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  Bolan came across Hassim as they mopped up the last of the guards who were not in the tent. The two scientists were with him, and Hassim indicated them.

  “Got the boys, eh? Time for us to make for the border, I think.”

  “Not quite,” Bolan said. “We’ve still got a tent full of potential trouble, and I think there’s more on the way.”

  The chatter of SMG fire as the Marines hit the edge of the camp only served to emphasize his words.

  “Why don’t any of these fuckers ever give up?” Hassim sighed.

  Chapter 15

  Piotr stepped back from the flap of the tent as fire from the M4 carbine raked past him and across the inside of the tent. Pandemonium reigned as the assembled bidders panicked, and their bodyguards sought to protect them. Bodies blocked each other and tumbled into tangled limbs, chairs scattering and adding to the confusion as people sought to avoid being hit.

  Piotr swore loudly, and indicated to his men to stand back around the edges of the crowd and keep clear of the tangle. He realized that to shout and try to restore order would be pointless in the chaos and the noise of the firefight outside. Indicating with gestures, he sought to marshal his men toward the rear of the tent. They could not use the front, but from the sound of fire outside, he doubted that the enemy could spare the manpower to cover the rear. The tent was thick canvas and tarp, reinforced by steel poles, and would be difficult to cut through quickly and without drawing attention to the action. But it was their best bet, as there was little chance of sighting the man covering the front without sparking another burst into the interior and causing more panic.

  At this time, he didn’t give a crap about the so-called powerful men in the tent. His only concern was to get his own ass—and those of his men, if possible—out of this death trap and into a position where they could escape. He wondered if Vladimir was in the same position elsewhere, or if he had already succumbed to the Berserker instincts that Piotr had always feared would claim him.

  “Knife, blade, anything,” he yelled at his men, snapping his fingers. One of the men thrust a Tekna into his hand, and he started to methodically hack at the canvas, hoping he had time, and that no one would be waiting for him on the other side.

  Two of the bodyguards—an American and a Ukrainian—left their charges and broke away from the crowd and came toward him.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” the American said, a SIG Sauer P229 in his fist.

  Piotr sighed, stopped cutting and drew his own pistol. “Every man for himself, my friend,” he said, tapping a clean shot into the American’s face. The Ukrainian reacted, but too slow. As he leveled his own gun, two shots from Piotr took him out, the first was off target and tore a chunk from his throat, leaving the artery spurting. The second shot tapped him the forehead, making certain.

  Oddly, no one else seemed to notice the confrontation in the confusion, so the Russian returned to his task, directing his men to cover him.

  * * *

  “GAMAL, TAKE THESE two and keep them safe. We want to use the choppers. Take them to Haithem and then pick up Shadeeb. Screw those bastards in the tent, we need to haul our asses out of here now,” Hassim shouted at his young protégé, manhandling the two scientists and shoving them toward the young man.

  “Go with him, it’s safer,” Bolan ordered the two scientists as they hesitated. They were traumatized, sure, but if he was going to save their hides this was no time for niceties.

  As the young man hauled them out of the immediate line of fire, Bolan turned to Hassim. The Arab mercenary leader now had Sami and Husni with him, while four others were going up against the Marines. The other half of Hassim’s men were dead.

  With the guards who had opposed them now wiped out, the Marines advanced rapidly toward the four mercenaries as they took covering positions and started to open fire. They had little chance of making any real impact, but were determined to stop the advance long enough for Gamal to gather his comrade and the targets, and get them to where the one-eyed mercenary was ready to take flight. Hassim knew that Haithem could fly a chopper, and he had some knowledge himself. He had no doubt that Cooper could do this, too. They only needed one chopper for their group’s survivors.

  Question was, could they hold the Marines at bay long enough to get to a Huey?

  The Marine detachment outnumbered them by at least three to one, and the mercenaries were driven back by the waves of fire. Their initial bursts of suppression turned into desperate shots designed to try and hold the Americans at bay. It felt wrong to Bolan to be doing this, firing on his own countrymen, but in this moment they were his enemies, guided as they were by a rogue element, however unwittingly.

  Sami yelled in pain as he was hit in the thigh, his M4 firing wildly as he fell back.

  Their only option was to grab the wounded man and make a desperate fallback. Hassim went to gather his comrade while Husni and Bolan formed up to cover them.

  And then the strangest thing happened. The Marines ceased firing, and the only sounds were suddenly the intermittent bursts from Bolan and Husni. These stopped quickly when they realized that the Marines had not only ceased fire, but were now pulling back.

  Bolan had no idea why this was happening, but was in no mood to hang around and question his luck. He figured some guardian angel was looking out for him, not imagining that it took the shape of the big Fed, Hal Brognola.

  For the briefest moment, the four men stood still, frozen in surprise at what was happening. Bolan was the first to move, his reflexes and instincts not allowing him to stand still.

