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  If he was feeling generous, the emperor would invite his intimates to these sessions and take bets on which victim stayed alive the longest.

  Last-to-survive wagers were also made on two more favorite techniques of "execution." In one, two men were roped tightly together face-to-face and placed in a bath containing just enough water to submerge one of them. Ononu found the resulting struggles diverting, especially if the victims were friends.

  The second system involved a rope passed over a beam. There was a noose at either end of the rope, and each noose was fastened around the neck of a handcuffed man. The length of the rope was then modified so that when one man could just touch the floor with his toes, the other would be suspended and choking. Provided the two men were of equal weight, the seesaw battle for life could be prolonged for quite a while.

  Finally there was a clever technique of torture that Ononu had learned from the descendants of the Thugs in India. A naked man or woman was held upright and a razor incision made from navel to pubis. It was surprising how little this would bleed.

  A sharp, well-directed blow with the heel of the hand on the victim's diaphragm would then cause an involuntary abdominal spasm that convulsed the intestines so that they burst outward and spilled through the opening.

  The high point was the victim's reaction: to see if he gave himself up for dead, or tried to wrench open the slit in his own belly and stuff his guts back in.

  There were still enough prisoners in the palace dungeons, most of them survivors of the recent coup, to satisfy Ononu's desire to enjoy all of these arcane pleasures. For the moment, however, the red-haired Bozuffi girl topped the list.

  Ononu left his luxurious private suite and went to check with his second in command. The emperor wore a pale cotton suit with a high-buttoning neck in the style preferred by Chairman Mao, with five gold stars on each shoulder strap. The contrast when he stripped would show off his virile animal body to perfection.

  General Shagari was waiting in the Long Room — an ornate salon furnished with gilded console tables and antique chairs imported from Paris. There was a seventeenth-century spinet with an ivory-colored case in one corner, but the effect was rather spoiled by the wooden figures displayed in floridly decorated niches along the room's western wall.

  These, many of them crudely phallic, represented the juju gods of war and fertility as imagined by a succession of indifferent Oriwady tribal artists whose cultural tradition went back no more than fifty years.

  The general was wearing a silver-gray uniform with large gold epaulets and seven rows of medal ribbons. A Browning automatic with mother-of-pearl butt plates nestled in a white suede holster clipped to his belt. He was a squat man, shorter and wider than Ononu, with similar eyes and tribal marks on his cheeks.

  Ononu rubbed his hands together. "Is everything ready?" he asked.

  Shagari bowed. "As you ordered it, Majesty."

  "The table, the lights, the film crew briefed on close-ups? The four men holding the girl instructed to keep out of the way of the camera?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Good. And the audience?"

  "Seventeen off-duty men and three officers from the palace guard, the deputy duty officer, the palace comptroller and his wife, the three dancers from Freetown and, of course, all the servants."

  "Excellent. The bitch has been fed?"

  Shagari nodded. It was an idiosyncrasy of the emperor that captives in the palace should invariably be well fed and in good shape.

  Ononu disagreed with the Oriental concept that emphasized the inferiority of prisoners by reducing them to the state of animals. Surely it was much more satisfying to reduce a smart, healthy man in a well-pressed uniform to a blubbering wreck than it was to terrorize some filthy, unshaven wretch who would cringe if a dog barked?

  It was a clearer lesson, too, in the matter of one's own supremacy, the domination of a worthier adversary.

  The same thing was true of the women.

  In the emperor's mind he was all-powerful. Anya Ononu considered himself the inspiration of warriors, forger of dynasties, destroyer of the unworthy — even the scented darlings of the Western world lay prone before his masculinity!

  If any of the spectators ordered to attend these ritual violations had reservations because the scented darlings were being held down by four men, they were careful not to voice them.

  "Have her prepared," Ononu ordered.

  The general bowed again and left the room.

