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

5

They sent a jeep into Benghazi to pick up Bolan at a designated corner in the busy waterfront district.

The jeep driver was a hefty American, outfitted in lightweight desert fatigues, who introduced himself as Doyle, then said no more for the duration of the forty-minute drive from Benghazi.

The adobe-type suburbs thinned out behind them. The jeep rocketed along a sparsely traveled blacktop highway that arrowed south into the rocky wilderness of desert.

The Sahara again.

The harsh wasteland of dunes stretched forever. The land shimmered with waves of heat beneath a bloodred sun. The wind blew in hot, scorching gusts. Thirst came quickly.

Bolan knew from experience that this was a deadly terrain of sand vipers, scorpions and clouds of loathsome flies. The only visible vegetation were the occasional stunted pines or thorny, knee-high shrubs.

It was startling, at one point, to see Arab tents and a flock of sheep and some camels amid this barren no-man's-land of sand and stone.

An arid land. But to Mack Bolan, a jungle nevertheless.

It was six o'clock.

A mere thirty hours since Mack Bolan's assault on Leonard Jericho's yacht, the Traveler, on the other side of the world in Exuma Cay in the Bahamas.

The oasis village of Bishabia was nothing more than a jumble of squalid stone houses and two main dirt streets.

But Leonard Jericho's villa, screened by desert trees beyond the village proper, was in a class by itself.

Doyle wheeled the jeep off the highway and along a winding approach to the front gate.

The walled estate was a blend of Roman and Moorish architecture. Bolan spotted clusters of cedar and aleppo pine trees growing near the outer base of the wall.

The entrance to the grounds was to the west. The concrete wall that surrounded the property was twenty feet high and six inches thick. An iron grille gate barred entrance.

The gate opened mechanically and the jeep passed through. Thus far things were so much easier than breaching Marker's damnable conglomeration in Algeria's Tanezrouft region of this same desert. Grim memories.

A brick gatehouse was situated just inside the wall. A guard, armed with a Galil ARM assault rifle, gave a sharp salute as the jeep rolled past.

Lansdale's intel had been correct. Jericho's security force was paramilitary all the way.

The wrought-iron gates closed automatically behind the jeep. Doyle and quot;Rideoutquot; drove a short distance into a spacious courtyard at the villa's core.

The core of Lenny Jericho's Something Big.

Three single-engine jet-turbine Bell UHi-D quot;Hueyquot; helicopters, buff-colored desert models without markings, rested on the pebbled turf of the courtyard. All three choppers were heavily armed, boasting 40mm cannons and 5.56mm miniguns mounted externally on turrets.

Three alert mercs stood guard around one of the aircraft. Other quot;soldiersquot; lounged here and there at points around the courtyard, looking hot, oppressed, drenched in sweat.

Bolan made the scene even before the jeep had rolled to a stop. The heavily guarded copter would be carrying whatever cargo it was that Jericho's forces had lifted from the States. The other two Huey gun-ships would guard the cargo when word came down to rendezvous at a trade-off point with Jericho and Colonel Shahkhia.

The jeep stopped at the front of a flight of marble steps. The opulent-looking steps led up to the entrance of the villa itself.

A man stood waiting, hands on hips, halfway up the wide steps. He was dressed in lightweight fatigues. He had watched the jeep approach. When the vehicle halted, the guy came down the rest of the way with an almost arrogant stride.

This would be Kennedy. Blond-haired, boyish good looks did not fool Bolan. The guy's eyes told the story: the eyes of a killer.

Kennedy carried a 9mm Browning hi-power in a cross-draw position at his left hip. Like those mercs Bolan could see who were not toting Galils, Kennedy also carried a Largo-Star submachine gun strapped over his shoulder.

Bolan knew the Largo as a Spanish copy of the German MP-40, or quot;Schmeisser.quot; The weapon, referred to by Konzaki back at Stony Man Farm as the Z-45, is fully automatic with a cyclic rate of fire of 550 rounds per minute and a muzzle velocity of some 1,500 fps. Hot stuff.

Kennedy looked at Doyle as Bolan climbed from the jeep.

quot;Was he wired?quot;

quot;Now, he was clean,quot; reported the driver. quot;No tails. He's all yours.quot;

quot;Check out the north wall with Bruner,quot; Kennedy told the driver. quot;We'll be getting word to pull out any minute now.quot;

Doyle nodded, wheeled the jeep out of sight.

A sweating Kennedy eyeballed Bolan. Bolan eye-balled the honcho right back. Even the long-term pain in his left shoulder from his last overseas mission would not deflect Bolan from meeting iron with iron, which was the way of his new terrorist wars.

quot;Where the hell you been, Rideout? We could been pulled out by now.quot;

quot;Then I guess I'd have made ten grand the easy way,quot; grunted Bolan in response. quot;The airlines tied me up. Got here fast as I could.quot;

quot;I don't like this crap, not knowing who's supposed to be working for me,quot; spat the head cock. quot;You could be any-damn-body. How do I know you're Mike Rideout?quot;

quot;You don't,quot; said Bolan. quot;So you call it.quot;

Kennedy paused several heartbeats to decide. Few men who ever stood eye to eye with Mack Bolan carried more than a confused and invariably false impression of what the anti-terrorist avenger actually looked like. But there was one detail that never escaped the living memory of a Bolan encounter. And that was the coldly purposeful eyes of the combatman. The Bolan gaze was actually composed of many diverse qualities and could switch from cold death to warm compassion in a flick — or could contain both at one moment. This was not one of those moments. Now it was all cold death. Bolan had the guy psyched and when Kennedy's decision came, Bolan knew that quot;Mike Rideoutquot; was in.

quot;Get yourself to the armory in the garage over there,quot; growled the merc. quot;Arm yourself and suit up. Then go to the southeast corner of this place. You'll find a guy named Teckert. Tell him I sent you as backup.quot;

quot;Sounds like you're expecting something.quot;

quot;Always expecting, pal. Always ready. We'll be pulling out of here within the hour. Be ready to move.quot;