Predator Paradise

by Don Pendleton

  The Executioner lurched up out of the hole and waded into the slaughter zone.

  ALZHARI COULD HARDLY be positive this attack was nonlethal, as foretold by the Iranian, since his own men were dying all around him. Either way, with all the shooting, screaming, the crunching din of explosions all over the camp, he wasn’t taking any chances.

  Not when the massive smoke cloud blew, a tidal wave of gray fumes sweeping his way, the night turned into day by flares, the glimpse of his own men cut down by unseen shooters telling him he’d better act or his number was up.

  It was sheer dumb luck the AK-74 was within easy reach, one of the trio of his fighters who had been racing for the hill blown off his feet by an invisible shooter, the weapon flung back his direction. He was picking it up when the cloud washed over him, tentacles of gas—tasteless and odorless—flung in his face. The assault rifle was in his hands, eyes tearing all of a sudden, when his legs began to buckle, head swimming in nausea, sight fuzzy. For a moment he couldn’t believe this was happening, a gas bomb—it could be a nerve agent for all he knew—dropping over the camp. It was wrong to the point of absurd, even betrayal, he considered, that the Iranian had known about this assault, not clued him in on any of the finer details.

  He knew the more gruesome particulars about nerve agents, VX and Sarin, having specifically worked with them in a laboratory in Afghanistan. If he was in fact dying, it was painless, quick and clean. There was no vomit spewing from his mouth, no convulsions as if he were hooked up to live electrical wires, no bowels cutting loose, no labored breathing. He was collapsing, a boneless heap of rubber, when he saw the masked invaders surge out of the cloud. A few of his men were holding on, firing wild bursts toward them when they were riddled with autofire. The world was turning hazy next, sight and sound fading fast, when he saw one of the black-clad masked shooters roll his way. It was a feeble attempt, senses going numb, but he scrabbled his hands for the assault rifle. He thought he heard muffled voices going back and forth, arguing it sounded, deciding, he believed, whether he should live or die.

  “Looks like your lucky night, asshole.”

  The AK was in his hands, coming up, when the boot shot out of nowhere and slammed him in the jaw.

  COLLINS CONTROLLED his rage as he stripped off the masks. Two of his men were down. His fingers were checking for a pulse, finding none. Asp and Roadrunner were history. He wouldn’t leave them behind on the battlefield, of course, provided any of them walked away in one piece, then he considered secret knowledge. There was, after all, some good news here, but nobody outside the inner loop would need to know what the upshot was.

  Collins found himself hunkered beside a Land Cruiser, his men raking the campgrounds with relentless autofire. Gambler, Warlock and Cyclops, sticking together like he knew they would, were nailing terrorists without discrimination, blasting anything that moved, crawled or was already out cold from the NARCON-D. Collins had just gotten into a brief pissing contest with Gambler over who and how many they should take when he’d recognized Mustafa Alzhari, a chemical wizard with connections to North Korean operatives who could land the Muslim world some very nasty ingredients for scraping together a weapon of mass destruction. One to the jaw, a satisfying and very resounding crack of bone, and Collins had Alzhari laid out and cuffed. Collins bellowed through the mask, tapping two of his commandos on the shoulder, ordering them to cease fire and start cuffing live ones—no more than ten if they could find that many. He had come in, wanting to haul off more, but he’d take what he could get at that point. Whether they were first-or second-tier terrorists didn’t really matter any longer. Personal survival was tantamount to mission success. Besides, he had the camp commander, and if the bastard didn’t want to talk, he could spill other guts or blood to loosen Alzhari’s tongue.

  He checked the eastern end of the camp where—lo and behold—Stone was proving himself a one-man wrecking crew. There were more bodies and body parts, more wreckage strewed around the unmistakable big masked shooter than even Collins could have believed the guy capable of racking up.

  The sight of Gambler and pals wasting valuable HUMINT, pumping rounds into figures clearly punch-drunk and writhing on the ground, grabbed his immediate attention. He ran up to Gambler.

  “Hey! I wouldn’t mind a few live ones.”

