“Perhaps a chance encounter.”
“I suppose that might explain the killing,” said Cardona. “But the rescue of your prisoners? It’s clear the woman must have been released, once she was liberated from your custody.”
“We’ll soon know all her secrets, I assure you.”
“I look forward to the demonstration. Please tell Señor Braga that I wish to speak with him, as soon as it’s convenient.”
“Certainly, senhor.”
Ramos was obviously glad to end the conversation and go about his business, frowning to himself. Cardona sensed a certain discontent in that one, which was not unusual among subordinates in his world. There were no altruists in the ranks of organized crime, no selfless givers dedicated to the betterment of others. Every man and woman in a given network was a greedy, grasping opportunist looking out for Number One. Their discontent could spawn betrayal and was something to be monitored, watched closely by the masters whom they envied most.
Cardona knew the risks of power, had eliminated several ambitious underlings who had schemed to exalt themselves over his dead body. Someday, he thought, one of them would be smart and secretive enough to bring him down, but not for some time yet. Meanwhile, he would enjoy his fortune and his freedom to the best of his ability.
His eyes strayed toward the shed where Braga had confined the female prisoner. A guard was posted at the padlocked door, but now Cardona wondered if he ought to speak with someone about getting in to see her privately, before the entertainment started. Watching a performance was one thing. Participating in it personally was a whole other experience.
Braga might agree to let him have a small preliminary taste. Call it a goodwill gesture or whatever. Was it not polite to serve an honored guest before the servants got their share?
The more he sat and thought about it, puffing his cigar, the more Cardona liked the images parading through his head. At last, he rose, stretched slowly, and went off to find his host.
* * *
BOLAN CIRCLED ONCE around the compound, saw no sign of Mercy Cronin and decided that meant nothing in itself. There were at least a dozen prefab structures where she could have been confined, invisible to anyone on the perimeter. Meanwhile, a group of Braga’s men were building something in the middle of the camp. He guessed it was a makeshift torture rack, since it appeared to have no other function.
It figured that was being thrown together for a spectacle.
The warrior’s painted face was deadpan, void of all emotion. If there’d been a nurse around to check his pulse and blood pressure, both readings would have fallen into the low-normal range. He was not agitated by the evidence of Braga’s plan for Mercy Cronin, or whoever else the rack might be designed for. Bolan did not get excited, in the sense of going into battle with a palpitating heart and sweaty palms.
Somewhere along the line—whether from birth, during his military basic training or when he had been baptized by fire in combat—Bolan had been purged of the oppressive worry that debilitated certain soldiers and civilians dropped into a crisis situation. Bottom line: he had been living on the razor’s edge of life and death for so long that it was normal for him. Relaxation was the problem, something that felt almost alien by contrast with his day-to-day existence.
Things to bear in mind: Grimaldi would be on his way by now, bringing the hellfire with him. If he suffered no mechanical calamities along the way, he should arrive around the same time as the shipment from Colombia, and at that point, all bets were off. If Bolan planned to locate Mercy Cronin and remove her from harm’s way, it would be wise to pull that off before the rockets started flying and the airborne miniguns began to rake the camp.
His problem, then, was evenly divided into two parts—find and fetch. He narrowed down the list of buildings where a prisoner might be confined, using the process of elimination. Mercy, he felt sure, would not be locked up in the mess hall, in the comm hut that bristled with antennas or inside the shed that obviously housed the compound’s generators. Bolan thought she might be in the bungalow he’d pegged as Braga’s private quarters and command post, but he was betting on a shed located on the north side of the compound, close to the latrines.
Why else padlock its door and place a rifleman outside?
Assuming he was right, the setup posed a series of potentially critical problems. First, he’d be making his move in broad daylight, visible to anybody in the compound. Second, taking out the sentry and the padlock, while not very complicated, would require some time and leave him physically exposed. Third, Mercy might be injured, therefore slowing him down. Finally, he’d have to manage that while under fire from hostiles, while Grimaldi filled the air with slugs and shrapnel, taking down as many Braga soldiers as he could and wiping out the cargo sent from Medellín.
