Fireburst

by Don Pendleton

  Pulling out a pair of insulated pliers, Bolan started to cut the wire, then decided to check underneath the landmine first. Sure enough, as expected, there was a second pressure switch hidden in the dirt below that was connected to a U.S. Army Claymore mine hidden under a thick pile of leaves.

  “Just the two mines?” Kirkland said with a scowl. “Pretty basic defense.”

  “Officially, nobody is after them,” Bolan reminded him. “The UN peace treaty is still in effect.”

  “And unofficially?”

  “Both the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers want these people dead and buried.”

  “That’s a lot of dead. Any chance of a reward?”

  “Not on these guys,” Bolan said.

  “Pity.”

  “Now, I thought you were richer than Croesus?” Montenegro asked Kirkwood, slowly raising an eyebrow.

  “True, but there is no such thing as too much money, too much firepower or too many friends.”

  “My God, we actually agree on something?”

  He shrugged. “It had to happen eventually,” Kirkland said.

  “Heather, better check for cameras and proximity sensors,” Bolan ordered, starting to disarm the Claymore.

  “Already did,” Montenegro said, displaying a compact EM scanner. “There’s nothing in the area but more land mines.”

  “Double-check,” Bolan directed her, glancing around the area.

  “Got a feeling, Matt?” Montenegro asked.

  “Something’s not right,” Bolan replied.

  That was good enough for her. Montenegro put no stock in the notion of extra sensory perception. However, any good soldier knew when there was something wrong with a combat situation. There was nothing supernatural about it. In fact, it was about as natural as anything could be—merely a million years of evolution hardwired into a functional survival instinct, the subconscious mind processing information faster than the conscious mind could register.

  Wordlessly, she melted back into the foliage and circled the area. In only a few seconds, she found the real deathtrap, a ring of Claymore mines equipped with proximity sensors. You merely had to get close to them, and your world ended in a strident blast of C-4 high-explosive mixed with steel ball bearings.

  However, an EM scanner neutralized the sensors long enough for Montenegro to disarm the Claymores, one at a time. It was delicate work, and nobody complained about how long it took. When working with landmines there were only two settings: careful and dead.

  “No cameras,” she reported afterward. “But there are signs that these are replacement mines.”

  Kirkland grunted. “Meaning they’ve been attacked before.”

  “My guess would be not successfully.”

  “Good,” Bolan stated. “With luck, they’ll be overconfident.”

  Sweeping past the landmines, they soon located the campsite hidden in a shallow ravine. There were a dozen low structures made of logs and concrete, pillboxes for lack of a better word. They were laid out in an irregular pattern to fool any surveillance planes or spy satellites. The two streams splashed over jumbled rocks, cooling the air to a comfortable level, and, more importantly, helping to mask the heat-signatures of the terrorists.

  The fuel dump was located under a different camouflage net, at the delta of the two rivers. Stacks of fifty-five-gallon drums were stored on plastic pallets, and nearby was a hand-cranked pump.

  A fishing boat was tied at a crude wooden dock, which was merely a few planks extending over the gentle waters. There was nothing that resembled a barracks, just the pillboxes and a series of low tents set alongside the sloping hillside under the huge trees. More protection from aerial surveillance.

  There were a couple of machine-gun nests made from logs and sandbags, along with an old antiaircraft gun.

  It was obvious that the White Tigers couldn’t possibly use the weapon with this much greenery as cover, and Bolan realized it was here for ground troops or enemy boats. At such a close range, almost point-blank, the antiquated antiaircraft weapon would be death incarnate to any boat foolhardy enough to approach.

  Camouflage netting was stretched over the entire camp, and there were several wooden platforms built into the leafy tops of the tall trees. Armed men sat inside the dense foliage, smoking cigarettes.

  “Overconfident,” Bolan whispered in frank disapproval.

  “Apparently with good reason,” Kirkland muttered.

  Off to the side of the clearing, a dead man hung from a wooden post. He was stark naked, the body covered with burn marks and deep cuts, the eyes and genitals removed. The ground underneath him was alive with scurrying ants.

  “Tortured, but not by an expert,” Bolan noted emotionlessly. “Just a sadist who loved his work.”

  “How do you know that?” Montenegro asked curiously.

  Bolan grunted. “A professional would never have cut off his testicles. Keeping them intact gives the prisoner false hope, which makes them weak. Cut them off, and the poor bastard has nothing more to lose, then he’ll die before talking. His last great act of defiance.”

  “The things you know worry me sometimes, Matt,” Kirkland said, checking the feed to the XM-214. “Okay, how do you want this done, a blitzkrieg or ghosts in the night?”

  “Clean sweep,” Bolan replied, leveling the Black Arrow. “There can’t be one of these people alive afterward.”

  “Check,” Montenegro said, sliding off a bulky backpack. Folding back the top, she removed four short plastic tubes. The light antitank weapon—LAW—was a 66 mm single-shot, disposable weapon.

  “I’ll take one of those,” Kirkland said, holding out a hand.

  “Be careful of the backwash,” Montenegro warned, passing over a tube. “It can easily set the bushes on fire, and you’ll get backlit. A perfect target.”

