The Executioner®

Volatile Agent
Don Pendleton’s

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Nathan Meyer for his contribution to this work.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

1

Mack Bolan reached under the dashboard of the Lincoln Navigator and worked the slide on the Beretta 93-R. The smooth action made a metallic snap as it maneuvered a 9 mm Parabellum round into the pistol chamber. The MX12 sound suppressor was a squat black cylinder on the end of the threaded muzzle. Bolan moved the fire-selector switch to the semiautomatic position and then slid the Beretta into place behind his back under his navy blue windbreaker.

Bolan sat up and looked through the tinted windows of the SUV, watching his prey nervously pacing in front of the men’s bathroom in the city park. The man’s name was Raphael Pucuro and he was a Confidential Informant for the DEA. Bolan narrowed his eyes and brought the man into focus, scanning the figure for every detail.

The park was almost deserted at the late hour. Halogen street lamps created halos of yellow light in staggered pools. Across the park a group of teenagers shouted and laughed as they played on the basketball courts. An elderly couple walked a black Labrador retriever along a paved path. On the far side of the recreation area several vehicles sat parked and silent, forming a wall between the grass and the street.

Pucuro was tall, as tall as Bolan, but whipcord thin with the nervous habits and shaking hands of an addict. His hair was swept straight back from a pockmarked face. The CI had made a marginalized living working as a drug mule between Colombia and the United States, giving up tips on his competitors to stay out of prison.

Bolan considered what he knew about how Pucuro made the big time. As part of his dealings, he had been given a cell phone by his DEA handlers, one they were constantly locked into. He’d gotten lazy over the digital signal and sealed his fate. Pucuro had arranged for six ex-special operations soldiers working as security contractors to meet in Bogotá with members of Colombia’s FARC terrorist group to arrange an information buy on behalf of American interests.

The meet had been a setup, and the Americans were machine-gunned in their car at a stoplight outside their hotel. DEA control had listened in as Pucuro had arranged payment. What they overheard had shocked them into alerting the Department of Homeland Security and from there Hal Brognola had quietly inserted himself into the situation.

In return for his help in setting up the private contractors Pucuro received a memory stick containing a communications list of all telephone numbers used by field administrators in the Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services for Venezuela. For strike two, instead of going to his DEA handlers, Pucuro tried to cut a deal with Chinese intelligence instead.

Brognola wanted the memory stick with those numbers, and the betrayed American operators cried out for justice. Bolan had been called in. If the CI wasn’t willing to cooperate, he had sealed his own fate. The Executioner shadowed the man to the secluded park and was about to instigate an interception one step ahead of the Chinese retrieval team. Despite his crimes, Pucuro was a treasure vault of information and a live capture had been requested.

Bolan opened the door to the SUV and stepped out into the night. He wore blue jeans and hiking boots with his windbreaker. The dome light to the Navigator had been disabled, and he closed the door softly while Pucuro’s back was turned. Bolan put his head down and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket as he set off across the grass.

The Executioner angled his approach across the corner of the athletic fields to keep the squat brick restroom building between himself and Pucuro. Bolan covered the ground quickly, looking casual but moving with purpose, like a man in a hurry to get to the bathroom. He reached the back wall of the structure and scanned the scene. On the street two men got out of a black sedan in the parking lot to his right. When he looked, Bolan saw nothing between himself and the basketball-playing teenagers on the left. He rounded the corner of the building.

Pucuro looked up, startled at Bolan’s sudden appearance. His hand fell in a telltale sign toward the inside pocket of his thigh-length leather jacket. The big American held up his empty hands and smiled.

“Easy, friend,” Bolan said in Spanish. “I just want to give you some money.”

Pucuro’s eyes flickered over Bolan’s shoulder, and the Executioner knew the snitch was looking toward the two men approaching from the street. Pucuro looked back at Bolan. His hand darted back inside his jacket, and Bolan caught a glimpse of a nylon shoulder sling. The Executioner sprang into motion.

Bolan surged forward, sweeping up his left arm and catching the startled snitch high on his chest. His fist grasped Pucuro’s jacket tightly while the elbow slammed into the other man’s shoulder. Bolan drove the slighter man back behind the L-shaped concrete wall serving as a divider between public view and the open door to the men’s bathroom.

“Don’t be stupid,” Bolan growled. “Let me help you come in.”

Pucuro squawked in protest and stumbled back on his heels under Bolan’s onslaught. His right hand emerged from his jacket around the butt of a black automatic pistol. Bolan’s right hand emerged from his jacket pocket even as Pucuro’s tried to claw his own weapon free. The Liquid Silver gravity knife opened as Bolan flicked his wrist.

The big American brought his arm up fast and hard, shoving the blade into Pucuro’s solar plexus and penetrating the diaphragm. Pucuro gasped and air rushed from his lungs. Blood spilled out sticky and hot across Bolan’s knuckles.

Bolan shoved Pucuro. The man bounced off the wall, and the soldier spun him into the open bathroom door. Pucuro’s pistol, a compact Glock 19, hung loose in his hands. Bolan’s fist lashed out again. The knife slid home under Pucuro’s chin and more blood spilled, splattering the floor. The Glock dropped to the concrete with a clatter.

Bolan let the dead man fall, then dropped to one knee beside the corpse and began to frisk the body. He found a fat wallet inside one pocket. A business envelope tucked into Pucuro’s other jacket pocket contained the memory stick.

Bolan carefully wiped the blade of his knife clean on the dead man’s shirt. He rose to his feet and put the envelope in his own jacket pocket.

He heard footsteps on the concrete outside. They hit the ground rapidly, and Bolan knew whoever was approaching was doing so at a dead run. He spun and pulled the Beretta 93-R from behind his back.

The first of the two men Bolan had seen in the parking lot rounded the corner. He was dressed in a business suit and an overcoat. A flat, black automatic pistol filled his fist. Over the first man’s shoulder the second man appeared, jockeying for position in the cramped quarters.

Bolan’s gaze locked onto the Chinese agent’s startled eyes. Both men raised their weapons. The big American threw himself to one side as he brought up the Beretta. The sound suppressor spit, and an instant later the tight chamber of the restroom reverberated with the sharp clap of a gunshot as the Chinese man fired simultaneously with an unmuffled pistol.

The Chinese agent staggered backward, a fount of blood opening up on his shoulder an inch above his heart. The man stumbled and his arms flew out as his pistol round rattled the metal divider around the toilets in the back of the room. Bolan bounced off the wall and spun, dropping to one knee.

Bolan pulled the trigger on his pistol again and buried a soft-nosed 9 mm round in the lead agent’s forehead. The second man twisted at the waist, ducking out of the way of the tumbling body, and his own pistol came up around the falling corpse.

Bolan shot him through the heart.

The man’s finger convulsed on his trigger, and the pistol bucked in his falling hand. A round flew past the crouching Bolan and shattered the thin, metal-backed glass of the restroom mirror. Splinters of glass showered the Executioner, sprinkling his hair and shoulders before falling to the floor.

The second agent hit the curve of the wall and slumped to the ground.

Bolan popped back up and quickly placed the still warm Beretta behind his back. He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair, spilling additional shards of glass onto the floor. He patted his pocket to make sure the memory stick was secure. Satisfied, he stood. Without hesitation he walked forward, stepped over the corpses and exited the restrooms.

The Executioner caught a glimpse of the teenagers across the park. They had stopped playing basketball and stood on the edge of the court, facing his direction. Several of them held up cell phones. He saw no sign of the elderly couple and their dog as he crossed the grass.

Moving quickly but staying calm, Bolan slid behind the wheel of the Lincoln Navigator. The big block engine purred to life immediately.

Bolan smoothly guided the big SUV out of the parking lot and into sparse traffic. He got out his cell phone and prepared to call Brognola. The big Fed had a mess that needed cleaning up.

2

The gunmen were in the hotel.

Crouched in the dark, Marie Saragossa eased the charging handle back on her mini-Uzi machine pistol. She chambered a 9 mm round and eased the receiver back into place. She pushed the safety selector onto the fire position. Out in the hallway beyond the door to her hotel room, Saragossa heard the murmur of deep male voices and the creaking of the floor under their footsteps.