All that and executing Joaquim Braga, too.
No problem.
Bolan made his own luck, for the most part, with a mix of preparation, training, personal experience and pure audacity. His enemies were often taken by surprise, believing no one could be dumb enough to take them on. A challenge, in and of itself, could shock someone who’d grown complacent at the pinnacle of power.
Joaquim Braga was in line for such a shock.
And if Mack Bolan had his way, that shock would be the drug lord’s last.
Chapter 11
Hugo Cardona had expected more resistance when he’d asked for time alone with Braga’s female prisoner. Perhaps Braga would want the woman for himself. He thought it might be a sticking point, even an opportunity to test Braga’s commitment to their budding partnership. However, Braga had simply shrugged, fished in a pocket of his trousers for the padlock key, and said, “You don’t have long. The shipment should arrive within the hour.”
It had almost been too easy, stealing just a little of the satisfaction Cardona had anticipated from coercing Braga into yielding something he valued. Now Braga might believe Cardona owed him a favor, or Braga could smirk about his request.
Can’t get a woman if she isn’t locked up in a shed. He almost heard the cackling laughter as he crossed the compound, feeling Braga’s soldiers watching him. They had to know where he was going, what he had in mind. Cardona almost felt embarrassed now, a feeling he had not experienced in many years. It made him angry, and the only person he could take it out on at that moment was the missionary’s wife.
So be it.
Braga might have spoiled his moment, but it need not be a total waste.
The sentry standing watch outside the shed stiffened a little when he saw Cardona coming, though no one would call it standing at attention. If the man were one of his, he would be punished for such disrespect, but that was not an option here. Instead, he simply showed the key and said, “Your boss says you ought to take a break.”
The watchman nodded, smirked at him and moved away. Such insolence! It was infuriating. He considered telling Braga of the soldier’s behavior, then decided that would only make him sound pathetic. Standing with Braga’s key inserted in the padlock, he considered taking out his sat phone, canceling the shipment, but that would have been ridiculous.
The price he was receiving for that cargo quickly changed his mind.
Cardona turned the key, removed the padlock from its hasp and stepped into the shed. It pleased him that the woman cringed away from him in fear, retreating to the farthest corner of her tiny cell. Looking around the place, he saw there was no furniture and that the floor was simply dirt. Cardona scowled at that. Was he supposed to take her on the ground, grinding the filthy soil into his clothes?
Damn it! What was this? Another insult?
He imagined Braga’s soldiers pointing, laughing at him, if he came out of the shed with dirt-stained knees and elbows, looking like some kind of barnyard animal. His face flushed hot with anger, focused on the woman who was huddled in her corner,
near a bucket that appeared to be the small shed’s only furniture. Cardona smelled its contents, thinking she might hurl it at him if he started to approach her.
He would have to kill her then, avenging the indignity—but he would still emerge a filthy, stinking mess, on top of ruining the show Braga had planned to entertain his troops.
Feeling absurd and frustrated, he kept his distance from the woman, speaking in a soft voice as he told her what awaited outside. The chains and hooks, the other tools that Braga had arranged for her. It pleased him when she started weeping, silently at first, then with her shoulders heaving as she sobbed.
This wasn’t what he’d come for, but it helped restore a measure of his confidence. He still possessed the power to intimidate, to terrify. Braga should keep that fact in mind before he tried to pull another joke at Cardona’s expense. The only men who’d ever laughed at him were dead.
And they had not died laughing.
* * *
MACK BOLAN WATCHED the swarthy well-dressed man approach the padlocked hut, say something to the guard that made him leave, then key the lock and slip inside. He wasn’t close enough to eavesdrop, but would hear it well enough if Mercy started screaming from the shed—and then what? He was waiting for the cargo chopper, waiting for Grimaldi, waiting for the proper time to make his move.
Waiting.
