Blood Vortex

by Don Pendleton

  And who would miss her when, not if, she sacrificed herself in that pursuit?

  A sharp voice in her mind commanded, Stop that! Geller shot a surreptitious glance toward Cooper, pleased to find that he was paying no attention to her, had not picked up on her sudden morbid mood.

  They still had work to do for their respective governments, and that meant wet work in the parlance of their trade. The best way to survive, she had learned from grim experience, was simply to fight on, perform her duty, serving as a hired exterminator for the vermin of her world.

  So far, her targets had included aged Nazi fugitives and younger “neo” Nazis—nothing “new” about them but the uniforms they wore, still cherishing the swastika. Fanatical jihadists, soldiers of her nation’s Arab neighbors, anyone, in fact, who clung to the deranged philosophy of knee-jerk anti-Semitism, viewing Judaism not as a religion but a race apart from human kind, its “Jewish blood” a virulent corrupting pathogen.

  How long had that twisted thinking plagued the world? Its roots were traceable through documents to Martin Luther in the sixteenth century, denouncing Jews as “Christ-killers” with the same vehemence he leveled at the Vatican. French linguist Ernan Renan had revived that hatred in the nineteenth century, imagining that Ashkenazi Jews were secret Turkish plotters whom he called “Khazars.” From there, the curse came down through popes and tsars, fascists and Stalinists, to modern-day Islamist radicals, American “private militias,” and a swarm of rival Ku Klux Klans.

  She knew that she could not eradicate that plague, but she could chip away at it, eliminating carriers as she encountered them. If Cooper helped her do it, then he was an ally. On the other hand, if he turned out to have some undisclosed agenda that ran counter to her own...

  Well, Geller reckoned he would die like any other man.

  Chapter Nine

  Whenever faced with far-flung enemies collected in a vulnerable place, with little or no threat of harming innocents, Mack Bolan favored blitz attacks.

  Like now.

  He couldn’t swear both star-crossed lovers from the north wing had been killed outright, but the explosion would have maimed both, at the very least, and thus removed two hostile pieces from the board. Four down at the resort so far, two more off-site, with what he estimated to be twenty-four plus the SEBIN guards remaining to be taken down and out.

  As to those guards, while Bolan’s rule against eliminating LEOs was absolute, he’d never counted spies as law-enforcement officers. If that were true, he couldn’t raise a hand against the Russian Federation’s FSB or SVR, the Pakistani ISI, or Cuba’s DGI, much less the homegrown CIA whose rogue agents he had been forced to execute on more than one occasion.

  Those agencies and many more, in Bolan’s view, were not legitimate police and seldom ranked as “soldiers of the same side” in his mind, until they had proved themselves reliable.

  So, SEBIN’s troops were on the menu at Las Palmas, though his top priority was to take out the foreign terrorists assembled by request of the Venezuelan president. As for Geller, Bolan could not say where she might draw the line—or if she even had a line she would not cross—but so far, thankfully, she posed no threat to him or his assignment.

  Where to land his next blow at Las Palmas was an open question. Roaming the resort, he’d spotted prospects meeting in the open, while he knew that others had to be barricading themselves in their suites by now. Without a list of delegates and room assignments, Bolan had to operate by noting lighted windows with their curtains drawn, choosing his next marks without touching off a premature engagement with SEBIN.

  Trailing attendees to their suites made the selection process easier, of course, and now, while peering from another shadowed garden, this one dedicated to palmettos and cacti, he spotted two more candidates.

  “This pair looks good to me,” he told Geller, his eyes following a pair of swarthy, bearded guests in matching black turbans.

  “I know the taller one,” Geller responded with a whisper. “He is Ibrahim al-Mihdhar of al-Qaeda.”

  As they watched, al-Mihdhar and his unidentified companion stopped outside a door on the resort’s south wing, knocked twice, and stood their ground until the door opened, admitting them.

  “That makes four,” Bolan said, rising and delving with his left hand in the canvas pouch containing rifle grenades for his Steyr AUG. “You with me?”

