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!"