Rain hammered the glass of the room’s only window. Despite the downpour, the heat in the room was stifling. Saragossa wore an olive green tank top, and it stuck to her body like a second skin. Perspiration ran into the valley between her breasts, and she could feel beads of sweat slide across her abdomen and along the small of her back.

Saragossa clenched then relaxed her grip on the machine pistol. As a young girl in Castro’s Cuba, she had been instructed in the use of weapons. Her subsequent rise into the intelligence service of the dictator’s country had only sharpened those skills—skills she now sold on the open market in the true spirit of the capitalism she had been taught to hate as a child.

The men in the hallway fell silent. Saragossa looked over the bed she crouched behind. A satellite phone lay on top of the covers, her only link with the outside world. From the street she heard rough laughter over the falling rain, then the stuttering burst of a Kalashnikov. There was a scream followed by more laughter.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

The rebels had driven across the border as night fell and had taken the town. The rains had rolled into the region, halting the government counteradvance in its tracks, and the rebels had begun an orgy of murder, torture, rape and looting. Intelligence indicated that the township of Yendere was a sanctuary point for the rebels and that they possessed a good relationship with the population on the Burkina Faso side of the border with the Ivory Coast.

Makimbo, Saragossa’s last street contact in the township, told her all of that had changed when the rebel units found the drugs.

The border town of Yendere had become a transition point. The rebels had morphed, becoming a link in the narcotic routes from Latin America into Europe. Cocaine and heroin were introduced by ship into the Ivory Coast, then made their way by a variety of means across the border into Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou. Only the rebel units who had arrived across the border one step ahead of Ivory Coast national forces hadn’t been a part of the established network. When they found shipments of narcotics among the crates of sheep wool in the warehouses behind the township mosque, the frenzy had begun.

Now Makimbo was gone, along with every other person who could make their escape along the only road leading out of town. With her dusky skin and long, straight hair Saragossa had been trapped. Her principal had promised her help if she could hold out long enough, but that was a huge if.

The green light indicating battery charge on her sat phone glowed like a beacon in the dark room. Outside her door Saragossa heard whispers. Holding the machine pistol close to her face in her right hand, the woman reached across the bedspread and wrapped her fingers around the phone.

The doorknob rattled as a heavy hand fell across it. Saragossa drew the phone to her and turned off the power. The bed lay between her and the door. Already on her knees, she slowly lowered herself to her stomach behind the mattress and frame as the doorknob began to turn.

She had taken a gamble. If she had locked the door, then she would be announcing her presence to the rampaging troops. She had to simply hide until help arrived in the form of mercenaries, government troops or a moneyman. Saragossa had experienced many unpleasant things since her days as a girl in Cuba. Being raped was not one she wanted to endure ever again.

The door creaked loudly as the rebel outside pushed it open. Saragossa slid under the bed. Light from the hallway spilled into the room. From her position she saw a pair of bare, skinny ankles above a filthy pair of rubber-soled tennis shoes. The soles of the shoes were thick with mud, and the toes were splattered with dark splotches that could only be blood.

Saragossa eased her arm up from her side, bringing the mini-Uzi around should she need to use it. Her breathing sounded as loud as a furnace bellows to her. The rebel walked a few steps into the room. She smelled cheap tobacco burning and an almost overwhelming stench of body odor.

The material of Saragossa’s shirt was stuck tight to the small of her back from the humidity and her own sweat. In the next moment she felt a fat weight drop onto her from the bottom of the mattress. She tensed in horror.

She felt the tiny presence scuttle up her back. She closed her eyes against the shudder of revulsion that threatened to ripple across her body. The thing was too short to be a centipede, but the legs felt too close together to be a spider. To Saragossa’s mind that left two options—one creepy the other deadly. The first was a roach. West African roaches were prevalent, disgusting and huge. The second was a scorpion. If a Death Stalker scorpion was to crawl up her back and become entangled in the thick mass of her long hair, she knew she was in very real danger.

The poison of the Death Stalker was fierce, deadly in children and the elderly, and likely to make her so sick she’d be unable to save herself if the rebels attacked her. In the field pack hidden behind her under the bed she had a first-aid kit complete with antivenin shots for insects and snakes. But nothing would help her if she was discovered by the gunmen in the room.

The creature scurried up her body, and Saragossa bit down hard on her trembling lower lip to stifle any sound. A young bass voice called out something from the hallway. The thing perched between Saragossa’s shoulder blades froze as the man in the room answered, his voice loud and slurred.

Saragossa held her breath. A sting from a scorpion that close to her spine and central nervous system could be fatal. If the gunmen discovered her under the bed and forced her to move and fire in self-defense, she was damned. There was no way that one of the aggressive African scorpion species would not strike.

Let it be a roach, she thought. Or a beetle. Let it be a goddamned dung beetle.

The man walked farther into the room. From where she lay Saragossa could see the ragged bottoms of the man’s cutoff jeans hanging down past his knees. The gunman relaxed—apparently satisfied the room was empty—and lowered his weapon so that Saragossa could see the muzzle and front sight of the assault rifle.

She heard the light switch snap on and off and the man curse in frustration. She had unscrewed the lightbulbs earlier but left them in the outlet to make it appear as if they had only burned out. On her back the creature began to move again, climbing up her nape where her hair was held in place by a cloth strip from a field medic kit used to splint broken bones or wrap wounds.

A tiny puddle of sweat had pooled in the hollow there. She felt the hard, sticky legs of the creature play themselves across the goose bumps of her flesh as it paused, drinking in her perspiration. The monsoon rains had kept the malaria-bearing mosquitoes and potential deadly flies inactive, and Saragossa hadn’t bothered using her insect repellant for days. She was an inviting playground to the bugs driven indoors by the rain.

The rebel opened the door to the hotel room all the way, spilling in more light. He dropped his half-smoked cigarette to the floor, and Saragossa watched him grind it out inches from her face. It lay on the room’s only rug and smoldered. A trail of smoke streamed up from the half-crushed cigarette and into her face.

The weight at the back of her neck shifted with sudden purpose and scurried onto her left shoulder. She breathed out slowly and cautiously. Afraid to turn her head, Saragossa shifted her eyes to follow the gunman as he walked deeper into the room. Predictably, he was headed for the closet.

The legs on her shoulder began a lazy trail down her arm toward her elbow. The thing was in such disgustingly intimate contact with her that Saragossa was almost positive it was no cockroach or dung beetle.

The rebel opened the door to her closet and chuckled. He called out to the other gunman in the hallway, and then he started throwing Saragossa’s luggage onto the bed. The mattress spring bounced in protest as her heavy backpack bounced onto the rickety bed.

The bed undulated above her, threatening to press down against her head. The thing on her arm froze in midstride. Saragossa could hear a hiss and knew without a doubt it was a scorpion. She felt a surge of adrenaline as her stomach clenched and sour bile flooded the back of her throat.

She heard footsteps and shifted her eyes to the door. The second gunman had entered to see what the first had found. This one wore dirty black sweatpants tucked into battered old army boots. He said something to the first gunman, and both pairs of feet crowded up to the bed.

Agitated, the scorpion crawled off Saragossa’s arm, running down her bicep to the plank wood floor. She gritted her teeth against the horror of how close the thing was to her face, especially her eyes. She had felt the segmented serpentine sway of the arachnid’s stinger as it slid off her arm.

Above her the bed bounced as the two gunmen began to open and rifle through her bags. Dust scattered by the activity trailed down into Saragossa’s face. She shifted her eyes to the left, trying to see the scorpion, but her hair hung in her way.

Terrified, Saragossa risked moving her head. She felt the searching grasp of the creature’s brittle-haired legs reach her left wrist. She felt the wiry folds of the front pincers bump across her skin as it climbed onto her hand.

She could see the thing clearly now. The arachnid had a brown banded back and abdomen set in the dull yellow amber color of the body. The stinger was raised like a fist over the segmented and armored torso. It was ugly and with a sinking sense of horrified certainty, Saragossa realized it was as deadly a scorpion as there was—the Death Stalker. Ounce for ounce it was one of the most poisonous creatures on the planet.

