How many cartel soldiers left? Bolan couldn’t have said and didn’t have the time to take a census. Standing still was tantamount to suicide, between the hostile guns and Jack Grimaldi’s strafing passes overhead. The secret of survival lay in constant motion, striking hard and fast before Bolan’s enemies could orient themselves and take him down.
Still watching out for Mercy Cronin, just in case, Bolan moved on across the killing field, leaving a trail of corpses in his wake.
* * *
JOAQUIM BRAGA DID not make it to the tree line. Roaring down upon him from the sky, the helicopter gunship had unleashed a stream of automatic fire, the bullets snapping at his heels until he veered hard right to get out of their way. Too late, in fact, as one slug ripped into his backpack, spalled and pierced his back with jagged fragments.
Braga fell, gasping in pain, but had the sense to lie still, playing dead for a moment, while the Huey passed above him and moved on. He had not dropped his carbine—something of a miracle—but feared to rise and fire after the helicopter as it banked away. First Braga wanted to assess his injuries, determine whether it was even safe for him to move.
And if not...what?
He tensed the muscles of his back and whimpered at the resulting pain. Reaching behind him, twisting awkwardly, he slipped a hand under his pack and found a warm, wet patch that stained his fingers red. He was definitely wounded, but the blood was seeping out, rather than jetting from a severed artery.
Where were the major veins and arteries, he wondered, in relation to his spine? He knew of the aorta, but if that was pierced or severed, he should already be dead. Drawing a breath, Braga determined that his lungs had not been punctured. Tensing legs and arms, he found no damage to his spine. The only test remaining was to stand and walk, despite the pain it would cause him. Staying where he was only increased his danger, making death a certainty.
With clenched teeth, Braga struggled up to hands and knees, groaning, then rose into a kneeling posture. Finally, bracing his free hand on his knee, he levered upward, standing, rising slowly to his full height with a final shudder at the lancing pain of shrapnel in his back. It hurt, but he could walk.
Now could he run?
Not very well, he soon discovered, but a loping kind of stride was possible, fighting to keep his balance as new spasms wracked his wounded flesh. The long trek through the jungle to Cáceres suddenly seemed doubly daunting. Could he even hope to make it, or would weakness leave him stranded in the rain forest to die?
Perhaps if he could ride...
Braga turned toward the compound’s meager motor pool and saw the ATV was missing. Some filho da puta had beaten him to it, but both of the trail bikes were still in their place. Could he manage to drive one, the way he felt? Was it better to try and crash than go off as he was and collapse before walking a mile?
He chose the Kawasaki KLX250S, with its manufacturer’s estimate of a 140-mile range on two gallons of fuel in its tank when full. If he could take his time and stay on course—without smashing into a tree or plunging off a cliff—the little bike would carry him most of the way to his intended destination, at a speed unrivaled by a man on foot. Braga could stop to rest whenever he required it, nurse the bike along for safety’s sake and still escape the nightmare that surrounded him.
Wincing, he kicked the motorcycle into life and aimed it toward the northeast corner of the camp.
* * *
JACK GRIMALDI RECOGNIZED Mack Bolan from the air, despite the smoke and dust of battle, even with the cartel soldiers scampering around him. He was watching as the tall athletic figure sent an ATV slamming into a clutch of Joaquim Braga’s men, then started blasting at them with a handgun that could only be a Desert Eagle .44. No doubt about who that was, standing in the midst of chaos, taking down the enemy.
Grimaldi banked and circled, coming back to find his old friend on the move once more. Grimaldi chose an angle of attack for his next strafing run that wouldn’t threaten Bolan as he kept on mopping up, maybe looking for Braga or the woman who’d gone missing.
Grimaldi still had two rockets remaining, and enough 7.62 mm ammo for another three or four passes across the compound plus cover fire to get the three of them out of here. He had taken hits each time he’d swooped over the camp—one of the slugs starring his cockpit’s windshield—but he wasn’t backing off. The Huey’s fuel tanks, engines and rotors were intact so far, which meant the fight went on.
