Hellfire Crusade

6

"It's a go!" instructed Bolan.

"I'm taking her off auto," warned Grimaldi, glancing back over his shoulder to where Bolan stood hunched over near the cockpit entrance. "There could be some turbulence up ahead. Better warn Danny."

Bolan returned to the cabin. Danica Jones sat glued to the window, just as she had for the past two hours. She appeared excited, which brought out a schoolgirl excitement in her. Bolan liked her fresh-faced enthusiasm.

She seemed even more vital, more alive inside, than she had in the suffocating confines of her retreat at Westfield. There was an edge of anticipated danger, the keen thrill of being tested against long odds, as they headed into action. All three of them shared and savored the same stimulation.

"Nearly there?" asked Danny.

"Soon," Bolan told her. "But Jack says we could be in for a few bumps."

Danny did not have to be told to fasten her safety belt, then she resumed her watch through the porthole.

The vast and block of Arabia, hostile and uninviting, stretched from the foam-flecked shoreline to the horizon. Here the earth's crust lay bare, without the slightest shade of trees or the cool refreshment of streams and takes, but parched, crumpled and forbidding.

It was also starkly beautiful in its own primeval way. The checkerboard politics of the Middle East had forced Grimaldi to plot a zigzag course, skipping this way and that like a drunken frog.

The cover story over the airwaves was that they were a special team on their way to put out an oil blaze in Oman.

Jack Grimaldi nursed the big cargo clipper through the turbulence. He had fought alongside the Executioner in this part of the world before — in the big blitzer's recent war against the Muslim Madman. The veteran pilot wore a mirthless grin as he adjusted the trim; after all, Ayatollah Khomeini was only one of the cannibal contenders for that dubious title.

Grimaldi was a crack pilot, able to fly almost anything. His Italian good looks attracted women by the score. Bolan liked the guy. In common, they had distinguished service records and an enduring hatred for the Mafia. The Stony Man flying ace had worked backup for the universal soldier on more missions than he could remember.

They were a good team. Back home Bolan had filled him in on a need-to-know basis, but Grimaldi was already well briefed in this mission; what mattered was that Mack was trying to pull someone out of Khurabi.

They had pored over the maps together looking for a possible landing site — an improvised and most definitely unauthorized airstrip for a sudden retrieval op. But not a single square inch of Khurabi's rugged terrain looked in the least bit suitable, even for emergency use. The pilot had suggested that the only paved road in the interior, which served the oil fields along the northwestern edge of the country, might serve their purpose. Bolan turned down the suggestion; they had to stick much closer to the opposite frontier.

Grimaldi resumed the search.

The Forbidden Zone was mined and patrolled. The sand sea around the old crusader fortress was out; it was smooth enough in places to risk a crash landing, but far too treacherous to attempt a takeoff. The craggy heights of the Jebel Kharg were out of the question. And the tortured terrain of wadis, quicksand, mineral beds and barren rock that lay between those inland peaks and the sea was no place to land a plane, even for a pilot as experienced as Grimaldi.

The only way to fly out of Khurabi safely was from the same place they would be going in; the country's one commercial airport, twelve miles outside the capital.

"That's the way it looks to me, too," Bolan had told his buddy. "I just wanted the input of your expert advice." Bolan's alternate plan was already in motion, but Grimaldi's role was still an integral part of the Khurabi mission.

The combat vet judged it was safe enough once more to switch back to autopilot, while he doublechecked his computations to navigate their way into the gulf states' airspace.

"Should have you unloaded in less than an hour," he told Bolan, who had returned to the cockpit. He nodded to the communications equipment.

"Incoming signals..." Bolan slipped the padded earphones on his head, exchanging the constant, muffled roar of the powerful engines for the hollow static of the electronic network. It was Kurtzman, who had accessed himself through safely scrambled channels to update the Executioner.

"I got a few items for you. First, the good news: Steve Hohenadel and his partner have confirmed all arrangements. They can risk one run and one run only. Time and place as you specified."

"Uh-huh," Bolan said. "Okay, so what's the bad news?"

"Intel sources report a box of krytons has possibly reached Khurabi. Now KN22's are sometimes used in the oil exploration business, but they're also the same kind of switches needed to trigger an H-bomb. This get uglier by the moment."

"We never thought it was going to be a picnic."

"Yeah, well, some guy over at N.E.S.T. is beginning to put the same pieces of the puzzle together. And N.E.S.T. has alerted the CIA, the State Department and the team at Rand. Things are starting to move back here... And move they would."

Bolan knew that a N.E.S.T. report would be taken seriously. The guys who made up the Nuclear Emergency Search Team didn't joke about the nightmare scenarios they had to deal with and the powers-that-be knew it, too.

The big question was still whether Bolan could defuse the situation before it became an international flare-up and hit the world headlines in the worst possible way.

Bolan was trying to put out a fire all right; and he could not afford to make a mistake.

"Got a few more close-ups of the target zone since you took off," said the Bear. "Did a head count. I figure Ruark's got maybe forty men there, and they're training a hundred or more local troopers. Of course, I don't know how many others were still inside the castle when these snapshots were taken. Either way, Zayoud has surrounded himself with a small army."

