Another soldier down with one shot, on his right flank, as the mark was setting up to rake Mansaré’s party with an RPD machine gun. The old Russian weapon had a funny look about it, like something from a fifties sci-fi movie, but the hundred 7.62 mm rounds in its drum magazine were man-killers, all the same. Half of them were gone now, as the dying soldier toppled over backward, firing at the stars.
One of Mansaré’s people spotted Bolan then, was turning with his rifle shouldered when an army round took out the left side of his skull. One second he was aiming at the Executioner; the next, dead meat collapsing to the earth. Bolan spotted his killer, angling for another shot, and cut him down before he had a chance to make it two for two.
Diallo’s soldiers had regained enough composure by that time to mount a final charge against their enemies in uniform, still missing Bolan on the sidelines where he crouched beside the Land Rovers. They came on like a banzai charge of old, shouting and weapons blazing, with Mansaré’s people fighting for their lives at odds of two or three to one.
Bolan hurled frag grenades against the charging line and saw the blasts slash through the ranks, Mansaré’s shooters making up the difference. The cops were taking hits, too, couldn’t help it in the circumstances, but the ones who’d stretched prone to fire their auto rifles whittled down the other side. Bolan was busy at the same time, spotting individuals, leading his moving targets, squeezing off, then tracking on before they fell. He didn’t count—had never been much into keeping score—but simply fired until the only targets still erect had dropped their guns and raised their hands.
A smoky silence settled over General Diallo’s compound, with the man himself still nowhere to be seen. Bolan maintained his cover, watching as Mansaré took control, sending his uninjured survivors out to cuff and frisk the soldiers they had spared. There were too many for the Land Rovers, but Bolan guessed Mansaré had already thought of some alternative for carting them to jail.
What jail? It was the captain’s problem. As for Bolan...
He saw one of the “dead” men stir behind Mansaré, rising on his elbows to extend a pistol toward the captain’s back, unseen. The shot from Bolan’s FAL cut through the silence, drilling the shooter’s skull and bringing every eye around to his position. He rose, the rifle dangling at his side, and raised the gas mask with his left hand to reveal his sweaty face.
Mansaré gaped at him, began to say, “Are you—”
“We need to talk,” the Executioner replied.
Epilogue
“I tell you, I barely escaped with my life,” General Diallo said.
“You were fortunate, then,” Pascal Kinte replied. “More Agwa de Bolivia?”
Diallo nodded, holding out his glass for a refill. He quaffed the coca-leaf liqueur greedily, as if he’d had nothing to drink for days and it was sweet, pure water. Seated in the recreation room of Kinte’s lavish home, he tried to let the alcohol and coca soothe his agitated nerves.
“You say I’m fortunate!” Diallo answered. “I have lost three dozen men, two shipments of cocaine and the media—”
“Will soon forget all this and move along to something else,” Kinte said, interrupting him. “You must regain perspective, General.”
“I have perspective. The reporters make me out to be a gangster and a fool!”
“One part is true, you must admit,” the minister replied. “As to the other, you can only prove them right by acting foolish.”
“If I wanted your advice—”
“You do,” Kinte said. “Why else are you here?”
“All right,” Diallo grudgingly admitted. “What do you say I should do?”
“Ignore the media for now, and take decisive action to suppress your enemies. Show them your strength is not diminished. Be a leader.”
“I am a leader,” Diallo snapped. “Don’t forget who you are speaking to!”
Kinte responded with a smile and said, “Now that’s more like it. Show the fire you’re known for. Hide from no man.”
That was humorous, Diallo thought, with half a dozen guards outside Kinte’s thirty-room mansion, furnished in style with state funds he’d embezzled. Still, the minister had managed to survive through several changes of regime in Guinea-Bissau and continued raking in the spoils, which proved that his advice was sound.
“How is your appetite, my friend?” Kinte asked.
“It depends on what you’re serving,” Diallo said.
“Only the best, General, as you’ve come to expect.”
Kinte pushed a button on the intercom that occupied a corner of the lounge’s hand-carved coffee table, alerting his servants that he and Diallo were ready for dinner. A moment later, the door opened behind Kinte and two men entered. One was African, the other white, and both held semiautomatic pistols tipped with sound suppressors.
Diallo thought about the little Walther PP pistol tucked inside his belt, beneath the jacket of his uniform, and knew he’d never reach it. Kinte saw the stunned expression on Diallo’s face and half turned in his armchair, squeaking out a startled sound.
“Sorry we didn’t meet last night,” the white man told Diallo.
“This is for Nilson Medina and our country,” the African said.
Diallo might have answered, given time, but there was no time left. As he went for his gun, both pistols made chugging sounds, three shots apiece, then silence ruled the house until a car started outside and quickly pulled away.
Osvaldo Vieira International Airport
“I’M NOT SURE what to say in such a situation. Should I thank you for my life or warn you to stay out of Guinea-Bissau?”
“Either one or both,” Bolan answered Captain Mansaré. “Maybe neither. Take your pick.”
“It’s better that you don’t come back, I think,” Mansaré said.
“I don’t plan on it,” Bolan said. “It’s my first time leaving anywhere with a police escort.”
“I owed you that, at least,” Mansaré said. “A takeoff without difficulty.”
“What about yourself?” Bolan asked.
“Oddly enough, it seems that I may be promoted. Or perhaps cashiered. I’ll take whatever comes.”
“I think your country needs you,” Bolan said.
“Others may disagree. We’ll see.”
“About Medina...”
“Say no more. He made his choice and died unbroken. Few of us can say that, in the end.”
A disembodied voice announced boarding for Bolan’s flight. He shook hands with Mansaré, left the captain standing in the middle of the concourse and moved out toward his gate without a backward glance. There was nothing to hold him here except more ghosts.
He was leaving Guinea-Bissau more or less the way he found it, shaken up a bit but still not ready, in his estimation, to clean house. And if its mess slopped over to the States again, Bolan knew that he might be back. How would Mansaré take it, if that happened?
They would have to wait and see.
New battlegrounds were waiting for the Executioner. New predators.
War without end.
Amen.
* * * * *
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ISBN: 9781460317143
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