Patriot Strike

by Don Pendleton

  Roth was in the middle of it, maybe screaming, though his voice was swallowed by the roaring that drowned out all other sound. The rocket’s blast melted the semitractor where it sat, together with its trailer, then the silver bird was off and speeding toward its unintended target, trailing white-hot flames. Bolan was facedown on the blacktop when it ripped through hangar A and detonated with a thunderclap that lifted him and slammed him back to earth, breathless.

  The end of days, he thought. Or this day anyway.

  Chapter 14

  College Station, Texas

  Getting out was easier than Bolan had expected. The confusion helped, of course, and the successive blasts from hangar A that got its neighbor burning within minutes—rocket fuel and God-knew-what-else going up in brilliant flames—tarring the sky for miles around with thick, foul smoke. Lone Star had firefighting equipment at the plant, and sirens were converging within minutes. No one seemed to notice two bedraggled figures walking through the haze to reach their rented van or driving off to make the switch with Bolan’s RAV4, half a mile away.

  Bolan and Granger caught some of the action via radio, then watched the rest at a motel on State Highway 6, near the Texas World Speedway, outside College Station. Every channel had it covered, the announcers seeming awestruck with their commentary. Fox News speculated that the fire was caused by Muslim terrorists. A red-faced televangelist blamed gays and Roe v. Wade, then segued into praying for donations to support his ministry. Most of the talking heads were satisfied to ooh and aah over live footage of the blaze in progress. None of them, so far, had managed to obtain a comment from president and CEO of Lone Star Aerospace.

  “He got away,” said Granger, washing down the bitter pill with diet soda.

  “In the chopper,” Bolan said, confirming it.

  “We’ve lost him then.”

  “Not lost. Misplaced.”

  “He’s in the wind by now, most likely well outside the States.”

  Bolan had worked that out before they’d cleared the Houston city limits. He’d already talked to Brognola, who, in turn, would have relayed the news to Stony Man.

  “Planes don’t leave U.S. air space without filing flight plans,” Bolan said. “And if they deviate, they’re still on radar. Anywhere he lands, there’ll be a record of it, with the plane’s tail number. Same thing if he takes off for another airport.”

  “He could change the numbers.”

  “Not in flight,” Bolan replied. “Whatever plane he used flying from Dallas down to Houston, it’s on record. If he lands somewhere—say Mexico—and takes off overland, it still gives me a starting point.”

  “Gives us a starting point,” she said, correcting him.

  Bolan muted the talking heads. “You’ve done your part,” he said, “and then some. There’s no point in chasing it around the world.”

  “But you will?”

  “That’s my job. It’s what I do.” And who I am, he thought, but kept it to himself.

  “They still owe me,” she said. “For Jerod.”

  “If you haven’t settled that tab yet, you likely never will.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You’ve got a life here. A career. So far, the only people who know anything about you helping me are either dead or can’t afford to talk about it. You can let it go.”

  “The point is that they do know me. Ridgway, Coetzee, whoever. What’s to stop them coming back to settle up a year from now or five years on?”

  “I will,” the Executioner replied.

  “Suppose I want to see it through. Haven’t I earned that yet?”

  “You’ve earned a break. I recommend you take it.”

  “No can do. You want to freeze me out, okay. I’ll make believe I’m going back to work and track Ridgway myself. We’ll see who gets him first.”

  “That’s not a wise decision,” Bolan said.

  She smiled at that. “What have you seen me do, so far, that’s wise?”

  He watched the silent television, Lone Star going up in smoke. “Do you have a passport?”

  Aboard Learjet No. N411X

  FROM FORTY THOUSAND FEET, the Gulf of Mexico looked just like any other ocean on the planet. Maybe not as blue or green as parts of the Caribbean, but Ridgway wasn’t interested in the scenery. Some might have said that he was running for his life, but he preferred to think of it as soaring toward a future bright with promise.

  And the possibility of settling old scores.

  “I want ’em,” he told Simon Coetzee, who lounged in the seat beside him. “Every mother’s son who had a hand in this. I don’t care what it costs, how long it takes. I want their scalps.”

  “Figure of speech?” Coetzee inquired.

  “Not necessarily.”

  Ridgway was not accustomed to frustration, much less to humiliation. Over the decades, since his first million had multiplied exponentially, he’d learned that problems that seemed insurmountable to lesser men were merely speed bumps on his road to ever-greater wealth and influence. Once he managed to replace the m in “millions” with a b, people stopped rejecting wild ideas and rushed to climb aboard the bandwagon.

  Now some smart-ass had changed the rules, and Ridgway didn’t like it. He would never rest until the insolent pissants were hunted down and punished, preferably while he watched their executions from a ringside seat.

  Failing that, he’d settle for a high-def video.

  In the meantime he had chosen Maracaibo as his destination of the moment. Venezuela had an extradition treaty with the States, of course; but under President Chávez, tension between the countries had produced a breakdown in cooperation on that front.