It was a soldier’s hardest job, both mentally and physically demanding. As a Special Forces sniper, he had learned to wait for hours, even days, to frame the perfect shot. Lying immobile while it rained, while insects buzzed and bit, while hostile troops passed by within arm’s length, oblivious to death among them. While a vulnerable woman was at the mercy of this stranger.
Bolan wasn’t here to save a solitary woman, but to face an army, take them down and send a multimillion-dollar cocaine shipment up in smoke. And yet...
The visitor to Mercy’s left just nine minutes after he’d gone in. Bolan examined him, saw nothing that would indicate he’d been in any kind of struggle. He secured the padlock, whistled for the sentry and said something to him as the guard returned that made the lookout’s face go slack.
Intimidation games, but that meant nothing to the Executioner. The cargo flight from Medellín was due within the hour. Bolan couldn’t watch the sky, thanks to the jungle canopy that loomed above him, but he took for granted that he’d hear the chopper coming. That one and Grimaldi’s, too. Bolan would alert Grimaldi via sat phone when the cocaine bird arrived, trusting that his wingman would be nearby and waiting to swoop in when he received the signal. If Grimaldi was somehow stalled or diverted, it would be his job to call, and Bolan would fall back onto plan B.
Same as plan A, in fact, except without the air support. One man against an army, seventy or eighty strong, with nothing but surprise and guts to carry the offensive.
It wouldn’t be the first time he had charged the gates of Hell alone.
With any luck, it wouldn’t be the last.
* * *
JACK GRIMALDI WASN’T stalled, wasn’t diverted. He was right on time and roughly halfway to his target, nearly skimming treetop level as he held the Huey around three hundred feet. Rain from a virtually clear sky splashed his chopper’s windshield, blowing back in long streaks as Grimaldi cruised along, clocking 125 miles per hour on the whirlybird’s airspeed indicator. Birds banked and wheeled out of his path like brightly colored pieces of confetti in a windstorm.
On the vacant copilot’s seat to his left, Grimaldi’s sat phone lay silent. He hoped it would stay that way, no further setbacks to delay completion of the mission that was swiftly drawing to a close. Another hour, give or take, and he’d be in the thick of it with Bolan, ripping into Joaquim Braga’s troops and burning down his house.
Or not.
A last-minute abort was always possible, though Grimaldi couldn’t recall Bolan pulling the plug on any operation of this size and scale. Mack was a gung-ho warrior of the old school, dedicated to the proposition that a battle, once begun, must be continued to the bitter end. That meant war to the knife, and knife to the hilt. No quarter, no surrender.
They were up against a good-size paramilitary force this time, on par with Los Zetas or La Línea in Mexico’s ongoing drug war. Braga’s private army didn’t get the same publicity up north, chiefly because its mayhem was thus far confined to Brazil and hadn’t invaded the States, but his men were no less deadly than the Mexican practitioners or Colombia’s dreaded Black Eagles.
Long odds, skilled enemies. What Bolan had on his side was experience, surprise and a heapin’ helping of old-fashioned shock and awe.
And Jack Grimaldi.
The last thing Joaquim Braga would expect, once the battle had been joined, was a literal bolt from the blue. By the time Grimaldi had expended fourteen rockets and thousands of rounds of 7.62 mm NATO ammunition on the drug lord’s camp, the last man standing ought to be Mack Bolan.
And if not....
Then Grimaldi would take the message home: mission accomplished, at a cost.
He pushed that image out of his mind and concentrated on the chopper’s instrument panel, double-checking altitude and airspeed, manifold pressure for the throttle setting, RPMs on the dual tachometer, compass and GPS. It helped distract him from the image of his old friend lying dead, and it reassured him that he hadn’t strayed off course.
When the smoke cleared, and he flew back to Várzea Grande, Grimaldi hoped he would have two reasonably healthy passengers. But he would settle for the one if it was Bolan, having lived to fight another day. That would be victory enough to satisfy Grimaldi.
But he was looking forward to seeing the Braga compound in flames.
In fact, he thought, it couldn’t happen to a more deserving guy.
