"Дон Пендлтон. The Libya Connection ("Палач" #48) " - читать интересную книгу автора

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
"Rideout" 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 "Huey" 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
"soldiers" lounged here and there at points around the courtyard, looking
hot, oppressed, drenched in sweat.