Pirate Offensive

Bolan pulled back onto the road and started toward Panama City. So far, so good. Cordan was dead, his organization was destroyed and Bolan now possessed a hundred million dollars in illegal weapons, mostly surface-to-air missiles.

The easy part was over. Time to raid police headquarters.

Chapter 2

Cancun, Mexico

Sluggishly, the woman roused herself from the depth of unconsciousness.

Renee Collins glanced around the brightly illuminated room. She was naked, hanging from the ceiling in steel chains. A padded leather corset kept the steel links from strangling her, but her arms were painfully drawn behind her and angled upward. The pain in her shoulders first made her scream, then pass out.

When she came to again, she saw him. Oh my god, she thought. Narmada! I’ve been captured by Narmada!

Collins began to cry as each horrid detail of her kidnapping came rushing back. The tear gas attack in the alley, the constant beatings with cushioned clubs that hurt but left no marks afterward.

No marks that could be seen, she mentally added, flinching at the humiliating memory of being forced to remove her clothing.

Drawing in a deep breath, Collins screamed again, an animalistic combination of rage, fear and desperate frustration.

“Well, at least you seem to have some strength back,” rumbled Captain Ravid Narmada, swinging around in his chair. “This is good. I still have so very many questions about the next shipment of microchip warheads.”

“Pig!” she snarled, then spit at him. “I will tell you nothing. Nothing!”

“That is, sadly, quite incorrect,” he said, rising from the chair and walking over to a small workbench in the far corner.

Narmada was almost twice the size of any normal man, and Collins had at first thought him merely of colossal girth. But Collins now knew the terrible truth. Oh, there was fat to be sure, but underneath were muscles of incredible strength, and even though Collins had seen his speed, she still had trouble believing it. Nothing that big could move that fast. Elephants were slow; whales were slow. But he moved with the speed and grace of a mongoose, a cheetah. Almost in a blur, when he wanted. It felt like a contradiction of natural laws.

“I’ll tell you nothing,” Collins repeated with less conviction.

“We shall see, eh?” Whistling through his teeth, Narmada began opening drawers in the bench, extracting tools and equipment.

“Perhaps...we can make a deal,” Collins whispered hoarsely. “I am still very beautiful...”

“Not interested, sorry.”

“I have money!”

“All I want are the microchips.” Donning insulated gloves, Narmada put a screwdriver into the hissing rush of flame and calmly waited until the tip was glowing red.

“Please...don’t do this,” she groaned in a small voice. “I’m...just a working girl...”

Smiling widely, Narmada lifted the screwdriver to inspect the tip. “This is true. But a whore who specializes in corporate espionage,” he said with a low chuckle. “Now, if you were much better at your job, I might have offered you a position in my organization. Information is often more valuable than gold, eh? Trite, but true.”

“I accept!”

He walked closer. “I said might, young lady. You are also a stupid whore and now must pay the price for failure.”

“Please!”

“No,” said Narmada, and Collins screamed, again and again, for a very long time....

When the interrogation was finished, Captain Narmada checked the sagging thing dangling in the chains for a pulse and found none. He then snapped her neck with a bare hand just for the practice.

“Pity we didn’t get to ride her for a while,” Lee Chung muttered from the doorway.

Standing almost six feet tall, Chung had the physique of a fanatical bodybuilder—a barrel chest and narrow waist. His hands were covered with old scars. An ornate silver buckle bearing the Confederate flag held a place of honor on the front of his garrison belt, and his alligator cowboy boots shone with fresh polish. The man wore his long black hair cut in a mullet, a style favored by many Southern Americans.

“This is a business, not a brothel,” Narmada snapped, crossing the room and tossing the screwdriver onto the workbench.

As Narmada glanced over a shoulder, Chung forced himself not to flinch or turn away. The captain always appeared calm after extracting information from uncooperative personnel. That was a major warning sign. The slower Narmada spoke, the angrier he was, and nobody sane ever wanted to tangle with the captain. Once, in a bar fight in Madrid Chung had watched Narmada kill twenty men while crossing the room at a regular pace, his hands bloody pistons that crushed faces and snapped necks with every strike.

“Yes, sir! My apologies, sir.”

Narmada waved the matter aside. “Please dispose of the body overboard.”

