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Doyle was on his feet. He started from the office, but paused with his hand on the doorknob.

"You didn't say anything about Rideout."

Kennedy's eyes narrowed. "You haven't figured it out yet?"

"I guess I have," said Doyle. "I'll set that up too, then."

Kennedy nodded.

"Use Bruner and Teckert. Tell them to watch their asses. I got that damn feeling."

"I wonder if we're right. About Rideout, I mean."

"Either way we'll find out soon enough."

"You want it, you got it," said Doyle. He snapped off a curt salute and left the office, closing the door behind him.

Leaving Kennedy alone to his thoughts.

The boss merc turned to stare out the window. It was too dark to see anything out there except his own reflection in the glass. But it would give Doyle a few minutes in case the guy came back with any last-minute questions. It would do no good for Doyle to return and find Kennedy gone, with no one having seen him emerge from the office out front. That would not do at all.

I've got to be real careful now, thought Kennedy. This damn thing has been like walking on eggs. But these final minutes are crucial...

The world looked at Kennedy and saw unlined, youthful features that he knew were attractive to most of the women he came in contact with. His eyes sparkled. His smile could dazzle.

In other words, the horrors that he had perpetrated, and the hellzones — Vietnam, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Rhodesia, Chad, Libya — where he had spent his career soldiering amid the harsh realities of a world he never made, could not be imagined from his outward appearance.

Kennedy was willing to concede that a few people over the years might have guessed at the true limits of behavior that he was capable of, but not many.

Even some of the men in his outfit here in Bishabia would be shocked to know about the locked and boarded schoolhouse full of rebel kids near Gatooma that Kennedy had burned to the ground some years ago. The job had been on orders, sure, but some of the mercs here tonight would damn sure have blanched at a thing like that and refused — because they never had Kennedy's ambition and drive — to do anything that would establish him as the toughest, baddest, best merc in the business. It was too bad about those kids in Gatooma. It was too bad about a lot of things. But no, it was not a world that Kennedy had made, to his way of thinking. It was a world that he was trying to get ahead in. To accomplish that, you needed ambition and drive and the knowledge that winning was everything.

It worked for Kennedy. It got him qualified enough to honcho a mission like this for no less a vip than Mr. Leonard Jericho himself.

Kennedy smiled at the reflection in the dark glass.

Yes, it worked and here you are. You're sitting on a cargo worth enough to get you into a life of comfort forever.

Enough time had passed.

Kennedy stalked across the office and locked the door from the inside. Then he went directly toward what appeared to be a bare niche in one wall.

He was thinking that there was one man, a newcomer, here tonight who might understand the truth about what kind of a man Kennedy really was. If such was indeed the case, then that man might have ideas of his own. The thought did not sit well with the boss merc.

Kennedy stepped up to the niche in the wall, then stooped down and used his right-hand thumb to press on a part of the floorboard where wall met floor.

The wall section slid sideways to reveal a steep narrow flight of stairs.

Movie stuff, smiled Kennedy.

The wall slid noiselessly back into place behind him. Kennedy briskly continued down the stairs.

He was thinking about the big, quiet man with the steely blue eyes.

Kennedy knew that a direct confrontation between himself and Michael Rideout could only end in death. They were equals with regards to capabilities. The big man had a look of deadly competence, the quiet look of a true hellgrounder.

Kennedy had convinced himself that "Rideout" was not the guy's real name. And that a confrontation with the big guy was somehow inevitable. It was coming soon.

Tonight.

Along with everything else.

8

Mack Bolan, on combat duty in Vietnam, led his Penetration Able Team on many successful classified missions behind enemy lines. Bolan was a penetration specialist, a penetration master.

That was how he appreciated immediately, by taking position in the background from where a soft surveillance could be maintained, the interesting information that security at the Jericho villa in Bishabia was very tight.

The Executioner felt a respect for Kennedy in the manner in which Jericho's top merc had deployed his manpower to guard this villa. Subliminal quivers in the psyche called Bolan to quick-pass a number of emplacements that were planned to bite inward as well as out. This was the whole nine yards here. It tickled something in his combat instinct, he felt the tremor of the game now.

The death look they wore indicated that the soldiers in this base were lethal even if they were also non-notable, the wolf pack fit to devour at any moment, savages in every respect.

After he outfitted himself in the armory in desert camouflage fatigues, and armed himself with a Galil, some grenades and a holstered Browning hi-power, Bolan made his way across the villa's courtyard, past the Hueys and up the tall ladder to the parapet, toward the villa's southeast corner. Mike Rideout was obediently following Kennedy's orders.

Bolan eyed Kennedy's heavily armed troops as he did so. In addition to a few AK-47s, Galils and Largos, he also noted several new Beretta Model 70 assault rifles that Bolan knew to be capable of spitting out 5.56mm death-dealers at a blistering 700 rpm.

Some of the mercs wore munitions belts heavy with grenades. Two men seen by Bolan wore .357's on their hips Western-style, the way Bolan now wore his Browning hi-power.

The only other small arms he could see were several SIG 9mm Parabellum P210 autos. Some of the mercs carried these in underarm shoulder holsters.

"Rideout" had drawn duty with a U.S. merc named Teckert, who sat perched behind a belt-fed Cartouche light machine gun, tripod-rigged atop the wall's ledge. A sheet held up by four posts protected each of these gun posts from the sun.

Teckert was a man of few words.

So was Bolan.

They got along fine.

Nothing moved beyond the villa walls. Utter stillness reigned.

At one point a Swede merc named Hohlstrom came along the parapet. Teckert introduced Hohlstrom to Bolan. Hohlstrom barely nodded. His eyes were dark marbles. His expressionless face was hard beneath a high intellectual brow and a pate of thinning hair.

Hohlstrom said nothing to Bolan.

Hohlstrom and Doyle exchanged grunted monosyllables, then Hohlstrom lumbered on. This was a world where a man kept his counsel unless he knew well the man to whom he was speaking.

A few minutes later another merc approached along the parapet. Apparently, Kennedy had roving sentries in addition to those at set stations, like Teckert and Rideout.

This merc was a German national named Bruner. Teckert and Bruner knew each other; there was a brief, low-keyed exchange between the two mercs as Bolan eavesdropped.

"So what do you think of this scene, Teckert? Easy money so far?"

"So far."

"Reminds me of the time we took Brother Khaddafi's wages at Aozou in Chad. Remember?"

Teckert spat over the wall.

"I remember. I hate these frigging desert jobs."

"But do you remember the women of Aozou?" prodded Bruner with a guttural laugh.

Teckert grunted. "Yeah, I remember. Too bad we had to torch that village."