  In the reception hall floodlights glared. A murmur of anticipation ran through the assembled spectators as the camera crew moved in on the marble table. Suzanne Bozuffi was led in through a side entrance. She wore a knee-length dress in flowered silk, gun-metal tights and white high-heeled shoes. Her long red hair was brushed and glossy.

  The young woman was handcuffed and the steel bracelets were attached to a chain held by the Oriwady corporal in charge of the three other jailers. Her head was held high and she was doing her best to look disdainful, though from time to time her body shook with an uncontrollable shudder.

  The corporal unlocked the cuffs and two of the jailers grabbed Suzanne's arms. She made no resistance when the NCO and the fourth man unzippered the dress, unhooked and removed her brassiere and stripped the tights down to her ankles.

  She stood naked before them, her body discolored with bruises, her back still crisscrossed with the marks of a whipping. General Shagari clicked his fingers and the four men lifted the girl, placed her face upward on the big table, stretched her arms above her head and spread her legs. Tears trickled from beneath her closed eyelids but she made no sound.

  Ononu strutted into the hall.

  From behind the spectators a young man in the uniform of a major ran up to the marble table.

  "Majesty!" he said, panting. "A message… Forgive me, but a most important message…"

  The emperor turned and scowled. "You dare to interrupt?" he shouted. "You know perfectly well this is forbidden. The duty officer is capable…"

  "But, sir…" the young officer's eyes were staring"…there has been an attack on the prison! Colonel Azzid and his men have escaped!"

  "What! What infamy is this?" Ononu's face was suffused with rage. "You dare to bring me news…" Backhanded, he slashed the major across the face with such force that the young man crashed to the floor and slid six feet along the polished boards.

  "Majesty, it is true," the officer babbled. "I swear it. We have received a telex from the governor. A detachment of traitors from the base at Oulad with foreign support… They are heading east for the border, but so far they have gotten away…"

  "Those Yanga dogs!" Ononu stormed. His rage was terrible to see. "Must I continually be surrounded by imbeciles? Is there nobody fit to trust with the simplest task? I can see I shall have to handle this myself. Shagari — warn the garrison at Halakaz. I want these men brought back alive. All of them. Heads will fall if any escape."

  He glared around at the silent crowd. "The rest of you — wait here until I give you permission to leave. I shall attend to this white trash as soon as I have been to the radio room and issued my orders." With a glance at the trembling girl on the table, he strode from the hall.

  Chapter Twelve

  Sitting at a bamboo table near the window of his room on the top floor of the Hotel Imperial in Kondani, Jason Mettner stared at his miniature tape recorder. The newspaperman rubbed his eyes, trying to collect his thoughts before speaking into the machine.

  Mettner was tired, but excited. He had been two nights without sleep following a lead that brought him to this backwater town in the armpit of Africa.

  This guy McTavish had returned Mettner's call with news of a jailbreak apparently organized by Mack Bolan. Mettner himself had arrived exhausted after an off-the-cuff decision to follow through the kidnapping of the four industrialists' daughters. He hesitated, staring out the window. Between the broad leaves of a banana tree he could see the muddy yellow waters of the Doulas estuary. On the
far side of the river, self-propelled cranes transferred ore from a line of railroad hopper cars to the hold of a freighter — one of several berthed alongside the Port-Doulas dock-side quays.

  What the hell. The research for the terrorist piece for the Sunday supplement could wait. Right now it was better to stay close to the news, whatever his editor, Allard Fielding said. Mettner picked up the miniature voice recorder and pressed the button.

  "Al," he said, "this is your wandering ace correspondent. Forget the terrorist feature. Okay, okay — I know it's the second week running. But it looks like all hell could break loose here and I figure it's better that I stay where the action is rather than waste cigarettes composing a scholarly thesis in a hotel room. If there's a military takeover here, I shall be the only Westerner able to give you a firsthand account. You could even have a scoop, guy!"

  The newspaperman stubbed out his cigarette and lit another.

  "Where is here?" he continued. "Kondani, Montenegria, no less. Third most important town in the 715th country in black Africa to achieve independence. Treasury full, courtesy of Moscow and Tripoli; one anti-American vote in the U.N. General Assembly up for rent.

