Damn it!
Bolan had no time to run off in search of her now, even if he had known where to start. He had destroyed Braga’s cocaine delivery, and Grimaldi had foiled the drug lord’s plan for flying out of Dodge while it went up in flames behind him, but Bolan’s mission would not be complete until he stood over the narco-trafficker’s dead body.
Simple justice.
Giving up on Mercy Cronin for the moment, Bolan edged back toward the hut’s gaping doorway, scanning the slice of Braga’s compound it revealed. He crouched in the doorway, waiting for Grimaldi to complete another pass from west to east, clearing the field before him with the buzz saw of his miniguns. As bodies dropped and rolled—some limp, some writhing in their death throes—Bolan broke for cover, headed for the bungalow he’d marked as Braga’s living quarters and command post.
Too late, as a mighty mouse homed in and struck the prefab building’s sloped roof, detonating on impact. The roof buckled, the walls blew outward, spewing clouds of smoke and dust. The shock wave took down two of Braga’s nearby soldiers, lacing them with shrapnel as they fell. Bolan ignored their screams and sought another target, watching for familiar faces in the chaos that surrounded him and finding none so far.
No sign of Braga, Oswaldo Ramos or the well-dressed man he’d pegged as a VIP guest at the compound. There was still a chance Bolan could find them, dead or alive, but his next priority was making sure that no one from the home team called for reinforcements. Angling from the CP’s wreckage toward the comm hut, Bolan began another sprint for cover, firing short bursts here and there when some of Braga’s soldiers recognized a stranger in their midst and taking them down.
So many enemies, so little time.
* * *
OSWALDO RAMOS HAD considered simply shooting Mercy Cronin when he’d witnessed her escape attempt, then flashed on the idea that she might yet be useful to him. He had no idea which of o chefe’s countless enemies had sent the gunship to destroy their forest staging area, but there was still a chance—a slim one—that a hostage might aid Ramos in his own escape.
If not, it would require only a second to be rid of her. A bullet in the head and he could leave her where she fell.
Flying was out. Ramos knew how to fly a helicopter, even had his pilot’s license, but the enemy had wasted no time wiping out the Mi-24 and the BLACK HAWK from Medellín. The only other vehicles in camp were two dirt bikes and one Suzuki all-terrain vehicle, none of which were truly useful in the jungle without decent trails to follow. Worse yet, they were noisy, would attract attention when he needed stealth; and none of them was built to accommodate unwilling passengers.
So he’d be walking out with Mrs. Missionary, heading eastward toward Cáceres. Three or four days, minimum, of hiking through the rain forest, which meant they would need supplies.
Still clutching Mercy’s hair and hissing threats, he steered her toward the camp’s mess hall. It had been damaged, Ramos saw, marked by a line of bullet holes across its long front wall. Each one was bright and shiny where the paint had flaked away on impact, but the metal underneath would start to rust by dawn. The door stood open, and he shoved Mercy ahead of him, into the dining hall where several soldiers had concealed themselves.
“Cowards!” Ramos shouted at them. “Get out there and fight, pelo amor de Deus!”
For just a moment, he thought they might turn on him, but Braga’s men had been conditioned to obey whatever orders they were given. Grudgingly they rose, collected weapons, then ran out to face their fate in broad daylight.
Ramos shoved Mercy toward the kitchen, at the north end of the building, grateful that the strafing had not blown the propane tank that ran the grill and ovens. He released her long enough to grab a canvas satchel from a shelf below the serving counter, thrusting it into her hands; then he clutched her hair again and aimed her toward a rack of shelves half filled with bottled water.
“Put a dozen of them in the bag,” he said. “No! Make it twenty.” Water, Ramos knew, was more important on a jungle trek than food.
From there, they moved on to the snack food section, popular with Braga’s soldiers, where the shelves were heaped with bagged and shrink-wrapped items such as candy bars and jerky, salted peanuts, pork rinds and potato chips. Most of the items on display were thirst-inducing, but they would not spoil as quickly as fruit or bread in the jungle’s steamy heat.
“Go on!” he snapped. “Load up. We don’t have any time to waste.”