The rebels began to chatter in earnest. Articles of clothing began to litter the floor at their feet. A new voice called out from the hallway, and one of the men beside Saragossa’s bed answered.

There was laughter from the hall, then the bed suddenly sagged as one of the rebels fell onto the mattress, roaring with laughter. The tired old bedsprings sang in protest, and the bottom sank so low it smacked Saragossa hard on the top of her head. Her chin bounced off the floor, and she hissed in surprise as she bit down on her tongue. The copper-tang metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. Her body tensed tight against the sudden pain.

That pain was nothing compared to what came next.

She felt like her hand had been struck by a baseball bat. She spasmed at the brutal, all encompassing shock of the scorpion strike. She bit down hard against the pain. Tears filled her eyes.

Then the scorpion struck again.

This time she couldn’t control herself. The moan was ripped from her body. The scorpion scurried off her arm and disappeared into the gloomy shadows at the head of the bed. Through a prism of involuntary tears Saragossa’s vision swam. She was in trouble.

The two men above her were quiet. For one long moment they were simply still and silent as the voice from the hallway called out to them. Then there was an explosion of motion.

The man on the bed sprang up and off the mattress, knocking Saragossa’s luggage to the floor. The rebel gunman already standing ripped the cover of the bed up. Saragossa was suddenly confronted with a grimacing male face, eyes wide with emotion and red veined with drug use.

The man snarled something and a hand the size of a dinner plate reached out and grabbed her by the arm. Saragossa let herself be taken without a struggle.

Saragossa looked up as the gunman dragged her clear of the bed. The scorpion’s poison was taking effect, and her vision had already begun to blur. Her left arm felt at once as if a hundred hot needles were gouging her, and as if it were made of lead.

She saw the gunmen looking down on her. Both men instinctively grabbed for the pistol grips of their Kalashnikovs, but at the sight of her small feminine form they relaxed and neither one assumed an aggressive stance with their assault rifles. Their bloodshot gazes roamed the curves of her body.

Saragossa whispered hate-filled curses at them in Spanish and brought up her mini-Uzi. Both men’s eyes expanded in shock and dull-witted horror.

Saragossa was merciless.

She triggered the mini-Uzi, and the little kill box chattered and shook in her hand. She stitched a line of 9 mm slugs straight into the first man’s throat. She shredded his neck, and the blood splattered across her upturned face even as the rebel was driven back. Hot shell casings bounced off the flat stretch of her belly.

Still firing, Saragossa shifted the compact machine pistol and took out the second man who stood frozen, mouth gaping. Her first two rounds hit his left deltoid and then shattered his collarbone before she put a bullet in his jaw, nasal cavity and right eye. The gunman crumpled without ever firing back.

Saragossa didn’t think, didn’t reflect, she merely acted. She pushed herself up to her knees and sprang to her feet. Her left arm hung useless from her side, as dead as the two African men lying on the floor behind her.

She crossed the room and was at the door while voices in the hallway were still calling out in confusion. She twisted around the door frame, her weapon already firing. The exertion made her dizzy, and her vision was badly blurred from the scorpion’s neurotoxin. She caught the shape of a man, the hall light behind him, standing at the top of the stairs leading up from the front lobby.

She fired and knocked him down even as he triggered a burst of his own. The bullets from his assault rifle burrowed into the wall on her right, and Saragossa staggered off the door frame as he went down.

She rushed forward. There were blind spots in her eyes now, and she was frantic to kill all the rebels before she blacked out. She came to the top of the stairs and tripped over the outstretched arm of the man she had just killed. She fell hard and landed on her knees. A burst of automatic weapon fire passed through the space above her head.

Saragossa thrust out her arm and pointed the machine pistol down the narrow staircase. Her eyes were too dilated to focus, and she couldn’t see much. She pulled the trigger and poured 9 mm rounds down the stairwell toward where she’d sensed the muzzle-flash.

She heard a cry. The man on the stairs gurgled loudly and dropped his weapon with a clatter onto the wooden steps. There was a sound like a basketball bouncing off a backboard as the rebel’s head struck each step on his long slide down.

Saragossa fell backward.

She felt flushed all over and nauseous. She lurched to her feet and stumbled back toward the door to her room like a drunk.

She’d been stung twice, and she knew that was enough to kill her.

3

Bolan sat in the back of the plane. The five-seat Aérospatiale AS350 was a charter aircraft from West African Trans-Cargo—a front company used by American intelligence concerns operating out of Liberia. He sat with a pen and notepad, making a list of equipment he’d need for the operation while Barbara Price gave him operational details over a secured line and into the headset he wore.

“It’s just you, Striker,” Price said. “This intel came through last minute, and other Stony Man assets have already been committed globally.”

“What’s going on?”

“A convergence of events has given us a window of opportunity to exploit, and Washington wants to really push it. You were the quickest resource we could deploy on such short notice.”

“This wet work?” Bolan asked.

“It could get pretty wet, but basically it’s a snatch op.”

“Who and why?”

“In the late eighties before Noriega was taken out, Langley was running an asset named Marie Saragossa inside the dictator’s security service. After the regime fell she went freelance. She’s worked for just about everyone in the Southern Regional Operational Zone.”

“Cartels? Castro?”

“Saragossa is mercenary. She doesn’t take ideological sides, but she came out of Cuba. She worked for Castro, she worked for Pablo Escobar, but she also worked against them, for us. So Langley kept a loose leash on her to piggyback inside those camps.”

“Did she know this?”

“Not always. Part of her contracts for us included payment in tech. Field gear and communications, mostly.”

“So as payment she was given encoded sat phones, laptops, stuff like that. Equipment she’d never hope to score on the open market. Only we made sure we were keyed in,” Bolan said.

“Exactly.”

“Sounds familiar,” Bolan said, his voice dry. “Go on.”

“Last week Saragossa took a job for the president of Venezuela. A reconnaissance and procurement gig in Burkina Faso. Seems they got wind of some kind of operation that Hussein had going down before the Iraq war. So he made a play-for-pay deal and sent her to West Africa.”

“With Langley watching every move?” Bolan asked.

“Exactly. With the information we got from Pucuro’s memory stick we could monitor almost all aspects of this event from all the players, not just Saragossa. Only as insane as South American politics can get, West Africa’s got ’em beat hands down. Whatever Saragossa was looking for, it was in the west of the country, along the border with the Ivory Coast.”

“I’m not up on that region,” Bolan admitted. “Are Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso engaged in hostilities?”

“Not openly, but the situation just went to hell. Both countries are controlled by military strongmen accused of corrupting elections to stay in power. They have a dispute about a couple of border markers. The Ivory Coast is in the middle of a three-way civil war. To give themselves some leeway Burkina Faso has been allowing members of the MPCI, the Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement, to use the area as a cross-border sanctuary.”

“So what happened?”

“Whatever Saragossa was looking for, she discovered its location,” Price said. “Unfortunately for her, two days ago the Ivory Coast national army began an offensive against the MPCI forces. They pushed them back across the border with Burkina Faso and kept on pushing right into the southern part of that country. The entire region is a combat zone with MPCI guerrilla units battling Ivory Coast government troops. Burkina Faso is massing its forces in the area, and if African Union diplomatic negotiators don’t reach a compromise quickly, we’re looking at another cross-border bush war.”

“Saragossa is caught in the middle of this?” Bolan asked.

“Yesterday Langley’s signal op center for this region intercepted a sat phone call by Saragossa to her Venezuelan control. Her township, Yendere, was overrun by elements of the MPCI who are now surrounded by army units. She’s trapped in a hotel in the center of town and under fire.”

“So I ride in on a white horse and she’s so grateful she gives us Saddam’s secrets?”

“It’s not quite that simple, I’m afraid. Venezuela really wants what Saragossa has. Plus, some intercepts suggest that Saragossa may have used her feminine charms on the president and he’s got a personal stake in her getting home.”

“Does Venezuela have the resources to pull a rescue operation off in western Africa?” Bolan asked.

“No. But they do have billions in oil money now that he’s nationalized all the wells in Venezuela. So he reached out to one James du Toit, former South African Defense Force special operator turned mercenary.”

“I’ve heard that name. Wasn’t du Toit mixed up in some bad business in New Guinea a while back?”

