The Libya Connection by Don Pendleton Page A

it, could sense it, the death in the air. Something had gone wrong. The orders were for tight formation in forward flight, not garbled messages over the radio and a precipitate drop to the ground under fire.
    He glanced at the four other mercs under his command. They stood beside him in the open side door of their gunship.
    "You men fall out here and flank out toward our nose," he ordered. He looked at the armed navigator, unable even to remember the guy's name. "You come with me. We'll flank out toward the left. Keep your heads down. All right, let's go. Kill anything that moves."
    The five men went EVA and started moving in the darkness toward the other helicopter.
    He noticed for the first time that a ridge ran north-south to their right flank. It was possible that...
    The night spat chattering gunfire from atop the ridge.
    Two mercs emitted short grunts as they were spun around by the impact of the bullets, flurries of twisted arms and legs sprawling to the desert floor.
    "Mother of God!" gasped the pilot in a scramble back toward cover.
    The machine gun on the ridge stuttered again.
    He and the navigator were already making a hurried dash back to the chopper when the pilot heard bullets snuff out the life behind him; he heard the sound of the dead man toppling to the sand.
    As fast as he was pumping his legs, as close as his Huey gunship was, time stood still for the merc during that short dash for safety. His heart was hammering. He had the disjointed realization that his forehead wore a glaze of sweat despite the chilled night air.
    There was no more gunfire.
    Now what the hell?
    He sensed movement from his right, from around the tail of the Huey gunship.
    From his left, the other remaining merc shouted something unintelligible. More gunfire from that side.
    But the pilot only had eyes on the big figure, gripping a Galil in his hands, who stepped into the red-splashed illumination of the copter's landing lights.
    The big dude was moving toward him. The rosy glow of the Huey's lights were reflected, even from this distance, by the man's eyes that looked like chips of ice.
    He brought up his AK-47 on the imposing combat figure striding toward him, knowing, even as his life survival instincts flared into crystal clarity, that he was too late.
    The sharp report of the Galil was the last sound he ever heard.
    Bolan heard the exchange of fire between Hohlstrom and the remaining merc, toward the front of the gun-ship.
    Then the gunfire stopped. The Sahara night was utterly silent except for the ghostly whooshing of the gunship's rotor blades rotating in idle.
    There was no sign of Hohlstrom.
    Bolan moved across the field of dead men, jogging cautiously up to the rocky ridge where Hohlstrom had been inflicting his hits.
    Bolan felt a sick premonition that was affirmed the moment he topped the ridge.
    The "Swede" was prone in a cleft in the rocks, which had given him a clear view of the ground surrounding the second gunship.
    The Mossad agent was not moving.
    Bolan bit off a curse as he approached the motionless form. He knelt beside his partner in this firefight and turned the man onto his side.
    Hohlstrom had stopped at least one bullet before taking out the remaining merc down below. The agent's throat was a pulpy raw mess. This fighter would fight no more. He and the merc may have died at the same time; certainly within seconds of each other.
    Bolan stood. He paused there in the cool night, above the body of his fallen ally. Mack Bolan listened. He watched.
    Nothing moved.
    He shared this desolation with the dead.
    But his mind was also on the second gunship, which was operational. It was a slim chance, but he might still be able to trace Doyle to the south, in the mother ship with that mysterious cargo that all of the mercenaries here had died to protect.
    Bolan slipped a silent salute to a good man who had sacrificed his life for a good cause. Then the Executioner turned from Hohlstrom's fallen form and started back down