LITMIR.BIZ

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stepped forward and shot a hard right fist into the CIA operative’s belly.

      Sims doubled over as if he’d been cut in two.

      The Executioner slammed the CIA man against the wall, straightened him back up and said, “What did you say your name was?”

      Sims was red-faced and choking, trying to catch his breath. “Sims,” he finally sputtered.

      “No, it isn’t,” Bolan said, and hit him in the abdomen again. “It’s Cash. Johnny Cash.” Grabbing a handful of the man’s hair, he forced Sims’s shoulder blades against the wall again. “Let me hear you say, ‘Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.’”

      “But my name’s—”

      A third punch, this time in the sternum, caused the last remaining air to rush from Sims’s lungs. The Executioner’s fists were painful, and would probably leave Sims with some sore abdominal muscles the next day. But none of the Executioner’s blows would do any permanent harm.

      Bolan waited while the vacuum in the man’s chest cleared, then repeated himself. “Say it. ‘Hello, I’m Johnny Cash.’”

      “Hello,” Sims said in a faint whisper. “I’m…John…ny…Cash.”

      The Executioner stepped back a pace, then turned to Urgoma. “Do you get my point?” he said.

      The colonel nodded. “I do,” he said. “Torture can make a man say anything you want him to say.” His face reflected no sign that he had taken the demonstration as an insult. Instead, he looked slightly embarrassed. And as if he had just learned a valuable lesson that he would put it to good use in the future.

      Bolan reached forward and straightened Sims back up yet again. “Get lost,” he told the red-faced CIA man. “And don’t get in my way. I don’t want to see you again while I’m here in Sudan. Understand?”

      Sims nodded, then staggered off down the hall.

      “You are a very direct person,” Urgoma said, chuckling.

      The Executioner nodded. “Do me a favor, will you?”

      “Anything you like,” Urgoma said.

      “Assign a couple of men to Sims. Make sure he doesn’t burn me.” Bolan paused for a moment, then said, “You understand the term burn? ”

      “Expose you,” Urgoma said.

      “Exactly,” the Executioner said. “I’ve already had too much exposure.”

      “I will tell the men inside this room,” Urgoma said, nodding toward the door, “to change into plainclothes and tail Sims. That way, we will keep the number of my own men who know you are here down to a minimum.”

      “Good thinking,” the Executioner said. “But is there some particular reason—some suspicion you have—to make you want to play this close to the vest?”

      Urgoma lowered his eyes to the floor for a moment, then raised them again. “I have, for some time now,” he said, “suspected that there is a rogue element operating within the law-enforcement community and other governmental offices in Sudan. And I suspect they have a mole right here. In my own Sudan National Police.” He paused a moment, then said, “That is why our government called your President for help. We do not know exactly who can be trusted and who can’t.”

      Urgoma was regaining Bolan’s respect quickly with his fast thinking, and the honesty he displayed even when it was embarrassing to him personally. And as far as the beatings of the men inside the next room went, the Executioner had to remind himself that he was in a part of the world where torture had been used, and accepted as just another part of life, since the dawn of time. Urgoma might be Western-educated but he had been born, and had grown up, here in North Africa. It was impractical to think that the man would have vaulted, head-first, into the twenty-first century in every area of life.

      “Tell me one thing before we go back inside,” Bolan said, leaning an elbow against the wall next to the door.

      “I will be happy to do so,” Urgoma said. “What do you wish to know?”

      “Did you learn anything from Sims? Anything the CIA might have found out that you, yourself, weren’t aware of?”

      Urgoma frowned and the wrinkles in his forehead extended up onto his bald pate. “He did let one thing slip,” the colonel said.

      “And that was…?” Bolan asked.

      “I cannot remember exactly how it came up,” Urgoma said. “But I gather that the CIA has been following the progress of Sudan’s nuclear program closely.”

      Bolan nodded. Every Third World country on the planet seemed to have a nuclear program in progress these days. Although they all claimed it was to harness energy for nonviolent purposes, in many cases, Sudan being one of them, it was the equivalent of cocking a loaded gun and then handing it to a child. But there was no point in saying anything more on the subject at this time. So he simply filed the information away in the back of his mind for future use. Somehow—he didn’t know in exactly what way yet—this so-called passive nuclear-energy program was linked to the two men in the interrogation room and the shipment of plutonium coming into Sudan to which they’d already admitted.

      “Tell me more about this rogue operation,” the Executioner said.

      “I would if I knew more,” Urgoma said, “but they are very secretive. Also, very violent in the way they view the Ethiopians who are encroaching on our borders. They would not be against just sending in troops and killing everyone who stepped over the line from Ethiopia to Sudan, I do not believe.”

      “Do you think they’re tied into this plutonium shipment in any way?” Bolan asked.

      Urgoma shrugged. “I cannot say,” he told the Executioner. “But it is hard for me to imagine that any group of my own fellow countrymen—regardless of how unhappy they are with the current Ethiopian government of the CUD rebels—would go to such extremes.”

      “I’ve seen far worse extremes in my time,” Bolan said. “I think it’s a possibility we need to keep in mind. This plutonium is most likely going one of three places. The Ethiopian army, the CUD rebels or to this rogue element within Sudan.”

      Urgoma just looked at him. The expression on the colonel’s face told Bolan he still hated to believe it was a possibility.

      “And, I think,” the Executioner went on, “the answer to that secret—the who, why, where, when and how—lay somewhere in the limerick which the Sudanese CIA informant handed off to the young American reporter. Now. Let’s go back inside and try a new line of questioning, shall we?”

      The colonel opened the door and again ushered Bolan in first. The look on his officers’ faces showed confusion as he gave them their orders to follow Sims in Arabic. But they nodded and quickly left.

      Bolan sat down across the table from the two blood-soaked men. Quickly, he surveyed the damage to both faces. It wasn’t as bad as it had looked at first—certainly nothing permanent. “Colonel,” he said over his shoulder, “do you have someone who can get these men some towels? They’ll need a little medical attention, too.”

      Urgoma lifted the phone receiver from the table and spoke into it. A few minutes later, another officer carrying a first-aid kit entered the room. The Executioner and the colonel waited silently as the officer slid rubber gloves over his hands, then dotted and dabbed at the cuts and bruises on both faces with cotton balls soaked in rubbing alcohol. Both men winced as the alcohol stung their wounds.

      After applying several small bandages here and there, the man with the first-aid kit turned to Urgoma, nodded and left the room again.

      The “good cop, bad cop” technique was the oldest trick in the book, the Executioner knew. But the stage had already been set so he decided to take advantage of it. “Do either of you speak English?” he asked the two men wearing the bandages.

      Both

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