The RPG struck his officer in the legs. The explosion threw the officer's torso twenty yards.
Blood flowed from his head, right arm and side as Carl Lyons held his position, searching the carnage for targets.
AUTOFIRE AND EXPLOSIONS RAGED in the chaos of the attack on the compound. Mack Bolan, Blancanales and Gadgets waited in the jungle around the staff houses. They saw the Soviet bodyguards running from house to house, gathering the officers, herding them and a woman toward the cars.
Bolan waited. Guards ran into the largest house. One staggered out, vomiting. Then the other guard came out, calling to his comrades. One of' the officers, a Hispanic in fatigue pants and a pyjama top, rushed into the house.
"You see what's going on?" Bolan whispered into his hand-radio.
Blancanales answered. "Something's happened in there—"
"I can't see anything," Gadgets reported. Positioned at the north end of the base complex, the staff houses blocked Gadgets’ view of the scene.
The officer came out of the house and motioned to the others. The group rushed in.
No one came out.
After a minute, Gadgets buzzed Bolan. "What the hell's going on?"
"Hold your position. Politician, what do you see?" "Nothing, Mack. No one outside, no movement at the windows or doors. No one on watch."
"Mack!" Gadgets’ voice hissed. "They're out! I hear them thrashing around—"
"They making a break?" From his position, Bolan had no view of what Gadgets saw.
"No, man. Not a break. They are out. I hear them running. They're taking off. They got out somehow—"
Bolan ran through the possibilities in his mind. Only one made sense. "An underground escape, a passage," he said. "Pol, Gadgets—"
"Already moving."
As the sky grayed, the Stony Men pursued the escaping leaders through the jungle.
SPORADIC RIFLE fire came from the barracks. Encizo watched for muzzle-flashes. He sent 40mm grenades through the windows. Below him, dead and dying terrorist soldiers littered the compound. On the other side of the wall, Lyons raked the parade grounds with deadly bursts from his M-249.
Over the sights of his machine gun, McCarter scanned the smoke and flames for terrorists. He heard a fire fight break out on the other side of the compound. His hand-radio buzzed.
Manning's voice shouted out, "We got a squad rushing us. Encizo, McCarter, anybody—"
A slug slapped flesh. The radio went silent for a moment, then Yakov's voice came on, "Manning is wounded. We need—"
An RPG blast sprayed fire and stone into the gray sky. McCarter yelled to Encizo, "You just going to bloody do nothing?"
McCarter jerked up his M-249 and ran along the top of the wall. Below him, terrorists saw the black clad commando and raised their rifles. Slugs chipped the wall, ripped past him. His leg jerked from a hit. He sprawled on the walkway, but held on to his weapon.
Kalashnikovs sent burst after burst at him. He rolled to the other side of the walkway, pressing himself against the outfacing bricks. The walkway's edge sheltered him, slugs from the gunmen below hitting the wall only inches above his, face. Lit by the dawn light and the compound's fire, he had no concealment. If he turned or crawled or stood, he'd be hit again.
"You bloody good-for-nothing Cuban Latin lover!" McCarter screamed. "Put out some rounds!"
Encizo's hybrid assault rifle/grenade launcher answered. A 40mm frag killed one terrorist, a burst of 5.56mm slugs ripped through the arm of another. The fire aimed at McCarter slacked off for an instant.
The wounded Englishman heard the sound of cast iron clanking on stone. Two steps from his face, a ComBloc grenade hissed, smoke coming from the fuse. He had no escape but gravity.
Rolling off the wall, still holding his weapon, he dropped eight feet to the pavement, his bleeding leg buckling underneath him. His back slammed against the wall, holding him semi-upright. Above him, the hand grenade exploded.
A Palestinian crouched beside him, a second grenade in his hand. McCarter jammed the muzzle of the machine gun against the man's chest and sprayed a ten-round burst through him. Another terrorist brought up an AKM. McCarter whipped his weapon around, fired point-blank again.
Slugs hit the wall around him. Fire slashed across his ribs. He lurched into a run, his back heavy with plastic magazines of belted 5.56mm rounds, one leg buckling beneath him with every step, knives seeming to stab through his ribs with every breath.
