Pirate Offensive

by Don Pendleton

  Pausing just outside the main door, Bolan listened carefully for any suspicious sounds. But there was only a soft snoring mixed with the low hum of the refrigerators cycling on and off. The door was locked, but a keywire gun tricked it open in only a few seconds. The smoky interior was vast, stacked to the ceiling with boxes, barrels, crates and trunks of every possible description, all of them carrying military markings. Numbers only, but Bolan knew the codes. United States, France, Russia, United Kingdom, Iran, Argentina, the ordnance of the world was packed to the ceiling of the warehouse. Death incarnate.

  Limp bodies were sprawled on the concrete floor, and, turning them over, Bolan recognized every man as part of the Cordan organization. The hard weeks of surveillance had been a success. His intel had been good. Every one of these people was a known murderer, most of them escaped convicts with rewards on their heads.

  Bolan did a fast recon of the entire building and found nineteen men and four women, all of them wearing work clothes and carrying guns. No civilians present. It never hurt to double-check.

  Suddenly, an engine revved and a forklift charged out of the shadows. Diving to the side, Bolan rolled to his knees with the Beretta leveled and ready for combat. Son of a bitch, it was Pierre Cordan himself. And the bastard was wearing a gas mask.

  As Bolan took aim, Cordan fired a Skorpion vz 61 submachine gun with his free hand, the other tight on the controls. The wild hail of 7.65 mm rounds hit everything around Bolan, and a ricochet slammed aside the Beretta, making his own stream of copper-jacketed rounds stitch across the rear of the forklift, missing Cordan completely.

  Screaming muffled obscenities, Cordan fired again, now angling the forklift directly at Bolan. As the twin steel blades filled his line of sight, Bolan dove into a shoulder roll and came up with the Beretta now braced in both hands.

  Bolan hammered the side and rear of the forklift, the rounds throwing sparks as they were deflected by the safety cage. He hit Cordan twice, ripping holes in the skinny man’s shirt, but the bullets flattened harmlessly on the tight body armor underneath.

  Wheeling around sharply, Cordan tossed aside the empty Skorpion and pulled out a Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol. Knowing better than to fall for that old trick, Bolan quickly got behind a concrete support pillar just as the Glock seemed to explode, the disguised Model 18 machine pistol issuing 33 rounds in under two seconds. Several bullets caught the Beretta, sending it flying out of Bolan’s hands, so he reached behind his back to produce his reserve piece, a Desert Eagle .357 Magnum.

  Laughing, as if this was some sort of a game, Cordan flung the spent Glock to the ground and jerked his left hand forward. A snug .44 derringer came out of his sleeve to slap into a waiting palm.

  It felt like minutes, but each man paused for only a few seconds for better aim, then they fired in unison. Both barrels of the derringer blasted flame as the Desert Eagle sounded a single, solemn boom.

  Bolan grunted as a graze ripped open his shoulder, exposing his own body armor underneath, and Cordan was thrown back against the safety cage as the massive soft-lead .357 Magnum round slammed him directly in the middle of the chest.

  Expertly spinning aside, Bolan fired twice more as Cordan sped by, a round from the Desert Eagle neatly removing his gas mask. Gasping in surprise, Cordan inadvertently inhaled and started to reel. Fighting to regain control, the man angled the forklift again for Bolan, just as the Executioner took aim at the man’s vulnerable throat. Before he could fire, Cordan slumped at the controls, his head lolling about helplessly. The bastard had succumbed to the sleep gas at last.

  Tracking the unconscious man with the barrel of his Desert Eagle, Bolan watched the forklift rattle past.

  The machine careened off a steel support beam, then crashed through a closed wooden door and shuddered out into the night. Craning his neck, Bolan saw the forklift veering about on the dock, clanging off the steel pylons before rolling straight into the water. As Cordan and the machine disappeared beneath the waves, Bolan holstered his weapon and went to find another forklift.

  It was far too clean a death for Cordan, but the man had always been lucky. Cordan was one of the biggest black market weapons dealers in Central America and had been responsible for taking thousands of innocent lives. His death alone paid for a host of bloody crimes. This was already a successful mission.

