“Where’s Gomez?” Nguyen asked when he didn’t see the old veteran fighter in the command group.
Garcia came to a position of attention. “Like a true Hero of the Revolution, he stayed behind to lead the men covering our escape.”
Nguyen didn’t like the sound of that. Gomez was an experienced military leader, and his vast expertise in combat operations had proved critical on more than one occasion. With both him and Martinez now gone, outside of Garcia, he was the only one left of the original Matador group that had planned this operation. That it hadn’t gone as they had planned was an understatement.
While he was still optimistic about the outcome of the second phase, splinters of doubt had been driven deeply into his mind. He was far from the paddies of the village where he had grown up, but he would have given anything for a gray-haired old priest to make a sacrifice of salt and rice to the god of war and to light a couple of joss sticks to try to improve their chances.
He was a Marxist now and knew better than to slip into error of primitive superstition, so he turned to the helmsman. “Make for open water.”
“Aye, Comrade.”
THE CALM THAT FOLLOWED the appearance of the eye of the storm had a stunning effect on the combatants. For Colonel Pablo Mendez’s Panthers, it was as if a veil had been lifted and they could now go to work. His counterterrorist platoons broke up into their hunter-killer Teams and started hunting their enemies in earnest.
Hunting bandits in a built-up area wasn’t their trained specialty, but they were very good at improvising. The crackle and snap of small-arms fire sounded like a drumroll as they started probing the enemy’s defenses. They were all aware that the eye would pass and the storm return, so they wanted to get as high a body count as they could before the wind and rain picked up again.
THE EMBATTLED Matador fighters could now look around and clearly see how many of their comrades were no longer among the living. It wasn’t a reassuring assessment. Even worse, the Mexicans were on the offensive and pushing hard. Small units were attacking almost every one of their positions and inflicting casualties.
Juan Gomez was driving his SUV from one position to the next trying to rally his fighters and to assess the situation. The Cuban had been at his business long enough to know when the combat equation had turned against him. His fighters still outnumbered the Mexicans, but the battle wasn’t going in their favor because their hearts weren’t in it. He fondly remembered the men he had fought with in Angola all those years ago. They had been true fighters of the revolution. No matter what the odds, they would stand and die if need be to show their enemies how brave men died.
This generation, though, wasn’t made of such stern stuff. To them, the Revolution was something they read about in books or heard stories of from their fathers. They didn’t burn with a desire to give their all for the cause. Most of them were going to die anyway, and he laughed when he thought how it would surprise them. He had made his acquaintanceship with death a long time ago, and every day that he didn’t die was a joy. His death would be an even greater joy, though, and he felt that it was coming to him this day.
Stepping out of his vehicle at one of his main blocking positions, he bent to take a fresh chestpack ammo carrier from the body of one of his dead. After looking around, he beckoned to the leader of the group.
“Yes, Comrade.” The man saluted.
“Your orders are to stand and hold this position until I return,” Gomez told him.
“And where are you going, Comrade Gomez?” the man asked suspiciously.
Without changing expression, Gomez pulled his pistol and shot the man in the head. Soldiers of the Revolution didn’t question their leader’s actions.
The Matador fighters pretended not to have noticed that their leader had just been shot to death, and Gomez pretended that they were going to do what they had been told as if they were brave. Beyond shooting half a dozen more of them to pump up the fear factor even more, there was little he could do to make them stand and fight.
As soon as his back was turned, he knew they would start to fade away. That was fine with him, though. Any man who abandoned his post under fire became an enemy of the people, and if he spotted him, he would kill him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Even though Bolan had been doing well in his solitary venture against the terrorists, when the winds started to abate he disengaged from the main battle area. He’d been through a hurricane or two before and knew what was coming next. As long as the eye of the hurricane was overhead and the skies were clear, he intended to keep out of convenient rifle range of the Cubans.
He made his way back deep into the town to a small garden plaza and took cover inside a tourist information booth. He really didn’t count himself as a tourist, but it seemed appropriate. He was surveying his front when a bullet hit the stuccoed wall beside his head.
Hitting the ground, he crawled across the walkway to the raised shrubbery beds bordering the plaza. He wasn’t much of a botanist and didn’t know what he was hiding behind, but the bushes were thick enough to conceal him. The low brick wall bordering the beds gave him some cover.
Since there hadn’t been an immediate follow-up shot, whoever was out there was an experienced shooter and he knew that it wasn’t one of the Mexicans thinking that he was one of the terrorists. There was no mistaking the sound of an AK, so it had to be a Cuban. The Kalashnikov wasn’t a good long-range sniper piece, which meant that the guy had to be fairly close by. He hadn’t had time to check the angle of the shot by the bullet hole in the wall, but he knew it had been fired from close to ground level.
Carefully parting the foliage in front of him so as to make little movement, Bolan peered through the greenery. Three broad streets entered the plaza, and he had a good line of sight to two of them. But if he had a line of sight to those locations, the sniper would, as well. He could be a hundred yards down either of those two streets in a concealed firing position.
