Hellfire Crusade

10

When Danny woke up to take the second shift, the bodies of the two would-be assassins had disappeared. She didn't ask Bolan what he had done with them.

They switched lookout shifts once more during the night. Bolan did not appear to stir as he rested, but Danny had little doubt his automatic warning system remained on full alert even while he slept. She padded over to check on their native prisoner, who somehow managed to doze fitfully with one arm held uncomfortably upright. He was secured by the wrist to the roll bar.

She was well aware by now that Mack seemed to have covered every angle — but why had he brought along those steel handcuffs? Danny turned to look at him but Bolan was no longer there. She saw him sauntering back from behind the rocks as the sun, still unseen, splashed the first vivid rays across the dawn sky.

He packed up the last of their things, then stood over the chief. "Remember what I told you?"

The bedu did, only too well. "I'l1 will show you the way."

"No tricks."

"Oh no, sah'b — upon my honor!"

"Then let's go."

Danny rode in back with the gear. The Hog scrambled along the slope, all four wheels driving it hard up the dangerous incline.

The Arab pointed ahead to what appeared to be a dead end, so well did the colors of the rock blend into a seamless whole. Bolan approached with caution.

The trail hooked sharply, disappearing through the granite shoulders of a gap barely wide enough to admit the armored Jeep. Beyond this concealed entrance it widened out and, except for one large flattened rock that partially blocked the passage higher up, it was an easy gradient to the top of the escarpment.

Loose sand had drifted down into this natural funnel; in places it looked soft and deep enough to cause problems for the heavy vehicle. The tribesman rattled his handcuffs. "Free me, sah'b — I will walk ahead of you. It will be safer."

Bolan hesitated.

"I cannot outrun your bullets," the bedu said, indicating the Uzi. "I can find the best path to follow."

Bolan unlocked the cuffs. Danny wondered why he seemed so reluctant; it sounded like a good idea to her. The man climbed down, carefully scanning the ground as he plodded up the wind-cut passageway. The Hog sat there idling while Bolan modified the Uzi.

The man turned, beckoning them forward with a wave.

He moved faster now, the hill was getting easier, until he skipped sideways with several nimble steps.

Bolan was already halfway up the slope when the nomad made that last odd crablike maneuver.

He pulled up hard, jamming on the hand brake.

With utter horror Danny suddenly realized why Bolan had been so apprehensive. Not four feet from the right front tire, the shifting wind had blown back enough sand to reveal a dark metal lump! The desert thief had led them straight into a mine trap.

"Stop right there!" Bolan commanded.

The man glanced back as Bolan stood up — and as the American's hands cleared the windshield, he saw the fat round barrel of the silencer affixed to the Uzi.

The Arab weighed his chances. He was safely out of the mine strip. That big flat rock offered him cover less than twenty feet away. Bolan did not give him the chance to try for it... a short burst stuttered softly from the submachine gun. The whining bullets made more noise as they ricocheted off the corner of the slab, chipping out puffs of powdered rock.

The chief knew he'd never make it in one piece. The American would cut him in two.

"Get back down here!" Bolan ordered gruffly. "Now!" He handed the gun to Danny. "Watch that trickster." Then he turned to a box in the back and opened the lid, pulling out what he'd claimed to the customs officer was a metal detector.

Danny knew now that he hadn't lied exactly — he just hadn't told the whole truth.

The device was a metal detector of sorts: a highly efficient, compact unit for sweeping mines. Bolan tested the ground alongside the Hog before stepping down. He was waiting in front of the Jeep when the crafty nomad finally got back to them. "One more false move and she's going to pull the trigger, you understand?"

The man nodded vigorously.

"Now I'm going ahead to sweep a way clear for the Jeep."

Another jerk of his head.

"I'll call out where they are... and you, my friend," said Bolan, handing him a wooden stake, "are going to dig them up."

The bedu's throat bobbed with a terrified swallow.

