Cold Fusion by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2012-10-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

Twelve hours in, Bolan lay across the back of the jeep, trying to get some rest. There was a lot to think about, but he was long practiced in the art of switching off—the problems would still be there when he awoke, and he would be in a much fresher frame of mind. That wasn’t the issue—it was these damn roads and the desert that were causing him grief.

A simple plan: two jeeps, one with Hassim and Bolan, the other with Rafik driving and Gamal riding shotgun. Hassim would take the wheel of their vehicle, allowing Bolan to get some rest as they made their way to the small line of border that lay between Syria and Jordan that would put him in direct line for his target destination. When they were within twenty klicks, Bolan would take the wheel and proceed across the border alone to his destination. Hassim would wait with the others, making camp. They would wait thirty-six hours. If Bolan returned, Hassim would drive him back to the village, allowing him to rest. If he did not return, they would mourn the loss of their vehicle and travel back alone.

Twenty klicks was far enough back that the border patrols would not stumble on them. Thirty-six hours would allow Bolan to get to his destination, effect his mission and then return. Anything else allowed too much margin of error.

The plan would have been great, if not for the fact that the roads were in poor condition and they needed to go off-road for great swaths of territory. The land was dry scrub, desert in places, with rocks treacherously hidden by the thin, sandy soil. It was not a smooth ride, and although Bolan was used to snatching z’s in the most unlikely of places, the constant jarring was proving to make his rest fitful, at best.

It would have been easier if he could have flown via Jack Grimaldi and Dragonslayer, but local conditions made this impossible. As part of the sanctions the Arab League had imposed when Libya was going down, there had been an exclusion policy and a no-fly zone over much of Libya and the surrounding territories. Even the UN planes that had been part of taking down Gaddafi had encountered problems. Although the despot had joined the league of great dictators in the even greater beyond, the fragile state of the National Transitional Council had made the other states in the region nervous, neighboring Egypt in particular. So the Arab League had kept no-fly in place: scheduled commercial flights and a state airforce were fine. But anything that didn’t fit this profile was a no-no. And as Syria was in a delicate political position and was not, unlike its neighbor Jordan, a part of the Arab League, having been sanctioned and excluded, anything that took to the air from there and wasn’t immediately accountable ran huge risks.

It would take a lot to shoot a flyer like Grimaldi and a chopper like Dragonslayer out of the sky.

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