Blood Rites

by Don Pendleton

  That was a filthy job, but someone had to do it, or the mess drew flies. Tulloch had done the job himself, once, and had never managed to forget it. He’d been confused at first, over the dabbling in Obeah when they were supposed to be loyal Rastafari, worshipping Haile Selassie, but he hadn’t let it trouble him for long. Mayhem was part of Tulloch’s world, and if a little mutilation gave the boss man peace—or cowed his enemies and made them easier to kill—so be it. Tulloch had no problem playing along.

  He was about to roust a soldier smoking near the tree line, maybe take the spliff away from him and keep it for himself, when a gunshot cracked out behind him. Tulloch spun to face the motor pool, where he believed the sound had come from, just in time to see one of his sentries breaking from the shadows, turning back to raise his rifle, aiming somewhere into the night. He may have been the one who’d fired, but he didn’t get a chance to try again. A muzzle-flash winked from the shadows in between a four-door pickup and an SUV, the short burst knocking Tulloch’s man flat on his back.

  “Intruders!” Tulloch bellowed. “Wake up and fetch your weapons!”

  Tulloch slipped his own Barrett REC7 assault rifle off its shoulder sling and cocked it in one fluid motion. Already moving toward the motor pool, Tulloch called out again, “Get your weapons!”

  And the words had barely left his mouth before he saw the enemy—or one of them, at least—emerging from the shadows where he’d glimpsed the deadly muzzle-flash a moment earlier. He was a tall man, definitely white, though dressed in black to camouflage himself. He carried some kind of assault rifle Tulloch didn’t recognize, along with other weapons strapped around him, high and low.

  Go for it! Tulloch thought, and snapped the Barrett to his shoulder, aiming through its holographic sight. He pegged the red dot on his target’s chest from sixty yards, his index finger curled around the rifle’s trigger, and he squeezed—just as the white man ducked and dodged away.

  His bullet struck the four-door pickup, drilling through its left-front fender, finishing its flight somewhere inside the engine compartment. Tulloch lifted off the rifle’s sight, scanning the motor pool for any sign of his intended target, and saw nothing.

  “Where in hell did he go?” he asked himself.

  And rushed to find the man who’d disappeared.

  * * *

  BOLAN HAD SEEN the red dot dancing on his chest in time to drop and roll beneath the pickup to his right. He was covered when the bullet struck the vehicle above him with a clang and spent its force against the engine block, starting a steady drip of gasoline where it had clipped the fuel line.

  He was out from under the pickup, crouching on the driver’s side, a pair of motorcycles at his back, before his would-be killer closed in on the motor pool, calling to others for assistance. “Come here!” he barked. “I’ve got him over here!”

  No one answered, but a peek around the pickup’s right-front fender told him others were responding silently, running to join the rifleman who’d almost reached his destination now. Bolan decided on the spot that it made more sense to distract them than engage them in a skirmish where he might well be pinned down.

  He plucked a frag grenade from his belt, pulled the pin and rolled the bomb into the puddle of gasoline spreading beneath the pickup’s front end. Four seconds to evacuate, and Bolan used them to his best advantage, hurdling the nearest motorcycle, sliding across the hood of an SUV painted in camouflage, and dropping out of sight before the world caught fire.

  The blast lifted the pickup in a semblance of a wheelie, riding on a fireball underneath its engine and front axle. Shrapnel finished off the fuel line, pouring gasoline into the flames, and Bolan stayed low, waiting for the secondary detonation when its gas tank blew. He heard a scream in there, maybe the guy who’d tried to snipe him, then the other Rasta soldiers were shouting and rushing forward, searching for whoever was responsible for the explosion.

  Bolan met them halfway, rising from behind the camo SUV and firing short, precision bursts to take them down. He counted four of them—the jumpy sentry who’d fired on him and missed made five. He couldn’t guarantee that all of them were dead before they hit the ground, but they were on their way.

  He left the flames behind him as another vehicle caught fire. Instead of running into trouble with the orange light at his back, he circled to his right and headed for the bungalow he’d spotted earlier, set off from Quarrie’s house and barn as if the place demanded special privacy. No cables fed it electricity. There were no windows to reveal what lay inside.