  Gambler was consumed by blood lust, he saw, understandable given the circumstances and the fact they were up against the worst of the worst, but there were a few top dogs he needed found, confirmed dead or alive.

  “Why don’t you go help Stone,” he told Gambler.

  “And?”

  He knew what Gambler was asking, but shook his head. “We just lost two men.”

  “Anybody on our payroll?”

  “Asp. So I need every shooter—at least until the finish line is in sight.”

  Gambler grunted, marched off to assist Stone, who was having a field day butchering the enemy.

  What a waste of superior talent it would prove, Collins thought. Ten ass-kickers like Wild Card and he figured he could conquer the world, then realized that soon enough he was going to do just that.

  THREE TERRORISTS came charging out of nowhere, bellowing war cries of “God is great.” Bolan, focused on waxing three mauled hardmen to his three o’clock, nearly missed the threat boring in from ahead. One lapse was all it would take, but their mouths alerted the soldier to the sudden new danger. A swarm of lead hornets chased Bolan to cover behind a Land Cruiser, slugs drumming the vehicle, blasting out windows, showering glass. He hit the ground on his stomach, extended the assault rifle flat out beneath the chassis and blew them down with a raking burst that chopped them off at the ankles.

  The Executioner fed his M-16 a fresh clip, three wails flaying the air, and took in the furious action at the western end where Cobra Force appeared to have bailed themselves out of the frying pan.

  Bolan was sliding around the front end of the Land Cruiser, looking to close in on the threesome, but they nearly punched his ticket when a masked shooter beat him to it. The gunner left him to it—glacier-blue eyes inside the bubbled holes of the mask telling him it was Gambler—and swept his compass.

  Withering autofire lashed the air, Bolan tagging two rabbits fleeing for the hills. Collins, he heard, began shouting out the orders to his men.

  “You want to give us a hand tidying up, Stone? No time to stand there and pat yourself on the back, even though you did some damn nice work here.”

  The black op’s mask was off. Bolan was looking at Gambler, who was kicking at the dead trio, his mouth twisted in a grin.

  On a slow turning march, Bolan began his own search of the campgrounds, a burning Land Cruiser coupled with another flare igniting in the sky overhead providing ample light to give the hellzone a walkthrough.

  “Any live ones you find, Stone, I want them cuffed and dumped into these vehicles. We’re out of here and on the Herc in ten minutes.”

  Collins, mask off, signaling Bolan he could likewise shed his own protective gear, was marching out of a pall of black smoke. The other members of Cobra Force were toeing bodies, snapping cuffs on survivors, slapping drowsy terrorists back to reality.

  It was over, at least here, the soldier knew.

  Bolan went through the motions of an obligatory search for prisoners but kept one eye on the movements of Collins, Gambler and buddies. They had three terrorists on their knees, barking at them in a mixture of Arabic, Farsi and Pathan. Their knowledge of the languages didn’t impress Bolan as much as it told him they knew the lay of those lands, had been around and down some dark and most likely dirty alleys. God only knew what they were really all about, but Bolan sensed a clear and present malevolence about the trio of black ops. Gambler lifted his M-16 when one of the prisoners protested he didn’t know where any intelligence materials were hidden and shot him between the eyes.

  “Anybody else doesn’t want to give up what we know is here?” Gambler shouted.

  Warlock repeated the question in
Farsi, Cyclops in Pathan.

  “Look at this guy,” Cyclops growled, chuckling. “He’s got a face you just want to slap. So, how about you, honey? Answer the question.”

  “Or,” Warlock added, “you’re the next one on the way to Hell to suck on…”

  Bolan turned away, went on with his search, checking bodies, weapon ready for any terror Lazarus. He overheard Gambler snarling about booby traps as he manhandled a prisoner into the largest of the tents. Moments later, a shot rang out, then Gambler reappeared with a bulging nylon satchel.

  Bolan slowly moved back toward the others, watched the action, listened. Prisoners were dumped into Land Cruisers, threats issued, interspersed with all manner of cursing. Collins ordering his Herc flight crew to bring it down on the coordinates he set on his GPS. Gambler next informed the major it looked as if they struck gold.

