Rogue Force

by Don Pendleton

  Two of the aircraft were down, disgorging soldiers as the others settled gracefully to earth. Katz slipped the Colt Commander out from under his serape, thumbing the selector to autofire. Around the plaza, "peasants" gaped in evident confusion at the soldiers pounding toward them across open ground. Most of them were Hispanics in olive drab, but two or three were taller, Anglos dressed in tiger-stripe fatigues. Katz tried to pick out Bolan's face, or Pol's, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  The last of the assault ships settled gingerly to earth, and Katz was swinging up his autorifle when the big M-60 cut loose overhead. He saw three of the Hispanics stumble, sprawling in the dust, and hoped that Calvin knew who he was shooting at. Another heartbeat and the plaza had become an echo chamber for what seemed to be a hundred weapons, all firing at once. The native troops were hauling out their hardware, dropping prone or firing from the cover of the market stalls, while their assailants opened up on the run, advancing behind a screen of automatic fire.

  Katz sighted quickly down the barrel of his weapon and dropped the foremost Anglo runner with a three-round burst across the chest. He didn't pause to watch the dead man thrashing in convulsions on the ground; too many other targets were demanding his attention at the moment, bearing down upon him in a screaming human wave.

  Downrange, one of the helicopters exploded in a clap of heavy metal thunder, spewing arcs of burning fuel in all directions. Katz had time to catch a glimpse of human torches scrambling from the wreckage, then incoming rounds were peppering his shelter, forcing him to answer with his own fire.

  There was no time to think of Pol or Bolan now. If they were with the raiding party, they would have to look out for themselves. He popped two more commandos, wondering as they fell if they were Contra troops or mercenaries. It didn't matter either way, the gruff Israeli realized. Whatever their philosophy, they had already crossed the line, becoming predators, and it was Katzenelenbogen's job to take them out.

  He broke from cover, dodging toward the nearest market stalls. Around him, some of the Honduran troops were taking hits, collapsing in untidy piles, their crimson blood soaking into the dusty ground. How many had they lost already? And how many hostile guns were still arrayed against them?

  Sliding behind a stand that offered gourds and vegetables for sale, Katz knew they were fortunate the helicopters were unarmed. If the choppers had had mounted rockets, cannon, even light machine guns, it might have been all over now. They could have swept the plaza from the air, reducing San Felipe to a pile of smoking rubble. If the enemy faced any disadvantage at the moment, it resided in the Phoenix warriors' moment of surprise. On foot, their only means of transportation critically at risk, the raiders would be fighting with divided minds, a part of their attention necessarily focused on the mechanism of withdrawal.

  Their plan hadn't been to capture San Felipe, after all. The game was hit-and-run, with maximum civilian casualties and a convenient fade to parts unknown. Confronted with a military force barely half their size, with one of five evacuation ships already blown to hell, some members of the strike team must be having second thoughts. And worried soldiers had been known to hesitate at crucial moments, risking life and mission while their thoughts strayed into areas of personal security. It was an edge that Katz was counting on as he maneuvered for position, crawling past another fallen friendly, looking for an open field of fire.

  He craned around the stall, prepared to risk a shot, and felt the heat flash as a second chopper went to hell on rolling thunder. Jagged portions of the rotor blades careened across the plaza, scything hostile troops and friendlies alike.

  Whatever happened now, McNerney's raiders had to level San Felipe to save themselves. They had to wipe out every trace of opposition, every witness to their deed. The grim alternative to total victory was death.

  So, too, with Katzenelenbogen and the men of Phoenix Force. So long as one of their assailants lived, the job wouldn't be done. And death would be a sorry substitute for victory.

  * * *

  Gary Manning dropped the rocket launcher's empty tube beside its mate and reached behind him for the heavy MM-1 projectile launcher. Chambered in 40 mm with a twelve-round capacity, the weapon resembled nothing so much as a bloated tommy gun of 1920s vintage. Loaded and operated like a revolver, the MM-1 could mix its ammo, anything from harmless smoke to high-explosive rounds. This time the tall Canadian had backed up three HE cans with as many buckshot rounds, the six remaining chambers primed with razor-edged fleschettes.

