He had to trust Doug Rawlings’s judgment

No matter what the odds, no matter what the defenses, the sub skipper had to get in close enough to his target to loose his weapons and kill. With that mind-set, he was predisposed to look for counterattack options.

“What if he has an actual hot weapon on board?” Rawlings asked Brognola. “Along with the nuclear waste we know he had, maybe he has some kind of nuclear device, as well.”

“Oh, my God!”

“That’s one threat,” the captain continued, “that we’ve never had a defense against—a nuke detonating in a harbor. If I was in Garcia’s situation, that’s what I’d do. And Miami is the perfect place.”

Other titles available in this series:

Counterblow

Hardline

Firepower

Storm Burst

Intercept

Lethal Impact

Deadfall

Onslaught

Battle Force

Rampage

Takedown

Death’s Head

Hellground

Inferno

Ambush

Blood Strike

Killpoint

Vendetta

Stalk

Line

Omega Game

Shock Tactic

Showdown

Precision Kill

Jungle Law

Dead Center

Tooth and Claw

Thermal Strike

Day of the Vulture

Flames of Wrath

High Aggression

Code of Bushido

Terror Spin

Judgment in Stone

Rage for Justice

Rebels and Hostiles

Ultimate Game

Blood Feud

Renegade Force

Retribution

Initiation

Cloud of Death

Termination Point

Hellfire Strike

Code of Conflict

Vengeance

Executive Action

Killsport

Conflagration

Storm Front

War Season

Evil Alliance

Scorched Earth

Deception

Destiny’s Hour

Power of the Lance

A Dying Evil

Deep Treachery

War Load

Sworn Enemies

Dark Truth

Breakaway

Blood and Sand

Caged

Sleepers

Strike and Retrieve

Age of War

Line of Control

Breached

Retaliation

Pressure Point

Silent Running

Mack Bolan®

Don Pendleton

Revolutions are not made; they come.

—Wendell Phillips

1811–1884

When a people’s revolution is helped along by external forces, there’s always an ulterior motive, strings attached. When the “revolution” is a cover for vengeance, the strings have to be cut and the puppet master taken down.

—Mack Bolan

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER ONE

Cancun, Mexico

The famed “Strip” of the Mexican resort town of Cancun looked more or less like any other overly developed tourist trap anywhere in a tropical paradise. An eight-mile-long row of expensive hotels complete with tennis courts, well-tended gardens, towering royal palms, spacious pools and cabanas flanked one another along a perfect beach. Interspaced with the hotels were concrete, chrome-and-glass shopping malls, exclusive boutiques, world-class restaurants, glittering nightclubs and twenty-four-hour tequila bars. A brightly lit four-lane boulevard crowded with freshly washed cabs and colorful jitneys ferried the fun-seeking vacationers from one destination to the next.

The Hotel Maya wasn’t the tallest building in the lineup, but it was easily the most impressive. From the outside, the hotel attempted to replicate the design of an ancient Mayan stepped pyramid as could be found at several of the neighboring Yucatan archaeological sites. If, that was, the Mayans had been able to build an eighteen-story pyramid in sand-colored concrete with bronze-tinted windows. Even a hardened pragmatist like Hal Brognola had to admit that it was impressive.

It was a warm, sultry evening, and the big Fed was standing on the balcony of his tenth-floor room of the Hotel Maya looking out over the Caribbean as a brightly lit cruise ship sailed out of the port. A raucous pool party fueled by Happy Hour drinks was in full swing around the pools in the courtyard below, and the live music was close to deafening. So far he hadn’t spotted any young buxom women frolicking sans their bikini tops, but the sun had just gone down, so the night was young. A few barrels of cheap tequila later and the place would really start to rock.

This wasn’t quite Brognola’s usual environment. But he was in Cancun on business and had to admit that this faux pyramid beat the hell out of the normal venue for the biannual meeting of the Organization of Justice Departments of the Americas. Usually the international group met in far less spectacular surroundings noted mostly for their rubber chicken dinners and the Gideon bibles in every nightstand. He suspected that his friend Hector de Lorenzo, Mexico’s attorney general, had a personal stake in the resort to have been able to reserve this swanky place for the week-long conference. With the attendees’ tabs all being paid with the public dime, though, the hotel certainly wasn’t going to suffer any loss of revenue with this crowd.

Plus, with everyone at the conference being either a police officer or justice department official, the staff wouldn’t have to go far to call the cops if things got out of hand. Which he knew they would again this evening before much longer. There was nothing like turning a bunch of cops, lawyers and judges loose in a place like this courtesy of the public coffers. Most of the young women he’d spotted so far looked to be working girls instead of the usual mix of coeds and thrill-seeking, young urban professionals who came to try their luck in Cancun. Since there wasn’t a dog among them, he figured they’d been flown in specifically to service the event. Again, he saw de Lorenzo’s deft touch at work.

Brognola enjoyed hanging loose as much as any other overworked public servant and God only knew, he could sure use a few days off. But while this was a premier place for off-duty fun in the sun of any and every variety known to humankind, he hadn’t come south to party. His mission at the conference was to try to get help with something that had been digging at the back of his mind. With the Western World focused so tightly on the “War Against Terrorism” no one was paying much attention to other potential hot spots in America’s backyard. The Middle East crisis hadn’t yet played itself out, and some doubted that it ever would. But it was still the number one topic on the national agenda and rightfully so; 9/11 wouldn’t be soon forgotten.

Nonetheless, America had other, closer enemies who wished her harm and they couldn’t be ignored. It was true that few of them presented as serious a threat as radical Islamic fundamentalists, but a nation, as well as a man, could die the death of a thousand cuts. His mission was to interest his colleagues in helping him look into something that seemed to be lurking just below the intelligence horizon. He’d had no joy with his quest so far; in fact, no one would even talk to him about his concerns. But this was just the second day of the scheduled week and now that the attendees had blown off a little pent-up steam, maybe he could get someone to listen to him.

He walked back to the well-stocked minibar in his kitchenette and was contemplating his choices when someone knocked on his door. He opened it to find Hector de Lorenzo and, even so early in the evening, the handsome, rakish, Mexican cop-turned-attorney general looked to be half in the bag and feeling no pain.

“Hal—” de Lorenzo hoisted his half-empty glass and rattled the ice cubes “—our dinner reservations are getting cold, amigo. And don’t tell me that you want to eat alone in your room again tonight. I went to all the trouble to find us suitable dinner companions and, believe me, we don’t want to disappoint them.”

“Dammit, Hector.” Brognola grinned as he shook his head. Hooking up with de Lorenzo was usually a one-way ticket to the Disoriented Express and this occasion was proving to be no different than usual. “You know how much I hate this social bullshit. I just want to have a quiet meal and go to bed by myself. I really don’t need to have a bad head in the morning. I have work to do tomorrow.”

“Hal, Hal.” De Lorenzo shook his head in mock sorrow. “That’s simply not done around here, and you know it. You have to show your country’s flag, and wave it proudly, by sharing our libations.”

The Mexican leaned closer and smiled. “Don’t forget, we Latinos are a very social people and we’re going to think that you don’t appreciate our hospitality if you don’t break bread with us.”

As much as Brognola hated to admit it, he knew the Mexican A.G. was right. He needed to be seen as part of the extended regional justice family if he was going to get the cooperation he wanted when he needed it. “It’s not the bread I’m worried about, Hector.”

“Never to worry, amigo—” de Lorenzo beamed “—I’ll see that you get served only the best tequila and not that rotgut you Yankees usually drink.”

Brognola shuddered.

“I promise.”

“Let me get my coat,” Brognola grumbled.

“Good man,” de Lorenzo said. “And I swear on my honor that you won’t regret the evening.”

Brognola had heard that line before, but maybe Barbara Price was right and he’d been working too hard and needed to relax a little.

DIEGO GARCIA GLANCED UP from the map of Mexico on the chart table over to the clock on the bulkhead of the spacious cabin of his pleasure boat. It was 2200 hours to the second.

“Team Six is at its launch point, Comrade,” the radio operator reported from the communications console on the other side of the cabin.

Diego Garcia nodded. They were exactly on schedule, and he had expected nothing less of his men. The last two of his assault teams had a more difficult approach to make, and it would be at least another hour before they would be in position to launch. When his teams went into action, they would follow a series of carefully coordinated actions to ensure that his plan would succeed. Nothing less would be acceptable.

His command post this night was a sizable pleasure yacht cruising fifteen miles off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico in international waters. Anyone spotting the craft on radar or satellite would see only one more private boat sailing past the Cancun resort complex. Externally, nothing showed to make his boat stand out from the dozens just like it in the region. His communications antennas were all hidden, as was his defensive armament. He even had half a dozen women in bikinis up on deck to aid the disguise. Nothing had been left to chance.

A sharp stab of pain in the side of his head caused the Cuban to blink, but he ignored it. He had no time for anything as trivial as a brain tumor right now. In fact, for the next six months that the doctors had said he had left to live, he would have no time for it. In those few months he was going to be totally focused on creating a new New World Order in the Western Hemisphere that would be his last legacy to the world.

His plan wasn’t just something he’d thrown together when he’d learned of his impending death. Not at all. It was a lifelong dream that had the full approval of the leader of Cuba himself. And while there would be no way to directly connect his operation with the Mother Country, Cuba would benefit greatly from it. She would finally become a real world power because of his effort, and his name would live forever in the minds of millions.

Diego Garcia, a ranking member of the DGI, Dirección General de Inteligencia, Cuba’s intelligence service, headed up the supersecret organization code named the Matador. This section had been named for the brave men who stood alone in the sand facing brutal animals many times their size with only a slim sword in their hand to protect them. His motherland could never best the hated Yankees by brute force. There were far too many of them and they were too strong. But, as with the lone man in the arena, through bravery and a thin blade, even the largest raging bull could be brought to its knees.

