Bolan smoothly ejected the spent round

Seconds later another grenade arced through the air and detonated against a truck at the end of the column, blowing it apart. A quick glimpse revealed that the vehicle’s heavy tires had flattened two of the gunners who had crouched next to it as the burning circles of rubber had become airborne missiles.

The Executioner shucked the spent grenade, fed another into the launcher and punched a third HEDP grenade into one of the troop carriers. The angle wasn’t good, but his goal was to create confusion and chaos. As the first group scattered, unaimed bursts of return fire began, and Bolan knew he had succeeded.

Unslinging his M-16, the Executioner stalked forward into battle.

Hell had come to Honduras.

Savage Rule

Don Pendleton’s

Mack Bolan®

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned, everywhere is war.

—Haile Selassie,

1892–1975

I don’t see color when I see a man. What matters to me is whether his intent is good or evil. If he’s a good man, then he is a good man, and that’s it. If he’s a predator, I’m going to put him 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

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

Mack Bolan, the soldier still known to a very few as the Executioner, crouched low and was perfectly still. His senses, attuned to the sounds of the jungle through long experience, picked out the telltale sounds of men and equipment some distance off. Some barely conscious part of his mind easily separated these from the ambient, natural noises of the beautiful—and deadly—terrain surrounding him.

The enemy wasn’t far away.

He finished hiding the crumpled, night-black HALO chute, burying it quickly and quietly with a few shovelfuls of moist earth and a handful of undergrowth. Then he silently folded the entrenching tool and replaced it on his small battle pack, next to his machete in its strapped-on scabbard. The pack had been specially prepared for him, at his request, by Stony Man Farm’s armorer.

The Executioner paused at movement near the toe of his combat boot. A four-inch tarantula crawled quietly over his foot and continued on, oblivious to the hell that was about to be unleashed. It wasn’t the largest specimen Bolan had seen, by a wide margin. He silently wished the creature a safe journey as he continued on in the opposite direction. An old joke echoed through his mind, a parody of a rallying cry: Forward, toward the danger.

Smiling grimly under the dark tiger stripes of black-and-green combat cosmetics smearing his face, Bolan made a mental inventory of his equipment. He was clad in his customary combat blacksuit, a close-fitting garment bearing multiple slit pockets. The web belt around his waist bore pouches for extra loaded magazines for his weapons. Grenades of varying types were clipped to the belt and to the web harness over his shoulders, to which his pack was also secured. Over this, in a ballistic nylon shoulder holster designed to withstand the humid climate, he carried a Beretta 93-R with a custom-made sound suppressor attached. The machine pistol, like the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle in a Kydex holster inside his waistband behind his right hip, had been specially action-tuned by John “Cowboy” Kissinger. Kissinger had served as the Stony Man Farm’s armorer for so long that few of the weapons carried within the covert facility or taken into the field by the action teams hadn’t felt his touch or undergone the scrutiny of his gunsmith’s eye.

The rifle in Bolan’s fists and secured by a single-point sling was a well-worn M-16 A-3. The 5.56-mm NATO weapon was capable of full-auto fire, and this one was equipped with an under-the-barrel 40-mm M-203 grenade launcher. Across the soldier’s chest was a bandolier of 40-mm grenades, as varied and lethal as the handheld bombs strapped to his person.

Also attached to Bolan’s web harness was a pair of truly lethal-looking blades, Japanese-style fighting tools manufactured by an American importer. The smaller blade had a single cutting edge over eight inches long, with a textured, guardless handle and a needle tip. The larger knife, a staggering weapon almost the size of a short sword, was also single edged, with a pronounced curve and a killing point, fully thirteen inches in the blade. Both wicked-looking knives were useful for only one purpose: killing people.

The Executioner was going to give them a workout.

He had been dropped here, in the dead of night, near the Guatemalan-Honduran border, for that purpose. The call from the secure phone in Hal Brognola’s Justice Department office in Washington had been clear enough, reaching Bolan as he rested between missions at Stony Man Farm. The big Fed, director of the Sensitive Operations Group, had wasted no time telling Bolan that the request for SOG intervention had come straight from the President.

“The Man,” Brognola had said, “wants us to stop an invasion of Guatemala.”

That had gotten Bolan’s attention.

Brognola had gone on to explain that in Honduras, a recent series of military coups had deposed two governments in six months. The beleaguered people of Honduras were no strangers to this type of governmental turbulence, but this time was worse than in the past. A new strong-arm dictator, “General” Ramon Orieza, had seized power, waging an ironfisted campaign of murder and intimidation to keep the terrified Honduran people under his control.

“It’s bad, Striker,” Brognola had said, using Bolan’s Farm code name. “Orieza has turned Honduras into an armed camp. He’s completely coopted the Honduran military, and he has a cadre of shock troops camped outside the capital. We’ve received reports of roaming death squads, political assassinations, even mass graves. Orieza makes Pol Pot look like an amateur.”

“There’s more to it than that, I’m guessing,” Bolan said. He knew only too well that, as extensive as its resources could be, SOG couldn’t pursue every injustice on foreign soil; it simply wasn’t possible. For the President to involve Stony Man directly meant that something far worse was implied—something with international implications that also threatened the security of the United States.

“When the coup took place and toppled first one, then the second local government,” Brognola explained, “I had Barbara put Aaron’s team on alert.” “Aaron” was Aaron “the Bear,” Kurtzman, the Farm’s wheelchair-bound cybernetics whiz and head of the team of computer experts at Stony Man. “Barbara” was Barbara Price, the Farm’s mission controller. Bolan and the honey-blonde, model-beautiful Price had a romantic relationship based on respect and desire. That was as much as either could offer the other. And it was enough. These thoughts flashed through Bolan’s mind unbidden as Brognola went on. “It turned out to be worse than just the usual military posturing, and it warned us of the threat to Guatemala. Bear’s people intercepted several coded communiqués between Orieza and the president Gaspar Castillo of Mexico.”

“He was just elected, wasn’t he?”

“‘Elected’ is probably too kind a word for it,” Brognola said. “While relations between the U.S. and Mexico have traditionally been hot and cold, depending on how the political winds of immigration reform were running, we could generally count on their government as a nominal ally. Castillo’s coalition pushed the moderates out of power and immediately cut diplomatic ties with the United States. His election was marred by dozens of allegations of vote fixing, ballot tampering and voter intimidation. Our intelligence sources south of the border tell us that Castillo has seeded the Mexican military with hard-liners loyal to him, not to mention bribing anyone within reach of a handout.”

“Hard-liners?” Bolan had asked.

“Castillo is a known entity to Interpol and various international antiterror groups. He has a file in our computers that goes way back, though he’s slippery. He’s never been tied, definitively, to the activities we know he supports.”

“Which are?”

“Castillo is a racist, a Hispanic supremacist, if you want to call it that. Has a long history as a street criminal in Mexico City. You’ve heard of La Raza?”

“‘The Race,’” Bolan said. “A term that applies to a pretty broad array of activist groups and even a radio network, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Correct,” Brognola had confirmed. “But the La Raza we’re concerned with is a particularly effective and violent Chicano nationalist group, terrorists operating in Mexico and the Southwest United States. Starting in the 1970s, when the concept began to catch on, the group and other radical splinter cells like it have been pursuing the restoration of what they consider the ‘Aztec homeland,’ which they call Aztlán. Through a movement they call the Reconquista—the reconquering of land once possessed by their people, now unfairly held by the United States, as they see it—they want to reclaim those lands lost by Mexico in the Mexican-American War. When all the yelling and posturing is done, they’d basically like to secure as much of Southern California, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona that they can take and hold by force of arms.”

“Understood,” Bolan had said, nodding even though Brognola couldn’t see him. “But what’s that got to do with the coup in Honduras, and where do we come in?”

“Nobody took fringe groups like this radical version of La Raza seriously before,” Brognola said. “And they weren’t much of a threat, at the national level. They were violent, yes, and they managed to kill several people while pushing their racist views, but they weren’t accomplishing much toward their goals. The sea change in Mexico’s government, headed by a known Chicano nationalist who we think has no qualms about using terror tactics to get what he wants, changes that. Now the group has the force of Mexico’s military behind it. Castillo’s also using the military to crush dissent in Mexico.”

“You’re thinking invasion? It would be suicide.”

“Not if it’s done using guerrilla tactics rather than an outright declaration of war,” Brognola retorted. “The Man knows he can’t afford to make an overt enemy of Mexico, not unless he wants a full-scale battle on our southern border. Castillo knows it, too, and he’s playing to that. We know, for example, that Castillo is using Tristan Zapata, a known La Raza terrorist wanted by the FBI and Interpol, to spearhead his operations on the Mexican border. Several border-patrol agents have been fired on, and last week three turned up dead wearing Colombian neckties. Tensions have been rising since Castillo took office, and we’ve traced Zapata’s movements thoroughly enough to know that he’s met privately with Castillo on no less than three occasions.”

“So why am I worrying about Orieza and Honduras when I should be dealing with Castillo and his La Raza forces?”

“Have you heard of O’Connor Petroleum Prospecting?”

“Can’t say I have,” Bolan said.