  Weighing in at eighteen pounds when fully loaded, Manning's weapon had no noticeable recoil. Tracking past the blazing wreckage of the choppers that his LAWs had already taken out, he sighted down on number three and put a high-explosive round directly through the windscreen. A ball of fire rolled out of there, consuming man and machine, the fuel tanks following in secondary detonation heartbeats later.

  Manning was already sweeping on, aware of hostile gunners closing on his flank. He pivoted to meet them with a buckshot round and swept them off their feet with forty pellets, each equivalent to .30 caliber. Their twisted bodies thrashed together briefly, then lay still.

  Returning to the choppers, Manning drew a bead on number four, already squeezing off as frantic figures in the cockpit tried to get her airborne. Ripping through the cargo bay, his HE load went off amidships, cut the whirlybird in two and left it sagging like the broken carcass of a prehistoric dragonfly. The pilot and his backup were attempting to evacuate when Manning hit them with his second buckshot charge and dropped them in their tracks.

  Too easy.

  Swinging toward the final helicopter, watching it disintegrate, a flaming skeleton with scarecrow figures dancing in the fire, he wondered why no troops had been detailed to guard the transport. They hadn't expected opposition on the ground, of course, but still…

  Too easy, yes. As if the raiders — some of them, at any rate — were supposed to die in San Felipe.

  Manning had no time to puzzle through the riddle before a flying squad of gunners hit him from his blind side. No one had detailed a guard to watch the choppers, but deprived of transport now, some of the raiders were intent on getting even with a pound of Manning's flesh. Their probing fire was eating up the doorway that sheltered him, and in another moment he would have to move or lose it all.

  He moved, the launcher chopping out a path with buckshot and fleschettes. The little razor-sharp darts had been designed to slice through body armor, and his opposition wasn't wearing any. Caught on open ground, the foremost of them took three rounds at point-blank range, evaporating on their feet. The rest were having second thoughts, but Manning didn't give them time to sort it out before he emptied the launcher, almost in their screaming faces, blowing them away in rags and tatters.

  He dropped the MM-1 and tugged his mini-Uzi out of shoulder rigging, chambering a live one and moving out to join the dance. So many hostiles left, so many friendlies down, and Manning knew that it could still go either way. The fight for San Felipe wasn't in the bag yet.

  They could still lose it, and the Canadian had no desire to think about the repercussions of defeat. If anything, the slaughter of Honduran troops would raise more heat than if the victims were civilians. It would be a clear-cut act of war.

  And back in Washington, those undecided congressmen would hear McNerney's message loud and clear. They would be voting arms and troops, along with cash, if Manning and his comrades couldn't stem the tide right now.

  Aware of everything at stake, he moved out through the drifting smoke of burning helicopters, searching for the enemy.

  * * *

  A shock wave from the helicopter's detonation lifted Blancanales off his feet and hurled him forward on his face. Somehow he kept his grip on the Kalashnikov as air was driven from his lungs, each sucking breath repulsive with the stench of burning fuel and human flesh.

  He had no fix on Bolan, no idea why peasant villagers were sporting small arms in the village square. As a precaution, he
hadn't been told their destination until they were airborne, but Machado obviously had been counting on an easy in-an-out. Instead, they had come down into a firestorm, and their transport had been blown to hell, eliminating any option of escape. The set was going sour, and while opposition was encouraging, Pol knew he ran a risk of being killed in San Felipe.

  Someone leaped across his prostrate form, intent upon the cover of a nearby building, but a bullet intercepted him and hurled him backward over Blancanales. Cursing, Pol kicked free of the deadweight and scrambled to his feet, desperately searching for some cover of his own. He saw three Contras, huddling some fifty feet away beside the tiny village church. One of them waved for him to join them, and Politician sprinted forward, thumbing off the safety of his AK-47 as he ran.