Like the matador who faced the bull on the hot sand, Garcia didn’t fear dying. When the tumor ate so much of his brain that he could no longer function, he would gladly put the muzzle of his pistol in his mouth and pull the trigger. His only fear was that he wouldn’t live long enough to see the full extent of America’s humiliation. The Yankees had ground his people under their heels for decades, and it was time for them to pay the bill for their arrogance. He envied the terrorists who had struck New York on 9/11, as the Yankees called it, but his operation would cost the Americans much more than just two buildings and a few thousand lives. They had caused the deaths of far more Cubans than that and one of them had been his dimly remembered father.

He remembered so clearly, though, his mother’s face on the day his hero father had been buried. The Cuban leader himself had delivered the eulogy for him and the other Heros of the People who had fallen turning back the Yankee invasion at the Bay of Pigs. During the long speech, his mother had held herself proudly as befitted a widow of a martyr of the Revolution. She herself had been active in the Revolution and would go on to work for the DGI for the rest of her life.

On the morning after his father’s state funeral, his mother had made him stand in front of a framed photo of Cuba’s leader and recite a vow to dedicate his life to bringing death and destruction to the Capitalists who had killed his father. At the time he’d been too young to really understand what she was asking of him, but he had made the vow to please her. He had repeated it every morning since then and continued to do so to this day as the touchstone of his life.

That same morning, his mother had also started to teach him the things he would need to know to be able to carry out his vow. She had lived in Florida before the glorious Revolution and had started to teach him proper American English. As soon as he had the basics down, she went on to teach him how to blend in with the Yankees. Being from an almost pure Spanish bloodline, his features and coloring would allow him to pass unnoticed in the mixed American society.

After entering Cuba’s secret service himself, he had specialized in the foreign branch of the DGI. With his mother’s thorough training, he had been a very successful undercover agent operating in Florida, Texas and Louisiana. His successes were rewarded with his appointment as the man in charge of the top-secret Matador Section. The plan he was implementing this night had already been in existence at that time, but he’d brought new ideas to it and had expanded the program.

Within a very short period, the great United States of America would be on her knees weeping, and he would be a very satisfied man. Few men had ever had the chance to be the driving force behind the destruction of a corrupt empire, and he would die happy.

Going to the head off the main cabin, Diego Garcia opened the medicine cabinet and took out the bottle of pills that kept his growing tumor partially in check. That the medication he needed to stay alive had been developed in the nation he was trying to destroy was an irony that hadn’t escaped him. Even he had to admit that the Americans were very clever when it came to the sciences and medicine, but they were as heartless with their modern wonders as they were with everything else. He had to have his medicine clandestinely purchased for him in Florida because the company that manufactured it wouldn’t allow it to be sold to the suffering people of his, and other poor countries, at a price they could afford.

That was only one small thing that would be different in the new world he was giving birth to this night.

HAL BROGNOLA HAD to admit that de Lorenzo had been absolutely correct in insisting that he go to the dinner this evening. It would have been a tragic mistake for him not to have made the acquaintance of his dinner companion Elena Martinez. Being a staunch family man, he had no intention of taking this any further than enjoying dinner and a few drinks at the table. But it really would have been a shame to have missed this chance to even briefly enjoy the company of one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.

A man who was too old to properly appreciate feminine beauty was a completely useless article, and he was never going to get that old.

“Hal—” Hector de Lorenzo’s grin threatened to split his face “—may I present Señorita Elena Martinez.”

In his cop’s mind, Señorita Martinez registered as five-six and a well-distributed one hundred and thirty pounds. The stats, though, didn’t even begin to convey the effect of the complete package. The low-cut, tight-waisted dress she wore was a stunning advertisement offset by long hair combed down over her back.

“Elena,” de Lorenzo said, turning to the woman, “my old friend Hal is one of the American President’s most valuable advisers, so you should make him feel welcome to Mexico. I might need his help someday and I want him to remember me fondly.”

The woman extended her hand and Brognola felt like a fool, but he bent over it like a Spanish grandee in a forties Zorro movie. “I am honored,” he said.

“As am I, señor,” she replied with a smile.

“Let’s eat,” de Lorenzo said.

Dinner was being served in the largest of the hotel’s open-air dining areas adjacent to the main pool. The scent of tropical flowers and salt water on the warm air and the flicker of torch lights created a romantic atmosphere. So did the intimate laughter of the young “dinner companions” each man had at his table. This was the most sexually charged event he’d attended in a long time where everyone still had their clothes on. With the pool close by, though, that could change at any moment.

The music from the live band wasn’t as loud as it had been during Happy Hour, but it was still a force to be reckoned with. It did, though, make dinner conversations more intimate because he had to lean close to Martinez to hear her low, throaty voice. Which, of course, put him in olfactory range of the subtle mix of her expensive perfume and her natural pheromones. It was a very nice combination indeed and went well with her catlike eyes, silky long hair, low-cut dress, soft lighting, Caribbean rum and spicy food.

He was leaning close again, his face inches from her fragrant hair, answering one of her questions when a switch was thrown and the dining area was hit with harsh light from spotlights around the perimeter. By the time he could blink away the retina burn, a dozen black-clad men armed with AKs entered from the shadows and surrounded the diners.

“Aw shit!” Brognola muttered. He’d come to Mexico to chase a hunch, but it looked as though it had come chasing him instead. There was no way this was going to have a happy ending.

“Hal!” Martinez clutched his arm, her eyes wide.

“Just stay calm,” he told her as he tried to figure the odds.

Since none of the diners had foreseen a need to pack lethal hardware while drinking and dining, there wasn’t a gun in the crowd. The exception was the squad of waiters who had all produced handguns from somewhere, but it looked as though they were on the side of the intruders.

“Everyone stay where you are,” one of the gunmen commanded in English and then Spanish.

When one of the diners jumped up, he was instantly shot. He fell dead across his table, scattering the dishes and drinks. This freaked his dinner partner, who also tried to run, only to share her companion’s fate.

“Stay seated!”

If there was something that cops and prosecutors knew how to do it was to listen to men with guns in the hands. Another dozen gunmen started taking the diners and their companions from their tables and searching them before leading them away. When it came his turn, Brognola went along with the pat-down. This was no time for macho heroics. He did, though, try to steady Elena Martinez when the grinning thug took his time running his hands over her.

When they were both found to be clean, they were led away to the main conference room inside the hotel, where they found more armed men waiting for them. Whoever had put this operation together wasn’t missing a trick. Once there, Martinez was led away to join the other women and Hal was sent over to join the men. The guards allowed no talking, so the men waited with their own thoughts and fears of what was coming next.

Brognola had no fears, though. He knew full well what was coming next. He just didn’t know who was sponsoring this mass hostage taking and what they thought they were going to get out of it. Whatever it was, though, it wasn’t going to be pretty.

CHAPTER TWO

Panama Canal

Dr. Richard Spellman wasn’t a man who enjoyed wasting his time; he was much too busy for it. He wasn’t one of those doctors who kept America’s golf courses in business or one who took extended winter vacations in exotic resorts. For one, he wasn’t a wealthy man, and two, he wasn’t the kind of doctor who could take time off. He was an M.D. bench researcher in a university hospital; not too much downtime came with the job. While his salary was less than stellar by current medical standards, he didn’t really care. He loved what he did. He loved it so much, in fact, that his wife had divorced him and taken up with a California plastic surgeon. Not only was she able to get her face-lifts and boob jobs done free now, but her new husband was willing to take her to exclusive, exotic locales and to parade her to show off his handiwork.

So, being on a cruise ship passing through the Panama Canal en route to the Caribbean was a first for Spellman and totally out of character. But it wasn’t really a vacation, either. The sole reason he was on board the SS Carib Princess was that the Society of Genomic Research was holding its annual meeting on board, and he had been invited to present a paper on his work. Even so, if the association hadn’t picked up his tab for the cruise and offered him an honorarium, he couldn’t have afforded to attend.

He’d been prepared to really hate wasting the time both before and after he made his presentation, but he had to admit that he was actually starting to enjoy himself. He’d never been at sea before and found the experience strangely liberating. Also, after a couple of years eating his own cooking, he was thoroughly enjoying the ship’s cuisine on his all-inclusive ticket.

Spellman stood at the rail watching the early evening jungle along the banks of the canal as the ship approached the eastern lock. In a little more than an hour, they would be in the Caribbean steaming for the island of Aruba. That would be another first for him; he’d never been to a tropical island. He turned when he heard footsteps approach.

“There you are, Richard,” a woman in a light tropical dress said with a smile.

Dr. Mary Hamilton was the other reason he had started to enjoy the cruise. Since his divorce, his social life had been pretty much confined to exchanging mumbled greetings with the surly waitress in the restaurant where he had breakfast. When he’d found himself almost the only single guy in a boatload of doctors with their trophy wives and younger girlfriends in tow, he’d been a little overwhelmed. It made him realize how long it had been since he’d enjoyed the scent of a woman. On the second night out, though, he’d stumbled onto Mary.

She was a woman many men wouldn’t notice. She wasn’t a fashion plate, nor was she young enough to be a centerfold. She was, however, trim, confident and intelligent. That rare combination made her more than exotic to his eyes. Best of all, she was also a Ph.D. research director for a major pharmaceutical company. He worked in a smaller university setting, but their professional lives were similar and they could talk shop. Until meeting her, he hadn’t realized how nice it was to be able to talk about his work with a woman who understood what he did for a living.