  He reached it, tried the door, and felt the knob turn in his hand. Palming a pencil flash, he slipped inside and played its beam around the structure’s single room, the light showing him rusty bloodstains on a table at the center, on the floor, the walls, even the ceiling. Someone had been busy here. Whomever they had butchered had been living when it started.

  Snarling silently, Bolan retreated to the door he’d left ajar, checked hurriedly for any danger on the threshold, and went out to find the man responsible.

  * * *

  DALE HOLBROOK CURSED himself for coming like a dog when Quarrie whistled for him. Now, with vehicles aflame and more exploding, gunfire hammering across the compound, he wished that he was anywhere except trapped between a gang of Rasta maniacs and someone bent on killing them.

  Too late.

  The time to second-guess his move had been when he was safe and comfy at the embassy. Now, huddled next to Quarrie and some other creepy asshole in the gangster’s farmhouse, lights out, peering through a window at the chaos in the yard, he figured it was time to do or die.

  “Who is this bastard?” Quarrie muttered, staring at the fires and muzzle-flashes lighting up his so-called hardsite. Next to him, the nameless creepy guy said nothing.

  “You think one man’s doing all that?” Holbrook asked. “Seriously?”

  “One is all my people saw each time he hit us.”

  “So, they were confused,” Holbrook replied. “The few that lived.”

  Truth was, he didn’t care how many men were out there raising hell. If it were only one, that helped his odds of getting out alive, but only marginally. At the moment, Holbrook thought he was as likely to be shot by one of Quarrie’s men as any outsider.

  This wasn’t Holbrook’s thing. He’d passed the necessary courses, sure: firearms and demolition, unarmed self-defense, but no one would mistake him for a soldier. He’d come to the Company straight out of college, gung-ho as hell and hoping for adventure, ultimately satisfied to let civilian assets risk their asses while he sat behind a desk or met with them occasionally, safe as he could make himself with his credentials and his diplomatic license plates.

  Now he was in the shit and there was no way out, other than getting dirty.

  Could he kill a man? Holbrook had never doubted it before, in theory, gassing with his buddies over drinks, but now it didn’t look so easy. This wasn’t a hypothetical problem: What do you do when you find out an asset’s betrayed you, or somebody’s hot on your trail at the end of a covert meeting?

  This was wholesale slaughter, and it terrified him.

  A bullet drilled the windowpane above him, making Holbrook gasp, recoil and shame himself. Quarrie glanced over at him, bright shards in his dreadlocks glinting firelight, and regarded him with vague disdain.

  “I’m going out there. Are you coming, or staying here to wet yourself?”

  You’re damn right I’m coming, Holbrook thought. And first chance I see, I’m getting out of here. But what he said, tight-lipped, was, “Lead the way.”

  “I’ll make a man out of you yet,” Quarrie said, flashing him a grimace. Hefting his rifle—some kind of Kalashnikov, who knew the difference?—the gangster duck-walked to the door, reached up to turn the knob, then lunged into the night.

  Holbrook was on his heels, sticking close on the assumption that proximity to Quarrie would at least protect him from the Rastas firing every which way. He assumed—hoped—they wouldn�
��t shoot their boss, or anyone accompanying him. As for the raiders, while he realized that sticking close to Quarrie might be detrimental, Holbrook didn’t plan to keep the mob boss company all night.

  As soon as he could reach his car or find another working set of wheels, Holbrook would be gone so fast he’d leave this posse choking on his dust. The embassy could bill him for the car he’d borrowed, if they wanted to, or charge it to the Company.

  He planned to stay alive, as Malcolm X once said, by any means necessary.

  And then, thinking of how it had worked out for Malcolm, Holbrook suddenly felt sick with fear.

  * * *

  BOLAN DIDN’T KNOW what Quarrie prayed for in his grisly rituals, but it was safe to say he hadn’t got his money’s worth tonight. His soldiers were in disarray, most of his rolling stock had been consumed by fire or soon would be, and all the corpses strewn around the grounds so far were members of the home team. Plenty more were still in fighting trim, but they were frightened and disorganized, running around like chickens who’d lost their heads or were about to.