“Correct. He just got out of prison in New Guinea for his role in the failed coup attempt there. He’s got aircraft, soldiers and a logistics network throughout the continent. Venezuela has the cash, du Toit has the capabilities. From what Venezuelan intelligence told Saragossa, du Toit’s deploying a platoon in a Super Puma helicopter to pull her out of the firefight.”

“So she’s not going to be all that happy to see me,” Bolan stated.

“No. You have to get in ahead of the South Africans, convince Saragossa by any means necessary to flip, and then extract her from the middle of the Yendere township, which is currently filled with MPCI guerrilla gunmen and surrounded by hostile army troops from the Ivory Coast.”

“With Burkina Faso forces closing in,” Bolan added.

“That’s right,” Price agreed.

Bolan fitted the drum magazine into a Mk 48 light weight machine gun. The weapon’s green plastic drum snapped into place with a reassuring click. Bolan took the loose belt of 7.62 mm ammunition and fit it into place before slapping the feed tray cover down and locking it into place.

“All right. Let’s talk details,” he said after thinking things over.

Price immediately began filling Bolan in on the logistical and support elements of the last minute, rapid deployment operation.

4

Saragossa lunged for her pack. Her left hand was frozen, cramped, and she worked at the buckles and drawstring with only her right. She felt her throat squeezing closed, and forced air into her lungs with a harsh, wheezing sound. She managed to open the first-aid pack, then bent down, using her teeth to help prise off the Velcro fastener on the top flap pouch.

Her all-purpose antivenin kit spilled out. Her throat closed up and she made a high-pitched barking sound like a seal, a condition known as stridor. Two breaths later Saragossa realized air was no longer making it through. Her mind was a white blank of panic. Death hugged her close. She opened the kit, but her shaking hand spilled the contents across her lap.

Her heart lurched abruptly in her chest. She knew she was dying. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know whether to use the venom-antagonist to neutralize the poison or to use shock medicine syringes. She fumbled ineffectually as her vision continued to dim around the edges.

Saragossa looked down. Her lap felt as if it were a mile away. She lifted her arm, and the feeling was completely disassociated. It could have been someone else’s arm for all she felt connected to it. She felt for the epi-pen and thumbed off the cap. It was military-grade atropine meant to counter chemical or biological warfare agents in addition to more pedestrian utilizations.

She lifted her arm as her vision went completely black, though her eyes remained open. She felt a falling sensation and snapped her arm down. The spring-loaded syringe shot into her leg and the needle discharged. She was immediately jolted back into herself. The effect on her airway was nearly instant.

She dropped the autoinjector and sucked in a lungful of life-giving air. She could breathe, but the adrenaline-hormone cocktail only added to the feeling of crushing pressure in her chest. She scooped up her kit and plucked out a little brown bottle. She put her teeth against the snap lid and let two tiny white pills fall out into her mouth.

She caught the nitroglycerin pills under her tongue and let them dissolve there. The pressure in her chest began to ease. She dropped the bottle and reached for her antivenin kit. She felt much better, but knew she was still in dire trouble. So far she was only combating symptoms and side effects—deadly symptoms and side effects, but still only secondary presentations.

She saw the green autoinjector filled with venom-antagonist. She juggled the syringe with fingers that felt as thick as sausage links. She pushed the nose of the autoinjector pen against her hand in the meaty part beneath the thumb.

The infected hand still burned, and the needle felt icy cold as it punched into the venom-filled muscle. Saragossa dropped the injector and sagged back against the wall, fighting for air and terrified by the continued crushing pressure behind her sternum.

The tablets continued dissolving beneath her tongue as she lay there, helpless. Breathe, she told herself, just breathe.

She lay helpless in the stink, the heat and the damp, and concentrated on breathing in and out. She thought about nothing else beyond filling her lungs with good air, then pushing out the bad air.

Gradually she felt the pressure reduce to a simple feeling of heaviness. Then, as the muscles of her abdomen began to unknot, that too dissipated. She was covered in sweat. She lay with her head on the ground and lifted her feet up and rested them on her pack. She knew by elevating her extremities she reduced the workload of her heart.

Saragossa pulled her machine pistol closer to her. She rested for a moment after the activity and let her breathing even out and her heart rate slow. When she felt stronger, she reached over and grabbed her left wrist with her right hand and rested it across her chest. She paused to take in her surroundings. She could detect no immediate threats and focused on taking care of herself.

She looked at the scorpion stings. Her veins stood out in vivid relief, and red streaks turned her dusky colored skin ashen from the puncture wounds in her hand. Pustules were already forming into fat pimples above the sting marks. In a few minutes she would need to pop and drain them before covering the area with antibiotic ointment and a clean, dry dressing.

In this kind of an environment infection would set in quickly and hang on stubbornly. Saragossa knew her arm, despite the work of the venom-antagonist in killing the active poison, was damaged by the necrotic effects of the scorpion stings and would continue to be hampered until a full recovery was made.

But she didn’t have time for a full recovery. She had a tight schedule for operations. She needed the use of her arm immediately. Saragossa scooted over to one side. Now that she was breathing freely she reached into her pack and pulled her general first-aid bag free.

Moving slowly and becoming more clearheaded by the moment, Saragossa opened the minipack and began to rummage through her kit. She pulled out two syringe bundles held together by white medical tape. Pulling her boot knife free, she slipped the tip of the blade under the tape and in between two of the syringes before plucking a single needle free.

Saragossa took the syringe filled with antinausea medicine and pulled the needle cover off with her teeth. She spit the plastic cap away and stuck the needle into her exposed shoulder. She pushed the plunger down and injected the medicine smoothly before discarding the syringe, needle down, into the wooden plank of the floor.

The next bundle she opened was a painkiller. The narcotic would completely numb the area it was injected into. It had euphoric side effects that Saragossa knew could hamper her judgment, but without it her left arm would be useless. After injecting her shoulder she repeated the process in the exposed muscles of her inflamed forearm.

Saragossa tossed the needle aside and picked up the feeder tube from the water bladder in her pack. She sucked slowly, drinking carefully. Then she lay still for twenty minutes, collecting herself.

As she let her medical cocktail take effect, Saragossa began the process of survival. Carefully she began to compartmentalize the incident, to wall it off away from the front of her mind. It was just something that had happened.

“Bad day, screw it,” she whispered.

She pushed the fear away, along with the helpless rage and the queasy sensation that the memory of the scorpion clutching tightly with its prickly legs to her hand gave her. She pushed the memories and the feelings down, then bricked them over. She began to test her senses, taking in stimulation from the building around her. She heard a scream over the drone of falling rain.

She slid her boot knife away and slowly secured the loose parts of her medical supplies before packing them back into the first-aid bag and the smaller antivenin kit. After glancing at her hand Saragossa slid the antivenin kit into the cargo pocket on her leg instead of putting it back in the top of the backpack.

She slowly rose into a sitting position. The feeling of dizziness nearly caused her to swoon, but the sensation passed. She lifted her red and swollen arm and looked at it. She felt no pain. She experimented with opening and closing her hand. The motion was stiff but didn’t hurt. She looked at her watch and frowned.

It was then that a multitude of weapons opened fire on her room.

5

Bolan shoved a fistful of local currency over the battered seat to the cabdriver and got out. He leaned in the open window of the passenger door and instructed the driver to wait for him around the block. The taxi sped away, leaving him standing on the edge of an unpaved street. There was an open sewer off to his right, and the stench was ripe in his nose.

The Executioner looked around. He was on the opposite side of the township of Banfora from the international airport. Banfora was the capital of Komoe, Burkina Faso’s south-westernmost province and the one sharing a border with Ivory Coast. The dirt street was lined with shanties, and what light there was escaped from boarded-up windows or from beneath shut doors. A pair of mongrels fought over some scraps in a refuse pile several yards up the road. Other than those dogs fighting, the stretch of grimy road was deserted.

The previous day, intelligence had noted that a brigade-sized element complete with field artillery and armored vehicles had been speeding through the regional center toward the villages of the border area. War had come once again to one of the poorest countries in the world.