“At once! So, do we have a destination?”

“Of course,” Narmada replied, leaving the room.

Left alone with the corpse, Chung scowled in annoyance, then hit a control on the wall to summon a cleaning crew.

On the main deck, Captain Narmada stood with both hands on the gunwale, breathing in the cool salty air. Inside the nearby wheelhouse, three men were watching a Chinese anime movie on a portable DVD player, eating sandwiches and drinking German beer. Just for a moment, Narmada longed for the company of other men. His colossal size had always kept him alone and separate. Doorways were too narrow, every chair was a potential danger, and very few women were attracted to giants.

Shaking his head to dispel the dark thought, Narmada focused on the next part of the journey. Key West. He had never been there before.

Across the deck, Chung appeared from a gangway with several men carrying a canvas bundle. Shuffling to the gunwale, they heaved it overboard, and Chung turned away before the body splashed into the water.

“Helm!” Narmada shouted over a shoulder.

The door to the wheelhouse opened, throwing a bright rhombus of light across the deck of the Russian trawler. “Yes, sir?” a burly man replied around the cigar in his mouth.

“Head south! We refuel at Buenos Aires,” Narmada said, rubbing his rough palms along the painted iron railing.

“But sir, the canal...”

“Too dangerous! Best we keep to the open sea.”

“Aye, aye, skipper!”

“And along the way?” Chung asked hopefully, coming closer.

“Along the way there will be many fine ships for us to choose from,” Narmada said with a half smile. “Bullion from Chile, emeralds from Argentina...and that silly French billionaire we’re supposed to sink just off the Galapagos Islands.”

“Another angry wife?”

“Gambling debt.”

“Mafia?”

“The Fifteen Families.”

“Idiot!”

“Agreed,” laughed Narmada. “But keep most of the hold empty. We have a lot of American microchips to steal in Key West...”

Caracas, Uruguay

TWO DAYS LATER, Bolan was driving a battered jeep, rattling through an entirely different kind of jungle.

The midnight raid on the Caracas Police Headquarters had gone off without a hitch. Dozens of armed officers saw Bolan enter, but his forged papers passed muster, and an EM scanner jammed the expensive electronic lock on the master file room. Five minutes later, he was driving across town with a series of clandestine photographs tucked into his pocket. So far, so good. Now it was time to kill a traitor.

Always trying to keep tabs on freedom fighters around the globe, Bolan knew several details about the Ghost Jaguars—a medium-sized group of rebels fighting Uruguay’s incredibly corrupt government. To the best of his knowledge, they had never crossed the line into unwarranted violence. Never kidnapped an innocent family member to force a crooked cop into confessing or conducted any blanket executions—although the government had certainly given them enough excuses to do so.

The Jaguars stayed the line, kept hard and simply did not take any crap from anybody. Bolan liked that. All too often, fighting an evil turned even the best intentions dark, and soon, one became the very thing one detested. It was a constant fear of his own, and one that Bolan kept a very close eye on. The moment he started to enjoy killing people was the day he would toss his weapons into the sea and go retire somewhere. Bali, maybe, or Kalamazoo.

Just not today, Bolan added privately, steering his rented jeep deeper into the wild jungle.

The jeep was old, circa World War II, but still in excellent shape, and the studded tires were getting excellent traction from the weight in the rear. Lashed securely into place were nine heavy wooden boxes, all of them marked “soil samples.”

Leaving the paved highway behind, Bolan started down a gravel road, switched to four-wheel drive and trundled up a dirt path that snaked deep into the misty mountains.

The Ghost Jaguars constantly asked for help from America, but Bolan knew that would never happen. Uruguay was an oil-producing nation, and it sold thousands of barrels a year to the good ol’ USA. In these troubled times, that was a powerful incentive for America to leave the internal politics of Uruguay alone. Happily, Bolan had no such restrictions.

Time passed, as did the long miles. Double-checking his GPS, Bolan parked the jeep in a cluster of giant ferns, letting the engine cool while he rechecked his maps and notations. If his original intel was good, combined with the crude notes stolen from the police files, then the main camp for the Ghosts would be somewhere inside the mountain range just ahead. The crosswinds between the jagged peaks were brutal, making an aerial reconnaissance damn near impossible. Countless waterfalls could help mask any minor heat signatures, such as truck engines or campfires, and the area was a favored hunting ground for jaguar.

