Predator Paradise

It seemed the President—or whoever had put the idea in his head—felt the need for a second holding pen outside Guantanamo Bay. Gitmo, or so Brognola had been told by the Man, Bolan recalled, had gotten a bit overcrowded with bad guys. And secondly, or so the line of reasoning went, there was too much spotlight glaring on Gitmo, thanks to the media, which, in the usual convoluted political thinking, could end up smacking Washington with a black eye. Prisoner mistreatment, abyssmal living conditions, individual rights of terrorists denied, and so on. It hadn’t been spelled out one hundred percent, but Bolan’s gut told him the next prison camp for international criminals wouldn’t pop up on CNN.

Usually the soldier operated alone, or as part of the two Stony Man commando teams. Working with unknown factors, CIA or bona fide military men with combat experience, had proved perilous to his health in the past. Brognola, however, had laid it out, convinced him to colead Cobra Force Twelve. Never one to unduly swaddle himself in the Stars and Stripes, the big Fed had told him twenty to thirty of some of the most wanted terrorists, depending on how many could be taken alive, could prove intelligence mother lodes in the war on terror. Somalia was first on the roundup list.

Not even Brognola had been told where this military tribunal would be held, and Bolan wasn’t quite sure what to make on the lack of concrete details. It smacked of dark secrecy to the soldier, all around, and Brognola had as much as said if it blew up in the faces of those in the field doing all the hunting and capturing then America would take a verbal shellacking by the UN, her supposed allies, not to mention the Muslim world cranking up the heat for jihad.

And even with intelligence operatives all over the map, guiding them from hit to hit, they were on their own. The Executioner understood and accepted his usual role as a deniable expendable if he was caught or killed by the enemy. That was acceptable. What wasn’t were a few nagging speculations tossed his way by Brognola before he headed out to Fort Bragg to introduce himself—Colonel Brandon Stone—to the Cobra troops. The file on Collins and Cobra was classified, but the cyber sleuths at the Farm had unearthed a few questions, framed as suspicion, about the man and his team. They were terrorist headhunters, with a trio of successful outings to their credit, only a “but” in caps hung over their heads. The thing was, they had been in the general vicinity when a spate of kidnappings and murders of American citizens in Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia sullied their record. Coincidence?

Another reason to hop on board.

The soldier was there now, willing to let battle and time tell the truth.

He turned to the driver—Asp—the op’s mane of black hair and facial scruff framing the portrait of a mercenary. The pager on Bolan’s hip vibrated, the same signal transmitted, he knew, to the other ground troops. The bird had landed.

“Listen up,” Bolan told Asp, turning to make sure the lone black commando on the team—Python—heard him loud and clear. “There’s been a little change in plans.”

DUGULA WAS beyond troubled, and he couldn’t simply will away the gnawing in his belly. Something was shooting him to new heights of fear, a feeling so alive it had become a living monster in his face.

As the day ground on, everything appearing to go as planned, the worm in his belly squirmed harder, terror not far behind the unease, threatening, he imagined, to uncoil an adder in his guts, devour him from the inside out.

He had placed the call to the man in Saudi Arabia, more out of nagging paranoia than curiosity. Sure enough, the cutout who had arranged safe transport for freedom fighters he was harboring, so high up the chain of command in the Islamic jihad that disobedience was a death sentence, had confirmed what the whites had told him.

There was, so the middleman said, a series of big events about to unfold, fear not, perform the holy duty, whatever it was. The Saudi had instructed him to comply with whatever the foreigners wanted him to do, no matter how bizarre their requests seemed. Again he was told he would know when it started, but not knowing when or what disturbed him the most, visions of the noose once more tightening around his neck flaming to mind. He was to have faith as strong as steel, ask no questions. He would be an important, even a glorious instrument exercising the will of God in the coming days. He was being called, perhaps by the Prophet himself, a holy decree he was to carry out, once again, on faith. And he would be paid—the bottom line in his ultimate decision—more than he could ever spend in two lifetimes. Woe be to anyone who attempted to betray any of them, chisel out of the bargain, or so the Saudi told him.

Still, he had many questions, all of them bringing on doubt and worry that would see him thrash through one or many sleepless nights before this big event. Beyond that, he was angered that forces beyond his control had assumed he would obey their mysterious dictates, even order him to relegate his power to the enemy. Being on an overseas line, though, the conversation was brief, code words and phrases that should leave any enemy eavesdroppers guessing.