Bolan moved methodically upward, listening through the lightweight headset and watching the gauge as he swung the detector in a smooth short arc.

Twelve paces out and he stopped, pointing to the ground a few inches from his left boot. "Okay, do it!"

The man, trying to stop his hands from shaking, prodded gingerly at the soil.

"Don't try anything stupid," Bolan snarled as he continued to walk up the slope, sweeping a pattern wide enough to take the Hog through safely.

Danny's brow and upper lip were beaded with perspiration and it wasn't just from the early-morning sun that was beginning to arc behind them. She held her breath each time Mack paused, his feet remaining stock-still, as he marked the location of the next mine.

It took nearly fifty minutes to clear a way to the spot where the big block cut the passage to half. Bolan eyed the boulder, the slope beneath and all the other details as he contemplated turning things to his advantage. Prodding the man in the back, they retraced their footsteps to the Hog.

"Okay, Danny, cross your fingers and hope we did it right." Keeping his eye fixed on the critical path, Bolan gunned the motor and the Jeep shot up the slope. He got out of the vehicle, indicating the double-crossing native should do the same. Then he turned to Danny and said, "Take the Hog almost to the top, but stay below the skyline. Then cover it with the net and wait for me there."

"What are you going to do?"

Bolan picked up the silenced Uzi and pointed at the prisoner. "He's going to put all those mines back in the sand again, but in different places."

Danica Jones was not a smoker, not anymore. She'd quit a long time ago. But right at this moment she would gladly have lit up a cigarette. The unexpected violence of last night and the strain of the past hour had left her with the shakes inside. But I asked for it, Danny reminded herself, I wanted it this way... being close to death is the cost of feeling so fully alive.

It was another half hour before Bolan reappeared. He marched up the hill alone. For a minute she thought he might have let that wily bastard go, even though she knew in her heart what must have happened back there. "He should have kept his word to us," was all the explanation Bolan offered her. "He swore on his honor."

Together they walked to the top of the slope, crouching low as they slipped over the ridge. They had a panoramic view of Khurabi's Forbidden Zone stretched out below them.

The actual distance down the far side of the Jebel Kharg was greater than what they'd climbed up to get here, but the slope descended less steeply.

Camels, traders and their miserable human cargo of slaves had, over so many years, beaten a track that was easy to follow. It cut across the hillside diagonally, disappearing through a forest of sandstone boulders, then dipped through a ravine leading all the way down to the desert floor beyond.

Sand, millions of tons of it blown from the Empty Quarter, washed up here like rolling waves upon ancient shores of the Jebel Kharg. Bolan said nothing as he searched the terrain sector by sector. Far away to their right, sunlight twinkled briefly on the windshield of a car or truck using Khurabi's only interior highway; but even through his powerful binoculars it was nothing more than a momentary flash. The road, which Grimaldi had picked as the only feasible landing site, squeezed past the terminal shoulder of the jebel and the oil fields ranged along the frontier. It was a natural bottleneck that would be watched right and day.

Bolan knew he was right to have chosen the more difficult track into this inaccessible region, despite the problems they had run into on the way.

He scanned left slowly, looking for any movement or sign of the patrols that Hassan was bound to have dispatched. The desert lay absolutely still, waiting to be hammered by the full force of the midday sun.

Finally, slightly to the left of their present position, he focused on a small irregularity poking up amid the distant dunes. "Take a look over there," he told Danny, handing her the field glasses.

"Hagadan? Is that the fortress?"

"It's in the right spot. How far off would you say that is?"

"Oh, twenty miles at least." Bolan dusted himself off. "Let's get going. We've got a lot of ground to cover."

Only when she turned back, squinting into the harsh glare, did Danny fully appreciate the wisdom of Bolan's wilderness route to Hagadan. From this angle the sun would be rising behind them all morning. Prying eyes would not choose to look directly along their line of approach.

Bolan stripped off the camouflage covering and left Danny to repack it. He rearranged the gear in the back of the Hog, opening the long wooden crate and lifting out the M-60.

