Predator Paradise

“You’ll know when it’s begun.”

He ran those words through his mind again, hatred burning. Now what?

His clansmen, he was sure, were all dead. If there were any survivors, could they stand and fight while…?

What? Should he attempt to flee again, but this time on foot? That he was still alive was no guarantee he wouldn’t be shot down in the next few moments. Where was his AK-47? And what would he do if he found the weapon? He was outnumbered, outgunned, alone most likely, autofire withering, no more screams, the lopsided battle winding down. There was a silence beyond the whapping rotors that sparked new fear. There really was no choice, he decided. Escape clearly wasn’t going to happen. Best to die on his feet. If this was the end, it was God’s will. So be it. The least he could do would be to kill as many of the enemy as he could before he was sent to Paradise.

Pinned by Muhmar’s deadweight, he shoved him away, grunting with the effort before he had him wedged between the seats. He scrabbled his hands through the bed of glass on the floorboard, crying out as a sliver jabbed his finger. There. He plucked up the assault rifle, aware at least that one of his enemies was close by. He hadn’t had a good look at the commando who had blasted out the window, sent the jeep careening out of control, trapping him now on his side, but he glimpsed enough of the eyes of the tall dark man to know his own doom was certain, the infidel probably circling the wreck even then.

How could this have happened? he wondered, rage clearing the sludge in his limbs. The attack had been unleashed, all thunder and lightning, instant death and destruction, so fierce it left little doubt they were there to kill him. It had been so easy before, intimidating the UN and Red Cross relief workers, seizing shipments…

It was over.

With the stock of the assault rifle, he punched out a jagged shard, groaning as pain knifed down his neck, reaching a point of fire between his shoulder blades. Nothing felt broken, but he assumed any pain was moments away from ending altogether.

Dugula squeezed through the opening, AK in shaky hands, the warlord unmindful of sharp glass tearing at his clothes. He sensed a presence behind him as he rose, the AK-47 swinging around, ready to kill whoever it was, however many were at his rear. He heard himself snarl, cursing all of this hideous misfortune, finger taking up slack on the trigger, pure murder pumping in his heart. It was the tall dark commando, rolling through the dust, coming out of nowhere, a floating wraith, right on top of him before he could act. The AK-47 nearly drew a bead, but Dugula knew it was already too late. There was a glimpse of the M-16, a question wanting to form in his mind as to why he wasn’t already dead on his feet, when the fist plowed into his jaw and the lights winked out.

“YOU WANT TO MIRANDIZE that asshole, too, Colonel? Maybe find him a lawyer?”

The plastic cuffs were fastened to Dugula, Bolan wrenching the warlord’s arms behind his back when it looked and sounded to the soldier as if this were where Collins wanted to assert his command in front of the troops. It was sheer luck on his part but earned, just the same, by audacity and determination that he’d gotten to Dugula first. Judging the tone he caught, Bolan could tell Collins didn’t like getting upstaged, and on the first leg of the mission.

“I wasn’t looking to steal anybody’s thunder,” Bolan said.

“Is that why you took it upon yourself to seal off their rear when you knew my gunships were supposed to do that?”

“It seemed the thing to do at the time.”

“Is that a fact?”

Bolan watched Collins, holding his ground beside Dugula, the warlord groaning, coming around, legs twitching in the dust. The short right cross had branded a purple welt on his jaw, hardly the kind of punishment, Bolan knew Dugula deserved. There was a village of innocents being butchered right then weighing on Bolan’s thoughts. The sky over the hills east had darkened, several more plumes of black smoke rising now since the battle here had erupted, bringing on a wide patch of unnatural dusk against the horizon. Time was wasting, lives being snuffed, Bolan sure they were being executed in droves by now. Up to then he hadn’t heard Collins mention any secondary objective beyond rounding up Dugula. This, Bolan knew, would prove a defining moment, grant him some insight into Collins’s true nature.

The salt-and-pepper flattop seemed to appear first in the boiling dust before six feet of muscled frame brought Collins swaggering out of the cloud, M-16 canted across his chest. Bolan read the former Delta major’s anger beyond the tight smile. The other commandos were toeing the dead or dying, pleas for help or mercy bleating out from several wounded Somalis. Collins slowed his pace, head swiveling, the soldier following the Cobra leader’s stare toward a commando—Tsunami—who was bent over a bloodied form convulsing near a technical riddled with bullet holes. Bolan panned on, found two more Cobra ops flanking a Somali who was on his knees, hands clasped, praying, it sounded, while in the same breath asking for mercy.

Collins shook his head. “He’s nobody.”

Bolan kept the anger to himself over the coldblooded killing that followed, as the commandos drilled autofire into the Somali’s chest. A kill in the heat of battle was one thing to Bolan, but when the enemy surrendered, execution on the spot was unacceptable. One act of outright savagery, Bolan knew, always led to another and even more brutal act. If a soldier couldn’t separate the difference, he was lost, no exceptions.

“Major. Over here.”

Again Collins peered at another Somali. His face was forced up and aimed at Collins, the commando named Roadrunner wadding up a handful of hair, a knee speared in his back. The Cobra leader gave a thumbs-down.

The face shoved away, the commando stood, drilled a 3-round burst into the Somali’s back, abruptly silencing his plea.

Collins held up and rotated a clenched fist, signaling the Black Hawks to move off, presumably to recon the area for any gunmen who had managed to slip away.

“So, is this where it starts, Colonel?”

