She stopped, as well, considering the implications of that sudden silence. Cooper, she thought, had probably destroyed another raiding party sent into the jungle by her enemy. It now occurred to her that she had panicked prematurely, run away for no good reason. Naturally, she couldn’t have known that, and she still might be mistaken, but what she had seen of Cooper so far convinced her that he’d probably survived and triumphed with this second battle in as many days.
I should go back, she thought, turning in the direction she had fled from, wondering if she could still catch up to Cooper.
But was she facing in the right direction? Every tree around her looked the same to Mercy, and no matter how she searched the undergrowth, she found no signs to reassure her. In the movies, trackers always found a broken twig or flattened leaf, a fresh scratch on a tree trunk, stones displaced by footsteps—something that allowed them to keep going in the right direction, following their prey. As far as she could tell, the ferns and shrubbery surrounding her appeared pristine, revealing no hint that she had crashed through them seconds earlier.
“Damn it!” she hissed, and in her agitation failed to ask forgiveness.
Getting lost was something Mercy understood. This would not be the first time she had gone astray, even on short walks from the mission to retrieve firewood or water, but she found it inconceivable that she could lose her own trail instantly, mere seconds after she had stopped running from the sounds of combat.
Sounds.
She strained her ears, hoping there’d be another shot, perhaps a coup de grâce, to help her orient herself, but all she heard were normal forest noises coming back after the shocking interruption of gunfire. After a long five minutes, when she realized that it was hopeless, tears brimmed in her eyes.
And she blamed Abner.
If he’d been a proper husband, if he hadn’t left her in the middle of the night, she wouldn’t be in this position. She had no idea how to find the mission, Matthew Cooper or the camp where she’d spent last night. It struck Mercy that she could wander through the vast and trackless jungle till she died from one cause or another, and no one would ever know what had become of her.
Likely no one would care.
She started walking, hoped that she was heading in the general direction she had come from, though she saw nothing familiar along the way. Blind panic had prevented her from memorizing any landmarks as she ran, not that the jungle offered much of anything in that regard to start with. There were no great peaks or boulders, she had crossed no rivers, seen no trees distinctly scarred by lightning.
Nothing.
As she walked, Mercy began to ruminate on ways of dying in the jungle. Dehydration seemed unlikely in a rain forest, although she recognized the dangers of consuming water that had not been boiled. Starvation, on the other hand, was altogether possible. Before leaving Miami, she had read a book about surviving in the wild on nuts and roots, that kind of thing, but she remembered next to nothing of it. As for catching game, she knew that was a hopeless fantasy.
How long could a reasonably healthy person survive without food? A week? Two weeks? Mercy decided that it hardly mattered, since she’d likely die from some other cause before then. Snakebite. An accident that left her physically disabled and defenseless.
Sending up a silent prayer for guidance, she slogged on.
* * *
SÉRGIO RIBEIRO HEARD the crackling sounds of gunfire, guessing he was less than a mile southeast of the battle site. Fixing its direction in his mind, he stopped his column, the third squad, called the point man back, and pondered what he ought to do.
Oswaldo Ramos had instructed him to search the forest for the prisoners who had escaped and for the men who’d helped them, killing a dozen of his comrades in the process. Ribeiro had been pointed southeast of Condor Acampamento, but should he ignore the noise of battle as if nothing had occurred?
Soldiers who served o chefe walked a fine line between following their orders to the letter and displaying personal initiative. Whichever path he chose, Ribeiro knew there would be pitfalls. Leave the trail he’d been assigned to, and he risked returning to the compound empty-handed. Or, if he ignored the obvious—that someone else’s team had seemingly engaged the enemy—he might be branded a coward. Either course of action might incur his master’s wrath, depending on the ultimate result.
