Predator Paradise

Fools.

They had long since given up attempting airdrops, or trekking to the villages themselves, on foot or by truck, since a few relief workers had mysteriously vanished.

It occurred to him, the thought dredging up more paranoia, that perhaps this time they had brought along a few guns to test his will. If that happened, it would prove no contest at all. If they made demands at gunpoint, they were all dead, shot on sight, and he would simply load the trucks with the cargo, burn the bodies, destroy the plane, take his chances. This was Somalia, after all, and only a massive invading army would dare attempt to…

He was out of his jeep, standing his ground, ordering his clansmen to move up on the plane when the C-130 swung around, ramp lowering, the bay out of view. Strange, he thought, since the previous attempts were done in full view of the ramp coming down. It could have been paranoia, anxiety getting the better of him, but something felt terribly wrong all of a sudden. Dust in his face, he found himself easing back toward his jeep. It was a faint and distant rattle, buzzing in his head, but a chatter that blew the lid on his fear.

Dugula knew the sound of autofire when he heard it.

CHAPTER TWO

Collins wished he could see Dugula’s face, the horrifying reality that this wasn’t the usual candy raid doing far more than just ruining the warlord’s day. He could well imagine Dugula right then, nuts going numb, knifing chest pains, pasta legs, a scream of outrage no one but himself could hear, much less cared to, the whole shrieking nine yards of terror and confusion over why and who had come to yank his ticket. It was a fleeting impulse, wanting to be there, grinning in the guy’s face of fear, but any gloating, Collins knew, was on hold.

Collins had a full shooting gallery before him to contend with. Getting hands on the Kewpie doll was the ultimate prize, but since the moment at hand was no guaranteed straight flush, Dugula had to keep.

The Cobra leader flamed away with his M-16, Mamba on the starboard side, likewise clamping down with autofire on the stunned opposition. So far they were on the money, Collins thought, shock appearing on the verge of winning the opening round, but the going would get a lot tougher once they were off the ramp. Figure ten had ventured up the ramp, AKs not even up and out, their faces laughing, maybe a private joke bandied about between them in their native tongue, but the Somali thugs lost all arrogant composure when the first few rounds began chopping into their ranks. White caftans were shredded to red ruins before they were even aware they were chewed and screwed, Collins and Mamba sweeping long bursts, port to starboard and back. Somalis tumbled, screamed, sailed down the ramp, a whirling dervish or two losing a sandal in midflight.

“Go!” Collins roared, but he heard engines revving already, pedal to the metal, the Hummers streaking away from their starting line, amidships.

The Hummer known as Thunder Three was a blur in Collins’s eye. Holding back on the trigger of his assault rifle, he gutted another Somali with a short burst. Diamondback, he saw, manning the M-60, cut loose with the heavy-metal thunder. Two heartbeats’ worth of pounding of 7.62 mm lead erased the terror on the face of a goon peeking over ramp, head erupting, the shattered crimson eggshell gone with the vanishing corpse. Thunder Four was right on their bumper, the point Hummer, Collins saw, about to bulldoze through a bloody scarecrow rising on the lip of the ramp, his arms shooting up as if they were supposed to slam on the brakes or veer around him. There was a thud on impact, Collins catching the sound of bones cracking like matchsticks, the scream flying away with the ramp kill.

One, two, and both Hummers were airborne, tires slamming to earth a moment later at the end of the ramp, his drivers straightening next, cutting the wheels hard, whipping around and gone to charge into what Collins figured was fifty percent of what was left of Dugula’s shooters. According to intel, there were twenty-plus more Somali gunmen, either moving from the command hut or sitting tight, depending on Dugula’s mood, but those numbers would be handled, he hoped, by his Apache and the colonel.

Collins was picking up the pace, Mamba on the march, both of them feeding fresh clips to their M-16s when the Cobra leader sighted on a downed Somali. He was dragging himself through the pooling blood on his elbows, toward the edge of the ramp, head cocked. The spurting hole in the middle of his back, the way he slithered ahead, legs limp weight, told Collins he’d taken one through the spine. Paralysis below the waist would prove the least of his woes; Collins unable to understand Somali but believed he caught the gist of it. Sounded like the guy wanted mercy, he thought, or was trying to tell him this was all some hideous mistake. Whoever he was, Collins knew he wasn’t one of the catches of the day.