“You ready to go in to dinner?” she asked. “The eight o’clock bell just rang.”

Being a man who hated to waste time, Spellman took her arm. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “Rather than standing in line with the rest of the herd at the common trough, why don’t we go down to that little French restaurant on the second deck and eat by ourselves. It seemed like a nice place, and the menu looked interesting.”

He didn’t add that this place he suggested was an intimate little bistro designed more for romantic encounters than for pedestrian dining. But if he was going to get to know this woman better, and he intended to, he wasn’t going to waste any more time doing it.

“Great idea.” Hamilton smiled. “I’m up for a few snails in garlic butter.”

Spellman grimaced. He should have checked on her culinary preferences. But in for a penny, in for a pound. If he needed to, he’d introduce her to breath mints.

NGUYEN CAO NGUYEN stood on the deck of the blacked-out canal tug as it approached the stern of the Carib Princess. On deck with him were two dozen heavily armed Matador operatives in black combat suits. Another dozen men stood behind them ready to take command of the ship after the assault teams had secured it. Doing the takedown in the canal made it easier, and his allies at the eastern lock guaranteed that the ship’s passage under new management would go without a hitch.

With the ship brightly lit, the Vietnamese had no trouble seeing the hatch open in the hull above the stern. A figure in a crewman’s uniform rolled out a long rope ladder and lowered it over the side.

“Go!” he said in Spanish, and motioned to the waiting assault leader.

The black-clad commandos swarmed up the rope ladder, their silenced weapons slung over their backs, and disappeared inside the ship. To keep from being spotted, Nguyen had the tugboat captain back off a hundred yards while he waited. He didn’t mind the wait because he’d been waiting for years to get his payback.

During the Vietnam war, Nguyen had been a young Vietcong agent planted in the USAID office in Saigon. In the aftermath of the Tet Offensive, he’d been exposed and sent to a South Vietnamese prison camp for six years. The North Vietnamese liberation of Saigon had freed him, but when he returned to what had been his home, he learned that his wife had moved in with an American foreign service officer in his absence.

The Yankee was already gone, having fled with the rest of his people in the last-minute evacuation, but Nguyen had hunted down his unfaithful wife and killed her and her bastard half-Yankee child. He could now see that it had been an impulsive act, but he’d been imprisoned for a long time. Had he taken the time to think about it, he would have still killed her, but might not have done it so publicly. His wife’s family was high-ranking Vietcong officials, and he’d been forced to flee to Red China to escape their vengeance.

Even though China and the People’s Republic of Vietnam shared the same twisted Oriental version of Marxism, they weren’t quite on speaking terms. In the aftermath of North Vietnam’s takeover of the South, the Chinese were concerned about continuing their expansionistic policies. The unsuccessful Vietnamese military incursions into the disputed Chinese border territory only confirmed their fears. Therefore, working on the enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend theory, Nguyen was welcomed in China.

When his debriefing revealed his vast working knowledge of American military and political activities, the Chinese took him on as an agent in their intelligence service. After extensive training, he’d been infiltrated into a group of “boat people” refugees from Hong Kong being sent to the United States. Once in the U.S., he settled in Southern Florida and, on orders of his Beijing masters, linked up with the Cuban DGI agents active there.

The Chinese considered the Cubans to be rather unimportant in the grand scheme of world history, and bumbling, overly emotional amateurs to boot. But they were the sole Communist state in the Western Hemisphere and a good launchpad for China’s plans for the region. And Beijing had been making plans for Latin America for decades. Since Chinese strategic thought was always couched in terms of decades instead of weeks, Beijing didn’t mind letting someone else be their front man as long as it served their ultimate goals.

When Nguyen discovered the activities of the Matador Section and reported it to his Beijing handlers, he was ordered to try to get accepted into the secret organization and, given local Chinese assets, to offer the Cubans as an enticement. The Cubans fell for it, and Nguyen soon became Diego Garcia’s second in command. As such, he was personally supervising the takeover of the Carib Princess as it was a critical element of Garcia’s overall Matador plan.

If Garcia’s operation was successful, it would advance China’s long-range objectives without their having to expose any of their own operations. Best of all, if it failed, China wouldn’t be caught up in the inevitable backlash. The Americans had been looking for an excuse to obliterate Cuba for many years now, and the Chinese didn’t want Beijing to end up on the same nuclear cruise missile target list as Havana.

When Nguyen heard the code word over his radio, he motioned to his replacement crew that would sail the ship on to Cancun. As per his instructions, the assault team had executed the ship’s captain and most of the bridge crew. The Carib Princess’s first officer, purser, engineering officer and the Black Gang had been kept alive, though. The Matador replacement crew was experienced with large vessels, but in case something came up, he wanted men on hand who knew the intimate details of operating this particular ship.

As soon as the substitute crewmen had climbed the ladder into the ship, Nguyen started up after them. His first act on board would be to notify Garcia that the ship was theirs.

RICHARD SPELLMAN grandly slathered butter on the last slice of thick-crust bread. “I swear this is the last bite,” he said. “I’m going to have to call the ship’s doctor and order a gurney to roll me back to my cabin.”

Mary Hamilton smiled. “Coming here has to have been one of your better ideas, Richard. But wait on calling for the gurney, my cabin’s right down the hallway.”

“That’s an even better idea,” he said. “But on a ship, I think they call it a passageway.”

“It still leads to my cabin.”

Spellman signed his dinner check with his room number and stood. He was pulling Mary’s chair back when he spotted a man in black heading down the passageway. He was carrying a submachine gun. A second later another gunman appeared. The ship had a small security force, but he’d not seen them wearing black combat suits nor packing automatic weapons. And the way these two men were moving told him that these guys weren’t friendly.

“Come on,” he told her quietly. “We’ve got to get out of here fast.”

“What is it?” She frowned and turned toward the door.

He took her chin and turned her head back toward him. “Don’t look,” he said, “but something odd’s going on. I just saw a couple of armed men in black SWAT suits in the hallway. Let’s look for a back door out of this place until we can figure out what the hell’s going on.”

Hamilton was a decisive woman, but she was out of her element here and didn’t mind him taking the lead.

The cook staff looked up from their chores when the two Americans walked into the kitchen. “Is there a back way out of here?” Spellman asked in English, nodding toward his companion. “Her husband is coming.”

Keeping a straight face, Hamilton translated his question into flawless Spanish.

One of the cooks left his soup pot and showed them to a passageway behind the kitchen.

“I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” Spellman said.

“You never asked.”

“What else do you know that might come in handy right about now?”

She shook her head. “I can’t think of anything.”

“Keep thinking.”

When the cook stopped in front of a door and said something in Spanish, Hamilton translated. “He says that if we need to hide from my husband, we can stay in here. There’s a lock on the inside of the door.”

“Gracias,” Spellman said.

The cook grinned.

The storeroom behind the door was quite large and the door had been fitted with a pair of sliding bolts on the inside. A thick pile of blankets on the floor showed that this was a common trysting place for the staff seeking an afternoon delight.

“Just what we need.” Mary chuckled.

“Complete with enough food and drink to last us for a couple of weeks.” Spellman’s eyes made a quick inventory of the shelves.

“Do you think someone’s trying to hijack the ship?”

“I don’t know, but we should be okay if we stay in here.”

There was a porthole at the end of the compartment, but he couldn’t see anything through it beyond the jungle lining the canal.

“How long do you think we’ll have to stay here?”

“I’ll be damned if I know,” he replied. “But if we hear any shooting we’ll be safe, at least until we reach a port somewhere.”

She glanced down at the pile of blankets. “I’m sure we can stay busy till then.”

Seeing the look in her eyes, so was he.

“This would’ve been better in my cabin.” She smiled. “More comfortable.”

He grinned. “I think we’ll be able to manage okay here.”

THE SPRAWLING PEMEX facility at Vera Cruz Llave was one of the Western Hemisphere’s largest oil refinery complexes. Crude oil from dozens of Caribbean and South Atlantic offshore, deep-sea oil platforms was pumped in to be processed into everything from bunker fuel to Avgas. Because of the never-ending court battles being waged to terminate such industrial activities as refining in the United States, more and more American oil companies were sending their crude to Mexico for processing. This arrangement was a boon to the Mexican economy and got the environmentalists and their vulture lawyers off the backs of American “big oil.”

Pemex wasn’t unaware that their refineries were prime potential terrorist targets. Even with the successes of the ongoing war on terrorism in the Middle and Far East, Latin American terrorism was still a common fact of life. Here, though, it wasn’t Islamic radicals causing trouble, but the home-grown whackos. There were still a few Marxists who still dreamed of dusty socialist glories to be won by the gun. But Native Indian separatists and would-be socialist land-grabbers were more likely to use terror tactics as were some of the drug cartels and out-of-office opposition parties.

As was common in all of Latin America, Mexico had more private security forces than it did police, and Pemex had the largest single security force establishment in the country. Sharp uniforms and modern weapons made the company cops look good, but the relatively low pay and almost complete lack of training made them little more than paper tigers. They would be no match for the forces Paco Domingo was moving into place against them.

Domingo was publicly known as the fiery leader of a militant oil field workers’ union. To Diego Garcia, though, he was one of a number of deep-cover Cuban Matador agents who had been placed in Mexico years earlier. Some of these men had been undercover for more than ten years, but all of that waiting was over now. One of the main Matador targets this night was Mexico’s petroleum industry, but other critical infrastructure systems would be taken over, as well. The electrical power generation facilities were high on that list as were the ports and the air traffic control system. And, of course, the presidential palace in Mexico City.

