He made a mental check of who was where in the camp. The Viper was off in the distance discussing something with his troops. Bolan was being guarded by two men. Khan and Rolaff, unwatched, were together, with no mercs nearby. Firing up a cigarette, more to keep the mosquitoes away than for the sheer pleasure of smoking, Godfried quickly made his way to the Swede and the Mongol. The Mongol was leaning against a tree, while the Swede was sitting, and they observed Godfried intently as the Brit approached them.
Godfried drew deeply on his cigarette when he reached the other two assassins. "I'll put it to you bluntly, mates," he told them. "It's time we did something for ourselves. If we don't, we're dead men. It's that simple."
"What do you suggest?" Rolaff asked.
Godfried didn't like the Swede, whom he saw as the typical Teuton or Viking — arrogant, self-centered and vicious.
"I suggest we get out of here. Alchupa is sure to send his men, and there'll be fighting and plenty of killing. I suggest that in the confusion of the battle we kill as many of the others as we can, then disappear into the jungle and fend for ourselves."
Liao Khan's lips curved in an odd smile. "There is a lot of jungle here. Where would we go?"
"Simple. We make our way to the river. They've got boats. We get a boat and head downstream."
"And miss out on our million-dollar bonus?"
Godfried looked at the Swede for a moment, undecided if Rolaff was serious, unable to tell if he was implying something. The Swede was starting to sport that same odd death's-head grin that the Viper and his mercenary horde had. Killing had never bothered Godfried, and he could understand how a man could come to enjoy murder.
"Listen, you know as well as I do that the Viper doesn't intend to let us live."
"That is a foregone conclusion," Khan said, unperturbed, and he smiled, too.
"So let's strike when we can. What do you say?"
The Swede and the Mongol looked at each other, as if they could communicate in silence or simply by eye contact.
Khan spoke. "I will do this. I agree that we must break out of here. But I sense you want our help with your own advantage in mind."
Godfried felt his guts knot. It was as if the Mongol could read his mind. "So what if I am doing this for myself? Help yourselves, too. We're the outsiders here, remember."
The Mongol held up a hand. "Let me finish. However I do this, I will kill when the time comes simply because I do not like this Viper. He is treacherous. He is a man without honor. He is a man who has no place in the world. That one over there..." the Mongol pointed toward Bolan "...he is a man of honor. He is a man who has a place in the world. If nothing else, I would see him live."
Whatever the Mongol's reason to join forces against the Viper, Godfried didn't care. At least he had reached him and Rolaff. At least they understood the importance of banding together.
"Hey! What the hell's the powwow about over there?"
Godfried turned and saw the Viper striding toward them.
"Something I should know about? Is there a problem with you people?"
"No problem," Godfried answered. "We're just wondering what's going to happen and how we fit in, that's all."
Weiss stopped in the middle of the camp. Raking a cold gaze over the faces of the three assassins, he grunted and spit, "Don't get any funny ideas, you hear me? You say you're with me, then I expect you to keep your word. Don't be giving me this shit about how you're going to fit in. You fit in how I tell you to fit in."
"Our word is good," Kahn told the Viper.
"It better be."
"Max!" Jake Thompson yelled. The team the Viper had sent out to Alchupa had returned to camp.
Godfried breathed a silent sigh of relief. He could tell that the Viper had been determined to press on with his questioning. There could have been a problem, Godfried knew, if the Viper had pushed the issue. Godfried was losing patience with the whole situation, and his nerves were just about shot. When that happened, he could become a very dangerous man. He listened intently to the exchange between the Viper and Thompson.
"The colonel says he's gonna paint the sky red with our blood unless we turn Bolan over."
"The bastard."
"You didn't honestly think he'd bite, did you?"
"There's always hope, Jake. I didn't think he would bite, but I wanted to give the spic a chance to come clean with us. All right, listen up," the Viper told his men. "I want you divided up evenly into five teams. I want a recon team stationed near the river. Let's set up a defensive perimeter around the camp. I want to be ready for Alchupa when he comes. Now let's move out. Stay in radio contact with one another, and check in every thirty minutes. Keep the messages brief."
