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  Still hidden from the mercenaries by the bulk of the buildings, they dashed across thirty yards of wasteland and vanished among the fifteen-foot stalks and desiccated leaves of the neglected plantation.

  By the time the Cubans set up their mortar on the rock from where they could survey the whole area of the farm, Bolan and Ruth were a quarter of a mile away, following the farm track as it snaked toward the crest of the range.

  For a wild moment, when he first decided to make the pretense of running out of fuel, Bolan had toyed with the idea of drawing Hanson and his men into the farm while he outflanked them by some maneuver and stole the half-track. But the odds against them were too great: they were outnumbered, they were outgunned — and Hanson was too experienced a fighter to leave his transport unguarded.

  The moment he heard the cannon open fire, Bolan knew he had been right.

  Seven hours later they reached the east bank of the river that formed the frontier. It wasn't the easiest seven hours of the Executioner's life.

  Once night had fallen, there were perilous descents through the dark, along rocky trails strewed with loose stones where a false step could mean a sprained ankle, a broken leg or even a shot from South African police, who Bolan was certain, would be lying in wait for them someplace ahead. The trail constantly petered out in a wilderness of scrub. But to use the dirt road that had taken them to the farm would invite another confrontation with Hanson.

  As they dropped below the tree line, unexpected branches whipped their faces. Their legs were scratched by thornbushes they could not see. A late-rising remnant of moon cast shadows that resembled clumps of bushes, and the bushes themselves became confused with shadow.

  But once they saw the surface of the river glimmering through the leaves below them, such natural hazards took second place to man-made dangers.

  Apart from catnaps snatched in the passenger seat of the Volvo, neither of them had slept for two nights. And although there were glucose tablets and vitaminized chocolate bars among the weaponry in the bag Bolan still carried, it was more than thirty-six hours since they had had a proper meal.

  But Bolan knew that before dawn he had to find a stretch of the river where they could safely cross into Botswana.

  He knew it wasn't going to be easy. It meant deliberately searching for a frontier post, a bridge, a ford, anyplace an enemy could by lying in wait.

  Although the aim of the operation was to avoid such places, it was only near them that crossing the swift-flowing river would be possible.

  The chances of swimming over were zero. Swollen by rains in the interior, the waters swirled between high, heavily wooded banks, sometimes thirty, sometimes as much as fifty yards across.

  It was more than an hour before Bolan, moving cautiously between the trees in the dark, saw light reflected on the water around a bend in the river several hundred yards ahead.

  The bank was steep and wet. It was hard to move without tripping over gnarled roots or snapping the branches of unseen undergrowth, difficult to advance without making any noise. But finally, beneath an arcade of thick trunks he was able to see around the corner.

  He saw a steel-and-wire suspension bridge with twin pylons on either side of the river. Floodlights cast a harsh glare over the roadway, and on the huts clustered on the South African side. Two antiriot trucks were parked near the striped barrier pole and what looked like a whole company of special police were mingling with the border guards.

  This bridge would be the nearest to the deserted farm. And the chopper had flown away before the attack. Bolan guessed the NIS crew had reported to the murder hunt authorities as well as spotting for the Vanderlee-Hanson team. The mercs wouldn't be far away, either; it was the obvious area to search once they found their quarry had bolted.

  Half a mile downstream was another bridge — a ropewalk for pedestrians only, slung high above the river, which narrowed there and flowed faster than ever. There was a frontier post, too: a small tin-roofed hut staffed by two guards.

  Police were in evidence, as well, but the place must have been considered unlikely for an attempted crossing, because only a single jeep and four men had been sent.

  At a bend in the river two hundred yards farther on, Bolan found the place he was looking for. But to gain the far bank, he would have to return to the hut and steal something.

  The jeep was parked without a guard, but it was no use to the warrior. No trail followed the course of the river; all they could have done with the jeep was move back into the interior. A few yards from the vehicle, however, was a small compound behind barbed wire, and inside this lay the means of the fugitives' escape.

  A stack of lumber, including some large logs.

  From the edge of the clearing surrounding the small post Bolan surveyed his target area. The gate to the compound was between the hut and the riverbank; to reach it he would have to cross the bar of light streaming from the open door of the hut — and risk being seen by the six men talking inside.

  The wire was strung with tin cans that would jangle at the slightest touch.

  But it was less dangerous than the bar of light — and there were wire cutters in his bag.

  Bolan posted the woman on the far side of the clearing with her two mini-Uzis. "Don't fire unless they trap me," he told her. "And if there's any trouble, move up the slope — don't follow the riverbank — and work your way down later to meet me at the place we chose."

  In the darkness behind the hut he had no trouble worming his way to the wire, except for some painful twinges in his side. He turned and lay flat on his back, looking upward to locate the cans.

  The stars continued to glitter in the blackness above him.

  He moved a few feet to one side, trying to locate the cans. For an instant he was certain that one star disappeared, and then reappeared. He twisted his head this way and that, but the star stayed bright.

  There was a sudden puff of wind, a thin metallic clanking. One of the cans was almost directly above his head.

