Volatile Agent

She fired and knocked him down even as he triggered a burst of his own. The bullets from his assault rifle burrowed into the wall on her right, and Saragossa staggered off the door frame as he went down.

She rushed forward. There were blind spots in her eyes now, and she was frantic to kill all the rebels before she blacked out. She came to the top of the stairs and tripped over the outstretched arm of the man she had just killed. She fell hard and landed on her knees. A burst of automatic weapon fire passed through the space above her head.

Saragossa thrust out her arm and pointed the machine pistol down the narrow staircase. Her eyes were too dilated to focus, and she couldn’t see much. She pulled the trigger and poured 9 mm rounds down the stairwell toward where she’d sensed the muzzle-flash.

She heard a cry. The man on the stairs gurgled loudly and dropped his weapon with a clatter onto the wooden steps. There was a sound like a basketball bouncing off a backboard as the rebel’s head struck each step on his long slide down.

Saragossa fell backward.

She felt flushed all over and nauseous. She lurched to her feet and stumbled back toward the door to her room like a drunk.

She’d been stung twice, and she knew that was enough to kill her.

3

Bolan sat in the back of the plane. The five-seat Aérospatiale AS350 was a charter aircraft from West African Trans-Cargo—a front company used by American intelligence concerns operating out of Liberia. He sat with a pen and notepad, making a list of equipment he’d need for the operation while Barbara Price gave him operational details over a secured line and into the headset he wore.

“It’s just you, Striker,” Price said. “This intel came through last minute, and other Stony Man assets have already been committed globally.”

“What’s going on?”

“A convergence of events has given us a window of opportunity to exploit, and Washington wants to really push it. You were the quickest resource we could deploy on such short notice.”

“This wet work?” Bolan asked.

“It could get pretty wet, but basically it’s a snatch op.”

“Who and why?”

“In the late eighties before Noriega was taken out, Langley was running an asset named Marie Saragossa inside the dictator’s security service. After the regime fell she went freelance. She’s worked for just about everyone in the Southern Regional Operational Zone.”

“Cartels? Castro?”

“Saragossa is mercenary. She doesn’t take ideological sides, but she came out of Cuba. She worked for Castro, she worked for Pablo Escobar, but she also worked against them, for us. So Langley kept a loose leash on her to piggyback inside those camps.”

“Did she know this?”

“Not always. Part of her contracts for us included payment in tech. Field gear and communications, mostly.”

“So as payment she was given encoded sat phones, laptops, stuff like that. Equipment she’d never hope to score on the open market. Only we made sure we were keyed in,” Bolan said.

“Exactly.”

“Sounds familiar,” Bolan said, his voice dry. “Go on.”

“Last week Saragossa took a job for the president of Venezuela. A reconnaissance and procurement gig in Burkina Faso. Seems they got wind of some kind of operation that Hussein had going down before the Iraq war. So he made a play-for-pay deal and sent her to West Africa.”

“With Langley watching every move?” Bolan asked.

“Exactly. With the information we got from Pucuro’s memory stick we could monitor almost all aspects of this event from all the players, not just Saragossa. Only as insane as South American politics can get, West Africa’s got ’em beat hands down. Whatever Saragossa was looking for, it was in the west of the country, along the border with the Ivory Coast.”

“I’m not up on that region,” Bolan admitted. “Are Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso engaged in hostilities?”

“Not openly, but the situation just went to hell. Both countries are controlled by military strongmen accused of corrupting elections to stay in power. They have a dispute about a couple of border markers. The Ivory Coast is in the middle of a three-way civil war. To give themselves some leeway Burkina Faso has been allowing members of the MPCI, the Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement, to use the area as a cross-border sanctuary.”

“So what happened?”

“Whatever Saragossa was looking for, she discovered its location,” Price said. “Unfortunately for her, two days ago the Ivory Coast national army began an offensive against the MPCI forces. They pushed them back across the border with Burkina Faso and kept on pushing right into the southern part of that country. The entire region is a combat zone with MPCI guerrilla units battling Ivory Coast government troops. Burkina Faso is massing its forces in the area, and if African Union diplomatic negotiators don’t reach a compromise quickly, we’re looking at another cross-border bush war.”