“They’re an international firm that works with large oil companies, finding previously overlooked petroleum deposits. Under the former, stable government of Honduras, they had an agreement that allowed them to use deep-ranging imaging equipment to locate oil in Honduras. Just before Orieza took over, they found what they were looking for—a previously unknown find that is, as I understand it, quite extensive. When Orieza learned about it, he nationalized the equipment, and either took hostage or murdered the OPP employees operating in his country.”

“The oil’s worth a lot?”

“It could turn Honduras into a wealthy nation, if its government played its cards right.”

“And what hand is Orieza holding?”

“That’s just it,” Brognola said, and Bolan could picture him frowning. “Orieza’s ambitious and brutal. He knows a fellow traveler when he sees one. According to our intercepts, his government contacted Castillo’s and cut a deal. They’re building a pipeline from Honduras to Mexico.”

“And Guatemala’s in the way,” Bolan said.

“Exactly. Orieza fights across Guatemala, building his pipeline as he goes. When he gets to Mexico, Castillo welcomes him with open arms, knowing that the results of that operation and the pipeline will enrich both nations—well, both men. This will solidify Orieza’s hold on Honduras, and for all we know he’s looking to annex some or all of Guatemala on a permanent basis. The oil wealth helps Castillo finance his personal vision of a recaptured Aztec homeland in the Southwest U.S., too. Orieza has made no secret of the fact that he despises the West. He’s given plenty of speeches on state-controlled television, blaming America for Honduras’s relative poverty. It would do his heart good to see our eye blackened, I’m sure. In the process, he makes a valuable ally, in his view, and strengthens his power at home.”

“But Castillo can’t think he can win a war against the United States,” Bolan protested.

“He doesn’t have to,” Brognola said. “As I said, if he does it just right, he can make things difficult enough that portions of the country will effectively be under his control. He’s counting on America’s unwillingness to go to war with Mexico directly, probably because he thinks we’ll hope to wait him out. The pipeline means he won’t have to wait us out. Even if we apply international sanctions, he and Orieza will be able to find plenty of customers for the oil. They may be counting on the fact that, if they hold portions of territory for long enough—especially those parts of the Southwest United States that are predominantly Hispanic, thanks to largely uncontrolled illegal immigration—they’ll effectively own it, and it will be too much trouble and cause too much unrest for us to get it back.”

“Possession being nine-tenths of the law,” Bolan had said.

“Exactly,” Brognola confirmed. “The Man doesn’t want to be put in that position, for obvious reasons. That’s where you come in, and that’s why our national security is tied to both nations. Striker, we’ve got to put a stop to this. Our analysts tell us that a sudden power vacuum in Mexico would allow the more moderate elements within the government to take control once more. Honduras is more turbulent, but removing Orieza would at least end the immediate crisis.”

“So where do I start?”

“Our ties to Guatemala have always been close, give or take, and Orieza’s troops have made several skirmishes over the border already. We’ve got satellite tracking of the invading force gathering on the border for yet another run. The Guatemalan military isn’t up to the task of repelling a determined invasion. They’re willing, but underfunded and disorganized. They’re screaming for help, and Orieza’s men have bloodied their noses already. Officially, we’ve told them there’s nothing we can do. Unofficially, they’re going to get some assistance as fast as we can get it to them.”

“Me.”

“You,” Brognola said. “I don’t have to tell you that this is delicate. The President isn’t one for nation building, nor would Congress back him if he tried. We have to maintain plausible deniability in this, at least overtly. But we’ve got to stop both Orieza and Castillo, or all four nations will suffer—Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and the United States. We’ve got to put an end to the crises on the Guatemalan border, and then deal with Castillo’s forays across our own.”

“How far are you willing for me to go?” Bolan asked.

“It was made very clear to me. Do what you do.”

“He realizes the implications?” Bolan pressed. “We’re talking about removing by force, however illegitimate, the leadership of two separate nations. I’m prepared to do that. Is he?”

“The President of the United States of course doesn’t sanction any such action,” Brognola said smoothly.

“If those volatile regimes’ leaders were suddenly to become…ineffectual, and perhaps fall from power, well, that would be fortuitous, wouldn’t it? Yes, I believe fortuitous was the word they used at the State Department when I spoke to them.”

“Understood,” Bolan said. “Backup?”

“None, unfortunately,” Brognola replied. “Able is tied up domestically, and Barbara’s got Phoenix on assignment halfway around the world. You’re it, Striker.”

“Understood,” Bolan repeated. “Let Cowboy know that I’ll need a lot of equipment. I’ll text Barb a list.”

“Grimaldi is already on his way to you by chopper,” Brognola said. “He’ll get you to the nearest airport, where your flight will be waiting. A courier will be dispatched from the Farm and meet your plane with the supplies you specify.”

“Then I’d better get to work.”

“Striker?” Brognola said. “Good luck. I realize that every time we call you it’s important. But I think we both know how much is riding on this now. More than ever.”

“Thanks, Hal. And yeah. We do.” He had terminated the call and immediately begun working out precisely what he would need, in order to fight a one-man war against the armies of two different dictators.

Now he was here, in Honduras, according the GPS coordinates provided by his secure satellite phone, and poised to strike a death blow to Orieza’s troops. Intelligence and satellite imaging provided by the Farm had revealed that Orieza’s pipeline was already under construction. To clear the way into and, thereafter, presumably through Guatemala, Orieza had an advance force preparing to move across the border. Bolan presumed it was this unit that had already carried out the initial attacks that had the Guatemalan government screaming. Apparently casualties on the Guatemalan side had been very high, as reported by Barbara Price. She had transmitted a detailed mission briefing to his secure satellite smartphone while he was in transit, with Stony Man pilot Jack Grimaldi at the controls of the long-range jet from which Mack had later jumped.

A black-clad ghost, he crept as close as he dared to where the enemy advance troops were massing. He checked his secure smartphone again; the screen brightness was turned down as low as it could go, and he cupped it with his hand to avoid giving away his position. The muted tones of the GPS grid told him his position relative to both the advance force, whose position the Farm had fixed using a “borrowed” NSA surveillance satellite, and to the semipermanent base camp from which the troops operated. That camp was a few miles down the “road”—a pair of ruts only recently cut through this densely forested area—that Orieza’s advance team had used to move both men and equipment to the Guatemalan border. It was logical that it was from this same camp, detailed and enhanced satellite photos of which had been overlaid with tactical priorities in Bolan’s mission briefing, that Orieza’s troops had launched their previous raids across the border.

Silently, the Executioner peeled back the black ballistic nylon covering the luminous hands of the military field watch he wore. If he judged correctly, the enemy troops would be preparing for a predawn raid for maximum psychological benefit. They would cross the border, destroying anything in their path, using that most vulnerable period of early-morning darkness to their advantage. Bolan didn’t know if they had a specific target in mind—if they planned to travel some distance once over the border, it would alter their departure time—but he judged that he still had at least a couple of hours before Orieza’s military thugs were on the move. That would be plenty of time for him to bring the fight to the enemy, using their own anticipation of battle against them.

They would be preparing to strike the first blow, counting on having the momentum, the combat advantage. Bolan would strike before they were ready, and thus steal that most valuable of battlefield elements from them.

It was this advantage on which all his plans were built. For a single man to take on so many troops would be suicide. Bolan wasn’t suicidal, nor was he insane. He understood only too well what it took for a small, motivated force to defeat a larger and largely unprepared opponent. In this case, he was a small, motivated force of one.

The enemy would never know that.

He unlimbered his compact but powerful field glasses, which were equipped with light-gathering night-vision circuitry. Through their green-tinged view he counted off the enemy column, resisting the urge to whistle as he gauged the strength of their force.

This forward raiding party would be composed of scouts and supporting infantry. They had come fully equipped. Bolan counted several Alvis Saladin six-wheeled light tanks, a couple of RBY Mk1 reconnaissance vehicles and a small fleet of two-and-a-half-ton trucks, whose canvas-covered cargo areas would be used to transport the infantry. Most of the soldiers Bolan saw milling about or gearing up carried M-16s, though a few had Galils and he saw at least one MP-5 submachine gun. He knew that the Honduran military fielded M-79 grenade launchers, though he saw none in evidence; the weapon dated to the Vietnam War and was functionally equivalent to the launcher slung under his rifle’s barrel.

He brought up his own weapon. Pressing the latch, he shoved the barrel of the M-203 forward and flicked the launcher into the Safe position. A quick check with his finger showed him the barrel was clear. If he had picked up an obstruction at the other end during his silent crawl through the jungle, well, that was a risk he would have to take, as there was no way to be certain now. He removed from his bandolier an M-433 HEDP round. The High Explosive, Dual Purpose round could, if fired straight on, penetrate up to two inches of armor plate, and had an effective kill radius of five meters. For several meters beyond that death zone, it would still cause casualties. It was, therefore, the perfect weapon for attacking Orieza’s column of invaders.

Bolan pulled the barrel of the launcher to the rear, locking it in place with an audible click. Then he aimed for the driver’s-side front wheel of the lead deuce-and-a-half, flicked the safety to Fire and squeezed the launcher’s trigger in one fluid movement.