  Bolan brushed the sweat from his eyes with the back of his free hand. He groped carefully upward. His fingers touched a cold strand of wire; one of the barbs pricked his thumb. The tin can clanked again, louder this time.

  He froze… then reached warily up once more. The snap of the cutters biting through metal sounded like an explosion in his ears. The wire coiled back, setting several cans jangling.

  He could feel the moisture running between his shoulder blades and trickling down his sides. The next strand was slacker: there was no reaction from the cans when he cut it. Nor was there from the one after that.

  He rose to his knees and tackled one of the higher strands. The wire sprang away from the blades like a striking snake, setting up a rattle on either side.

  Bolan dropped to the ground and hid his face in his hands. The shadow of a soldier appeared in the spill of light spreading outward from the door of the hut, peering into the night. Another light squall stirred a can farther along the wire. "It's just the wind, Sergeant." The man's head turned. "There's a bit of a breeze blowing up."

  Bolan went on cutting the wire. When there were no strands left he rose to his feet and tiptoed into the compound.

  He selected three large logs from the woodpile and lashed them together with a long coil of rope he had seen in one corner the first time they passed.

  He hefted the logs onto his back and pulled one end of the rope down over his shoulder. He took a step toward the gap in the wire… and then something caught in his pant leg and he plunged to the ground.

  There was a trip wire he had missed on his way in.

  Tin cans jangled, clattered and bounced all around the compound. The noise was deafening.

  Voices inside the hut shouted. Tongues of flame spit into the night as the police specials fired a volley blind. By the steps leading to the bridge a searchlight glowed and then sizzled into dazzling brilliance. The beam, trained on the ropewalk, swung slowly around to sweep the clearing. The light in the hut was exting
uished.

  At once Ruth Elias opened fire with both SMGs.

  Over the shattering double clamor of the hellfire miniatures, glass splintered and fell. The searchlight faded and died. The South Africans returned fire from outside the hut; they were too smart to be caught in a confined space.

  For a moment there was silence from the far side of the glade. Then two more bursts from the Uzis — from among the trees, higher up the hillside.

  Following orders, Ruth was laying down the idea of a strategic retreat. Bolan knew the police would have been ordered not to leave the bridge unguarded. Since there were so few of them he reckoned they would call for reinforcements rather than attempt to follow attackers into the forest.

  He was right. After a few more sporadic volleys — returned by single shots from the woman, even higher up the hill — Bolan heard the tinkle of a hand-cranked field telephone from inside the darkened hut. And then an excited voice — the sergeant's.

  He picked up the load of wood and stole quietly in among the trees himself.

  A little later, alarmingly, he heard another exchange of shots — farther away from the river this time. Immediately before, he had been aware of the sound of a truck engine grinding along the forest trail that he guessed led to the rope bridge and the hut. He judged that the reinforcements called up by the sergeant in charge of the frontier detail had caught sight of Ruth.

  They had — a fleeting figure momentarily seen among the tree trunks, picked up by the headlight beams when she had inadvertently strayed too near the track.

  She once more shot out the lights and escaped before they could deploy into the woods and surround her. But it was another half hour before she joined Bolan at the place he had chosen for their crossing.

  She was exhausted, scratched and bleeding, her hair mussed and her clothes torn. She was also distressed.

  "I couldn't find the place," she gasped. "I kept hearing the river but I couldn't locate the bank. I'm so sorry, but…"

  "That's okay. We've got time."

  "You don't understand." She was almost in tears. "The… the bag… I don't have it. I lost it. I fell down a bank and it was torn out of my hands… I dared not go back to l-l-look for it. They were too near. I don't know what to say…"

  The bag had contained the remainder of their rations, the Ingram, grenades, spare ammunition, lightweight clothes and some burglary tools that Bolan sometimes used. It was a serious loss.

  "No sweat," he said lightly. "It could happen to anyone. The important thing is that you're here; you still have the Uzis and your radio, and I still have Big Thunder and my Beretta. But we should cross over quickly."

  "Bolan," she cried, "I think you're great! Some of the guys I work with, they'd have thrown me into the river. But you…" She stifled a sob.

  "Come on," he said awkwardly. "Let's go."

  They were by a double curve in the river, where the stream swirled west, then east, between steep slippery banks. The current was fast and deep, far too turbulent for a human being to stay afloat, an undulating surge of water with only an occasional eddy of foam at the surface to hint at the jagged rocks beneath.

  The quarter moon was brighter now, streaking the far bank with caverns of darkness, casting grotesque shadows behind the boulders at the river's edge.

  The Executioner's plan — ironically, one developed by South African scouts during the Boer War almost a hundred years before — was to drop into the water clinging to a log with the rope attached to it. He would then allow himself to be swept downstream, relying on the centrifugal force of the current to swing him outward against the far bank at the limit of the westward bend. He would then scramble ashore, pull up the rope and fix it so that Ruth could follow hand over hand.

  But first he had to check that the treacherous stream would do what he expected. This was what the other two logs were for. He tossed them in one after the other. Each time, as he had calculated, the river dashed the wood against the opposite bank at exactly the same place, a smooth arc of sandstone where the force of the water had swept away the topsoil and gouged out the bedrock below overhanging branches.