“Saragossa is caught in the middle of this?” Bolan asked.

“Yesterday Langley’s signal op center for this region intercepted a sat phone call by Saragossa to her Venezuelan control. Her township, Yendere, was overrun by elements of the MPCI who are now surrounded by army units. She’s trapped in a hotel in the center of town and under fire.”

“So I ride in on a white horse and she’s so grateful she gives us Saddam’s secrets?”

“It’s not quite that simple, I’m afraid. Venezuela really wants what Saragossa has. Plus, some intercepts suggest that Saragossa may have used her feminine charms on the president and he’s got a personal stake in her getting home.”

“Does Venezuela have the resources to pull a rescue operation off in western Africa?” Bolan asked.

“No. But they do have billions in oil money now that he’s nationalized all the wells in Venezuela. So he reached out to one James du Toit, former South African Defense Force special operator turned mercenary.”

“I’ve heard that name. Wasn’t du Toit mixed up in some bad business in New Guinea a while back?”

“Correct. He just got out of prison in New Guinea for his role in the failed coup attempt there. He’s got aircraft, soldiers and a logistics network throughout the continent. Venezuela has the cash, du Toit has the capabilities. From what Venezuelan intelligence told Saragossa, du Toit’s deploying a platoon in a Super Puma helicopter to pull her out of the firefight.”

“So she’s not going to be all that happy to see me,” Bolan stated.

“No. You have to get in ahead of the South Africans, convince Saragossa by any means necessary to flip, and then extract her from the middle of the Yendere township, which is currently filled with MPCI guerrilla gunmen and surrounded by hostile army troops from the Ivory Coast.”

“With Burkina Faso forces closing in,” Bolan added.

“That’s right,” Price agreed.

Bolan fitted the drum magazine into a Mk 48 light weight machine gun. The weapon’s green plastic drum snapped into place with a reassuring click. Bolan took the loose belt of 7.62 mm ammunition and fit it into place before slapping the feed tray cover down and locking it into place.

“All right. Let’s talk details,” he said after thinking things over.

Price immediately began filling Bolan in on the logistical and support elements of the last minute, rapid deployment operation.

4

Saragossa lunged for her pack. Her left hand was frozen, cramped, and she worked at the buckles and drawstring with only her right. She felt her throat squeezing closed, and forced air into her lungs with a harsh, wheezing sound. She managed to open the first-aid pack, then bent down, using her teeth to help prise off the Velcro fastener on the top flap pouch.

Her all-purpose antivenin kit spilled out. Her throat closed up and she made a high-pitched barking sound like a seal, a condition known as stridor. Two breaths later Saragossa realized air was no longer making it through. Her mind was a white blank of panic. Death hugged her close. She opened the kit, but her shaking hand spilled the contents across her lap.

Her heart lurched abruptly in her chest. She knew she was dying. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know whether to use the venom-antagonist to neutralize the poison or to use shock medicine syringes. She fumbled ineffectually as her vision continued to dim around the edges.

Saragossa looked down. Her lap felt as if it were a mile away. She lifted her arm, and the feeling was completely disassociated. It could have been someone else’s arm for all she felt connected to it. She felt for the epi-pen and thumbed off the cap. It was military-grade atropine meant to counter chemical or biological warfare agents in addition to more pedestrian utilizations.

She lifted her arm as her vision went completely black, though her eyes remained open. She felt a falling sensation and snapped her arm down. The spring-loaded syringe shot into her leg and the needle discharged. She was immediately jolted back into herself. The effect on her airway was nearly instant.

She dropped the autoinjector and sucked in a lungful of life-giving air. She could breathe, but the adrenaline-hormone cocktail only added to the feeling of crushing pressure in her chest. She scooped up her kit and plucked out a little brown bottle. She put her teeth against the snap lid and let two tiny white pills fall out into her mouth.

She caught the nitroglycerin pills under her tongue and let them dissolve there. The pressure in her chest began to ease. She dropped the bottle and reached for her antivenin kit. She felt much better, but knew she was still in dire trouble. So far she was only combating symptoms and side effects—deadly symptoms and side effects, but still only secondary presentations.

