would have similarly attired welcoming par ties awaiting them at Benghazi.
No one met 'Michael Rideout' at the Benghazi airport.
Bolan was wearing worn denim and work shirt, the uniform of the American oil-field worker abroad. He had one carry-on piece of luggage.
He emerged from the air terminal into the arid, 120-plus-degree midday heat. Libya was booming.
A row of shiny new taxis were parked in the terminal loading zone. Bolan hired one for the ride into the city. He observed with curiosity this Mediterranean powder-keg country.
Upon touchdown in the army transport plane at Tunis, Bolan had regretfully entrusted his Beretta and AutoMag to Jack Grimaldi for temporary safekeeping. Mike Rideout would not be carrying heat on a commercial flight.
Bolan knew that he would be provided with firearms as soon as he made contact, as Rideout, with Jericho's people here in Libya. Until then he was armed with a knife, purchased from a street merchant outside the airport, worn concealed at the small of his back.
Most of the houses along the dusty, palm-lined 'highway' into Benghazi were timeless mud-brick affairs. Street signs and all advertisements were in Arabic, but indications of Western-style prosperity were everywhere.
In the city proper, the streets became clogged with an uncomfortable number of Japanese, American and European cars.
Traditional Arabic architecture gave way to towering glass-walled office buildings.
Everywhere Bolan looked, there was movement, energy and commerce. And oppressive heat.
The country's oil fields made Libya the world's ninth largest producer. Of all the Arab nations, Libya had used its oil as a political weapon more than any other.
It was incredibly inflated profits that fueled the heavy activity in trade and housing and industrialization that Bolan saw all around him.
Government-owned and -subsidized supermarkets and stores were rapidly replacing the ancient tangled bazaars.
Libya's population, predominantly Arab Muslims, never thought that they would ever have it this good.
Of course, there was a price. And his name was Khaddafi.
The Company's Benghazi cover operation was a small accounting firm that serviced many of the second- string U.S. business concerns in Libya.
The offices of Mid-Am Incorporated were in the old section of the city, on a hillside of narrow, winding lanes that only donkeys and pedestrians could negotiate, where the poor lived crowded together amid occasional small business fronts that shared the crumbling, antiquated stone architecture.
Mid-Am's quarters were behind such a storefront. The glass had been painted black. Only the silver lettering on the painted glass door indicated that this storefront was occupied at all.
The flow of the street scene before the storefront seemed unconcerned and unaware of Mid-Am Inc. The storefront was around the corner from the neighborhood
Even along this narrow side street fronting the offices of Mid-Am, which was little more than a cobbled footpath, the scene bustled with local women clad in traditional veils, on their way to or from the market, and the Arab men — Berbers, Kabyles, Mzabites and Bedouins — wearing the
Within the desultory building, the offices of Mid-Am were a modern complex of 'work areas' that housed just one cell in a network of covert CIA operations in Libya.
The head man of the Benghazi facility was an amiable Bostonian named Lansdale. At least, that was what he said his name was. Bolan met the guy after passing through two separate security checkpoints that blocked his path in the facility.
Grim-faced men and some women hurried busily about their errands, answering phones, checking files.
Lansdale showed 'John Phoenix' to the soundproofed cell in one of the basement work areas where the real Michael Rideout was being detained.
Bolan gazed in upon the Spartanly furnished, not uncomfortable, room and saw the renegade American stretched out in a sedated sleep.
Ten minutes after his arrival at the Company offices, Mack Bolan was alone with Lansdale in the head agent's office in the back of the building.
'The first piece of classified news I have for you is that Pentagon investigators tracked down General Thatcher stateside,' said Lansdale. 'Unfortunately, the general is not doing any talking. The coded communique we received says he got his hands on a gun and blew his brains out. Before any questioning got underway.'
Bolan fired a cigarette. He had hoped that Thatcher would have the best clue to the whereabouts of Eve Aguilar. But that hope was now dead, like the general himself.
'Tell me about Rideout,' said Bolan. 'What did you learn from him?'
'Ah, truth serum, it's wonderful stuff,' said Lansdale. 'Jericho owns a villa forty miles southeast of here in Bishabia. Rideout says that's where he was headed. He was supposed to contact the villa when he landed in Benghazi.'
'That was this morning?'
'Yes. Rideout told us that a mercenary named Kennedy is honchoing the operation at the villa. They'll want to know why you're late. But air travel is notorious in these parts, and you can build a story around that.'
'Does Rideout have any idea what Jericho's operation is all about?'
'Negative. He was told stateside that Jericho Industries needs a temporary security force for one of their Libyan business concerns. That's all he knows except that they told him he'd be back home by the end of the week.'
Bolan tried to fit what he was hearing into the puzzle.
'So we've got a paid-off general in the States and a covert security force here in Libya,' he said. 'I think that Jericho has been supplied by Thatcher with something big, has had it transported here, and now he needs his own force to safeguard it. But if Khaddafi is Jericho's buyer, why does Jericho need a civilian outfit with people like Rideout? Why aren't Khaddafi's own forces taking over security?'
Lansdale answered immediately, but there was something of a weariness in his young man's voice.
'Khaddafi is not Jericho's buyer. There is bad blood between Jericho and Khaddafi. Remember when Reagan cut off Libyan oil imports to the U.S.? Khaddafi went through the roof. He instigated reprisals at the time against most American interests in Libya. These reprisals never made the world media for a variety of reasons. We still don't know everything that happened. But the Libyan government shut down several U.S. business concerns here, including several that were clearing big profits for Jericho. Three of Jericho's top men in Libya disappeared in the middle of the night and were never heard from again. That was Khaddafi's work and Jericho knows and resents it.'
The agent flipped open a folder on his desk and handed a 12x13-inch glossy photograph across to Bolan.
'Here is the man we're fairly certain Jericho is doing business with. Colonel Ahmad Shahkhia. Shahkhia and Khaddafi have been close friends since childhood. Shahkhia is second-in-command, under Khaddafi, of the Libyan army.'
Bolan studied the Arab face in the picture. The photo had evidently been snapped without the colonel's knowledge. Shahkhia was in uniform, sipping from a cup at a sidewalk cafe. Even from a photograph, in repose, the military commander emanated an aura of forceful ambition. Bolan memorized the face and handed the picture back to Lansdale.
'A coup?'
Lansdale nodded.
