A brick gatehouse was situated just inside the wall. A guard, armed with a Galil ARM assault rifle, gave a sharp salute as the jeep rolled past.

Lansdale's intel had been correct. Jericho's security force was paramilitary all the way.

The wrought-iron gates closed automatically behind the jeep. Doyle and "Rideout" drove a short distance into a spacious courtyard at the villa's core.

The core of Lenny Jericho's Something Big.

Three single-engine jet-turbine Bell UHi-D "Huey" helicopters, buff-colored desert models without markings, rested on the pebbled turf of the courtyard. All three choppers were heavily armed, boasting 40mm cannons and 5.56mm miniguns mounted externally on turrets.

Three alert mercs stood guard around one of the aircraft. Other "soldiers" lounged here and there at points around the courtyard, looking hot, oppressed, drenched in sweat.

Bolan made the scene even before the jeep had rolled to a stop. The heavily guarded copter would be carrying whatever cargo it was that Jericho's forces had lifted from the States. The other two Huey gun-ships would guard the cargo when word came down to rendezvous at a trade-off point with Jericho and Colonel Shahkhia.

The jeep stopped at the front of a flight of marble steps. The opulent-looking 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 be careful. And cautious.

This was a treacherous game he played. Especially now.

Shahkhia fully understood that success, at this point, rested solely on his maintaining a confident facade to all involved in the unfolding drama.

The rider spurred his mount into a sideways canter along the face of the sloping dune.

Shahkhia wondered why the Russian had contacted him for a meeting. This was not a time that Colonal Shahkhia wished to be seen making contact with anyone who might cast the slightest hint of suspicion on him, most notably the Russians. Most notably on this day of days.

Nothing would stop Colonel Shahkhia from keeping his rendezvous this evening with Leonard Jericho.

Nothing!

Shahkhia realized once again exactly how dangerous was this game he played with Pornov, the KGB agent from Moscow.

Be very cautious, the rider reminded himself again as Pornov's tent grew closer. Do not make the same mistakes in dealing with these people who are about to bring down Moammar.

Brother Colonel Khaddafi was one year older than Ahmad Shahkhia's own thirty-seven years. They were of the same tribe, and it seemed to Shahkhia that he had always been forced, by circumstance, to live in Moammar's shadow.

Shahkhia had been aware of this from their very earliest days together. And he had always resented it. And always waited for the day when he, Ahmad Shahkhia, could step from the Khadaffi shadow and claim the ruling power of Libya as his own. It was his destiny, he would tell himself. His fate. He deserved no less. And now... yes, now the time had come. Shahkhia's visions of a lifetime were about to become reality.

Ahmad Shahkhia knew that he would not make the same mistakes as Khaddafi.

While in Moammar's shadow, Ahmad had observed and studied very closely, and he felt that he had learned his lessons well.

He had even been with Khaddafi when the two men attended Britain's Sandhurst military college together, the only time in his life when Ahmad had ever been away from his beloved desert. The young men had walked about London in their traditional Bedouin robes, causing all manner of sensation at a time when such an act was considered an Arab defiance of the West. And, indeed, it was exactly that!

Ahmad Shahkhia and Moammar Khaddafi had been lowly captains together in the Libyan army when Khaddafi commanded his efficient bloodless military coup against Libya's Western-backed monarch, King Idris, while the eighty-year-old monarch was out of the country in 1969.