Bolan heard raised voices as he approached the stairs to the main room. He paused and listened.
Kennedy was shouting.
"You can't do this, goddammit! We had a deal, you black bastards!"
"Watch your tongue, Mr. Kennedy." A heavily accented African voice; silky but with cold steel in it. "I do not know what is happening outside. But I suggest we leave here at once."
"You're damn right we'll leave here," snarled Kennedy. "And I'm taking my money with me." Then, over his shoulder, he called out: "Hymie — get in here fast!"
Bolan figured Kennedy was calling to the merc who had been guarding Fahima and Bushir. Bolan was about to respond when a door across the hallway burst open and two more African soldiers leveled AK-47s at the Executioner.
Bolan fell to one knee, pumped off two fast rounds from the Galil but not fast enough to stop one of the soldiers firing his own fast round.
But accurate enough to nail both black troopers with head hits that sent them toppling back into the room in a deadfalling tangle.
Bolan mounted the steps two at a time. He entered the inn's main room, Galil searching for targets.
There were four men in the dining room. A bodyguard, in the same uniform as the men outside; two chunky blacks who looked uncomfortable in their Italian suits. And Kennedy.
The gunfire from the corridor had interrupted their confrontation. All four men spun their attention to the doorway Bolan had burst through.
The bodyguard was already pulling up his rifle.
Bolan took the bodyguard first.
The Galil bucked death as Bolan squeezed the trigger. The bodyguard was tagged out with a rupturing throat hit that tossed him tumbling back to the floor, taking a table and two chairs with him on the way down.
Someone blew out the candle on the table where the principals of the meeting had been sitting. The room was pitched into darkness. There was a scuffling of movement. Mad and fast.
Bolan sidestepped away from where he had stood, went into a deep crouch. He heard a door opening on the other side of the large room.
He fired two rounds at where he determined the sound was. He heard a groan of pain, desperate in the dark.
Bolan dodged again. A handgun opened up from the far corner of the room. He heard the hiss of a bullet slice past him.
Bolan fired to the right of the pistol shot. He darted sideways himself a microsecond after triggering the round. He was not rewarded with the sound of a hit. Bolan's opponent knew how to handle a fire-fight in the dark, too. Bolan's target was constantly moving. On the offensive.
Two heartbeats. The open doorway was now visible, a deep gray. And empty. Another pistol shot slammed through the darkness. Another tongue of dirty flame across the room.
Bolan heard the darkness as if it were breathing, and divined through a mix of gambling and the intense will of the air itself that his opponent would choose to dodge to the right again. That is where he fired.
He knew he was on the money when a wet rattle bubbled from a body with a sound that no man can fake. The sound of death.
The noisy collapse was succeeded by a hushed stillness in the dining room.
Bolan could hear sounds of assault from outside. Doors were thrown open, running men were entering the inn.
Within seconds the lead invaders were silhouetted in the grayness of the open doorway. Bolan blew away three of them instantly, with three shots and unerring accuracy. His was an inexhaustible command of judgment. The remaining soldiers scampered out of sight for cover, back the way they had come. There were sounds of retreat in the darkness.
Bolan utilized the fleeing seconds before more soldiers came. He moved to where the body of the handgun-wielder had fallen. He looked closely in the gloom.
He was looking into the dead face of one of Kennedy's Italian-togged black customers.
The other buyer was also dead, visibly crumpled near the door. So the first cry in the dark had been that one's last.
And Kennedy was gone.
Bolan moved through the doorway. He was into starlight.
There was troop movement from several areas in and around the small village. The activity centered in the street fronting the inn. Bolan swiftly trotted around to the back of the ancient stone building, then cut off diagonally in a line toward the dunes. His senses were attuned to perceptions of the enemy, and informed him that the deployment numbered ten or twelve men at most, although they were widely scattered and dangerously answerable to no one.
Kennedy could not backtrack through the tunnel to the villa. Bolan recalled meeting those black troopers as he was first helping Fahima and her father to escape. The soldiers had looked like they were on their way to where the girl and her father were hidden. The Africans therefore knew of the room with two doors and Kennedy's "secret" tunnel. Something had gone down here at the inn. Kennedy would know that they knew, because it had just happened.
Kennedy's actions in his office earlier, when Bolan had been watching him, told Bolan that Kennedy was alone on this except for the merc Hymie, no doubt promised a slice of the action. Not even Doyle, Kennedy's second-in-command, knew about what Kennedy had been up to.
Kennedy's probable course of action would be to cut across the open terrain and get back inside the villa, utilizing his knowledge of security of the Jericho property.
Bolan had to make Kennedy talk.
Kennedy knew where Evita Aguilar was.
But Bolan had to find him first.
11
Kennedy jogged through the night, listening to the sounds of his own labored breathing.
The village of Bishabia, and gunfire, receded to lower ground behind him. He was moving in a zigzag course toward the walls of Leonard Jericho's villa a quarter mile away. He planned a slip back in via his office window. He would bluff his way out of this, whatever happened.
Kennedy's main concern was Mike Rideout. Or whatever the guy's real name was. Kennedy had little doubt that "Rideout" would be hot on his trail, and closing fast, at this very moment.
Kennedy paused when the ground suddenly angled downward. The village lights and activity dipped out of sight behind him.
The merc swung around and crouched, listening. He was sure he could hear very light footfalls gaining on him, rapidly approaching from the direction of the village.
Kennedy estimated his pursuer to be about one hundred yards away. Time enough to set a trap.
He unhitched the compact transceiver from his belt. The radio was Kennedy's contact to Doyle and the other mercs in the villa. Kennedy knew Doyle would be going berserk trying to raise him on the radio the minute they heard the uproar from the village and couldn't find Kennedy. There would be plenty of squawking over the transceiver right now.
Kennedy ran to a nearby ridge in the rock-and-sand terrain. He placed the transceiver in a shallow surface gully. He flicked a tiny switch, activating the unit. It started crackling.
Kennedy ran back to his previous position. He bellied out prone. He swung the Largo-Star machine gun around by its leather strap into firing posture. Less than fifteen seconds had elapsed since he first paused and listened for the sounds of Rideout's approach.
He would be waiting when the desert starlight silhouetted Rideout's approaching form.
"Boss! What the hell's going on? Do you read me? Are you in the village?" The sounds from the transceiver crackled clearly in the night. "Come in, goddammit!"
Enough time had passed, thought Kennedy. Where the hell is he?
"Right behind you." A cool voice answered his thoughts. "Drop your gun. Turn over slowly."
Kennedy swung around onto his back, the Largo-Star blazing.