  “Rock and roll,” he replied, tucking the tube under an arm before easing off into the jungle.

  “Give us ninety,” Montenegro said, heading in the opposite direction.

  Grunting assent, Bolan swung up the Black Arrow and took careful aim, gauging the force of the wind from the fluttering of the flowers on some nearby vines. Looking through the telescopic sights, he marked each target carefully, then did it again until ninety seconds had passed. Taking a deep breath, he moved back to the first target and stroked the trigger.

  The massive Black Arrow sniper rifle boomed like unchained thunder, and a guard smoking a cigarette on top of the radio shack was thrown backward from the arrival of the 700-grain bone-shredding round. He hit a tree with a sickening crunch of smashing bones and slid down to the ground, leaving behind a red smear of life.

  No alarms sounded. There were no bells or sirens. But armed men boiled out of the tents and pillboxes and started firing blindly into the jungle. The patter of the hot lead tearing through the green leaves sounded strangely like rain.

  Riding out the recoil, Bolan moved to the next target and took out two more guards, then punched holes in the speedboat until it began to sink into the river.

  Suddenly, there was a flash of fiery smoke, and a LAW rocket streaked out of the jungle to lance straight into one of the pillboxes. Instantly, the structure erupted in a stentorian column of fire, smoke, logs and dead bodies. There was a microsecond pause, and then the stores of ammunition ignited, the blast sending out a corona of shrapnel that flattened the jungle for a dozen yards in every direction. A guard standing on the dock screamed as a log slammed into hi
s chest, sending him flying across the water and out of sight into the dappled shadows.

  Firing as fast as he could work the arming lever, Bolan maintained the sniper fire while Kirkland and Montenegro put two more LAW rockets into the base, taking out the treetop fortifications, the firebase on the island and the main structure. Only the radio shack wasn’t hit, the equipment inside far too precious to risk damaging in any way.

  Scrambling behind a stockade, a White Tiger managed to get a heavy machine gun into action. Tracers were visible in the air as the terrorist racked the hillside, the big .50-caliber rounds clipping off vines and leaves to create a whirlwind of flying greenery.

  Pouring streams of hot lead into the pillboxes, Kirkland and Montenegro kept the terrorists busy as Bolan levered a fresh round into the Black Arrow, aimed and fired.

  There was a small puff of dust from the outside of a log as the big round hit, then the man inside shouted in pain and the machine gun went silent.

  Now rising into view, Kirkland unleashed the XM-214, sweeping a visible stream of high-velocity lead across the campsite. A dozen men were literally cut in two from the stream of 5.56 mm bullets, their torsos flailing backward as their legs continued on for a few steps before the men toppled over.

  As the hopper became empty, Kirkland ducked behind the rock, and Montenegro appeared on the bluff, the Neostead vomiting hot-lead death. Two men climbing into a military-style jeep seemed to fall apart from the incoming barrage of stainless-steel buckshot, the vehicle flipping over to burst into flames as it rolled away.

  Bolan cursed as he realized that the vehicle was heading straight for the radio shack. Changing targets, he poured .50-caliber rounds into the burning jeep, blowing away pieces to slightly change its course. Tumbling directly past the radio shack, the vehicle rolled into the river and vanished below the waves.

  Just then, three men appeared from a pillbox wearing old-fashioned body armor, each of them cradling an M-60 machine gun, a long belt of linked ammunition dangling from the side. In orchestrated attack pattern, they began to advance, spraying the treetops and the bushes at the same time, while the third man fired short bursts into random stands of vegetation.

  Dozens of birds and monkeys died in the maelstrom, and Bolan grunted as a .308 hardball round ricocheted off a rock and slammed him in the side. His NATO body armor held, but glancing down he saw a nick in the ceramic plates right along the edge. A quarter-inch more and he would have died, drowning as his lungs filled with blood.

  As one of the belts of an M-60 got short, the other men would bracket that shooter in protective fire while he shoved in a fresh belt from the lumpy canvas bag hanging at a side.

  Struggling to clear a jam from the breech of the XM-214, Kirkland slapped the release on the harness and the bulky weapon dropped to the ground. Drawing both a Glock 18 and the Webley, he started forward at a full sprint, jumping over bodies and rocks to dive behind a smoldering chunk of a destroyed pillbox.

  Instinctively, Kirkland started to report the loss of the weapon over a throat mike, then stopped. This blitz had to be done silently. There couldn’t be any broadcasts of an outside invasion. That could ruin everything.

  As a White Tiger rushed by firing a Kalashnikov, Kirkland waited until he passed, then stood and triggered a single round from the Webley. The huge revolver boomed, and the terrorist ceased to exist from the neck upward.

  Inserting a fresh drum of 12-gauge cartridges into the Neostead, Montenegro saw a subtle motion in the corner of her eyes, and just barely swung the weapon around in time to stop the knife from slashing open her throat. Steel clanged on steel as the machete rebounded from the barrel, then the White Tiger hacked for her belly. Montenegro rammed the unloaded autoshotgun down on his wrist, and the machete went flying as his bones shattered. Muttering curses, he staggered backward, holding the crushed wrist, then turned sideways to kick a boot at her chest.