Fighting panic, he did not aim, he did not look for targets, he ran and fired. An Al Fatah killer jumped in front of him, AKM held in his hands like a baseball bat. McCarter fired wild, killing the gunman—but an instant too late, for the Kalashnikov stock smashed his left hand.
McCarter fell over the dead man, rolled, his right hand never releasing the machine gun. Staggering to his feet, he tried to grip with his left hand. His broken thumb and index finger would not close around the machine gun's fore grip.
"ENCIZO!" McCarter bellowed. He held up the front of the heavy weapon with his forearm, his hand dangling numb from his wrist. His eyes searched for shelter as he sprayed slugs at everything that moved.
A slug hit his battle armor, bouncing off the steel trauma plate. Then something hit him from the rear, sending him skidding against the steps of a barracks. He felt a man on him.
His right hand jerked the double-edged blade from his boot top. As he pulled back to stab, Encizo caught his wrist.
"I am here. Give me that machine gun."
Encizo dragged McCarter through a doorway, then threw him down. From the window, Encizo fired into the compound's street, brass casings showering his Phoenix Force partner on the floor. AK slugs smashed through glass and pocked the back wall.
"I tell you, amigo. I think we have problems." A flash-roar swept past.
"Encizo. McCarter!" Rushing into the room, Keio Ohara threw down a spent Viper launcher, immediately pulled another from his backpack. He glanced outside.
Only gore remained of a group of terrorists. "What happened to Manning?" McCarter gasped.
"He is wounded," said Keio, blankly sad yet still flame-bright too, in the midst of this crucial wartime that held the balance of democracy's future in its falling numbers.
"Where is he?"
The Canadian staggered in, his right arm hanging limp, blood dripping from his fingers. He slumped against the wall, tried to change the magazine of his CAR one-handed, couldn't. He sat down with the rifle between his knees. Then he pulled out the empty mag, jammed in another, and hit the bolt release to chamber the first round. He looked around at the others.
"Well, do we want to sit here? Or get the job done?" And he stumbled out.
Pulling the pack off McCarter's back, Encizo jerked the near-spent magazine out of the M-249 and fitted on a new one. Then he and Ohara followed Manning.
Alone in the smashed furnishings and broken glass of the small room, McCarter looked at the useless fingers of his left hand then down at his bleeding leg.
"Oh, what the hell. . . " Staggering to his feet, he pulled out his pistol and headed for the door. "Still got one hand that works."
MOVING SILENTLY THROUGH THE DAWN, Mack Bolan, Blancanales and Gadgets pursued the Hydra officers across the island. The noise of the attack on the base faded behind them. They moved as quickly as they dared, expecting ambush at any moment.
But the Soviets and Cubans did not turn on their attackers. They seemed to want only to escape. They thrashed through the fronds and bushes, left foot prints, broken branches, a woman's shoe to mark their path.
Bolan signalled his friends. They crouched in the half-light, their eyes sweeping the jungle around them. Bolan pointed along the path.
"They're going to their boats. We can't chance following them straight to the beach."
"They'll hit us," Gadgets agreed.
A vast roar came from the island's airstrip. Looking up, they saw flame light glowing on wisps of clouds. Gadgets grinned.
"Someone tried to use
a plane."
Blancanales pulled a compass from his thigh pocket, watched the needle find north. He pointed to the southwest. Bolan and Gadgets nodded.
They emerged several hundred yards to the west of the dock. Several moored boats bobbed on the light swell. The Hydra officers, their bodyguards and their girlfriends crowded onto a cabin cruiser.
Bolan put binoculars to his eyes. He scanned the group. "Yoshida isn't with them. But. . ." Bolan passed the binoculars to Blancanales. "Look at the one in the pyjama top."
"That's Munoz," Blancanales agreed. "But where's Fedorenko?"
Gadgets took out his hand-radio and keyed the transmit. "Phoenix Force, Lyons, anybody. What goes on?"
Yakov answered. "It is done." Behind his voice, individual shots popped. "Have you finished with the others?"