Ribeiro made his choice. If he did not investigate the shooting, if another of the teams was wiped out when he could have offered some assistance, the full weight of Braga’s punishment would no doubt fall on him. Conversely, if he reached the scene in time to help—or even to confirm a victory against their unknown enemies—Ribeiro might share in the glory of the victors. Come what may, once he determined what was happening, he could proceed as ordered on the course selected for him and complete his jungle search.
And so his column struck off toward the killing site, where silence had descended on the forest once again. Ribeiro didn’t know what he should make of that, if anything, but he could not help speculating, playing out scenarios as he followed his point man, breaking trail.
He had no doubt that one of the competing teams dispatched by Ramos had encountered opposition. That said, once the shooting stopped, it meant that they had either overcome their enemies or had themselves been slain. If it was victory, and living adversaries had been captured, then the mission was complete. If not...well, that was where Ribeiro’s problem lay.
If he pressed on to find Barbosa’s team or Lima’s column massacred, what then? His men could not drag twenty corpses through the forest, back to Braga’s compound. Save their weapons and equipment, certainly, but dead meat in the jungle decomposed in record time, drew swarms of biting flies and generally made life miserable for the living. Neither had they come equipped with tools for a mass burial, assuming they could dig and hack their way through tree roots using anything available in camp.
So, if he found another of the teams wiped out, the best that Ribeiro could offer o chefe was a stack of dead men’s guns and more bad news. Hardly the recipe for a reward.
Or he could try to make the best of it and press on from the slaughter cite, pick up the trail of the assassins and destroy them, hoping one or two would fall into his hands while they were still alive and fit for questioning. Avenge his fellow soldiers and bring home a prize for Braga.
Better.
In the rain forest, it was difficult to track the source of a sound. Depending on the echo factor, wind and humidity, a calling bird might be somewhere directly overhead or half a mile away. Gunshots, particularly, were deceptive, and a lone report could rarely be traced back to any source. This time, however, there’d been many shots, and Sérgio Ribeiro felt a fair degree of confidence that he was headed in the right direction. As to distance, though...
They had been marching for a half hour when the point man raised a shout, then doubled back to join the team. Ribeiro stood with rifle cocked and ready, watching as the man emerged from the shadows, noting that he did not come alone. Stumbling along beside him, clutched by one wrist, was a woman.
Ribeiro recognized the Anglo missionary’s wife and finally allowed himself a smile.
* * *
MACK BOLAN OVERTOOK the last two members of the Braga search team one by one, tracking the noise they made while fleeing through the jungle. They’d have had a better chance sticking together, maybe, but the sight of their companions dropping from Bolan’s silenced SIG rounds had panicked the survivors who were quick enough to bolt in different directions.
More time wasted, but he couldn’t let them get back to the compound and report.
With that in mind, his first priority was taking out the one who’d picked the most direct path back to Braga’s camp, churning along the trail his team had followed to the ambush site. There was no real finesse involved, just hot pursuit. The runner must have thought
he was clear, because he never looked back once and didn’t leave the trail to look for cover when he could have. With his own pulse pounding in his ears, his rasping breath, he likely never heard the Executioner behind him, running hard to close the gap.
Then, on a straightaway, Bolan had stopped and let a bullet close it for him, slamming home between the fleeing gunman’s shoulder blades around heart level, damage to the spine immediate and crippling. Bolan didn’t check the kill, knowing that even if he’d somehow missed the shooter’s heart and his aorta, Braga’s man was going nowhere. He’d bleed out in minutes.
He was done.
From there, Bolan had doubled back to find the other one, trusting forest sounds and silences to guide him. Where a human passed in haste, the birdcalls ceased and monkeys either shrieked or scattered. In this forest realm, he knew that nothing but a jaguar or a tapir matched a man in terms of size. Jaguars were silent on the hunt, and tapirs spent most of their time near water, so a noisy thrashing in the undergrowth close by the recent skirmish site meant a human running for his life, desperate to escape the kill zone.