The situation reminded Bolan of an old trick—hide in plain sight, with the warning, “Here be Monsters.” It kept out most of the innocent bystanders, and if there was an invasion, disposing of the body afterward could be left entirely to the animals. Alexander the Great had used something similar in his military outposts around the world, as had the Romans.

Sliding on a backpack, Bolan checked over his weapons, then started climbing up the steep hillside. The footing was tricky because of the deep carpeting of loose leaves and the many snakes hidden beneath them. After a few miles, Bolan’s EM scanner had yet to find a single live microphone hidden in the trees, a land mine or even a proximity sensor. Could he be wrong? Had the rebels moved to another location? It was possible. Perhaps the real reason the secret police had never found the Ghost Jaguars was because they had disbanded or...

Bolan froze as the needle of the EM scanner jerked wildly. Straight ahead of him was a land mine. No, a field of land mines, spread out in every direction. Dozens...hundreds. His intel had been right—this was the place. Now, it was just a matter of cutting a deal with people who disliked outsiders, had no reason whatsoever to trust him and hated most Americans.

Warily, Bolan moved through the maze of high-explosive death traps, keeping a constant watch on the flickering indicator. If the needle ever swung into the red, it would be too late. Red would mean the mines were about to explode. But there was no other way to reach the rebel camp.

Edging steadily closer, Bolan caught a glimpse of a massive wall of upright logs hammered into the dark soil. The jungle grew right up to the wall, helping to mask its presence. The logs were at least a foot thick, patched with concrete, draped in camouflage netting and topped with concertina wire.

The razor blades shone with fresh oil—much-needed protection from the constant mist and dampness. Nothing was visible over the top of the wall, but Bolan saw crude birds’ nests here and there. That’s where the video cameras would be hidden. Most likely. He needed to get over that damn fence in spite of them.

Holding his breath, Bolan listened intently to the soft sounds of the jungle—the wind through the trees, the rustle of snakes, the chirps of various insects. Oddly, no noise seemed to be coming from his left, so he carefully headed in that direction. He soon discovered the source of the unnatural silence. A pair of jaguars was chained to the base of a large tree, their dappled fur helping them blend into the shadows.

As the animals turned to face him, Bolan pulled out a pneumatic air gun and fired several times. The tiny darts disappeared completely into the thick, spotted hides of the huge animals, and they paused, wobbled slightly, then lay down clumsily.

Just to be sure, Bolan gave them a couple of extra minutes to pass out. Jaguars were smart and often only pretended to be dead, or asleep, to lure their prey in closer. Which was probably why the rebels had chosen them as their symbol—smart and deadly. A good combination.

Once he was satisfied the jungle killers were well and truly unconscious, Bolan approached the tree. He pulled a pair of slim knives out of his belt, then kicked the sides of his boots, releasing their climbing spurs.

The ascent into the tree was easy, but every leaf seemed to hold a gallon of water, and by the time he reached the top, Bolan was soaked to the skin. Ignoring the minor inconvenience, he extracted a pair of compact binoculars and looked over the base.

It was impressive. He saw a dozen log cabins and several large tents, everything draped with camouflage netting. He counted ten armed trucks, a dozen mountain bikes and two large canvas lumps. From the angle and positions, his best guess was that the lumps were missiles, probably surface-to-air. He also spotted what sure as hell resembled an old howitzer situated directly before the front gate.

Designed for lobbing colossal shells a great distance, the blast of the 155 mm caliber cannon would be devastating to anything at such a short range. The gunnery crew could probably only get off one shot, maybe two, if they were really good. But the first government tank rumbling into the base would have a hot reception.

The rebels themselves were men and women of all ages, some seeming too old to march, whereas others didn’t look old enough to shave. Everyone carried a gun and a machete. Nobody had any insignia of rank. Bolan assumed this was a small, tight group—if you were not personally known, you’d be killed on the spot. Brutal, but good tactics.

An old switchback road snaked down the side of the mountain, and the base was located at the edge of a crumbling cliff that overlooked the ocean. The height was extreme—ten, maybe fifteen miles. But a brave man with a parachute might make it down to the coastline alive. An escape maneuver that most invading troops would not be able to duplicate.

