"The Libya Connection" - читать интересную книгу автора (Pendleton Don)

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Bolan's fellow passengers from Tunis had included well-dressed European businessmen, casually attired British and American oil-field workers, at least two dozen other professional-looking Westerners, many of whom would have similarly attired welcoming par ties awaiting them at Benghazi.

No one met quot;Michael Rideoutquot; at the Benghazi airport.

Bolan was wearing worn denim and work shirt, the uniform of the American oil-field worker abroad. He had one carry-on piece of luggage.

He emerged from the air terminal into the arid, 120-plus-degree midday heat. Libya was booming.

A row of shiny new taxis were parked in the terminal loading zone. Bolan hired one for the ride into the city. He observed with curiosity this Mediterranean powder-keg country.

Upon touchdown in the army transport plane at Tunis, Bolan had regretfully entrusted his Beretta and AutoMag to Jack Grimaldi for temporary safekeeping. Mike Rideout would not be carrying heat on a commercial flight.

Bolan knew that he would be provided with firearms as soon as he made contact, as Rideout, with Jericho's people here in Libya. Until then he was armed with a knife, purchased from a street merchant outside the airport, worn concealed at the small of his back.

Most of the houses along the dusty, palm-lined quot;highwayquot; into Benghazi were timeless mud-brick affairs. Street signs and all advertisements were in Arabic, but indications of Western-style prosperity were everywhere.

In the city proper, the streets became clogged with an uncomfortable number of Japanese, American and European cars.

Traditional Arabic architecture gave way to towering glass-walled office buildings.

Everywhere Bolan looked, there was movement, energy and commerce. And oppressive heat.

The country's oil fields made Libya the world's ninth largest producer. Of all the Arab nations, Libya had used its oil as a political weapon more than any other.

It was incredibly inflated profits that fueled the heavy activity in trade and housing and industrialization that Bolan saw all around him.

Government-owned and -subsidized supermarkets and stores were rapidly replacing the ancient tangled bazaars.

Libya's population, predominantly Arab Muslims, never thought that they would ever have it this good.

Of course, there was a price. And his name was Khaddafi.

The Company's Benghazi cover operation was a small accounting firm that serviced many of the second-string U.S. business concerns in Libya.

The offices of Mid-Am Incorporated were in the old section of the city, on a hillside of narrow, winding lanes that only donkeys and pedestrians could negotiate, where the poor lived crowded together amid occasional small business fronts that shared the crumbling, antiquated stone architecture.

Mid-Am's quarters were behind such a storefront. The glass had been painted black. Only the silver lettering on the painted glass door indicated that this storefront was occupied at all.

The flow of the street scene before the storefront seemed unconcerned and unaware of Mid-Am Inc. The storefront was around the corner from the neighborhood Bah el atouk, the Street of Merchants. The sounds clearly carried of grocers in their open-air stalls, all enthusiastically and simultaneously proclaiming the virtues of green figs, pomegranates, lemons, oranges, almonds. All around, under blue skies but in the shade from the throbbing sun, buzzed the added hubbub of foot traffic in and out of scores of craft shops specializing in jewelry and leatherwork and shoemaking. Berber music from flutes and goatskin drums filled the air.

Even along this narrow side street fronting the offices of Mid-Am, which was little more than a cobbled footpath, the scene bustled with local women clad in traditional veils, on their way to or from the market, and the Arab men — Berbers, Kabyles, Mzabites and Bedouins — wearing the burnous, a hooded mantle, all pushing, shoving, chattering their way about their business.

Within the desultory building, the offices of Mid-Am were a modern complex of quot;work areasquot; that housed just one cell in a network of covert CIA operations in Libya.

The head man of the Benghazi facility was an amiable Bostonian named Lansdale. At least, that was what he said his name was. Bolan met the guy after passing through two separate security checkpoints that blocked his path in the facility.

Grim-faced men and some women hurried busily about their errands, answering phones, checking files.

Lansdale showed quot;John Phoenixquot; to the soundproofed cell in one of the basement work areas where the real Michael Rideout was being detained.

Bolan gazed in upon the Spartanly furnished, not uncomfortable, room and saw the renegade American stretched out in a sedated sleep.

Ten minutes after his arrival at the Company offices, Mack Bolan was alone with Lansdale in the head agent's office in the back of the building.

quot;The first piece of classified news I have for you is that Pentagon investigators tracked down General Thatcher stateside,quot; said Lansdale. quot;Unfortunately, the general is not doing any talking. The coded communique we received says he got his hands on a gun and blew his brains out. Before any questioning got underway.quot;

Bolan fired a cigarette. He had hoped that Thatcher would have the best clue to the whereabouts of Eve Aguilar. But that hope was now dead, like the general himself.