Faintly, Bolan could hear the sound of music playing and then voices raised in argument. A baby started crying somewhere, and farther away more dogs began barking in response. Bolan looked up at the sky, noting the low cloud cover. The road was thick with muck from the seasonal rains, and it clung to the soles of his hiking boots.

Bolan set down the attaché case he was holding and reached around behind his back to pull his pistol clear. He jacked the slide and chambered a .44 Magnum round before sliding it into his jeans behind his belt buckle, leaving it in plain sight. He leaned down and picked up the case. He shifted his grip on the handle so that his gun hand was free.

Bolan took a quick look around before crossing the road and stepping up to the front door of one of the innumerable shacks lining the road. He lifted his big hand and pounded three times on the door. He heard a hushed conversation break out momentarily before the voices fell quiet.

“Le Crème?” Bolan asked.

Bolan felt a sudden damp and realized it had started to rain while he was standing there. Despite the wet, he was still uncomfortably warm in his short-sleeve, button-down khaki shirt and battered blue jeans.

The door opened slowly and a bar of soft light spilled out and illuminated him. A silhouette stood in the doorway, and Bolan narrowed his eyes to take in the figure’s features. It was a male, wearing an unbuttoned and disheveled gendarme uniform.

He held a bottle of grain alcohol in one hand, and the other rested on the pistol grip of a French MAT-49 submachine gun hanging from a strap slung across his neck like a guitar. He leaned forward, crowding Bolan’s space. The big American made no move to back up.

“Cooper?” the man asked.

His breath reeked with alcohol fumes, and the light around him reflected wildly off the glaze in his eyes. His words were softly slurred, but his gaze was steady as he eyed Bolan up and down. The finger on the trigger of the MAT-49 seemed firm enough.

“Yes.” Bolan repeated. “Is Le Crème here?”

“Colonel Le Crème,” the man corrected.

“Is Colonel Le Crème here?”

“You have the money?”

Bolan lifted the attaché case, though he knew the man had already seen it when he’d opened the door. The gendarme ignored the displayed satchel, his eyes never leaving Bolan’s face. His hair was closely cropped, and Bolan could see bullets of sweat beading on the man’s forehead.

“Give me the pistol,” the man ordered.

“Go to hell,” Bolan replied.

The drunken gendarme’s eyes widened in shock and his face twisted in sudden, instant outrage. He snapped straight up and twisted the MAT-49 around on its sling, trying to bring the muzzle up in the cramped quarters.

Bolan’s free hand shot out and grabbed the submachine gun behind its front sight. He locked his arm and pushed down, preventing the gendarme from raising the weapon. The gendarme’s eyeballs bulged in anger, and the cords of his neck stood out as he strained to bring the submachine gun to bear.

“Leave him!” A deep bass voice barked from somewhere behind the struggling gendarme.

The man cursed and tried to step back and swing his weapon up and away from Bolan’s grip. The Executioner stepped forward as the man stepped back, preventing the smaller man from bringing any leverage to bear.

They moved into the room, and Bolan heard chair legs scrape against floorboards as men jumped to their feet. He ignored them, making no move for the butt of the Desert Eagle sticking out of his jeans.

The man grunted his exertion and tried to step to the outside. Bolan danced with him, keeping the gendarme’s body between him and the others in the smoky room. Bolan’s grip on the front sling swivel remained unbroken. Finally, the gendarme dropped his bottle and grabbed the submachine gun with both his hands. The bottle thumped loudly as it struck the floor but did not break. Liquid began to gurgle out and stain the floorboards.

“I said enough!” the voice roared.

The gendarme was already using both his hands to snatch the submachine gun free as the order came. Bolan released the front sling swivel and stepped to the side. The gendarme found his center of balance around the struggle abruptly gone and overextended himself. Already drunk, he toppled backward and struck the floor in the pool of alcohol spilling from his fallen bottle.

Cursing and sputtering, the man tried to rise. Bolan surveyed the room. He saw four other men in the same soiled and rumpled police uniforms, each one armed either with a pistol or a submachine gun. All of them were gaunt and lanky with short hair, except for the bear of a man with the gold braid epaulets of an officer.

The officer rose from behind a table and hurled a heavy glass tumbler at the gendarme Bolan had left on the floor. The glass struck the man in the face and opened a gash under his eye.

“I said leave him!”

The shock of being struck snapped the embarrassed man out of his rage. He touched a hand to the cut under his eye and held up his bloody fingers. He looked away from his hand and nodded once toward the man looming behind the table.

The officer turned toward Bolan. “My apologizes,” he said. “My men worry about my safety.”

“Understandable, Colonel Le Crème.” Bolan nodded. “I worry about my own safety.”

“Come now, you are in the company of police officers.”

“Yes, I am,” Bolan agreed.

“Foreigners are not usually permitted to carry weapons in our land.”

Bolan threw the attaché case on the table. “That should more than cover any administrative fees.”

“Is it in euros?”

“As you specified.”

Le Crème nodded, and one of the gendarmes at the table reached over and picked up the case. He had a sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeve. Bolan saw there were two very young girls pressed up against the back wall of the shack. Their eyes were as hard as diamonds and glittered as they took him in.

The sergeant pulled the case over and opened it. The sudden light of avarice flared in his eyes, impossible to disguise. Bolan shrugged it off. He was tempted to believe that if he’d been born into the kind of poverty these men took for granted he might have been just as greedy.

While the sergeant counted the stacks of bills, the colonel reseated himself. He snapped his fingers at one of the girls, and she jumped to pick a fresh glass off a shelf beside her. She brought it over to the table and poured the colonel a drink from an already open bottle. Bolan could feel the intensity of her gaze.

Le Crème regarded Bolan through squinty, bloodshot eyes. He picked a smoldering cigar off the table and drew heavily from it. His men made no move to return to their seats. Le Crème pulled his cigar out of his mouth and gestured with it.

“Sit down.”

Bolan pulled out the chair opposite Le Crème and eased himself into it. The two men regarded each other with coolly assessing gazes while the sergeant beside Le Crème continued counting the money. Le Crème lifted his new glass and downed its contents without changing expression.

“Shouldn’t a man like you be out hunting terrorists?” Le Crème asked.

“Shouldn’t you be down in Banfora with the fighting?” Bolan asked.

Le Crème shrugged. “That’s what the army is for. I fight crime.”

“Just so.”

The sergeant looked up from the money. Le Crème’s eyes never left Bolan. “Is it all there?” he asked.

“More,” the sergeant replied.

“Why?” Le Crème asked Bolan.

“There’s a bonus in there. The shipment came in at a few more kilos than we’d originally talked about.”

“Still tractor parts?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then, no problem. It’s St. Pierre’s day on the Customs Desk,” Colonel Le Crème said, smirking.

Bolan followed the line of Le Crème’s sight across the room to where the gendarme Bolan had scuffled with stood glowering.

“Any way you want it, Colonel,” Bolan said.

“Yes. Yes, it usually is.”

Le Crème leaned back from the table and stretched out his arm. The girl who’d poured his drink slid into his lap. She regarded Bolan from beneath hooded lids. He guessed she could have been no older than sixteen. She was beautiful, her eyes so darkly brown they were almost black, but still nearly luminescent. The effect was disquieting. In America she would be in high school. In Burkina Faso she was the paramour of a corrupt warlord three times her age.

Bolan forced himself to look away.

The sergeant on Le Crème’s right shut the briefcase and placed it on the floor at his colonel’s feet. Bolan looked around the room. An expensive-looking portable stereo played hip-hop music featuring a French rapper. A bar stood against one wall and a motley collection of bottles sat on it, devoid of import tax stamps. Cigar smoke was thick in the room.

Bolan placed his hands palm down on the table and pushed himself up. He rose slowly and nodded to the colonel, who didn’t bother to return the favor. Bolan looked over at the gendarme who had opened the door. The man’s eyes were slits of hate.

The big American crossed the room, keenly aware of how many guns were at his back. He placed his hand on the door and slowly turned the knob. Coolly he swung it open and stepped out into the falling rain.

As he pulled the door closed behind him, Bolan saw headlights coming down the road. He stepped into the shadows beside the door and let his hand rest on the butt of the Desert Eagle. He didn’t want to offer too great a silhouette in case this was some kind of hit squad, nor was he eager to be splashed by any of the offal in the ditches lining the road.