Chandler had engineered a special mount for the machine gun. It took Bolan only a few moments to slot the support column into its base. Danny wondered what that nosy customs officer would have said... there was no disguising their intentions now: they were going off to war.

They were halfway down the far side of the jebel when Bolan started talking. "I won't kill a man merely because of what he believes in. Even if I think he's misguided, perverse or just plain mad, that's his affair." The suddenness with which Bolan launched into these reflections of his past life certainly surprised Danica Jones. But she remained silent. "But when a person, an organization or even a country starts to cause havoc in the name of those beliefs — when they torture anyone who doesn't happen to agree with them, maim the children, murder the innocent — that's when they become the enemies of decency, order and humanity. And that's when they become my enemies, too."

Danny listened carefully. He did not seem to be offering her any excuses or simply trying to justify what had happened in the past few hours; rather she sensed that he needed to paint an overall picture for her. He was letting her know more precisely what she was involved in. And why he tried to help others despite the incredible risks to his own life.

"I will defend myself, those I care for and the values of freedom — I'll defend them to the death!" This was not a hollow boast but a plain statement of fact. "I took no pleasure in killing those guys back there. I admire the bedu. But that man and his sons were double-crossing thieves who intended to murder us. Like I said — he called the play and made it 'them or us.'" He paused to navigate between two jagged outcrops. "I didn't come here to Khurabi because I hate Islam and think it should be put down. I don't. There are many things worthy of deep and abiding respect in the Muslim world. The Koran sets out a harsh code not one that I could easily live by — but if a man wishes to follow it in peace, okay, then I wish him luck..." Bolan's eyes had a distant look. Was he scanning for trouble ahead of them? Or was he remembering another time, another place, another battle? "Some of the bravest men I ever had the privilege of fighting alongside were Tarik Khan and his mujahedeen in the mountains of Afghanistan. No, I won't go on a mission, knowing that men will probably die, just because they worship Allah."

He glanced across at her. Danny gazed back into those pale blue eyes, awed by the strength of his commitment as she now perceived the broader perspectives of the Executioner's endless war.

"There was a journalist once, back in Nam, who tried to write me up as some sort of commie-hating psychotic. Well, I don't hate anyone for merely believing in Marx or Lenin — although, considering their theories have been thoroughly discredited by the events of this century, I'd certainly have to say their faith was misplaced."

Danny had to smile at this last remark. She'd come across several true believers in the Marxist-Leninist line at university.

She had heard otherwise intelligent professors, often indulging in the most affluent of lifestyles, mouthing all the usual platitudes of communist brotherhood. Her thoughts were interrupted as Bolan continued. "But it's in the name of those same beliefs — even masquerading them as a scientific theory — that the Soviets have murdered, what, thirty or forty million people... in their war to first seize power, by a deliberate policy of famine, in slave labor camps, in the treacherous way they conducted themselves both with and then against Hitler, through surrogate terrorist armies, and now with the rape of Afghanistan... The list of their atrocities is endless.

"But their goal is simple: they have to dominate the whole world. They've warned us on enough occasions that that's what they're up to — it's our own fault if we don't listen. And that's what makes the Soviets, not the ordinary Russian man in the street, my enemies. Particularly the KGB. I oppose them because of the horror they inflict in the name of their outmoded beliefs."

Danny recalled the nightmare scenes she had witnessed in Southeast Asia and knew that in his worldwide campaigns Bolan must have seen ten times worse.

"It's the same now with Hassan Zayoud. I don't care if he kneels five times a day toward Mecca. It has always seemed obvious to me that this power, this universal life force we call God must, by definition, be beyond our own limited comprehension."

"Of course," agreed Danny. The detailed study she had made of the past had led her to much the same conclusion. "I'm sure that the great religions are all worshiping different facets of the same limitless source — each formulating their faith in different ways."