Dugula watched as the giant UN cargo plane descended from the direction of Kenya, touched down, hurled up spools of dust, began to taxi. For a moment, attempting to calm himself, he marveled at the naiveté of these relief workers. Surely by now they knew what became of their cargo. Were they stupid? Or did they actually believe one more attempt to funnel food and medicine into this region would buy the masses a few more days, even weeks before they succumbed to the inevitable fate of the weak? That he would actually distribute the relief to the surrounding villages?

Fools.

They had long since given up attempting airdrops, or trekking to the villages themselves, on foot or by truck, since a few relief workers had mysteriously vanished.

It occurred to him, the thought dredging up more paranoia, that perhaps this time they had brought along a few guns to test his will. If that happened, it would prove no contest at all. If they made demands at gunpoint, they were all dead, shot on sight, and he would simply load the trucks with the cargo, burn the bodies, destroy the plane, take his chances. This was Somalia, after all, and only a massive invading army would dare attempt to…

He was out of his jeep, standing his ground, ordering his clansmen to move up on the plane when the C-130 swung around, ramp lowering, the bay out of view. Strange, he thought, since the previous attempts were done in full view of the ramp coming down. It could have been paranoia, anxiety getting the better of him, but something felt terribly wrong all of a sudden. Dust in his face, he found himself easing back toward his jeep. It was a faint and distant rattle, buzzing in his head, but a chatter that blew the lid on his fear.

Dugula knew the sound of autofire when he heard it.

CHAPTER TWO

Collins wished he could see Dugula’s face, the horrifying reality that this wasn’t the usual candy raid doing far more than just ruining the warlord’s day. He could well imagine Dugula right then, nuts going numb, knifing chest pains, pasta legs, a scream of outrage no one but himself could hear, much less cared to, the whole shrieking nine yards of terror and confusion over why and who had come to yank his ticket. It was a fleeting impulse, wanting to be there, grinning in the guy’s face of fear, but any gloating, Collins knew, was on hold.

Collins had a full shooting gallery before him to contend with. Getting hands on the Kewpie doll was the ultimate prize, but since the moment at hand was no guaranteed straight flush, Dugula had to keep.

The Cobra leader flamed away with his M-16, Mamba on the starboard side, likewise clamping down with autofire on the stunned opposition. So far they were on the money, Collins thought, shock appearing on the verge of winning the opening round, but the going would get a lot tougher once they were off the ramp. Figure ten had ventured up the ramp, AKs not even up and out, their faces laughing, maybe a private joke bandied about between them in their native tongue, but the Somali thugs lost all arrogant composure when the first few rounds began chopping into their ranks. White caftans were shredded to red ruins before they were even aware they were chewed and screwed, Collins and Mamba sweeping long bursts, port to starboard and back. Somalis tumbled, screamed, sailed down the ramp, a whirling dervish or two losing a sandal in midflight.

“Go!” Collins roared, but he heard engines revving already, pedal to the metal, the Hummers streaking away from their starting line, amidships.

The Hummer known as Thunder Three was a blur in Collins’s eye. Holding back on the trigger of his assault rifle, he gutted another Somali with a short burst. Diamondback, he saw, manning the M-60, cut loose with the heavy-metal thunder. Two heartbeats’ worth of pounding of 7.62 mm lead erased the terror on the face of a goon peeking over ramp, head erupting, the shattered crimson eggshell gone with the vanishing corpse. Thunder Four was right on their bumper, the point Hummer, Collins saw, about to bulldoze through a bloody scarecrow rising on the lip of the ramp, his arms shooting up as if they were supposed to slam on the brakes or veer around him. There was a thud on impact, Collins catching the sound of bones cracking like matchsticks, the scream flying away with the ramp kill.

One, two, and both Hummers were airborne, tires slamming to earth a moment later at the end of the ramp, his drivers straightening next, cutting the wheels hard, whipping around and gone to charge into what Collins figured was fifty percent of what was left of Dugula’s shooters. According to intel, there were twenty-plus more Somali gunmen, either moving from the command hut or sitting tight, depending on Dugula’s mood, but those numbers would be handled, he hoped, by his Apache and the colonel.