"They're at the boats, thinking they're going somewhere. Some of them, anyway," Gadgets responded. "Haven't spotted Fedorenko or the Japanese."
While they spoke, the three men watched the Cubans and Soviets on the dock. The terrorists had finally discovered the sabotaged engines.
"I found the Russian," Yakov told Gadgets. "He died very badly."
Mack Bolan keyed his own radio. "You got Fedorenko?"
"Not me, I could not have done it like that," the Israeli answered. "There are limits. One of his own kind did this."
"Did what?" Bolan asked.
"I found him in his house. I will not even describe it."
Then Bolan asked what most concerned him. "And what about our men, Yakov? Who have we lost?"
"God blessed us this morning. We have lost much blood, but no lives."
"Everyone who can walk and carry a weapon," Bolan commanded, "will search for the Japanese."
AKM fire stopped the talk. Two hundred yards away, unseen gunmen fired from the jungle, slugs shattering the windows of the boats. A woman and two of the Soviet bodyguards fell.
A Russian returned fire. AKM bursts punched death through the gunwale of the power cruiser, sending the Russian staggering backward into the water.
Bolan focused his binoculars. "Munoz is starting the boat!"
Switching on the power cruiser's ignition, the Cuban member of the troika triggered the Stony Men's pre-placed charges.
The explosion destroyed the boats at the dock. Scraps of wood and metal and fiberglass floated from the sky. Palm trees vibrated with shock, the air shimmered.
Two gunmen left the jungle, Kalashnikovs in their hands. Bolan identified them with the binoculars. "Japanese."
"Yoshida?" Blancanales asked.
"Don't see him," Bolan reported. "But that Palestinian, Shyein, the one you took in Los Angeles, he said Yoshida has two Japanese bodyguards."
Moving silently through the palms, the three Stony warriors watched the two Japanese poke through the flickering flames of the wreckage. They found one of the women still alive and put an AK burst through her face. Then the Japanese returned to the jungle.
Signalling his friends to wait, Bolan set down his M-16 / M-203. He pulled Big Thunder, his .44 Auto-Mag. He moved ahead alone, his free hand easing branches and fronds silently aside.
Blancanales and Gadgets watched Bolan disappear into the silent shadows. They listened for the inevitable.
The AutoMag boomed once. For a moment, they heard thrashing. Then the AutoMag thundered again.
The last impact threw a dying Japanese bodyguard through a tangle of branches. Only steps from Blancanales, the man sprawled face down in the small ferns. The gunman struggled to rise. He threw himself over on his back, spraying the jungle with his AKM.
Blancanales rushed to the dying Japanese and brought down the butt of his M-16/M-203 on the gunman's throat, smashing the larynx. Blancanales cupped his hand over the man's bloody mouth as he choked to death.
Silence returned. Crouching over the dead man, Blancanales scanned the jungle for movement, his hybrid assault rifle/grenade launcher on line, a buck-shot load in the 40mm tube. But no other terrorists appeared.
In his peripheral vision, Blancanales sensed a shadow emerging into the red dawn light from the black hole of overgrowth.
Finally weary of all the killing, his hand sticky from the choking of the Japanese bodyguard, Blancanales was relieved to see the black-clad form of his commander padding through the jungle litter toward him.
Mack could have met his match in there. It was good to see him return.
Blancanales casually opened an arm to greet his leader. An abrazo was in order on this dawn of destruction. Blancanales was tired.
As he turned to fully face his friend, opening his heart to the night scorcher who was the one true saint in his life, Blancanales saw his mistake.
Yoshida!
Gadgets screamed. He, too, had confused one black-clad dawn fighter for another. He watched the Japanese madman slam into Blancanales, slip around the Chicano's rocking form and close his arm around his throat.
Gadgets could not take aim. "Pol!" he yelled uselessly at his stricken friend, his legs locked apart as he moved his weapon's muzzle in search of a safe target.
A twelve-inch blade flashed past Blancanales's face. Yoshida brought the razor edge across the Stony warrior's throat. Twisting against the steel muscles of Yoshida's arm, Blancanales threw his right shoulder forward and up. The shoto blade missed his throat, but sliced through the Kevlar battle armor.
