Blood Vortex

by Don Pendleton

  Lekka said nothing for a moment, watching as Colonel Pérez and Major Khosa from the ISI moved in the opposite direction from 221, toward the administration center of Las Palmas. When he calculated they were safely out of earshot, the Greek terrorist resumed speaking.

  “We all know the president is in trouble with America. Perhaps he’s pushed the game as far as he can take it. Some of his advisers, doubtless, have suggested offering an olive branch to Washington.”

  “And so?” Biscailuz prodded him.

  “The White House and the Pentagon hate all of us,” Lekka replied. “They’d gladly see us all rotting in prison—or in graves, if that could be arranged.”

  “You think the president has betrayed us?” Urkullu challenged.

  “I think it is a possibility, no more, no less. Would he serve up an offering to stay in power and resume a measure of diplomacy between Caracas and his mighty neighbor to the north?”

  “We cannot rule it out,” Biscailuz grudgingly admitted. “But some other possibilities also arise.”

  “Such as?” Lekka replied.

  “Consider this. The majority of the surviving delegates are Islamists,” Biscailuz said. “While they may argue over doctrinal theology, all of them despise the West and hope to see its culture swept away. This meeting is—at least, could be—an opportunity to strike potential enemies and let the president take the blame.”

  “I would never trust one of those Arab bastards,” Urkullu declared.

  “And they feel the same about you, comrade,” Biscailuz assured him.

  “Would they dare try it, without reaching an agreement with the Venezuelans?” Lekka asked.

  “Another point to ponder,” Biscailuz replied.

  “How many do you think may be involved?” Xenakis asked.

  This time, Biscailuz rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “I don’t suggest that all of them are guilty, necessarily. But from this moment onward, we must treat Las Palmas as a hostile battleground.”

  “We should get out of here while we still can,” Xenakis said.

  “With Venezuelan drivers taking us to Christ knows where?” Urkullu answered back. “No, thank you. I would rather take my chances here.”

  “And do what?” Lekka asked.

  “First thing,” Biscailuz said, “would be to get more guns and ammunition if possible. Be prepared for anything.”

  “And then?” Xenakis asked.

  “If set upon,” Biscailuz said with perfect certainty, “we fight.”

  * * *

  From what Bolan could tell, the SEBIN sentries had only a vague plan for securing Las Palmas after his attack on the east wing. Their search parties were fanning out in every cardinal direction of the compass, or at least as far as the resort’s established walkways would allow.

  To that end, they were knocking on the doors of every suite presently occupied, ostensibly inquiring as to the welfare of invited delegates, but doubtless also taking stock of those they saw along the way, explaining what had happened to the terrorists who didn’t know already, and assessing their response in terms of foreknowledge and guilt.

  Of course, none of the foreigners knew what in hell was going on. How could they, unless one or more of them was psychic? All the SEBIN searchers would accomplish with that sweep was to disperse and escalate anxiety throughout the normally sedate resort.

  That only served to further Bolan’s scheme.

  Avoiding searchers did not prove to be a major problem. Even though the troops would be alert to trespassers, ready to fire upon them without warning if discovered, Bolan knew the prime suspects were terrorists invited to the meeting by SEBIN’s supreme commander, the vice president of Venezuela, acting under orders from his boss, residing at the Milaflores Palace on Urdaneta Avenue in Caracas.

  No matter how the rest of this played out, in terms of foreign media, the buck would stop with the president of Venezuela, known worldwide for his corruption and strident—some might say hysterical—attacks and accusations against Washington. If stateside editorials pointed a finger at him, branding the man a possible conspirator with global terrorists, political broadsides and a well-lubricated rumor mill would carry it from there.

  The president might behave as if his nation were an island insulated from the world at large, heedless of how his people suffered, but the nation’s faltering economy depended largely on trade with countries that might slam their doors on a terrorist sponsor.