  Bolan knew his best bet for a shot at Quarrie was the farmhouse. No one on the yard had managed to exert even a semblance of authority so far, which told him the boss was lying low. Biding his time, most likely, waiting till he had a clear view of his enemy—or else, a clear way out.

  There would be other vehicles around the farm, outside the burning motor pool. Bolan could see a couple of them now. In the slaughter shed behind him, firelight glinted off chrome and metalwork where four-wheel drives and off-road bikes were parked at random.

  One of the dreads came rushing at him from the shadows to his left, might have succeeded if he hadn’t felt the need to howl his rage at the last second—or if he’d found a firearm to replace the cane knife he aimed at Bolan’s skull. Bolan dropped underneath the roundhouse swing and whipped his rifle’s butt around, changing the landscape of his adversary’s face. The guy lurched backward, gasping now instead of shouting, lost his balance and sat down. A slug from Bolan’s L85A1 punched through his forehead, fired at point-blank range, and made sure he didn’t rise again.

  No zombies here.

  A swarm of bullets crackled past his face and Bolan hit the deck, rolling away to spoil the shooter’s aim. He wound up facing toward the nearest sound of gunfire, looking at two of Quarrie’s men who seemed amazed to find him still alive. Before they could digest it and correct their target acquisition, Bolan shot the taller of them in the groin and sent him sprawling, not the cleanest hit he’d ever made, but still effective.

  Number two was torn between running and claiming the prize. He chose glory and leveled his TEC-9 at Bolan, but he did it too late. Before he could trigger the kill shot, Bolan’s 5.56 mm tumblers ripped into his chest and ended him, his body tipping over backward, dropping on his buddy’s wounded lower half. That wrenched a scream out of the soldier who was still alive, though not exactly kicking, while the Executioner jumped up and moved away.

  Still hunting Quarrie, in the midst of hell on earth.

  * * *

  CLANCY RECKFORD PARKED two hundred yards from Quarrie’s gate and walked in, burdened with his little private arsenal. The shotgun had no sling, so he was carrying it, pistol holstered, machine pistol slung across his back where he could reach it easily, his pockets weighted down with extra magazines and twelve-gauge cartridges.

  From what he heard ahead of him, he might need all of that, and more.

  The gate was closed but presently unguarded. Reckford guessed the watchmen had been drawn away to join the fight now raging on the inside of the compound’s fence, men running, shouting, firing, dying. For a moment he was tempted to wait outside and let them kill each other, then he thought about the stranger who’d brought him here, and cursed his luck.

  He hadn’t come this far to simply stand and watch.

  Shifting to one side of the gate, he leaped and placed his shotgun flat atop the eight-foot wall. A second leap, and Reckford caught the upper edge of it, toes digging into gaps between the bricks, hoisting himself until he found a perch above the grounds, the battlefield laid out in front of him. Ignoring the sick feeling in his stomach, he reclaimed his shotgun and pushed off, to land crouching inside the compound.

  Bad move, he thought immediately, but there was no turning back.

  One of the posse guards had spotted him already, squealed something incomprehensible, and ran toward Reckford with an automatic weapon clutched against his chest. The Rasta should have fired instead of charging, as he realized too late, when he’d closed the gap by half and saw the new arrival’s shotgun pointed at his face.

  Recoil stung Reckford’s shoulder, but he rode it out and saw his target drop, heels drumming briefly on the turf. He thought about grabbing the dead man’s weapon as he passed, then shrugged it off, already laden with more guns than he could use at once. He pumped the shotgun’s slide-action, putting another fat shell in the chamber, and moved on.

  How would he find the nameless stranger he’d come to locate? And if he couldn’t find the man…then, what?

  A car theft and a drive for nothing, which would likely get him killed. And if he managed to survive the night, he could look forward to dismissal from the JCF, arrest and trial, maybe a prison term.

  The good news: legal problems seemed so trivial right now, they almost made him laugh aloud. Almost.

  It came to Reckford that, aside from the stranger he couldn’t see yet, everyone else inside the wall was now fair game. It was a posse happy hunting ground, and open season was declared. The best way to survive was to eliminate his opposition, one by one.

