Blood Vortex

by Don Pendleton

  Putting thoughts into action, Geller scuttled from her hiding place behind an ornamental hedge of juniper, Lotar Kobra knife in hand, her M4A1 carbine dangling from its nylon sling across her chest. She reached the nearest vehicle—a Kia Telluride—and slipped into the slot between it and the SUV next-door, a Mazda CX-9.

  Her knife hand lashed out like a piston: stab, release and then stab again. Within a span of forty seconds, she heard air hiss from the Kia’s ruptured right-hand tires, immediately followed by two on the Mazda’s left-hand side. Duck-walking to the next two rides in line, a Subaru Ascent and Chevrolet Traverse, she did the same again—first to her right, then her left—before she paused to scan the parking lot again.

  Still with no sentries visible.

  And so it went, continuing until her arm was tired, her palm chafed by the knife’s grip, until all fifteen vehicles were slouched to one side or the other and the parking lot resounded with a hissing reminiscent of an agitated serpent’s den.

  When she was done, Geller was confident that no guests from Las Palmas or its staff would manage to escape on wheels. At most, civilian vehicles packed one spare tire apiece, and she could double back to watch them just in case, to bring hopeful repairmen under fire.

  In the meantime, Geller wasn’t finished yet. Las Palmas had a second parking lot on the southwest, where she looked forward to repeating her performance, locking down the one-time luxury resort and forcing any fugitives to flee on foot, or in the helicopter that had recently touched down.

  Where was Cooper and what was he doing now?

  Geller could not answer that without abandoning her task. While she hoped that he was still alive, still in one piece and fighting, he had passed beyond the sphere of her protection. If they met again, so be it.

  And if not, she would press on alone until the job was done or she died trying to complete it.

  Either way, she knew she would have done her level best.

  * * *

  Deputy Minister Wilmer Graffe waited to hear a dial tone on his cell phone, but the silent wedge of plastic mocked him. Peering at its lighted screen, he saw a red No Service warning in the upper right-hand corner.

  “Shit!” Graffe snarled. He then turned to face his aide-de-camp, saying, “Oscar, try yours.”

  Sambrano did as he was told, frowned at his own device, and said, “Nothing, sir. I’m sorry.”

  “Never mind that,” Graffe scolded him. “I need to reach Caracas now. Immediately.”

  “Every suite should have a telephone, sir,” Sambrano suggested.

  Searching for Pérez, Graffe called out to him. “Colonel, I need a land line. Do you have the keys to any of these suites?”

  Graffe took note of the colonel’s peeved expression as he reached into one of his pockets and retrieved what seemed to be a plastic credit card. Pérez handed the card, emblazoned with the Las Palmas logo, to Graffe. “It’s a copy of the master key card,” he told him. “Try whichever suite you choose, unless it’s occupied. Our guests may not receive an unexpected visitor with open arms.”

  Withholding thanks, Graffe received the card and led Sambrano, followed by their bodyguards, to try the nearest numbered door. It opened easily, two of the soldiers stepping in ahead of Graffe and his aide, turning on lights, checking the several interior rooms before one of them told him all was clear.

  Inside the suite, Graffe immediately saw a telephone located on an end table beside an overstuffed sofa. He crossed to it, raised the handset and listened for a dial tone—and again, got nothing but dead air.

  “Damn it all to hell!” Graffe cursed. “This one is dead, as well.”

  “What can we do, sir?” Sambrano asked in a wheedling tone.

  It came to Graffe then. “The helicopter, Oscar,” he said. “Its radio won’t be affected by whatever’s tying up the phones.”

  “Brilliant, sir!” At least Sambrano was dependable in always kissing ass.

  “Come with me, all of you.” Graffe was on the move and speaking to his lackeys as he passed them, headed for the door. “We have no time to waste!”

  * * *

  Taking out the phones around Las Palmas was a relatively simple exercise. First, Bolan found the master junction box for landlines feeding in and out of the resort and put three muffled .40-caliber rounds where they would do their worst, without the damage being reparable by the resort’s handyman in residence.