The grenade exploded on impact. The heavy HEDP round tore apart the engine block and cab of the cargo truck, spraying deadly shrapnel in all directions. Men screamed, and for a moment the pitch-black of the nighttime jungle was lit with an actinic yellow-white glare as the Honduran troops scattered.

Bolan smoothly ejected the spent round, loaded another HEDP grenade, aimed and fired. This time he took the truck at the rear of the column, blowing it apart between its cab and its cargo bed. He punched a third round into the vehicle next to it. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he caught, in the ensuing explosion, a glimpse of one of the vehicle’s heavy tires flattening a pair of men who had been crouching next to it, as the burning circles of textured rubber became airborne missiles.

Bolan shucked the spent casing, fed another grenade into the launcher and punched the HEDP into one of the Saladins. The angle wasn’t good, but his goal was to create confusion and chaos. As the first scattered, unaimed bursts of return fire began—panic shooting, and nothing more—he knew he had succeeded. Flicking his M-16 A-3 to full-auto, he stalked forward into battle.

Hell had come to Honduras.

CHAPTER TWO

Spraying full-auto bursts on the run, the Executioner aimed in the general direction of the nearest invading troops. He wasn’t concerned with hitting them; he wanted them to hear the gunfire and respond. Moving as quickly as he was, in a full sprint, he could have aimed precisely if he wished, but he could move faster by focusing on his destination: the nearest of the Saladins.

The six-wheeled light tank was an old British model equipped with a single 76-mm gun. Typically, such a vehicle also mounted coaxial and antiaircraft 7.62-mm machine guns, but Bolan saw no evidence of such weapons mounted externally on his target. There was no gun atop the turret, and the barrel of the machine gun that would otherwise poke from the turret parallel to the main gun was missing, the hole sealed and painted over.

The all-welded steel hull of the Saladin—more an armored car than a tank, really—had been painted a sloppy camouflage pattern more or less suitable to the jungle environment surrounding him. As he ran, his mind was already sorting through his extensive military knowledge, as if calling up an imaginary file. The Saladin, developed by the British in the 1950s, predated tracked light armor like the Scorpion combat reconnaissance vehicle, the Saladin’s British successor. This specimen, from what little Bolan could see of it, was likely quite old, probably manufactured in the late sixties or early seventies. It would have a gas-guzzling 8-cylinder engine mounted at the rear—though this could have been upgraded to diesel, for all he knew—and a crew of two or three. The driver would be seated forward, behind a hinged hatch, and the gunner would be to the left of the center-mounted turret. If there was a third man, a loader for the gun, he would be seated to the right of that center position.

None of this mattered. Bolan had no time to waste, not if he didn’t want to be bracketed and gunned down. He reached the tank, leaped onto the hull and pulled a pair of M-67 fragmentation grenades from his harness. Then he yanked the pin with his thumb and jammed the bombs down the barrel of the 76-mm gun.

He continued to run as gunfire erupted with much greater force around him. The muffled, staggered explosions came five seconds each after he’d pulled the grenades’ pins, doing the men inside the Saladin no good and hopefully at least distracting and confusing them. It was doubtful the blasts would cause any serious damage, given that the gun was designed to contain the force of the shells it fired, but there was at least a chance that the grenades might cause a problem. At the very least, the explosions would add to the insanity Bolan was manufacturing for the enemy to experience.

He was just getting started. He jacked open the M-203 launcher and loaded an M-576 buckshot round. Then he crouched, blending into the dancing shadows, and paused.

The enemy fire became even more intense. They were shooting in all directions, lit by the dancing fires of the burning vehicles. It was clear they thought they were being attacked from all sides, which was what Bolan wanted them to think.

The Executioner waited for the first knot of confused, frantic soldiers to close on his position, shouting to one another in Spanish. They were craning their necks at the tree line beyond their clearing, shooting sporadically into it, their fear-twisted features lit by the muzzle-flashes of their M-16 rifles. Bolan counted to three and, when they had come as close as they were likely to, he triggered the M-203.

The withering blast of buckshot from the giant bore of the 40-mm grenade launcher cut them down at waist level, leaving them broken and screaming, killing the nearest of the men who had taken the brunt of the widespread blast. Bolan was up then, squeezing precise bursts from his M-16 A-3, a veteran and virtuoso on the trigger of the familiar weapon. Soldiers, little more than thugs, fell before Bolan, who was himself the most lethal soldier they would ever encounter.

He paused, loaded another HEDP round in the M-203, and blasted yet another parked truck. The deafening sound of countless automatic weapons rolled over him in waves, much like the clouds of fitful, caustic smoke that poured from the burning vehicles. Two of the Saladins were mobile now, and one got its 76-mm gun working. It barked in Bolan’s general direction, off by many meters, the shots themselves random.

Bolan was rapidly using the ordnance with which the Farm had equipped him, but he saw no reason to hold back now. He loaded yet another HEDP grenade and, moving in a half crouch through the smoke, avoiding clumps of wildly shooting Honduran soldiers, he angled around to the rear of the closer Saladin. Lining up on the other six-wheeled tank, he punched it hard with his grenade.

The battered vehicle shuddered, but through the haze and the strobe lights of the enemy guns Bolan couldn’t tell how badly he had damaged it. Predictably, the turret traversed to bracket the Saladin next to which Bolan squatted. The soldier sprinted clear as the wounded tank fired again, this time hitting the closer vehicle.

Bolan stopped near the corpse of one of the fallen Honduran military men. He scooped up the boonie hat that many of the soldiers wore, and planted it on his own head. Then, trusting that his silhouette more closely resembled those of the invading troops, he started running urgently from group to group and shouting in Spanish, pointing at the next cluster of frenzied shooters.

Bolan hit the dirt as answering fire threatened to cut him down. The soldiers were soon eagerly, desperately shooting into their own numbers. The cry that infiltrators were among them was taken up by others. In the fusillades that ensued, Bolan was forced to roll close to one of the still-undamaged trucks to avoid the wild automatic gunfire. It wasn’t long before those in charge began shouting in Spanish for the men to cease firing. At least one of these voices was cut short, screaming, when someone else trained a gun on the man and pulled the trigger.

Creeping along over the flattened undergrowth that had been crushed by the wheels of the enemy column’s vehicles, Bolan held his rifle along his side, careful to keep it from dragging. He drew the Beretta 93-R machine pistol, flicked the weapon’s fire selector switch to single shot and began peppering the enemy again. The sound suppressor threaded onto the pistol’s barrel reduced the noise of his 9-mm rounds to a discreet cough—a sound drowned out by the automatic gunfire, terrified yelling and dying screams of the men all around him.

There was a rhythm to any combat operation, a palpable sense of motion and vibration that Bolan could feel, could pick out, thanks to so many years in the field. He rode that momentum now, felt that pulse, as he crept along in the darkness and placed his shots for maximum effect. Honduran troops fired their weapons into the trees beyond the clearing, and as they did so, several men at their left flank were felled, so it seemed, by the gunfire. When individuals there began to return fire, their shots were strangely, almost impossibly accurate, their wild blasts somehow becoming precisely aimed head shots. Bolan became the grim reaper among the disorganized, berserk gunmen, playing to their fears. By the time he was done firing covertly, the Honduran invaders seemed to be convinced, to a man, that a large group of enemy sappers had somehow penetrated their ranks.

Then the Executioner’s knives came out.

The longer blade almost leaped into his right hand, the coarse weave of the handle wrap firm in his grip as if welded there. He drew the shorter blade, its textured handle stippled for traction, and spun the knife on his palm into a reverse grip, the edge oriented toward his own body. Moving silently, Bolan used the flickering shadows, the dancing flames and flashes of gunfire to his advantage, entering his enemies’ midst, his blades flashing, stabbing and carving.

The first few soldiers went down silently, dead before they knew it. Bolan, implacable as he moved surgically forward, took no emotion from the act. There was no feeling of triumph; there was no sense of victory. He was simply performing a necessary function, grim purpose his only guide. The faces of the enemy invaders who fell before him were flash-burned onto his memory, joining the ranks of the countless others whose lives had ended as invisible notches on the grips of the Executioner’s weapons. He remembered them all; he wasn’t some unfeeling, unthinking mass murderer. The Executioner was a force for righteous redress, and as the agent of Justice, he would never shrink from acknowledging his lethal acts in that blindfolded figure’s name.

The silent knifings did more damage than Bolan’s clever shooting could have. As men began screaming, and then dying quietly, choking and gurgling in pain, a wave of renewed panic spread through the ranks of the already disorganized, terrified fighting men. Bolan narrowly avoided being shot by several Honduran soldiers who began firing at one another, screaming curses in Spanish. Rolling aside as one line of men advanced on the second, Bolan brought his large blade singing through the backs of their boots. The heavy knife chopped through the nylon and leather, slicing the left leg of the first man, both legs of the second and the right leg of a third, severing the Achilles tendons. The three folded, collapsing on limbs that could no longer bear their weight, and Bolan’s knives were the last things the shooters felt in life.