The headlights slowed and finally the car stopped directly in front of Bolan. He saw it was a taxi, not unlike the one he had waiting for him around the corner. The back door opened and a big man climbed out. He was Caucasian, and as he climbed out his windbreaker swung open. Bolan saw two pistols tucked into twin shoulder holsters.

Bolan let his hand fall away from the butt of his pistol and assumed a neutral stance. The man rose to his full height and turned toward Bolan. He was square jawed and wide shouldered, his hair and beard both full and reddish tinged. When he faced the Executioner they stood eye to eye.

A scar turned the corner of the man’s mouth up in a perpetual sneer, and his skin was ruddy and heavily pockmarked over strong, almost bluntly Germanic features. He was holding a battered leather briefcase in one big hand. A gold signet ring sat on one thick pinkie.

Bolan nodded. The man sized him up like a professional boxer and then, almost grudgingly, nodded back. The man obviously knew why Bolan, a Westerner, was there. It was the same reason the man himself had come to this place.

Bolan turned and began walking down the street toward where he had instructed his own taxi to wait for him. Behind him Bolan heard the man knock on the same door he himself had, just minutes before. A voice answered from inside, and the man said something in a crude French patois. His accent was unmistakably Afrikaans.

As soon as he heard the voice any doubt Bolan might have held was gone. That was the man he had been sent to stop.

6

After the initial burst of automatic weapons fire riddled the wall outside the window to her room, the firing simply stopped. Remaining in a low profile, Saragossa waited out a tense fifteen minutes.

She heard movement in the street and she went carefully over to the shot out window. In the street below she saw armed men running through the square. The motley crew of brigands ran in and out of the UNICEF offices and the front gate of the mudbrick wall surrounding the main Yendere mosque. Islam was by no means the dominant religion in Burkina Faso, but the mosques were almost always the most dominant buildings in any given town in the country.

Weak, Saragossa leaned back against the wall of her room. She thought about making for the roof and decided against it. From the lobby below her she could hear men calling back and forth to each other in rough voices.

She felt flushed with fever, and perspiration dripped off her in sheets. She hurt all over, and she knew she had been irrevocably slowed down. She was no longer confident in her ability to hold out if she had to fend off another attack. She hadn’t packed enough ammunition to recreate the Bay of Pigs. The entire Burkina operation had been planned for one hell of a lot lower profile than it had turned out to be.

Saragossa went over to the bed and searched among her gear until she found her cell phone. She knew better than to think she’d get a signal, but the battery was fresh and other usage options on the device worked.

She crossed to the dresser and pulled out of the top drawer the legal tablet she used for her notes. On the first page, written in her tight, neat hand, was a summary of the information she had gathered about the Iraqi laboratory. This included a brief physical description of the building, its architecture and structural capabilities, a ten-digit grid coordinate and a precise GPS listing, as well as concise notes on the surrounding topography. It was everything she had been paid to deliver stripped down to the bare bone essentials. Using those notes, her intention had been to type up a full report for delivery to the principal in Caracas.

If push came to shove, however, everything they needed, all the information they had paid for, was on that sheet of paper. Saragossa settled herself back down below the window. The rain coming in through the shattered pane felt good against her feverish skin. With her back to the wall she could cover the door, and she kept her mini-Uzi close.

She placed the legal pad between her legs and opened her cell phone. She quickly tapped through her menu and selected the camera option. Carefully she centered the lens on the page. She drew the camera back, bringing the words on the paper into sharp focus. She held her hand steady and clicked the picture.

When that was done, she shut the phone and tore off the sheet with her notes on it, separating it from the legal pad. She folded the paper into quarters, then began ripping them into tiny pieces. When she was done she made a pile on the floor between her legs and used a match from her medic kit to light them.

The paper was consumed in seconds.

Still nauseous Saragossa leaned her head back against the wall. She cradled the mini-Uzi and prayed for her rescue to arrive.

7

Bolan walked into the airport terminal out of the rain. He wore a dark, hooded poncho, and water ran off him in erratic rivers. He scanned the waiting area of the open room and saw the gendarme from the previous night lounging against the wall by a folding table set in front of the small side room that was the customs station. Three other gendarmes and two men in army uniforms were scattered around the nearly deserted room.

The Banfora airport was an international operation. Burkina Faso was so small that it was possible to reach a host of other countries from any of the country’s thirty-three airports, only two of which boasted paved runways. Because of this even the smallest of air terminals held a gendarme contingent for customs administration and at least a small force for security against insurrection. From the looks of the nearly empty terminal, it appeared that almost the entirety of the army had been moved toward the border with Ivory Coast to meet the incursion there.

The gendarme turned toward Bolan as soon as he saw him. Bolan pulled a manila envelope out from under his poncho as the man began walking toward him. The big American tossed the thick envelope onto one of the seats in a row of hard plastic chairs. He saw the man’s eyes follow the envelope. When he looked up at Bolan again, the Executioner tapped the face of his watch meaningfully, then turned and walked back out into the rain.

Bolan walked around the edge of the terminal and crossed a muddy stretch of grass before walking into the tall grass bordering the airport. The land was mostly undulating plains filled with tall grass and short, brushlike trees. Bolan knew as he moved closer to the border the terrain would become increasingly hilly.

Setting up behind a stand of short acacia trees, Bolan watched the area through a pair of binoculars. After several minutes he saw a soldier leave the terminal and run over to a vehicle parked beside a rusting hangar. The soldier started up an old truck with a canvas-covered bed and drove to the front of the airport terminal. As soon as the truck pulled to a stop, Le Crème’s gendarme strolled out of the building and climbed up into the cab beside the driver.

Behind him the rest of the security unit followed, clambering over the tailgate and into the back of the truck. As soon as the last man was in, those in the back shouted something and the truck pulled away from the terminal and drove down the access road toward the highway leading into the township.

Bolan watched them go, satisfied for the moment. The operation had been so rushed there had been no time to implement a more comprehensive strategy than the one just executed. When Bolan was finished, it would take even more cash at even higher levels of government to smooth the incident over. What Le Crème thought was a smuggling operation was something very different.

Briefly, Bolan considered moving his operations into one of the hangars or even inside the terminal itself. It mattered little if the few remaining civilian officials saw his face. But he dismissed the idea. If everything didn’t unfold precisely, he wanted as little potential for collateral damage as possible. In a country where the life expectancy was barely fifty years of age, the people didn’t need to be shot for political machinations for which they weren’t responsible.

Bolan looked at his watch. Communication with Stony Man pilot Jack Grimaldi was based on an arranged timetable. Grimaldi would begin his approach in the Cessna Conquest I in ten minutes. Once he landed the pilot would turn the airplane and point the nose straight back up one leg of the twin strips with engines idling, prepared for an immediate takeoff.

Bolan caught a flash of movement and turned. A Land Rover pulled off the highway and began to speed down the terminal access road. Bolan zeroed in the binoculars on the vehicle windshield. James du Toit’s square head came into focus behind the wheel. Bolan felt a grim satisfaction. Du Toit appeared to be grinning madly at some private joke. His lips moved as he said something to someone else in the vehicle.

Bolan frowned and refocused the binoculars. He zoomed in on the South African mercenary again.

Suddenly a pile of black hair rose from du Toit’s lap, standing between him and the steering wheel. Bolan cursed in frustration. The girl from Le Crème’s shack snuggled into the comfortable passenger seat of the vehicle. The Land Rover pulled up to the airport terminal. Bolan ground his teeth together in frustration.

He didn’t know why the girl was there. Maybe du Toit had given Le Crème such a generous payoff the corrupt gendarme colonel had simply thrown the girl in as a bonus. Maybe du Toit had just bought her. Hell, Bolan thought, maybe she was the guy’s wife, the why didn’t really matter at the moment.

The steady drizzle of rain began to increase. The stiff breeze shifted slightly, and the orange wind sock on top of the terminal spun in a different direction. Bolan watched as the pair got out of the Land Rover and entered the terminal. He had just minutes to figure out how to change his plans.