  Coupled with pervasive shortages of food and other household necessities, that dilemma could only increase domestic dissent, revealed most starkly in August 2018, when a drone packed with explosives detonated in Caracas, at a site where the president was reviewing a National Guard parade, wounding seven officers and putting the rest to flight, resulting in thirty-odd arrests.

  How much more rotten press could El Presidente manage to survive?

  Not Bolan’s problem, though he calculated that a shift in the regime might do a world of good for Venezuela and its people—all depending, naturally, on who rose to power and the means he—or she—used.

  Meanwhile, he had to come up with another strike and—

  As if reading Bolan’s thoughts, Geller asked, “All right, what now?”

  “You mean, aside from playing tag with sentries?”

  “Hopefully,” she said.

  He took her point. They couldn’t just keep ducking in and out of vacant rooms. Aside from taking on the aspect of a movie bedroom farce without the sex, that game would soon become unfeasible, with SEBIN soldiers checking suites unoccupied by delegates, using a master key card to gain entry as they pleased. Bolan and Geller, on the other hand, would have to jimmy locks, leaving unwanted telltale traces in the process.

  “You’re familiar with the adage that the best defense—”

  “Should be a good offense?” she interrupted him. “Of course. From Mao Zedong.”

  “Not quite,” Bolan corrected her. “Mao got it from George Washington, who stole it from Sun Tzu by way of Niccolò Machiavelli.”

  “You’re a historian, as well?”

  He let that go, instead replying, “I need to find another twosome settling in for the night, without mobbing up to find safety in numbers.”

  “Another attack, then?”

  “Don’t fix what isn’t broken. Push it to the limit.”

  They reached a corner, heard no one approaching.

  Geller glanced around, said, “What about these two?”

  Bolan edged forward, following her gaze, and nearly smiled.

  “They just might do,” he said. “Let’s find out where they’re headed.”

  * * *

  “Here he comes,” Namadi Giwa told his comrade from Boko Haram.

  “And not alone,” Dele Okonji said.

  “Did you expect he would be?” Giwa asked.

  “I have a bad feeling about the Pakistani, Major Khosa.”

  “As do I,” Giwa agreed. “But as joint hosts of this disaster, it can’t hurt for us to speak with both of them at once.”

  “It might, if we’re not ready for them,” Okonji told him. “And the three guards with them may be nervous.”

  “So, we must not cause them any agitation,” Giwa said. “At least, until we’ve had a chance to find out what Pérez intends. If that goes badly...”

  “We should be prepared.”

  The two Nigerians were speaking English, the official language of their homeland, but they stopped to readjust the pistols they’d been issued, tucked inside their belts and hidden under their long-sleeved dashiki shirts. Once satisfied, Giwa stepped from the service alcove humming with the sounds of a soft drink dispenser and an icemaker, where they had been concealed. Okonji followed him and took up station to his right.

  Approaching them, the party of five men—Colonel Pérez and Major Khosa, with th
ree riflemen in uniform—stopped short but then cautiously proceeded forward.

  “Mr. Giwa, Mr. Okonji,” Colonel Pérez said as he approached. “I might have hoped to find you in your suite.”

  “It’s but a few doors down, Colonel,” Giwa replied.

  “And is your minibar well stocked?” the Venezuelan officer inquired, eyes gazing past them toward the service niche where they had been concealed.

  “Indeed,” Giwa said. “But my comrade hoped to find a Pepsi cola.”

  “I regret that you will search in vain. Their headquarters in the United States had a dispute with our president some five years ago, over a profit sharing matter, and their products are no longer sold in Venezuela.”

  Turning toward his comrade, Giwa said, “You see? I told you, Dele.”

  Okonji responded with a shrug.

  “But since we have you here,” Giwa continued, “may I ask what steps you’ve taken to improve security around Las Palmas, Colonel?”

  Pérez kept smiling in his artificial way, but now his face appeared to tighten, as if gremlins on the inside were at work, manipulating muscles underneath his olive skin.