  Climbing into another forklift, Bolan started ferrying stacks of munitions to the loading dock. When he had enough, Bolan pulled up a truck and packed it solid with neat rows of military shipping containers. Mostly American, but a few from the UK, Germany and Russia.

  Bolan then returned to the warehouse and walked into an office, where a snoring man slumped over a desk covered with stacks of cash. Bolan grabbed a duffel bag from the corner of the room and stuffed it full, then drew his Beretta. With calm deliberation, he shot the electronic controls for the fire alarm.

  In response, a hundred nozzles in the ceiling and walls began hissing out thick streams of halon gas. Water-logged weapons had to be carefully cleaned, and a spray of H20 could thwart thousands of valuable explosions. But halon stopped any conventional fire and would not harm any of the lethal inventory. More important, it dissipated quickly. Even when the sea breeze was so uncooperative.

  Bolan headed back toward the truck, slipping on his gas mask before walking through the swirling clouds, then drove away into the night. Leaving the inlet behind, he pulled out a cell phone, tapping in a memorized number.

  “Phoenix has the egg,” Bolan said.

  “Confirm,” Hal Brognola replied. “Luck.”

  Bolan switched the phone off and tossed it out the window. It was still airborne when the thermite charge ignited. The phone landed in an explosion of flames.

  After a few minutes, Bolan reached a dirt road and parked the truck. He pulled out his night vision goggles and watched patiently as the halon gas swirled past the warehouse windows. On the ten-minute mark, it stopped abruptly. Everybody in the warehouse was now dead from asphyxiation. Flipping open a second phone, Bolan punched in a local number. “Panama City Fire Department?” he said in halting Spanish, trying to sound unfamiliar with the language. “There is a warehouse on fire over at Cordan Quay.”

  “Madre mia!” the man on the other end gasped. “Are you sure? Who is this?”

  “Just a concerned citizen,” Bolan said, turning off the phone and also consigning it to the wind.

  Shifting into gear, Bolan drove onto the highway and pulled a small remote control from his pocket. He pressed the switch twice and a light on top turned red, then he pressed it once more. In the far distance, he heard a muffled bang as his abandoned backpack inside the warehouse exploded.

  Trundling carefully along the dirt road, Bolan counted the seconds. It was almost a minute before the first explosion occurred. The blast ripped off the disguised roof of the warehouse, wild tongues of flames extending for a dozen yards from every door and window. That was closely followed by another, bigger explosion and several small, irregular blasts. Then the entire warehouse lifted off the ground as the multiple mega-tons of stolen ordnance detonated in ragged unison. The blast illuminated the sky for miles.

  Angling fast behind a sand dune, Bolan hit the brakes and braced himself. A few seconds later, the shockwave buffeted the truck, and Bolan heard the patter of shrapnel smack into the dune. Long minutes passed. The sirens of fire trucks were getting uncomfortably close before the rain of debris finally eased.

  Bolan pulled back onto the road and started toward Panama City. So far, so good. Cordan was dead, his organization was destroyed and Bolan now possessed a hundred million dollars in illegal weapons, mostly surface-to-air missiles.

  The easy part was over. Time to raid police headquarters.

  Chapter 2

  Cancun, Mexico

  Sluggishly, the woman roused herself from the depth of unconsci
ousness.

  Renee Collins glanced around the brightly illuminated room. She was naked, hanging from the ceiling in steel chains. A padded leather corset kept the steel links from strangling her, but her arms were painfully drawn behind her and angled upward. The pain in her shoulders first made her scream, then pass out.

  When she came to again, she saw him. Oh my god, she thought. Narmada! I’ve been captured by Narmada!

  Collins began to cry as each horrid detail of her kidnapping came rushing back. The tear gas attack in the alley, the constant beatings with cushioned clubs that hurt but left no marks afterward.

  No marks that could be seen, she mentally added, flinching at the humiliating memory of being forced to remove her clothing.