Collins was picking up the pace, Mamba on the march, both of them feeding fresh clips to their M-16s when the Cobra leader sighted on a downed Somali. He was dragging himself through the pooling blood on his elbows, toward the edge of the ramp, head cocked. The spurting hole in the middle of his back, the way he slithered ahead, legs limp weight, told Collins he’d taken one through the spine. Paralysis below the waist would prove the least of his woes; Collins unable to understand Somali but believed he caught the gist of it. Sounded like the guy wanted mercy, he thought, or was trying to tell him this was all some hideous mistake. Whoever he was, Collins knew he wasn’t one of the catches of the day.

“Welcome to the big leagues, son,” Collins told him, then drilled a 3-round burst into his face.

Halfway down the ramp, Collins leaped, landing on hard-packed earth, M-16 searching out fresh blood off to the port side of the Hercules. The trick now, he knew, would be taking Dugula and a few top lieutenants alive. He already had that figured out beforehand, though, his hand ready to unleather the tranquilizer gun on his right hip just as soon as he made eyeball confirmation. The dicey part would be getting close enough to drop Dugula and trophies in the sleeping bag. As for his other commandos, the running scheme was to encircle them before they could bolt. Thunders One and Two would race in from the north, a sweeping left hook to their flank. It was a tactical page, he thought with a moment’s pride, ripped straight out of Genghis Khan’s war book. If one of his troops got close enough to Dugula first, they were ordered to lob a canister his way, where a cloud of barbituate-laced gas would disperse.

Collins saw three, then four technicals already in flight, dust billowing around the vehicles as they reversed away from the C-130, Thunders Three and Four charging to outflank them. Collins took a moment to watch the action.

Autofire chattered around the technicals, two vehicles sitting, shooters steeled to go to the mat, two more murderous goon squads on wheels rolling to break out, but the noose was tightening, he saw. Screams of pain lanced out of all that swirling dust, but Collins felt grim satisfaction it was nearly a lock. Still, he saw two technicals break out of the ring, racing across the plain. His commandos were alternating bursts between shooting gunmen out of their technicals and blasting out tires.

He was grinning to himself, his Black Hawks soaring overhead to run down the rabbits, the Apache strafing the troops and transports at the command post to the northeast when he found only one of his ground Hummers barreling in from the wadi.

“What the—?”

The M-60 gunner on that rig—Lionteeth—told him the colonel was engaged somewhere with Somali gunmen. Or had he broken off, purposely changed their role on his own command? If so, why?

Scouting the plain, Collins spotted the other Hummer. Thunder One was rolling slow, nearly creeping toward the fleeing Somalis. The Cobra team leader figured out the strategy. A lone figure peeled off from the Hummer, M-16 blazing at the profiteers who were squirming from an overturned transport rig, an APC near them demolished, swathed in leaping flames, treated, he reckoned, to a direct hit from the Apache’s Hellfire missile.

Wild Card was doing his thing, Collins thought, and cursed. So he had a prima donna on the team, the guy might as well have told him to kiss his ass, he’d do it his way.

A few choice words, assuming the colonel survived, had to wait as Collins drew a bead on a Somali gunman still standing in the dust, and drilled a burst into his chest.

THE EXECUTIONER sensed Asp and Python weren’t happy about being ordered to change the game plan right before the shooting started, but they did as ordered. The shift in strategy, at least on his part, had one goal in mind. Cutting off any retreat on foot, he knew, was a dicier proposition than simply allowing the Black Hawks and Apache to blow the enemy off the plain. Say the warbirds ground up the Somalis with lead and Hellfires from above, and any capture of Dugula was all but lost. If their job was to cuff and stuff the world’s most wanted international terror mongers, then anything short of bringing Dugula and top henchmen to justice spelled mission failure.

Bolan left the Apache to its Hellfire-and-chain-gun demolition. The command post, with any radar and tracking goodies, was blown away by the warbird, six or so Somalis scythed by 30 mm doom as they were bolting from the flying rubble. Before that round of destruction, the warbird had plowed a missile into one of the transport trucks, dead ahead to Bolan’s twelve, wreckage spewing out of the fireball bowling another canvas-covered transport onto its side.