  The Executioner gave the camp and the surrounding night one last search. Nothing stirred, groaned, twitched. He saw Collins walking up to him, met him halfway. Collins parked it, seemed to give the carnage an approving look, something new in the eyes, Bolan thought.

  “You don’t look too happy, Stone.”

  “You lost two men?”

  “Yeah. Asp and Roadrunner.”

  “I’d think you’d be the one with the longer face, Major.”

  “Shit happens.”

  “Indeed it does. What next?”

  “Interrogation once we get them chained down on the Herc.”

  “I gather that’s where it all gets real interesting.”

  “Hey, maybe our methods for getting information from these scumbags doesn’t gibe with most folks’ sense of morality and fair play. What I’m saying, are you going to have a problem with how I let those three handle the Q-and-A session?”

  Bolan probably would, since torture and coldblooded murder wasn’t how he handled business—at least as standard operating procedure—but there was some method to the madness he knew waited. If they were going to extract valuable information about terrorist operations, future plans for strikes and what the enemy had coined big events, some pain would have to be inflicted, perhaps even some blood shed. It was the way of the real world, Bolan knew.

  “It’s your show.”

  “Let’s shake a leg, Stone. I’ve got a Spectre on the way. They’re ready to burn this place off the earth with some nasty incendiary packages that made the trip. What we’ll do when we board, I’m going to lay out the rest of the mission for you, including where we’re eventually going to take this bunch for the trial. As far as I’m concerned, you’ve proved your mettle.”

  Bolan said nothing as Collins turned and walked away. Leave Collins to believe he’d just hung out the welcome-aboard sign, but Bolan was hardly flattered, much less about to embrace the change in attitude.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Let me be perfectly clear. You aren’t going to Paradise. You aren’t going to a warm yellow planet. You aren’t going to a sandy beach to work on your tan and unwind while you hatch your next chickenshit scheme to murder Israelis or Americans. There will be no flight schools, no lap dances in South Florida, no seventy-nine virgins waiting for you on the other end of this magic-carpet ride.”

  And so it began.

  Bolan grabbed a cup of bad coffee, settled in, close to amidships, claiming one of several bolted-down chairs near the intel-planning bays, war tables and other high-tech apparatus. He counted twenty-six terrorists altogether, headcloths, skullcaps, turbans, tunics, African caftans and so forth distinguishing independent countries of origin. There would have been twenty-eight bad guys, but two prisoners came unhinged just as they were being ushered up the ramp of the C-130, and the terrible reality hit them with full sledgehammer force. As they lunged at their Cobra handlers, Cyclops and Warlock used the opportunity to put a 9 mm round from their Berettas through their brains, rolled them off the ramp, depositing still more enemy bodies on Sudanese soil. It was something of a monumental struggle after that, manhandling the others to the bench, between threats and beatings and blood spilled from rifle butts to the head and face, but Cobra got them chained down.

  Bolan had silently begged off the whole brutal process, drawing funny looks from Gambler and cronies. It had been clear to Bolan the trio of black ops got the most jollies from abusing the prisoners beyond the necessary rough persuasion to accept their lot. Bolan filed them away as sadists. Whatever rotten else they were, he was sure in time they would reveal themselves.

  Hands now cuffed to the long steel bench, feet manacled together, their expressions varied down the line, and Bolan read them in turn. Faces ranged from seething anger to utter disbelief to the sort of sociopathic hatred he’d found countless times before in the eyes of the fanatic. A few of the bad guys just appeared shell-shocked by the shellacking they’d received, thousand-mile stares fixed on the far wall. They might be in the bag now, but Bolan knew the real danger was just ahead, caged animals raging for a way to break out, devour their captors, whatever it took.

  Collins had the intro session started; a slow pace, back and forth, hands behind his back, the star of the show. Gambler, Warlock and Cyclops stood behind the major, a few feet of space between them, looking pleased with the floor show so far. Asp and Roadrunner were getting zipped up in rubber bags. Bolan wasn’t sure how they would be shipped back to the States, but was fairly certain Collins had allowed for casualties and had it figured out in advance.