  Drawing in a deep breath, Collins screamed again, an animalistic combination of rage, fear and desperate frustration.

  “Well, at least you seem to have some strength back,” rumbled Captain Ravid Narmada, swinging around in his chair. “This is good. I still have so very many questions about the next shipment of microchip warheads.”

  “Pig!” she snarled, then spit at him. “I will tell you nothing. Nothing!”

  “That is, sadly, quite incorrect,” he said, rising from the chair and walking over to a small workbench in the far corner.

  Narmada was almost twice the size of any normal man, and Collins had at first thought him merely of colossal girth. But Collins now knew the terrible truth. Oh, there was fat to be sure, but underneath were muscles of incredible strength, and even though Collins had seen his speed, she still had trouble believing it. Nothing that big could move that fast. Elephants were slow; whales were slow. But he moved with the speed and grace of a mongoose, a cheetah. Almost in a blur, when he wanted. It felt like a contradiction of natural laws.

  “I’ll tell you nothing,” Collins repeated with less conviction.

  “We shall see, eh?” Whistling through his teeth, Narmada began opening drawers in the bench, extracting tools and equipment.

  “Perhaps...we can make a deal,” Collins whispered hoarsely. “I am still very beautiful...”

  “Not interested, sorry.”

  “I have money!”

  “All I want are the microchips.” Donning insulated gloves, Narmada put a screwdriver into the hissing rush of flame and calmly waited until the tip was glowing red.

  “Please...don’t do this,” she groaned in a small voice. “I’m...just a working girl...”

  Smiling widely, Narmada lifted the screwdriver to inspect the tip. “This is true. But a whore who specializes in corporate espionage,” he said with a low chuckle. “Now, if you were much better at your job, I might have offered you a position in my organization. Information is often more valuable than gold, eh? Trite, but true.”

  “I accept!”

  He walked closer. “I said might, young lady. You are also a stupid whore and now must pay the price for failure.”

  “Please!”

  “No,” said Narmada, and Collins screamed, again and again, for a very long time....

  When the interrogation was finished, Captain Narmada checked the sagging thing dangling in the chains for a pulse and found none. He then snapped her neck with a bare hand just for the practice.

  “Pity we didn’t get to ride her for a while,” Lee Chung muttered from the doorway.

  Standing almost six feet tall, Chung had the physique of a fanatical bodybuilder—a barrel chest and narrow waist. His hands were covered with old scars. An ornate silver buckle bearing the Confederate flag held a place of honor on the front of his garrison belt, and his alligator cowboy boots shone with fresh polish. The man wore his long black hair cut in a mullet, a style favored by many Southern Americans.

  “This is a business, not a brothel,” Narmada snapped, crossing the room and tossing the screwdriver onto the workbench.

  As Narmada glanced over a shoulder, Chung forced himself not to flinch or turn away. The captain always appeared calm after extracting information from uncooperative personnel. That was a major warning sign. The slower Narmada spoke, the angrier he was, and nobody sane ever wanted to tangle with the captain. Once, in a bar fight in Madrid Chung had watched Narmada kill twenty men while crossing the room at a regular pace, his hands bloody pistons that crushed faces and snapped necks with every strike.

  “Yes, sir! My apologies, sir.”

  Narmada waved the matter aside. “Please dispose of the body overboard.”

  “At once! So, do we have a destination?”

  “Of course,” Narmada replied, leaving the room.

  Left alone with the corpse, Chung scowled in annoyance, then hit a control on the wall to summon a cleaning crew.

  On the main deck, Captain Narmada stood with both hands on the gunwale, breathing in the cool salty air. Inside the nearby wheelhouse, three men were watching a Chinese anime movie on a portable DVD player, eating sandwiches and drinking German beer. Just for a moment, Narmada longed for the company of other men. His colossal size had always kept him alone and separate. Doorways were too narrow, every chair was a potential danger, and very few women were attracted to giants.

  Shaking his head to dispel the dark thought, Narmada focused on the next part of the journey. Key West. He had never been there before.

