saffron flashes of gunfire knifed the darkness.

Bolan was rolling in a sideways fling, wide and wild to his left. He heard bullets chunking into the dirt where he had been moments before.

He came out of the roll, sighted at the man to his left and squeezed the trigger. The guy jackknifed with an ugly grunt and pitched to the ground. Bolan had heard clearly the
thwack-suck
as the heavy round splattered through living matter. That soldier was dead.

The remaining man of the group tossed a fast trio of parting shots and started to turn.

Bolan heard a gasping noise to his right. He concentrated immediately on taking out the soldier who was two paces from gaining cover at the corner of the building.

The assault rifle thumped once, twice more. The target was twisted around and slammed into the corner of the building he had been trying to hide behind. His corpse slumped slowly to the ground. Bolan had heard those hits, too. The guy was dead.

The night was responding with a hum of activity. The babble of awakened villagers merged with something else.

Bolan heard two separate engines gunning to life. He heard voices raised in alarm. He heard the sound of men mobilizing.

Bolan hurried to where Fahima knelt beside the body of her father.

Bushir had caught one high in the chest. The old man had not been quite agile enough. He was sprawled onto his back with a gaping, pulpy hole above his heart that still pumped blood. His legs extended straight, his arms were flung out. He looked like a man crucified. He was dead.

Fahima was wringing her father's hand. She was in anguish, wailing in Arabic.

Bolan stooped, placed an arm around the young woman, and gently yet forcefully guided her to her feet.

"Fahima. Listen to me. You must run. Get away from here."

"My father!" she cried. Her features were twisted. "He's all I have... They've killed him..."

He slapped her gently, but sharply.

She snapped to attention, hysteria forgotten.

"You can come back," he pressed. "But stay now and you'll be killed. Get away from here, Fahima. It's me they want. I'll engage them. You go.
Now!"

He did not wait for her response. He turned and stalked back toward the rear entrance of the inn. He held the Galil with a finger on the trigger, his eyes constantly probing.

He heard soft words, carried on the night wind. Fahima's woman-child voice:

"Thank you, American. May Allah protect you."

He sensed Fahima moving off along the stone wall of the building, away from her father's body. Away from the killing ground.

Bolan regained the doorway that he and the others had just left. He hustled swiftly into the hallway that cut through the building. The Executioner hurried on soundless feet.

The merc terrorists over at Jericho's villa had undoubtedly heard the sounds of weapon fire out here in the bleak nowhere.

How would they respond?

As he hurried down the hallway and approached the stairs leading up to the main room, Bolan ran a quick review of what he had seen here so far.

Kennedy has ideas of his own. He's got a market for the cargo he's supposed to be guarding. The buyers are here tonight. The computation lacked one answer: Where is Eve?

Bolan heard raised voices as he approached the stairs to the main room. He paused and listened.

Kennedy was shouting.

"You can't do this, goddammit! We had a deal, you black bastards!"

"Watch your tongue, Mr. Kennedy." A heavily accented African voice; silky but with cold steel in it. "I do not know what is happening outside. But I suggest we leave here at once."

"You're damn right we'll leave here," snarled Kennedy. "And I'm taking my money with me." Then, over his shoulder, he called out: "Hymie — get in here fast!"

Bolan figured Kennedy was calling to the merc who had been guarding Fahima and Bushir. Bolan was about to respond when a door across the hallway burst open and two more African soldiers leveled AK-47s at the Executioner.

Bolan fell to one knee, pumped off two fast rounds from the Galil but not fast enough to stop one of the soldiers firing his own fast round.

But accurate enough to nail both black troopers with head hits that sent them toppling back into the room in a deadfalling tangle.

Bolan mounted the steps two at a time. He entered the inn's main room, Galil searching for targets.

There were four men in the dining room. A bodyguard, in the same uniform as the men outside; two chunky blacks who looked uncomfortable in their Italian suits. And Kennedy.

The gunfire from the corridor had interrupted their confrontation. All four men spun their attention to the doorway Bolan had burst through.

The bodyguard was already pulling up his rifle.

Bolan took the bodyguard first.

The Galil bucked death as Bolan squeezed the trigger. The bodyguard was tagged out with a rupturing throat hit that tossed him tumbling back to the floor, taking a table and two chairs with him on the way down.

Someone blew out the candle on the table where the principals of the meeting had been sitting. The room was pitched into darkness. There was a scuffling of movement. Mad and fast.

Bolan sidestepped away from where he had stood, went into a deep crouch. He heard a door opening on the other side of the large room.

He fired two rounds at where he determined the sound was. He heard a groan of pain, desperate in the dark.

Bolan dodged again. A handgun opened up from the far corner of the room. He heard the hiss of a bullet slice past him.

Bolan fired to the right of the pistol shot. He darted sideways himself a microsecond after triggering the round. He was not rewarded with the sound of a hit. Bolan's opponent knew how to handle a fire-fight in the dark, too. Bolan's target was constantly moving. On the offensive.

Two heartbeats. The open doorway was now visible, a deep gray. And empty. Another pistol shot slammed through the darkness. Another tongue of dirty flame across the room.

Bolan heard the darkness as if it were breathing, and divined through a mix of gambling and the intense will of the air itself that his opponent would choose to dodge to the right again. That is where he fired.

He knew he was on the money when a wet rattle bubbled from a body with a sound that no man can fake. The sound of death.

The noisy collapse was succeeded by a hushed stillness in the dining room.

Bolan could hear sounds of assault from outside. Doors were thrown open, running men were entering the inn.

Within seconds the lead invaders were silhouetted in the grayness of the open doorway. Bolan blew away three of them instantly, with three shots and unerring accuracy. His was an inexhaustible command of judgment. The remaining soldiers scampered out of sight for cover, back the way they had come. There were sounds of retreat in the darkness.

Bolan utilized the fleeing seconds before more soldiers came. He moved to where the body of the handgun-wielder had fallen. He looked closely in the gloom.

He was looking into the dead face of one of Kennedy's Italian-togged black customers.

The other buyer was also dead, visibly crumpled near the door. So the first cry in the dark had been that one's last.

And Kennedy was gone.

Bolan moved through the doorway. He was into starlight.

There was troop movement from several areas in and around the small village. The activity centered in the street fronting the inn. Bolan swiftly trotted around to the back of the ancient stone building, then cut off diagonally in a line toward the dunes. His senses were attuned to perceptions of the enemy, and informed him that the deployment numbered ten or twelve men at most, although they were widely scattered and dangerously answerable to no one.

Kennedy could not backtrack through the tunnel to the villa. Bolan recalled meeting those black troopers as he was first helping Fahima and her father to escape. The soldiers had looked like they were on their way to where the girl and her father were hidden. The Africans therefore knew of the room with two doors and Kennedy's "secret" tunnel. Something had gone down here at the inn. Kennedy would know that they knew, because it had just happened.

Kennedy's actions in his office earlier, when Bolan had been watching him, told Bolan that Kennedy was alone on this except for the merc Hymie, no doubt promised a slice of the action. Not even Doyle, Kennedy's second-in-command, knew about what Kennedy had been up to.

Kennedy's probable course of action would be to cut across the open terrain and get back inside the villa, utilizing his knowledge of security of the Jericho property.

Bolan had to make Kennedy talk.

Kennedy knew where Evita Aguilar was.

But Bolan had to find him first.