The soldier cut a wide berth around the hungry flames and oily smoke, his M-16 leading the way, the stink of burning diesel fuel and toasted flesh swelling the air, grinding into his senses as he closed on the cries of panic. His vector, if he nailed the enemy before him in seconds flat, would land him directly in the path of two technicals charging away from the ring of Cobra lead. It was a dust bowl near the C-130’s nose, armed combatants blazing away, he saw, commandos then chasing down Somalis who had decided it was better to flee than stand and fight. It was hard for the soldier to tell which was which and who was who, but a split-second assessment of the numbers of bodies flying from technicals signaled to him the Somalis were clutching the short end of the stick.

Maybe ten Somalis, he viewed, came crawling or staggering out of the bed of their dumped transport. They were lurching to their feet, punch-drunk from the hard topple, AKs jerking in different directions, uncertain where the next immediate threat would rear up.

Bolan took care of their confusion, finger caressing the M-203’s trigger. He dumped the 40 mm fragmentation bomb into their ranks—no point in wasting precious seconds when the prize was maybe on the fly. The blast ripped out the heart of the pack, torn figures kicked in separate directions. Three hardmen with the quickest feet and the most luck, knocked down by the concussive force but clearing the fireball and shock waves, scurried to get back in action. The Executioner tagged the trio with a raking burst of autofire, left to right and back, bodies flung into tight corkscrews, dropping. Two of the warlord’s goons then popped into the soldier’s gun sights on the other side of the downed transport, running for the oncoming technicals, arms flapping as if they were hailing a cab.

Bolan shot them both up the back, flinging them ahead, their arms windmilling, faces hammering down with such force their legs flew up. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Asp charging the Hummer at a group of Somalis pouring AK-47 autofire from the bed of a technical, Python opting to help hose down those survivors still in the fight with his M-16.

Bolan cut his path hard and fast toward the racing technical, drawing target acquisition on three gunmen in the jeep’s bed. Rotor wash from the Black Hawks, hovering thirty yards behind, kicked up a cyclone of grit and dust, obscuring confirmation until the technical was nearly on top of the warrior.

But Bolan pinned down their man, Dugula’s face of terror and outrage framed from the shotgun seat of the technical, the soldier’s attention shifting back to the M-60 gunner who swiveled the machine gun in his direction. There was a moment’s hesitation from the hardman on the M-60, a spray of bullets flying wild past the soldier, before he hit him with a burst of 5.56 mm tumblers and sent him flying. Two Cobra Hummers then burst out of the dust storm, an M-60 roaring, other Cobra commandos racing on foot ahead to help lay waste to the pack of Somalis in the trailing rig.

The Executioner focused on the big catch charging his way.

Dugula, Bolan glimpsed, was flailing his arms, raging at his driver, when he hit the M-16’s trigger. The windshield imploded, a crimson halo where the wheelman had sat bearing grim testament that Dugula was the last passenger. The Executioner sidled away from the unmanned jeep, one last Somali launched from the bed of Dugula’s getaway, then he blew out the port tires with a long burst of autofire. He let it surge past, saw Dugula’s eyes bugging out, mouth vented, a silent scream lost to the din of autofire from some point downrange. Deflated tread slammed down into a rut, and the jeep shot up and over a jagged rip in the land, sailing a few yards, before it flipped onto its side.

THE WORLD WAS a shattered hell of noise, foul smells and choking dust from where he lay, slumped against the door, spitting flecks of blood and glass chips from his lips. Dugula heard the bitter chuckle next, but the sound was chased away by the Black Hawks, the bleat of massive blades a pounding racket that washed fire through his brain. They were nightmare specters suspended in the sky, two giant prehistoric birds of doom.

American commandos! He hadn’t clearly seen the faces of their attackers, but he had been there in Mogadishu when the infidel forces had come to supposedly restore order to a lawless country, when he had been on the shortlist of kill or capture. The infidels had returned.

Black Hawks. It was happening again, only this time it appeared the invaders would create a different outcome. The three white devils had maneuvered him into this trap; he was sure of it. But if they were working with his own Muslim handlers, why? It made no sense, a preposterous riddle without the first clue. He had made every accommodation possible to the freedom fighters, arming them, refuge inside his borders, food, women and qat. Or had they, too, been deceived? Beyond his sense of outrage over the betrayal, pure fear began writhing in his belly.