Rogue Force

by Don Pendleton

  He might come up with nothing, Blancanales knew, and it wasn't his mission to disrupt the Contra movement. They were sanctioned out of Washington with full support directly from the Oval Office, but it was possible that certain Contra elements had slipped the leash, as certain members of the Special Forces obviously had. If trained Americans — and general officers at that — were actively conspiring to subvert the foreign policy of the United States, why should the Contras flinch from underhanded dealings in the war to liberate their homeland?

  Pol could sympathize, but he could also recognize the danger posed by independent operators. If Brognola was correct, McNerney and his men were looking forward to another Vietnam in Nicaragua. But if they overreached themselves and agitated Sandinista allies to the east, they might be stirring up a different kind of conflagration altogether.

  World War Three, for instance.

  Would Moscow stand and fight for Nicaragua? Would it make a difference if the Cubans intervened and U.S. forces lowered the boom on Fidel? What would it take to make someone on either side reach out and push the doomsday button? Pol didn't know the answers to those questions, and because he didn't, he was doubly determined to prevent their being asked aloud. If someone in the Contra movement was about to raise the ante here, employing extralegal aid from members of the U.S. military, it was time to ring the curtain down and stop the show.

  It went against Politician's grain to interfere with righteous freedom fighters, all the more so in an age where they had been preempted, for the most part, by a flock of terrorists and mercenary killers totally devoid of ideology. But there was more at stake this time than simple opposition to a dictatorial regime. When local freedom fighters threatened to ignite a global conflict, it was time to reassess their cause and intervene, if necessary, to prevent catastrophe.

  But he was being premature, he realized. Politician made his mind a blank. Idle speculation wouldn't help at this point, and it might prove detrimental later if he was locked into a theory unsupported by the facts. The only way to play it was to keep his eyes and mind wide open, searching for the truth until he found it. Or until he proved that there was nothing to be found.

  And in the meantime there was always Esperanza.

  "If you are interested in joining us," Luis Machado said, "I feel that we can guarantee full vengeance for your family, in time."

  "I would be honored," Blancanales told him, turning toward Esperanza and looking deep into her eyes. "The pleasure will be mine."

  13

  "You want a good time, sí? Ten dollars, American."

  The girl was no more than seventeen in Bolan's estimation, but her face already showed the scars of living on the streets. If he could glimpse her soul, the Executioner was certain he would find it callused, like a peasant farmer's hand. The light of youth and joy was missing from her almond eyes.

  "Not now," he told her brusquely, pushing on, ignoring her as she began to bargain for her wares.

  "Six dollars? Gimme six, you get a half-an'-half that make you loco."

  Bolan closed his mind to her and concentrated on his destination, three doors farther down the block. Aside from dialects and accents, certain cooking smells, he could have been in Saigon rather than Tegucigalpa. Red-light districts were essentially the same throughout the world: congested, frantic, throbbing with an urgency that passed for passion, even love, if you were desperate enough. The blaring music, uniforms, the women showing off their bodies in revealing clothes, were all familiar to the Executioner from other duty stations, other wars. In Vietnam, between engagements with the enemy, he had been known to patronize establishments of easy virtue on occasion. It had offered him diversion, but the grim realities of war and death were always waiting for him when he stepped outside again.

  And it was funny how life insisted on demanding your attention. Every time you slipped away, reality came back to haunt you, dredging up the ghosts and memories of failures that were never quite forgotten. Standing on the main drag of Tegucigalpa's red-light district, rubbing shoulders with the uniforms and tourists, prostitutes and pushers, Bolan knew that in a way this was reality. His war was here, among the seedy bars and cribs, as much as in the steaming jungle to the south. No matter how you sliced it, Bolan had to get a handle on the situation soon before he lost his chance forever.

  Three days into it, and the mission simply wasn't taking off. So far there had been no proposition from the enemy, and Bolan had begun to wonder if the prior disruptions, carried off by Able Team and Phoenix Force, had put the opposition on its guard. McNerney and his team wouldn't ignore the incidents, of course, but Bolan had been hoping their commitment to the cause would make them forge ahead, regardless of the risks involved. Without a deadline, Bolan had no way of knowing what their schedule might be, but instinct told him that he didn't have much time. Two lethal incidents within as many weeks — or three, if the suspicious disappearance of another Green Beret was added to the equation — told the Executioner that there was more to come.