quot;Tell me about Rideout,quot; said Bolan. quot;What did you learn from him?quot;

quot;Ah, truth serum, it's wonderful stuff,quot; said Lansdale. quot;Jericho owns a villa forty miles southeast of here in Bishabia. Rideout says that's where he was headed. He was supposed to contact the villa when he landed in Benghazi.quot;

quot;That was this morning?quot;

quot;Yes. Rideout told us that a mercenary named Kennedy is honchoing the operation at the villa. They'll want to know why you're late. But air travel is notorious in these parts, and you can build a story around that.quot;

quot;Does Rideout have any idea what Jericho's operation is all about?quot;

quot;Negative. He was told stateside that Jericho Industries needs a temporary security force for one of their Libyan business concerns. That's all he knows except that they told him he'd be back home by the end of the week.quot;

Bolan tried to fit what he was hearing into the puzzle.

quot;So we've got a paid-off general in the States and a covert security force here in Libya,quot; he said. quot;I think that Jericho has been supplied by Thatcher with something big, has had it transported here, and now he needs his own force to safeguard it. But if Khaddafi is Jericho's buyer, why does Jericho need a civilian outfit with people like Rideout? Why aren't Khaddafi's own forces taking over security?quot;

Lansdale answered immediately, but there was something of a weariness in his young man's voice.

quot;Khaddafi is not Jericho's buyer. There is bad blood between Jericho and Khaddafi. Remember when Reagan cut off Libyan oil imports to the U.S.? Khaddafi went through the roof. He instigated reprisals at the time against most American interests in Libya. These reprisals never made the world media for a variety of reasons. We still don't know everything that happened. But the Libyan government shut down several U.S. business concerns here, including several that were clearing big profits for Jericho. Three of Jericho's top men in Libya disappeared in the middle of the night and were never heard from again. That was Khaddafi's work and Jericho knows and resents it.quot;

The agent flipped open a folder on his desk and handed a 12x13-inch glossy photograph across to Bolan.

quot;Here is the man we're fairly certain Jericho is doing business with. Colonel Ahmad Shahkhia. Shahkhia and Khaddafi have been close friends since childhood. Shahkhia is second-in-command, under Khaddafi, of the Libyan army.quot;

Bolan studied the Arab face in the picture. The photo had evidently been snapped without the colonel's knowledge. Shahkhia was in uniform, sipping from a cup at a sidewalk cafe. Even from a photograph, in repose, the military commander emanated an aura of forceful ambition. Bolan memorized the face and handed the picture back to Lansdale.

quot;A coup?quot;

Lansdale nodded.

quot;We tumbled to it thanks to our tap on the Russian Embassy in Tripoli.quot;

quot;I thought Khaddafi was in Moscow's pocket.quot;

quot;He was and still is, for the time being,quot; said Lansdale. quot;But that old boy's been getting mighty uppity lately and the Kremlin's looking for a new puppet hereabouts. Shahkhia seems to be it. We've only been onto this since last night.

quot;The conversation we picked up over the embassy line indicates that the Russians are giving Shahkhia the necessary backing and that the coup is set to happen immediately. Shahkhia spoke like someone with a wide base of Libyan support too. Most likely in the military. Considering the timing of Jericho's operation, and Jericho's intense hatred for Khaddafi, I'd say Shahkhia is our best bet as the buyer for whatever Jericho has diverted over here.quot;

quot;Is Jericho at the villa now?quot; Bolan's reaction was biased toward action. Enough talk.

quot;We don't know, Colonel Phoenix. My guess is that the cargo itself is in the possession of this Kennedy guy, the mercenary. His force probably is at the villa in Bishabia. Meanwhile Jericho is off somewhere making the final negotiations with Shahkhia, or Shahkhia's people.quot;

quot;What kind of force does Kennedy have?quot;

quot;Paramilitary all the way,quot; said the Company man. quot;U.S. mercs, mostly. We've not been able to get an accurate manpower count. We do know there have been three or four civilian. Huey choppers inside the estate walls of that villa at one time or another recently.quot;

quot;What happens to the real Mike Rideout?quot; asked Bolan.

quot;He'll still be home by the end of the week, just like Jericho's people told him he would,quot; smiled Lansdale.

quot;One more thing,quot; grunted Bolan. quot;I must locate a woman, an agent from Puerto Rico, who Jericho is holding prisoner. She's here in Libya with him. Her name is Eve Aguilar.quot;

quot;Nothing on that, I'm afraid,quot; said Lansdale in his languorous, East Coast prep-school style. quot;The most I can tell you is that Shahkhia is rumored to have a taste for Western women. Maybe Jericho has something in mind along those lines...quot;

The two men were only paces from the door. The meeting had come to an end.

quot;One last thing. I guess I should warn you about,quot; said Lansdale. quot;It's something that's been coming through one of the other stations. But we're getting it only one piece at a time. The word is that the Israeli Mossad has already planted an agent of their own in the villa at Bishabia. No connection with us. You have been warned.quot;

Bolan smiled coldly.

quot;Name of the game,quot; he said, by way of a farewell.

Bolan left the covert complex to rejoin the Benghazi street scene outside. He had a phone call to make. To a man named Kennedy.

Yeah. Libya was definitely booming.

The Executioner was here to make sure it stayed that way.

But with a bigger boom, in the manner of Mack Bolan.