  Another bonus: Venezuela currently produced more oil and natural gas than Saudi Arabia—with domestic gasoline prices cheaper, per gallon, than a bottle of water—and while foreign investments were limited by law, Lone Star Petroleum had found its niche. Ridgway had not been surprised to learn that members of the Venezuelan government enjoyed payoffs as much as those in Texas and Washington. The circumstances had encouraged him to view the country as a home away from home.

  At least for now.

  And in a little while... Well, who could say how long the current president would hold on to his job? By law he could be reelected till the end of time, but South America was well known for its coups and revolutions. Everyone was subject to the winds of change.

  Coetzee’s voice cut through Ridgway’s reverie. “We’ll find them, sir. I guarantee it.”

  “Guarantees are one thing,” Ridgway told him. “Doin’ is another. I’d be lyin’ if I said you haven’t disappointed me so far.”

  “I understand, sir.”

  “That’s a start. Now fix it!”

  Turning from his window’s view over the Gulf, Ridgway stared at the television mounted in the bulkhead. He had it tuned to CNN, and they were all over the Houston fire, with helicopters circling through the smoke and cameras on the ground, catching the blaze from every angle they could think of. The networks didn’t have a body count, and Ridgway wondered if they ever would, given the heat generated by rocket fuel. A crematorium normally took a couple hours to do its job, running at 1,400 to 1,800 degrees Fahrenheit—roughly one-third the temperature of George Roth’s modernized V-2.

  Ridgway supposed it was the late George Roth, unless he had been taken into custody. And there were ways to deal with that, if it turned out to be the case. A million here, a million there...

  In Ridgway’s personal experience, a man could purchase anything, if he was rich enough.

  A tropical sanctuary definitely. And perhaps a whole new country of his very own.

  Robert F. Kennedy Department of Justice Building

  “IT’S MARACAIBO,” BROGNOLA said. “Landing confirmed.”

  Bolan’
s voice came back through the sat-phone. “Before I jump on that, let’s wait and see if he takes off again.”

  “We’re working on surveillance,” Hal replied. “I’ve got a contact with the Bolivarian Intelligence Service down there. He’s putting some eyes on the Learjet.”

  “Okay. Let’s wait and see if he’s refueling. If he hasn’t left by sundown, say, I’ll catch the next flight out. Have you got someone in the neighborhood to hook me up with hardware?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem,” said Brognola. “Able has a couple guys they use in Maracaibo.”

  Meaning Able Team—Carl Lyons, Hermann Schwarz and Rosario Blancanales, all allies of Bolan in earlier wars. Hal wasn’t ready to commit them on the Ridgway problem yet, but he could field them as reserves if matters went from bad to worse.

  “I’ll be in touch then,” Bolan said, and cut the link. No mention was made of the Texas Ranger since they’d both left Houston, leaving it to Hal’s imagination for the moment.

  Fair enough. The news was mostly good, so far, despite Ridgway’s escape. The bulk of the mainstream media coverage leaned toward a tragic accident scenario, while state and federal authorities took command of the scene. NEST was on standby in Houston, ready to move as soon as the fires were brought under control. If and when they found fissile materials stockpiled on-site, a story could be crafted to explain them. Or the story could be buried, as others had been in the past.

  Along with Ridgway, once Mack Bolan got another shot at him.

  It galled Brognola that the truth about a madman’s deadly power grab might never reach the public, but Hal had grown accustomed over time to unsung victories. Defeating evil was its own reward, even when victory was transient and the issue never really got resolved. He knew there’d always be another predator, another savage or a despot in the making who required the kind of treatment that the Executioner provided.

  But there wouldn’t always be an Executioner.

  For all his skills, the one trait Bolan did not have was immortality.

  * * *

  THE RED PHONE on his desk trilled softly, and he grabbed it midway through the first ring.

  “Yes, sir...No, that’s all the information that we have right now, sir...Moving on that lead as soon as we’ve confirmed it, sir...You’ll be apprised immediately, sir...Of course. Goodbye, sir.”

  Pressure from upstairs, the only person outside Stony Man who knew a thing of Hal’s involvement in the covert game of life and death he played each day. There were concerns that had to be resolved.

  What else was new?

  There had been blood already, but it wasn’t quite enough.

  Not yet.

  College Station

  ASIDE FROM MILITARY service, Adlene Granger hadn’t seen much of the world—and what she had seen mostly left a bad taste in her mouth. Boot camp had been all right; Afghanistan had sucked. Beyond that, she had been to Mexico a few times through the years, like any other Texan, taking in the poverty of border towns like Ciudad Juárez and Matamoros, where the souvenirs—and life—were cheap.

  She’d never thought about a trip to South America, much less Venezuela specifically, but it looked like she was on her way, despite Matt Cooper’s initial resistance. Granger had earned her seat aboard that roller coaster, and she would ride it to the end of the line.

  To Hell, if that’s where it took her.

  And if Hell existed, would she find her brother there?

  Matt Cooper had been busy checking flights to Maracaibo, weighing charters versus the commercial airlines. They could load their weapons on a private charter plane but had no guarantee that customs would not intercept and jail them on the other end.

  Conversely, if they flew unarmed on a commercial flight, Cooper believed they could find hardware when they got to Venezuela, although buying guns and ammunition in a foreign land would also be a dicey proposition. He had contacts—friends of friends, apparently—but how far could he trust them?