  “C’mon, let’s go,” he snapped, helping Hassim to shoulder the injured man. “Keep us covered,” he told Husni.

  They moved swiftly across camp to the area where the Hueys were waiting. Gamal, Haithem and Shadeeb had the area covered from one of the choppers and were visibly relieved when the four men appeared. Bolan could see the scientists within the Huey.

  “Help him,” Hassim ordered, handing Sami over to the oncoming Gamal, Husni having already taken weight from Bolan. The mercenary leader turned to the soldier.

  “What do we do about those bastards in the tent?”

  Bolan grinned mercilessly. “Just keep me covered. They’ll be on us in a moment, if I’m not wrong.” There were cries and shouts, and the odd gunshot emanating from the area of the auction tent. It was obvious that there was dissension inside, as they had also realized that they were no longer pinned down.

  While Hassim took cover and trained his SMG on the area directly in front of the choppers, Bolan set to work disabling the two remaining Hueys. It wasn’t subtle sabotage, but it would ensure that the helicopters were no longer in any condition to fly. He placed a Claymore mine in each, ensuring that whoever took the first step into the chopper would render it not airworthy while also putting themselves out of the game.

  It took him only a couple of minutes, though it seemed like hours as he carefully set the mines before running across to the remaining Huey where Gamal had taken over cover from Hassim, who was now beside Haithem, preparing for takeoff.

  “Go,” Bolan yelled as he came aboard, moving past the youth who remained in position at the open hatch of the chopper, ready to cover them as they ascended.

  “Not a moment too soon,” he added to himself as the Huey took to the air.

  * * *

  PIOTR WAS STILL hacking at the canvas when he heard the firefight outside suddenly die down. He stopped, puzzled. The faces of his men showed the same confusion. An air of hesitancy and tension lay like a fog over the others in the tent as they wondered if this meant they would be saved or slaughtered. A few seconds yielded neither result, and their hesitancy was broken as Piotr and his guard cleaved through them. Snapping orders, Piotr directed two of his men to lay down a covering fire through the flap while he looked around. It was a huge risk, but h
e was already convinced that there would be no one there.

  He didn’t understand what had just happened, but he was pretty sure that it had been some kind of withdrawal. In which case, then, surely anyone left would attack the last remaining enclave—the auction tent?

  That hadn’t happened. Had both enemy forces withdrawn? If so, it was his cue to get his men the hell out. This had gone from a discreet auction with a few blind eyes paid for, to a full-scale firefight in the oasis region. There was no way it would go unnoticed. Even if unwillingly, the National Transitional Council would be forced to send at least a token force to investigate and mop up.

  Piotr had no intention of hanging around waiting for those awkward questions.

  The Syrian delegate grabbed him as he passed. He had time to blurt out, “What about us? You can’t leave us—” before one of the guards bludgeoned him down, another firing into the face of the bodyguard who sought to protect his charge. Unrest bubbled in the tent as the delegates realized that they were to be left to their own fate. Similarly, their bodyguards began to think about carving a way out, realizing that the space was so tight that any kind of firefight would cause problems and endanger their own charges.

  Piotr was out of the tent, his men following swiftly with a rearguard action as the dissent grew, with random bursts of weapons fire testifying to the panic within.

  Piotr swore heavily as his team reached the edge of the camp, only to be pinned back by a burst of fire from the Huey that was rising into the sky. His men returned fire as the chopper spun in the sky, the Arab crew rusty and familiarizing themselves with the controls. Ironically, it made them harder to hit, and although the covering fire from the chopper was erratic because of this, it made it harder to access the two remaining choppers.

  Piotr zigzagged his way across the sand, hoping that the combination of cover from his men and the spinning trajectory of the Huey would make it less likely that he could be picked out, and that his luck would hold just long enough to reach one of the helicopters.

  Blowing hard, he ran through the hatch into the Huey, thanking God or whoever had landed him in this forsaken hole that he had flown choppers in his time. All he needed to do was get the damned thing going, then his men could load up and he could join those other bastards in the skies. Screw anyone else.

  He looked back briefly to see that his men were advancing, covering their rear and now relatively safe from fire from above as the first Huey had risen out of effective range.

  It was his fatal error. He did not see the Claymore and its detonator until his foot was almost on it. He screamed, more from frustration than fear, as he knew that his muscle reaction would be too slow to halt his foot from landing on the mine.

  So close.

  * * *

  “WHOA,” JARED EXCLAIMED as the concussion from below bucked the Huey, even at the height it had attained. They were high enough for him and Haithem to wrest back control easily as they looked down on the carnage.