This latest estimate gave Bolan pause for thought. In a way, the more men there were milling around the fortress made it easier for him to infiltrate unchallenged, but it made getting out again even more hazardous. The odds against were mounting.

"Thanks, Bear. We're still going in."

"Never doubted it, Mack. Good luck!"

Bolan shed the headset. He stretched as best he could in the cramped walkway behind the pilot's seat. Glancing down through the aircraft's windshield, he could see the vivid flames of the burn-offs at an oilfield some way inland. Odd patches of brilliant green surrounded the occasional well or irrigation system. Sunlight twinkled on a truck window far below.

"I'll begin the final descent in about three minutes." Grimaldi checked the transmitter. "Better confirm our arrival..."

Bolan sat next to Danny for the landing. There was nothing further for them to discuss. She had briefed him with every detail she knew about Khurabi, making him precisely aware of the difficulties and dangers he faced.

She had set things up in advance with Allied Oil, and it proved that her contacts with the giant oil corporation reached far higher than Bill Patterson. And, above all, she was a source of unfailing encouragement and approval. Bolan could not have asked for more. The ex-nurse, every bit as much of a veteran of Nam's blood-soaked craziness as Bolan or Grimaldi, wanted to rescue Kevin Baker for the boy's own sake far more than for some abstract threat to world peace. Sergeant Mercy understood that full well.

Jack Grimaldi, with a feather-light touch at the controls, brought that big bird in as if it were a two-seater. Danny shook her head in disbelief and sheer respect as they rolled down the runway of Khurabi International.

"It sure isn't LAX," she warned her traveling companion. "Looks like a few more buildings, but no more planes than when I was last here."

Grimaldi followed the tower's instructions and taxied onto the apron at the southeast end of the terminal complex.

It was like opening an oven door. The midday sun hammered the concrete, then bounced back up to roast anything that moved. An Allied Oil truck followed the self-propelled steps to the side of the plane. The driver waved frantically as Danny emerged.

"Miss Jones! Miss Jones!"

"Abdel!" She waved back.

She introduced "Professor" Bolan, while Jack lowered the cargo ramp. It seemed as if Danny had dropped her words in all the right ears; a small crew of swampers suddenly appeared and worked quickly under Grimaldi's gruff supervision.

A Jeep, carrying three customs and immigration officials, drove across from the terminal.

The Americans' paperwork was all in order. The men stood there, watching, hands resting lightly on their shiny holsters, as Grimaldi barked out instructions for unloading the gear.

Danny and Abdel were stowing some of the smaller packages in the back of the company truck. She glanced around once or twice, wondering why there had been no official welcoming committee.

Grimaldi himself drove Chandler's Sand Hog down onto the tarmac. Bolan was busy making small talk with the inquisitive customs inspector. "And what is in this crate here?" He tapped the box with a highly polished toe cap.

Bolan used a small crowbar to pry open the lid. "These are sensitive metal detectors. Archaeologists use them to find old coins, swords, cooking pots, that sort of thing. It save a lot of time digging."

The captain twirled the point of his well-waxed mustache. "And what is this... engine?"

"That's our generator," replied Bolan, quickly and convincingly. Damn, was this guy going to rummage through everything? Most of the equipment was carefully stowed in the long trailer Red Chandler had fashioned from a converted horse box.

"Open it," ordered the captain. "Please." He peeked inside two of the reinforced cardboard cartons. "And why so much, er, canvas... all this fabric?"

"Tents," Bolan lied. "Several of them. One for myself. One for Professor Jones. Another for a darkroom. It's all there on the manifest."

The officer was briefly distracted by the arrival of a fuel tanker. Jack Grimaldi went over to talk to the technicians. The second official had been inspecting the Sand Hog, and not without an envious gleam in his eye.

"What is this for?" he shouted. The man was pointing at the mounting bracket in the back of the Hog.

"Oh, that... that provides a secure base for my surveying and photographic equipment."

The man nodded thoughtfully. Danny was amazed to hear Bolan's rapid explanations. She had no idea they were bringing this much equipment just for a cover story of a brief dig. Bolan had got enough gear here to unearth Troy single-handed.

This whole charade was making Bolan tense. He knew they were being watched. At first there had been nothing to warn him except that uneasy prickling he had long ago learned not to ignore. The guy in the short-sleeved white shirt standing close to the tower's shaded windows was to be expected; any controller worth his salt would want to know more about a man who could fly like Grimaldi. It took Bolan longer to pick up on the second watcher.

One glinting flash from the binoculars marked the thin man in the leisure suit, who was lounging against a car parked beyond the chain link fence at the perimeter of the airfield.

The arrival of Delta-One-Niner must have been the most interesting thing to have happened in Khurabi all day.

The first customs officer was still fingering his mustache.

"What is in this crate? Open it, please."

Bolan moved a lot more slowly this time.

Inside that wooden box was the one item he could not coolly explain away — a machine gun looks just like a machine gun and nothing else.