Come morning, Mexico would finally belong to the people. The rule of the powerful old families and corrupt business elites would be ended, and the people would be presided over by their “chosen” representatives—Paco Domingo and his deep-cover associates.

That thought sustained him when he drove up to the main gate of the Pemex complex. This was an impressive security hard point complete with razor wire, a remote-controlled traffic barrier, security cameras and half a dozen armed guards behind bulletproof glass. It looked formidable, but it was mostly show because the checkpoint was manned by idiots.

Domingo stopped his SUV in front of the barrier and honked. The security officer who came out of the booth recognized him and walked up to the open driver’s-side window. “You’ve been banned from this place, Domingo. Move on before I have to shoot you.”

“I have to talk to the company officer in charge tonight,” he replied. “I’ve learned information about a threat to your plant and I have to tell him about it.”

The guard laughed. “That’s a new one coming from a union bastard like you. You’d be happy to see this place burn down to the ground.”

“You idiot,” Domingo gritted. “My people need their jobs here so they can feed their families. They’re not crazy enough to destroy their own jobs. This is a foreign threat to the plant, and it’s serious.”

“Okay.” The guard reluctantly reached for his radio. “But if this is some kind of a trick, Domingo, you’re going to pay for it.” He pointed to the video camera. “This is all on tape, you know.”

“Just let me talk to the man in charge.”

A few minutes later a BMW drove up, the barrier was opened and a man in a suit and tie walked through. “I’m Valdez,” he said. “What’s this about a threat here?”

“It’s no threat,” Domingo said as he pulled out a silenced pistol and shot the guard in the forehead. The company man got two rounds in the back as he turned and fled for his car.

Four black-clad gunmen stormed out of the darkness and rushed the guardhouse. A few shots later it was over. With the main gate secured, Domingo radioed for the rest of his assault force to move in. Twenty more armed, black-clad men emerged from outside the cone of light, slipped through the perimeter and fanned out, weapons ready.

The Pemex refinery was about to become the property of the people of Mexico.

A HALF AN HOUR later the leader of the strike team reported to Domingo. “The entire complex is in Union hands, boss.”

“Good.”

As with any successful revolutionary, Domingo never let the right hand know what the left was doing. His militant Union brothers might have been a little apprehensive had they known that he was working more in the name of the Cuban DGI than he was in theirs. It would turn out the same in the end, though, and that’s what really counted.

“Comrade Engineers,” he said, turning to the dozen or so grim-faced men standing around a van sporting caution markings, “it is time for you to do your part.”

“Yes, Comrade.” The explosives engineer smiled. When he and his men were done with their work, all it would take would be a single push on a button and the largest oil refinery in Mexico would go up in flames. And, until the rightful demands of the union workers were met, not a single drop of gas would leave the place.

Domingo reached into his SUV for the radio to make his report.

DIEGO GARCIA SMILED as he stepped off his boat onto the brightly lit yacht dock at the Cancun marina. The initial phase of the plan had gone like clockwork. The Cancun peninsula was completely secured, the Carib Princess was in his hands, as were as most of the targets in Mexico. He had expected nothing else from his Matador teams, but he knew that the Goddess of Fate could always unexpectedly deal herself into the game. She’d been smiling on him this time, though, which meant that the rest of the operation should continue according to plan.

When the sun rose over Latin America in a few hours, it would be on a new world in the making, a world of his making.

CHAPTER THREE

Cancun

The mood in the main conference room of the Hotel Maya could only be called grim. It was approaching dawn, and raw nerves had kept most of the conference hostages from sleeping. The heavily armed, black-clad guards had reacted swiftly with rifle butts to any attempts at conversation, so the men had been left to stew in their anger.

Hal Brognola was an old hand at the crunch game and knew how to keep his emotions firmly in check. He, too, was outraged at being taken hostage. But he knew that wasting his energy on things he had no control over was a useless exercise.

He’d catnapped throughout the night while still staying alert to exploit any opportunity that might have presented itself. Unfortunately, though, the silent guards hadn’t blinked. With the dawn, additional armed gunmen walked into the room, which only increased the tension.

To some, the newcomers might have been a guard shift change, but Brognola had no trouble identifying that they were a command group. The head honcho was easy to spot. He was a light-skinned Hispanic who looked as if he had a Spanish grandee somewhere in his bloodline. He appeared to be in his mid-fifties and had a relaxed, military bearing. His eyes swept across the roomful of captives but revealed nothing. The way the other men treated him, told Brognola that the show was about to get on the road. He was glad to see the newcomers settle at one of the conference tables.

Not having been able to talk to his fellow captives, Hal couldn’t even begin to guess what this was all about and he looked forward to going one-on-one with his captors. Being interrogated always worked both ways, and he should be able to pick up some information. There was no doubt that he and his fellow conferees had some perceived value as hostages. Were that not the case, they’d have simply been gunned down in reprisal for some real or imagined wrong done to someone, somewhere, sometime ago. The usual terrorist excuse for brutality.

They were considered valuable, so the only question was what they would be held ransom for.

He was a bit surprised when he wasn’t the first man to be taken over to the head table. The American representatives bore the brunt of the kidnappers’ displeasure so the others could see how tough they were on the biggest threat. His friend Hector de Lorenzo got first honors. Hal wasn’t close enough to overhear what was being said, but Hector didn’t hide the fact that he was royally pissed. The questioning was short, and de Lorenzo was led away.

When the A.G. of Panama was called out next, Brognola let himself relax. There was no point in getting amped up until his time came, but he automatically patted his empty coat pocket anyway.

He was catching another catnap on the floor when he was called for his turn in the barrel via a rifle butt in the middle of his back.

MISTER HAROLD BROGNOLA, the honcho read in almost unaccented English from what looked like a rap sheet. “Let’s see, you’re usually called Hal by your good friend the President, right?”

“And you are?” Brognola answered the question with one of his own.

The honcho’s eyes bore into him. “I would answer the question if I were you.”

Brognola met his eyes and shrugged. “You know who I am. You have my passport.”

The honcho nodded curtly, and the guard hovering over Brognola reversed his AK and slammed it into the pit of his stomach.

He’d seen it coming and tried to move with the blow, but it still took his wind. As soon as he could breathe again, he straightened.

The interrogator leaned forward. “Mr. Brognola, a man of your high position in government can’t be stupid enough not to recognize the realities of what is taking place here today. You are my prisoner and regardless of who you might be in your American Justice Department, or who your friends in Washington are, whatever may be left of your life is solely in my hands now.”

The honcho smiled. “You can play childish macho cowboy games with me if you want, but I can assure you that you will answer my questions sooner or later.”

Brognola knew that to be a simple statement of fact. He had no amateurish illusions about the realities of going through an extended interrogation. But he wasn’t about to play ball with this asshole until he absolutely had no other choice. If he was held long enough, or if they brought out the chemical interrogation gear, he’d have to talk. But he really didn’t expect to be here that long.

As the honcho had said, he had friends.

“We’ll see.” Brognola didn’t blink.

“Yes, we will,” the man replied. “And by the way, I am Diego Garcia. You are going to get to know me well before this is over.”

A feminine scream split the air and the captives, not knowing who’s woman was being mistreated, turned toward the sound. Brognola didn’t, however.

“You’ve got some real winners working for you here, mister,” he said, his eyes locked on Garcia’s. “It looks like they have to beat up the women to get enough balls to talk to the—”

Focused on Garcia, Brognola didn’t see the rifle butt coming this time, but he rode it out.

The Cuban turned to one of his gunmen. “Take Mr. Brognola to the jail.”

“Sí, Jefe.”

Garcia watched impassively as the Yankee was escorted out of the room. The report he had received from the Matador operative at the Latin American Desk of the U.S. State Department had been accurate. Hal Brognola was a force to be reckoned with, but he also had his weaknesses. What the American saw as his strength, the Cuban saw as something to be broken. His arrogance would also contribute to his downfall as would his protective instincts toward the women. Though the Yankee hadn’t turned when the woman screamed, Garcia had seen the anger flash in his eyes.

Though the “interview” had been short, it had told Garcia much and confirmed that he had chosen his man well. Had he wanted, he could have arranged for the attorney general of the United States to have attended the conference and taken him hostage instead. But the American A.G. was always a political flunkey who had been given his job as a payoff for services he had rendered to the party of the incoming President. Brognola was a career Justice Department officer, and he had more than likely forgotten more about the workings of U.S. law-enforcement agencies than the A.G. would have time to learn before he left office. And his intimate knowledge was the goal.

If it wouldn’t have tipped his hand, Garcia would have simply snatched Brognola and the Mexican de Lorenzo and let the rest go free. The other lawmen he’d gathered up were of little use to him except as expendable pawns as his plan played out over the next few weeks. And, to get what he needed from the Yankee, he fully intended to waste a couple of them. He would expend several of the women, as well, if that was needed to get what he wanted.

Except, of course for the delectable Señorita Martinez, Brognola’s dinner companion. He was very careful about not sacrificing his top operatives.

THREE OF DIEGO Y GARCIA’S goons escorted Brognola to an SUV parked out in front of the hotel, handcuffed him and tossed him into the back seat. A short drive brought them downtown to a three-story building with an ornate, cast concrete, pseudo-Mayan facade. The sign carved into the facade, though, told it all—Municipal Jail.

Brognola was hustled in, uncuffed and shoved into an empty cell. Being in jail in Cancun wasn’t like being locked up in the Mexican border towns traditionally seen in many movies. The resort town’s facility had been built to house inebriated young American tourists and was more of a cheap but clean motel than a jail. Since the resort was one of the Caribbean’s prime college break hangouts, they were aware that they had to treat their customers with kid gloves. If the cops traumatized a drunken frat boy, he and his brothers might not come back for spring break next year. So, for a jail, the accommodations in Cancun were first-class.

