Final Coup. Don Pendleton

an S pattern that changed in speed, shape and size so that it became no true pattern at all. Behind him, he could hear the other men following.

      The soldier dropped Grimaldi to the grass as soon as he was behind the shack. And then, just as suddenly as it had started, the rifle-fire ceased. Bolan glanced around the corner of the building and saw why.

      On both sides, as well as behind the terminal, stood a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. Topped with coil after coil of rolled razor-wire, it was meant to stop or slow anyone trying to transverse it. It would be easy to scale the fence. But passing through the razor-wire without getting shredded to pieces—or at least tangled and providing an easy, stationary target for the sharpshooters in the terminal—would be all but impossible.

      But the fence and wire didn’t do a very good job of retarding the tank that was pushing slowly through it to the left of the runway where the jet’s remains still stood. The armored vehicle began snapping the fence and the steel poles between, which it stretched as if they were dry wooden matchsticks.

      Bolan stared at the tank for a moment. An older-model Chieftain, it was of British design and had obviously been left behind when Great Britain moved out of Cameroon. Originally meant for use by a legitimate new government, it had, not surprisingly, fallen into the hands of terrorists instead. Bolan knew that the Chieftain had been created as a result of Britain’s World War II warfare experience. It was built to give priority to both firepower and armored protection.

      The soldier felt the muscles in his face tighten. Earlier, he had had a brief moment of regret that his team’s rifles, grenades, extra ammo, clothes and other gear had been left on the jet and were now either in ashes or otherwise useless. But watching the tank roll forward undeterred, he realized they had carried nothing that would stop the British Chieftain.

      No, Bolan thought, as the jeeps arrived and their occupants began scooting closer to make room for the Americans. Until more firepower could arrive via diplomatic pouches, he and the other men would have only the weapons they had carried on them and anything they could beg, borrow, or steal from the Cameroonians.

      Taking a seat next to the dark-skinned sergeant in one of the jeeps, Bolan held on to the top of his door as the man cut a sharp U-turn and picked up speed again. A 60 mm machine gun was mounted in each jeep, but they would be of little more use against the Chieftain than his .44 Magnum Desert Eagle. They led the convoy of jeeps to escape the inevitable aim of the tank’s antitank rounds or machine gun— either of which could turn the jeeps into fiery infernos like the jet.

      Bolan had learned many truths during his career as a warrior. And one of them was that when you were outgunned and unable to go toe-to-toe with a superior weapon itself, the only plan of action that had any chance of succeeding was to take out the man whose finger was on the trigger.

      The soldier’s eyebrows furrowed in concentration as a head suddenly rose through the hatch on top of the tank. All Bolan could see was the man’s hair and eyes.

      The men inside would not be expecting any significant return fire from the Americans’ pistols or the AK-47s carried by the Cameroonian regulars in the jeeps. So as soon as their speed had leveled off, Bolan twisted and rested the Desert Eagle on the side of the jeep. Aiming high, he lined up the front and rear sights of the big .44 Magnum pistol just above the head sticking out of the tank’s hatch.

      But before he could squeeze the trigger, he heard the boom of the Chieftain’s gun and saw the tank literally thrown backward with the recoil.

      What was left of the airplane finally crumbled into an unrecognizable mass of broken steel. Bolan tried to line up the Desert Eagle’s sights again. But before he could shoot at the eyes and scalp he’d seen, the terrorist in the tank had disappeared into the vehicle.

      Who were these assailants? Bolan couldn’t help but wonder again. Were they Cameroonian People’s Union or Kamerun Democratic National Party? He didn’t know, but their attack was just as deadly no matter which side of the genocide they were on.

      As the jeeps raced on, the rushing wind made conversation difficult. “We still having the meeting with the prime minister here at the airport?” Bolan shouted.

      “The meeting is still scheduled,” the sergeant behind the wheel yelled back to him. “But I doubt it will be here.” He pointed toward the terminal and Bolan could see that it was rivaling the jet in the burning category.

      Whoever was behind this “Welcome to Cameroon” fiasco was taking out the airport building as well as his plane.

      “Who were we fighting?” Bolan finally got a chance to ask.

      The sergeant shrugged as he answered. “Either the CPU or the KDNP,” he said. “Take your pick. They wear the same old combination of battle-dress uniforms and civilian clothes, and it’s hard to tell who they are unless you can get them to talk. CPUs usually speak English with a heavy accent. KDNP-ers have the same accent but almost always speak French. Most, however, are bilingual.”

      By then the jeeps had slowed as they neared another set of buildings far from the terminal. Bolan guessed this to be the cargo plane landing area, and probably the airstrips used by the Cameroonian military forces. The structure was not nearly as architecturally pleasing or as well kept as the passengers’ terminal had been, but it was in a lot better shape than that building was going to be for a long time after the flames died down.

      The Executioner looked over his shoulder at the still-burning airplane, far in the distance now. The old adage “between the devil and the deep blue sea” crossed his mind. But, somehow, that old saying didn’t quite sum up his, or his team’s, current situation.

      It seemed far more likely that they were between two different kinds of hell.

      The Chieftain was even farther away now than it had been before it finished off the airplane. But it was still following the jeeps across the runways toward the rough commercial buildings. And the same hair and eyes had risen again through the hatch.

      Finally on flatter land, the Executioner once again rested the Desert Eagle on the jeep’s rear ledge and lined up the sights, allowing for even more bullet drop this time. Slowly, without allowing the big .44’s barrel to waver in the slightest, he squeezed the trigger.

      The “scream of the Eagle” was still in his ears as the head sticking out of the British tank literally exploded like a watermelon. The tank ground to a halt. Three more men inside the old and battered war vehicle panicked and, rather than remain within the relative safety of the tank, pushed the headless man out through the exit hole. Clad in a variety of different patterned camouflage, OD-green BDU pants and blouses, and T-shirts, jeans and khaki work pants, they followed the corpse and dropped to the ground.

      Bolan picked off all three of them as their boots hit the tarmac. The advance of the tank had ended, and with that failure, the sporadic sniper shots, which had already begun to die down from the flaming terminal, ended too.

      “Stop the jeep,” Bolan ordered.

      The driver hit the brakes.

      The big American leaped from the jeep. The Desert Eagle still in his hand, he whirled in a quick 360-degree scan of the area.

      The snipers he hadn’t already killed had fled the fiery inferno that had once been the terminal building. And the four men who had managed the Chieftain were dead. But as the rest of his American team and the army troops hopped over the sides of their vehicles, Bolan knew one thing for certain.

      The enemy might have drawn the short stick here, in this battle, but the war was far from over.

      Bolan and his team jumped back into the jeep, and the driver led the convoy on.

      2

      The initial meeting with Prime Minister Jean Antangana, other chiefs of state, and Cameroonian cabinet members who had not fled with ex-President Robert Menye, had been transferred to the commercial area of the airport as soon as the gunfire had broken out. The jeeps stopped in front of a cruder, more industrial-looking Quonset hut.

      Bolan