The weapon felt heavy, unfamiliar in his hands, and half the magazine was spent before he managed to control the recoil. Following the nearest helicopter, tracking on the open bay and flashing guns, he fired again, remembering to lead his target as the others had been taught.
Incredibly it worked. Before he knew precisely what was happening, Langois beheld a gunner rising from his crouch, a scarlet blossom opening above his heart. The helicopter listed, canting toward the earth, and suddenly the man was airborne, making no attempt to break his fall.
The priest's gun was empty, and he discarded it, a surge of panic taking over as the gunship swung in his direction. He ran, remembering to duck and weave from side to side as bullets ate into the soil around him. Something caught his foot and brought him down, the jarring impact emptying his lungs.
It was the fall that saved him, as the Huey thundered past, guns blazing. Whether they believed that he was dead, or simply gave priority to other targets, he would never know. Langois allowed the enemy to pass him by, then scrambled to his feet and broke once more in the direction of the trees.
Behind him, something detonated with a flash and roar, the shock wave nearly dropping him again. He kept his balance with an effort, reeling, conscious of the carnage all around him as he ran. He should have helped these men somehow, administered last rites, but there was nothing he could do for any of them now. Survival took priority above all else.
He reached the trees and put the camp behind him, running for his life.
* * *
The chopper sat down heavily, with troops unloading in a rush. The colonel waved Sonny Esposito out, and he hit the ground reluctantly, his finger on the trigger of his borrowed M-16.
It was a nightmare, circling the camp like Indians around a wagon train and blasting everything in sight. He didn't mind the killing, but the targets had been shooting back and scoring hits to boot. Their chopper had been driven off by ground fire once, before the colonel forced them back and ordered them to land.
Twenty yards or so in front of Esposito was the crumpled body of a gunner from their number-two ship. Sonny had been watching when he fell, and for an instant he'd seen himself in free-fall, plunging toward the unrelenting earth. It had been touch and go for several seconds, but he held his own and didn't need a change of shorts.
Not yet.
The clearing smelled of death and cordite, and bodies were scattered everywhere beneath a drifting pall of smoke. The cooking fires had been responsible for most of that, as well as a hand grenade that someone in the third ship dropped among a clutch of tents. The Mafia crew chief caught a whiff of roasted flesh and started breathing through his mouth.
The troops were playing mop-up, firing into prostrate bodies even where it clearly wasn't necessary. Sonny didn't bother counting; if the bastards wanted a report for their superiors, they could come up with figures on their own.
His job was specific; he was looking for a single man who might — or might not — be among the dead. As far as Sonny was concerned, it was a waste of time, but no one had solicited his thoughts. He'd been ordered to perform, and there were no two ways about it. Concentrating on the lifeless faces, trying to forget about what might be hiding in the trees, he went to work.
The dead were mostly young men, though he found some creeping up on middle age; a few he would have classed as senior citizens. The youngest was a boy of twelve or thirteen years, more proof that you could never be too young to die.
And all of them were Haitian. There wasn't a white man in the crowd.
"Goddamn it!"
"Well, monsieur?" The colonel had sidled up beside him, smiling with the satisfaction of a hunter who had bagged a record trophy.
"I don't see him here."
"Then you must look again."
"I'll look as often as you like, okay? I'll look all fucking day, and you can bring the klieg lights out at sundown, but it won't make any difference. Are you reading me? I'm looking for a white man, six feet tall or better, and he isn't here!"
The colonel's smile was melting down. "There must be some mistake."
"It isn't mine, old buddy. I was sent to find the man I saw on Friday, when the convoy got knocked over. Now, for all I know these other guys were hiding in the bushes, shooting up a storm, but if you're looking for the man I saw, you're wasting time."
"We have destroyed the rebel stronghold."
"And you know as well as I do that at least a couple dozen got away. I saw them running for the trees. You saw them."
"Was your man among them?"
"How the hell should I know? It was happening too fast. He might've been here. If he was, he got away."
"Perhaps, if you review the casualties again…"
"It won't make any difference."
"I must insist."
Disgusted, Sonny Esposito made another circuit of the camp, without results. The colonel watched him like a hawk, demanding that he spend more time with certain corpses, just in case.
The tall man wasn't there. No matter how he tried to make the pieces fit, pretending that a black man could have worn the war paint, there were still the other points. His hair, his size, the gear and camouflage fatigues he wore.
The colonel might be willing to delude himself, and Esposito frankly didn't give a damn what he reported to his own superiors, but Sonny knew that he'd have to play it straight with Don Bartoli. If the man who took their convoy down was still at large — and nothing Esposito saw suggested otherwise — the capo had a right to know. There would be hell to pay if Sonny tried to lead him on and something happened down the line.
Returning to the chopper, Esposito shook his head and bore the colonel's brooding glare.
"I will report that we have found the rebels and destroyed them. Several might have slipped away, but they are few in number and disorganized. They will be easily discovered and eliminated."
"Anything you say."
"Our mission is successful."
"Right."
