Carnage Code. Don Pendleton

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СКАЧАТЬ did,” the man with the mustache said. “But, like has already been said, he was very young. And fast on his feet. He escaped.”

      Bolan turned to where Urgoma stood against the wall. “Do you have the death penalty here in Sudan?” he asked.

      “Indeed, we do,” the colonel said, quickly picking up on the Executioner’s direction. “And these men will likely receive it for the murder they have committed.”

      “No,” the man with the mustache said. “You cannot do that to us.” The clean-shaved man was shaking his head in agreement.

      “And why can’t he?” Bolan asked.

      “Because we were only doing our jobs,” hissed the man with the bandage half-covering his lip.

      The Executioner frowned. “What jobs?” he asked. “What do you mean you were just doing your jobs?”

      The two prisoners looked at each other again, whispering in Arabic.

      “We are,” the man with the mustache said slowly and hesitantly, “both agents with the Department of Defense.”

      For a second, silence reigned over the room. Then Urgoma said, “What Department of Defense?”

      “The Sudan Department of Defense, of course,” the man with the bandaged lips replied.

      The Executioner looked up from his chair as Urgoma straightened.

      The colonel looked surprised, but not as surprised as he might have.

      The Executioner nodded toward the door, opened it and they went out into the hall. “Where’s this reporter who turned the limerick over to Sims in the first place?” he asked.

      “Just down the hall in a holding cell,” Urgoma said.

      “You jailed him?” Bolan frowned.

      “At Sims’s request.” Urgoma nodded. “Besides, he is a material witness to a murder. And we could not be certain he would stay in the country. Particularly considering the fact that we were afraid another attempt would be made on his life.”

      Bolan nodded. It might not have been the way things would have been handled in the United States but it made sense. “Did Sims run any kind of background check on him?” he asked. “Anything that might lead us to believe he’s reliable or isn’t? And make him understand that we can get any information we need? Coax him into helping us?” The young man appeared to be a journalist, and journalists by nature seemed to almost always be uncooperative with police and government-intelligence agents.

      Urgoma nodded. “Sims may be a prick, but he is still a very thorough agent for your country. He did, indeed, check into this man’s background, and it appears he was able to learn a lot about him in a very short period of time.”

      Bolan nodded. “Let’s go talk to him,” he said. “You can fill me in on the details on the way.”

      Colonel Urgoma reached back, locked the door to imprison the two murderers still in the interrogation room and started off down the hall. As they walked, he briefed the Executioner on what Sims’s background investigation had turned up.

      R ONNIE C ASSETTI SAT on the hard steel platform that served as a bed in the holding cell. Leaning back, he felt the cold concrete wall through the thin material of his tank top and especially on his arms and shoulders where the shirt didn’t cover his skin. His life had been turned upside down, and he had yet to have time to really sit down and make any sense of it.

      But he had time to do that now. Plenty of time. More time than he needed or even wanted.

      Cassetti had gone to the American Embassy in Khartoum, the limerick safe in its envelope in the side pocket of the sport coat he’d thrown on over his tank top after the cab had returned him to his hotel. First, he’d had to talk the Marines on guard at the gate into escorting him inside. That hadn’t been an easy task to begin with, and now he wished it had failed altogether. But in any case, after he’d cleared the metal detector the Marines had taken him to an outer reception area where he’d asked to see a CIA representative.

      By the look on the face of the woman behind the desk you’d have thought he’d just asked her to lie down and take off her clothes. She’d told him that no CIA agents worked out of the embassy, of course, and at that point he had suspected he was about to be thrown back out on the street again.

      Instead, he’d been told that there was a “plainclothes Marine” who might be willing to talk to him.

      That was when he’d met that son of a bitch Bill Sims.

      Sims, he had quickly surmised after being led into one of the rear offices, was actually CIA. At least his stiff-necked attitude reminded Cassetti of all the spook supervisors he’d seen in a million movies. Maybe that was the way CIA operatives really acted. Or maybe Sims had just seen the same movies and believed that was how he was supposed to act.

      Life was either imitating art or art was imitating life. Cassetti didn’t know which, and didn’t really care. He just wanted to be out of this cage and as far away from Sudan as possible.

      Cassetti remembered that he had sat across the desk while Sims looked at the sheet of paper inside the envelope. And while the agent had done his best to keep his face deadpan, it was obvious that the limerick was having some kind of effect on him. But it was also evident that Sims didn’t fully understand what the words meant any more than Cassetti did.

      The young journalist shifted uncomfortably on the steel ledge. The first thing Sims had done was looked at his passport, then gotten his home address and Social Security number from him. Then he’d made a call to Langley, where a background check on Cassetti would be conducted.

      “Simply routine,” Sims had said. “You can understand. We have to weed out the nuts somehow. Not that I think you’re crazy—but it’s procedure.”

      At this point, Cassetti had still been nodding and cooperating.

      But before he and Sims had a chance to speak about the limerick, the CIA man’s phone had rung. He’d picked it up, listened for a moment, then said, “They have them in custody now?”

      Then he’d hung up, looked at Cassetti and said, “You’re a good and patriotic American, son. Now, suppose we take a little ride together. The Sudanese cops have just picked up the two men who killed the old man and they need you to identify them.”

      Cassetti’s mistake had been trusting Sims. On the ride to the SNP’s central station, the CIA man’s cell phone had rung and he’d done more listening than talking. The next thing the young American knew, he was at the headquarters of the Sudan National Police and in this jail cell sitting on the steel sleeping platform. And he still didn’t know what the hell was going on.

      He had evidently stumbled onto something big, and for all he knew, the next trip he took might be out into the desert where Sims, or some Sudanese cop, would put a bullet in the back of his head.

      Cassetti’s thoughts returned to the present as he heard two sets of footsteps coming down the run outside his cell.

      “As I said, we booked him in as a material witness,” a heavily accented Sudanese voice said in English, “because СКАЧАТЬ