She saw the green autoinjector filled with venom-antagonist. She juggled the syringe with fingers that felt as thick as sausage links. She pushed the nose of the autoinjector pen against her hand in the meaty part beneath the thumb.

The infected hand still burned, and the needle felt icy cold as it punched into the venom-filled muscle. Saragossa dropped the injector and sagged back against the wall, fighting for air and terrified by the continued crushing pressure behind her sternum.

The tablets continued dissolving beneath her tongue as she lay there, helpless. Breathe, she told herself, just breathe.

She lay helpless in the stink, the heat and the damp, and concentrated on breathing in and out. She thought about nothing else beyond filling her lungs with good air, then pushing out the bad air.

Gradually she felt the pressure reduce to a simple feeling of heaviness. Then, as the muscles of her abdomen began to unknot, that too dissipated. She was covered in sweat. She lay with her head on the ground and lifted her feet up and rested them on her pack. She knew by elevating her extremities she reduced the workload of her heart.

Saragossa pulled her machine pistol closer to her. She rested for a moment after the activity and let her breathing even out and her heart rate slow. When she felt stronger, she reached over and grabbed her left wrist with her right hand and rested it across her chest. She paused to take in her surroundings. She could detect no immediate threats and focused on taking care of herself.

She looked at the scorpion stings. Her veins stood out in vivid relief, and red streaks turned her dusky colored skin ashen from the puncture wounds in her hand. Pustules were already forming into fat pimples above the sting marks. In a few minutes she would need to pop and drain them before covering the area with antibiotic ointment and a clean, dry dressing.

In this kind of an environment infection would set in quickly and hang on stubbornly. Saragossa knew her arm, despite the work of the venom-antagonist in killing the active poison, was damaged by the necrotic effects of the scorpion stings and would continue to be hampered until a full recovery was made.

But she didn’t have time for a full recovery. She had a tight schedule for operations. She needed the use of her arm immediately. Saragossa scooted over to one side. Now that she was breathing freely she reached into her pack and pulled her general first-aid bag free.

Moving slowly and becoming more clearheaded by the moment, Saragossa opened the minipack and began to rummage through her kit. She pulled out two syringe bundles held together by white medical tape. Pulling her boot knife free, she slipped the tip of the blade under the tape and in between two of the syringes before plucking a single needle free.

Saragossa took the syringe filled with antinausea medicine and pulled the needle cover off with her teeth. She spit the plastic cap away and stuck the needle into her exposed shoulder. She pushed the plunger down and injected the medicine smoothly before discarding the syringe, needle down, into the wooden plank of the floor.

The next bundle she opened was a painkiller. The narcotic would completely numb the area it was injected into. It had euphoric side effects that Saragossa knew could hamper her judgment, but without it her left arm would be useless. After injecting her shoulder she repeated the process in the exposed muscles of her inflamed forearm.

Saragossa tossed the needle aside and picked up the feeder tube from the water bladder in her pack. She sucked slowly, drinking carefully. Then she lay still for twenty minutes, collecting herself.

As she let her medical cocktail take effect, Saragossa began the process of survival. Carefully she began to compartmentalize the incident, to wall it off away from the front of her mind. It was just something that had happened.

“Bad day, screw it,” she whispered.

She pushed the fear away, along with the helpless rage and the queasy sensation that the memory of the scorpion clutching tightly with its prickly legs to her hand gave her. She pushed the memories and the feelings down, then bricked them over. She began to test her senses, taking in stimulation from the building around her. She heard a scream over the drone of falling rain.

She slid her boot knife away and slowly secured the loose parts of her medical supplies before packing them back into the first-aid bag and the smaller antivenin kit. After glancing at her hand Saragossa slid the antivenin kit into the cargo pocket on her leg instead of putting it back in the top of the backpack.

She slowly rose into a sitting position. The feeling of dizziness nearly caused her to swoon, but the sensation passed. She lifted her red and swollen arm and looked at it. She felt no pain. She experimented with opening and closing her hand. The motion was stiff but didn’t hurt. She looked at her watch and frowned.

It was then that a multitude of weapons opened fire on her room.