The Viper looked Godfried straight in the eye. "You three," he growled at the assassins, "stay here where I can keep an eye on you."
"If you do not trust us," Khan said, "then take our weapons."
"What the fuck makes you think I don't trust you?" Weiss rasped. "When the shit hits the fan, I'll need every man I've got. Are you three in or out? I want an answer right now."
"In," Godfried said.
"All right, then quit your bitching. Load up and get ready. All heirs about to break loose, and I don't want to hear any more shit"
* * *
Pablo Diaz, leading his troops through the jungle, was itching to use his machete. He brandished it in his right hand, the mini-Uzi in his left. Hell-bent on slaughtering the treacherous gringos, he pushed ahead through the thornbushes. Silence was imperative. He had ordered his troops to use their machetes to hack through the bush only when absolutely necessary. Earlier, aerial reconnaissance had pinpointed the camp of the gringos. It was believed that the Viper had a force of forty-strong. Whatever the numbers, though, Diaz was certain his small army of sixty men was more than equal to the task of wiping out the gringos. Diaz decided that if the Viper and his men were alerted by their movement through the jungle, it didn't really matter. What mattered was killing them as quickly as possible. If they attempted to escape by river, then the colonel's gunboat crews would destroy them.
Diaz saw the first victim for his machete. The gringo had his back turned. Diaz gave the order for his team to move in and to begin firing at the first sign of the enemy.
The enemy had been found. The slaughter was on.
Diaz ran up behind the unsuspecting gringo and drove his machete through the back of the man's neck with all the rage-powered might he could muster. The gringo's head flew into the air, and great spurts of crimson splashed the tree beside Diaz, blood spattering the green camous of Alchupa's right-hand man. As the headless body toppled into the bush, Diaz discovered that the dead man hadn't been alone. Ahead, figures popped up out of the bush, M-16s blazing. Several of Diaz's men screamed, corkscrewed, and dropped to the ground. With a heart full of hate for the gringos, Diaz triggered his mini-Uzi, stitching several of the enemy across the chest.
All around Diaz, the jungle roared alive in an instant with the blistering din of autofire. Like the pros they were, Diaz and his men moved out, swiftly, silently, firing on the run, leapfrogging ahead in three- and four-man fireteams to take the fight to the hated enemy.
His blood-dripping machete hanging at his side, Diaz forged ahead, the mini-Uzi blazing in his fist, dropping another one of the Viper's mercs with a 3-burst to the face. He was insane with bloodlust and vengeance. He was in a killing mood, a mood to keep lopping off heads.
* * *
Bolan heard the autofire in the distance and knew it was now or never. One of the mercs guarding him, a man called Krumpf, carried one of Bolan's favored pieces. The choice piece, the .44 AutoMag, and the M-16 with the M-203 grenade launcher would do for starters. The war had found him, and Bolan had no intention of being pinned down.
Alerted by the gunfire, the Viper charged out of his tent. With Toby and three other mercs, he disappeared into the jungle.
Immediately Bolan leaped up off the ground, draped his roped hands over Krumpf's head
and wrapped the rope around the merc's throat in a stranglehold. Twisting, Krumpf tried to stomp on Bolan's foot, but the Executioner pulled his foot back, and Krumpf hit nothing but hard ground. The struggle made the other sentry turn, and Bolan pistoned a side kick into the man's crotch, doubling him over. Realizing he couldn't strangle Krumpf in time and still take care of the second sentry, too, Bolan smashed the merc's head into a tree. There was a sickening crack of bone, and Krumpf went limp in Bolan's hands. Bolan released the deadweight.
As the other merc rose to his feet, Bolan moved up on the guy to deliver a snap kick to his jaw. But suddenly an arrow whistled through the air and drilled through the merc's throat. Whirling, Bolan spotted the three assassins near the edge of the camp.