“Welcome to the big leagues, son,” Collins told him, then drilled a 3-round burst into his face.

Halfway down the ramp, Collins leaped, landing on hard-packed earth, M-16 searching out fresh blood off to the port side of the Hercules. The trick now, he knew, would be taking Dugula and a few top lieutenants alive. He already had that figured out beforehand, though, his hand ready to unleather the tranquilizer gun on his right hip just as soon as he made eyeball confirmation. The dicey part would be getting close enough to drop Dugula and trophies in the sleeping bag. As for his other commandos, the running scheme was to encircle them before they could bolt. Thunders One and Two would race in from the north, a sweeping left hook to their flank. It was a tactical page, he thought with a moment’s pride, ripped straight out of Genghis Khan’s war book. If one of his troops got close enough to Dugula first, they were ordered to lob a canister his way, where a cloud of barbituate-laced gas would disperse.

Collins saw three, then four technicals already in flight, dust billowing around the vehicles as they reversed away from the C-130, Thunders Three and Four charging to outflank them. Collins took a moment to watch the action.

Autofire chattered around the technicals, two vehicles sitting, shooters steeled to go to the mat, two more murderous goon squads on wheels rolling to break out, but the noose was tightening, he saw. Screams of pain lanced out of all that swirling dust, but Collins felt grim satisfaction it was nearly a lock. Still, he saw two technicals break out of the ring, racing across the plain. His commandos were alternating bursts between shooting gunmen out of their technicals and blasting out tires.

He was grinning to himself, his Black Hawks soaring overhead to run down the rabbits, the Apache strafing the troops and transports at the command post to the northeast when he found only one of his ground Hummers barreling in from the wadi.

“What the—?”

The M-60 gunner on that rig—Lionteeth—told him the colonel was engaged somewhere with Somali gunmen. Or had he broken off, purposely changed their role on his own command? If so, why?

Scouting the plain, Collins spotted the other Hummer. Thunder One was rolling slow, nearly creeping toward the fleeing Somalis. The Cobra team leader figured out the strategy. A lone figure peeled off from the Hummer, M-16 blazing at the profiteers who were squirming from an overturned transport rig, an APC near them demolished, swathed in leaping flames, treated, he reckoned, to a direct hit from the Apache’s Hellfire missile.

Wild Card was doing his thing, Collins thought, and cursed. So he had a prima donna on the team, the guy might as well have told him to kiss his ass, he’d do it his way.

A few choice words, assuming the colonel survived, had to wait as Collins drew a bead on a Somali gunman still standing in the dust, and drilled a burst into his chest.

THE EXECUTIONER sensed Asp and Python weren’t happy about being ordered to change the game plan right before the shooting started, but they did as ordered. The shift in strategy, at least on his part, had one goal in mind. Cutting off any retreat on foot, he knew, was a dicier proposition than simply allowing the Black Hawks and Apache to blow the enemy off the plain. Say the warbirds ground up the Somalis with lead and Hellfires from above, and any capture of Dugula was all but lost. If their job was to cuff and stuff the world’s most wanted international terror mongers, then anything short of bringing Dugula and top henchmen to justice spelled mission failure.

Bolan left the Apache to its Hellfire-and-chain-gun demolition. The command post, with any radar and tracking goodies, was blown away by the warbird, six or so Somalis scythed by 30 mm doom as they were bolting from the flying rubble. Before that round of destruction, the warbird had plowed a missile into one of the transport trucks, dead ahead to Bolan’s twelve, wreckage spewing out of the fireball bowling another canvas-covered transport onto its side.

The soldier cut a wide berth around the hungry flames and oily smoke, his M-16 leading the way, the stink of burning diesel fuel and toasted flesh swelling the air, grinding into his senses as he closed on the cries of panic. His vector, if he nailed the enemy before him in seconds flat, would land him directly in the path of two technicals charging away from the ring of Cobra lead. It was a dust bowl near the C-130’s nose, armed combatants blazing away, he saw, commandos then chasing down Somalis who had decided it was better to flee than stand and fight. It was hard for the soldier to tell which was which and who was who, but a split-second assessment of the numbers of bodies flying from technicals signaled to him the Somalis were clutching the short end of the stick.