That was the good news.

The other side of that coin was that the jail had been built to modern security specifications. There would be no digging the flaking mortar from around a rusted iron bar and escaping from this place. The windows looked to be Lexan, the bars were stainless steel, the electronic lock on the door had been made in Dallas and the video camera watching him had originated in Pasadena.

At least, though, he had a comfortable place to lie down. That he was being housed alone in a four-man cell wasn’t a good sign, but he had to play it as it lay. The best thing a man in his position could do was to eat and sleep every chance he could get because he didn’t know when he’d get a chance to do either one again.

Brognola took off his coat, automatically checked his empty pocket one last time, placed it on one of the bunks, shook his thin blanket and stretched out for a nap.

He was asleep in minutes.

BROGNOLA WAS NOT surprised to be awakened only a few hours later. He hadn’t been deceived by the shortness of his initial interview with Diego Garcia. The classic “false hope” gambit only worked with morons and drunks, and he was neither.

A short ride back to the Hotel Maya confirmed his suspicion that he was on for another round with the “Boss.” The man was playing his hand by the book, chapter and verse. But since the big Fed had read the same book, he’d see if he couldn’t stall the process. He was in no bloody great hurry, as McCarter would say, to get his ass stomped into the ground. In fact, to make this come out right, he needed to delay that part of the program for as long as he possibly could.

It was apparent that he’d been included in the bag, because Garcia thought that he was “friends” with the President. On paper he was listed as a Special Justice Department Adviser to the President, but that was just a long-standing cover for what he actually did. And it was imperative that he keep his real job from Garcia for as long as he could. As far as the man’s thinking that he was one of the President’s personal friends, he had no idea where that had come from. But since it was on the table, he’d use it to buy himself as much time as he could.

This time, Brognola was escorted into what looked in happier times to have been the hotel management’s office suite. He was being taken to what looked to be the main office when the door opened and two goons walked out with Hector de Lorenzo between them. The Mexican’s face was bloodied, but he only gave Brognola a quick glance. Hector was playing the game, but with Garcia’s apparent intelligence sources, Brognola was certain that the bastard already knew of their long-standing friendship.

The office was large and tastefully decorated. A chunk of ancient Mayan carved stone was mounted on one wall, a minor Riviera painting on the other. Garcia was seated behind a huge, ornately carved, dark mahogany desk littered with enough electronic gear to run a fair-size war. Still working with an information deficit, Brognola knew whatever this operation was, it was no nickel-and-dime, hostage-taking incident.

“Mr. Brognola.” Garcia greeted him and pointed to a chair. “Please have a seat. It is time that I let you know why you are here.”

Brognola sat.

“Since it’s been almost twenty-four hours since you were last in communication with your government, I thought I’d fill you in on what has recently happened in Mexico and, of course, your own country.”

Brognola was interested but remained silent.

“You see,” Garcia continued, “since you went down to dinner last night with the lovely Miss Martinez, the Western Hemisphere has changed for the better. The government of Mexico is now in the hands of its rightful owners—the people. As, by the way, are the nations of Panama, Guatemala and Ecuador. As a result of this, your nation will no longer be able to manipulate the destinies of those who live in what you North Americans like to refer to as Latin America. The Yankee hegemony has ended for all time.”

“And how was this great feat accomplished?” Brognola asked.

“The will of the people is being brought to bear—and very successfully this time.”

“Under the leadership of what Communist party this time?” Brognola made a guess. “China’s?”

“Oh, no,” Garcia quickly replied. “This is completely our own affair. Our socialist brothers in China have assisted us in several ways, true, but this is a spontaneous true expression of the people themselves.”

“When pigs fly!” Brognola laughed. “Man, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that crap about ‘the will of the people.’ All you Communists are the same, but it’s never worked and it never will. The only thing that’s going to happen to the people is that they’re really going to get royally screwed now.”

Garcia didn’t rise to the bait. “Let me show you why it’s going to work this time. As I said, this revolution has come directly from the people themselves, and it’s long overdue. They have been repressed long enough and now they’re finally taking back what’s rightfully theirs.”

He picked up a TV remote from the desk, clicked it and the set mounted on the wall flashed to a San Diego channel. A helicopter-mounted camera was showing a scene of some kind of massive riot with tens of thousands of people involved. It was so large that it filled the entire field of vision of the camera. It took several moments before Brognola recognized that he was looking at what had been the U.S.-Mexican border crossing point at Tijuana.

The barriers that had controlled the endless streams of traffic coming and going were gone. The buildings that housed the Immigration and Customs offices were being literally torn down by bare hands. The vehicles waiting in line to cross the border when the onslaught struck were being looted or overturned and set on fire.

A clearly panicked young TV reporter sounded near tears as he did the voice-over. “We have just gotten word that the governor has called up the National Guard, but local authorities say that—” The transmission abruptly ended.

“Jesus!” Brognola said softly.

Garcia smiled. “Most of your country was stolen from my people and, as you can plainly see, we are taking it back now.”

“We have an army, you know,” Brognola said, “and we won’t let something like this happen without responding.”

“Most of your regular army is overseas fighting the so-called ‘terrorists,’” Garcia stated accurately, “leaving your reserves and National Guards at home to protect you. And, do you really think that those soft, part-time, citizen soldiers are going to fire on unarmed women, old men and children and kill them? You Americans are cruel, but even I don’t think they will do that.”

Brognola was stunned. The United States military could bring almost unimaginable force to bear on any armed enemy. The stronger the enemy, the greater the force. But firing on unarmed civilians, particularly women and children, went against everything America stood for. America extended a helping hand to such people, not a bayonet.

Garcia leaned forward, his eyes glittering. “Take a good look, Brognola. You’re watching the fall of the most corrupt government in human history, and it can’t come a minute too soon for me.”

The Cuban blinked and his hand flew to the side of his head. For a brief moment his eyes went unfocused, but it passed.

“And,” he continued, “California isn’t the only place where America is feeling the righteous rage of the people.”

He clicked the remote again and a scene from what had to be the beachfront of a city in Florida appeared. A flotilla of boats, both large and small, were drawn up close to the shore and their decks were filled to overflowing. The smaller boats were heading in through the surf to beach themselves while people jumped from the larger ones to swim ashore.

A huge crowd had gathered along the beach and were successfully holding the police at bay to allow the boat people to reach land. Tear gas canisters were flying and the riot squads were out in force, but they were too few and were being pushed back. Every time one of the boats ran itself up onto the beach, hundreds more jumped down to join the crowds fighting the police.

As Brognola watched, one flank of the police line broke and the crowd surged forward. When one of the cops slipped and fell, he was trampled into the concrete. As soon as the mob reached the shops flanking the street, they started looting. As the camera panned, he saw smoke rising over a mall as another crowd blocked the fire trucks.

“That is right outside Miami Beach, Florida,” Garcia said. “The boats are full of people from all over the Caribbean who have decided to immigrate to America so they can share the fruits of their ancestor’s slave labor. The world is coming to America to take what is theirs.”

“You’re one sick bastard,” Brognola stated.

The rifle butt to the back of his head sent him reeling into unconsciousness.

CHAPTER FOUR

SS Carib Princess

The requisitioned storeroom behind the cruise ship’s French café had served well as an impromptu playroom, and Richard Spellman and Mary Hamilton didn’t drift off to sleep until the early morning. Part of their sleeplessness, though, resulted from the occasional muffled gunshot heard in the night.

When sunlight streamed through the porthole on the two voluntary stowaways and woke Spellman, he glanced at his watch and saw that it was a little after nine. Getting up carefully so as not to wake Mary, he went to the porthole, but only saw open sea. Obviously the ship had passed through the canal into the Caribbean while they’d been in their self-imposed, but-not-completely-unwelcome exile.

“Richard?” Hamilton said.

“Right here.” He turned back. “We’re at sea, and my guess from the sun angle is that we’re heading south. At least we won’t starve, though. Hiding in a restaurant storeroom is definitely the way to stow away.”

“How’re we going to know when we’re safe?” Hamilton asked.

“Damned if I know,” Spellman admitted. “This sounded like a great idea last night and I’m convinced those were shots we heard, so I think we made the right move. The problem is that locked away like this, we don’t have any idea what’s going on out there. I’ve got a feeling, though, that I’m not going to be presenting my paper today.”

The gunfire in the night had scared Hamilton as nothing else had ever done, but Richard’d had a calming effect on her and it was still working.

She smiled slyly. “I guess we’ll just have to find something to keep ourselves occupied then.”

RICHARD SPELLMAN was no sailor, but later that afternoon he recognized that the ship had reduced her speed and he chanced a peek around the edge of the porthole.

“Where do you think we are?” Hamilton asked.

“It looks like we’re coming up to some resort mooring for cruise ships,” he replied. “If I had to guess, I’d say that we’re somewhere in Mexico. Maybe the Yucatán.”

“What’s going to happen to us?” the woman asked before she could stop herself. She hated playing the helpless woman with him, but she admitted to herself that she was scared. So far, Richard had been very calm, considering the circumstances, and in comforting her, had calmed her fears. Now that they had arrived at some kind of destination, though, the fear came flooding back.

“I don’t have much experience at this kind of thing,” he admitted, “but my guess is that we passengers have been taken hostage. For what, I have no idea. I don’t know anything about Mexican politics.

“But—” he snuck another peek “—like it or not, I think that we’re about to go to school for a cram course.”

She shook her head. “How can you be so damned calm about this? I mean, I don’t mind, but aren’t you scared half to death? I know I am.”

