The Libya Connection Read Online Free PDF Page A

steps led up to the entrance of the villa itself.
    A man stood waiting, hands on hips, halfway up the wide steps. He was dressed in lightweight fatigues. He had watched the jeep approach. When the vehicle halted, the guy came down the rest of the way with an almost arrogant stride.
    This would be Kennedy. Blond-haired, boyish good looks did not fool Bolan. The guy's eyes told the story: the eyes of a killer.
    Kennedy carried a 9mm Browning hi-power in a cross-draw position at his left hip. Like those mercs Bolan could see who were not toting Galils, Kennedy also carried a Largo-Star submachine gun strapped over his shoulder.
    Bolan knew the Largo as a Spanish copy of the German MP-40, or "Schmeisser." The weapon, referred to by Konzaki back at Stony Man Farm as the Z-45, is fully automatic with a cyclic rate of fire of 550 rounds per minute and a muzzle velocity of some 1,500 fps. Hot stuff.
    Kennedy looked at Doyle as Bolan climbed from the jeep.
    "Was he wired?"
    "Now, he was clean," reported the driver. "No tails. He's all yours."
    "Check out the north wall with Bruner," Kennedy told the driver. "We'll be getting word to pull out any minute now."
    Doyle nodded, wheeled the jeep out of sight.
    A sweating Kennedy eyeballed Bolan. Bolan eye-balled the honcho right back. Even the long-term pain in his left shoulder from his last overseas mission would not deflect Bolan from meeting iron with iron, which was the way of his new terrorist wars.
    "Where the hell you been, Rideout? We could been pulled out by now."
    "Then I guess I'd have made ten grand the easy way," grunted Bolan in response. "The airlines tied me up. Got here fast as I could."
    "I don't like this crap, not knowing who's supposed to be working for me," spat the head cock. "You could be any-damn-body. How do I know you're Mike Rideout?"
    "You don't," said Bolan. "So you call it."
    Kennedy paused several heartbeats to decide. Few men who ever stood eye to eye with Mack Bolan carried more than a confused and invariably false impression of what the anti-terrorist avenger actually looked like. But there was one detail that never escaped the living memory of a Bolan encounter. And that was the coldly purposeful eyes of the combatman. The Bolan gaze was actually composed of many diverse qualities and could switch from cold death to warm compassion in a flick — or could contain both at one moment. This was not one of those moments. Now it was all cold death. Bolan had the guy psyched and when Kennedy's decision came, Bolan knew that "Mike Rideout" was in.
    "Get yourself to the armory in the garage over there," growled the merc. "Arm yourself and suit up. Then go to the southeast corner of this place. You'll find a guy named Teckert. Tell him I sent you as backup."
    "Sounds like you're expecting something."
    "Always expecting, pal. Always ready. We'll be pulling out of here within the hour. Be ready to move."

6
    The rider wore crude shepherd's clothing as a disguise. The gray charger beneath him soared at full gallop across the tumbling landscape of desert wasteland.
    Colonel Ahmad Shahkhia pulled rein at the crest of a dune. Below, a stretch of the Benghazi-Jarabub highway arrowed from north to south.
    A three-sided tent was pitched against the scorching Sahara sun, some twenty yards off the highway.
    One man sat in a camp chair, waiting alone in the tent's shade.
    Pornov.
    Of course, thought Shahkhia.
    The Russian
would
be here early for their meeting. He always was.
    Colonel Shahkhia clearly discerned, through the shimmering mirage of afternoon heat, a small bodyguard force, deployed around a cluster of desert vehicles parked another ten yards up the highway from the tent.
    The sentries were all heavily armed. Shahkhia spotted rifles, machine guns, a grenade launcher.
    The man in shepherd's clothing felt a certain satisfaction at this.
    The amount of protection for the general was an indication of their respect for Shahkhia.
    And what he was capable of.
    Yet, he must