  “Indeed, you may,” Pérez replied. “I have sent for reinforcements from Caracas, and a search is underway for evidence of who dispatched our Irish friends.”

  “You still expect the meetings to resume, then, in the morning?”

  “If the delegates are all agreed by breakfast time, I do,” Pérez confirmed. “It seems a shame for you to travel all this way and then accomplish nothing, wouldn’t you agree?”

  “I would,” Giwa replied. “But I suppose we must await the morning’s light and see which of us still remain.”

  Pérez gave up his smile, but still managed an affable reply. “You are in good hands, gentlemen, you may be sure of it. Now, if you will excuse us...”

  “Certainly.” Giwa stepped aside and watched as the five-man party moved along the concrete walkway, turned a corner and was gone.

  “Safe hands, my ass,” Okonji said, sneering when they were out of earshot.

  “From now on,” Giwa replied, “the only hands that we can trust here are our own.”

  Suite 109, North Wing

  Julian Cepeda closed and double-locked the hotel door behind him. He then retrieved one of the suite’s three matching straight-backed chairs and wedged it underneath the door’s handle as extra reinforcement.

  “That should hold it.”

  From behind him, Carolina Salazar remarked, “The Irishmen must have been stupid asses, letting a stranger in their suite.”

  “Most of the delegates are strangers to each other, my love,” Cepeda said, turning to face her.

  The endearment never would have passed his lips in public. Certain members of Colombia’s Ejército de Liberación Nacional knew that Cepeda’s feelings for Carolina Salazar extended beyond politics and guerrilla warfare. While wider leaks were always possible, the tabloid press at home had never broached the subject of their long-running affair.

  And if the story broke someday...well, then, everyone could just go to hell. Cepeda had never heard it said that soldiers should be starved of sexual release.

  “I need a shower,” Salazar said as she slipped off her denim jacket, tossing it onto the nearer side of Cepeda’s king-size bed. She wore a white T-shirt beneath, tucked into blue jeans, with their cuffs in turn tucked into ankle-high suede boots. The Glock wedged in between her belt and T-shirt at the back, positioned for a right-hand draw, made her seem all the more erotic to Cepeda.

  “May I join you, my darling?”

  “I’d feel slighted if you didn’t,” she replied, smiling. “And bring your big rod, eh?”

  “I don’t go anywhere without it,” he assured her as she peeled off the T-shirt and dropped it on the floor, revealing small but perfect breasts.

  Cepeda was already grappling with his shirt, unbuttoning it in a rush, as Salazar sat, pulled off her boots, then wriggled out of her confining jeans. Again, as was her habit, she had managed to dispense with underwear. Rising once again, she pivoted on tiptoe, showing off the fashion model’s body that had earned her living prior to meeting Julian Cepeda and deciding that her time was better spent pursuing Che Guevara’s revolutionary dream—that was, between their fevered bouts of lovemaking.

  Cepeda was a few paces behind her as she stepped into their suite’s spacious bathroom, its centerpiece a glassed-in shower roughly twelve feet square. Above that shower, to the left, a window made of pebbled glass stood half open, its wire screen preventing forest insects from encroaching on the couple’s privacy.

  Cepeda watched, fiercely tumescent, as Salazar stepped into the shower, turned it on, and shivered until she had managed to adjust the water’s temperature to her liking. With her back turned toward him, Salazar reached out to a shelf at shoulder height, unwrapped a bar of soap, and started lathering her body. Midway through that process, though, the soap slipped from her grasp and landed on the tile between her feet.

  “Christ, I’m so clumsy. Will you help me?”

  “My absolute pleasure,” Cepeda replied.

  He stepped into the shower’s spray, her back still turned to him, and bowed to reach between her feet. Rising, he handed back the bar of soap, then slid his arms around her waist, hands sliding up to find her soapy breasts.

  “You were supposed to help me,” she scolded him. “How can I finish now?”

  “You’ll think of something,” he replied. “And you should thank me.”

  “Oh? For what?”