The last guy made it interesting. He kept on running long enough for Bolan to pick up his trail and gain some ground, but then he stopped. The only one of the two who’d used his head, although he’d left it pretty late. In his defense, he hadn’t known he faced only one man, or which of the escaping soldiers the Executioner would follow first. The instinct for a long head start was logical enough, but he’d been too noisy in the process to escape notice completely.
Now it was a stalking game. Bolan had hunted silently, waiting for men in situations such as this before, on turf distinctly similar. He knew the signs to look for, could distinguish the aroma of a sweating human body from a forest quadruped that’s rolled in mud or had a shower in the rain. He knew a partial footprint when he saw one, and a scuff left by a boot on stone or gnarled tree roots. It wasn’t something you learned from books, but rather through experience, surviving in the wild when other humans meant to kill you and the only method of survival was to kill them first.
He found the last man huddled in the shadow of a giant tree, watching a narrow path he’d forged to get there. Bolan didn’t try to frighten him, just came around behind him with the SIG and ended it, a head shot fired from ten feet out that put the final member of the search team down and out.
He was definitely running late now, losing time he could not afford.
Scowling, he checked the GPS, confirmed his course, and struck off for the mission once again.
* * *
Várzea Grande, Mato Grosso
JACK GRIMALDI LIFTED off in his Bell UH-1 Iroquois right on schedule. He had agreed to be on station at the LZ by ten, an hour’s flight from Marechal Rondon International Airport. Bolan should be waiting with the people he wanted Grimaldi to clear out of the way, then Bolan could proceed with spoiling Joaquim Braga’s day.
Grimaldi had already touched base with the U.S. consulate in São Paulo, warning an attaché there that two Americans had met with trouble in the Mato Grosso and would need assistance—or some counseling about their options for the future. Names would have to wait, and Grimaldi was sketchy on the details. He couldn’t tell the lady he had spoken to exactly how he’d met the folks he would be bringing in or what the nature of his business was. When pressed, he’d cited national security and referred her to a cut-out number that would put her through to Stony Man but still remain untraceable. Whatever happened to the jungle stragglers after that was none of his concern.
None of Bolan’s, either, once the field of fire was clear.
Grimaldi’s second flight over the jungle in as many days was not relaxing. Even though he felt his best when flying, always had since learning in the army long ago, there were too many variables this time for his mind to be at ease. Bolan was off script with the current rescue mission, had already clashed with Braga’s men then disengaged to babysit the hostages. That wouldn’t stop the narco-trafficker from hunting Bolan, putting the master plan at risk.
Grimaldi knew the basics: Braga in his old friend’s crosshairs, with a major cocaine shipment flying in this afternoon. The strike was meant to be coordinated, taking out the cargo and the drug lord’s army in a single stroke. No minor operation, that. It was a challenge even for a fighting man of Bolan’s capability, but the distraction forced upon him by a pair of innocent civilians jeopardized the timeline.
Which meant jeopardizing Bolan’s life.
So, what else was new? Grimaldi had backed Bolan’s play on dozens of desperate missions, each with the potential for ending Bolan’s life. He’d never seen the big guy hesitate to help someone in need, even when doing so increased the odds against him. In another time and place, another war, that tendency had seen him nicknamed Sergeant Mercy, even while he had earned his designation as the Executioner.
Split personality? Not even close.
Bolan had always seemed to know exactly what he wanted out of life. He might not have welcomed it—back in the days when he’d lost his family to tragedy, embarked on the path to vengeance and then to a more noble pursuit—but once committed to the fight, he had not wavered.
Grimaldi called him a hero, the old-fashioned definition of that term, before it was applied to anyone who ever donned a uniform, whether or not they’d been tried by fire. These days, it seemed some people thought they were heroic just for showing up, taking an oath, then disappearing for the duration of a stint that cost them nothing but a little time. Better than sitting home and doing nothing, granted, but a hero, to Grimaldi, was a guy who charged the barricades, who threw himself on a grenade to save his friends.
