Volatile Agent. Don Pendleton

away. As long as the international press didn’t get wind of the situation, then money could make everything right in Burkina Faso. The third world nation wasn’t so backward that bribes were useless.

      “Get inside and sit down,” du Toit suddenly said to the girl, speaking French.

      He had to organize his men, secure medical evacuation for the wounded and eventually a cargo plane back to South Africa for the dead. He needed to uncrate and arm the men he had left before securing motorized transportation. He needed to get into town and pull money out of the transfer account he’d set up. He had to start bribing people, starting with Le Crème.

      He looked up into the sky, turning his face into the deluge. He could see the face of the man who had ambushed him very clearly, each stark line and even the graveyard gaze of the man’s cold blue eyes. He felt a grudging admiration. That feeling changed nothing. If he saw the man again, he’d kill him.

       9

      “That went well,” Grimaldi said.

      “About as well as could be expected.”

      Grimaldi pointed toward a laptop in a mesh pouch under the dash as Bolan slid into the copilot seat. Bolan picked it up and opened the screen. “What’s this,” he asked.

      “Sitrep,” Grimaldi answered. “Bear and Barb put it together based on a report from the NRO.”

      The National Reconnaissance Office was the division of the Department of Defense that designed, built and operated the reconnaissance satellites of the United States government. It also coordinated collection and analysis of information from airplane and satellite reconnaissance by the military services and the Central Intelligence Agency. It was funded through the National Reconnaissance Program, which was only one section of the National Foreign Intelligence Program.

      Bolan began to click through the jpeg images, reading the synopses accompanying each photo. He was amazed by the detail and resolution of the satellite imagery, despite the heavy cloud cover from the tropical rains.

      “How old are these?”

      “I got ’em sent to me en route, that’s up to the minute as of an hour ago. What do the troop movements look like?”

      “Like Saragossa’s screwed,” Bolan said.

      “Which means you’re screwed.”

      “The MPCI is all over the township. They control it. There’s a half-moon formation of Ivory Coast national army around the southern perimeter and a column of Burkina military bearing down from the north with field artillery and a handful of armored vehicles.”

      “Too hot?” Grimaldi asked. “The CIA can put a missile from a Predator drone through her front door if it comes down to it.”

      “In this weather?” Bolan asked.

      Grimaldi simply nodded. Their own plane was being buffeted mercilessly as the Stony Man pilot tried to climb above the storm. Rain lashed the windshield, obscuring vision and, at the same time, maverick air currents snapped the transport plane’s pitch with casual power.

      “That’s my point, Sarge. You want to jump in this? The meteorologist predicted a window in the rains for right now. There ain’t no damn window.”

      “Weathermen.” Bolan shrugged.

      “It’s your call, Sarge, just like always.”

      “The storm is strong, but low. We climb up above the storm and I jump from high and sail into the storm once I’m almost directly over target. I should only be exposed to the weather for three to five hundred feet.”

      “The wind is pretty calm down lower,” Grimaldi allowed. “The clouds are simply sitting over the area, pissing a storm. These air currents are much higher.”

      “See? Easy as pie,” Bolan said.

      Bolan began applying camouflage greasepaint and Jack Grimaldi barked a laugh that echoed like a gunshot in the cockpit.

      T AKING HIS HEAVY BACKPACK in both hands, Bolan heaved it up and muscled it before him. He shuffled forward, climbing up off his knees and making it to his feet. The black of the nighttime sky appeared out the open rectangular door of the Cessna.

      Bolan hobbled ungracefully down the aisle and closer to the door. Suddenly the plane hit an air pocket and lurched. He hit the floor of the plane hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs, and he gasped. Then the Cessna twisted hard as it rolled through the turbulence. The motion lifted Bolan, backpack and all, about four inches off the deck. For one surreal moment Bolan simply levitated.

      Then the Cessna rotated again and threw Bolan out into the night sky four miles above the ground.

      The ice-cold slipstream punched into Bolan like a freight train. He spun off and away from the airplane. Like a turtle caught on the beach Bolan struggled to flip himself onto his stomach. He looked at his altimeter and saw it reading nineteen thousand feet.

      Bolan reached for the ripcord on his parachute. He pulled the cord and felt the parachute separate. He was jerked sharply to a stop and then bounced. He saw the dark silhouette of Grimaldi’s plane disappear above and behind him.