"It's a deal. I'll have Grimaldi fly in tomorrow."
Forty-eight hectic hour's after leaving for Florida, Bolan was back at his base.
Danny Jones flew in from Westfield to join him.
"Any problems getting away?" he asked her.
"No. This is my semester off. I'm supposed to be doing writing and research. What could be more natural than my going back to the Haufari dig for a short visit?"
"Did you call the Minister of Culture?"
"Salim Zakir was in a meeting with the sheikh. But I left a message with his office."
Danny poured them both strong coffee. The table was littered with notepads, equipment checklists, maps the Executioner's order of battle. Despite the speed with which this operation was being mounted, Danny appreciated just how thoroughly Bolan prepared for action.
She could not deny a surge of excitement at briefing him on Khurabi and discussing the best approaches to Hagadan, but at the same time it was mixed with trepidation for Danny knew their safety, perhaps even their lives, depended on getting it right. They had only one shot at pulling it off. No consolation prizes.
"Look, you might think this is a dumb question, but why not hand over the whole matter to Sheikh Zayoud? I'm sure he'd take action when he knows the score."
"That was the first option I considered. There are a couple of problems, though. First, how much would it take to persuade Zayoud that his own brother is plotting against him? And, once convinced, he might unleash everything against Hassan with Kevin still being held hostage in the cross fire. Secondly, if Hassan Zayoud got word of what was happening, it might precipitate him into staging a coup right now. Either way, things could turn into a bloodbath."
"This way at least you preserve some element of surprise."
"Yes. When Kevin is safe, we can then explain things to Harun Zayoud." A buzzer called Bolan's attention to the computer. It was the Bear. "What's new?"
"They're still keeping a lid on the Florida kills. From what I can monitor they still haven't figured out the connection."
"If and when they do, the whole affair will have to plod its way through the regular diplomatic channels." Bolan watched the images on the video screen.
There was no mistaking the high-altitude view of the desert fortress; the layout of Hagadan was already imprinted on Bolan's memory. The match was perfect. Succeeding photos brought the brooding structure into close-up, the foreshortened shadows indicating that the surveillance had taken place in the early afternoon. The definition was good enough to count a number of vehicles parked in the courtyards.
"Three Jeeps plus a couple of army trucks," commented Kurtzman. "And that looked like a Land Rover on the approach road. Quite a lot of activity."
"Yeah. And that could be a generator truck parked against the wall." Bolan could make out the tiny figures of sentries posted on the ramparts, but the photos were too grainy to permit positive identification of nationality or uniform.
Danny had moved across to stand behind Bolan, her hand resting lightly on his shoulder. He felt the sudden tension in her fingers as the final picture in the series flashed on the screen.
A white stallion was being paraded around the outer yard. A small group was watching the magnificent horse. The four guys standing back in a semicircle might have been the bodyguards for the man seated at the center; sitting cross-legged beside him was a slighter figure. "Kevin?" Bolan wondered aloud.
"That's the way I read it," said Kurtzman.
"Zayoud has several sons..." Danny added cautiously.
"What would they be wearing?"
"A thaub." She was referring to the long white robe favored by the true Arabs.
"And a head cloth? What do they call them a ghutra?" asked Bolan. "Looks like that young man is wearing jeans and a sport shirt or something just as casual."
It was the end of Kurtzman's transmission. The Bear waited on the line, knowing that Bolan was silently making a final assessment.
After a few moments the man in black said simply, "We're going in."
"Right," Danny backed him up.
"Two last things I need from you," Bolan told the Bear. "All the material you've compiled, especially the satellite shots... I want them on one tape. And I want you to call Steve Hohenadel and tell him that everything's on as we arranged." Bolan had already held a long-distance conference with Hohenadel and his partner, Chris Sorbara, in East Africa. They were the ace bush pilots who had flown Bolan and Phoenix Force on their mission to Blood River. The Executioner knew he could trust them.
"What about Grimaldi?" asked Kurtzman.
"I'll call him myself."
It was the next thing Bolan did and Jack Grimaldi was waiting.
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.