A guy who risked it all, time and again, because he could.
Such men—and women, too, damn right—weren’t those who had joined the service or a law enforcement agency because they liked the uniform or craved some measure of authority over their fellow citizens. They didn’t do it for political advantage down the road, or for a pension that was guaranteed by Uncle Sam. They acted from a sense of honor, answering the call of duty, and they fought until they dropped.
And all of them, eventually, fell.
But not today. Not if Grimaldi could prevent it. Whether he was getting stragglers out of Bolan’s way or roaring in with rockets and a pair of miniguns ablaze, he had the big guy’s back. Today and in the future, till he finally went down in flames himself.
Missão Misericórdia
WEARY FROM repairing the mission, Abner kept working nonetheless. He had not come so far against all odds simply to lie down on his bunk and rest. There would be time enough for that when he’d put God’s house in perfect order—well, as perfect as he could, under the circumstances—and then he must locate the Mundurukus. If and when he found them, he would beg them to forgive him for the losses they had suffered, through his failure to protect them.
If forgiveness was beyond them, at least Abner would have tried.
He thought about Mercy, wondering if she was safe, and that thought in its turn embarrassed him. He’d lost—no, given up—the right to be concerned about her when he’d left in the middle of the night and struck off on his own. Most of his former friends in Florida would scorn him for it, blaming it on ego, but they didn’t understand the depth of his commitment to the Lord. A man who had the calling must be ready to surrender everything that tied him to the world, whether family, acquaintances or earthly goods might prevent him from following God’s path.
That path had led him here, and now all he could do was make the best of it.
Or die in the attempt.
Abner felt grubby, filthy, after all that he’d been through since yesterday. The kidnapping and rescue, followed by his night hike through the rain forest, and all the work he’d done to put the mission back in shape after the raid. He craved a bath, which meant another short hike to the nearby river where they—he, now—drew
the mission’s water. Satisfied that he could spare the time, and that the wash-up might improve his spirits when he went to find the Mundurukus, Abner found a bar of soap, one of their threadbare towels and left the mission walking southward toward the river.
He had never heard the natives call this river by a name. Perhaps it wasn’t large enough to rate one. Twenty feet or so in width, no more than chest-high at the deepest point he’d found so far, it wasn’t much as jungle rivers went. Thanks to the constant rain, of course, it never came up short of water. Boiling was required to make that water potable, but it was fine for bathing if he didn’t swallow any in the process.
What he had to watch for near the river were the jungle denizens who came to drink from it and those inhabiting its waters. Piranhas were a danger, as were caimans and electric eels—which, in fact, were not eels at all, but a species of air-breathing fish that could paralyze prey with a charge of some six hundred volts. Anacondas appeared in the river from time to time, but Abner worried more about the toothpick fish, or candiru, said to invade the urethras of nude swimmers.
Reasons enough to remain near the shore and indulge in a spit bath of sorts, taking care not to wade out too far. It was better than nothing, and this was the jungle. No one he was likely to meet would expect Abner to look or smell as if he’d just emerged from Bath & Body Works.
He stripped down on the riverbank, folded his towel over his clothes and took the soap with him as he waded knee-deep into the rushing stream. Crouching, he had begun to lather up his lower body when a voice called out behind him, “Hey, filho de puta! Are you cleaning up for us?”
* * *
WHEN BOLAN GOT to Mercy Mission, there was no one home. He looked around the place, calling for Abner Cronin and getting no response. The mission had sustained some damage in the raid by Braga’s soldiers, but it wasn’t terrible. More to the point, Bolan saw that someone had returned and tried to tidy up. The wood stove, freshly stocked and smoking, verified that assessment, as did traces of a recent meal—canned beans, he thought—remaining in a pot and bowl, as yet unwashed. Since there was only one bowl, with a single spoon, he didn’t need a CSI report to tell him Abner Cronin had come home.
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