  "Al, let me fill you in. Four tycoons' daughters snatched, each presently in the hands of the big shot. Each the apple of Daddy's eye. Each father connected with the local mining concession. Add the fact — for which I owe this guy McTavish — that the emperor considers he was done in by said daddies, now wants to grab a larger slice of the royalties, and what do you come up with? The hottest blackmail story this year.

  "But this, baby, is not all. The ever-present Mr. Bolan is present. This time he contacts buddies of the ruler's jailed enemies, rubs his magic lamp and presto, the enemies are out of jail!

  "I was too late for the party. By the time I got there, there was nothing left but smoke. No comment, of course. A minor accident with an explosive charge while hollowing out the rock for the prisoners' new swimming pool. But I heard the gunfire and I saw the holes in the wall.

  "They're said to be heading for the border. Not for my money: ducking out from under ain't the Bolan way. Me, I'm heading for the boss's safehouse in the interior. Don't be surprised to find a cabled Flash on your desk. You could even dust off those old headlines about the Red Monarch Ousted by Military Junta. But remember, this time the soldier boys are the good guys."

  Mettner killed his second cigarette, stretched, yawned and favored the darkening sky with a crooked smile. "Watch this space!" he told the recorder.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Mack Bolan climbed down from the sky. The sky was now gray, darkening in the southwest, with low clouds tumbling inland from the ocean. The steamy heat of the early afternoon had been dissipated by the wind; soon, as the dusk thickened, there was going to be a fierce tropical rainstorm.

  Bolan's rope ladder hung from the open hatchway of the Hind. The bulbous chopper, with its swept-back stub wings and the twin air intakes above the bullet-proof-Plexiglas canopy, was hovering over the southern wing of Anya Ononu's summer palace.

  Halfway along the steep roof an octagonal tower was built out from the facade. The tower was open-sided and housed a wide spiral staircase bordered on the outside with stone balustrades.

  Surmounting the tower was a smaller octagonal structure and it was on the flat roof of this that Bolan and his companions intended to land.

  The continually curving staircase would give them maximum protection from any shooting within the palace. At the same time they could exit from any of the five floors where the battle was fiercest.

  Before he stepped off the ladder and signaled Azzid and the soldiers to follow him, the Executioner had to make sure that the opening stage of the assault was going as planned.

  There was no way of telling whether the ruse suggesting that the escaped prisoners were trying to make it to the Ivory Coast had fooled the bloodthirsty dictator. Even if it had, he would be jumpy as hell, knowing his opponents were free; he would certainly be protected by a nucleus of his own toughest fellow tribesmen.

  And those guys were certainly going to be trigger-happy, even if they hadn't heard the chopper was involved in the jailbreak, even if nobody wondered why it was hovering over the islet, even if Bolan and his ladder hadn't been observed.

  But they had been observed.

  Beyond the slated roofs, Bolan saw a sentry outside the gate house at the landward end of the bridge, legs astride, head tilting back, finger pointing skyward.

  The man turned his head to shout a warning to the guards inside the gate house.

  At that moment a single shot cracked out from behind a line of bushes on the far side of the lakeshore road. The sentry dropped. He lay on his face with his arms outflung.

  Bolan wondered if the guard had had time to get his message across. The sentries — maybe the people inside the palace — would know there was a chopper overhead. But was anyone else wise to the fact that someone was about to land on the roof?

  Whether or not Ogano's marksman had dropped the sentry in time swiftly became an academic question.

  Small-arms fire erupted all along the leafy margin of the road. Lying in a trench behind the bushes, the attackers hosed lead from Kalashnikov AK-74 automatic rifles at the two guardhouses.

  Three soldiers had run out to check what had happened to the sentry. Two of them fell; the third dodged back inside the doorway. Then a withering stream of return fire from perhaps a dozen Uzi submachine guns opened up through slits in the walls of both buildings.