  The three of them were firing at a clutch of market stalls as Blancanales closed the gap. They were secure in his allegiance to their cause, oblivious to death approaching in a friendly uniform until he hit them with a burst from the Kalashnikov and dropped them in their tracks beside the house of God. A sour taste was in his mouth, and this time it had no connection with the smell of burning oil or bodies. Crouching next to the remains of three dead men whose final error had been trusting him, Politician scanned for other "allies" he could kill in an attempt to shave the odds.

  There was no guilt. The crime was theirs, and yet…

  Sighting down the AK-47's barrel at another pair of Contra soldiers, Blancanales thought he might be on the verge of understanding Judas. Squeezing off, he cut down the two guerrillas and left them kicking in the middle of the dusty plaza.

  Across the square, he saw one of the spetsnaz troopers closing in on the market stalls. Could it be Bolan? There was too much intervening distance, too much smoke and dust between them for Blancanales to be sure, so he held his fire. The plaza was alive with other targets anyway, and one man made no difference.

  Except that everybody counted, sure. If they were to succeed in stopping Mike McNerney cold, it had to be a clean sweep. No stragglers, no strays, no MIAs. A single miss was tantamount to failure. If the bastards got away to start from scratch or spread the fiction of a Sandinista border raid against Honduras, then McNerney and his backers would have won.

  A couple of the "peasant" gunners had his fix, and they were laying fire on his position now, their bullets chipping at the wood and stonework of the church. He sent a burst in their direction, high enough to miss and low enough to keep their heads down, wondering how long he could continue the charade before he had to kill a friendly. He was an enemy, for all they knew, and they would do their best to nail him if they could.

  Breaking from the shadow of the church, Pol dodged across an open no-man's-land, bypassing fallen Contras and defenders alike. He had traveled thirty feet when something struck him in the shoulder with sufficient force to knock him off his feet. This time he dropped his rifle and had to scrabble after it with numbed fingers. White-hot pain was flaring in his shoulder now, warm blood coursing down his arm, and Blancanales knew he had been tagged.

  It didn't matter who had shot him. Either way, he was a dead man if he gave the sniper time to try again. He snared the AK-47, staggered to his feet and veered in the direction of what seemed to be a blacksmith's shop. Incoming rounds snapped at his heels as he slid into sanctuary, huddling in a corner, trusting masonry to keep the bullets from him while he probed his wound.

  It took a heartbeat for Politician to realize that he wasn't alone. Almost afraid to look, he raised his eyes… and found himself looking down the muzzle of an M-16 assault rifle, held by one of San Felipe's "peasant" defenders.

  * * *

  "You look a sodden mess," McCarter told him, lowering his autorifle. "Who's your tailor?"

  "GI Joe," Politician answered testily, his free hand raised to staunch the flow of blood from what appeared to be an ugly shoulder wound. "What brings you here?"

  "Cal got the word from Striker late last night. We weren't sure if Machado's people would be in on it."

  "You live and learn."

  "Assuming that you live."

  A stray round ricocheted around the inside of their sanctuary and snapped back out again the way it had come. McCarter scanned the plaza, saw two Contras closing on them from the left and dropped them with a ragged figure eight.

  "How bad's that shoulder?"

  "Bad enough, but I can fight."

  "Take these."

  Removing his sombrero, he passed it to Blancanales and watched the Able warrior perch it on his head with bloody fingers. Shrugging out of his poncho, McCarter draped it over Pol to hide his wound and part of his Sandinista uniform.

  "The locals here don't know you," he remarked. "Stay put. Play dead, if possible. If not… well… I'll be back when this is finished."

  "Thank you, Mother."

  "Bloody cheek."

  He made another rapid visual and broke from cover, running in a crouch and cutting down another pair of Contras on his short dash to the market stalls. After the first bold rush, both sides had settled in to fight a different kind of battle, sniping at their enemies from cover where it was available, retreating where it wasn't. San Felipe's plaza was an open grave. At least two dozen leaking corpses littered the ground in McCarter's line of sight. There would be others, certainly, and he began to wonder who — if anyone — was winning.