He turned back. “Sure I’m scared,” he said. “Any rational human in this situation would be. But I’m saving it up for the right time to freak out. You know, a time and place where it might be useful.”

She smiled in spite of herself and felt her fear ebb again. If she was going to die on this trip, at least she’d found someone she wouldn’t mind dying with.

“You’re a very funny man,” she said. “And if we can get out of this mess, I think I’m going to want to see more of you. A lot more.”

“That’s a date.” He grinned. “But first we have to figure out what in the hell we should be doing next. What do you think about trying to sneak off this damned thing as soon as it docks?”

She glanced around the storeroom. “There’s got to be more room to run out there than there is in here.”

“Good girl.”

THE CRUISE SHIP was met at the Cancun moorage by Diego Garcia, a small fleet of buses and a couple dozen of his Matador gunmen. Nguyen Cao Nguyen, the first man down the gangplank, was met on the dock by the Cuban.

“Here they are, Comrade,” the Vietnamese said, “packaged and delivered as you requested. Almost seven hundred and fifty of the international community’s top medical men, their women and their children. And, as we expected, most of them are Yankees.”

“Any casualties?” Garcia asked.

“None.” Nguyen shook his head, referring to his own Matador team. The deaths among the ship’s crew simply didn’t count, and the passengers who had tried to resist were too few to mention, either. Since the bodies had been dumped over the side, he hadn’t been able to reconcile the passenger manifest with the head count, though. But again, a few hostages more or less wouldn’t really matter.

“Do you have the people I asked for selected?”

Nguyen nodded. “Of course, Comrade,” he replied. A last-minute change to the master plan was to mix the political and medical hostages. He didn’t understand the reasoning behind the decision, but it didn’t really matter.

“Very good,” Garcia said. “Bring them out now and tell your people to keep the ship ready to sail on a moment’s notice.”

This was another change to the carefully formulated plan he had helped put together, but again he had to go along with it. “Where?”

“Anywhere we might have to go,” the Cuban said. “So have the fuel bunkers topped off immediately.”

Nguyen took out a portable radio and spoke into it. “They’re coming up on deck.”

“As soon as they’re transferred to the hotel,” Garcia said, “I’ll send some of the government hostages over to you. They’ll be easier to guard here.”

“I’m ready for them, Comrade.”

Under the guns of the Matador guards, the selected passengers started to file down the gangplank and onto the waiting buses. The men were grim-faced, the women visibly frightened. These weren’t people who were experienced with anything like this and their imaginations were obviously running away with them. There weren’t that many children, but they had picked up on their parents’ concern and looked dazed.

Garcia secretly smiled as the passengers were led away. Even though these doctors were educated, privileged men and women, like the rest of the Yankees, they were soft and would be no problem for him to hold captive for as long as he wanted.

THE TWO-SEAT, sea-gray camouflaged, Marine TAV-8B Harrier jet sat alone in a remote hangar at the U.S. Navy airbase at Corpus Christi, Texas. A squad of armed Marines secured the hangar from unauthorized visitors while the Navy ground crew gave the jump jet a final check-over. A figure in a flight suit broke away from the plane and walked to the locker room at the end of the hangar.

Marine Captain Fred “Mojo” Jenkins was the poster-perfect picture of a hot-rock Marine attack squadron aviator. Of medium height and in his early thirties, with a cocky, nonchalant bearing, he sported the typical buzz cut. He wore a half smile and looked at the world through steely eyes. His flight suit was covered with Tiger patches. Even so, he wasn’t quite sure what to expect from his passenger on this classified flight. He’d never been involved with moving spooks before and had no idea what he’d gotten himself into. He’d made sure, though, to have his crew chief put an ample supply of burp kits in the rear cockpit.

There was no doubt in his military mind, though, that he had to handle this guy, whoever he was, with kid gloves. The Commandant of the Corps himself had told him in no uncertain terms that the orders regarding this man had come down from the very top. That thought was foremost on his mind as he walked up to the man who, wearing an unmarked flight suit, was sitting alone in the locker room.

“I’m Captain Fred Jenkins, Sir.” The pilot extended his hand. “Call sign Mojo.”

“Glad to meet you, Captain.” Mack Bolan stood and shook hands. “I’m Jeff Cooper.”

Jenkins had seen enough spy thrillers to know there was no chance that was the man’s real name. But this guy looked as though he could call himself the king of Egypt if he wanted and make it work for him. He was a big man, but not overpowering about it the way a SEAL or Recon Marine would have been. He wore his size well and projected a sense of total competence. There was nothing overtly threatening about him, but his blue eyes told you not to even think about fucking with him. All told, he looked as if he was the right guy to have at your side in a bar fight.

The pilot turned to the gunnery sergeant who’d overseen his passenger’s suiting up. “Is Mr. Cooper briefed and ready to fly, Gunny?”

“Yes, Sir,” the sergeant replied. “And I think he’s done this once or twice before.”

“Very good.” Jenkins was curious, but knew better than to even think about asking questions. “If you’re ready, Sir, we should launch. It’ll be dark by the time we’re over the target.”

Bolan hoisted his black bag. “I need this stowed in your cargo pod.”

“My crew chief can do that for you.”

“Let’s go.”

JENKINS’S PASSENGER didn’t display any of the telltale signs of being a Cherry flyer and there was no doubt that he’d flown in military jets before. When the F-14s of the CAP that had been ordered to cover his flight in showed up six feet off the Harrier’s wingtips, Cooper hadn’t even flinched. Even the link-up with the tanker for a quick, couple hundred gallon fill-up hadn’t bothered him, and that was more than the pilot could say.

After the JP-4 top-off, Jenkins dropped down to wave-top level for the high-speed sprint to the coastline of the Yucatán Peninsula. The Harrier jump jet wasn’t supersonic, but it didn’t matter at that altitude. Once he crossed over the beach, the pilot flashed his “feet dry” code to the E-2C Hawkeye AWACS monitoring his mission and went on the terrain-following radar to continue keeping it low but out of the trees and native architecture. With his GPS nav system locked onto the LZ, he had no trouble locating the small clearing in the jungle a few minutes later.

Even so, rather than take a satellite photo’s word on its suitability for a vertical landing, Jenkins clicked in the intercom to his back-seat passenger. “I’ve got the LZ in sight, Sir, but I’d like to make a flyover to check it out before I put us down.”

“No problem.”

When the pilot spotted no obstacles to landing, he cranked the Harrier around, viffed his nozzles down, went into a hover and sat his plane in the clearing.

“Thanks for the ride,” Bolan said over the intercom as he unbuckled his seat harness and raised the canopy.

“Good luck, Sir.”

Leaving his flight helmet and aviator survival vest behind, Bolan climbed down and shot Jenkins a thumbs-up. As per his preflight briefing, the pilot triggered the release to the cargo pod shackled under his right wing. Bolan’s black bag fell to the ground and he quickly rolled it out of the way before shooting the pilot a second thumbs-up.

After answering with a crisp salute, Jenkins throttled up, hit his viffer control and the Harrier rose into the air. Balancing his lift, he fed in a little thrust and started forward. As soon as his air speed built to the point where the wings were generating enough aerodynamic lift to fly, he swiveled his nozzles all the way back and left town at top speed. Fortunately he didn’t have far to go to reach international waters again and the protection of the F-14 CAP over the Western Caribbean.

He had no idea where his passenger was heading, but he wished him the best of luck.

BOLAN WAITED UNTIL THE SOUND of the Harrier echoed away in the surrounding jungle before breaking out his gear. Along with his usual personal weapons and equipment, he was packing heavily this time. With this being an open-ended mission, he had rations for three days, a pair of two-quart canteens, a larger than usual med kit, satcom radio gear and extra ammunition. He quickly got into his gear and loaded his weapons.

The pod had been sanitized of all U.S. military markings and could be safely left behind along with the equally sterile flight suit. By the time anyone found them, he’d have Hal Brognola back and they’d be long gone. At least, that was the mission profile, and until he knew something different, that’s what he was going with.

He and Brognola had a history together that spanned almost his entire career, so when the President asked him via Barbara Price to try to extricate the big Fed from whatever was going on in Cancun, he hadn’t hesitated.

Beyond their long friendship, Brognola was the leader of the nation’s most secretive, clandestine operations organization known as the Sensitive Operations Group. When the nation needed a completely off-the-screen response to a threat or simply wanted to get some payback against evil-doers, Brognola’s action teams were the President’s first choice to take care of it.

Because of that, Brognola rarely traveled outside of the United States. And, on the rare times that he did, he was usually accorded Stony Man Farm black-suit protection. This time, though, he’d figured that since he’d be in the company of the top cops from the entire hemisphere, personal bodyguards wouldn’t be necessary.

That the President needed to get Brognola back as soon as possible went without saying. The information he carried in his head went beyond merely being damaging to national security. If the details of SOG were found out, it would be months, if not years, before the damage could be repaired. Bolan knew that Brognola was tough, but the risks of interrogation could never be underestimated, and it all hinged on him being able to stick to his established cover job. If Hal could force his kidnappers away from concentrating on breaking into that, Bolan should have enough time to get him out before it was discovered who he really was.

What should have been a simple hostage rescue operation was being complicated by a severe lack of intelligence. All communications with the region, even cell-phone traffic, had been cut and no one had any idea what was going on in the resort town. But if it had anything to do with what was happening in almost all of the rest of Mexico and the border states, the worst was feared.

The little information that had made it out of Mexico via satellite phones and TV hookups indicated that the nation was caught up in a bizarre revolution. The presidential palace in Mexico City had been taken over, along with most of the state governments. The armed forces were apparently also in the hands of the revolutionaries, as well as most of the major industries and services. That this was more than a traditional Mexican change in government “Pancho Villa style” could be seen in the reports of American business facilities being stormed and destroyed. Other foreign interests were being taken over, as well, but the main concentration seemed to be against U.S. property.