From the perspective of the opposing gunners, it was as if a line of men simply disappeared into the flickering shadows and chaos, falling away in unison. They sprayed out their magazines, firing in all directions. Bolan flattened himself to the ground as bullets buzzed above him.

Crawling out of the immediate zone of crazed fire, he paused. Before him, in a small clearing where two dozen troops were arrayed, was a giant of a man. The sleeves of his fatigues had been ripped off and the muscles of his arms bulged impossibly, the result of what could only be steroid abuse. The big Honduran, who wore an officer’s rank, was crushing the throat of one of his fellow soldiers in the thick fingers of one ham-size hand.

The men surrounding him were trying futilely to remove their comrade from the hulking officer’s grip. Each time any of them moved in, shouting, the big man shoved them back. There was a sickening crack as the officer brought up his free hand, in which he clenched a wooden-handled entrenching tool. He wielded the shovel like a battle-ax, swinging the blade through the jaw of the closest soldier.

As Bolan watched, sheltered in the lee of one of the burning trucks, the massive Honduran made short work of his own soldiers. Like a wounded animal lashing out in pain and rage—Bolan saw blood trickling down the man’s forehead, the crease in the side of his head an obvious bullet graze—he smashed them with his bloody, swollen fist, hacked at them with the shovel and stomped them under the heels of his heavy leather boots, which weren’t the lightweight jungle footwear the rest of the troops wore. Bolan raised an eyebrow, amazed at the man’s ferocity. The giant smashed the last two soldiers together and tossed them aside like broken dolls before fixing one bloodshot eye on the Executioner himself.

Something like recognition, perhaps realization, flitted across the bigger man’s face. Bolan could see the wheels move in the big soldier’s mind, even as the chaos of the miniature civil war Bolan had incited continued to swirl and rage around this temporary pocket of abrupt stillness. The officer was putting it together: Bolan wasn’t one of his men, wasn’t wearing a Honduran military uniform and wasn’t supposed to be where he clearly was, a knife in either hand. The madness that had enveloped the raiding party had suddenly become, for the big man, the result of enemy action rather than bad luck or coincidence. His expression lost its mad, frenzied, berserker cast and hardened into something else. Bolan had seen the expression before and knew it only too well.

It was murderous determination.

Whatever firearms the officer had carried weren’t with him. A flap holster on his belt was open and empty; he had lost his rifle, if he ever had one. If he hadn’t simply lost it in the melee, he had probably fired it empty and discarded it. Bolan saw the behemoth of a man grope left-handed for the weapon, which would have looked like a toy in his fist if he’d had it. He stopped, remembering that the gun was gone, and instead clenched the wooden handle of the shovel.

Bolan could have dropped his knives and gone for one of his weapons, such as the assault rifle on its sling, but that would have defeated the purpose of his creep-and-shoot, crawl-and-stick campaign. He wanted these troops so terrified of their own shadows that they continued to fire at one another, doing his work for him. No one man could take on this many soldiers alone, not directly; to succeed, Bolan had to make them fight one another. He flexed his fingers around the grips of his knives, crouched low and, nodding once, waited for the big man to attack.

The giant Honduran took the nod as the challenge he was meant to see. He bellowed and charged, raising the entrenching tool above him for a killing blow. There was no way Bolan could meet that mad dash head-on; the man was a freight train of muscle powered by berserker rage. Bolan let him come.

At the last moment, just before the Honduran came within range with his shovel, Bolan feinted with his long blade. The soldier made as if to slip past the blade, barely altering his stride. Bolan, rather than completing the slash, fell onto his back in the blood-soaked loam.

Bolan’s combat boots came up, and he shoved out with both legs. The waffle soles of his boots pressed some of the air out of the giant’s stomach on contact, but not nearly enough. Feeling the muscles in his legs straining, Bolan continued to push, carrying the giant over his body. The big Honduran landed on his head in the dirt beyond. The Executioner thought he could feel the earth vibrating, ever so slightly, as the large man crashed to the ground.

The American swiveled and surged to his feet, closing the distance between him and his opponent. The big Japanese-style blade flashed downward—

The Honduran’s hand snaked out and grabbed Bolan’s wrist.

The shock hit Bolan like an electrical charge. Pain shot up his forearm as the big Honduran crushed it in his meaty palm, as if trying to grind the bones within his grasp.

Bolan brought the shorter knife over and down for a killing blow, but the giant blocked with the shovel. Metal struck metal with a sound like a cymbal’s crash.

The noise was drawing attention.

The Honduran dropped his shovel and managed to get a grip on both of his adversary’s forearms, squeezing for all he was worth. The pain was stunning in its sudden intensity. Some men might have passed out from that alone; Bolan could see spots swimming in his vision. Even as his mind raced to find a way out of this situation, he realized that the soldiers nearest them were falling back to brace the giant—and gasping in shock as they realized that the man held in the big man’s grip was not one of their number, after all.

Bolan, with no other options, rotated his wrists. The blades of his knives came down, the reversed, smaller one doing a more thorough job than the other, but both edges slicing deeply into flesh. The giant Honduran screamed in agony and surprise as Bolan carved his way free from his grip.

Then the Executioner stepped in and drove his longer blade through the man’s neck.

The big American didn’t wait to see his enemy fall. He wrenched the big knife free, reversed it and slammed the bloody blade home in its Kydex sheath, also resheathing the smaller off-hand blade. Then his fingers curled around the grip of his M-16 A-3.

Weapons were coming up and seeking target acquisition as he blazed his way through the entire 30-round magazine on full-automatic, mowing down the first row of encroaching soldiers. He dropped the mag and inserted another, but not before triggering a buckshot round from his 40-mm grenade launcher, shredding more of the enemy.

It didn’t take him long, working amid the Hondurans and in the fitful shadows of the burning night, to bring his manufactured chaos once more to a fever pitch. Again he shouted in Spanish as he ran, misleading one man, targeting another, misdirecting a third. He poured on the firepower as the answering guns of the dwindling raiding party increased their own pitch. The jungle came alive as staccato bursts of orange-white muzzle blasts mingled with the fires consuming the vehicles, and men screamed and died by the dozens.

As abruptly as this dance of death had opened, it drew to a close. The last pockets of resistance managed to wipe out one another, either through sheer determination or with Bolan’s help. Finally, the night’s darkness began to close in once again. The muzzle-flash blooms of illumination were few and far between, and the fires licking at the scorched hulks of the vehicles, though they showed no signs of truly dying, began to subside. Once more holding his rifle by his side on its single-point sling, Bolan drew the suppressed 93-R and began to administer mercy rounds to the dying.

Then, finally, nothing moved.

Bolan made two complete circuits of the raiding party’s camp, making certain. The Executioner had walked many a battlefield and ended the lives of countless gunmen…but it would never be a casual thing to him. He didn’t dismiss them as he walked among them. He was careful to check those who might be shamming, too, using his small combat light. He would illuminate a body here, toe a corpse for reaction there, always moving lest the light make him a target.

When he was satisfied that only one other man remained alive among the raiding party, he reached down to his belt and clicked off the portable radio jammer he carried. The device, a powerful miniature electronic unit crafted by Able Team’s Hermann “Gadgets” Schwarz at Stony Man Farm, was powerful enough to prevent radio transmissions for roughly one half mile. That had been more than enough range to prevent the raiding party from calling for help or alerting the advance camp where they had been based. Bolan unclipped the jammer from his belt and examined it. It had almost depleted its lithium battery pack; the device was very strong for its size, but exacted a heavy toll from its power cell. He replaced the unit on his belt and continued tracking the raiding party’s sole survivor.

He had spotted the man during his second circuit of the devastated column. The soldier—who, like the giant Honduran Bolan had battled, wore the rank tabs of an officer—was badly wounded. He dragged himself through the muck of the clearing, among the bodies of his fallen comrades. Bolan closed in and then stopped, standing over him.

The officer turned over, painfully. The right side of his face was scorched black, and the eye on that side stared blindly. He fixed Bolan with his good eye and rattled off something in Spanish that the Executioner couldn’t catch. Then he made to grab for a rifle still clutched in the hands of a dead man nearby.

“Don’t,” Bolan said. “Leave it there.” He aimed the muzzle of the suppressed 93-R machine pistol at the wounded officer’s face. The flickering light from the truck fires was the only illumination.

“American,” the officer said, his accent heavy. “You are American.”

Bolan didn’t answer that. He stepped over and kicked the rifle out of the man’s reach. “I can provide medical treatment,” he said simply.

“Stay away,” the officer spit. He started to get up, shaking on his lacerated legs.

“Stay down,” Bolan countered.

The man didn’t listen. Perhaps given strength by sudden adrenaline, he regained his footing long enough to draw an M-7 bayonet from his belt. He lunged with the blade in a clumsy overhand strike.

Still gripping his pistol, Bolan stepped in, meeting the raised arm and slapping it down and away. He folded the man’s hand back on itself and drove the point of the bayonet toward the officer’s stomach. The wounded man lost his footing and collapsed onto the blood-soaked soil once more. The knife had never touched him. It fell to the ground next to him.

“You…you are…a butcher.” His voice had become a whisper. “Los…campesinos…sufrirán para su insolencia.”