Maybe ten Somalis, he viewed, came crawling or staggering out of the bed of their dumped transport. They were lurching to their feet, punch-drunk from the hard topple, AKs jerking in different directions, uncertain where the next immediate threat would rear up.

Bolan took care of their confusion, finger caressing the M-203’s trigger. He dumped the 40 mm fragmentation bomb into their ranks—no point in wasting precious seconds when the prize was maybe on the fly. The blast ripped out the heart of the pack, torn figures kicked in separate directions. Three hardmen with the quickest feet and the most luck, knocked down by the concussive force but clearing the fireball and shock waves, scurried to get back in action. The Executioner tagged the trio with a raking burst of autofire, left to right and back, bodies flung into tight corkscrews, dropping. Two of the warlord’s goons then popped into the soldier’s gun sights on the other side of the downed transport, running for the oncoming technicals, arms flapping as if they were hailing a cab.

Bolan shot them both up the back, flinging them ahead, their arms windmilling, faces hammering down with such force their legs flew up. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Asp charging the Hummer at a group of Somalis pouring AK-47 autofire from the bed of a technical, Python opting to help hose down those survivors still in the fight with his M-16.

Bolan cut his path hard and fast toward the racing technical, drawing target acquisition on three gunmen in the jeep’s bed. Rotor wash from the Black Hawks, hovering thirty yards behind, kicked up a cyclone of grit and dust, obscuring confirmation until the technical was nearly on top of the warrior.

But Bolan pinned down their man, Dugula’s face of terror and outrage framed from the shotgun seat of the technical, the soldier’s attention shifting back to the M-60 gunner who swiveled the machine gun in his direction. There was a moment’s hesitation from the hardman on the M-60, a spray of bullets flying wild past the soldier, before he hit him with a burst of 5.56 mm tumblers and sent him flying. Two Cobra Hummers then burst out of the dust storm, an M-60 roaring, other Cobra commandos racing on foot ahead to help lay waste to the pack of Somalis in the trailing rig.

The Executioner focused on the big catch charging his way.

Dugula, Bolan glimpsed, was flailing his arms, raging at his driver, when he hit the M-16’s trigger. The windshield imploded, a crimson halo where the wheelman had sat bearing grim testament that Dugula was the last passenger. The Executioner sidled away from the unmanned jeep, one last Somali launched from the bed of Dugula’s getaway, then he blew out the port tires with a long burst of autofire. He let it surge past, saw Dugula’s eyes bugging out, mouth vented, a silent scream lost to the din of autofire from some point downrange. Deflated tread slammed down into a rut, and the jeep shot up and over a jagged rip in the land, sailing a few yards, before it flipped onto its side.

THE WORLD WAS a shattered hell of noise, foul smells and choking dust from where he lay, slumped against the door, spitting flecks of blood and glass chips from his lips. Dugula heard the bitter chuckle next, but the sound was chased away by the Black Hawks, the bleat of massive blades a pounding racket that washed fire through his brain. They were nightmare specters suspended in the sky, two giant prehistoric birds of doom.

American commandos! He hadn’t clearly seen the faces of their attackers, but he had been there in Mogadishu when the infidel forces had come to supposedly restore order to a lawless country, when he had been on the shortlist of kill or capture. The infidels had returned.

Black Hawks. It was happening again, only this time it appeared the invaders would create a different outcome. The three white devils had maneuvered him into this trap; he was sure of it. But if they were working with his own Muslim handlers, why? It made no sense, a preposterous riddle without the first clue. He had made every accommodation possible to the freedom fighters, arming them, refuge inside his borders, food, women and qat. Or had they, too, been deceived? Beyond his sense of outrage over the betrayal, pure fear began writhing in his belly.

“You’ll know when it’s begun.”

He ran those words through his mind again, hatred burning. Now what?

His clansmen, he was sure, were all dead. If there were any survivors, could they stand and fight while…?

What? Should he attempt to flee again, but this time on foot? That he was still alive was no guarantee he wouldn’t be shot down in the next few moments. Where was his AK-47? And what would he do if he found the weapon? He was outnumbered, outgunned, alone most likely, autofire withering, no more screams, the lopsided battle winding down. There was a silence beyond the whapping rotors that sparked new fear. There really was no choice, he decided. Escape clearly wasn’t going to happen. Best to die on his feet. If this was the end, it was God’s will. So be it. The least he could do would be to kill as many of the enemy as he could before he was sent to Paradise.