* * *
THAT COULD HAVE been worse, Mercy thought, then added silently, it will get worse.
She had seen her visitor with Joaquim Braga when her kidnappers had delivered her to Braga’s camp. He’d taken pleasure in describing what lay in store for her, the tortures she would suffer soon, and while she could not stop herself from weeping, Mercy knew she’d gotten off easy.
For now.
She guessed that her tormentor was one of those people her mother-in-law called a “prevert,” perhaps unable to perform with women in the flesh and reduced to terrifying them with words and images of mayhem. Very possibly a sadist, though he had not laid a hand on her, thank God. It was a brief reprieve, perhaps, but it was still better than nothing.
It gave Mercy a bit more time to pray.
She had revised her message to the Lord, stopped asking Him to rescue her. It had begun to sound repetitive and whiny, even selfish, when she knew so many others must be suffering and dying hideously all around the world. Instead, she’d simply started asking Him for strength to bear whatever happened next without abandoning her faith. If she could just hold on to that, until He granted her the sweet release of death...
But Mercy Cronin’s faith had taken quite a beating in the past twelve hours or so. It wasn’t being kidnapped that dismayed her really, since she’d known her mission to the Amazon was dangerous on many levels. No. It had been Abner’s violation of her trust, his marriage vows that had turned her small world upside down and broke her heart. Wherever he was now, she hoped that he would feel some measure of her loneliness, her pain when it began in earnest, then a flush of guilt enveloped her, making her beg the Lord’s forgiveness once again.
It was a vicious cycle, when she thought about it. God supposedly gave humans their free will, then added guilt to make them suffer for it and demanded they constantly apologize, on pain of an eternal roasting in the fires of Hell. She thought there was a disconnect in logic somewhere, in the midst of that theology, but even thinking of it felt like blasphemy.
Another sin. Terrific.
Mercy had not eate
n since she’d finished off the MRE Matt Cooper had given her before dawn, and now she felt her stomach rumbling, wondered if the guard outside could hear it growling. Braga obviously wouldn’t waste good food on someone he planned to kill, so she’d die hungry—which, she supposed, would be the least of it.
What had become of Matthew Cooper?
Mercy had no idea if he’d survived the jungle shootout that had sent her running straight into the arms of her abductors. If he had, there was no reason to suppose he could find her, or he would even try.
Unless...
She thought his cryptic mission in the Mato Grosso had something to do with Joaquim Braga. Cooper was clearly not a law enforcement agent in the normal sense; they came with badges and in large numbers, with their warrants, flashing lights and sirens. Nor was he a spy, as she had imagined one, sneaking around and watching people, taking pains not to alarm them.
She supposed he was some kind of soldier. Not a Christian soldier, as the hymn described, but he was clearly marching as to war.
In fact, the battle had been joined.
She drew a certain satisfaction from the thought that after she was dead and gone, Cooper might dispose of Braga and the others. Once again, she felt a pang of guilt—hate was the same as murder in God’s eyes—but she defiantly refused to beg forgiveness on that score. All else was taken from her, but she could cling to her rage.
So, how much longer did she have? From what she had heard outside, there was an almost festive mood in the camp. She guessed that Braga and his animals were looking forward to her torture and debasement. Mercy hoped that she would disappoint them, but she knew that she’d be screaming when the time came.
Miserable and alone, she bit her lip and tried to hold the tears at bay.
* * *
“TWELVE MINUTES,” SAID Nadin Deliz.
Cezar Beltrán glanced at his copilot and nodded. They were right on time, as usual.
Hugo Cardona hated disappointments.
The Sikorsky UH-60 BLACK HAWK helicopter was part of Cardona’s air fleet, a U.S. military surplus item he had obtained from the Colombian Air Force. It cruised at 173 miles per hour, over a ferry range of 1,380 miles, and would need fuel after unloading its illegal cargo, before starting back across the border on its way to Medellín. It would be lighter then, of course, after it dropped Cardona’s cocaine at its destination.
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