Except that Sonny couldn't shake his sense of grim foreboding. They had cast their net for sharks and pulled in roughly half the school, all small-fry. The man-eater had slipped past them somehow, and he was still out there, perhaps staring down their throat at that very moment.
It must have been a sudden breeze, he thought, that had made him shiver. Sonny's hands were trembling as he turned to face the colonel.
"Are we finished here, or what?"
* * *
The helicopters had been on their second pass when Bolan reached the clearing, followed seconds later by Michelle. He pulled her down beside him, cupped a hand across her mouth and held her back when she attempted to invade the killing ground.
At that point there was nothing she or Bolan could have done to help the rebels. Some of them had gained the trees, and others made their move while Bolan watched. But many others had been cut down in their tracks, without a chance to offer any real damage. The soldier counted twenty-six before he gave it up as futile. Body counts, beyond a certain point, became irrelevant.
"Come on!"
She tried to shake him off but lacked the strength.
"My brother, Jacques, we have to help them!"
"How?"
She had no answer for him, but she stubbornly refused to move, as if by watching the annihilation of her friends she could in some ways save their lives.
The Executioner decided he could probably disable one of the attack ships with his.44, if he could nail the pilot or the rotors. That left two, and they would both be after him in seconds, laying down heavy fire. Again, he might evade them, but the girl would slow him down, and if he left her she'd never stand a chance.
The choice boiled down to no choice, and he left the Desert Eagle in its holster, watching the destruction of a homegrown army. It would have to be a toss-up whether Bolan or Michelle saw the boy first.
"Henri!"
She nearly slipped away from him, but Bolan pulled her down. The boy was obviously wounded
, bleeding heavily and listing to the left as if the weight of the bullets had destroyed his balance.
The nearest Huey swung around and came up on the boy from behind, the gunner lining up his shot before Bolan could respond. Michelle was sobbing, but the sounds of gunfire drowned her out, a dozen bullets ripping through Henri before he hit the ground. And stayed there.
Bolan scooped Michelle up and took her out of there, her fists drumming on his back with all the strength of an exhausted child. The firing gradually faded in the darkness, grew sporadic as the raiders landed for their mop-up, finally halted altogether.
It was finished.
Bolan wondered if Petoit had managed to escape. He thought about the priest and several of the others he'd come to know in training sessions. They were finished as a unit, the survivors scattered, running for their lives. They might regroup in time, but Bolan knew that it would never be the same.
He concentrated on Michelle, her body almost weightless in his arms, as if the massacre had taken something out of her as well. There would be scars, but he could only hope that she wouldn't be permanently damaged by the slaughter she had witnessed.
Some recovered from their introduction to the killing ground, while others never did. A few would never grow beyond the moment when they recognized their own mortality in the destruction of their fellow man.
Bolan hoped Michelle Saint-Cyr would have the strength and courage to recover. If she didn't he'd deal with that dilemma if and when the need arose. Just now, the warrior had survival on his mind, and he was bearing precious cargo from the battle front. Whatever happened next, her life was his responsibility.
The forest closed behind them as the sounds of gunfire died away.
9
Bartoli dropped the telephone receiver in its cradle and swiveled his desk chair toward the windows of his study, which faced the sea. He had a view of scattered islands in the middle distance, and he was relieved that he hadn't been forced to rent a villa in the heart of Port-au-Prince.
Descartes had called him to announce a "major victory" against the rebel forces: thirty-seven dead, with only a single casualty for the raiding party. There were a few survivors, but Descartes offered personal assurance that they had been scattered in the forest, taught a lesson they wouldn't forget.
Bartoli hoped the little worm was right. He needed problems on the job sight like he needed herpes. Anything that slowed down construction was detrimental; if construction stopped, his ass was in a sling. But he wouldn't go down alone. No way.
Descartes hadn't received a breakdown on the rebel dead, but he assumed that they were «ordinary» rebels. That meant native blacks, fed up with the totalitarian regime, and it was no damned good to Anthony Bartoli. He was looking for a white man, maybe several, who had joined the rebels, organized them and directed their attentions toward the building site at Liberté. Without direction, he believed that Haitians would be busy killing other Haitians, as they had throughout the troubled island's history.
Directions meant a foreign input, and Bartoli didn't have to rack his brain to realize where that originated. Maybe he was getting paranoid, but what was wrong with that? A little paranoia made a man watch his back and stay alert for traitors in the ranks. It didn't mean that you were going crazy, only that you recognized the truth.
New York was out to get him. He could feel it in his gut. The Families were sitting back and praying he would blow it, so that they could lend a hand at minimal expense. And if they had to manufacture problems — steal his payroll, for example, so that workers put their tools away and took a hike — New York would find a way.
It troubled him that there were no white corpses in the rebel camp. That meant the birds had flown, confirmed by Descartes's offhand mention of survivors. Mercenaries didn't scatter, they regrouped, by God, and drew new battle plans.