The Executioner’s face hardened at that. “If I were a butcher,” he said, jerking his chin toward the bayonet on the ground, “that would be in your stomach right now.” He raised the 93-R for a mercy shot, but it was already too late.

“You…you…” The man’s good eye suddenly stared at nothing. The tension went out of his body as death finally took him.

Bolan shook his head. “The peasants will suffer for your insolence,” the man had said in Spanish. That was what he was fighting. According to Brognola, some unknown number of Honduran citizens had already suffered under Orieza’s ironfisted regime. Bolan didn’t intend to let that continue, or to let Orieza’s thugs bring their terror across the boarder to Honduras’s neighbors.

Bolan surveyed the ruined column one last time. Nothing and no one else moved.

The Executioner hurried off into the night, leaving only guttering flames and dead men behind him.

CHAPTER THREE

Cupping his hand over its face, Mack Bolan checked his field watch once more before replacing the ballistic nylon cover that concealed it on his wrist. The first gray rays of predawn were perhaps an hour away, maybe less. That didn’t leave him much time to operate; he would need the cover of darkness to execute his one-man assault on the Honduran base camp.

He surveyed the advance camp, taking special note of the pipeline that stood on prefabricated struts a few hundred yards to the west. Additional segments of pipe were piled nearby amid parked earthmoving and construction vehicles. The equipment and portions of the base camp itself were “protected” under camouflage netting that had proved insufficient to hide the operation from NSA’s satellite surveillance.

Bolan, crouched in the dense undergrowth bordering the cleared no-man’s-land surrounding the camp, took a moment to check the briefing on his smartphone. He had memorized the basic layout in transit, but now compared his intel to the reality of the camp before him. He saw no glaring contradictions. In the field, knowledge—real-time intelligence verified through direct experience—was invaluable. The more he knew, the more flexible he could be, tailoring his strategies and tactics to the fluid and ever-changing conditions of the modern battlefield. That was at least the theory; from long practice, the Executioner knew that a great deal was driven by sheer will, by determination and ferocity.

The camp’s layout was basic, but sound. Any trees and scrub had been slashed and burned, clear-cut around the base perimeter to deny an enemy cover or concealment. The camp itself was ringed by sandbagged machine-gun emplacements, not all of which were manned at any one time, from what he could see. The guns were FN Minimis most likely chambered in 5.56-mm NATO, Bolan suspected. Guards moved casually among the widely spaced pits, occasionally conferring with sentries stationed at other posts.

The last line of defense around the camp itself was a rough palisade apparently built from the materials cleared for the base, and topped by razor wire. Four small watchtowers, made of prefabricated metal struts, with what looked like metal-bucket crow’s nests at their tops, were placed at the corners of the square perimeter.

Even at this distance, Bolan could hear screams.

The faint sounds of human torment carried to him on the night breeze, which would have been refreshing in the Honduran undergrowth if not for those chilling noises. Bolan could just make out, through his field glasses, the blue epaulets on the uniforms of the men guarding a prefabricated metal hut near the center of the advance camp. These would be, according to the Farm’s briefing, Orieza’s shock troops. They formed the vanguard of Orieza’s campaign of terror within Honduras, according to the information in Bolan’s files.

It stood to reason; that was a common enough tactic among strong-arm dictators and their ilk. Creating a cadre of loyalists whose powers exceeded those of the regular military fostered a sense of fear among the lower echelons of a dictator’s power base, while shoring up—through preferential treatment and a sense of elite status—the core of men willing to fight and die for their leader. This had been, after all, the theory and concept behind Iraq’s Republican Guard, essentially a special-forces unit tasked with protecting Saddam Hussein’s regime as well as with the dictator’s most critical military operations. Republican Guard recruits were volunteers on whom many material perks were lavished. They’d enjoyed their often cruel jobs and were well rewarded for them. There was every reason to believe that Orieza’s shock troops were every bit as brutal and every bit as highly motivated.

Out here on the border, it was unlikely the prisoners were Honduran citizens. They could be Guatemalan troops lost in the previous forays made by Orieza’s raiders. They might even be Honduran soldiers accused of disloyalty, real or imagined. Hard-line regimes like Orieza’s were notorious for their paranoia, Bolan knew. It didn’t matter. The advance camp had to be destroyed, and completely, for the Executioner’s daring one-man blitz through Honduras to succeed. It was merely the second step in a chain of raids that would take him, before he was done, to the heart of Orieza’s government… But first things first. Whoever the prisoners were, Bolan would make sure they were freed. And before he was done, their torturers would answer in full for what had been inflicted upon those captives screaming in the night.

Bolan crept along the brush line until he found a suitable target: a sentry who had ranged just a little too far from his sandbag nest, smoking a truly gigantic, cheap cigar that was producing large volumes of blue smoke. From the banter being exchanged in stage whispers between the sentry and his compadre still in the machine-gun emplacement, it was clear that the fumes were objectionable to the second man; hence the smoker’s distance from his post. Bolan listened to them trade vulgar insults in Spanish. There were at least a few threats. Both men, if Bolan heard them correctly, were vowing to stab each other. Shaking his head and questioning his fellow soldier’s parentage, the sentry with the cigar grudgingly moved a few paces farther.

Perfect.

Bolan removed a simple fork of carbon fiber from a ballistic nylon pouch on his belt. He unsnapped the wrist brace and attached a heavy, synthetic rubber band to the two posts of the fork. Then he produced a small ball bearing from the belt pouch, placed it in the wrist-brace slingshot he held and stretched the band taut.

The sentry turned away, sucking in a deep mouthful of smoke. When the tip of the cigar flared orange-red, Bolan let fly.

The ball bearing snapped the man in the neck, hard. The sentry swore and slapped at the spot. His cigar fell down the front of his uniform, spraying dull orange sparks, and he slapped at them, as well, cursing quietly. He was reasonably discreet nonetheless. No doubt he would be disciplined, perhaps harshly, for drifting from his post to enjoy a late-night smoke.

“Come here!” Bolan whispered in Spanish, beckoning from the cover of the brush and hoping the man could see his arm despite the damage the burning cigar would had done to the sentry’s night vision. “You have to take a look at this. Hurry!”

“What?” the man whispered, confused. “Tomas?” He stepped forward hesitantly.

“Hurry up!” Bolan urged.

The sentry’s curiosity, and perhaps some overconfidence characteristic of Orieza’s raiders—who, after all, had met little resistance from the disorganized Guatemalan troops—got the better of him. He groped for his cigar, picked it up and hurried forward, firing a series of whispered questions in Spanish. Bolan couldn’t catch it all, but he gathered the sentry thought this was some practical joke played by a friend in his unit, the “Tomas” he kept naming.

Up close, Bolan could see this man wore the blue epaulets of the shock troops. The joke was on the sentry, all right.

Once he was in range, Bolan struck. He reached for the man as fast as a rattler uncoiling, and grabbed him by the shoulder and the face, his fingers jabbing up and under the sentry’s jawline. The sudden move brought a gasp of surprise from Bolan’s target as the man hit the ground like a sack of wet cement. The big American lifted his hand from the man’s jaw and slashed down savagely with the smaller of his two fighting knives, silencing the sentry forever.

Wiping the gory blade on the dead man’s uniform, Bolan searched him and found what he wanted: the sentry’s radio. Then he drew the suppressed Beretta 93-R, crouched to brace his elbow against his knee, and waited for the sentry’s cigar-hating fellow trooper to pop his head up over the sandbags. The fact that an alarm hadn’t already been raised was proof that nobody had seen the Executioner grab the man in the shadows. Now, when the cigar-smoking soldier was nowhere to be found, it shouldn’t take long for the other soldier to wonder where he went.

It didn’t. The curse in Spanish was another loud stage whisper, and when the Honduran soldier propped himself up above the sandbags to call to his wayward comrade, Bolan put a silenced 147-grain 9-mm hollowpoint through the man’s brain.

Working his way in the darkness across the cleared perimeter as far as he dared, he found Claymore mines placed at intervals to cover the dead soldiers’ position at the southwest. No doubt there were more mines similarly spaced all around the advance camp. He kept an eye on the crow’s nest of the tower on that corner of the base as he crawled back the way he’d come. The guard appeared to be slumped in his metal enclosure, possibly napping.

The combat clock was ticking, now. The Executioner had no idea on what schedule the perimeter guards called in, or if they did at all, but it was standard military procedure to do so. He worked his way around the perimeter of the camp as stealthily as he could. When he faced the north side of the camp, he was ready. He picked up his stolen radio, keyed it twice, then started groaning into it.

Answering chatter in Spanish came immediately. Bolan keyed the mike a few more times, as if having trouble with it, and then muttered something about dying. He managed to dredge up the appropriate terminology, again in Spanish, and hissed into the radio as if with his dying breath, urging his brave comrades to activate the mines guarding the southwest machine-gun emplacement.

The camp came alive. Searchlights on the towers buzzed to life and began sweeping the no-man’s-land around the base, while somewhere inside, a hand-cranked siren slowly worked its way to a gravelly, mechanical wail. Bolan could hear the shouts of alarmed soldiers grow in intensity. He pictured them finding the dead soldier behind his sandbags, next to his machine gun. Their fears confirmed, they would reach for the Claymore detonator nearby, if not clutched in the dead man’s hand….