"Exactly," said Bolan. "But Zayoud wants to be the new Sword of Islam, spreading his personal beliefs in a bloody Crescent Revolution — and to do that he'll kidnap kids or gather an army of hired killers, build a bomb or murder his own brother, given half a chance. When he ordered his men to snatch Kevin Baker in Florida, Hassan Zayoud called down a sentence upon himself with that action. That's where I come in... Hey, talking of enemy troops, look at that dust!"

"They're coming this way," said Danny.

"Quick, over there... we can hide behind those rocks." Bolan slipped the Hog into the depression behind the boulders. They were less than two hundred yards from the edge of the sand and still slightly above it. The long sweeping crest of the nearest dune had protected them for the few vital moments that were needed to reach safe cover.

A Jeep with four men aboard clambered into view and rolled down the banked sand. The driver, in a khaki shirt and red-checkered burnoose, was one of Hassan's troopers, as was the man who sat next to him; the two guys in the back were mercenaries. They were carrying Uzis, too — the weapons had been on Ruark's "shopping list." Bolan recognized the bullet-headed giant with tattooed forearms as Bull Keegan.

Danny held her breath, wondering if the new arrivals were going to inspect the trail down from the Jebel. Bolan took his gun off safety. He was taking no chances.

The Arab jumped out of the passenger seat and cast around for a sign, while Keegan checked the bottom edge of the hillside through glasses. Bolan and his companion were close enough to pick up the conversation.

"Waste of goddamn time coming out here. C'mon, let get back and find some shade," Bull Keegan said.

Zayoud's men hopped back inside. The driver let out the clutch too quickly, jerking forward before stalling in a pothole. It almost threw Keegan overboard. He started berating the driver. "You stupid... haven't you learned anything? Jeez, your boss figures he's going to take over the country with dumb bastards like you to back him? Huh, I dunno... Jim, you take the wheel."

The other merc climbed down into the driver's seat.

They pulled away with Keegan still swearing at the native soldier until they were out of earshot.

The Jeep vanished through a dip between two massive dunes and soon even the sound of the engine died away.

"That," said Danny, "was uncomfortably close."

"Best thing that could have happened," Bolan contradicted her.

She looked at him curiously.

"We'll give them twenty minutes head start," he explained, "then follow them back to the fortress." Bolan noticed that the desert floor of the Forbidden Zone was not quite the uniform sea of sand that it had first seemed from the craggy heights behind them.

For many square miles the unimpeded wind had indeed built up great transverse dunes — frozen waves in a burning ocean — but there were harder patches, too, and here the sand had been pushed into the crescent shapes of barchan dunes, all neatly pointing downwind. In other places the desert had been stripped to almost naked rock. With utmost caution Bolan followed the scouting patrol toward the target. He and Danny paused often, the Hog's hull down behind a crest, waiting for the right moment to slip safely across. Once, they spotted Keegan waving his fist as he ripped into Zayoud's men for their stupidity. The sun climbed toward its zenith. Danny used a towel to fashion a head cloth to protect herself. It was not unendurably sticky; out here perspiration simply evaporated as soon as it appeared. They had stopped for a water break when Bolan spotted a truck approaching from the right. It rendezvoused with Keegan's Jeep and, after a brief conference, the two vehicles proceeded in convoy back to the base. The double tracks were easy enough to follow. Bolan memorized what markers he could in this repetitive landscape: once it was a peculiar star-shaped dune, and in another spot he noted a rust-colored rock; often he glanced back to take his bearings from the notch they had crossed atop the jebel.

The powerful 600 horsepower V8 engine that Chandler had fitted in the Sand Hog throbbed quietly as it propelled them over the shifting terrain. Bolan checked his watch frequently against the speedometer and odometer. "Stay here," he finally instructed Danny, and stalked up the slope ahead to double-check their position. He remained there some time. When he came back he told Danny, "We'll have to go very carefully now... we're almost there."