Pinned by Muhmar’s deadweight, he shoved him away, grunting with the effort before he had him wedged between the seats. He scrabbled his hands through the bed of glass on the floorboard, crying out as a sliver jabbed his finger. There. He plucked up the assault rifle, aware at least that one of his enemies was close by. He hadn’t had a good look at the commando who had blasted out the window, sent the jeep careening out of control, trapping him now on his side, but he glimpsed enough of the eyes of the tall dark man to know his own doom was certain, the infidel probably circling the wreck even then.

How could this have happened? he wondered, rage clearing the sludge in his limbs. The attack had been unleashed, all thunder and lightning, instant death and destruction, so fierce it left little doubt they were there to kill him. It had been so easy before, intimidating the UN and Red Cross relief workers, seizing shipments…

It was over.

With the stock of the assault rifle, he punched out a jagged shard, groaning as pain knifed down his neck, reaching a point of fire between his shoulder blades. Nothing felt broken, but he assumed any pain was moments away from ending altogether.

Dugula squeezed through the opening, AK in shaky hands, the warlord unmindful of sharp glass tearing at his clothes. He sensed a presence behind him as he rose, the AK-47 swinging around, ready to kill whoever it was, however many were at his rear. He heard himself snarl, cursing all of this hideous misfortune, finger taking up slack on the trigger, pure murder pumping in his heart. It was the tall dark commando, rolling through the dust, coming out of nowhere, a floating wraith, right on top of him before he could act. The AK-47 nearly drew a bead, but Dugula knew it was already too late. There was a glimpse of the M-16, a question wanting to form in his mind as to why he wasn’t already dead on his feet, when the fist plowed into his jaw and the lights winked out.

“YOU WANT TO MIRANDIZE that asshole, too, Colonel? Maybe find him a lawyer?”

The plastic cuffs were fastened to Dugula, Bolan wrenching the warlord’s arms behind his back when it looked and sounded to the soldier as if this were where Collins wanted to assert his command in front of the troops. It was sheer luck on his part but earned, just the same, by audacity and determination that he’d gotten to Dugula first. Judging the tone he caught, Bolan could tell Collins didn’t like getting upstaged, and on the first leg of the mission.

“I wasn’t looking to steal anybody’s thunder,” Bolan said.

“Is that why you took it upon yourself to seal off their rear when you knew my gunships were supposed to do that?”

“It seemed the thing to do at the time.”

“Is that a fact?”

Bolan watched Collins, holding his ground beside Dugula, the warlord groaning, coming around, legs twitching in the dust. The short right cross had branded a purple welt on his jaw, hardly the kind of punishment, Bolan knew Dugula deserved. There was a village of innocents being butchered right then weighing on Bolan’s thoughts. The sky over the hills east had darkened, several more plumes of black smoke rising now since the battle here had erupted, bringing on a wide patch of unnatural dusk against the horizon. Time was wasting, lives being snuffed, Bolan sure they were being executed in droves by now. Up to then he hadn’t heard Collins mention any secondary objective beyond rounding up Dugula. This, Bolan knew, would prove a defining moment, grant him some insight into Collins’s true nature.

The salt-and-pepper flattop seemed to appear first in the boiling dust before six feet of muscled frame brought Collins swaggering out of the cloud, M-16 canted across his chest. Bolan read the former Delta major’s anger beyond the tight smile. The other commandos were toeing the dead or dying, pleas for help or mercy bleating out from several wounded Somalis. Collins slowed his pace, head swiveling, the soldier following the Cobra leader’s stare toward a commando—Tsunami—who was bent over a bloodied form convulsing near a technical riddled with bullet holes. Bolan panned on, found two more Cobra ops flanking a Somali who was on his knees, hands clasped, praying, it sounded, while in the same breath asking for mercy.

Collins shook his head. “He’s nobody.”

Bolan kept the anger to himself over the coldblooded killing that followed, as the commandos drilled autofire into the Somali’s chest. A kill in the heat of battle was one thing to Bolan, but when the enemy surrendered, execution on the spot was unacceptable. One act of outright savagery, Bolan knew, always led to another and even more brutal act. If a soldier couldn’t separate the difference, he was lost, no exceptions.