The thumps of the Claymores detonating were followed by screams even more horrifying than those that had stopped coming from the interrogation building in the midst of the camp. They would be from the Honduran soldiers responding to the alert—where Bolan had reversed the Claymore mines he had found, the shaped charges directing their deadly ball-bearing payload inward over the machine-gun emplacements rather than outward from the palisade.

Blind reaction fire erupted from several locations outside the camp and from within the perimeter. The noise was deafening. Several other Honduran soldiers triggered their own Claymores, apparently fearing an unseen enemy was advancing on their positions. Bolan, well clear of the mines from his location beyond the no-man’s-land, was in no danger. This was the moment of frenetic panic he required—and the moment he had engineered.

He methodically loaded and fired the M-203. It was a difficult shot, but his first 40-mm fragmentation grenades struck true, blowing apart the crow’s nest of the watchtower closest to his position. He worked his way out, dropping a grenade into the midst of the camp, then annihilating another of the guard towers.

Bolan fired a grenade into the middle of the no-man’s-land. He was rewarded with the thumps of Claymores again. He sent another 40-mm payload downrange, but there were no more explosions; the Claymores had been fired, and now the way was clear. He moved easily through the darkness, avoiding the wild firing of the machine guns as he slipped through. As he had expected, Third World soldiers who were brave when facing out-gunned opponents were quick to break discipline and give in to fear when faced with a determined aggressor. Gaining and keeping the battlefield momentum, the initiative in an engagement, was Bolan’s stock in trade. He was very good at what he did.

He leveled his rifle and sprayed bursts of 5.56-mm fire into the guards manning the nearest machine gun. They didn’t appear even to notice him, until it was too late. Their attention was focused inward, on the base itself. Bolan loaded his grenade launcher once more and blew a hole in the palisade large enough for him to enter the camp.

The explosion drew fire, but the Executioner ignored it, throwing himself through the splintered gap and rolling with the impact. He came up firing, stitching the confused, surprised shock troopers he encountered. As he ran, he yanked smoke grenades from his harness and threw them. The plumes of dense, green-yellow smoke added to the confusion and helped further cover his movements.

Working his way through the camp, he exhausted his supply of 40-mm grenades, blowing apart as many pieces of equipment and protective structures as he could, while always avoiding the roughly centered prefab hut he had dubbed the holding cell. He finished destroying the watchtowers and punched several holes in the protective palisade. There was nothing to be gained by destroying the wooden walls themselves, but no harm in allowing it to happen, either.

Resistance was ineffectual, as he had expected it to be. Most of the troops from the advance camp had, as was only logical, been assigned to the raiding column massing at the border. This base was, after all, the staging area that permitted the raiders to do what they had come to do. A token force had been left behind to guard it, but it was clear they had expected nothing serious by way of retaliation.

If they had been alerted by their loss of radio contact with the raiding party, nothing about their reaction to Bolan’s assault indicated so. It took him a little while, nonetheless, to work his way through the camp and eliminate any stragglers. He took down several men wearing the blue epaulets of the shock troopers, some of them in the act of fleeing, while others stood their ground in the smoke and flames and tried to take him. It didn’t matter, either way. These men might be the elite of Orieza’s killers and the best the dictator could field, but they weren’t in the same class as the Executioner.

Thinking of radio contact reminded him to check the radio room, which he recognized by the small, portable transmitting array jerry-rigged to the top of a corrugated metal shack in the northwest corner of the palisade’s interior. Inside, Bolan expected to find a man or men desperately screaming for help, but the shack was empty. The radio equipment was undamaged, so the big American emptied the last of his rifle’s ammo into it. He dropped the magazine, slapped home a spare, then picked his way through the wreckage of the base interior once more. As he moved he was mindful of the dangers, for there still could be men hidden between him and the holding cell.

Nevertheless, the man who threw himself from concealment next to a burning military-style jeep almost managed to take Bolan by surprise. He was incredibly fast, with a sinewy build that translated into a painful blow as the tall man drove a bony elbow into Bolan’s chest. The Executioner allowed himself to fall back, absorbing the hit as he let his rifle fall, and moved to draw one of his knives….

The man surprised Bolan by leaping over him and continuing to flee. The Executioner rolled over and regained his footing, snapping up the rifle and trying to line up the shot. He caught a glimpse of the thin, hatchet-faced man as the evidently terrified Honduran soldier bolted through the smoke, running as if the devil himself were close behind. Bolan didn’t bother to try for the shot; the angle was bad, and too much cover stood between him and the rapidly fleeing trooper. Just as he had been unconcerned with a radio distress call, the Executioner wasn’t worried about a soldier or two running for help. By the time Orieza’s forces could muster a relief effort, Bolan would be long gone.

A bit chagrined despite himself, he was even more vigilant as he advanced on the holding cell. A heavy wooden bar set in steel staples secured the door. He lifted the bar and tossed it aside. The door couldn’t be opened from the inside, which meant there would be no guards within—unless their own people had locked them inside with the prisoners.

“Step away from the door!” he ordered in Spanish, careful to stand well aside. He let his rifle fall to the end of its sling, and drew both his Beretta and his portable combat light, holding the machine pistol over his off-hand wrist. There were no answering shots from within, so he chanced it and planted one combat boot against the barrier. The heavy door opened, and Bolan swept the dimly lit interior.

What he saw hardened his expression and brought a righteously furious gleam to his eyes. There were half a dozen men and women, ranging from their late teens to quite old, hanging by their wrists from chains mounted in the ceiling. They had been repeatedly flogged. A leather whip was hanging in the center of the room, from a nail set in a post that helped support the corrugated metal ceiling.

“Señor,” an older man called, his eyes bright. He fired off a sentence in Spanish so rapid that Bolan couldn’t catch it.

Bolan went to him. “Easy,” he said. “I’m going to let you down. It’s over. Ha terminado.”

“You are American?” the man asked in English.

Bolan looked at him, pulling the pin that secured the chains. The old man fell briefly to his knees before Bolan helped him up. “I’m a friend,” he said.

“You are sent from God.” The old man smiled. “And you are an American.”

Bolan didn’t answer that. Instead, he said, “Can you walk?”

“I can walk.” The man nodded. His lightweight clothes were bloody and ragged, stained a uniform dirty brown, and clearly, he had suffered badly at the hands of Orieza’s men. But he stood tall and defiant under Bolan’s gaze. “What is your name?”

“Just call me ‘friend.’”

“I am Jairo,” the old man said. He grinned. “Amigo.”

Bolan gestured to the others, who were watching with an almost eerily uniform silence. “Help me with them,” he said simply.

“Of course,” Jairo said. “Do not worry about them, amigo. They were strong. They will be all right.”

“Does anyone need medical attention?”

“I will make sure they get it,” Jairo said. “Our village is not far.”

“Village? Where?” Bolan asked.

He pointed. “Over the border.”

“You’re from Guatemala?”

“Sí. The soldiers raided our village and took us prisoner two days ago. It has been a very long two days.” Jairo worked his way among the others with Bolan, freeing the captured villagers from their chains. From what Bolan could see, the victims had indeed been cruelly tortured.

“You were fed? Given water?” he asked.

“Sí.” Jairo nodded.

That was interesting. Bolan completed his survey of the villagers. Many had bad wounds on their backs, and a couple, including Jairo, sported cigar and cigarette burns, but the damage was largely superficial. There had been no intent to kill these people.

“Jairo, did your captors say anything? Did they explain why they took you, or what they wanted from you?”

“No,” Jairo replied, shaking his head. “Nothing. Only that we would do well to tell others, if we lived, just what General Orieza will do to us if his men are resisted.”

So that was it, Bolan mused. Orieza and his people were pursuing an explicit strategy. It wasn’t atrocities for the sake of atrocities; Orieza’s shock troopers were softening up the resistance, both within Honduras and across the border, by instilling fear in the populations of both nations. Combined with the military raids, it was a very good strategy, from Orieza’s perspective. It would enable him to continue rolling over the Guatemalans and probably guarantee at least some cooperation, if not simply a lack of interference from the frightened locals.

“Did he say he might release some or all of you?” Bolan asked.

“No,” Jairo shook his head again. “But I think he would have. His heart, it did not seem to be in it. El Alto had a cruel look to him. He was not so soft as to let us live unless he meant to.”

“Who? ‘The Tall One’?”

“Sí,” Jairo said. “It was El Alto who did the whipping, and the talking. Always him. Never the other soldiers. I think he liked it. He looked, in his eyes, as if he enjoyed it.” Jairo shook his head yet again and spit on the ground in disgust. “He left not long before you found us. Had he wished, he could have cut our throats.”

A tall, cruel-looking man. It was very likely that El Alto, this torturer, was the same Honduran soldier Bolan had seen fleeing the camp. He made a mental note of that. If luck and the mercurial gods of combat were with him, he would encounter The Tall One again.

“Come on,” Bolan said to the old man. “Let’s get your people gathered together, treat their wounds and move them out. Can any of you handle a weapon?”