  “Looking forward to it,” Geller said. A heartbeat later, spotting the grenade in Bolan’s hand, she asked, “You think that is the way to go?”

  “Variety,” he answered back. “We can’t just go around knocking on doors or looking for an open window. With four guns against us, maybe more, I don’t put any stock in subtlety.”

  She saw the logic of it and nodded, bracing her M4A1 carbine against her hip.

  The Steyr AUG’s closed-type ported muzzle device doubled as a flash hider and grenade launcher, while its gas valve had three discrete settings. One, marked with a small dot, was used for normal operations, while another, labeled with a large dot, denoted a fouled rifle. The third, marked “GR,” permitted launching rifle grenades made without bullet traps.

  As Geller watched, Bolan mounted the NATO STANAG type 22 mm rifle grenade to his Steyr’s muzzle, adding roughly two pounds to the AUG’s overall weight, and switched the gas lever to “GR.”

  Ready to rock and roll.

  “You good to go?” he asked Geller.

  “Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.

  Suite 109, North Wing

  The en suite slaughter pen was not the worst thing that Colonel Pérez had seen, but if he had to rate it, he’d have placed it somewhere in his top ten murder scenes.

  Of course, he’d seen more victims mowed down at one time, some of their corpses left to rot in rural sites where scavengers were prevalent, and while this crime had only claimed two lives, the brutal interruption of their passion was unique in his experience.

  One thing that came to mind: pairing a male guerrilla with a female counterpart invited fatal errors and distractions. Media reports of women who had been defiled in military service surfaced frequently in the United States, and while the woman in this instance was a battle-tested terrorist, chiefly responsible for blowing up the General Santander National Police Academy in Bogotá last year—murdering twenty-eight, wounding another sixty-eight—her death by violence still chafed Pérez’s sensibilities.

  Not that he hadn’t been responsible for certain women dying in his time, of course.

  Perhaps the worst part of it was that Carolina Salazar had not been slain immediately by the blast of what appeared to be an antipersonnel grenade. From the arrangement of her body and Julian Cepeda’s, it appeared that he had stood behind her, Carolina doubled over to allow full access, when the high-explosive detonation had unleashed a storm of shrapnel, shattered glass and broken tile. Something had slashed through her femoral artery—the left one—and she’d bled out in the shower, pinned beneath Cepeda’s lifeless, partially decapitated body, doubtless crying out in agony.

  But that was not the worst of it.

  Major Riaz Khosa spoke up, as if reading Pérez’s mind. “Did your men issue hand grenades to any of the delegates, Colonel?”

  It was a foolish question, and he nearly said so, but instead replied, “Of course not, Major Khosa. Pistols mainly, plus one submachine gun and one shotgun.”

  “Given to the Irish,” Khosa said, not asking.

  “Sí.”

  “And I have seen no such grenades among your guards.”

  “There was no point, and damage to Las Palmas was an issue. The owner is a good friend of El Presidente’s Minister of Tourism—and he, in turn, holds stock in the resort.”

  “One hand washing the other, eh?”

  “It makes the world go ’round,” Pérez replied.

  “So, this was done by someone from outs
ide.”

  “Beyond a doubt,” Pérez agreed, fighting a sour feeling in his gut.

  “More searching then,” Khosa suggested.

  “Until someone is discovered. I—”

  The trilling of his cell phone made Pérez frown as he took it from his pocket and read a number on the LED display. He pressed a button to accept the call.

  “Yes, sir?” His frown deepened as a familiar voice delivered more bad news in rapid-fire clipped phrases, giving him no chance to interrupt or question the announcement passed on from Caracas. “Yes, sir. Very good, sir. With luck, the problem may be solved by then. Of course. Good night, sir.”

  His caller cut the link without goodbyes. Pérez was pocketing his phone as he told Khosa, “Wilmer Graffe will be joining us within the hour.”

  “And he is...?”

  “A deputy of General Ignacio Padrino Bandras.”

  “Your country’s minister of defense,” Khosa said, showing off his knowledge. “I believe his middle name translates as ‘godfather’?”