No one had any idea yet who or what was behind the sudden eruption of social unrest south of the border. It was as if the entire country had suddenly gone insane and the insanity was rapidly spreading northward into the United States. The famous border crossing at Tijuana had been stormed by tens of thousands of Mexicans and completely destroyed. The token Border Patrol and Customs police detachments had been overwhelmed and killed before reinforcements could be sent in.

The initial county and California Highway Patrol police units that sped to the scene had fared no better. Most of them, though, had managed to escape with their lives. When their guns hadn’t been able to slow the hordes, they had wisely retreated back down the freeway hoping to put up roadblocks farther north.

Right before Bolan had taken off, he’d received a scrambled update reporting that the invaders had fanned out into the communities around the California border, hijacking vehicles and looting businesses. Police choppers were trying to keep track of them, but it simply wasn’t doable. There were too many incidents to be tracked, much less stopped.

Adding to the problem was that other border crossings areas in Texas, Arizona and New Mexico were also being stormed and penetrated. Florida, Alabama and Louisiana were being invaded from the sea with the same success. If this wasn’t brought under control immediately, the southern half of the United States was in danger of being overrun.

The President had called a state of national emergency and was federalizing all of the National Guard and Reserve units in the southern half of the country and sending them to secure the border. But it would be some time before any semblance of order could be restored to the thousands of miles of border and coastline. Even when that was accomplished, rounding up and deporting all the invaders would take even longer, maybe years. With more than eight million illegals living in the States already, finding and removing this new influx of invaders wasn’t going to be easy.

Against that backdrop of pending national collapse, Bolan’s job seemed simple. Go to Cancun, find Hal Brognola and bring him back.

THE HARRIER’S LZ had been plotted far enough away from the inhabited areas around Cancun so the jet couldn’t be heard, thus Bolan faced a two-hour hike to reach his objective. An H&K 5.56 mm assault rifle ready in his hands, he checked his GPS, snapped his night-vision goggles in place and set out into the unknown of a world suddenly gone mad.

Bolan kept to the jungle for the first hour before coming across a dirt road that ran in the direction he was going. There was no traffic at this hour, so he used it to make better time. With his night-vision goggles in place, he had little fear of stumbling into an enemy patrol in the dark.

The dirt road intersected with the Yucatán Highway right outside the little village of Cancun. A few hundred yards farther on, he hit the first of the shacks on the outskirts of the village and stopped.

Twenty-odd years ago Cancun had been just another sleepy Mexican fishing village on the coast of the Yucatán and not even a very big one at that. Then the area had been “discovered” by modern financial conquistadors bent on conquering their share of the burgeoning Caribbean tourist trade.

Since Cancun had barely even been a village, the developers hadn’t tried to do an Acapulco look-alike and build on the site’s existing Old World Mexican charm because there simply wasn’t any. Instead, they had gone for the gusto, building from scratch, U.S.-resort style. And since they hadn’t wanted to get into the hassle of buying out the villagers and relocating them, they’d built on the then-empty, eight-mile-long sand spit across the bay from the village. The old dirt road through the town had been turned into a four-lane causeway leading from the airport to the hotels on the peninsula.

With only that one bridge between the peninsula and the mainland, whoever held the bridge controlled access to the resort. No one knew yet why the mysterious invaders had captured the strip at Cancun and the thousands of tourists vacationing there. Bolan had to admit, though, that the physical terrain was perfect for what they had pulled off. He’d studied the NRO recon satellite photos before getting on the Harrier, but he needed to make a personal recon before he decided on his move.

CHAPTER FIVE

From a hundred yards out, there were few signs of life in the old village of Cancun, the odd low-wattage light or candle cast a soft glow, but those were about the only lights showing. There was no civilian foot traffic and no signs of any vehicles, even parked, anywhere. Whoever the resort invaders were, they’d obviously swept through and secured this place, as well. But, the Executioner hadn’t seen any foot patrols yet, so they might have gotten overconfident, which was fine with him. He liked it when his opponents were overly impressed with their own brilliance.

Bolan kept to the shadows as he made his way through the village. Were it not for the few faint voices he heard from some of the darkened dwellings, he would have thought the place had been emptied out. What inhabitants remained were keeping a low profile. He was moving quickly when a woman’s scream, sounding louder because of the unnatural silence, split the night. A man shouted and the woman wailed again.

Against his better judgment, Bolan couldn’t ignore it and went to investigate.

Following the sound, he came to a small adobe house a block off the main road. The front door was hanging wide open and a candle or lantern was burning inside, but the light was too dark for him to make out anything through the small window. Stepping up to the open door, he saw what looked to be a man struggling with a woman on the narrow bed against the wall in the corner of the single room.

In the dim light, he didn’t have a clear, unobstructed line of sight, so his right hand whipped the Cold Steel Tanto fighting knife from the sheath on his assault harness. He was through the open door and across the room in three steps. The would-be rapist looked up from his work just in time to catch the blade as it slashed across his jugular.

The thug gurgled his death as Bolan grabbed him with his free hand and pulled him away from the motionless woman. She was unconscious, but breathing and didn’t appear to be badly hurt. He laid his fingers against the side of her neck and found a strong pulse, so he just covered her.

Dragging the corpse outside, he closed the door behind him before taking the body to a hiding place behind what looked to be a tavern. If there were other wandering thugs loose tonight, he didn’t want someone to stumble over it and raise the alarm. From there, he continued on his way.

HAL BROGNOLA was still keeping to his sleep-when-ever-he-could regimen. The world might be going to hell in a hand basket, but there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Yet. He’d been awakened for the first meal his captors had provided in the late afternoon, wolfed down the beans and soft tortillas, used the urinal, crawled into bed and gone right back to sleep.

It was after dark when he was awakened by voices coming down the hall outside his cell. His watch had been taken away during the search the first night, so he had no idea what time it was, but it didn’t really matter. He sat up, swung his legs over the side of his bunk and got mentally prepared to greet his visitors.

Two black-clad Latino gunmen entered the cell followed by a swaggering Diego Garcia. “How do you like your accommodations, Mr. Brognola?” he asked. “It’s not quite your usual fancy D.C. hotel room is it?”

Brognola patted his narrow bunk. “Not bad for a Mexican jail.” He shrugged. “I’ve seen a lot worse. The food’s not quite up to Cancun’s usual standards, though. I expected to eat much better here.”

“You’re eating what the people of Cancun eat on a daily basis,” Garcia said. “They might be able to find work in your hotels, but they can’t afford to eat the food they prepare for you.”

“I don’t think you kidnapped me to lecture me about the local cuisine, Garcia. There’s not much I can do to improve the diet of your ‘people.’”

“Your government has had a chance to improve the lives of the people of Latin America for years,” the Cuban shot back, “but they have done nothing except to work hard to make it worse. Now that the people have taken things into their own hands, they will improve their lives for themselves.”

“By invading the United States?” Brognola laughed. “And stealing what we Americans have created by our own ingenuity and our hard work? That’s very original. I’ve never heard that one before.”

“The people are only taking back what was taken from them in the first place,” Garcia stated. “California, Texas and Florida rightfully belong to the Mexican people you Yankees stole them from.”

“Don’t forget Arizona and New Mexico.” Brognola couldn’t help himself. “We won them, too, when we beat your sorry asses in the Mexican War.”

Brognola didn’t even try to duck when Garcia swung at him. This guy wasn’t too tightly wrapped, but as long as he could get him fired up every now and then, he wouldn’t start asking the questions Brognola didn’t want to answer. He took the blow without flinching.

“Your arrogance is going to cost you dearly, Brognola.” The Cuban almost spit the words. “I know that I could get a good ransom from your Washington friends for you, but I think that I’ll turn you over to a People’s Revolutionary Court instead to be tried for your crimes again humanity. The punishment will be to face a firing squad.”

“Oh, please!” Brognola said. “Put me on trial in a kangaroo court and charge me with what? Being an underpaid career government employee?” He shrugged. “If I worked for the State Department, you might be able to make a case for my having repeatedly committed Crimes Against Common Sense, but I’m just a midlevel federal cop.”

“A cop, as you say,” Garcia replied, “who has the ear of the President. But your President is missing much more than just one of his many overpaid advisers. As of today he has also lost his source of cheap labor and a dumping ground for his toxic waste.”

Brognola frowned. He was no stranger to the incomprehensible ravings of would-be, socialist “saviors of the people,” but this was a completely new one on him. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

“The president of Cuba has just announced his recognition of the newly formed People’s Republic of Mexico,” Garcia said proudly. “The Mexicans will now follow on the glorious path of the Cuban peoples to attain their true freedom from Capitalistic exploitation.”

Brognola wanted to laugh but he knew better. This guy was rapidly descending into true paranoia. “In case you missed it,” he couldn’t keep himself from saying, “we’re in the twenty-first century now. Che was the heart of the Revolution, and he’s been dead for years so, for God’s sake, get over it. After spilling his guts to the CIA, he got stood up against a shit house wall and was shot like a diseased dog.”

Hearing the name of his personal hero spoken of so disrespectfully, the Cuban went berserk. Brognola’s head snapped back from two blows to the face. The first strike opened a cut over his left eye and the second felt as though it had chipped a tooth. He’d been through worse and didn’t react.

Garcia suddenly stopped and stalked out of the cell. One of the goons reversed his AK and smiled as he made as if to jab Brognola in the gut with the butt before following his boss out and locking the door behind him.

