Armed Response

Bolan gazed at him, wondering if Thompson was missing the point of the tragedy. People had died. People who had lives, dreams. It was more than just “a story.”

“If it’s a story you want, then I’ll give you one,” he said coldly, “but for now you have an unexpected guest who needs an alternative method of extraction. Return to your car. I’ll join you in a few minutes with my vehicle. I need to transfer a few things over.”

Thompson nodded and hobbled away, his artificial foot making scuff prints in the sand. Bolan watched him for a few moments before turning his attention to the distant, burning village on the far horizon. Shielding his eyes, he could just make out the two helicopters buzzing around, searching for survivors. The army troops would find the tracks of his UAZ once they got over the initial shock of finding so many bullet-riddled bodies. Time was of the essence.

He started to jog toward the dunes where the UAZ was hidden. The sun was searing.

It took him several minutes to reach the vehicle, start it and drive to where Thompson was waiting, the trunk of his white Peugeot car open. Bolan hopped out, opened the rear and prepared to transfer his equipment.

Thompson spoke up. “You do know that we have to pass through several checkpoints before we can enter the city, don’t you?”

Bolan closed his eyes, disappointed with himself. Of course he knew that. Lack of sleep had made him lax. He had been on the go for almost thirty-six hours. The catnap in the Hercules had done nothing to ease his weariness. He nodded. “We’ll have to bury the equipment and burn the vehicle. My fingerprints are all over it. Just in case.” He sighed, knowing that he had wasted precious time. He pulled an entrenching tool out of the UAZ and proceeded to dig a shallow hole at the side of the road. He chucked the ruined gear bag in along with the remains of his sniper rifle, several grenades and various other items for which he no longer had a use. He noticed that the sat phone was missing. He thought it had fallen into the back of the UAZ when Kurtzman had yelled at him, but now realized that it had been left behind in the village. Another mistake.

Kurtzman would be able to remotely erase any electronic footprints, but it was still careless to have left it behind. Too much was going wrong with this mission. He refilled the hole and scattered the remaining sand. “I’ll drive your vehicle over the hill and burn it,” Thompson said. “You really need to get yourself cleaned up. There’s a small compartment under the passenger seat. You can stash the hardware there. It’s also where your papers are hidden. They were rushed over to me during the night. You’re now a freelance journalist like me. Water is in the trunk. Once the UAZ is burning, we’ll have to move. Another smoke column will attract the choppers.”

Bolan opened the hidden compartment as Thompson drove away. Inside he found a passport along with forged Yemeni travel documents. The name inside the passport was Mike Blanski. He smiled. That was one name he thought had been put to rest long ago. The passport looked a little tatty, and Bolan wondered where it had come from, where it had been stashed. A picture of his younger self stared back. How many miles had he traveled since he’d last held this?

He removed and reloaded his weapons before placing them in the compartment. The blue notebook of Qutaiba’s joined the two guns. If anybody did a thorough search, then they would be quickly discovered. In the trunk he found a bowl to be used as a basin and a gallon of water in a large plastic bottle. A bar of soap had also been provided. A white shirt, a pair of jeans and a pair of casual training shoes, all cheap imitations of famous American makes, lay neatly inside.

Bolan stripped off his ripped bloodstained blacksuit and proceeded to wash himself all over. Within minutes he felt human again. He dressed, the clothes a perfect fit, then buried the blacksuit and his combat boots in the sand. Somewhere over the dune there was a muffled whump, the familiar sound of a gasoline explosion. A few moments later he saw Thompson working his way down to the car. Bolan poured the bowl of soapy water into the sand, slammed the trunk shut and waited.

Thompson grinned when he got close to Bolan.

“Wow, you sure look pretty enough to ask to the prom.”

“Flattery will get you nowhere. Let’s go before they see that.” A column of smoke was working its way into the air.

“Yeah.” Thompson got into the vehicle and turned the engine over. The old car belched black exhaust fumes, coughed, then caught. Thompson grinned again at Bolan, who was climbing into the passenger seat. “Well, she ain’t pretty, that’s for sure, but I keep the engine fine-tuned, and she won’t attract any undue attention. There are hundreds of them in Aden.” He put the automatic transmission into Drive and accelerated away.

“Why haven’t we seen any traffic on this road?” Bolan asked.

“It’s a road that goes nowhere. I have no idea why it was built. But we’ll be joining the main highway in a moment, and it’ll get a little busier.”

It did get busier on the main highway. As they traveled toward Aden, they encountered several troop trucks heading in the opposite direction.

“They’re probably going to see where you were playing.”

Bolan didn’t reply.