His targets weren’t exactly sitting ducks—not sitting still—but even as a few of them slipped off into the rain forest, more seemed intent on fighting for the open ground they occupied. That was a bonus for Grimaldi, even when they ducked behind or into buildings, since the compound’s prefab structures were no match for armor-piercing NATO rounds, much less his mighty mouse rockets. Instead of holding back his last two, Grimaldi decided to expend them on the only structure left of any size.
What was it? He had no idea, but it was coming down.
The Huey shuddered slightly as the rockets exited their pods to left and right, hurtling away on smoky trails toward impact with their target. Grimaldi kept going, was above the building when they blew—and something else went off inside the place a heartbeat later, slamming out a secondary shock wave greater than the double-rocket blast.
Grimaldi rode it out, his chopper turned into a bucking bronco that leaped skyward on a wave of hot air rising from the fiery cauldron down below. He guessed it must have been the compound’s arsenal or else some kind of fuel stash—maybe gasoline and propane stored together in a dimwit’s notion of security.
Flames stroked the Huey’s underside but didn’t catch, Grimaldi climbing like his life depended on it. Which, in point of fact, it did. He used the extra push to supplement the thrust of his Lycoming engines, gaining altitude faster than the designers of his airship had anticipated when they wrote its specs.
Climbing, but just to circle back and dive again into the smoke and fire. Continuing the battle until Bolan called him off or he had nothing left to throw at Braga’s troops.
Another pass to keep them hopping and to watch them die.
* * *
BOLAN WATCHED THE Huey’s rockets strike, then staggered as the largest fireball yet erupted from the building they had penetrated. Baking heat enveloped him as he fell prone, hearing the hiss of shrapnel overhead. Inside that conflagration, ammunition started cooking off, hundreds of bullets whining through the camp without a gun barrel to guide them. Bolan hugged the earth, staying below the line of fire as best he could, while others bolted from the fiery wreckage and were cut down in their tracks.
Doing Bolan’s job before he got the chance.
Poetic justice, some might say—or just bad luck for those who took a random hit. Bolan wasn’t about to question any break that came his way.
He let the air clear, more or less, then rose and went back on the hunt. He wanted Braga, Ramos and the well-dressed visitor he’d shadowed earlier, if he was still available. Taking them down himself was best, but verifying their demise by sight was good enough. Without eliminating Braga and his second-in-command, the cartel might survive.
And if he wiped it out, another would arise to take its place. So, what?
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
That verse came to him from somewhere in his past, long forgotten, but it summed up Bolan’s take on victory. There were no final wins in his profession, only constant battling for the ground gained, then holding on to it and perhaps advancing a little more.
Two gunmen rushed at Bolan through the battle smoke, apparently not knowing he was there. They stopped short at the sight of him, no recognition in their eyes, their weapons rising, but the fight had taken too much out of them already. Bolan beat them to it, stitched them chest-high with a string of 5.56 mm tumblers from his AUG and blew them over backward, shoulde
rs striking turf before their boots touched down.
The home team, as he saw it now, was thinning out. Some of Braga’s men no doubt had fled into the jungle, but Bolan couldn’t tell if they were watching from the nearby trees or if they’d kept on going, rats abandoning the sinking ship. If they were close, they could start sniping anytime, raising the risk factor, but hunting for them at the moment would be a distracting waste of time. Bolan had to concentrate on targets he could see, the ones that definitely threatened him; no hypotheticals involved.
And here came three more, stalking through the battle haze, two firing automatic rifles at the circling Huey, while the third man clutched a pistol, covering their backs. The lookout had a crazed expression on his face, as if he knew death surrounded him.
Smart guy.
Bolan reached out and touched him with a 5.56 mm NATO round between the eyes, switching his brain off in an instant so he folded like an empty suit of clothes. The others, still intent on bringing down Grimaldi’s chopper, didn’t notice they’d lost their backup until Bolan hit them with a one-two punch from forty feet and left them sprawled beside the first to drop.