“Does what start?”

Something flickered through Collins’s eyes, a darkness stirring behind the look, Bolan believing he sensed an angry animal presence of the savage he’d just seen carry out the executions.

Collins lowered his voice, edged with tight anger as he said, “I don’t have time to jack around with you, Colonel. From here on, we map out a strategy. I’d like you to stick with the program. I need to know we’re on the same page and not out here clashing cocks. We clear? Sudden interruptions in tactics, in my experience, have a way of proving hazardous to everybody’s health.”

“And improvising?”

Collins grunted. “Is that what you call it? Well, that depends on who’s doing the improvising and why. I’m getting a sense here, Stone, that maybe you’re not really a team player, or that you’re a lot more than I’ve been led to believe. That maybe you’re telling me I don’t know how to do my job?”

Bolan nodded at Dugula. “He’s in the net, but there’s a few loose ends still running around over those hills, Major. This isn’t over.”

Collins glanced past Bolan. “What’s happening over there isn’t my concern, Colonel. They’re not part of the mission parameters. And we’re not some flying hospital or a bunch of Red Cross workers on a mission from God. Say we do what you’re implying, say we’re successful driving out the rest of Dugula’s bad boys. Then what? We’re looking at slews of wounded, dying, diseased, mouths to feed. We’re not equipped for that scenario to start with.”

“They’re being slaughtered, Collins. Women, children. If they don’t fit into your plans, chances are you could still put a few of Dugula’s top lieutenants on your mantel.”

“Hey, this isn’t some game show to me, Stone. I’m not in this to land a seat as some military expert on FOX & Friends when I hang it up.”

“Then let it be about something right.”

Collins paused, considering something. “A part of me can almost respect you for wanting to be a decent guy and all that, Colonel. In other circumstances I might feel the same way. But do you know why whatever’s left of Dugula’s brigands are over that hump torching those people? They’re carrying a plague, Stone, that’s straight from up top. It’s all been caught on sat imagery, and I’ve got the details in triplicate if you care to read the reports. The UN, WHO all know about it, and not even they will send in some relief help at this time. And we’ve been ordered to leave it alone. What’s over those hills is a bunch of Ethiopian nomads who brought some sort of hemorrhagic contagion, some real wicked stuff that infected hundreds. We don’t know what it is. It could even be Ebola. You think I want to risk the lives of my men just to play some kind of Mother Teresa to a bunch of people who are going to die anyway? Whose own countrymen will march in right behind us and kill and burn them even if we do take out the rest of Dugula’s rabble? You want to be running around, shooting up bad guys with open sores and black shit flying out of their mouths and maybe getting doused in their infected blood? For all we know, this plague could be an airborne contagion.”

“You don’t want to do it, then let me handle it.”

“I’ve got a lot to do, Colonel, before we move on to our next objective. I’ll have to beg off.”

“Then I’ll go it alone. I won’t just walk away.”

Collins measured Bolan, bobbing his head. “Okay, tell you what. Just to show I’ve got some heart, take one of the Black Hawks, I’ll even throw in the Apache, since my numbers show about thirty or more of Dugula’s punks running around over there. I can spare four of my men, but that’s it. You’ve got one hour, Stone, then I’m in the air. I’ll take back my men and leave you behind if you’re not ready to fly. Will that accommodate your sense of mercy and compassion for the oppressed?”

It suddenly sounded too easy, Collins relenting, handing over his own men even, despite his argument about the risks of infection. Bolan sensed something else had prompted the Cobra leader to cave, but Collins was already keying his com link, relaying the order, the Black Hawk coming back to pick up the soldier.

The Executioner watched as Collins snatched Dugula off the ground by the shoulder, then barked the handles of the four commandos who would ride with the colonel.

“One hour, Colonel. Clock’s ticking.”

No good luck, no kiss off, nothing. On his own, but he had been, pretty much, since accepting the mission.

The Executioner turned, forging into the dust as the Black Hawk landed. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but there was a familiar churning in his gut, warning him that everything wasn’t as it appeared with Collins and Cobra Force Twelve.

Bolan hopped into the warbird’s belly. Time, he knew, would separate truth from lies, the righteous from the unclean of spirit. Right then there was another battle to fight, and hopefully a village, or part of it, at least to save.

One hour, he thought.

It could prove an eternity.

CHAPTER THREE

As anxious as Collins was to put Somalia behind him and set the stage for round two, it wouldn’t hurt, he figured, to stay grounded for another hour or so. By then a few questions might get put to rest, or, perhaps better still, he could spare himself some grief in the future. No, it wouldn’t cause him the first twinge of pain or regret if Stone—or the other four without the snake handles—didn’t come back from the crusade. Stone the Merciful, he thought. What the hell kind of warrior went out of his way to play savior to people who were doomed to die anyway? The diseased of that village had never been on the itinerary of things to do, but it might just help his own scheme of things if Wild Card was aced in the next sixty minutes trying to play savior. Something about the big colonel was nagging him the more he pondered any number of possible scenarios. The SOB could be anything—a spy, a plant, a shooter with orders given behind his back to terminate all of them if…

There were calls over the satcom to make right then, last-minute details to be ironed out before the next incursion, a date with another homicidal megalomaniac that would go down inside Sudan’s border. Hot spots to ignite, more bad guys to stuff or cuff, dreams to hold on to, he thought. Stone was on his own. He’d forget about him for the time being and let fate run its course.