5

Bolan shoved a fistful of local currency over the battered seat to the cabdriver and got out. He leaned in the open window of the passenger door and instructed the driver to wait for him around the block. The taxi sped away, leaving him standing on the edge of an unpaved street. There was an open sewer off to his right, and the stench was ripe in his nose.

The Executioner looked around. He was on the opposite side of the township of Banfora from the international airport. Banfora was the capital of Komoe, Burkina Faso’s south-westernmost province and the one sharing a border with Ivory Coast. The dirt street was lined with shanties, and what light there was escaped from boarded-up windows or from beneath shut doors. A pair of mongrels fought over some scraps in a refuse pile several yards up the road. Other than those dogs fighting, the stretch of grimy road was deserted.

The previous day, intelligence had noted that a brigade-sized element complete with field artillery and armored vehicles had been speeding through the regional center toward the villages of the border area. War had come once again to one of the poorest countries in the world.

Faintly, Bolan could hear the sound of music playing and then voices raised in argument. A baby started crying somewhere, and farther away more dogs began barking in response. Bolan looked up at the sky, noting the low cloud cover. The road was thick with muck from the seasonal rains, and it clung to the soles of his hiking boots.

Bolan set down the attaché case he was holding and reached around behind his back to pull his pistol clear. He jacked the slide and chambered a .44 Magnum round before sliding it into his jeans behind his belt buckle, leaving it in plain sight. He leaned down and picked up the case. He shifted his grip on the handle so that his gun hand was free.

Bolan took a quick look around before crossing the road and stepping up to the front door of one of the innumerable shacks lining the road. He lifted his big hand and pounded three times on the door. He heard a hushed conversation break out momentarily before the voices fell quiet.

“Le Crème?” Bolan asked.

Bolan felt a sudden damp and realized it had started to rain while he was standing there. Despite the wet, he was still uncomfortably warm in his short-sleeve, button-down khaki shirt and battered blue jeans.

The door opened slowly and a bar of soft light spilled out and illuminated him. A silhouette stood in the doorway, and Bolan narrowed his eyes to take in the figure’s features. It was a male, wearing an unbuttoned and disheveled gendarme uniform.

He held a bottle of grain alcohol in one hand, and the other rested on the pistol grip of a French MAT-49 submachine gun hanging from a strap slung across his neck like a guitar. He leaned forward, crowding Bolan’s space. The big American made no move to back up.

“Cooper?” the man asked.

His breath reeked with alcohol fumes, and the light around him reflected wildly off the glaze in his eyes. His words were softly slurred, but his gaze was steady as he eyed Bolan up and down. The finger on the trigger of the MAT-49 seemed firm enough.

“Yes.” Bolan repeated. “Is Le Crème here?”

“Colonel Le Crème,” the man corrected.

“Is Colonel Le Crème here?”

“You have the money?”

Bolan lifted the attaché case, though he knew the man had already seen it when he’d opened the door. The gendarme ignored the displayed satchel, his eyes never leaving Bolan’s face. His hair was closely cropped, and Bolan could see bullets of sweat beading on the man’s forehead.

“Give me the pistol,” the man ordered.

“Go to hell,” Bolan replied.

The drunken gendarme’s eyes widened in shock and his face twisted in sudden, instant outrage. He snapped straight up and twisted the MAT-49 around on its sling, trying to bring the muzzle up in the cramped quarters.

Bolan’s free hand shot out and grabbed the submachine gun behind its front sight. He locked his arm and pushed down, preventing the gendarme from raising the weapon. The gendarme’s eyeballs bulged in anger, and the cords of his neck stood out as he strained to bring the submachine gun to bear.

“Leave him!” A deep bass voice barked from somewhere behind the struggling gendarme.

The man cursed and tried to step back and swing his weapon up and away from Bolan’s grip. The Executioner stepped forward as the man stepped back, preventing the smaller man from bringing any leverage to bear.

They moved into the room, and Bolan heard chair legs scrape against floorboards as men jumped to their feet. He ignored them, making no move for the butt of the Desert Eagle sticking out of his jeans.