"You're on your own, mate," Geoffrey Godfried yelled at Bolan. "Don't let us see you again. We're gamers. And we may just decide to collect on your head, free of charge. So best make yourself scarce."
The assassins disappeared into the jungle.
Bolan didn't question his bizarre turn of fate. As the sentry with the arrow impaled in his throat writhed on the ground in his death throes, Bolan stripped Krumpf of weapons, including a Ka-bar commando knife. AutoMag inside his belt, M-16 slung around his shoulder, Bolan retreated into the jungle. There, he clamped his teeth over the handle of the commando knife and pressed the point of the blade into a tree. It took close to a minute, but Bolan finally sawed through the ropes.
M-16 in hand, the Executioner forged his way through the jungle, moving in a northeasterly direction away from the camp. The Viper had ordered the camp surrounded by his gunmen, and Bolan was expecting to come across a group of mercs any second.
He found a hunting party.
Autofire still chattering in the distance blanketed the sound of Bolan's approach to the seven mercs. They were moving out, away from Bolan to join the foray. His clothing ripped and slashed by the thornbushes, Bolan closed to within ten yards of the mercenaries.
Then the Executioner opened fire with his M-16. A stream of 5.56 mm lead ripped into the mercs, chewing off strips of camous and biting off even larger chunks of flesh. They screamed, spun and pitched to the jungle floor, bloody heaps of twitching meat. Leaves, churned up by stray rounds, fluttered over the dead bodies. Ahead, Bolan saw a jaguar padding deeper into the jungle. Man was not the only danger that could stalk him, he realized.
As Bolan pushed past the quagmire of blood and guts, he discovered that not all of the mercs had died in his initial onslaught. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the knife in Jake Thompson's hand. Combat senses on full alert, he sidestepped the blade that was angling up to plunge into his stomach. Even so, the point of the blade tore across Bolan's right front pant leg, drawing a jagged line of blood.
Thompson's face was twisted with demonic rage. He started to leap to his feet, his blade slashing back for another swipe at Bolan.
But the Executioner descended on the merc with a lightning deathstrike. Triggering his M-16, Bolan emptied the rest of the clip into Thompson's face, shattering it like an eggshell.
The Executioner moved on, backtracking toward the river. Behind him the dead twitched in their final spasms.
If Alchupa commanded a much larger force than the Viper, then the colonel and his cutthroats would prove to be the main enemy to be dealt with.
Bolan would deal with all of them.
The hunt was on.
There was no turning back, no running, no hiding for anyone caught in the Amazon jungle hellzone.
Mack Bolan intended to flush out and crush the enemy wherever he found them. He wanted the Viper.
14
Livid with rage, Weiss entered the battle. He hadn't expected Alchupa to deliver such a lightning blow. His men were outnumbered and were dropping like flies in the dense bush. Slugs were chewing up the foliage around the Viper. He spent clip after clip from his Uzi, directing a steady relentless fire at the enemy ahead. But numbers gave Alchupa's hitters the advantage.
The Viper had to do something fast if he was to avoid a rout. He gave the order to Toby, who passed it down the line. Time for a riposte. Time for the heavy firepower.
A second later more than two dozen 40 mm grenades were triggered from M-203 launchers. A line of roiling explosions ripped through the heart of Alchupa's hitters. The Viper heard Johnny Rubin howl with glee as leaves fluttered through the air and bits and pieces of shredded meat spattered the jungle floor.
"Don't get too happy, goddamn it!" the Viper cautioned, and when he saw Alchupa's men begin to retreat, he ordered, "Pursue!"
Just moments before, Weiss had stumbled across the severed head of one of his men. Through the swirling smoke in the distance, he saw a big, beefy Spaniard who wielded a machete leading the retreat deeper into the jungle. The big guy was the head-lopper and Weiss wanted that son of a bitch himself.
But he knew he had to secure the Nabuco gunboat, first. Their camp wouldn't last another six hours. Once Alchupa's forces regrouped, they would come back with their own rocket firepower. Weiss wanted to be prepared to deliver a final, decisive blow.