  The cell phones were a little trickier, but nothing Bolan couldn’t handle on his own. The dedicated cell site for Las Palmas was a twenty-foot-tall tower fitted with directional antennas, and he’d finished off the quiet Glock’s first magazine, the rounds effectively dismantling the various components that made wireless chitchat possible.

  That left his adversaries’ only medium of contact with the outside world—the SEBIN Eurocopter’s two-way radio—as Bolan had intended from the moment the AS532 whirlybird touched down. He didn’t know exactly who it had delivered, or from where, but logic told him one of the latecomers had to be the present man in charge.

  That would not sit well with whomever he’d replaced, a harsh vote of no confidence to say the least. And when the commander’s stand-in tried to reach his boss, the newbie would have no choice but to reveal himself and use the chopper’s squawk box.

  With any luck, that would occur sooner than later.

  Bolan’s mind had barely formed that thought when he saw six men exiting the east side of Las Palmas, moving toward the chopper resting on its makeshift helipad. Four of the men crossing his line of fire were clearly grunts, decked out for combat, while the other two wore tailored business suits. Of those, the one out front was taller, older, with an attitude that telegraphed aggression from his scowl down to the rapid strides that carried him along.

  Bolan was ready for them, with a rifle grenade affixed to his AUG’s muzzle and a fresh magazine of thirty 5.56 mm rounds seated in place. He did not open fire at once, but waited in a bed of mulch, kneeling among imported looming palmyra palms. The Eurocopter stood some fifty feet away, an easy shot with the STANAG grenade and any rifle rounds that followed it. Now, all they had to do was put the man in charge aboard and Bolan was prepared to strike.

  It took another minute for the boss suit to climb up into the cockpit, settle in the pilot’s seat, and start to place his call. Instead of letting him make contact, Bolan sighted through his AUG’s telescopic sight, framing the honcho’s anxious face through the windscreen before he squeezed the Steyr’s trigger and his missile flew downrange.

  Bolan lost sight of his main target as a fireball erupted from the aircraft’s cockpit, spewing shattered pieces of acrylic and twisted metal fragments far and wide. One sheared-off rotor tip decapitated Suit No. 2 with the efficiency of a guillotine’s blade, leaving his headless corpse standing upright for perhaps three seconds, while its stub of neck produced a crimson geyser.

  By the time that guy collapsed into a lake of burning helicopter fuel, the four soldiers assigned to keep him and his boss alive were firing aimless automatic bursts into the night, seeking a target while their bullets never came within a yard of Bolan’s hiding place. It was a relatively simple task to take them down. Short Steyr bursts toppled each man in turn, none rising once he fell.

  As stillness fell over the parking lot, aside from crackling flames, Bolan heard voices closing on him from somewhere inside the maze that was Las Palmas. He was up and moving as the helicopter’s fuel tanks detonated like a string of giant firecrackers. Those tanks were meant to be self-sealing, fire-retardant in a crash, but when an HE round ripped through the chopper’s fuselage, all bets were off.

  Bolan departed from that spreading sea of flames without a backward glance and disappeared into the night.

  * * *

  “Holy Mary, Mother of God!”

  Scarcely aware that he had spoken, Colonel Pérez scanned the blazing helicopter
wreckage strewed across the parking lot, counting at least three bodies crisping as the fire spread. He had difficulty breathing with the stench of burning aviation fuel scalding his throat and sinuses.

  Beside him, Major Khosa gaped in horror at the spectacle laid out before them, his lips moving silently, as if he were a grounded fish, drowning in open air. Their guards moved restlessly, staring in all directions simultaneously, weapons tracking but discovering no targets.

  Finally, the colonel’s mind focused upon a single thought: Deputy Minister Graffe was dead, apparently reduced to ashes with his aide and their “elite” defenders from the 52nd Jungle Infantry Brigade.