  “That is correct,” Pérez replied. He’d never thought of that before, and nearly laughed now as it hit him.

  “And does this mean that you’ll be relieved of duty, Colonel?”

  Pérez stifled a split second of dizziness at that idea, then replied, “We’ll have to wait and see, Major.”

  But Pérez knew too well that reassignment, possibly demotion, might not be the worst thing that he faced.

  If he was blamed for the president’s summit meeting breaking down in blood and disarray, the outcome could be so much worse.

  And his blood might be spilled before this night was done.

  Suite 309, South Wing

  “This looks the same as our room,” Ibrahim al-Mihdhar of al-Qaeda said.

  Yousef Farsoun, a delegate from Hamas, replied, “The art is different, I think.”

  Al-Mihdhar turned to face a painting by Balthazar Armas that depicted men with blocky heads, all wearing business suits, watching three seemingly intoxicated girls in matching outfits dancing, as it seemed, with arms extended, backs turned to the gallery observing them.

  “You are correct,” Al-Mihdhar told Farsoun. “Our suite has Monet’s portrait called ‘Women in the Garden.’ A fair reproduction, not the famed original.”

  “Ours, too,” Farsoun said. “I do not pretend to understand it.”

  Al-Mihdhar changed subjects. “As to why I called for this appointment—”

  “Delegates are dying,” Farsoun finished for him. “You have no wish to become the next.”

  “Not from simple fear of dying,” al-Mihdhar stated. “We long ago accepted that and are prepared for it, but our homeland—our war—lies seven thousand miles away.”

  “And ours nearly as far,” Farsoun agreed. “We’ve seen enough of Venezuela for a lifetime.”

  “I suspect that others feel the same,” al-Mihdhar told him.

  “We know they do,” Rashid Barghouti interjected. “Several, in fact.”

  “More of the faithful, I assume?” said al-Mihdhar’s companion, Fahd Julaidan.

  “Loyal followers of Allah who would rather carry on their war at home instead of hiding in a foreign jungle or a rich American’s resort,” Farsoun opined.

  “If we address Colonel Pérez and Major Khosa all united, in a solid front,” Barghouti said, “they must see reason and release us.”

  Ibrahim al-Mihdhar, for his part, was not so sure of that. “Their guards outnumber us and they have better weapons,” he replied. “If they refuse us transportation, do we leave on foot and hike back to Caracas through the jungle, eighty miles or more?”

  Barghouti drew a Browning Hi-Power and twirled it with his index finger through the trigger guard, like a gunfighter cast by Hollywood. “With these, we can secure transportation,” he declared.

  “And what then?” al-Mihdhar inquired. “Colonel Pérez can make one call and close the airports to us while his troops close in.”

  “He might accompany us,” Farsoun said, “and clear our way.”

  Al-Mihdhar had no scruples against murder, kidnapping, or any other crime. And while he had accepted bloody death as the inevitable outcome of his life serving al-Qaeda, he did not relish the thought of hijacking a Venezuelan airliner, departing from the country while a flight of Russian Sukhoi Su-30 fighter jets or American F-16 Fighting Falcons followed them, armed with Kh-59MK2 stealth cruise missiles or the US equivalent AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile—AMRAAM—and blasted them out of the sky.

  Still, if that turned out to be their only hope of fleeing from Las Palmas...

  “Go ahead,” he told the warriors from Hamas. “I’m listening.”

  * * *

  By Bolan’s count, at least four terrorists were gathered in suite 309. There might be more, if others had arrived before the spokesmen for al-Qaeda, representing any of the other radical jihadist groups attending the convention.

  Some of those were enemies in daily life, he knew, a problem that the summit meeting was supposed to solve. But even counting friendly cliques alone, there could be ten or twelve guerrilla fighters in suite 309, all of them armed.