Her pulse was racing with excitement but Danny was determined not to let it show. She wondered if Mack felt anything at having got this far, for being so dangerously near Zayoud's headquarters?

If he did, it didn't show; he seemed so calm and self-assured.

Bolan turned more to the south for this final leg, leaving the churned-up tracks of the patrol vehicles, as they kept low in a long trough behind another golden barricade of sand. There was a barren ridge of rock beyond it, cracked by the brutal elements and sculpted into a labyrinth of weirdly shaped protrusions.

He drew in beneath the shadowy underside of a giant stone mushroom, parking tight against the windscoured pillar.

"This should be safe enough," he said, switching off the engine, then adding realistically, "well, as safe as anywhere around here can be. First things first, let's rig the netting, then wipe out our tracks." There was little sign of their presence on the hard rock surface.

Danny scuffed out a tire track in one softer patch of grit. When she turned toward the formation where they were parked, she had to look twice to find the hiding place. It was amazing how well the camouflaged Hog had melded into the surroundings.

She knew she was going to be left here alone, perhaps for many hours, once Mack set off for the fortress. But her concern for his safety now outweighed her own fears.

"Let's take a look at the castle," said Bolan. He led the way up a narrow cleft to the top of the sandstone ridge.

Danny was staggered at how frighteningly close they were to the fortress. "It's impressive," Danny breathed.

"And damn near impregnable," added Bolan.

In their present position they were less than half a mile from the southeastern corner of the fortifications.

The dunes, smaller here and studded with rocks, swirled right to the base of the massive upthrust on which Hagadan was built.

The rugged cliffs, covered in places with a tangle of thorn bushes, reared up for a hundred feet or more and then the thick stone walls, still in remarkably good repair, rose for another fifty feet above the foundation line.

To their left they could see that a single gravel track rose along an approach ramp directly beneath the battlements. At the top of the incline it twisted in an L-turn through the main gateway.

Four guards, all carrying modern rifles, stood on duty at this entrance. There were more soldiers stationed on the rooftops of the square towers that marked the corners of the fortress. Two more round towers and the central keep stood proudly within the protection of these stout outer walls.

Bolan surveyed the crenellated towers — there must have been at least thirty men on watch, and those were only the ones he could count from this angle. How many sentries would be on duty at night? And how watchful would they be?

The binoculars were fitted with extended rubber shields to mask off any reflections but Bolan still instinctively lowered them for a moment when a small party suddenly appeared on top of the keep.

"Is that Zayoud?" asked Danny.

"Yeah, that's him all right." He gave her the glasses. "And look who he's got with him!"

There was no mistaking the young boy who stood by Hassan Zayoud. The circular image that Danny focused on was a smaller replica of the locket Bolan had shown her when they first met. The suntanned youth pointing off into the distance behind them was Kevin Baker. Zayoud, with his neatly trimmed black beard and glittering eyes, extended his arm upon which was perched a sleek falcon. He removed the hood, untied the tethering thong and launched the bird above the tower.

With strong, steady strokes it rose high above the desert, then glided silently over the rocks that concealed Bolan and Danny.

It swooped, regained altitude and then plunged like a dive bomber on some unseen prey. When it rose into view again, it was carrying the small limp body of some desert creature clutched in its talons. Returning to the tower seemed to take a greater effort as the bird flew quite low over their heads.

"Good thing birds can't talk," said Bolan.

Kevin applauded the return of the successful hunter. And Zayoud was pleased with his prized bird's performance. He had spent many hours training it to attack men as well as smaller, more natural prey. But something else had attracted the sheikh's attention... Danny nudged Bolan's arm: a squad of Zayoud's handpicked guards was being marched up the approach road. Craig Harrison was in command of the detail. They looked hot and dusty. He must have been putting them through some grueling paces.

"Keep your eyes open for anyone else." Bolan raised the glasses and began a detailed examination of every inch along the cliffs below the wall, assessing each fissure, each spur, each overhang as if his life depended on it... because, before this night was over, he knew it would.