Brognola hid a smile as he laid back down again. Once more he had managed to deflect the conversation to lesser topics. But how much longer he could keep getting hit in the head remained to be seen. So far, though, he was taking it without incurring any permanent damage. Barbara Price was always saying that he was a hardheaded bastard, and now he was getting a chance to test that statement.

QUICKLY MOVING through the reminder of Cancun village, Bolan intersected the main paved road and followed it to the bridge that crossed the lagoon. As the photos had shown, the causeway was being guarded from the opposite end. A pair of open-top SUVs with mounted machine guns and searchlights were parked at the far end, and a dozen gunmen loitered nearby. It would be no problem for him to simply take out the security force, but this wasn’t the time to make a lot of noise and leave more bodies behind. Someone was bound to notice sooner rather than later.

His only other choice was to make a half mile swim across the bay, which wasn’t the option he would have chosen. Nonetheless, he headed south down the village side of the lagoon, separating it from the resort area, looking for an alternative to a swim.

A half a mile downshore, he came across a beach shack with several personal watercraft pulled up on the sand in front of it. A couple more small water-craft were under the roof of a lean-to in a state of disrepair; this, apparently, was a repair facility.

A quick check showed that all of the machines had been disabled by having their spark plugs pulled, but that was okay with him. The sound of an unmuffled two-stroke engine in the still night would attract a little more attention than he wanted. The watercraft would still float, however, so he looked around the shack until he found an aluminum paddle. Back on the beach, he chose a dark-colored Jet Ski, dragged it down to the water’s edge and into the surf.

Straddling the saddle, he bent over the handlebars and paddled out into the lagoon at an angle away from the bridge. With few lights showing, there wasn’t much chance of his being spotted against the dark water, but he kept low and paddled strongly, but carefully, so as not to raise ripples. The tide was with him and the trip across the quarter mile of open water went quickly.

On reaching the other side, he pulled the watercraft well up onto the sand and tipped it over so it would look as if it had been abandoned. He took cover above the surf line to orient himself; his GPS nav unit contained a downloaded map of the major buildings in the area. The Hotel Maya, where Brognola had been staying, was at the far end of the strip. But before checking out the hotel, he wanted to recon for a feel of the kind of forces he would be facing here and their locations.

There was an additional risk of exposure by doing it this way, but he didn’t want to go to the trouble of getting Brognola out only to discover that there was no way for them to escape. He wanted to locate his back door first. Even then, finding the man was probably going to be more difficult than it really should be.

There was a comfortable sub-Q personal locator beacon often worn by people like Brognola—or people who were going in harm’s way—that made finding them a snap. A single overhead pass of a satellite or spy plane would activate the beeper, and it would remain powered up for five days. As Bolan well knew, though, Hal didn’t like to wear the miniature beepers, saying that they itched him.

For the lack of the locator beacon to follow, if Brognola wasn’t being held in the hotel, Bolan was faced with the possibility of having to search more than a hundred buildings to find him. And, to make it even more difficult, according to the data dump he’d received right before he’d taken off from Texas, the airline manifests showed that some eight thousand American tourists had been flown into Cancun recently. Of course, there were also the thousands of Mexicans who lived and worked in the area to serve the visitors.

Finding the proverbial needle might turn out to be easier than this job.

WITH ALL THE ACTIVITY at the pier Richard Spellman and Mary Hamilton decided to wait for dark before trying to make an escape. They had also changed into fresh, starched sets of cook’s whites they had found in the storeroom. They weren’t the most practical camouflage to wear while trying to make a nighttime break, but he figured that if they were spotted, they could be taken for the hired help, not escaped Americans on the run.

“If you think you can handle it,” he told his companion, “it might work better if you lead off. With your Spanish, you might be able to talk our way out of trouble. I can pretend to be a deaf mute or something. But if it looks bad, get behind me real fast.”

Hamilton smiled nervously. For someone who was more comfortable in a lab than a battlefield, her new man was proving resourceful.

Grabbing one of the extra tablecloths, Spellman tied the ends together to make a crude bag and loaded it with several plastic bottles of mineral water. Hamilton added a box of whole-grain crackers, some cheeses and a big tin of smoked salmon.

“How about some of those jazzed-up coffee beans?” Spellman asked. “We may need to stay awake until we can find a place to hide.”

“Good idea.”

Spellman slipped the locks on the storeroom door, opened it a crack and peered out. The passageway was clear, and he motioned for Hamilton to follow as he eased out into the hall. The deck they were on was two down from the main one. He expected the main to be guarded, but when he had boarded, he’d noticed a cargo hatch in the side of the ship on one of the lower decks. In L.A. it had been used to load passenger luggage and supplies for the trip. If he remembered correctly, it should be two decks down from where they were.

The passageway outside the café was deserted, and the pair quickly headed for the stairwell leading to the lower decks. The ship’s passenger areas were carpeted, so Spellman barely heard the approaching footsteps in time to grab his companion’s arm and get them both out of sight. The stair steps were also carpeted, which let them move quickly and noiselessly. Two decks down, they came to a hatch labeled D Cargo.

“This should be it,” he said as he undogged the steel door and opened it.

The compartment behind the door was the size of a small house but was divided up into smaller sub-areas holding different cargos. Several of the cubicles held the passenger luggage he’d seen being loaded in L.A., and others held ship supplies. He motioned her inside and dogged the hatch shut behind them.

The steel deck in the compartment wasn’t carpeted, so they stepped lightly as they crossed to the hatch on the outer hull. The sign on the steel door read Loading Berth.

“This should be it,” Spellman said.

The controls for the hatch were simple, but he opened it slowly so as not to make any more noise than necessary. The lights on the pier had been turned off, but the few lights burning on the ship illuminated about a six-foot gap between the hull and the dock. He looked inside the hatchway for a gangplank to bridge the gap, but there was none.

“Can you jump that far?” he asked.

Hamilton peered down at the water. “Maybe if you go first and catch me?”

“First I have to see if anyone’s watching us,” he said softly. “Grab my belt while I take a look.”

“Be careful,” she whispered.

Spellman held on to the door frame with one arm and swung out as far into the void as he could to look up at the decks above him. It was difficult to see anything beyond the expanse of the glossy white hull, but he caught moving shadows at both the bow and the stern before swinging back inside.

“It looks like they’ve posted a guard at both ends of the boat,” he said. “But I don’t think that they’re looking this way.”

Putting his hands on Hamilton’s shoulders, Spellman looked her full in the face. “I think we have a good chance of pulling this off,” he said. “If we can get off the ship, I know we can find someone to help us. I’ll go first and if I’m spotted, I’ll take off running to draw them away from you.”

“I’ll follow you,” she said.

Spellman backed up a few feet, took a deep breath, sprinted for the open hatchway and leaped. He cleared the gap with ease, but landed hard. Getting to his feet, he made sure that no one was watching from the ship’s decks before motioning for Hamilton to join him. As he had done, she backed off to get a run at it and cleared the gap by a foot.

He caught her arm as she came by and kept her balanced on her feet. “Good jump,” he said softly. “Now let’s get the hell out of here.”

“You’re limping,” she said as they started off.

“I was never good at track and field. I hit wrong when I jumped, but I’ll be okay.”

“You sure?”

He grinned. “Yeah, I’m a doctor, remember?”

Taking her hand, Spellman led her across the pier into the cover of darkness.

WHEN BOLAN ENTERED the built-up area of restaurants and shops it was like being on an elaborate, full-size movie set after all of the actors and crew had gone home for the night. No one was on the streets, and none of the establishments was open for business. Again, a few dim lights glowed behind curtained windows, but that was all. Most of the streetlights had been turned off, as well, but that suited him just fine. Shadows were a scout’s best ally.

A couple hundred yards farther on, he saw that one of the plazas along the main boulevard was brightly lit. Taking that as his cue, he decided to find out what was so important that it needed to be lit up. Coming from the side, he noted a handful of black-clad gunmen lounging around the entrance of a sizable building facing the square. The machine gun mounted on top of the SUV parked beside them told Bolan that the contents of the building had to be of interest.

When he got close enough to see the bars on the windows, he realized that this had to be the town lock-up. He had no way of knowing if Brognola was actually being held prisoner in there. But it was a jail and it was being guarded by the intruders, so before he moved on, he would take a look.

Slinging his H&K, he drew his Beretta 93-R and threaded the sound suppressor onto its muzzle.

He was working his way around the plaza when the gunmen made it easy for him. The guy behind the machine gun stepped down and said something to the others who laughed as he walked into the jail. That left him with only three targets to take down, and they all had their weapons casually slung.

Their confidence was admirable and showed that they had the entire resort peninsula under their control and weren’t expecting trouble.

It was time to start changing that.

Bolan stepped unnoticed into the lighted plaza in front of the jail, the Beretta machine pistol held low against his leg.

“¡Hola!” he called.

The three gunmen turned and hesitated for a moment. This stranger was dressed in black, too, but by the time it registered on them that he wasn’t one of them, he had the 93-R up and was firing.

Bolan’s first 3-round burst took the man farthest from him, stitching a tight triangle over his heart. Retargeting smoothly, he put down the second man with another trio of 9 mm slugs before the first gunner hit the pavement.

The last guard had his AK halfway into position when a final short burst took him down, as well.

The only sounds of the hit had been the tinkle of empty brass on the pavement, the clatter of the AK hitting the steps of the jail and the soft thud of the bodies. So, before the machine gunner came back out, Bolan took the steps himself. He paused at the door, but the voices he heard inside didn’t sound alarmed.

Swinging his H&K around on its sling, he switched his 93-R to his left hand and gripped the assault rifle with his right.

Show time.

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