  Bolan stepped off the rope ladder onto the flat roof of the octagonal structure above the tower, signaling to the others to follow him with a sweep of his arm. Azzid and the two soldiers slid down to join him. The helicopter, with its three-man crew and the wounded officer aboard, soared up and flew away toward the wood.

  It was to land there, out of sight of the palace, and await a radio call from Azzid, who would need transport to the base camp once the assault was over.

  In the huge rectangular entrance courtyard, out of sight over the rooftops, Bolan could hear shouting and the stamp of feet. Gunfire continued from the two gate houses and along the far side of the lakeshore road.

  One of the attackers, dashing between two bushes, was slow off the mark; sandwiched in a lethal stream from both ends of the bridge, he crashed through low branches onto the road, rolled over twice and then lay still. Tentacles of blood spread out from beneath his body, reaching for the grassy margin.

  Bolan was waiting. From his shoulder he unhitched a compact and deadly Ingram MAC-11 SMG fitted with a suppressor, checked that the AutoMag and his silenced Beretta were smoothly leathered and turned to Azzid and the soldiers. "Any moment now," he gritted. "But I think we should make the top of the stairway first."

  The colonel nodded. One by one they dropped, light-footed, from the roof of the octagon to the flat parapet on top of the tower. One of the eight openings gave access to the stone stairway.

  The Executioner hesitated again. Then he heard the sound he was waiting for. The sporadic gunfire from below, which could bring the assault force nothing while the defenders were protected in their stone shelters, was punctuated by a heavier, thudding report.

  A streak of flame pierced the bushes.

  Towing a fiery tail, one of the two rocket grenades Bolan had reserved leaped for the lakeshore gate house. The HEAT warhead thundered into the wall just below the roof and exploded with a shattering roar. Blocks of masonry were sent spinning high into the air and one side of the building collapsed, sending tiles showering to the ground in a cloud of plaster dust.

  The launcher tube spewed flame again, and the last of the RPG-7 bombs scored on the inner gate house. The explosion smashed a hole in the wall and sent gunners reeling out through the smoke. Ogano's men shot them down.

  "Okay, this is it!" Bolan yelled. Thumbing the fast-fire Ingram onto full auto he pounded down the stairs. Azzid and the two soldiers, each carrying an AK-74, followed close behind.

  At the f
irst turning of the spiral, Bolan looked out above the slanting stone balustrade… and checked his stride.

  The clatter of rotors had increased in volume, all but drowning the gunfire below.

  Through the open side of the tower, Bolan saw that the attackers were, as planned, taking advantage of the chaos caused by the grenade explosions to emerge from behind the bushes and rush the bridge. Firing from the hip as they came, Ogano's men fanned out to saturate the first gate house.

  But above them, sideslipping down from the angry sky, whirled one of Ononu's AH-1G helicopters with Hellfire missiles nestling in launch tubes above its skids.

  Colonel Azzid uttered a shocked exclamation. Bolan's mouth opened but he said nothing; there was nothing they could do. The unarmed Hind, an ungainly sitting duck, had not yet sunk from sight behind the trees.

  From beneath the smaller helicopter's cabin, a missile detached itself in a deceptively leisurely fashion, trailing fire. Then, accelerating in successive stages until it was no more than a brush stroke of flame against the dark canvas of the landscape, it homed on the Hind's hot jets, burst into an orange fireball and blew off the helicopter's five-bladed rotor.

  Blazing, the Hind dropped like a stone. An instant later black smoke marbled with crimson boiled up from behind the trees.

  Clearly they had underestimated Ononu's intelligence organization. As soon as the Hind appeared, the dictator had known it to be connected with the escape and had called up his air support.

  The AH-1G banked, angling its remaining Rockwell Hellfire projectile at the troops attacking the bridge. But two of the MICV crews had dismantled the 40 mm cannons from their turrets before they left the vehicles in the forest. Set up now behind the bushes, the two guns opened up at a range of less than five hundred feet as the chopper drifted nearer.