The man grunted his exertion and tried to step to the outside. Bolan danced with him, keeping the gendarme’s body between him and the others in the smoky room. Bolan’s grip on the front sling swivel remained unbroken. Finally, the gendarme dropped his bottle and grabbed the submachine gun with both his hands. The bottle thumped loudly as it struck the floor but did not break. Liquid began to gurgle out and stain the floorboards.

“I said enough!” the voice roared.

The gendarme was already using both his hands to snatch the submachine gun free as the order came. Bolan released the front sling swivel and stepped to the side. The gendarme found his center of balance around the struggle abruptly gone and overextended himself. Already drunk, he toppled backward and struck the floor in the pool of alcohol spilling from his fallen bottle.

Cursing and sputtering, the man tried to rise. Bolan surveyed the room. He saw four other men in the same soiled and rumpled police uniforms, each one armed either with a pistol or a submachine gun. All of them were gaunt and lanky with short hair, except for the bear of a man with the gold braid epaulets of an officer.

The officer rose from behind a table and hurled a heavy glass tumbler at the gendarme Bolan had left on the floor. The glass struck the man in the face and opened a gash under his eye.

“I said leave him!”

The shock of being struck snapped the embarrassed man out of his rage. He touched a hand to the cut under his eye and held up his bloody fingers. He looked away from his hand and nodded once toward the man looming behind the table.

The officer turned toward Bolan. “My apologizes,” he said. “My men worry about my safety.”

“Understandable, Colonel Le Crème.” Bolan nodded. “I worry about my own safety.”

“Come now, you are in the company of police officers.”

“Yes, I am,” Bolan agreed.

“Foreigners are not usually permitted to carry weapons in our land.”

Bolan threw the attaché case on the table. “That should more than cover any administrative fees.”

“Is it in euros?”

“As you specified.”

Le Crème nodded, and one of the gendarmes at the table reached over and picked up the case. He had a sergeant’s chevrons on his sleeve. Bolan saw there were two very young girls pressed up against the back wall of the shack. Their eyes were as hard as diamonds and glittered as they took him in.

The sergeant pulled the case over and opened it. The sudden light of avarice flared in his eyes, impossible to disguise. Bolan shrugged it off. He was tempted to believe that if he’d been born into the kind of poverty these men took for granted he might have been just as greedy.

While the sergeant counted the stacks of bills, the colonel reseated himself. He snapped his fingers at one of the girls, and she jumped to pick a fresh glass off a shelf beside her. She brought it over to the table and poured the colonel a drink from an already open bottle. Bolan could feel the intensity of her gaze.

Le Crème regarded Bolan through squinty, bloodshot eyes. He picked a smoldering cigar off the table and drew heavily from it. His men made no move to return to their seats. Le Crème pulled his cigar out of his mouth and gestured with it.

“Sit down.”

Bolan pulled out the chair opposite Le Crème and eased himself into it. The two men regarded each other with coolly assessing gazes while the sergeant beside Le Crème continued counting the money. Le Crème lifted his new glass and downed its contents without changing expression.

“Shouldn’t a man like you be out hunting terrorists?” Le Crème asked.

“Shouldn’t you be down in Banfora with the fighting?” Bolan asked.

Le Crème shrugged. “That’s what the army is for. I fight crime.”

“Just so.”

The sergeant looked up from the money. Le Crème’s eyes never left Bolan. “Is it all there?” he asked.

“More,” the sergeant replied.

“Why?” Le Crème asked Bolan.

“There’s a bonus in there. The shipment came in at a few more kilos than we’d originally talked about.”

“Still tractor parts?”

“Yes.”

“Okay then, no problem. It’s St. Pierre’s day on the Customs Desk,” Colonel Le Crème said, smirking.

Bolan followed the line of Le Crème’s sight across the room to where the gendarme Bolan had scuffled with stood glowering.

“Any way you want it, Colonel,” Bolan said.

“Yes. Yes, it usually is.”

Le Crème leaned back from the table and stretched out his arm. The girl who’d poured his drink slid into his lap. She regarded Bolan from beneath hooded lids. He guessed she could have been no older than sixteen. She was beautiful, her eyes so darkly brown they were almost black, but still nearly luminescent. The effect was disquieting. In America she would be in high school. In Burkina Faso she was the paramour of a corrupt warlord three times her age.