  They were ten minutes in the air, and the way the Hercules had swung around, Bolan believed they were heading south, figured the next stop was the base in Kenya. Beyond that, Collins had yet to fill him in on the next leg. While Collins paced and spoke in Arabic, Warlock and Cyclops translated in Farsi and Pathan when the major paused.

  Bolan watched, sipped his coffee. A few of the Cobra commandos stood guard, M-16s out and aimed at the prisoners, while other commandos went to the computer bays, hauling out whatever intel had been seized at the camp. The one-eyed op worked on a smoke, a strange grin on his face, Bolan reading the glint in all five eyes, the major’s ballyhooed HUMINT op edgy and eager, no doubt, to shake some more nerves with on-the-spot executions.

  “You aren’t heroes, you aren’t martyrs, visionaries or divine instruments of God’s will. What you are is camel dung, the droppings of Satan, cold-blooded murderers of innocent women and children. What—”

  “Most of us speak near perfect English.”

  It was Alzhari piping up, the Sudanese camp leader wincing as he forced the words out from what Bolan could tell was a broken jaw.

  “As for who is the droppings of Satan, it is a matter of opinion.”

  “I believe we have a smart-ass in the class, Major,” Cyclops said.

  “I believe you’re correct,” Collins chimed back. “Very well, then, people. I’ll assume everyone will be clear on what I am about to tell you—in English. My mistake, since I know most terrorist scumbags learn to speak flawless English as part of their training. Pardon me the oversight, my first and last.” Back to pacing, closing the gap to some of the prisoners, Collins fired up a cigarette, blowing streams of smoke in their faces. “You are now prisoners of the United States government. POWs, but stamped as illegal combatants. You will be questioned thoroughly and extensively and you will comply. I know you’ll have many questions.”

  “Such as how you might relieve yourselves,” Warlock cut in.

  “The least of your problems,” Cyclops added.

  “Trust us,” Gambler said. “You stink bad enough as it is, and the last thing we want is to smell you soiling your panties.”

  “Bear in mind,” Gambler said, “as much as you believe your Allah knows your heart—”

  “The Devil knows it equally as well,” Cyclops said.

  “Every dark thought, secret desire,” Warlock added.

  “Every malicious intent,” Gambler said. “Bottom line, boys and girls,” he continued, “you cannot fool us. You will give us what we want. We know you better than you know yourselv
es.”

  It was a sick singsong routine, Bolan throwing the trio a look. A picture of the Three Stooges, but with guns and malice and bigotry of sick heart, framed in his mind for a moment.

  Collins held up a hand, glanced at the trio, then fell back into the act. “You are going to be detained. How long is up to each of you. How much information you provide may determine, in the long run, whether or not you are convicted of crimes against humanity. Depending on what we learn about you, depending on the nature of your evils, you may be hung at the end of your trial.”

  Bolan went back to his coffee when he heard the sudden outburst. Something about Collins and his manhood in relation to his mother, but Bolan couldn’t spot the rebel tongue.

  “Who said that? Who the fuck said that?” Collins roared, marching up and down the line, repeating the question. “No one said that, huh? Guess I’ll just have to pick one as an example. Malcontents, smart mouths and foul language will not be tolerated on this joyride.”

  The nod was given, and Cyclops brought the Beretta out of his holster, walked up to a terrorist Collins jabbed his cigarette at, and shot him between the eyes. Blood and brain matter sprayed the prisoners flanking the body, then another captive was screaming, thrashing in his chains, three down the line.

  “I thought the bulkhead was armor-plated,” Cyclops growled.

  “Ricochet. Use your knife from now on,” Collins said. “Take care of that noise!”

  The blade was out, Bolan feeling his gut clench. He nearly rose to put a stop to this insanity, but Cyclops already had fisted a handful of the wounded prisoner’s hair. The face was yanked up, all defiance and hatred beyond the pain, as Cyclops slashed his throat, ear to ear. The soldier hadn’t signed on for torture and indiscriminate cold-blooded murder of even the worst of the worst. It was far from any moral cowardice that froze Bolan from acting out his rage, putting an end to this horror show, and even at gunpoint.