Aden, to the thick column of black smoke, which was now spreading across the sky.
* * *
MACK BOLAN HAD already seen the pillar of smoke. He turned to Thompson for an explanation.
“It’s the airport. A passenger flight from Turkey crashed about an hour ago. From what I heard on the radio, it appears that there was a Mayday, a fire on board, and an emergency landing was attempted. Other than that…” He shrugged. “The city will be bogged down in traffic. The airport is more or less right in the middle of Aden. It will be closed for a quite a while. I’m missing one hell of a story.”
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.”