  It was entirely possible that Bolan's adversaries had decided to proceed with what they had, eliminating risks inherent in recruitment of additional participants. If so, then he would have to find another way inside, but he wasn't ready to give up just yet. He had a reputation to uphold, as Frank Lambretta, and he was prepared to give the troops a show they wouldn't soon forget. With any luck at all, he might arouse some interest from a member of McNerney's group… enough, at any rate, to make them take a closer look.

  "Lambretta" had already asked around the base and learned that there were three cantinas catering primarily to U.S. servicemen. The first had been a rude surprise, its clientele predominantly black and universally indignant when the Anglo sergeant had shown his face inside. Devoid of racial prejudice himself, the Executioner was well aware that "Frank Lambretta" and the men he sought would not be likely to associate with blacks off duty, and he had retreated without ordering a drink.

  The second joint had been a quasi disco, heavy metal music blasting from giant speakers mounted every yard or so along the walls. It seemed as if two different albums might be playing simultaneously, but no one seemed to mind. The crowd was young, composed primarily of two- and four-year enlistees, their rented women and a scattering of tourists who appeared confused, disoriented. Conversation was impossible, and Bolan had been forced to order by gesture. The place didn't feel right to Bolan, lacking the depressing atmosphere familiar to him from the countless other bars where soldiers congregated to lament unfinished wars. This place was upbeat, flashy, overpriced — the absolute opposite of what the Executioner was seeking.

  On his third try, Bolan hit the jackpot in a dive where ceiling fixtures were discreetly tuned to twilight hues and oldies from a decade past were playing on the jukebox. As he entered, Barry Sadler was just winding down his "Ballad of the Green Beret." Bolan took a look around and guessed that Sadler got a lot of play from this crowd, consisting as it did of veterans in knife-edged uniforms, assorted prostitutes and B-girls, with a smattering of locals who resembled cheap Chicago gangsters from the 1950s.

  Bolan ordered a beer and found himself a table in the middle of the room. There was no dance floor — these men came to drink and brood, uninterrupted by the sounds of celebration — and he had an unobstructed view of both the entryway and bar. When he was settled in, the Executioner began a secondary scan… and struck pay dirt immediately.

  Leaning against the bar, a Special Forces sergeant by the name of Rafferty was downing beers like there was no tomorrow. Bolan knew him from the base — they had been introduced and hadn't spoken since — and Rafferty was one of those the soldier had been keen to watch more closely. Tall and muscular, a lifer in his early thirties, Rafferty had ten years on the average trooper stationed in Honduras.

  With a handful of selected friends — DiSalvo, Steiner, Broderick, some others — he apparently was at the core of an elitist clique on base, their camaraderie excluding even other Green Berets. The group wasn't
especially popular, but they were universally acknowledged as the best at what they did: specifically, instruction in guerrilla warfare and the latest counterrevolutionary tactics for the local military under terms of an assistance treaty. Bolan knew that all of them were combat veterans with service in Grenada, Vietnam, or both. Their training was the best, refined by battlefield experience… and if the Executioner was right in his suspicions, he would have to face them all before his mission in Honduras was completed.

  At the moment, Rafferty was drinking like a jilted lover trying to forget his sorrows, glancing neither left nor right. When he had put away five beers, by Bolan's count, he took a breather, ordering another one but merely sipping at it for the moment, turning from his place to scan the crowded, smoky room. His eyes were dark, suspicious slits, his mouth turned down into an angry scowl. Whatever had been bothering the sergeant, he was plainly working up his anger and his nerve to share it with the world.

  "I dunno 'bout the rest of you," he growled to no one in particular, "but lately I've been wondering just what the hell we're doing here." He scanned the silent faces, holding their attention now, and sipped his beer again before continuing. "I mean, do you believe they packed us off down here so we could sit around and watch the fuckin' Sandinistas use the border like it was a revolving door?"