  Below them, the blast from the first Huey had spread shrapnel and debris that had triggered the Claymore in the second chopper. Both were now smoking, flaming ruins, the shrapnel and blast damage also having laid waste to most of the remaining guard force that had been following Piotr to the first chopper. Driven back into the camp, the men in the airborne Huey could see the auction delegates and their bodyguards milling in the camp, those not injured or killed by the blast wandering in shock and wondering how the hell they were going to get away before the inevitable arrival of native forces.

  “They’ll have a lot of explaining to do.” Haithem chuckled.

  Bolan’s face wrinkled in a grimace. “Sad to say, but I doubt that they’ll actually have to do too much. Those that survive the NTC blundering in will have too much influence to do anything other than get away scot-free. But at least they didn’t get what they were after,” he added, looking back into the chopper at the two scientists.

  Hassim spat in disgust. “Six men for them. It doesn’t seem worth it.”

  “It’s the price, my friend. You took the pay.”

  “I know,” the Arab replied softly, leaving the rest unsaid.

  Chapter 16

  Bolan stood looking at the memorial. So many names. When his time came, he doubted that he would appear on such a monument. It didn’t matter, really—only in that he could look at it and ponder how many unknown and unrecorded there were for each fallen man who made the cut?

  “It’s a lot of men. Could have been a few more out there.” Brognola’s voice was soft at his shoulder. Bolan turned to face him, and the two men proceeded to walk as they conversed.

  “Thinking about it, I assume that you were responsible for pulling out that Marine detachment before we had to do them any real harm? Or they did us harm,” he added with a wry smile.

  “Always looking over you, Striker, you know that,” Brognola replied with humor. “Sure, it was me. But you can give Bear a lot of the credit. I pulled the trigger, but it was his probing that loaded the gun.”

  “Would I be right in thinking this had something to do with it?” Bolan pulled a two-day-old copy of the Herald from his pocket and indicated a paragraph concerning the sad death of a U.S. Senator in a road accident.

  “There are a lot of accidents on our roads, Striker. I guess people need driver’s ed more than you’d think. An unfortunate occurrence, and it creates a vacuum within a certain cabal. That, and the pressure brought on a colonel nearing retirement, may be in some manner connected.”

  “I see. Every action—”

  “—has an equal and opposite reaction. Precisely.”

  “Our mission,” Bolan said after a pause.

  “What of it?” Brognola asked blandly.

  “Was it worth it?”

  Brognola took a deep breath. “Depends what you mean. From this country’s point of view, the gentlemen you rescued will naturally be grateful to us. From their point of view, they’re getting good care. It’ll be a while before they recover from the psychological effects, but that will come.”

  “As long as Hassim didn’t lose six men for nothing,” Bolan mused.

  “It’s the price. He took the pay offered,” Brognola shrugged.

  “I know...” Bolan answered, hearing the echoes.

  Six months later

  GABRIEL AND HOENESS had spent the time since their kidnapping recovering in a clinic located in the Midwest. Their families had been flown to join them, and although they did not know it, the laboratories they had assembled in Switzerland were dismantled and shipped to a location out on the American West Coast, just south of the orange groves. Their treatment had been intensive but careful, and their shattered psyches pieced together again. Oddly, despite their initial reactions, it had been the older man who had responded better to treatment.

  Finally they were free to leave—as far as the parking lot. There they were greeted by men in dark suits who ferried them to the nearest airstrip, where an unmarked jet was waiting to take them to the coast.

  “Your families are waiting for you,” the smooth suit on the plane told them. “But first, we need to show you where you will be working.”

  When the plane landed, they were taken in a limo with smoked glass to a compound located outside a small town. It seemed to be a small military post dealing with catering supplies. This was an impression belied by the elevator taking them down several hundred yards.

  “General, it is time at last,” the smooth suit said as the elevator discharged them. Gabriel and Hoeness looked at each other nervously.

  “Gentlemen, you have nothing to fear,” the general greeted them. “Follow me.”

  At the end of a corridor, they came out onto the gallery running around a floorspace that was peopled by two dozen scientists, all working at benches and with small-scale lab equipment.

 
Uli looked bemused. “But they’re...”

  A heavy-set, blue-suited figure joined them. His voice would have been familiar to the man he called Striker.

  “Indeed, gentlemen. They are working on exactly the same thing as you. They have been for some time. This team has been assembled from all over the world. You may have believed you were working in isolation, but you were not. You may just be the final piece in the jigsaw that forms the picture of cold fusion.”

  The two scientists looked at him, puzzled.

  “Welcome to the team. You’re one of us, now, gentlemen, and you can trust us to look after you. After all, we pulled you out of the fire, right?”

  The two scientists took in what was happening below them and exchanged glances. The blue-suited man could read their expressions, and allowed himself a small smile.

  Job done, thought Hal Brognola.

  * * * * *

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  ISBN: 9781460304044

  Copyright © 2013 by Worldwide Library

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