  Worse, perhaps, than the pervasive reek of fuel was the overwhelming smell of roasted human flesh.

  Am I deranged, Pérez wondered, because it smells so much like grilled beef?

  He turned away from that tableau of death, facing his Pakistani cohost for the conference, which was now well and truly scuttled. “We must gather the surviving delegates and leave this place,” he said. “Take half of the remaining guards and start to round them up. You take the north and west wings, while I sweep the east and south.”

  “But, Colonel—”

  “This is no time for debate, Major,” Pérez said, cutting short whatever protest Khosa had intended. “Every moment we delay means more lives lost and painful consequences for our nations.”

  “As you wish, Colonel,” Khosa answered, although his tone and grim expression made Pérez question—not for the first time—whether he could trust the Pakistani major.

  Or, in fact, could he trust anyone at all?

  Chapter Twelve

  North Wing of Las Palmas

  Major Khosa had little faith, if any, in Colonel Pérez’s plan for hastily evacuating delegates from the aborted gathering, but he had gone along with it since he had no armed ISI agents to back him up and did not wish to find himself among the dead.

  Better to play along as far as possible and pray to Allah that he could explain the failure of his mission when—or if—he got home to Islamabad.

  Already, he had managed to collect a few more of Pérez’s soldiers, one of them a pallid wreck who had survived a shoulder wound—so far—but lost his rifle in the process, blood still leaking from the bullet hole he’d crudely covered with a sanitary napkin and some duct tape.

  Barely able to describe what had befallen him, the hapless guard could only say that he had lost four comrades in a skirmish with two strangers, one of them a woman, if his weak, disjointed narrative was even credible.

  Granted, his mention of a female fighter meshed with what Khosa had heard from Maiquetía early that day, describing both a man and woman who had slain two Filipino delegates before escaping. But what—if anything—did that prove?

  Khosa, for his part, no longer cared.

  Moving along the north wing’s major walkway, he allowed four SEBIN riflemen to go ahead of him, in case they were ambushed. At this point, nothing seemed impossible or too outlandish to occur.

  Khosa had no bullhorn for communicating with the foreign delegates hiding behind locked doors but compensated for that by shouting as he moved along, his throat already feeling strained and sore from the unusual exertion.

  No one had responded yet, but he dared not abandon the task foisted on him by Colonel Pérez. Khosa could feel the SEBIN soldiers watching him, trying to measure his sincerity and curry favor with their boss by airing any evidence of sloth or frailty on the major’s part.

  Khosa knew some of the suites they passed were occupied—or should have been—by delegates to the convention, but no answer issued from them as he passed by, calling for anyone who heard him to respond. Perhaps some of the terrorists had fled from their assigned rooms, seeking shelter elsewhere, or they might be roaming aimlessly around Las Palmas, seeking some way to escape.

  That much, he realized, would likely prove to be impossible.

  It startled Khosa when one of his escorts said, “That curtain moved!”

  Khosa followed the soldier’s pointing finger and discovered it was true. One of the drapes blocking his view inside suite 115 was falling back in place, clearly released by someone standing on the other side.

  Khosa stopped short, facing the numbered door and windows flanking it, as he called out, “Attention! If you hear and understand me, it’s important that you join us now in order to escape!”

  Suite 115

  Boushra Damari swore in Arabic. “The bastard caught me watching him.”

  “I warned you,” his companion, Ifrah Tako, said.

  “This is no time for gloating,” Damari told him. “We must do something.”

  “But what?” Tako replied.

  The delegates from al-Shabaab—also known as the Movement of Striving Youth—had been discussing various alternatives before they’d heard the Pakistani cohost of their ruined conference shouting for their attention from the outer walkway, but they had reached no conclusion yet.