  It would be a victory of sorts if they wiped out the raiding force, regardless of the friendly casualties. McCarter planned on walking out of San Felipe on his own, and it was difficult to visualize himself as any kind of sacrificial lamb. He might well die before the day was out, but he wouldn't be going meekly, on his knees.

  One of the taller Anglos emerged from cover. McCarter snapped his rifle up, delaying for a moment as the "Russian" turned to glance across his shoulder, verifying that the target wasn't Bolan. Satisfied, he stroked the trigger of his M-16 and put a three-round burst into the gunner's face.

  No sign of Bolan yet, and it was only luck that he had stumbled onto Blancanales in the midst of all this chaos. Knowing Striker might be dead already, McCarter still didn't give up hope. Until he saw the body for himself, there was a chance.

  Tired of waiting, the Briton braced himself to make another dash from cover through the killing grounds. His war was waiting for him out there in the open, and the former SAS commando didn't plan to keep it waiting any longer.

  27

  Travers knew instinctively that it was time to go. His contact on McNerney's team confirmed the loss of radio contact with Crane's strike force, and that could only mean deep trouble for all concerned. The pilots weren't under radio silence; in fact, they had been ordered to talk as much as possible, impersonating Sandinistas, during and after the raid on San Felipe. Silence was the worst news possible. It might mean loss of pilots, radios or even helicopters. The man from Langley didn't want to think about those soldiers stranded in the jungle, miles from anywhere, with real-life Sandinistas on one side and Honduran troopers on the other.

  Some of them would talk if they were captured. That was guaranteed. Machado's men weren't professionals; their patriotic zeal was counterbalanced by a lack of preparation for the grim realities of fighting a clandestine war. The Contras might be hell on raiding villages, ambushing enemy patrols, but when the interrogation started heating up, they often broke. For every one who'd held his tongue, there was another anxious to confess his sins, say anything at all to ease the pain.

  None of them knew Lane Travers. He had met Machado once, in passing, but his secret link with Anastasio Ruiz had been the problem, now effectively eliminated by the clumsy bastard's death. But they could lead interrogators back to Fletcher Crane, perhaps to Anthony Falcone, and from there…

  If something had gone wrong in San Felipe, then McNerney was in jeopardy, and everyone around him stood a chance of going down. Each moment wasted brought them closer to exposure. Sick to death of waiting, Travers was determined to evacuate before the enemy had time to get a fix on his positi
on, his identity. There just might be sufficient time to make it work.

  He finished riffling the desk drawers, thankful that he kept no critical material on hand. There were two stops to be made before he split, at home and at his bank, but he should still be clear and running by the time the shock waves from today's adventure reached Tegucigalpa. In the wake of San Felipe, there would be a certain measure of confusion while authorities went through the wreckage, checking for IDs and looking for a scapegoat. Travers would be grateful for anything at all to buy him extra time.

  He pocketed the automatic pistol and finished stuffing papers into his briefcase. He wouldn't miss anything about Honduras: weather, women, work, had all become extremely tedious of late. McNerney's strange diversion had relieved the general monotony a little by replacing tedium with creeping paranoia. Travers would be glad to shake both feelings and put the sweaty place behind him and begin afresh.

  He might try Switzerland. He had to stop in Zurich as it was to raid his cash reserves, and if he found the atmosphere accommodating, Travers thought that he might shelter there awhile. It wouldn't last of course, not if McNerney's backers in the Company were still at large. They would be looking for him high and low, employing all their contacts in an effort to eliminate potential leaks. And if they fell? What then? Would federal investigators find his name on file, connected with the bungled Nicaraguan operation? Would they seek him out for questioning, or simply post a kill-on-sight beside his name?

  No, Switzerland would never do. Once he had tapped his numbered bank accounts, the man from Langley would be forced to find himself another hiding place outside the NATO sphere of operations. Somewhere in the South Pacific might be nice. He knew that there were islands to be had at bargain-basement prices if you had the contacts. Lane Travers paused, envisioning himself as King of Traversland, the sovereign ruler of his own domain, and wondered if the CIA would find him there.