There were a few murmurs of assent. Jairo grinned. “We are not so helpless. We can see ourselves safely home. We will take what we need from the soldiers,” he said. “The ones who are outside.” He nodded to the door. “The ones you killed.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because you, too, have a look in your eyes, amigo.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Sí.” Jairo nodded solemnly. “Su mirada es muerte. Your look is one of death.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The blue-tagged shock-troop guards outside General Orieza’s office snapped to attention as Roderigo del Valle stalked down the corridor. Dawn had broken, yellow and inviting, the sun’s rays streaming through the floor-to-ceiling windows on either side of the corridor. This had no effect on Del Valle, who carried with him a darkness that no light could penetrate. At least, this was how he preferred to be seen. Better to be feared than loved when one of the two must be lacking, as the old saying went….

He swept past the guards as if he barely saw them, and in truth, he didn’t. It had been a very long, very frustrating night, and he hadn’t yet even begun to catalog the damage dealt to their operation on the Guatemalan border. He snarled in reply as one of the guards greeted him respectfully and managed to get the door open before Del Valle rammed it, for the tall, hatchet-faced man didn’t break his stride as he made his way into the anteroom of General Orieza’s private lair.

Orieza’s secretary glanced up, her face as pretty but as stupid as ever. She pursed her lips and greeted him quietly. Her eyes were full of fear, and that pleased him, for she was only too aware of what he could do to her if he chose. Orieza wouldn’t object, at least not too loudly, if Del Valle decided to use the woman and throw her away. Another just like her, even prettier, would be sitting in her chair come the next dawn.

It wasn’t that Del Valle didn’t have his own needs, where women were concerned. He had them on occasion, and when he did, the union was brief and brutal. He had little use for a woman clinging to his arm and making demands of his time; what man would put up with such impositions, truly? And he had no respect for the empty-headed trollops who invariably did serve his purposes. How any man chose to saddle himself with a woman’s constant whining and complaining, he didn’t know. Orieza himself had been married, not so very long ago, and the woman had grated on Del Valle’s nerves. She was forever bitching to Orieza about whatever whims came to her head, demanding his time and diminishing his focus. It had been a relief when Orieza had finally confided to his chief adviser that the general found his wife somewhat of a nuisance. Del Valle had jumped at the chance to arrange an “accident” for the miserable harpy. And Orieza, while he suspected that Mrs. Orieza’s car didn’t perhaps roll over of its own accord that fateful morning, hadn’t asked many questions. The old man was content to spend his time with the slatterns Del Valle’s lieutenants dug up for him. He tired of them quickly, and more than once Del Valle had made use of these castoffs before leaving their broken bodies on the floor for his men to clean up…. But such were the privileges of power.

He paused to survey himself in the full-length mirror that dominated one wall of the opulently appointed anteroom, while the woman fidgeted nervously. He ignored her. His angular, lined face looked back at him as he tried to smooth the creases in his uniform. He wore the same fatigues as did his shock troops, with no insignia of rank whatever. This was an affectation, but a deliberate one. No strutting peacock to dress himself in worthless ribbons and medals, or gold braids and colorful cloth, Del Valle preferred instead to let what he could do speak for itself. His shock troops were loyal to him, and him first, for he had proved time and again that he would deal violently with any challenge to his authority. When the time came, even General Orieza would learn that the blue epaulets on the shoulders of those armed guards surrounding him bespoke devotion to Roderigo del Valle, and not to their “general,” but by then… Well, by then, it would be too late for poor Ramon.

Del Valle frowned at the widow’s peak of stubble prominent on his forehead; it was time to shave his head once more. This was, however, the least of his concerns. His eyes were bloodshot, his uniform stained and torn. He hadn’t paused to change or truly to right himself after making the trip here, using the SUV he had hidden near the advance camp for just that purpose. There had been no time. By now, Castillo’s spies within the ranks of Orieza’s people—and Del Valle knew the Mexican president had them, for he permitted them to remain—would know that the general’s troops had suffered a serious setback on the Guatemalan border. Orieza would have to speak with Castillo, and that meant El Presidente himself would be phoning. Orieza couldn’t be permitted to take the call alone. He would need Del Valle on hand, lest the simpering old fool lose his nerve and back out of the plan.

Del Valle would give his general the courage he needed in dealing with the Mexican. That would be simple enough. Explaining to the general what had happened in the simplest, most casual terms would require a more delicate balancing act. Orieza had to know; it couldn’t be kept from him, lest the fact of Del Valle’s power behind the old man’s throne become too apparent to those with whom the General dealt regularly. There was no benefit to pulling a puppet’s strings if your audience focused on the puppeteer.

Del Valle knew that others considered him paranoid; he had been told as much, by many fools who this day didn’t draw breath. He dismissed them. To hold power, true power, required that one not be the constant target of assassins. Doing what was necessary carried with it many dangers and made many enemies. His shock troops were now camped about the general’s residence, a standing army devoted simply to keeping the old man safe. Let Orieza be a prisoner in his own home, content to play with his women and believing he was commanding legions. Del Valle would be there to reap the true benefits, forever in control, never far from the shadows.

Roderigo had risen through the ranks of the Honduran military, always unofficial, always an “adviser” or a consultant to men of power. Attaching himself to Orieza’s coattails had been simple enough, becoming known and respected as his adviser easy. The old man was handsome and well liked, a silver fox who, in his younger days, had shown much brilliance and inspired much loyalty. But Orieza was no saint. He knew and valued the services a ruthless agent could provide, and Del Valle shrewdly and masterfully played to the old man’s ego while bolstering his failing courage. Creating the shock troops, training them and assigning them their missions had been Del Valle’s brilliant move, and it had served them both well. Orieza liked believing he was protected by a private army within the Honduran military. The shock troops, meanwhile, were fiercely loyal to the man who had elevated them to elite status, to wealth, to almost unlimited license within the world permitted to them. Special privileges, women, weapons, money…the shock troops knew that they benefited greatly from the arrangement. They also knew that these things were conferred on them not by Orieza, but by Roderigo Del Valle.

After orchestrating Orieza’s coup, his rise to true power in Honduras, and after seeing to it that the old man’s claim to governing was shored up by blood and terror through his shock troops and his command of the Honduran military at large, Del Valle wasn’t satisfied. It was he, therefore, who had seen the potential of the oil pipeline. Nationalizing the country’s remaining private concerns had simply been a matter of course, but knowing what to do with those resources…well, that had been Del Valle’s brilliance at work, as well. It was Roderigo del Valle who had concocted the daring scheme to build the pipeline to Mexico, and it was Roderigo del Valle who recognized that a man like President Castillo would be receptive to the power play that Del Valle offered. Of course, Castillo thought all this was Orieza’s doing, and that was as it should be. If it went wrong, Orieza would take the blame. If somehow Del Valle’s hold on power was broken and the regime crumbled, it would be General Orieza’s back against the wall before a revolutionary firing squad.

When you were the power behind the throne, you could hide behind it, too.

But he was drifting. Back to the problem at hand. Castillo would call, would want assurances that the plan was to continue. Del Valle, through Orieza, would provide those assurances. President Castillo would be easily enough placated; he was many miles away, and understood the military might that General Orieza could yet bring to bear. Castillo also had a weakness that Del Valle was happy to exploit: the new Mexican president was a believer. His faith in this La Raza business, this Chicano nationalism, burned deeply in him. His hatred for the United States and his desire to take what he could from the Yankees north of his border would be the carrot that continued to lead him down Del Valle’s garden path. Only Roderigo del Valle would know that it was he who held the stick….

In offering these assurances to Castillo, of course, it was critical that Del Valle shield his general from the shock of the attacks near the Guatemalan border. Above all, Orieza couldn’t be allowed to know the true extent of the damage done.

Del Valle had seen the man. He had seen the big soldier and known him instantly for what he was, this Caucasian with dark hair. There was no way to be sure, but something about him—the way he moved, the equipment he carried, just something indefinable about his bearing—had made Del Valle place him as a an American. Certainly his willingness to invade, to kill, to cut a bloody swath across a foreign nation’s sovereign borders, was typical of his kind. Del Valle had seen U.S. Special Forces soldiers in action, and this man was very likely one of them.

His head still reeled with the knowledge of what the soldier had done. It was clear that the invader couldn’t be working alone, not given the extent of the carnage. He would likely be a leader, however. He had that look. Even in his brief contact with the big foreigner, Del Valle had felt something like fear tickling his guts. He had brushed against death and escaped, this man whose clothes were stained with blood, who smelled of smoke and of gunfire. This man with the two large knives mounted on his combat harness.

It was only after escaping the ruins of the base camp that Del Valle had learned of the true fury of the invading onslaught. His raiding party, massing on the border for another strike into Guatemalan territory, had been wiped out utterly. No doubt the American soldiers, if that was what they were, had brought a sizable team into the country. They were perhaps Marines, or SEALs…. It didn’t matter. He would have to make inquiries, once he returned to his own offices, in order to perform damage control.