  Unthinkable, for someone who’d sworn to uphold and defend the law.

  But Reckford wasn’t working for the law tonight. He had no valid badge and no authority. He did know right from wrong, however, and the Viper Posse’s dreads had brought this on themselves, through years of preying on the decent people of Jamaica and the outside world.

  Scowling as he shot another soldier, and another, Reckford set a course for Quarrie’s farmhouse, letting no one stand against him, leaving corpses in his wake.

  * * *

  JEROME QUARRIE REFUSED to panic. It was true that he’d been driven from the last home he possessed, that many of his vehicles had been destroyed and that his soldiers had been dying all around him. Still, he had his wits, his courage and the power of Obeah on his side.

  And, of course, the mighty CIA.

  He was concerned about Dale Holbrook, wished the Company had sent a better spy to deal with him. A James Bond type, perhaps, or Jason Bourne. Holbrook was adequate, as far as bagmen went, but he inspired no confidence in combat.

  Neither, at the moment, did Usain Dalhouse. The papaloi had refused to take a weapon when Quarrie offered him several, simply muttering that the orishas would protect him. Which was fine for Dalhouse, but Quarrie still felt better with an AK-47 in his hands. Black magic, in his experience, had never stopped a man as quickly as a bullet did.

  “Where are we going?” Holbrook asked, sounding nervous now, if not exactly frightened.

  “We’re leaving,” Quarrie replied, as if that answered everything.

  “But leaving how?” Holbrook demanded. “Going where?”

  “Stop asking questions!” he snapped back. “You talk too damn much!”

  How was he supposed to know where they were going, how they would escape? Quarrie was making it up as he went along, sorry he’d run to the country at all, when he could have found someplace to hide back in Tivoli Gardens or Trench Town. Now, to have this white man jabbering and nagging at him was intolerable.

  Two of Quarrie’s soldiers saw him through the battle smoke and ran to join him, both wild-eyed with fear or bloodlust, which looked much the same. One of them blurted out, “Where are we goin, Boss?”

  “Never mind,” he answered. “Have you seen the white man?”

  “No, Boss,” the other said.

  “Dammit! So why are you standing here?
” Quarrie shot back at them.

  The soldiers glanced at one another, puzzled, then turned back to Quarrie.

  “What should we do?” asked the first one who’d spoken.

  “Find the man who killed your brothers. Don’t come back without his head.”

  Another glance between them, then they nodded like a pair of puppets and ran back into the fray. Quarrie supposed he might have sent them to their death, but all he cared about right now was getting off the farm alive, back to the city, where he could conceal himself in some rat hole until the storm had passed.

  Holbrook? Forget him, if he couldn’t take care of himself. The Company owed Quarrie more than money for the information and assistance he’d provided over time. They should have sent a helicopter for him, with an armed escort to carry him away and stash him somewhere safe.

  Dalhouse, the papaloi? They were a dime a dozen in Jamaica. He could always find another, better priest to intercede on his behalf with the orishas. And if not, that simply meant the gods were overrated, pushing deals they didn’t keep.

  “We need a car,” he told the others, as if that was some astounding revelation.

  “Where’s mine?” Holbrook asked, peering around the smoky compound.

  “You don’t remember?”

  “Give me a second!”

  “We’re in a hurry!” Quarrie reminded him. “We’ll all be dead soon.”

  Holbrook snarled a curse, then stopped and pointed. “There, dammit! There it is!”

  15

  Bolan found the front door of the farmhouse open. He went inside and started checking its rooms. The lights were out, although the generator was still running, which told Bolan they’d been switched off deliberately. It made searching doubly dangerous, but he got through it and found no one hiding in the house, inside its closets, cupboards, underneath its beds.

  He’d missed Quarrie again—but by how long this time?

  Despite his sense of urgency, Bolan took time to rig the kitchen. With the Cold Steel blade, he cut the stove’s propane line, then sprayed lighter fluid on the range, along the nearby counter tops, and lit it with a match. Time to get out, and he was clear before the gas tank blew, shattering one whole quarter of the house and peeling back its roof, venting hellfire into the night.