Grimaldi made another strafing run just then, and Bolan tracked him, marking the path of havoc from his miniguns, then following it in search of living prey.
Chapter 15
Braga cursed bitterly and revved the Kawasaki as the helicopter swooped and made another pass, pursuing him again. “Desgraçado filho da puta!” he shouted at the thundering machine, knowing the pilot could not hear him and would only laugh in any case. Behind Braga the Gatling guns began their ripping chain-saw noise once more, spewing projectiles at a rate designed to shred the human form.
He swerved the trail bike, leaning into the erratic veering moves while pain from his still-bleeding back wounds sapped strength from his arms and hands. Braga was frightened that he’d lose control at any moment and crash the bike, perhaps breaking an arm or leg, maybe his neck.
He simply wanted to escape now, would have promised anything to his tormentors, even if he had to lie. Of course, if he survived, he would come looking for revenge; that was a given, but his adversaries didn’t need to know that, if Braga could persuade them otherwise. To pull that off, however, he would need a chance to speak.
And at the moment he was fleeing for his life.
A bullet struck the Kawasaki’s rear wheel, splintered it and sent red-hot fragments hurtling onward. One pierced Braga’s right calf, boring deep, while others struck the four-stroke liquid-cooled engine. Chilled liquid splashed against his wounded leg, accompanied by reeking fumes that told Braga his fuel line had been cut. The bike, already wobbling, kicked free of his grip an instant later, and he found himself airborne.
Braga landed on his back, lying across his backpack and the IMBEL carbine he had slung there when he’d climbed aboard the motorcycle. More pain from his earlier wounds, as the latest impact and his body’s weight ground them against his weapon. He tried to roll over, but the crosswise placement of his MD-2 defeated him. Snarling with anger and frustration, Braga strained to reach the nearest quick-release clasp on his rifle’s sling, finally managing to get it open as the helicopter circled wide to make another pass.
He rose, using the carbine as a crutch, remembering to brace its butt against the ground and not the muzzle. Standing off balance, racked by pain from head to heels, Braga snapped the carbine’s side-folding stock into position and raised it to his shoulder, trying to line up his sights on the circling gunship.
Could he bring it down? Not if he didn’t try.
The MD-2 was not terribly heavy—ten pounds with its thirty-round magazine—but it still put a strain on his muscles in Braga’s present condition. He fought to hold it steady, aligning the aperture of the rear sight with the hooded post in front, trying to keep his balance as he shuffled through a turn, tracking the helicopter.
When he squeezed the trigger, Braga fired off the whole magazine in one burst, less than three seconds in real time, but he had lost control of the muzzle midway through that burst, could see and feel it climbing as the recoil pulsed against his throbbing shoulder. Stutter-stepping back to avoid the next barrage of bullets from on high, he tripped and fell over again, yet another jarring blow against his spine and punctured flesh.
“Mãe de Cristo!”
Squirming on the ground, he heard and felt the stream of slugs ripping across the turf in his direction, rolling to his left barely in time to save himself.
* * *
MACK BOLAN SAW the Kawasaki slide and tumble, but he didn’t recognize its driver from a distance, through the battle smoke. One bike remained in Braga’s motor pool, not far from where Bolan stood, and Bolan took it out of service with a three-round burst that left the fuel tank streaming gasoline onto the ground. No more escape on wheels for anyone trying to leave the camp. Bolan moved on in search of human targets.
Grimaldi had plowed the camp with miniguns and rockets, leaving wreckage everywhere he struck. The cocaine stash was gone, together with the armory, and Bolan had destroyed the comm hut himself. Too late, perhaps, but they still had some time before any possible reinforcements arrived. Time, hopefully, to locate Joaquim Braga and his chief lieutenant, either dead or living on the field of slaughter.
