State of Evil by Don Pendleton

Author:Don Pendleton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Worldwide Library
Published: 2013-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The sudden change in Bolan’s task disturbed him. He had come to Africa as Val Querente’s friend, vowing to help her save a young man if he could. But now that he’d accomplished that, or nearly so, the Universe had pitched a curve across home plate, forcing the Executioner either to swing with all his might or to quit the game.

And he had never learned to quit.

The shift disturbed him on three levels. First, he had a sense of cheating Val, breaking his promise and betraying her. She wanted Patrick Quinn alive, wanted to see him standing in the U.S.A., and Bolan likely could accomplish that if he arranged the pickup with Grimaldi and left someone else to deal with Gaborone’s experiment in nuclear proliferation. He could simply let it go and walk away.

But who would grab the ball if Bolan dropped it?

On another level, Bolan wondered if he was betraying Quinn. His young companion was escaping from the Process, shaking off the cult’s indoctrination and accepting his own errors, but he needed time to soldier through it and get well. He’d have that chance at home, with Val and others who still cared for him—but not if Bolan led him back into the viper’s nest and got him killed.

The final level of uneasiness was more abstract, but it plagued Bolan all the same. If he proceeded with the job he’d pledged to Val and focused all his thoughts on Quinn, taking him home, there was a fair chance that he’d be condemning thousands more to death. He didn’t buy the Armageddon mumbo jumbo, though a well-placed nuclear explosion in the Middle East might well ignite another war, but the religious trappings were superfluous.

The threat of nuclear blackmail or worse was now a day-to-day reality of modern life. A suitcase nuke in New York or New Delhi would produce carnage that made the 9/11 raids look like a minor skirmish in the age-old war for hearts and minds. The warrior couldn’t turn his back on that. He had to stop it if he could, but did that goal jibe with reality?

Was there a bomb at all?

Bolan believed himself a decent judge of character, but he’d been fooled on prior occasions and despite Quinn’s personal appearance of sincerity, there was a chance Val’s protégé was lying through his teeth about the nuke, the sale, the whole damned thing.

Take it another way. Suppose Quinn meant what he was saying, but he had his facts wrong. Had he been duped by rumors? Misinterpreted snatches of conversation overheard in passing? With the several languages spoken in Gaborone’s encampment, was he even qualified as an interpreter?

The only way to answer those and other questions was to go back, penetrate the village one more time and have another look around. Bolan needed to find the nuke or to prove to his own satisfaction that it wasn’t there.

And what will that prove? asked an inner voice of nagging doubt.

By the time they reached Obike, the better part of a full day would’ve passed since he’d extracted Quinn.

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