Renegade Agent by Don Pendleton Page B

mob.
    But neither Bolan nor Toby had attempted to rekindle the physical closeness they had shared in Detroit. Yeah, they had been lovers, and always would be lovers, in the largest sense of the word. And maybe someday, in the best of all possible worlds toward which both of them had pledged their fighting that world, maybe, they could be lovers in a personal sense as well.
    But the future would see to itself. Mack Bolan was concerned only with the Now.
    Now Toby Ranger was in the maw of the carnivore, and those rapacious jaws were about to clamp shut.
    That she remained alive and entire was the merest hope. But it was hope he would not relinquish.
    He would get to her in time. He would redeem the life now forfeit to terrorist whim.
    And then he would unleash his own reign of terror, would leave the kingdom of the traitor Frank Edwards a scorched wasteland.

10
    From what Mack Bolan could see, treason had been extremely profitable for Frank Edwards.
    The luxurious villa was located west of downtown Tripoli, in the garden suburb of Giorgimpopoli. Though ninety-nine percent of the country of Libya was desert, Giorgimpopoli was temperate and Mediterranean. The curving street was lined with graceful date palms; a hedge of cool green foliage fronted the estate; beyond it, a wide expanse of irrigated lawn stretched to the house itself, a two-story European-style home that bespoke wealth and quiet elegance.
    There was a little guardhouse near the break in the hedge that admitted the long arching driveway, but there was no gate. As near as Bolan could tell, the middle-aged uniformed man who occupied it was unarmed. He was there for courtesy, not security; it was likely he did not even know what his boss did to support this expensive life-style.
    Framed in the lens of the Litton Night Scope, the guard yawned. Likely he was nearing the tail end of his graveyard shift. Dawn was maybe an hour away.
    Bolan slumped lower in the seat of the Jaguar sedan, parked across from the villa. He had been there for perhaps twenty minutes; in that time the guard's yawn was the most activity he'd seen.
    This was no hardsite, that was certain. It was what it appeared to be, the expansive home of a wealthy man, secure in his station in life and his personal safety from unwanted intruders. Inside, Frank Edwards would have bodyguards, would have a garage full of cars; those were elementary precautions for a man in his dirty business. But in Libya, there was hardly any need for Edwards to surround himself with a private army. No other country in the world had so closely identified itself with the terrorist cause. No other country had thrown open its arms as widely to embrace the violent hordes.
    In 1969, Colonel Muammar al-Khaddafi had led a military coup. He remained to this day head of the Revolutionary Command Council, prime minister, minister of defense, and commander in chief. His support of terrorism was documented fact. Khaddafi had provided money, training, and arms to virtually every terrorist group in the world, including Nicaragua's Sandinistas, the IRA Provisional Army, armed revolutionary groups in Egypt and the Sudan, and Muslim rebels in the Philippines. With proven oil reserves of 28 billion barrels, and complete control over how to spend the profits from this vast ocean of petroleum, Khaddafi was in a unique position.
    He had been using that position from the past ten years-to subsidize death.
    The late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, himself the victim of fanatics guns, once called Khaddafi "a vicious criminal, 100 percent sick and possessed of a demon." This president of Sudan, Gaafer Mohammed Numeiry, noted that Khaddafi had "a split personality-both evil." Other observers felt the two African Jeaders descriptions were admirably restrained.
    So it was little wonder that Frank Edwards felt secure under Khaddafi's wing. Libya, Bolan knew full well, would be the perfect place for Edwards to base his "black" CIA. His experience, contacts, and