  Granger had considered backing out, returning to her job and burying her brother as if nothing else had happened since his death. The state investigation into Jerod’s murder would drag on, eventually going cold, and likely would remain officially unsolved. No one from Ridgway’s camp was likely to accuse her of participating in the recent mayhem around Lone Star, but as long as the old man survived, there was a chance that someone would return to settle that account when Granger least expected it.

  Choices.

  Once she went aboard a flight to Maracaibo, she’d be out of options. There would be no turning back then, no second chance to face herself in the mirror—at least not with anything resembling self-respect. Whether or not she ever knew who’d pulled the trigger on her brother, whether they were dead already or had fled to parts unknown, Granger could not allow herself to go that extra mile and then beg off before the bloodletting began.

  So she was in. And that meant all the way.

  Cooper was on the phone again, taking another call from one of his connections. There was nothing to be gained from eavesdropping, so Granger watched the TV news, its volume turned down low. In Houston, they had more or less controlled the Lone Star fire, and folks in hazmat suits were moving in to sweep the site.

  How much of what she knew for fact would ever make it to the media? Granger could not have said and was a bit surprised to find she didn’t care. Reporters got it wrong so often that she barely trusted them to handle sports and weather, let alone anything that mattered. And what mattered now, to her, was finding Ridgway. Making sure he could never pull another crazy stunt like this again, regardless of how many billions he had banked offshore.

  If she could help do that, it would be worth whatever risks she had to face.

  And if she never made it home again...well, maybe it was worth that, too.

  La Chinita International Airport, Maracaibo, Venezuela

  “THEY WON’T CALL this a dry heat,” Ridgway muttered, as he left the Learjet 60’s air-conditioned comfort and descended into stifling humidity. It was a short walk to the limousine that waited for him on the tarmac, but he’d sweated through his shirt before he climbed inside the car and sank back in his seat.

  Beside him, Malcolm Barnhart had the same sour expression on his face that he’d been wearing since Houston, seeming as if he was on the verge of tears. Ridgway considered slapping him but realized it wasn’t worth the effort. He had only brought Barnhart along to keep the FBI from latching onto him and squeezing him for information. Now that they had left the States, Barnhart was moping on borrowed time.

  “Is everything arranged?” Ridgway asked Coetzee.

  “Good to go, sir,” Simon said. “I double-checked as we were landing.”

  Ridgway glanced at Barnhart, who stared out the limo’s tinted window to his left. “I’ll need to make one stop along the way. I’ll tell you when,” Ridgway said.

  Coetzee, as usual, raised no objections, asked no questions. He would do as he was told. Ridgway had not decided where to leave his pouting sycophant just yet, but it would come to him. Somewhere along the ninety-minute drive to his vacation hacienda, he would spot a place that suited him for Barnhart’s execution. Burial would not be necessary. Let the Venezuelan forest deal with his disposal.

  “The staff foreman was curious how long you might be staying, sir,” said Coetzee.

  “Was he now? I’ll have to think about it.”

  There were legal issues to deal with, and bribes to be doled out at the so-called Ministry of Justice, to make sure that all his ducks were in a row. If something went wrong, if the bastards in charge took his money, then tried to betray him, Ridgway would have to get out on short notice.

  But where would he go?

  In the Western Hemisphere, only Cuba had no diplomatic ties to the United States, and Ridgway thought he was unlikely to be welcome t
here. Canadian law had once refused extradition of anyone facing the death penalty, but that longstanding rule was presently in legal limbo. To be clear of extradition absolutely, he would have to hide somewhere in Africa, or maybe in the Middle East.

  Not an attractive prospect, either way.

  Still he was hopeful Venezuela would accommodate him. Ridgway recalled reading, somewhere, that the current president received a paltry salary, less than twenty grand per year, with half of that paid out in alimony to his ex-wife. There should be some room for a negotiation there, and with the ministers who fell beneath His Excellency on the totem pole of government authority. Hell, Ridgway could keep them all in tacos and tequila for a fraction of last year’s Christmas bonus out of Lone Star.

  Life was good—or would be, once he verified that no G-men would be knocking on his door.

  When they were fifty miles southwest of Maracaibo, outside La Villa de Rosario, Ridgway told Coetzee, “This should do it.”

  Coetzee nodded to the driver, and the limo coasted to a halt. Barnhart appeared to notice his surroundings for the first time since they’d landed. “What’s this? Are we there?” he asked Ridgway.

  “Not quite, old buddy,” Ridgway said. “But this is where you leave us.”

  “What? I don’t— What do you mean, Lamar?”

  “Your services, as hoity-toity people like to say, are no longer required.”

  “But I don’t understand!”

  Barnhart apparently had not seen Coetzee exit on the far side of the limousine or walk around behind it. He let out a squawk as strong hands gripped his coat and yanked him from the car.

  “Lamar! Don’t do this!”

  “It’s already done,” Ridgway replied, reaching across to close the door.

  It seemed a shame to waste the limo’s lovely air-conditioning.