  On that score, Bolan rightly felt superior. Between him and Adira Geller, they had better, more effective and diverse weapons than SEBIN had supplied to the surviving delegates after he’d liquidated the Irish contingent. Likewise, his experience and skill, coupled with Geller’s, likely topped that of mujahideen fighters who had spent the better part of two decades in hiding from the West’s best troops and killer drones.

  They had an edge, sure, but that didn’t translate as a guarantee of victory. A novice who had never fired a shot in anger might take down a seasoned warrior through dumb luck or desperation, and it made no difference to whomever he’d slain.

  Bolan had pulled off two clean strikes so far, but that was no assurance that a third or fourth time would succeed. Each time he played the same hand, even with a twist thrown in to change it up, the odds of a clean getaway were narrowing.

  And if SEBIN’s guard force caught wind of him...

  Well, that would be another game entirely, and all bets were off.

  Scanning the empty walkways of Las Palmas as he neared suite 309, uncertain of how many terrorists were sheltering inside, he found no search parties in evidence. Their total number was another unknown quantity, meaning that troops could show up anywhere, at any time, and that would be a game changer.

  With Geller at his side, he reached a point some twenty feet from the suite’s recessed doorway. Light behind the drapes there failed to show him any telltale shadows that would help him spot his enemies or make a firm head count. The moment that he blew their door in, there would be no turning back.

  More than 160 years ago, Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, Chief of the Prussian General Staff, had said that no plan survived first contact with the enemy. That had been true of every human conflict dating back to prehistoric times and coming forward to the present day.

  Once shooting started, everything that followed came as a potentially fatal surprise.

  Another glance to left and right, checking for anyone or anything he might have missed, then Bolan raised the Steyr to his shoulder, framed the target doorway in the crosshairs of its Swarovski telescopic sight, and sent his high-explosive wakeup call sizzling on its way.

  Approaching Las Palmas

  Deputy Minister of Defense Wilmer Graffe hated flying. It was unavoidable, of course, and he had managed to suppress his aerophobia when traveling around the country and beyond in airliners, aided by Valium. But smaller aircraft—helicopters, for example, or the Cessna 208 Caravans used by his country’s air force as spotters—were a challenge for him even now.

  Tonight, ordered to fly in an emergency, Graffe had skipped his normal medication, knowing that he had to be alert, ready for anything, upon
arrival at Las Palmas. He was sweating, but at least the flight was nearly over, eighty-odd miles covered in half an hour.

  “Thank God for small favors.” He realized he’d spoken aloud only when his aide, Oscar Sambrano, said, “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “Nothing,” Graffe replied. Another worry now, if word got out that he was talking to himself.

  Their airship was a Eurocopter AS532 Cougar. It seated twenty passengers besides its two-man crew, but only six were flying westward tonight—Graffe, Sambrano, and four members of the Army’s 52nd Jungle Infantry Brigade, armed to the teeth.

  Aside from the brusque orders he’d received at home, by telephone, Graffe knew next to nothing of his mission or the risks it might entail. His commander, the Minister of Defense, had only told him that a meeting of international terror groups was in progress at Las Palmas, in Aragua, but said nothing of its purpose, named none of the various participants involved. Someone had started killing off the visitors—four dead at last report, with no more details readily available.

  SEBIN had organized the meeting, but its man on-site, a colonel named Pérez, had no idea who’d murdered the four participants. In fact, he was unable to suggest whether the killer had been welcomed to the meeting as a delegate, or even if a single person were responsible. From that sketchy description of events, Graffe had been ordered to drop everything, fly out and solve the mystery, bringing the man or men responsible to book for the attacks.

  And he should do it quickly, his superior demanded. Quickly and discreetly, without letting any mention of the bloodshed leak out to the media in Venezuela or abroad. Graffe’s cushy position with the government depended on success, but now he wondered if his very life was riding on the line.

  Despite the bodyguards seated behind him in the helicopter, and the SEBIN agents stationed at Las Palmas for the meeting, Graffe did not feel like leaving anything to chance. He had not packed an overnight bag, but he was armed with a government issue Glock 17 and two spare magazines, and wore a lightweight Kevlar vest under his shirt and tie.