“Major. Over here.”

Again Collins peered at another Somali. His face was forced up and aimed at Collins, the commando named Roadrunner wadding up a handful of hair, a knee speared in his back. The Cobra leader gave a thumbs-down.

The face shoved away, the commando stood, drilled a 3-round burst into the Somali’s back, abruptly silencing his plea.

Collins held up and rotated a clenched fist, signaling the Black Hawks to move off, presumably to recon the area for any gunmen who had managed to slip away.

“So, is this where it starts, Colonel?”

“Does what start?”

Something flickered through Collins’s eyes, a darkness stirring behind the look, Bolan believing he sensed an angry animal presence of the savage he’d just seen carry out the executions.

Collins lowered his voice, edged with tight anger as he said, “I don’t have time to jack around with you, Colonel. From here on, we map out a strategy. I’d like you to stick with the program. I need to know we’re on the same page and not out here clashing cocks. We clear? Sudden interruptions in tactics, in my experience, have a way of proving hazardous to everybody’s health.”

“And improvising?”

Collins grunted. “Is that what you call it? Well, that depends on who’s doing the improvising and why. I’m getting a sense here, Stone, that maybe you’re not really a team player, or that you’re a lot more than I’ve been led to believe. That maybe you’re telling me I don’t know how to do my job?”

Bolan nodded at Dugula. “He’s in the net, but there’s a few loose ends still running around over those hills, Major. This isn’t over.”

Collins glanced past Bolan. “What’s happening over there isn’t my concern, Colonel. They’re not part of the mission parameters. And we’re not some flying hospital or a bunch of Red Cross workers on a mission from God. Say we do what you’re implying, say we’re successful driving out the rest of Dugula’s bad boys. Then what? We’re looking at slews of wounded, dying, diseased, mouths to feed. We’re not equipped for that scenario to start with.”

“They’re being slaughtered, Collins. Women, children. If they don’t fit into your plans, chances are you could still put a few of Dugula’s top lieutenants on your mantel.”

“Hey, this isn’t some game show to me, Stone. I’m not in this to land a seat as some military expert on FOX & Friends when I hang it up.”

“Then let it be about something right.”

Collins paused, considering something. “A part of me can almost respect you for wanting to be a decent guy and all that, Colonel. In other circumstances I might feel the same way. But do you know why whatever’s left of Dugula’s brigands are over that hump torching those people? They’re carrying a plague, Stone, that’s straight from up top. It’s all been caught on sat imagery, and I’ve got the details in triplicate if you care to read the reports. The UN, WHO all know about it, and not even they will send in some relief help at this time. And we’ve been ordered to leave it alone. What’s over those hills is a bunch of Ethiopian nomads who brought some sort of hemorrhagic contagion, some real wicked stuff that infected hundreds. We don’t know what it is. It could even be Ebola. You think I want to risk the lives of my men just to play some kind of Mother Teresa to a bunch of people who are going to die anyway? Whose own countrymen will march in right behind us and kill and burn them even if we do take out the rest of Dugula’s rabble? You want to be running around, shooting up bad guys with open sores and black shit flying out of their mouths and maybe getting doused in their infected blood? For all we know, this plague could be an airborne contagion.”

“You don’t want to do it, then let me handle it.”

“I’ve got a lot to do, Colonel, before we move on to our next objective. I’ll have to beg off.”

“Then I’ll go it alone. I won’t just walk away.”

Collins measured Bolan, bobbing his head. “Okay, tell you what. Just to show I’ve got some heart, take one of the Black Hawks, I’ll even throw in the Apache, since my numbers show about thirty or more of Dugula’s punks running around over there. I can spare four of my men, but that’s it. You’ve got one hour, Stone, then I’m in the air. I’ll take back my men and leave you behind if you’re not ready to fly. Will that accommodate your sense of mercy and compassion for the oppressed?”

It suddenly sounded too easy, Collins relenting, handing over his own men even, despite his argument about the risks of infection. Bolan sensed something else had prompted the Cobra leader to cave, but Collins was already keying his com link, relaying the order, the Black Hawk coming back to pick up the soldier.