  The truth be told, neither Damari nor his roommate would qualify as “youths” by any normal standard, their respective ages being twenty-eight and twenty-five. Both spoke Arabic, Italian and English, and were seasoned fighters of al-Shabaab. Both had managed to survive the civil wars in their respective homelands while sustaining only minor wounds, and had been honored by their leader, Sheikh Ahmed Umar Abu Ubaidah, by being appointed delegates to a conference halfway around the world on what now seemed to be a fool’s errand.

  “Major Khosa claims he wishes to protect us,” Damari said. “He might help us to escape this trap.”

  “Or that might be a lie to overcome our justified suspicion of him,” Tako replied.

  “Would you resist them, then?” Damari asked.

  They had only two pistols—one Glock and a Browning Hi-Power—with two spare magazines for each. Outside, a dozen men, most armed with automatic rifles, had them penned inside the suite that had become their prison cell.

  Tako responded with a question of his own. “What would Sheikh Ahmed wish for us to do?”

  “Return alive, I think,” Damari said, “and give him our report.”

  “And if that is not possible, Boushra?”

  “Bring glory to the name of al-Shabaab.”

  “You have your answer then,” Tako replied.

  “So be it.”

  Both men drew their pistols, cocked them, and moved up to stand in front of the suite’s broad windows, kneeling to find cover, although limited, before they opened fire on Major Khosa and his men below.

  Damari knew their chances of surviving the lopsided siege were nil, but pride and faith in Allah would not let him play a coward’s role in the impending showdown.

  Besides, there was no back door to their suite, no way at all of slipping out unseen.

  He would prefer a hero’s death in any case, but worried that no one at home would ever learn the truth about his final moments with Tako, fighting against such hopeless odds.

  No matter, he decided. Allah knows and He will not forget.

  Northwest Parking Lot

  After he blitzed the Eurocopter and wiped out the six men who’d approached it, Bolan retraced his steps, dodging a three-man SEBIN squad that seemed disoriented, lost despite the helpful signs posted throughout Las Palmas, indicating how to reach various wings, administrative buildings, the gymnasium, and so on.

  Once that trio passed him, Bolan proceeded toward the parking lot where he intended to destroy the SEBIN motor pool, stranding the troops and their invited guests within the former luxury resort that had become a killing ground.

  When he was done with that, there would be no escape for them except through death or rushing blind into the forest that surrounded Las Palmas, a playground for assorted predators and creeping things that turned the countryside into a death trap of its own.

  He reached the parking lot,
surveyed the vehicles neatly arranged there, and required another moment to determine what was out of place. Each vehicle had two flat tires, some on their left side, with others listing to the right. Someone undoubtedly had crept among the cars and rendered each in turn unfit for an escape from Las Palmas.

  And Bolan had no doubt that someone was Adira Geller.

  On the one hand, he was relieved to know she’d managed to escape from the resort’s north wing, after his last glimpse of her entering a second-story suite. There’d been no way for Bolan to connect with her after he’d dropped the SEBIN soldiers who’d had ambushed them, and it had nagged at Bolan’s mind since then, fearing that she’d been trapped and slain or captured.

  Now, knowing that she was still alive and fighting, he could only wonder where she was and hope their paths might cross again.

  If not, Adira Geller wouldn’t be the first comrade in arms he’d lost, nor would she likely be the last.

  And while they barely knew each other, he would miss her all the same.

  Meanwhile, what should be next on his list, now that she’d beat him to the punch on cutting off a motorized escape by land for any of their targets?

  That was no great mystery. Most of his war against a wide range of malignant predators came down to one concept.

  Search and destroy.

  Unlike some battles, where he’d had a city, county, or an even larger area to scour in his hunt for enemies, Las Palmas was a relatively compact target. Bolan knew that it was possible he’d miss some targets as they’d slipped away on foot into the wilderness, and he accepted that. For all intents and purposes, his overriding goal had already been achieved—breaking up the terrorist confab the Venezuelan president had arranged, before its delegates had managed more than dinner following a meet-and-greet.

  He could exfiltrate now, count the job as finished, but it ran against his grain to let it go at that.