A second shot rang out, and though he didn’t see a muzzle-flash, he sent a snap shot down the street directly in front of him. He really didn’t expect it to connect, but even a near miss would tell his opponent that he was still in the game. And a deadly game it was going to be.
He carefully rolled to the side and parted the foliage again. This time he thought he saw a flash of movement right before another shot rang out.
Taking a flash-bang grenade from his harness, Bolan thumbed the fuse and tossed the bomb into the middle of the plaza, which was bare earth. Even as wet as it was, the detonation should create a big enough mud spray for Bolan to duck into the alley behind him.
Crouching with his eyes closed, he counted down to the detonation.
With the flash he was on his feet, crouched low, sprinting for the alley. Two AK rounds sang past his head as he ducked around the side of the building.
JUAN GOMEZ’S CHAGRIN at having lost his prey was tempered with a savage joy at having found someone who apparently knew how the game was played. This Yankee, and he could only be a Yankee, hadn’t panicked at being fired on, nor had he done the macho Mexican thing and charged. Even under sniper fire, this man had kept his head and had taken the time to make a clever escape from a bad situation.
The Cuban doubted that this Yankee would run for safety now that he was out of the line of fire. Not this one. This was a man, and he would take to the alleys himself and hunt for whoever had fired at him, which was what Gomez wanted more then anything. Even more than surviving this cockup, he wanted one more chance to go up against a worthy opponent, win or lose.
He rose from his position and slipped into the backyard of the neighboring two-story house. It had a ladder from the balcony to the roof and, like a stalking jungle cat, he wanted the high ground.
THE BUILDINGS in this particular part of town were mostly smaller two-story structures, many of them with Spanish-style balconies. They also had sunken doorways that could provide cover for a man on the ground level. As with all soldiers, Bolan lik
ed the high ground and decided to use it to go after this guy. He was too dangerous to be left out there to try to kill someone else. There was also a good chance that his assailant would come after him, so he might as well get it over with.
A few yards into the alley, he went through a gate into a small backyard. As he had expected, the yard had stairs leading up to a balcony, then up to the flat roof. Moving quickly, he took the stairs. Once on the roof, he crossed to the side facing in the direction he had come. His building was one back from the open area, and the roof of the building facing the plaza was higher than the one he had chosen, but not so high that he couldn’t pull himself onto it.
Once there, he stayed low as he crossed to the balustrade on the street side and took cover. Dismounting the optical scope from his H&K, he used it to scan the roofs and fronts of the buildings across the small square. As he had half expected, he didn’t see anyone, but he doubted that they were empty. Everyone liked the high ground, and he settled in to wait.
After fifteen minutes, even though his combat instincts told him that the sniper was still out there, he was beginning to think that maybe the Cuban had moved on. Leaving his current position, though, wouldn’t be a wise move right as yet.
He was dividing his time between watching the streets and the rooftops when he caught a flash of movement from a rooftop down the side street. He wasn’t in a good position to take him under fire, so leaving his H&K on the balustrade with the muzzle exposed, he crawled to the other end of the roof. When he reached the side of the building facing the lower one he had come up from, he let himself down onto it. From there, he went down to the balcony and took the stairs to the ground.
Figuring that the Cuban would stay focused on the rooftops for a while, he would make his move on the ground level.
GOMEZ SPOTTED the rifle muzzle. A warrior knew the value of holding the high ground and the Yankee had it, but he could deal with it. Leaving his perch, he kept to the shadows as he slipped down to the garden. There was a building behind the gringo’s hiding place and its roof was high enough for him to make his kill.
He was moving from walled garden to walled garden and was within one house of his planned assault point when he caught a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. He was diving for cover when he felt a blow to his chest and was slammed to the ground.
THOUGH HE HAD SEEN his man go down, Bolan waited for several minutes before breaking cover. When he did, he approached his downed opponent, his .44 trained on him and his finger on the trigger. He wasn’t going to take a chance with a guy who was this good.
He wasn’t surprised to see that the Cuban sniper was an older man, and from the scars on his face, a veteran soldier. For decades Cuba had exported thousands of her troops to fight surrogate wars for the Soviets in Africa and Latin America. This doomed expedition was like a leftover cold war scenario from the seventies or eighties, so it was fitting that a veteran of Cuba’s foreign wars was taking part in it.
The Cuban painfully opened his eyes when he heard Bolan’s footsteps, but was too badly wounded to try to reach for his assault rifle.
“Yankee,” he said in accented English, “you tricked me.”
“You should have stayed in Cuba, compadre,” Bolan stated. “Didn’t you hear that communism’s dead?”
“Tu Madre,” the Cuban said as he died.
BOLAN FINALLY LOCATED Hal Brognola outside the Hotel Maya with the Mexican army unit he and de Lorenzo had surrendered to. Lieutenant Villa’s team was still trying to keep their VIPs safe, and the hotel grounds were the most secure place in Cancun right now. Most of the remaining surviving terrorists were either on the run or surrendering, but the Panther hunter-killer teams were still cleaning up isolated pockets of die-hard resistance.
“You look like you’ve been busy, Striker,” Brognola said by way of greeting.