  A murmur arose from a group of uniforms positioned near the door. They might not be acquainted with the speaker, but he had already touched a nerve.

  "Containment," Rafferty informed them scornfully. "Assistance short of personal involvement. And what kind of chicken shit is that? How many of you think Ortega and his fuckin' terrorists are gonna be contained so long as they're alive?"

  No hands were raised.

  "You bet your ass they won't!" the sergeant bellowed. "We've been sitting on a fuckin' powder keg down here since 1981, goddamn it, and there's people in Managua who would love to light the fuckin' fuse. If they could blast us out of here tomorrow, they'd do it. Am I right?"

  "Tha's right!" a solitary voice chimed in from somewhere off on Bolan's right. He didn't bother tracking down the voice's owner.

  "Bet your ass, I'm right! I dunno 'bout the rest of you, but I'm a fighting man. The U.S. government has spent a bit of money teaching me to fight guerrillas, terrorists, the kinda scum you got in uniform across the border there. I'm tellin' you, they spent a fortune teaching me to kick some ass, and now I gotta sit on mine while fuckin' terrorists do anything they goddamn please and get away with it. I dunno 'bout the rest of you, but I'm pissed off!"

  "Damn straight!"

  "Fucking-A!"

  It suddenly occurred to Bolan that the sergeant had preempted him. He was performing "Frank Lambretta's" act, preempting Bolan as a drunken rabble-rouser. If the Executioner should chime in now, he might antagonize his would-be contact. If Rafferty was running down an act to draw "Lambretta" or recruit new members for McNerney's team, it wouldn't do for Bolan to attack the bait with too much zeal. His record as a loner was available to anyone with access to the files, and he couldn't afford behavior that was out of character. If Rafferty's performance was sincere, however, then there might be time. If he was seeking gunners to replace the dead and missing, Bolan could approach him later when they had more privacy and try to strike a deal. It would require discretion, extraordinary care, and Bolan knew that any slip he made from this point on could be his last. A simple word in passing might be adequate, next time they met on base, or if the opportunity arose this evening…

  "I'll tell you what's the matter," Rafferty began again, his tone increasingly belligerent. A cocktail waitress blundered into him, approaching from his blind side with a tray of brimming mugs and glasses. Staggered by the impact, she released her tray; it fell with an explosive crash, warm beer and wine deluging Rafferty below the knees.

  The sergeant stood and gaped for several seconds, color rising in his face until his cheeks were darker than his ruined khaki pants. "You stupid bitch!" he bellowed, whirling on the frightened waitress and flinging the remainder of his beer directly in her face. He followed with an open-handed slap that drove her to her knees.

  Bolan thought Rafferty would continue his assault, but a native macho man was suddenly between them, shouting back at Rafferty in Spanish and shoving him away. The sergeant staggered, hesitated, and a wicked grin replaced the brooding storm clouds in his countenance.

  "You want a piece of this, Jose?" he asked.

  "Chinga tu madre, gringo!"

  "Bring it on to papa, greaseball."

  With a shout of rage, the local rushed at Rafferty, both hands outstretched as if to throttle him. The sergeant ducked beneath those hands and cut his adversary's legs away with one deft kick, allowing him to fall facedown beside the bar. Before the local could recover, Rafferty was on him, kicking at his back, his legs and buttocks, bending down to hammer at the unprotected skull with angry fists.

  No less than half a dozen uniforms were on their feet, restraining Rafferty before the beating could become a murder. Bolan kept his seat while others scooped up the bloody victim, dragged him to the doorway and dumped him on the sidewalk just outside. The battered waitress, grateful to have been forgotten in the chaos, had already cleared the floor of broken glass and disappeared behind the bar, refilling orders for the tables in the rear. She didn't look at Rafferty as other servicemen surrounded him, congratulating him on work well done. The barkeep, a Honduran native, kept his face impassive and his opinions to himself.