The lesson they hoped to impart was clear enough: leave Guatemala alone. In truth, Del Valle hadn’t credited them with the courage to make a minor show of force, much less this. They were fools if they thought a bloody nose would be enough to dissuade him. He would find their forces, if they hadn’t already fled, and he would make lessons of them. But first there was Orieza….

Del Valle finished his useless attempts to clean himself up and turned to the door. He gestured to the woman, who pressed the buzzer beneath her desk. The door opened automatically, the locks releasing. That door was bulletproof, of course, the walls of Orieza’s office reinforced against explosives. The general himself sat within, looking far older and more tired than his troops would ever be permitted to see him.

“Roderigo,” he said weakly in Spanish, looking up from his ornate chair behind his equally ornate desk. “I am glad you are here.” He looked pale and sallow, his white hair flat against his skull. The elaborately gilded white uniform he wore hung limply on his frame, as if a size too large. He was staring at the phone on his desk, with its faux-antique receiver and engraved casing. It was ringing.

“Is that…?”

“Castillo.” Orieza nodded. “He has been calling all morning. I thought it best you be here before I spoke with him.”

Thank heavens, Del Valle thought, that the old fool can be trusted to follow my instructions at least that far.

“Of course, General,” he said, bowing smartly at the waist. “Forgive me for keeping you waiting. I will be honored to assist you.”

Orieza looked relieved. Del Valle took up a position perched on Orieza’s desk, where he would be able to listen to the call and quietly offer suggestions to the general out of range of the telephone.

After Orieza’s secretary and the operator on the other end traded formalities, the leaden voice of Mexico’s president blared from the device. “General Orieza,” Castillo said. “I have heard disturbing things.”

Del Valle whispered, and Orieza repeated his words verbatim. “I know full well what you have heard,” he said, the steel in his voice an act, but the role one he was quite accustomed to playing. It was as if the simple fact that Del Valle was there to think for him liberated him from whatever had turned him into such a shriveled shell of himself. He was free to be the powerful general, the macho hero of the new Honduran regime, as long as Del Valle did the heavy lifting—in this case, by telling him what to say.

“Then you know that I’ve learned your forces have been dealt a defeat on the Guatemalan border,” Castillo stated smoothly. “I don’t know how bad it is, but it worries me. Tell me, my friend, how bad is it?”

Worse than I will permit your spies to learn, useful idiot, Del Valle thought. Through Orieza, he said, “A small matter only. We believe the Guatemalans have called on their allies for assistance. It may have been the American directly, or some international force, which amounts to roughly the same thing.”

“And?” Castillo demanded.

“And they obviously seek to send us a message,” Del Valle said through the general. “One that, clearly, will have no effect. You know the Americans. They are gutless.”

“This I agree with,” the Mexican said. “But you are guessing. You do not know that it was the United States.”

“No,” Orieza repeated obediently. “But then, I do not know that it wasn’t, and in either case, it does not matter. Only a few men were killed. The operation will not be significantly slowed. The pipeline will be completed on schedule.”

“I have my doubts,” Castillo murmured. “Though, in truth, I owe you a debt of gratitude.”

“In what way?” Orieza asked, sounding genuinely as curious as Del Valle was.

“When you first came to me,” the Mexican president said, “telling me of your…shall we call it newfound wealth, and suggested the pipeline, I thought the plan insane. Waging war through your neighbors and mine in order to bring us the oil directly… Why, yes, the resulting wealth is most welcome, and with wealth comes power. But I got to thinking. You were dreaming big. I should do no less, I thought, and so I started to dream bigger.”

“We discussed this,” Orieza said, his cautious tone mirroring Del Valle’s. “You will use your money, your power, to accomplish your own goals in your upcoming battle with the Americans. We provided you significant material assistance in exchange for your cooperation with this plan, which is very detailed and has a specific schedule.”

“Assistance? You speak, no doubt, of your fine little helicopter. Yes, well,” Castillo said, “do not fear. We shall be putting it and the missiles to good use.”

“The time for your incursions is soon to be reached in that schedule—”

“That’s just it,” Castillo interrupted. “There is no ‘soon to be.’ My operatives are already in position. The first moves are already being made. Soon I shall bring those weaklings north of the border to their very knees, and we, the proud people of Mexico, will take what belongs to us.”

“But this is not what we agreed,” Orieza repeated for Del Valle.

“I do not give a damn for schedules any longer,” Castillo said. “I will take what I wish from the Americans, with or without your oil money. I will gladly take that, of course. Do not count it against me. But you have inspired me, General. I am taking what I want with or without your help. I shall gladly use the toy you have sent us to do it, too.”

“Is that wise?” Orieza asked, and this time he spoke before being prompted. Del Valle let it go, for he was about to ask the very same thing. He whispered, and Orieza repeated his next words: “If you alert the forces of the West too early, they may respond with greater force than they have already done.”

“Ramon, Ramon, Ramon.” Castillo tsked into the phone, setting Del Valle’s nerves on edge. “You refuse to acknowledge with whom you are dealing. These Americans are a fundamentally inferior race. We have discussed this.”

“Please do not ply me with your racial theories,” Orieza said, unbidden, and Del Valle had to admit that he felt much the same. “I am aware of your notions, and we agree that the territory you will seize rightfully belongs to you. But if you move too far too fast, before we have filled our coffers and purchased more weapons and equipment, they will crush you.”

“We have been eating them alive for years now, from within,” Castillo said with a sneer. “But perhaps I misunderstand. I am informed that you have suffered material damages. That someone has interfered with your operation on the border.”

“And I,” Orieza said, his tone mirroring the venom in Del Valle’s, “would very much like to know how you are aware of this.”

“We are all friends,” Castillo said. “Friends talk among themselves.”

“Indeed,” Orieza dutifully repeated. “We will not discuss that for now. As we—” He stopped abruptly as Del Valle shot him a look. “As I said, everything is under control. Pipeline construction continues on schedule. The Guatemalans cannot stop us. They do not have the means, nor the strength of will. Our own people can be counted on to do as we order them. It is a good plan and we shall stick to it.”

“Then I have nothing to worry about, do I?” Castillo said. “So I’m moving my people into position earlier than we discussed. It means little, provided the pipeline does go through. And, frankly, if you fail, Ramon, I will not be held back by your weakness. The Race demands more. It deserves more.”

“Just tread carefully,” Orieza said. “Remember what I have said.” He looked up at Del Valle as his adviser snatched the receiver and slammed it down on the cradle.

“That miserable pig!” Del Valle hissed. “He could ruin everything!”

“Roderigo…” Orieza said hesitantly, gazing directly at him for the first time since he’d entered the room.

“You look terrible. Are you all right?”

“I am fine,” Del Valle said sharply. He softened his tone, catching himself. “Please, General, think nothing of it. All is well. There are simply many things to monitor, many things I must keep a watchful eye on.”

“Yes, I suppose that would be so,” Orieza said, sounding unconvinced. “But who is it that attacks us? Have they done us much harm?”

“No, no, General.” Del Valle spread his hands, smiling broadly. “You know that a man like Castillo must always try to impress others with his great power. If he makes us believe he thinks us weak, he gains an advantage. We are in no danger, and our plans progress according to schedule. Our dream for our great nation progresses accordingly. There is no need to worry.”

“But, Roderigo, I have doubts. I have heard from some of the men that the people are angry.”

“Angry? Who told you that?”

Orieza shrugged. “One hears things from the staff. Is it true that the elite guard are interrogating our own people?”

“My men? Your bodyguards? That is absurd,” Del Valle lied. “Really, General, you must give this no thought. These are the kinds of rumors spread by the bored, the idle and the envious. You must know that your great power and popularity will bring unfair criticism.”

“I suppose,” Orieza said, his forehead knotting. “I simply do not understand—”

The intercom buzzed. Del Valle, grateful for the distraction, pressed the button before he could continue, and made a mental note of the fact that some people had been far too free in their conversation with Orieza. Roderigo would determine who the general had been listening to, and would make sure those persons disappeared permanently. Orieza was asking far too many inconvenient questions.

“Yes?” he said, leaning over the intercom.

Orieza’s secretary spouted a stream of apologies for interrupting, and then begged their pardons, but could Commander Del Valle take an urgent call from the field? One of his men had been trying to reach him for some time, she said, and she had delayed connecting the call for as long as she thought prudent.

“Yes, yes,” Del Valle said testily. “Put it through.” He picked up the large receiver. “Yes?” he said again in Spanish.

“Commander,” stated one of his field lieutenants, whose name escaped him at the moment. The soldier was out of breath, or frantic in some way, as if he was frightened or had run to reach the phone. “Sir, I must sound the alarm urgently, sir! There is great trouble here at the terminal!”

“The pipeline terminal?” Del Valle demanded.

“Yes, Commander, yes!”

“Well?”

“Sir…it…”

“What, damn you?” Del Valle roared. “Spit it out, or I will wring your neck!”

“Sir, the terminal burns.”

“What?” Del Valle shouted. “What are you talking about?”

“Sir—” The voice was cut short by a loud clap of sound, a noise Del Valle couldn’t escape.

“Report!” he yelled. “Report, damn you!”

The muffled click of the receiver being replaced in its cradle was the only reply.

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