“Just the usual,” Bolan replied. “Scouting around and taking out the trash, but I think it’s just about over around here. The Cubans don’t seem to have the stomach to fight to the death over this.”
“Not with their boss gone,” Brognola said. “Garcia escaped on that ship.”
“I was a little busy at the time, but I figured that’s what was going on when I saw it come back into port.”
“I saw him get on board,” Brognola recounted, “but there wasn’t anything I could do about it.”
“Speaking of doing things,” Bolan said, “don’t you think it’s about time that we got back in touch with the Man? He’s probably got half the surveillance systems in the country looking for you right about now. I’m sure he’s gotten over your not wanting to do what you were told.”
“Don’t you think we’re doing okay without him? I mean, we managed to run Garcia out of here, didn’t we?”
“With the help of a storm and the Mexican army,” Bolan pointed out. “Someone needs to tell him that Garcia has put to sea with those hostages. We’ve got a real situation going on here, Hal, and those people need more help than we can give them no matter what we try to do. This is a major event, and some tough decisions are going to have to be made on a higher level than just the two of us. Let me put the radio back online, so we can get this squared away with him and get back on the road.”
Brognola thought about that for a long moment. “Okay,” he conceded. “But after I make my report, I’m going to ask if the Navy has something close enough to come and get us so we can still follow that bastard, but do it in style. I’m not going to let him get away with this.”
Since it was obvious that Brognola had the bit firmly in his teeth and wasn’t about to spit it out, Bolan could only go along for the ride wherever it went.
Bolan put the batteries back in his satcom radio, bounced a signal off a satellite to Stony Man Farm, told the techs in the com center that Brognola was on the line and had them patch him through to the Oval Office.
“It’s Striker, Mr. President,” he said. “Yes, I have Hal Brognola here…Yes, sir.
“I think he wants to talk to you.” Bolan smiled.
“Okay.” Brognola wore a big grin when he turned the radio off. “He says that all is forgiven and we’re back in business big-time. He’s sending a nuke sub to pick us up, an attack boat. It’s coming at flank speed and should be here in under three hours.”
“And we’re supposed to follow Garcia’s ship and report on what we see him doing, right?”
“At a minimum,” Brognola said. “But he left it open for suggestions for direct action. Let’s go find Hector and tell him what’s going down. He’s set up a command post inside with the Mexican battalion commander.”
NOW THAT Colonel Pablo Mendez’s counterterrorist Panther battalion had the situation with the Cubans well in hand, the Mexican attorney general was acting as the local political commander. He and Mendez had set up a joint command post in the hotel manager’s office recently vacated by Diego Garcia and his people. As a stockholder in the resort, de Lorenzo had been glad to see that the Cuban thugs hadn’t trashed the place too badly on their way out. The same couldn’t be said for the hotel’s liquor stocks.
“Gentlemen,” the Mexican said when Bolan and Brognola walked in, “good news from Mexico City. The presidential palace and the National Police headquarters have been freed, and they’re working to bring key buildings and public service functions back under government control. This ‘revolution’ isn’t going to last more than another day or two at the most.”
“That’s good to hear,” Brognola said. “And I have a favor to ask of you.”
“Anything, my friend.”
“Do you think that Colonel Mendez and his men can take care of the American tourist hostages until someone can get in here to evacuate them?”
“That sounds like you’re planning to go somewhere again,” de Lorenzo said.
“We are. The President is sending a submarine to pick us up and we’re going to follow Garcia. Do you want to come along?”
“I’d love to go with you.” De Lorenz
o sighed. “But my duty is to remain here and oversee getting things back to normal, whatever that’s going to be, as quickly as I can. I want to see Garcia get his as much as you do, but we have a lot of very frightened people here who need to be reassured and evacuated as quickly as possible. I just got word that the airport is in friendly hands once again, and the airlines will start flying in as soon as the storm completely dies down and the runways can be cleared of debris.”
“Do you need any help from Uncle Sam?” Brognola said. “I have friends in high places, and I’m sure that a word from me would get immediate results.”
De Lorenzo laughed. “Tell your ‘uncle’ thanks, but this time the Mexican government owes the United States. The least we can do is to assist your stranded citizens and see that they’re made as comfortable as we can until they can be evacuated. What you can really do to help all of us is to get that Cuban bastard.”
“We’ll get him,” Brognola promised. “You can take that one to the bank.”
“If you get him alive,” de Lorenzo said dryly, “I’m sure that my government would love to put him on trial and prove that Castro was behind this so we can take a chunk out of that bastard, as well.”
“I can’t promise that,” Brognola said honestly, “but I can assure you that my Justice Department will render all possible assistance to your department in getting to the bottom of this. I’ll personally see to it that you get a full exchange of information and assistance should Mexico decide to take direct action against the perpetrators of this outrage.”
De Lorenzo was fully aware that Brognola had just promised him that the United States would go to war alongside Mexico if that was deemed appropriate. He still wasn’t sure how much pull his friend really had with the American President, but if he was serious, it was a major commitment. And with the stance the United States had taken against terrorism worldwide since the 9/11 attack, it might actually come to pass.
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