Bolan started checking corpses as he passed them, crouching to examine faces on the bodies matching Braga’s size, if they had any faces left. Bolan had last seen Braga wearing what appeared to be safari garb, tailored to fit him perfectly. There’d been no time for him to change when Grimaldi began to strafe the camp, so bodies dressed in camouflage fatigues received only a passing glance as Bolan moved among them. Oswaldo Ramos had been decked out in a khaki shirt and blue jeans, while the visitor to Mercy’s prison hut had been incongruous in an expensive business suit.
Each easy to spot, in theory, but still elusive on the battleground.
And as for Mercy, nothing yet.
Bolan could only hope she’d made it out of camp somehow, when the initial shooting had started. Otherwise, she might be buried under smoking wreckage from Grimaldi’s rocket strikes or the detonation of the grounded helicopters he and Jack had blown to smithereens. The fact that he might never find her or discover what had happened to her preyed on Bolan’s mind, but he stayed focused on his mission without letting apprehension for the missionary’s widow slow him down.
There were enough live targets still in camp to keep him busy, reloading his Steyr AUG, taking them down with single shots whenever possible, conserving ammunition. Grimaldi, Bolan knew, had to be running low on ammo for his miniguns, and once it was exhausted, Grimaldi would be reduced to watching from the air while Bolan finished mopping up.
But there was still time left to find the three specific men he wanted, one of them as yet unidentified but clearly prominent enough to rate a meeting with the Executioner. Three narco-traffickers the world could do without.
Eyes slitted against the acrid smoke, Bolan moved through the carnage, looking for the men he’d come to kill.
* * *
MERCY CRONIN CLEARED the mess hall’s wreckage, stumbling over slabs of buckled and twisted aluminum siding. Behind her, the man who gripped her hair was cursing steadily in Portuguese, punctuating the obscenities with terse demands for greater speed. Unsteady on his own feet, he apparently could not decide if it was best to shove her forward or to hold her close in front of him, a human shield. The jerky back-and-forth maneuver made it difficult for Mercy to proceed, but when she tried to tell him so, he simply twisted on her hair until she squealed.
“Shut up! You draw attention to us, you die first!”
“Aren’t these your men?” she asked him, grimacing as yet another twist sent fiery lancets shooting into her scalp.
“We don’t trust anyone today,” he answered. “No one! You understand?”
“Yes!”
“Then move!”
She moved—and immediately slipped on the last bent panel of aluminum they had to cross before their feet were back on solid ground. She might have slipped and rolled away entirely, but the gunman’s tight grip on her hair arrested her momentum. Mercy’s buttocks hit the metal, bouncing once, before her captor started cursing her again, trying to drag her upright.
“Shit! Get up! I said, get—”
In the middle of his tirade, Mercy heard a wet slap from somewhere above her, cutting off her captor’s raging flow of words. The fingers tangled in her hair relaxed, and she was turning to look up at him when he collapsed. His knees buckled, striking Mercy across her shoulder blades, and then he tumbled forward, crushing her beneath his sudden weight. Warm liquid splashed across her face and neck, tickling her cleavage as she fell.
The gunman’s blood.
He had been shot, and while she couldn’t say who’d done it, Mercy knew the best thing she could do was get as far away from him as possible. Complete the run into the jungle she’d begun when he had captured her.
But first she had to wriggle out from under his dead weight.
Shoving and then rolling him, she managed it after a minute, maybe longer. In the process Mercy felt his pistol gouge her ribs. She relieved him of it, and was on the verge of tossing it away, when something in her mind said, No! Mercy held on to it, careful to keep her fingers off the trigger as she finished crawling out from under the weapon’s original owner.
He was dead, no question, with a neat hole in his right cheek and a sodden mass at the back of his head where the bullet had blown out a fist-size chunk of his skull. Mercy’s gag reflex almost betrayed her, but she overcame it, kept in mind that he would have certainly killed her if it had suited him, without remorse. On hands and knees, clutching the dead man’s gun with no clear fix on how to use it, she surveyed the camp once more, seeking the shortest route to cover in the rain forest.
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