  Behind them in the forest, Bolan and Ruth could hear the shouts of security men beating the undergrowth in search of them. From time to time faint gleams of light appeared between the closely packed trunks.

  Bolan hated like hell to be the quarry, forced to duck and run; it was his nature to play the hunter, fearless and enterprising. He was still fearless, yeah, but the enterprise would have to wait until he got out of the country.

  He knotted one end of the rope high up around the trunk of a tree, held in place by a projecting branch, and then lashed the other around the log. "I think it's long enough," he said. "There's a lot of rope here — probably a replacement for that bridge rail — and the river's not more than twenty-five yards wide here."

  "And if it's not long enough?" Ruth asked.

  Bolan grinned at her in the gloom. "Then I'll be back!"

  He picked up the last log and jumped with it into the raging stream.

  The swirling of the river was suddenly very loud in Ruth's ears. All at once she felt very much alone. She saw Bolan for an instant, a darker blur against the turbulent surface of the water, and then he had submerged, to reappear amid the foam farther downstream. But after that she lost him in the patches of light and shadow heaving where the river swung into the curves.

  She strained her eyes, striving to pierce the dark, staring at the white froth by the shoulder of rock that diverted the river from its course. It seemed a long time before she felt the rope rise from the water and pull tight. Shortly afterward it was tugged sharply three times.

  That was the signal. Bolan was safely across. He had worked his way back upstream until he was opposite Ruth and had secured the other end of the rope.

  All she had to do now was swing herself over to join him.

  Ruth slung the radio around her neck. She shortened the webbing straps on each of the miniature SMGs so that they rose as high up on her shoulders as possible. The rope stretched away into the dark at the level of her eyes.

  She gripped it with both hands, lowered herself gingerly down the bank and then stepped off over the racing stream.

  The rope stretched over the river eight or ten feet above the surface. But as she began slowly working her way across, her weight dragged it down so that her feet, her calves and finally her knees were in the water.

  Panting with exertion, her brow furrowed with effort and her lower lip clenched between her teeth, she inched along at the full stretch of her arms as the current swirling around her thighs tried to snatch her away and sweep her downstream.

  Slowly the woman's dangling form writhed to combat the remorseless pull of the current. Sinews now crying out with fatigue, Ruth fought on hand over hand. The last few yards were the worst, for the flow was at its strongest there, hurling itself against the bank as it swept toward the curve.

  She was within feet of dry land when she lost her grip with one hand. For an instant she hung perilously, her slender body carried away at an angle of forty-five degrees, and then with a despairing cry she let go and plunged into the torrent.

  The Executioner moved with lightning speed. He leaped into the furious stream and grabbed one of her arms just as she went under. Then, as they were about to be swept away by the force of the water he reached up and grabbed a branch that overhung the scooped-out rock bank.

  For timeless seconds he hung there, muscles straining with effort. Slowly, against the relentless downstream pressure, he drew the woman toward him until she could reach out and lace her arms around his neck. Then he lifted his arm and wrapped his free hand around the branch.

  He went on fighting the river, edging shoreward along the branch until at last he could haul the two of them out of the water and onto the bank.

  "Welcome to Botswana," he gasped as they collapsed exhausted on the damp ground.

  Much later, striking diagonally through the woods, Bolan a
nd Ruth hit the trail leading inland from the rope bridge. It was little more than a forest path, curling slowly uphill through the densely packed trees. But just before dawn the trunks thinned out and they emerged on the fringe of a vast savanna, sloping gently up to a distant range of hills.

  There had been some cloud obscuring the stars during the latter part of the night, but the breeze had freshened and blown it away. Now the bar of orange silhouetting the treetops of the forest they had left widened to reveal a clear sky. Westward, a segment of moon rode palely in the dark. It was going to be another hot day.

  Bolan decided to call a halt. "Once the sun's up," he said, "we find a sheltered place, we dry our clothes, we try to dry out the weapons. After that we must find a village, get food — and if possible transport. We're free, we're safe, but there's work to do. Any chance of raising your… friends… on that radio?"

  Ruth shook her head. "Apart from water damage, the range wouldn't be enough to raise anyone. And there aren't too many Mossad agents in Botswana!"

  He nodded. "Okay. We're on our own. There's still money stashed in my waterproof belt. This trail probably hits the highway from that suspension bridge not too far away. Once we make that, it shouldn't be too hard to find a village, then a town, finally an airport."

  They found the highway — a dirt road wide enough for only one vehicle — a mile away. Pressing on after they had dried their clothes and their weapons, they came to an intersection. But they could turn neither right nor left. And to continue along that road would be crazy.

  Fortunately the warrior was a few paces in the lead.

  Glancing to one side as he drew level with the opening — the road ran below banks traversing a sugar plantation — he froze and motioned Ruth to halt.

  Two hundred yards away, where the side road turned back toward the river, a truck was parked beneath a giant acacia.

  A military truck, a Humber FV-1612 half-track with a 40 mm cannon installed in the turret and the South African army identification letters and unit insignia painted out.