Bartoli trusted the Macoutes about as far as he could throw them. They were mean enough, by all accounts, but they were also totally corrupt. If he could buy them off, it stood to reason that a larger sum might shift their loyalties. As for the junta, its members were totally indifferent as to who was in charge of Liberté, as long as the resort drew tourists and produced the necessary revenue.
It was a situation made for double cross, but Don Bartoli still had nothing he could lay before the men of La Commissione, no proof to indicate the New York Families were moving in on his operation. New York had five of the eleven votes on the Commission; he would have to plead his case before the six outstanding members, remembering that each and every one of them were frightened of a war. He'd have to prove his case beyond the shadow of a doubt, unless…
The only viable alternative was to deal with the problem on his own, in Haiti. If the New York Families dispatched a crew to take him out, Bartoli would return the bums in pieces, C.O.D. New York could hardly raise a beef when they were in the wrong for openers. And when they sent more men, he'd arrange more funerals, quietly, arranging it so word got back all right, but not as far as the Commission.
Don Bartoli studied military history. He knew that victories were seldom won by armies linked to long, exposed supply lines. The United States had won her independence fighting on familiar soil, against an enemy compelled to wait while orders, arms and ammunition crossed the wide Atlantic. That was long before the airplane and the telephone, but the principle remained the same.
Bartoli had his foothold on the island, friendly contacts within the junta and Macoutes. His own support was based in Florida, an easy hop by air in case he needed reinforcements or supplies. New York, by contrast, was a thousand miles away, and if Manhattan's muscle had a notion to fly out of Florida, they'd be treading hostile turf.
Don Bartoli had a notion he could beat the odds — or make the action so expensive for New York that they'd eventually disengage — but he'd have to play his cards exactly right.
"Boss, you got a minute?"
It was Tommy on the intercom. Bartoli frowned and keyed the switch to answer.
"Yeah, what is it?"
"Someone here to see you, Mr. B. He calls himself Omega, and he's carrying an ace of spades."
Bartoli felt the short hairs rising on his neck. There weren't that many of the old Black Aces left, and it was madness to believe that one of them would turn up on his doorstep by coincidence.
"I guess you'd better show him in."
* * *
In the beginning, prior to Bolan's one-man war against the Mafia, the dreaded Aces were a law unto themselves, empowered by the Syndicate's Commission to dispatch a capo on their own authority, providing they could later demonstrate necessity. The bloody Talifero brothers — twins named Pat and Mike — had managed the elite gestapo until Bolan took them out; the outfit's hard arm had been whittled by attrition in the intervening years, with capos frightened of reviving a machine that might destroy them in the end. A few Black Aces survived, however — or were rumored to have survived — and it would work for Bolan, either way.
He had adopted the Omega mask in Georgia, at a time when he was standing on his own against the Mob, before he struck his working bargain with the White House. It had served him well since then, enhanced by the confusion and the mystery surrounding those few Aces left alive. They were reputed to be everywhere and nowhere, changing faces like another man might change his underwear, controlled by God knows who.
It was a perfect short-term cover for the Haiti strike, and short-term plans were all the warrior could afford.
He had deposited Michelle with friends in Port-au-Prince, uneasy with her choice but well aware that she would only slow him down. The flashy wheels and suit to match came courtesy of a Brognola contact, who accepted money grudgingly and instantly forgot the stranger's face. Barton's palace on the coast was anything but secret, and it didn't have to be. Approaching from the inland side, he saw that the place was fortified as if for war.
Bartoli thought he knew which way the wind was blowing. He was in for a surprise.
The gat
e man studied Bolan with suspicious eyes before he flashed the laminated ace of spades. He had their full attention then, but they were under orders to be cautious. Walkie-talkies were produced and messages exchanged. The order came to pass him through.
Bolan knew that the manor house had once belonged to Papa Doc, a personal retreat when he got tired of hanging out at the presidential palace, thirty miles away. A man with many enemies, Duvalier had planned the home away from home with strict security in mind, reflected in the ten-foot walls topped with razor wire, the dog runs and the field of fire that had been cleared around the house. Bartoli had his own young guns in place along the wall, and Bolan spotted roving sentries on the grounds as he proceeded up the curving driveway.
Half a dozen burly men were waiting for him underneath the porte cochere. He flashed his calling card again, declined requests to show his hardware and was finally passed along without a frisk. The Ace mystique was holding, for the moment, but he knew the risks involved if he should push too far.
A four-man escort walked him to the door of Don Bartoli's study, knocked and ushered him inside. The muscle stayed behind to take up stations in the corridor, prepared to burst into the room if they heard a strange voice raised in anger.
"Don Bartoli."
"You're Omega?"
"At the moment."
"You want to have a seat?"
Bolan chose a leather seat directly opposite Bartoli's desk, accepted a cigar and lighted it.
"I like your home away from home."
Bartoli forced a smile. "I'm getting by."
"That's what I hear. It's what they hear around New York."
"Oh, yeah? You from the Apple?"
"I'm from nowhere," Bolan answered. "My allegiance lies with La Commissione. You ought to know that."
Haitian Hit Page 9