"Toby! Move 'em out. Chase 'em all the way to the goddamn river. We got 'em on the run. I'm going to have a talk with our amigo about that gunboat."
"Roger," Toby said, then surged through the bush to organize the other mercs into a hunting party.
His own machete in hand, Weiss began hacking through the bush with vicious strokes. He was pissed. He was high on adrenaline.
Then Weiss came crashing down from his high when he stumbled over the body of another of his men. An arrow had been drilled through Timmy Rogers's back. A Mongol arrow. Seething, the Viper scoured the jungle nearby, searching for any sign of Khan or the other two assassins. He found nothing, but then he didn't expect them to show themselves, grinning like fools over their treachery. Weiss cursed. He had offered them a share in the spoils of victory, but they had turned on him. Why? There really was no answer. Maybe they just plain didn't like him. But if that was the case, the Viper decided, he was definitely going to get in the last word.
As he moved through the jungle, he looked behind him frequently, checking his flanks and rear. Short bursts of autofire rang through the jungle. Squirrel monkeys screeched through the green canopy above, panicked by the weapon fire.
But something felt wrong to Weiss. Again and again his eyes ranged over the jungle behind and beside him. At times he would have sworn he saw the bush move, heard it rustle. Was someone stalking him? It was possible.
A little more than thirty minutes after his troops had put Alchupa's men to flight, Weiss reached the bank of the stream. There he found the short, squat Spaniard in soiled camous, waiting. The guy looked nervous, ready to bolt.
"Relax there, Fernando. No need to look so worried," Weiss told the boatrunner. "But I need that gunboat and I need it now."
"Si, señor. I can take you there. It is five miles downstream, hidden in a tributary."
"I don't have time to go with you."
"Por favor, I cannot bring the gunboat here by myself. Alchupa's men patrol these waters, and they would kill me."
"Show some balls, man. I've got a fucking war on my hands. We've all got to make sacrifices."
"You come with me, señor, along with some of your men. I will not bring the gunboat here myself. It was enough to bring the canoes."
"All right, already." Weiss was really getting burned up now. The last thing he wanted at the moment was to stand there and squabble with the boatrunner. Well, he'd fix this spic, too. Before it was all over there were going to be plenty of men lying dead in this jungle. Too many of his own had already perished in the battle, and Weiss was determined to demand more than a pound of flesh from his enemies.
Then it happened.
The Viper saw the Spaniard's eyes grow wide in fear, and realized somebody was behind him. As he wheeled, a hellish figure cannonballed out of the bush toward him.
"There was no mistaking those ice-blue eyes, eyes that burned with rage i
n a bruised and battered face.
Mack Bolan.
The butt end of Bolan's M-16 cracked against the side of Weiss's head. Stars exploding before his eyes, Weiss toppled. His Uzi slipped from his grasp, and bile surged into his throat. He wondered why Bolan didn't just kill him outright. Then the front of his shirt was bunched up in a fist of steel.
Payback.
And payback, Weiss knew, would be deadly.
Bolan would show him no mercy.
But the Viper wasn't about to ask for mercy. Or forgiveness.
* * *
Mack Bolan wasn't a sadist, by any means. Still, he couldn't help but feel some pleasure when he hammered his fist into the Viper's jaw and knocked the scum out cold. Bolan wasn't finished with Weiss yet, by a long shot. The Viper was his ticket to a hellzone far, far away. Whoever was running the headshed for the Viper back in the States was going to taste the Bolan fury. Eventually. But for now Bolan had to concern himself with the war at hand. Putting an end to Alchupa and his deadly games took top priority.
When he saw the grim-faced attacker in black, the boatranner had made a break for the motorized canoe. Bolan swung his M-16 toward the Spaniard and yelled, "Freeze!"
The Spaniard, already in the canoe, stopped, looked back at Bolan and raised his hands. He was shaking like a leaf.
Blood of the Lion Page 12