* * *
GRIMALDI HAD EIGHT rockets left, and he was circling close to treetop level, seeking likely targets. Roughly half of Braga’s prefab buildings were intact so far, and all fair game, but Grimaldi was hesitant to simply take them down at random. Bolan must be somewhere in the camp by now—Grimaldi hadn’t taken out the cargo chopper; that had been his old friend’s doing—and each rocket Grimaldi fired into the compound was potentially a hit by friendly fire.
Which didn’t mean he was supposed to stop.
If Bolan wanted him to back off, Grimaldi would get a sat phone call. Assuming, naturally, that the big guy wasn’t hit or rendered unconscious, and that his phone hadn’t been damaged in some way.
How to proceed? Stick to plan A.
He nosed the Huey over, framed the largest building he could see in his M60 reflex sight and let another pair of rockets fly. They struck together at the south end of the structure, blew on impact, and he saw the building swell—as if somebody was inflating it—before the roof came off, rising to meet Grimaldi on a ball of oily orange and yellow flames.
Grimaldi banked away and heard something that was either shrapnel or a rifle bullet ping the Huey’s tailboom, climbing out of there before it suffered any further damage. Up at treetop level once more, well above the latest flash-fire, he recouped and circled, counted off some thirty seconds in his head, then dived again through roiling smoke.
Muzzle-flashes winked up at Grimaldi as he hurtled toward the enemy, his miniguns humming like chain saws and ripping through flesh much the same. This time the smoke blurred his vision of exploding bodies, but he didn’t mind. He took no pleasure from the act of blowing men apart, but neither would it cost him any sleep. The gunmen firing at Grimaldi—then relenting, running for their lives in disarray—had made a choice to be here, to work for a monster and guard his delivery of poison, which was bound for addicts in the cities where those soldiers had been born and raised.
Choices have consequences, all right. Some of them fatal.
And death spared no one in the end.
More plunking sounds came from underneath the Huey as Grimaldi ran the gauntlet, passing over Braga’s camp from north to south this time, plowing a field of flesh. Grimaldi wasn’t a religious man, but still he offered up a silent prayer that Mack would keep his head down—and the rest of him, as well—and wouldn’t let himself be tacked onto the butcher’s bill.
Grimaldi’s ammo counter told him that he’d used up roughly half his 7.62 mm NATO rounds so far. How many hits was that? How many more kills by his hurtling rockets? Intel had estimated some two hundred men inhabiting the compound, and Grimaldi still saw plenty on their feet, ducking and dodging as his Huey swept over the slaughter ground. A few more passes then and he would finish off the rockets too, while he was at it. Save a few rounds for the miniguns to cover Bolan when he came aboard, with or without the missionary’s wife.
And where in hell was she right now?
Chapter 14
Mack Bolan reached the comm hut and found its door ajar. Someone inside was shouting to be heard over the sounds of battle, speaking Portuguese.
Bolan couldn’t translate, but he got the gist of it. A call for help. It didn’t matter to him if the guy inside the hut was calling more of Braga’s soldiers to the scene or asking the Brazilian army to jump in. Whoever the lone man was talking to, it had to stop.<
br />
Bolan stepped through the doorway, his shadow falling on the young man who was shouting at a handheld microphone, the fingers of his free hand clutching a revolver. He glanced up, saw death before him and let out a squeal before the three-round burst from Bolan’s Steyr AUG ripped through the radio operator’s chest, ending the call.
No point in taking chances. Bolan blasted each of the devices Braga had arranged along an L-shaped table, taking out a CB radio, a shortwave set, a sat phone setup and a couple computers Bolan assumed were used for anything from Wi-Fi to Skype. He couldn’t say who the dead broadcaster had reached, or whether reinforcements would be coming, but at least geography was on Bolan’s side.
The closest town of any size, Cáceres, was a hundred-something miles from Braga’s camp. Even if the radio transmission had soldiers scrambling now, this very minute, it would likely take an hour or more for them to organize a flight and reach the camp.
Too late for Braga and his friends. Whichever way the battle went, it would be over long before the narco-cavalry arrived.
