J-P was pointing to the moonlit countryside below. The thick stand of trees enclosed by that big loop in the highway, he called over the helicopters rotor whine. The southern fringe, away from the road in ten minutes. Okay?
Bolan nodded. He pulled the panel aside and jumped.
At that height it was necessary to pull the ripcord at once. Even then he was left little time to take in the landscape floating up with increasing speed to meet him. He was already well below the jagged crests of the mountains.
To his left the bleak expanse of the Desert of Agriates lay bone-white beneath the night sky. Somewhere among these granite outcrops was Jean-Pauls ten-man squad who would have been offloaded from a trawler and landed in rubber dinghies two hours earlier. Somewhere down there those guys were humping heavy machine guns, Kalashnikovs, grenade launchers and certain other pieces of equipment over the stony ground toward the ranch.
Smiler and his men would already be in place. Bolan gazed upward. There was no sign of the other two canopies against the stars. The droning clatter of the chopper died away in the direction of Cap Corse and the ocean.
He maneuvered the shrouds, spilling air from the chute. The wood was rushing toward him. He could no longer see the highway. Beyond a slope of meadow, half-hidden among another grove of trees, the pale light gleamed on the roofs of what he guessed was the Balestre farm.
Bolan skimmed the upper branches of pines, flexed his knees and made a perfect landing fifty feet from the edge of the wood. He was an experienced jumper, remaining upright and rocksteady as the canopy bellied down behind him and collapsed in the long grass. One minute later his harness undipped, the grenades transferred to the belt of his blacksuit, it was rolled up and hidden behind a bush under the trees.
He unslung the Husqvarna and waited. He neither heard nor saw the other two come down, but it seemed almost at once that his ears detected the low whistle, repeated three times, that he was waiting for. He replied only once and made his way toward the sound.
Delacroix and his leader were together two hundred yards nearer the ranch.
Smiler, Raoul and Bertrand will have worked their way into the woods behind the ranch, Jean-Paul told Bolan in a low voice. Theyll hold their fire until the rats begin to leave the ship.
Come again?
We want the Balestre gang there may be between twenty and thirty of them in there to think the frontal attack by the guys crossing the road from the desert, the detail advancing from the sea, is the only one. If theyre getting the worst of it, theyll most likely run out the back and head for the interior.
And into Smiler and his boys?
Right. If they figure they have a chance, they may fan out in front of the buildings and try a counterattack.
And thats where we three start to operate?
You got it. In that case, theyd probably try some kind of encircling move from in back, as well.
Bolan nodded. Toward Smiler. Okay. Seems simple and sensible. They wont have patrols out? Or dogs?
Uh-uh. They dont know that we know they aimed to be part of last nights scene. If the punk Smiler wasted was telling the truth, theyll all be in there working on a plan where they hit us.
No electrified fences? Trip wires? Booby traps? No sensors or closed-circuit TV? Bolan sounded surprised.
The Frenchman laughed. Hell, no. You can do that kind of thing on a private island like La Rocaille. But this is right by a public highway. There may be sensors nearer the house, but we want them to know were coming when were that close, anyway!
They were skirting the edge of the wood, the night breeze warm on their faces. Jean-Paul led the way through a gap in a stonewall, and suddenly the details of the ranch buildings were visible in the radiance of the moon.
The place lay at the top of a long slope of pastureland that was broken nearer the house by a complex of pens and sheep-dip troughs spread below the largest of the barns. A line of trees on the far side of the slope marked the course of the driveway that curled up from the road.
The gang leader stopped near a ramshackle shepherds cabin with a tumbledown gap where the door had been and a gaping window that looked toward the ranch.
You stay here, J-P said. The range to the stoop is exactly 360 yards we worked it out on a large-scale survey map. The average slope of the meadow is six degrees. He added further instructions, and then departed into the night with the silent ex-wrestler.
Bolan moved across to the glassless window and looked up at the house. Louvered shutters were closed all the way around the two stories. The moonlight was too bright to see if there were lights shining inside. It was very quiet in the abandoned hut.
The Husqvarna was propped against the rough stone wall. He picked up the rifle and hefted it experimentally. It was a beautifully crafted weapon a .358 Magnum, with a two-foot blued steel barrel, a rosewood stock and a corrugated butt plate. It weighed, Bolan estimated, just under eight pounds.
He had chosen it because his briefing demanded a large-bore rifle, dead accurate at long ranges, with a heavy, high-velocity bullet and colossal stopping power. Some of the hoods had laughed at the gun because it was bolt-action with only a 3-shot magazine.
Bolan had retorted that it might be the slowest of all the repeaters for follow-up shots, but it was also the most reliable, since the marksman commanded the climb on each shot... and anyway, with the nightscope he had fitted, follow-up shots were rarely necessary!
The scope was a Balvar X5 by Bausch and Lomb. This, and a breech pressure of more than twenty tons p.s.i. and a superhigh muzzle velocity that gave the 150-grain slugs an almost flat trajectory, were enough to guarantee a gunner of Bolans expertise better than an eighty percent chance of a first-time hit whenever the cross-hairs centered on a target.
He brushed dust and small fragments of stone and mortar from the flat sill of the window frame and leaned his elbows on it. With the butt pressed into his right shoulder, the big gun was heavy but beautifully balanced. Bolan wrapped his fingers around the pistol grip, hit a full magazine into the chamber, and flicked the bolt. The safety was already set in the firing position.
The scopes rubber eyeguard caressed his cheek and brow. Through the magnifying IR lens he could see the moonsplashed facade of the ranch-house. Testing the strength of the first-pressure prelim spring, he curled his right index around the trigger. The cross hairs were centered on the entrance doors.
In the distance a whistle shrilled.
It was echoed, louder, from closer at hand. Three piercing blasts. The seaborn detail had arrived; Jean-Paul had instructed them to go ahead.
Inside the house a dog barked. The sound was at once drowned by a staccato burst of automatic fire from the far side of the meadow. Bolan could see the muzzle-flashes winking in the shadow beneath the trees lining the driveway.
A shutter banged open and was slammed shut. Voices shouted inside the building. Glass shattered and fell, and a single ricochet screeched off the stone facing to the frame house.
The attackers unleashed another volley. It was repeated from the edge of the wood fifty yards to Bolans left. And now there was an answering fire from the ranch. Flame stabbed the dark on the shadowed side of the building. Louvers were smashed aside, and guns sprouted from the shutters. Revolvers, automatic rifles and at least one SMG were aiming at the muzzle-flashes of the assault force.
Mack Bolan waited in the cool semidarkness of the shepherds hut, watching the action.
The men from the sea were advancing up the driveway under cover of bushes that grew beneath the trees. The leading guns were within a hundred yards of the house now. Fire from the defenders redoubled: there were a lot of guys shooting from all windows on both floors, although automatic fire was shredding some of the wooden structures and making the position untenable. Bolan heard a high-pitched scream of agony, but whether it came from inside or outside he couldnt say.