  "There's nothin' to it," Rafferty was telling one of his admirers as they ordered up another round of beers. "We could go through the fuckin' Sandinistas just like that if someone up in Fairyland, D.C., had guts enough to give the go-ahead."

  Bolan nursed his beer and watched as Rafferty was gradually deserted by his rooting section, troopers drifting back to tables they had occupied before the fight had erupted. Rafferty didn't appear to miss them, concentrating on his drink and strangely silent in the wake of his preceding outburst. Had the rush of combat sobered him enough to realize that he was talking out of turn? Maybe he had gone too far already, spelling out the feelings common in McNerney's group in front of an audience that might contain informers? Or were beer and battle simply combining to create fatigue?

  It was already after midnight, and the Executioner had duty early in the morning. He would stick with Rafferty a short while longer, trusting in his intuition, to see if anything further would transpire.

  As if in answer to his thoughts, the sergeant downed his final beer and pushed a pile of currency across the bar, retreating toward the exit. Several of the others offered him a round of weak applause, but Rafferty ignored them, homing on the doorway and the street outside. The Executioner was well aware that any sudden move could blow his cover, but he couldn't afford to let the sergeant slip away just yet. If Rafferty was going back to base, so be it; Bolan would be naturally heading in the same direction, thankful for the rest. If not?

  There had been no cessation in the action on the street. If anything, the pimps and prostitutes had sent for reinforcements, nearly doubling their numbers. Bolan glanced in both directions, picking up his quarry on the second try, already halfway down the block and moving rapidly despite the quantity of alcohol he had consumed. As far as Bolan could determine, Rafferty was heading for the base.

  Bolan set off in pursuit of Rafferty, ignoring hookers and the junk men who emerged from darkened alleyways with bags of pills and marijuana, quoting prices on the run. Ahead of him, the Special Forces sergeant was running a gauntlet of his own, pausing long enough to dicker with a greasy-looking pimp before his mood abruptly soured and he shoved the man away. Mack Bolan half expected some retaliation from the pimp, but if he carried any grudge, the weasel didn't show it, backing off and seeking other customers. As Bolan trailed him from a distance, he saw three men fall in step behind the sergeant, closing fast. Despite the angle, one of them was easily identifiable as Rafferty's assailant from the bar.

  The battered m
an had picked up reinforcements, burly toughs who swaggered as they walked, dressed like a stateside street gang circa 1960. Stepping up his pace, the Executioner spied two more leather jackets in front of Rafferty, already veering on a rough collision course. That made it five, and Bolan wondered if there might be others salted through the crowd or waiting in the nearby alley's mouth. Whatever, Rafferty would have his hands full, and it might still work out to Bolan's personal advantage.

  He couldn't hear a word above the blaring music and exaggerated laughter that surrounded him, but from the visuals alone he knew when Rafferty's assailant hailed the sergeant. The man in khaki grinned in recognition of the man who had intruded on his reverie and kept on grinning when he saw the flankers. Other words were passed, inaudible to Bolan, but the sergeant's posture made it clear that he wasn't averse to taking on three men at once. And it was also clear he never saw the other two, approaching swiftly on his blind side.

  One of them clubbed Rafferty behind the ear as his companion drove a fist into the sergeant's lower back. The khaki soldier folded, but he never hit the sidewalk; eager arms were open to receive him, bearing him away in the direction of the darkened alley. In their wake, the business of the streets continued unabated as if nothing had transpired.

  Bolan had a choice to make. If Rafferty was maimed or murdered in the alley, the Executioner might lose his only hope of making contact with McNerney's team. So far he had no evidence of Rafferty's involvement in the plot, no "proof" beyond his intuition that the guy was dirty. If he let it go at that, abandoned Rafferty to face the jackals on his own, he would be relinquishing the only chance to prove his hunch. And once that opportunity was lost, there might not be another.

  One part of Bolan would have been content to walk away and let the street thugs deal with Rafferty as he had dealt with others. But another part — the cold, pragmatic part where logic lived and strategy was born — demanded that he intervene, make something of the situation if he could. And if his instincts were off base this time, if Rafferty had no connection with the plotters… well, at least he would have tried.