She’s not important, Bolan tried to tell himself. He didn’t like how it sounded, even in his head. She had chosen her company, and he couldn’t be held responsible for that. His life and the life of Marie Saragossa were on the line. Bolan frowned. He knew what he was getting into, had always known, and it had been his choice. Saragossa was a mercenary at heart. She’d turned down a hundred opportunities to get out of the game since Noriega had fallen. She was in Burkina Faso by choice.

Bolan knew it would be easy for him to extrapolate how many lives could depend on the information that Marie Saragossa held, but it didn’t feel right in the face of a girl cursed by poverty to a short, brutal life. He couldn’t kill her. She was, when all was said and done, an innocent.

Bolan looked at his watch, then back up to the sky. Right on time Bolan’s sensitive ears picked up the sounds of the Cessna Conquest’s big, prop-driven engine. Grimaldi was approaching for his landing. Bolan reached for his sat phone, prepared to scrub the mission. His eyes fell across his little cache. He saw the clackers for the Claymore mines he had set out along the runway where the helipad was located. It was more than enough to take out a Super Puma as it landed, destroying du Toit’s transportation and putting down his eighteen-man strike force.

Claymores were indiscriminate killers, and the back blast area was significant. If du Toit pulled the Land Rover up next to the helipad to rendezvous with his team, the girl would be gravely injured. At best.

Grimaldi landed the plane smoothly despite the heavy rain and crosswind. He began to brake the aircraft as he guided it toward the terminal. Its rear end skidded out to the side slightly as the rear landing gear slid in the mud on the runway. On board the plane the rest of Bolan’s equipment for the mission was secured. Bolan knew he needed his long weapons. While he had wreaked considerable havoc before through the use of his Beretta and the Desert Eagle, he was going into a war zone when he left Banfora. It would be suicide to consider completing the operation armed as he was.

Bolan, his mind racing, debated with himself as Grimaldi taxied the plane into position. At that moment, from over Bolan’s shoulder, came the rhythmic thumping of a powerful helicopter engine. Du Toit had managed to place his troops and equipment in the area of operations in just hours despite the heavy rains.

Bolan watched the terminal, hoping du Toit would leave the girl in the building when he came out to meet his men.

Grimaldi reached the end of the runway and turned the plane smoothly, his tires leaving deep ruts in the muddy strip as he did so. From above Bolan’s head the racket of the helicopter coming in obscured all other sounds. A doorway set next to the observation window opened and du Toit walked out, heading toward the helicopter pad.

Bolan gripped the binoculars. Stay inside, he silently willed the girl. But she emerged from the terminal right behind du Toit.

The pair approached the landing pad as the helicopter hovered into position and the pilot began to lower the powerful aircraft. Bolan had placed his mines on either side of the pad, away from the raised dirt mound, camouflaging them and the detonation cord carefully so they were positioned in a V-pattern facing out from the rear of the helipad.

Bolan watched du Toit and the girl standing on the edge of the landing pad. The South African gave the pilot a thumbs-up as the skids touched down on the muddy soil. Bolan made up his mind. He was willing to risk detonating the Claymore on the far side.

He reached over and pulled the detonation clacker to him. He covered the edge and double-checked the electrical connection by looking for the blinking light in the small, recessed window of the detonator. The connection was good. Bolan looked up.

The pilot began to power down the rotors. Du Toit stepped away from the girl and approached the crew doors as they slid open on either side of the helicopter cargo bay. Beyond the helicopter landing pad Bolan saw the door set inside the frame of the Cessna open up and Grimaldi kick a short rope ladder out the side.

Bolan set his jaw hard and squeezed the detonation clacker.

The Claymores positioned on the far side of the helicopter erupted. Shrapnel slammed into the side of the Super Puma with ruthless efficiency. The frame of the aircraft shrieked in protest, and flight-tempered glass shattered. The explosion was murderously loud, but Bolan could hear the mercenaries’ screams immediately.

Metal struts positioned at the point where the main rotor shaft met the roof of the helicopter shredded under the impact of the steel ball bearings, and the still spinning blades drooped dangerously. Bolan realized that if he triggered the second Claymore the mortality rate would be final for the South African mercenaries. He looked at the girl, hating that she was there, but he couldn’t bring himself to do the smart thing.

Du Toit had been thrown to the ground and behind him the girl cowered at the explosion. Du Toit rose and pulled the pistols under his arms clear of their nylon holsters. Wounded mercenaries stumbled out of the helicopter, holding injuries, their clothes soaked in blood.

Bolan came up with the Beretta 93-R ready. He thumbed the selector switch to the triburst setting and hooked the thumb of his free hand through the oversized trigger guard. He swiveled, running for the terminal from his concealed position.

Du Toit saw the motion and spun, his pistols coming up. Even across the distance Bolan could see the other man’s eyes widen in the shock of recognition. The Afrikaner’s face hardened in determination, and he triggered the twin pistols.

Bolan fired the Beretta twice, aiming low and letting the recoil climb the muzzle up as six rounds spit out, speeding toward du Toit. Bolan’s rounds flew wide as du Toit’s own shots tore into the turf two steps behind the Executioner. With each stride Bolan’s feet jarred into the mud and falling rain slashed at his face, forcing him to squint against its force.

Behind du Toit, Bolan saw the scrambling mercenaries heading for cover, some helping their wounded comrades, others simply throwing themselves into mud puddles in an effort to escape the flying lead. Bolan triggered two more bursts, but du Toit was already scrambling and the falling rain obscured the Executioner’s aim.

Bolan reached the corner of the terminal and raced around it. Mud splashed up his pant legs as he ran along the front of the building. Through the windows he saw the few remaining civilians, clerks and customers, rushing toward the back observation window that opened out to the landing strips.

Out of sight of du Toit, Bolan continued sprinting down the length of the terminal. He came up to du Toit’s Land Rover and pumped two bursts into the vehicle, puncturing the radiator and front passenger-side tire. Bolan risked a glance behind him as he neared the rear of the vehicle.

Du Toit came around the corner low, his pistols leading the way. Bolan twisted into a side shuffling gait and lowered the Beretta to his waist before triggering a quick blast at the crouching mercenary. The shots scored the side of the building, knocking chips of masonry flying and forcing du Toit to duck back around the sharp corner.

Bolan scurried behind the back of the Land Rover and went to one knee. Filthy water soaked the material of his jeans, chilling him unexpectedly. He took the Beretta into two hands and drew a bead on the edge of the terminal.

Du Toit did a quick sneak and peek around the edge of the building after changing his elevation in an attempt to try to throw off Bolan’s aim. A gust of wind blew stinging drops of rain into the big American’s face. He triggered the Beretta, missing du Toit but forcing him to duck back around the building edge once again.

Bolan popped to his feet, weapon held in front of him, and shuffled toward the corner of the building opposite du Toit. He fired the Beretta tight against the line of the terminal front wall to keep du Toit’s head down, then turned and sprinted the last few yards for the edge of the building.

Twisting in midstride, Bolan muscled himself around the corner of the terminal. He put his head down and ran for the tail of the Cessna even as he heard Grimaldi revving the engines to a feverish pitch of mechanical intensity. Bolan hit the danger area between the cover of the building and the safety of the airplane at a dead sprint. He pumped his arms and raced flat out toward Grimaldi’s aircraft.

Bolan risked a look over his shoulder as he ran and saw confused mercenaries fanning out for cover on the edge of the airport landing strips. Stony Man intel had discovered du Toit was holding off armament until his crew was in-country in order to facilitate quick hop times between intervening nations as the Super Puma flew into Banfora. Bolan had still been fearful that the men might have chosen to arm themselves with at least pistols in spite of du Toit’s orders.

This appeared not to be the case. As Bolan raced toward Grimaldi and the waiting Cessna, he heard a burst of fire and knew du Toit had doubled back around the terminal’s far corner. He realized he was lucky to have gotten even as much of a lead as he’d pulled off so far. He felt like cursing the rain and wind that had hampered his aim but held back as he knew it had hampered du Toit’s aim, as well.