  One of his hands dipped lower as he said, “I’ve found a spot you’ve missed.”

  * * *

  Bolan and Geller had pursued the couple at a distance, staying out of sight, lucky to meet no roving guards along the way. When their selected targets—male and female, an anomaly for the convention at Las Palmas—slipped into a suite and blocked the night out with its door, Bolan had led Geller to the back side of the north wing, counting off dark windows until they found one beaming light.

  And it was half open, a black-and-white zebra longwing moth perched on the screen, its wingspan some four inches wide, entranced by the fluorescent light beyond. Inside, Bolan could hear a shower running, water splashing onto tile, obscuring the Spanish words exchanged between a male and female.

  Some of that was moaning now and grunting from exertion. Bolan didn’t have to guess what method his intended victims had selected to help them unwind, nor could he blame them, having done the same himself on more than one occasion.

  But that would not stop him from transforming their idyllic tryst into a hell-bound elevator ride.

  Leaning close enough to whisper in Geller’s ear, he said, “You’ll want to move away, say twenty feet or so.”

  She watched as Bolan drew his Cold Steel Recon Tanto dagger with his right hand, palming an M26 frag grenade with his left. Slowly and gently, he reached out to prod the zebra longwing with his knife blade, putting it to flight, then stepped in close and listened for another second before slicing through the window’s screen.

  His knife blade barely whispered, passing through the mesh on one side, then across the top and down the other side, until the screen sagged inward, dangling from its bottom frame. That done, Bolan replaced his dagger in its sheath, switched hands with the grenade and pulled the safety pin, letting it drop.

  From the adjacent shower came a woman’s voice, urging her partner to go faster. Bolan got the message, even with his basic understanding of Spanish. He reached in through the open bathroom window and tossed his grenade so that it landed near the shower’s box of glass, clouded by steam within, and wobbled over tile as he retreated, running in a crouch.

  Behind him, some four seconds later, thunder rocked the bathroom, metal shards and splintered tile smashing the spacious shower’s glass walls, turning the fervid sounds of sex to scream
s of mortal agony. A smoky gust of superheated wind whooshed through the open window and escaped into the humid night.

  Geller waited for the Executioner, M4A1 carbine in her steady hands, face blank. As Bolan closed the gap between them, she remarked, “I almost feel as if we should apologize for ruining their night.”

  “No problem,” Bolan answered back. “The honeymoon was over, anyway.”

  * * *

  Geller moved in lockstep with her comrade in arms as they left the shattered north-wing suite behind. She’d glimpsed the bathroom through its open window before detonation, guessed that there had been little in the room to blaze except for fleecy bath towels. She assumed the smoke now rolling out of it was residue from burned-off Composition B, a malleable blend of RDX and TNT that filled most antipersonnel grenades, along with land mines, rockets and artillery projectiles.

  As for blood inside the bathroom, there’d be plenty of it left, despite some that was vaporized.

  She could have taken time to glimpse the carnage, from an awkward angle and through swirling smoke, but why bother? Geller had seen enough dead men, women and children in her time, most recently the pair she’d shot at Maiquetía. She did not need another ghastly image burned into her memory by choice, when she was bound to see—and cause—more bloodshed as the night wore on.

  It would only end when she did, or when she stepped down from duty with Mossad at sixty-two, under Israel’s Retirement Age Law of 2004. Not that retirement would eliminate the images tossed up unbidden by her own subconscious mind at random intervals.

  But then again...

  The notion of retirement brought a wry, off-kilter smile to Geller’s face.

  Considering the life she’d chosen and the dangers that she regularly courted, was she likely to survive another thirty years? More to the point, when she had aged out of Metsada’s fieldwork and been relegated to a desk at headquarters, reviewing files or doing other busywork, would she even desire to live?

  She had no husband—no man, period, aside from one-night stands at random intervals—no children, no surviving family at all, in fact. Why did she even bother to exist, aside from dealing death out to her homeland’s countless enemies?