Leaving the comm hut, Bolan paused again to check the open ground outside, then came out moving like he owned the place, angling toward what passed for the compound’s motor pool. There wasn’t much to choose from, so he took the Suzuki KingQuad 500Axi all-terrain vehicle, painted in camo to match the rain forest. He found a key in the ignition, waiting for him, gunned it and took off.
Not fleeing. That was far from Bolan’s mind. Call it a changeup in the rules of play.
Four-wheeling called for one hand on the throttle, so he’d shoulder-slung the Steyr AUG and drawn his mighty Desert Eagle autoloader as he climbed aboard the ATV. From the first engine snarl it reminded him of an old John Wayne movie, Hatari!, about chasing down wild animals in Africa and catching them for zoos.
Except the hunters in the movie took their prey alive.
Not Bolan.
Roaring through the compound on the KingQuad, he kept his right hand on its throttle, the heavy pistol in his left. He started out with eight rounds in the Desert Eagle’s magazine and one more in the chamber, quickly burning that one as he came up on a startled runner’s right and shot him in the back.
The 225-grain XPB lead-free round struck home with sledgehammer force. The running man was airborne for an instant, arms pinwheeling as he seemed to chase the spray of crimson bursting from his ruptured chest. Before he hit the turf, Bolan was past him on the ATV, chasing down another target.
It wasn’t sport, not even close.
Simply another taste of shock and awe.
* * *
HUGO CARDONA WIPED fresh blood from his eyes, smearing the sleeves of his thousand-dollar suit. Something still obscured his vision, and he reached up with a trembling hand to clear it, gasping at the sudden pain. A portion of his scalp was hanging down above his left eye like a cheap toupee dislodged by wind, but this had been no simple accident.
He had been running for the tree line, seeking cover, when a piece of shrapnel from the last rocket’s explosion had struck him in the head, a glancing blow that stunned him, knocked him down—and now, as he discovered, nearly scalped him. Grimacing and cursing, the Colombian tried to replace the errant flap of flesh and hair, with no hope of determining whether he had it straight or if it would remain in place. The only good news was that he felt solid bone beneath his fingertips, instead of pulsing gray matter.
His brain was not exposed.
Cardona blundered to his feet, dizzy from his near loss of consciousness and disoriented by his pain, the clouds of drifting smoke, the men who rushed past him in all directions like a mob of specters running willy-nilly through a fog bank.
Where had he been going when he fell? Away.
But where? The forest.
There was a ringing in his ears, compounded by erratic bursts of gunfire and the whup-whup of a helicopter circling overhead. And something else. Was that a motorcycle revving up somewhere behind him, making tracks across the compound? Who could possibly escape on wheels from this death trap surrounded by the jungle?
While he tried to pierce the smoke screen with his bleary-eyed gaze, Cardona reached under his ruined jacked and discovered that he had not lost his pistol. It was a good weapon, a Ruger SR9 chambered in 9 mm Parabellum, but Cardona was not sure he could aim it accurately in his present state, or hold it steady enough to hit a target if he pulled the trigger. Yet better to have a gun than lurch about unarmed when everybody else was firing randomly into the air, into the forest, possibly at one another in the choking, gagging smoke.
Cardona realized, too late, it had been a grave mistake for him to leave Colombia. Whether that error proved to be the death of him was something else, still unresolved. He had survived in other situations when it had seemed there was no hope, but this time...
Trees. He had to reach the forest and conceal himself.
Cardona swiped away more blood—no dangling scalp this time—and saw what he believed to be the tree line, thirty yards or so in front of him. It might as well have been a mile, the way he felt, but he began to walk in that direction, step by dragging step. If he could only make it to the shadows there, he might be able to recuperate.
He might be able to survive.
* * *
MERCY HAD NEARLY filled her satchel when a huge explosion blasted through the south end of the camp’s mess hall. A ball of flame erupted there, the shock wave hurling chairs and tables toward the kitchen area. Later, she guessed that falling down had saved her, as the kitchen’s serving counter took the brunt of the blast and stopped most of the flying furniture from reaching where she lay stunned on the floor. A single chair had banged against her shoulder as it fell, wringing a cry of pain from Mercy’s lips, but it had missed her skull and left both of her arms still functional.