  Moving fast, Montenegro tried to dodge out of the way, but the boot hit, and the air exploded from her lungs. The body armor took the brunt of the attack, but her left breast still felt as though it had been stomped flat. But then, hitting a woman in the breast was like kicking a man in the balls. The pain temporarily rendered the victim unable to do much of anything but gasp in pain.

  As her vision blurred, Montenegro swung around the Neostead and blindly fired. The range was only a few feet, and the terrorist was lifted off the ground by the hammering arrival of the double-O buckshot, his chest spreading wide into raw meaty wings as his organs burst across the bushes in a ghastly crimson spray.

  Skirting along the edge of the trail, Bolan was attacked by two more White Tigers, one of them hiding in a muddy pond, and the other pretending to be dead, a blood-soaked shirt draped over his undamaged shoulders. The first got a .50-caliber round in the face, and his head exploded like a dropped watermelon. The second White Tiger managed to get off two rounds from a 9 mm Beretta before Bolan finished him with a boot to the throat, and then a bullet to the chest.

  Levering a fresh round into the Black Arrow, Bolan swept the campsite and found a White Tiger scrambling for the radio shack. Starting to fire, Bolan realized the 700-grain rounds would go through the man and endanger the equipment inside the pillbox.

  Instantly changing tactics, Bolan stroked the trigger, and a thick branch was blasted off a tall tree. It came straight down onto the terrorist just as he reached the entrance. His head caved in from the blow, the eyes popping from his face. Screaming obscenities, the terrorist clawed at his dangling eyes just as the Executioner drew his Beretta and squeezed off a fast shot, sending the disfigured man into the bushes to die.

  A half-second later, the man and bushes erupted as Montenegro unleashed a burst of buckshot from the Neostead.

  On the other side of the camp, Kirkland came striding out of the trees, the XM-214 whining a song of death. Hiding behind a water barrel, a White Tiger died kneeling in the mud, his AK-47 assault rifle firing into the ground, kicking up leaves and rocks.

  Ducking low, Kirkland got hit anyway as a rock slammed into his chest, ripping a hole in his shirt to reveal the molded body armor underneath. Then another hit the spinning barrels of the XM-214. The rock shattered into pieces, and Kirkland staggered backward with blood covering his face.

  Just then, a grenade fell from the trees to explode near the dock. The eruption threw out large clouds of dirt and leaves, closely followed by two grenades that created a larger cloud of swirling debris.

  “Shoot the explosion!” Montenegro yelled, just as a White Tiger appeared from the bushes to charge straight for the radio shack. Obviously, somebody had realized that was the one location not being attacked.

  Changing targets, Bolan fired fast, but the White Tiger was only grazed, and made it inside the radio shack alive. But there was a red smear of blood on the entrance.

  Springing across the open ground, Montenegro raced into the shack and almost fired. But the terrorist was standing behind the precious radio, slapping a fresh clip into his assault rifle. Damn!

  Throwing herself to the concrete floor, Montenegro unleashed a burst of buckshot at the man’s boots, his legs below the knees disappearing in a bloody explosion. Shrieking in agony, the crippled terrorist fell into view, and his brief time on earth swiftly ended as she fired one more time.

  Shadowy figures filled the entrance, and Montenegro stopped herself from shooting just in time as she recognized Bolan and Kirkland.

  “You okay?” Bolan dema
nded, the barrel of the Black Arrow sweeping the pillbox for targets.

  “Undamaged,” she growled, slowly standing. “What happened to your fancy popgun there, William?”

  “Ran out of pop,” Kirkland replied, holstering the Webley. “Radio intact?”

  She started toward it. “Let’s see.”

  Converging on the radio, Bolan checked the controls while Kirkland looked over the transceiver and Montenegro inspected the car batteries it used.

  “Everything looks good,” Bolan said hesitantly. “Bill and I will give you some cover in case there are any more Tigers around.”

  “Stay close. It won’t take me a minute to broadcast our message,” Montenegro said, pulling out a small code book that was tucked inside her body armor.

  “Should we prep the bikes?”

  “Running is not my style. But it sure as hell can’t hurt.”

  Going outside, Bolan and Kirkland took defensive positions alongside the entrance. One of them reloaded while the other stood guard, then they switched. There was nothing moving in the camp aside from loose leaves and a few scattered fires. The only sounds were the gentle murmur of the river and a soft shushing caused by the breeze blowing through the trees. Then a tiger roared in the distance, closely followed by the high-pitched scream of a monkey.

  “Lunchtime,” Kirkland muttered, wiping the blood off his face with a handkerchief. “Tell me the truth, Matt, how do I look?”

  “Like you’ve been dead for a week.”

  “So it’s an improvement? Cool.”

  Just then, Montenegro appeared. “Done and done,” she crisply reported. “I podcast the message so that it goes out over the air and across the internet. Any decent hacker should be able to figure out it came from the White Tigers, and where they’re located.”