Soon, for the first time since the ambush had begun, there was no enemy gunfire to contend with.
Up in the Black Hawk, Grimaldi made two more quick passes as Bolan surveyed the mountainside, spotting three bodies but no sign of movement.
“I think that’s it,” he told Grimaldi. “Let’s get the major back to the base.”
“Let me just check in with Cowboy,” Grimaldi said. He was trying to reach Kissinger on his headset when he detected movement amid the rubble high up the mountainside. “I think we got a stray up at around two o’clock,” he told Bolan.
“Swing by and see if we can take him alive,” Bolan said.
Grimaldi changed course and drifted the Black Hawk closer to the mountain. Bolan spotted the figure in the debris and raised his rifle. Once he got a better look at his target, however, he slowly lowered the weapon and shook his head with disbelief.
“I don’t believe it,” he murmured.
“What?”
“It’s a woman,” Bolan said, grabbing for the binoculars. “A tourist, from the looks of it.”
“She must have wandered over from that textile place when the fireworks started going off,” Grimaldi speculated.
“Or maybe not,” Bolan said once he got a look at the woman through the binoculars. “She might not be a tourist after all.”
“What makes you say that?”
“I thought it was a camera she was carrying, but it’s not,” Bolan replied. “It’s a gun.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Grimaldi was setting the Black Hawk on the road as Bolan finished fastening the seals on his gas mask and leaped down to the tarmac. Kissinger was leading Latek and the other surviving KOPASSUS commandos to the chopper. Two more soldiers had been wounded in the last few exchanges of gunfire. One was well enough to walk but the other was unconscious and had to be carried. They were upwind from the Bio-Tain truck. The cloud leaking from its cargo bay had dissipated, but the ground forces still wore their masks. Latek and another commando stood back from the others, assault rifles trained on the woman slowly making her way down the mountain. She’d tucked her gun back in the web holster strapped under her left arm.
“She keeps yelling that she’s an American,” Kissinger told Bolan.
“We’ll see,” Bolan said.
Grimaldi left the chopper idling and came over to help hoist the unconscious soldier into the cabin.
“He got caught up in that last billow of gas from the truck,” Kissinger explained. “I’m guessing the seals on his mask didn’t hold up.”
“I’ll get him back to the base so they can look him over,” Grimaldi stated.
Bolan looked past Kissinger at the battleground. “I think we should keep a couple men down here and make a sweep back to the compound.”
“I was going to suggest the same thing,” Kissinger said. “So far we’ve counted nineteen bushwhackers. None of them are in any shape to talk.”
“I was afraid of that,” Bolan said. From where he was standing he could see a few bodies scattered along the road and amid the piled debris from the landslide.
Further uphill, the woman continued to make her way down the steep slope. She’d lost her footing several times and was covered with dust, but she wasn’t wearing any HAZMAT gear and Bolan could see that she was in her early forties, lean and athletic, with dark, medium-length hair. She wore dark khaki cargo pants and a matching T-shirt under her holstered pistol. Staring down at the commandos covering her every move, she shouted angrily, “Point those popguns someplace else, would you? You’re making me nervous!”
Bolan frowned. “I know that voice from somewhere,” he said.
“You think so?” Kissinger replied.
When the soldiers ignored her command, the woman shouted again, “I keep telling you, I’m on your side! Doesn’t anybody here understand English?”
“I’ll be damned,” Bolan muttered, finally recognizing the voice.
He turned back to the chopper and called out to Sergeant Latek, “Go ahead and lower your rifles.”
Latek glanced at Bolan, then back at the woman. Slowly, he lowered his rifle while advising the other commando to do the same.
“Finally,” the woman called out cynically. “Thank you so much.”
Kissinger turned to Bolan. “So, who is she?”
“Take a good look,” Bolan told him. “It’s that bounty hunter we crossed paths with in Africa when we were going up against Khaddafi and the Interahamwe.”
“Are you kidding me?” Kissinger said. “Jayne Bahn?”
“That’s the one.”
“Great,” Kissinger muttered, “just what we need. It figures she’d show up. I mean, what’s the reward on Jahf-Al up to now? Twenty million?”
“Thirty, I think.”
“Hell, and here us poor chumps are tracking him down for free.” Kissinger shook his head. “What’s wrong with…Holy shit!”
Up on the hillside, a bloodied jihad warrior had suddenly materialized out of the debris and was charging Jayne Bahn, brandishing a long-bladed knife.
Bolan spotted the man, too, and started to call out a warning, but Bahn was already in motion, lurching to one side as the blade swept past, missing her by inches. Loose debris shifted under her feet, throwing her off balance. As she fell, she managed to grab hold of her attacker’s wrist. Together, they tumbled down the slope, fighting over the knife.
Bahn finally managed to knock the weapon from the man’s hand and, once they reached the level ground of the roadway, she fended off a right cross from her would-be assailant and countered with a fierce pair of karate blows. Both connected, one knocking the wind from the man’s lungs, the other striking him behind the ear with enough force to knock him unconscious.
Staggering to her feet, Bahn drew her pistol and trained it on the man’s face. When she heard Bolan and Kissinger jogging toward her, she turned to them. At first she didn’t recognize them, but once they were close enough for her to see past their masks, she smiled faintly.
“You guys,” she said. “Small world, eh?”
Kissinger yanked off his mask and stared hard at the woman. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Crashing the party,” she wisecracked. Nudging the fallen terrorist, she added, “I brought you a little something, but I didn’t have time to wrap it.”
CHAPTER NINE
“No wonder I put him out of commission so fast,” Jayne Bahn said, crouching over the Lashkar Jihad warrior she’d felled. The man, it turned out, had been shot twice prior to being caught up in the landslide, which had broken his right leg in at least two places. “I can’t believe he was able to get up and take a swipe at me with that knife of his.”
“Adrenaline,” Kissinger surmised.
“I say we put the squeeze on him till he coughs up Jahf-Al,” Bahn said.
“He’s in no shape to talk right now,” Bolan said, inspecting the man’s wounds. “With the blood he’s lost, even if he comes to, he’s going to be in shock.”
“Well,