She scanned the kitchen space around her for the gunman who had brought her there. She didn’t know his name, but had decided he was close to Joaquim Braga from the way they stood and spoke together after she had been delivered to their camp. Some kind of aide or second-in-command, perhaps, as if it mattered now.
Mercy discovered him a few yards from her own place on the kitchen floor, facedown and moaning, bleeding from the nose and lips. It looked as if a coffee urn had tumbled from its shelf and struck him in the face as he was falling, toppled by the recent blast. Perhaps his nose was broken, but his eyes were open, more or less alert, and now focused on her.
“Get up!” he snapped. The pistol in his hand persuaded her.
Rising was not as easy as it should have been. Besides the shock of the explosion and the sharp pain in her shoulder, Mercy struggled with her balance as she tried to stand. Did she have a concussion? Was there bleeding in her brain? If so, she’d likely never know it, since her captor had regained his feet now and was moving toward her, reaching down to grab the satchel she had filled with food and water, thrusting it into her hands.
“We’re going,” he informed her. “Move!”
She turned to face the doorway through which they had entered, but it was no longer there. Instead, the west wall of the prefab building had collapsed and crumpled inward, forming a kind of chute in place of the door. The gunman grabbed her hair again, twisting it to make her whimper from the added pain, then pushed her toward the gaping exit from the mess hall.
Stumbling, Mercy might have fallen if he had not held her upright. She considered asking him to loosen his grip, but knew it would be pointless. Same for praying, as she reasoned that if God was watching, listening, He would have rescued her by now.
Or sent someone to do it for Him.
She was on her own, it seemed—the next worst thing to being absolutely lost.
* * *
THE KINGQUAD’S MOTOR started sputtering on Bolan’s second circuit of the compound. Glancing at its fuel gauge, he saw the needle kissing Empty
and decided it was time to bail. Instead of switching off the ATV, however, Bolan aimed it at a clutch of Braga’s soldiers forty feet in front of him, twisted the throttle for a final burst of speed, then vaulted from the driver’s seat to send the squat four-wheeler on its way, unmanned.
Bowling for bad guys.
Braga’s men were busy firing at the Huey overhead, deafened by gunfire and the chopper’s noise, when Bolan’s borrowed ATV slammed into them. It sent two shooters somersaulting through the air and slammed into a third at knee level, taking him down and rolling up onto his back, while others fell away to either side.
Call it a strike, but Bolan wasn’t finished with them. He had fed the Desert Eagle a fresh magazine, now emptied it in rapid fire, plugging the KingQuad’s gas tank first and sparking flames to sear the gunman trapped beneath it. While he screamed and flailed, the other seven Magnum rounds ripped through his friends, already reeling from the ATV collision with their huddle. When the slide on Bolan’s .44 locked open on an empty chamber, he reloaded, then returned the smoking cannon to its holster and unslung his Steyr AUG.
Grimaldi made another swooping pass just then, strafing the ground to Bolan’s left. The NATO rounds from the Huey’s revolving miniguns came close, but Bolan guessed that Grimaldi had probably observed him firing on the cartel goons, seeing enough at any rate to sort out who was who. The smoke and shifting tide of soldiers wouldn’t let Grimaldi track him accurately while pursuing targets of his own, but at least Grimaldi knew Bolan was still alive and kicking ass.
A burst of automatic fire came sizzling in to Bolan’s right, with the distinctive sound of 5.56 mm rounds. He ducked and rolled, eyes closed against the dirt thrown up by flying bullets and the Huey’s rotor wash, until he came up in a crouch and faced back toward the source of hostile fire.
One shooter was lining up his IMBEL autorifle for another try, when Bolan hit him with a three-round burst that tipped him over backward, sprawling. Finger on the trigger, Bolan’s dying adversary still got off his shots, but they were angled toward the distant treetops, wasted. Whether they’d come down inside the camp or scatter on the canopy was anybody’s guess.
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