He caught a glimpse of a limp arm hanging out of the door of the helicopter. He saw two men covered with blood lying unmoving and facedown in the muck. Past them Bolan saw wounded men being helped by other mercenaries toward the edge of the airfield. He had hurt the South Africans. Not as bad as he’d hoped, but hurt them still.

There was a twin barking of pistols and, despite the wind, Bolan felt the shock wave as du Toit’s rounds tore past him.

Bolan spun as he ran, sliding in the mud and throwing himself flat into the wet earth. He stretched out his pistol and fired back toward the terminal where du Toit knelt by the corner, his back to Bolan’s original observation and ambush hide among the acacia trees. Du Toit fired again, and Bolan heard the rounds strike the fuselage of Grimaldi’s plane, dimpling the airframe.

Bolan returned fire, squeezing off a careful burst. The girl stood on the ground between Bolan and du Toit. She simply stood unmoving in the rain as both men tried to fire around her. Bolan forced himself to look away and to concentrate on du Toit, but the girl’s eyes tracked him like lasers.

On his feet again, Bolan pulled his shot to the left of the girl, still trying to throw off du Toit’s aim. He whirled and raced for the plane. Bolan heard du Toit’s guns go off again and ahead of him Grimaldi started the plane rolling.

Bolan shoved the Beretta into his shoulder sling and reached out for the rope ladder Grimaldi had kicked over the lip of the aircraft door. He grabbed hold with first one strong hand and then the other. He could no longer hear du Toit’s firing over the plane’s racing engines. Grimaldi saw that he was on the ladder, and Bolan felt the plane pick up speed as he clung to the dangling rope structure.

Bolan hauled himself up the ladder as the Cessna began to sprint down the muddy landing strip. He looked back and saw du Toit racing after him, both pistols blazing in the rain. The girl stood still, only her head moving as she tracked the fleeing plane’s progress.

The Executioner reached the top of the ladder as Grimaldi pulled the nose of the plane airborne. The Executioner tumbled inside and yanked the ladder in after himself. He stood in the doorway and looked down as the airfield disappeared beneath him. The rain was falling too hard for him to see clearly, and he was soaked to the bone with it. Angry at the missed opportunity, Bolan grabbed the door and slammed it shut.

“Saragossa had better damn well be worth this,” he muttered.

8

Du Toit lowered his pistols and watched the plane taking off into the storm.

Rain beat into his upturned face, and he fairly shook with the energy required to suppress his anger. He turned and looked at the girl before spitting on the ground, then he examined his helicopter, his beloved Super Puma.

The cargo bay was a slaughterhouse. Du Toit turned away, disgusted. His stomach was twisted in knots. Not again, he thought. He stalked away from the carnage of the ambush toward the terminal building. Bile was sour in his mouth.

A few years earlier du Toit had been part of a small mercenary force headed for Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, to initiate a coup. Instead, the mercenaries were taken at an airport in Zimbabwe while onboard their Boeing 727, awaiting the loading of weapons and equipment.

Du Toit had spent eighteen months incarcerated in Chikurubi Prison, where high tides frequently submerged the first floor with filthy water. He would die before he would go back to another African prison.

As du Toit walked, he grabbed his sat phone and punched in numbers.

“This is du Toit,” he said when the other end was picked up. “We’ve had a snag,” he stated.

Du Toit went on to tell his contact what had occurred, using curt, clipped tones.

“Tell the principal that an intelligence intercept must have happened on their end. If it had been an African or UN based leak it would have been a regiment of Burkina police who stopped us. A single operator using tight coordination air support? That’s Western capabilities only. There isn’t a military or secret service on this whole continent capable of this, besides us or our associates. You tell him he screwed it. Double the price, and tell him to get me operational funds to the bank in Ouagadougou immediately.”

Du Toit stopped and turned, holding the sat phone to his ear. The girl had started to wander in his direction, a blank indifferent look on her face. He ignored her.

“We can still buy our way out of this problem,” du Toit said into the phone. “Good, I’m glad to hear it. I’ll be in contact shortly.”

Du Toit looked at his vehicle and cursed when he realized it was completely unserviceable. It didn’t matter, he realized, and some of the tension in him began to bleed away. As long as the international press didn’t get wind of the situation, then money could make everything right in Burkina Faso. The third world nation wasn’t so backward that bribes were useless.

“Get inside and sit down,” du Toit suddenly said to the girl, speaking French.

He had to organize his men, secure medical evacuation for the wounded and eventually a cargo plane back to South Africa for the dead. He needed to uncrate and arm the men he had left before securing motorized transportation. He needed to get into town and pull money out of the transfer account he’d set up. He had to start bribing people, starting with Le Crème.

He looked up into the sky, turning his face into the deluge. He could see the face of the man who had ambushed him very clearly, each stark line and even the graveyard gaze of the man’s cold blue eyes. He felt a grudging admiration. That feeling changed nothing. If he saw the man again, he’d kill him.

9

“That went well,” Grimaldi said.

“About as well as could be expected.”

Grimaldi pointed toward a laptop in a mesh pouch under the dash as Bolan slid into the copilot seat. Bolan picked it up and opened the screen. “What’s this,” he asked.

“Sitrep,” Grimaldi answered. “Bear and Barb put it together based on a report from the NRO.”

The National Reconnaissance Office was the division of the Department of Defense that designed, built and operated the reconnaissance satellites of the United States government. It also coordinated collection and analysis of information from airplane and satellite reconnaissance by the military services and the Central Intelligence Agency. It was funded through the National Reconnaissance Program, which was only one section of the National Foreign Intelligence Program.

Bolan began to click through the jpeg images, reading the synopses accompanying each photo. He was amazed by the detail and resolution of the satellite imagery, despite the heavy cloud cover from the tropical rains.

“How old are these?”

“I got ’em sent to me en route, that’s up to the minute as of an hour ago. What do the troop movements look like?”

“Like Saragossa’s screwed,” Bolan said.

“Which means you’re screwed.”

“The MPCI is all over the township. They control it. There’s a half-moon formation of Ivory Coast national army around the southern perimeter and a column of Burkina military bearing down from the north with field artillery and a handful of armored vehicles.”

“Too hot?” Grimaldi asked. “The CIA can put a missile from a Predator drone through her front door if it comes down to it.”

“In this weather?” Bolan asked.

Grimaldi simply nodded. Their own plane was being buffeted mercilessly as the Stony Man pilot tried to climb above the storm. Rain lashed the windshield, obscuring vision and, at the same time, maverick air currents snapped the transport plane’s pitch with casual power.

“That’s my point, Sarge. You want to jump in this? The meteorologist predicted a window in the rains for right now. There ain’t no damn window.”

“Weathermen.” Bolan shrugged.

“It’s your call, Sarge, just like always.”

“The storm is strong, but low. We climb up above the storm and I jump from high and sail into the storm once I’m almost directly over target. I should only be exposed to the weather for three to five hundred feet.”

“The wind is pretty calm down lower,” Grimaldi allowed. “The clouds are simply sitting over the area, pissing a storm. These air currents are much higher.”

“See? Easy as pie,” Bolan said.

Bolan began applying camouflage greasepaint and Jack Grimaldi barked a laugh that echoed like a gunshot in the cockpit.

T AKING HIS HEAVY BACKPACK in both hands, Bolan heaved it up and muscled it before him. He shuffled forward, climbing up off his knees and making it to his feet. The black of the nighttime sky appeared out the open rectangular door of the Cessna.

Bolan hobbled ungracefully down the aisle and closer to the door. Suddenly the plane hit an air pocket and lurched. He hit the floor of the plane hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs, and he gasped. Then the Cessna twisted hard as it rolled through the turbulence. The motion lifted Bolan, backpack and all, about four inches off the deck. For one surreal moment Bolan simply levitated.

Then the Cessna rotated again and threw Bolan out into the night sky four miles above the ground.

The ice-cold slipstream punched into Bolan like a freight train. He spun off and away from the airplane. Like a turtle caught on the beach Bolan struggled to flip himself onto his stomach. He looked at his altimeter and saw it reading nineteen thousand feet.

Bolan reached for the ripcord on his parachute. He pulled the cord and felt the parachute separate. He was jerked sharply to a stop and then bounced. He saw the dark silhouette of Grimaldi’s plane disappear above and behind him.

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