  Across the deck, Chung appeared from a gangway with several men carrying a canvas bundle. Shuffling to the gunwale, they heaved it overboard, and Chung turned away before the body splashed into the water.

  “Helm!” Narmada shouted over a shoulder.

  The door to the wheelhouse opened, throwing a bright rhombus of light across the deck of the Russian trawler. “Yes, sir?” a burly man replied around the cigar in his mouth.

  “Head south! We refuel at Buenos Aires,” Narmada said, rubbing his rough palms along the painted iron railing.

  “But sir, the canal...”

  “Too dangerous! Best we keep to the open sea.”

  “Aye, aye, skipper!”

  “And along the way?” Chung asked hopefully, coming closer.

  “Along the way there will be many fine ships for us to choose from,” Narmada said with a half smile. “Bullion from Chile, emeralds from Argentina...and that silly French billionaire we’re supposed to sink just off the Galapagos Islands.”

  “Another angry wife?”

  “Gambling debt.”

  “Mafia?”

  “The Fifteen Families.”

  “Idiot!”

  “Agreed,” laughed Narmada. “But keep most of the hold empty. We have a lot of American microchips to steal in Key West...”

  Caracas, Uruguay

  TWO DAYS LATER, Bolan was driving a battered jeep, rattling through an entirely different kind of jungle.

  The midnight raid on the Caracas Police Headquarters had gone off without a hitch. Dozens of armed officers saw Bolan enter, but his forged papers passed muster, and an EM scanner jammed the expensive electronic lock on the master file room. Five minutes later, he was driving across town with a series of clandestine photographs tucked into his pocket. So far, so good. Now it was time to kill a traitor.

  Always trying to keep tabs on freedom fighters around the globe, Bolan knew several details about the Ghost Jaguars—a medium-sized group of rebels fighting Uruguay’s incredibly corrupt government. To the best of his knowledge, they had never crossed the line into unwarranted violence. Never kidnapped an innocent family member to force a crooked cop into confessing or conducted any blanket executions—although the government had certainly given them enough excuses to do so.

  The Jaguars stayed the line, kept hard and simply did not take any crap from anybody. Bolan liked that. All too often, fighting an evil turned even the best intentions dark, and soon, one became the very thing one detested. It was a constant fear of his own, and one that Bolan kept a very clo
se eye on. The moment he started to enjoy killing people was the day he would toss his weapons into the sea and go retire somewhere. Bali, maybe, or Kalamazoo.

  Just not today, Bolan added privately, steering his rented jeep deeper into the wild jungle.

  The jeep was old, circa World War II, but still in excellent shape, and the studded tires were getting excellent traction from the weight in the rear. Lashed securely into place were nine heavy wooden boxes, all of them marked “soil samples.”

  Leaving the paved highway behind, Bolan started down a gravel road, switched to four-wheel drive and trundled up a dirt path that snaked deep into the misty mountains.

  The Ghost Jaguars constantly asked for help from America, but Bolan knew that would never happen. Uruguay was an oil-producing nation, and it sold thousands of barrels a year to the good ol’ USA. In these troubled times, that was a powerful incentive for America to leave the internal politics of Uruguay alone. Happily, Bolan had no such restrictions.

  Time passed, as did the long miles. Double-checking his GPS, Bolan parked the jeep in a cluster of giant ferns, letting the engine cool while he rechecked his maps and notations. If his original intel was good, combined with the crude notes stolen from the police files, then the main camp for the Ghosts would be somewhere inside the mountain range just ahead. The crosswinds between the jagged peaks were brutal, making an aerial reconnaissance damn near impossible. Countless waterfalls could help mask any minor heat signatures, such as truck engines or campfires, and the area was a favored hunting ground for jaguar.

  The situation reminded Bolan of an old trick—hide in plain sight, with the warning, “Here be Monsters.” It kept out most of the innocent bystanders, and if there was an invasion, disposing of the body afterward could be left entirely to the animals. Alexander the Great had used something similar in his military outposts around the world, as had the Romans.