As the shoto slashed across his chest in a microsecond, it cut deep into his right pectoral and continued to his upper arm. Blancanales felt the blade scrape across the bone. Then he rolled free, and kicked out.
But another black form had already slammed into Yoshida. The two bodies fell on Blancanales. Two writhing beasts of shadow fought on top of him. Blancanales saw Bolan wrestling face-to-face with Yoshida.
They rolled from him in clinging confrontation, rising upright, still locked, as Gadgets rushed to attend to Blancanales's blood-pulsing wound.
The opponents' tendons and neck muscles above their black suits stood out from the skin, as each strained to overwhelm the other. Their flesh glistened with chill sweat.
Stony Man's commander glared at the demon mask of Yoshida's insanely nihilistic hatred. It was one man against his absolute opposite. Such a condition cannot exist without the final arbitration of death. In the primal world of physics, death was a wise counsellor. So be it.
Bolan gripped Yoshida's wrist in his left hand to push back the shoto blade. In his right hand was the AutoMag.
The two unleashed forces that were Bolan and Yoshida struggled without movement, equally matched. Their strength and intensity made them sculptures of violence, extreme to the limit, visibly explosive, but for the moment actually motionless in time.
Bolan snapped his head forward, broke the tension, broke the mood, broke Yoshida's nose with his forehead.
Berserk with pain and rage, his screams spraying blood, the terrorist monster focused his entire psychotic consciousness on plunging the twelve-inch mirror of death into Bolan's throat.
The good mind and the best weapon are one. When the mind is through-and-through right, the weapon is too....
Bolan strained to move the barrel upright, then fired the bucking flesh-shredder that had been The Executioner's companion on his every mile.
The AutoMag blew Yoshida's head away. The heat of the blast seared Bolan's face.
Bolan staggered back. Gadgets caught him as he fell. He let him down on the matted jungle trail. Gasping for breath, Bolan eased the AutoMag's hammer down. Then he wiped Yoshida's blood and brains from his face.
Gadgets returned to Blancanales and tore open more field dressing to put it against Pol's opened-up chest. The wounded fighter pressed it against the bubbling gash while Gadgets put a dressing over the exposed bone of his right arm.
The giant red fireball that rose, from the horizon was the sun.
It came like the future itself, a violent thing, full of explosions that sustain and advance life itself.
The red glow of the eastern
sky turned to a day-light hue as Mack Bolan stood up and threw his head back in exhaustion, his face staring up at the pale virgin blue.
The dawn of destruction.
He snapped his head forward again. He touched the drying slicks of blood that encrusted the front of his black suit. He looked at Gadgets and Blancanales, the two shattered avengers seeming like a still-life of care and attention as the final bandages were tied, and the last empty syringes poked out of the bloodied grass.
"Time for the last act," Bolan said.
THE SHEET OF FLAME SOARED UP to the sky in a crescending roar. It ascended like a terrible curtain that turned the sky from eggshell blue to dirty yellow. The flame, hundreds of yards wide, competed with the sun. It made a warm morning unbearably hot.
The fresh odour of seawater was replaced by the acrid, unmistakable stink that comes from burning the material effects of man.
Mack's order had been to torch the camp. Not a trace must remain. Now Phoenix Force and Able Team watched from the hillside with their commander, as the terrorist town disappeared in the single sheet of flame.
Their work of righteous arson had taken only an hour to set up, utilizing the gasoline stores of the base itself. Manning and McCarter had arranged the triggering devices in the dry ground and in the straw-roofed, highly inflammable buildings.
Soon the nine men could see each hut burn. Every roof, every wall, every fence, every street corner showed the individual flames that had contributed to the opening sheet explosion. Fire consumed every detail of a place that had once been very dangerously alive. It was a world in flames.
Mack Bolan knew this to be a sacrificial fire.
It was a sacrifice to save the larger world from the same immolation. Without the blaze that he gazed at below him now, twenty million Americans—more, maybe twice as many, maybe three or four times as many—would never have survived the constant siege that they endured.
Super Bolan - 001 - Stony Man Doctrine Page 26