“There’s a camera on the backseat. Hang it around your neck. You’ll look the part of a journalist to them.”

Bolan leaned back and grabbed an old Nikon digital camera. “Does it work?”

“Sure does. I’ve even taken a few photos of the desert if they care to inspect it. They’ll stop us at the checkpoints and ask us what we’re up to. We’ll say something about following the troop trucks for a story, got turned back and now we’re on our way to the airport to cover that story. I have some money to slip into the passports, for administration purposes you understand. Say, are you going to tell me what happened back there? What happened to Qutaiba? It was Qutaiba, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“Damn, I knew it. Oh, this is going to be on the front page of the New York Times.” Thompson glanced at Bolan. “I can report this, can’t I?”

“As long as all credit goes to the brave Yemeni army who tracked and engaged Qutaiba in a gun battle, killing all of his terrorist team while sustaining no casualties themselves. Something like that.”

“Damn. And they won’t even give you a medal for what you did.”

“That’s the way it goes.” Bolan leaned back and closed his eyes. “I found a notebook of Qutaiba’s. I haven’t had time to look at it yet. We’ll need to decipher it when we get to your place. How much farther is it?”

“Depends. Without checkpoints and disasters, about an hour. But this one wasn’t here this morning, and it looks like they’re checking all cars.”

Bolan’s eyes snapped open as Thompson brought the car to a halt behind a truck full of bleating goats. There were at least another four cars in front. The barricade was no more than a couple of military-style jeeps parked on either side of the road and two wooden barriers, which could be raised and lowered. Half a dozen soldiers milled around.

The Executioner closed his eyes again. There was no point in looking nervous. It was just another day for a freelance journalist with a job to do. Just another checkpoint. Thompson didn’t seem nervous, either. The man had to pass through roadblocks every time he left the city. Three cars, then two, then one. It was the truck’s turn. The driver chatted with the soldiers a few minutes before being waved through.

Thompson drove the car to the makeshift barrier, smiling at the soldiers. They didn’t seem impressed, especially after spotting a white man in the passenger seat. Thompson was instructed to turn off his engine. A young soldier held his hand out for papers, never taking his eyes off Bolan or Thompson. The others stood back, hands on their AK-47s. The young soldier scanned the documents for a few seconds, discovered a small pile of US dollars hidden within and slid the money into his top pocket. He looked down at Thompson.

“Who this?” he asked in heavily accented English, indicating Bolan with his chin.

“Why, my new colleague!” Thompson said. “We came out looking for a story for our newspaper.”

“How you find story in desert?”

“Well—” Thompson lowered his voice conspiratorially “—I have a friend in the glorious Yemeni army, quite high up, a colonel, and he told me that you guys had a big gunfight out here somewhere in the desert. So my friend and I, well, we came looking. But then some soldiers turned us back, saying they would shoot us if we didn’t go away. So now we’re going to the airport to see what story is there.”

How much the soldier understood wasn’t clear, but he seemed to get the gist of it. He continued to stare suspiciously at Bolan and Thompson before finally waving them through. Whether it was the bribe that convinced the soldier, the mention of knowing a colonel or a combination of both, Bolan didn’t know. Thompson let out a breath, muttered something about good luck and drove away from the checkpoint at a cautious speed, apparently not wanting to raise further suspicion.

“The first of many,” he said.

Bolan closed his eyes again. The sun beat down. Thompson turned his inefficient car cooling system to full. Warm air blasted into Bolan’s face. He adjusted the vents so that they pointed toward his feet, then he dozed off.

They passed through another army checkpoint on the outskirts of the city. The situation was no different from the first: some money in one of the passports, answer a few questions about journalism, mention a nonexistent colonel and be waved through.

The city appeared in the distance. They passed the outlying buildings, billboards advertising cola, jeans, cars. Bolan asked for the cell phone, and Thompson passed it over. There was a strong signal. The soldier typed in a long number and waited for it to ring. The number was good for one call. Once used, the number would be reassigned by one of the phone companies, becoming a launderette or pizza parlor. The signal would pass through many cell phone providers and bounce off several satellites before being answered. The entire electronic journey took two seconds.

“Yes,” a disembodied voice answered.

“Six Alpha Green,” Bolan replied.

The phone clicked a few times, then Barbara Price came on the line.

“Striker?”

“Affirmative. The line is unsecure.”

“Understood.”

Bolan reached for the dashboard and turned the car’s roaring air system down in order to hear what was being said.

“Our friend was at the location, but had to depart quickly to meet his maker.”

“Understood.” There was slight relief in Price’s voice at the confirmation that Qutaiba was confirmed dead.