Easing his way back to the ground, Bolan moved to a small clearing where he could see the front gate. Bolan pulled out a small transceiver, thumbed aside the protective cover, waited for the green light, then pressed the arming button twice.

Ten miles away, the stacked boxes of cargo in the rear of the jeep cut loose in a prolonged display of thermite, dynamite, white phosphorous and cheap fireworks.

Within seconds, the front gate of the base was throw open, and a ragged convoy of trucks and motorcycles charged out of the enclosure.

As the defenders disappeared quickly down the dirt road, the gate slamming shut behind them, Bolan sprinted to the opposite edge of the compound and used his pneumatic air gun to launch a grappling over the stockade wall. Going up was easy, down even more so, and Bolan hit the ground in a crouch, reloading the air gun with darts again.

He’d landed right across from a small wooden shack that looked to be an outhouse. As if on cue, the door pushed outward and a rebel exited, zipping up his pants. Spotting Bolan, the rebel cried out, clawing for a holstered pistol on his hip. Bolan put two tranquilizer darts in his chest and moved onward.

Six more guards fell under the gentle assault of the tranquilizer darts, and soon Bolan was standing inside a battered old canvas tent. There was nothing special about the tent, from the outside, but its position was the logical location for the commander.

A fast glance around the interior told Bolan that he was correct. He spied a weapons cabinet containing advanced armament—an Atchisson auto-shotgun, a Milkor grenade launcher, several 66 mm LAW rocket launchers, five or six Neostead shotguns and enough spare ammunition and assorted grenades to punch a hole in the moon. Whatever else they were, these rebels weren’t poor. A small bookcase next to the cabinet was filled with assorted legal volumes dealing with international law, war crimes and joining the UN. These folks thought big. Bolan liked that.

A large folding table was covered with detailed maps of the capital city, Montevideo, the president’s palace and the complex sewer system underneath. It looked as if a sortie was being planned, possibly an assassination. Then Bolan spied an old, battered medical case. A quick glance inside showed only surgical instruments, mostly dental. Apparently, the rebels also believed in torture.

Off in the far corner, a folding cot stood near a small wood-burning stove, and on a worktable were boxes of camouflage paint sticks, a hairbrush and several tampons. Bolan had no idea what the military function of the tampons might be. He’d heard tales of wounded soldiers in battle jamming a tampon into a deep bullet hole to act as a crude blood stop, but he’d always considered it an army legend. Maybe the trick really did work.

Suddenly, there came the sound of multiple engines. Bolan quickly grabbed a pair of M35 anti-personnel grenades from his pack, pulled the pins and held tightly to the arming levers. He listened to the shouting over the discovery of the unconscious guards, running, cursing in several different languages, a few wild bursts from assault rifles.... Then the tent flap was pulled aside.

Six armed people stood in the opening, their faces registering shock and then raw hatred.

“Filthy dog!” a rebel snarled, swinging up the barrel of his AK-47.

“Stop that, Jose!” snapped a woman, slapping the weapon aside. “Did you not see the grenades?”

“Live, I assure you,” Bolan said, beaming a friendly smile.

“I assumed,” she said, cocking back the hammer on the Colt Commander semi-automatic pistol in her grip. The weapon looked very old, but it was spotlessly clean and shone with fresh oil.

She was a beautiful woman, and not even the long jagged scar bisecting her face could affect that. Her figure was tight and firm, as befitting a leader of combat soldiers. Her camouflage-pattern uniform was patched, the boots old, but everything was clean.

More important, she stood with the calm assurance of a leader. Clearly, this was the person in charge of the operation. The government called her Sergeant Gato, Spanish for “cat.” But giving your enemy a silly nickname to make them sound weak was one of the oldest tricks in the book.

“What do you want here?” the woman demanded, the pitted barrel of the handgun never wavering.

“You,” Bolan replied. “You, your men and that warship you’ve been secretly building for the past ten years.”

A collective gasp from the rebels told Bolan he’d made a direct hit.

A burly man with a large black mustache frowned. “How did you find us?”

Bolan gave a small shrug. “A friend of a friend.”

“I want names, gringo! Names!” the man demanded.

“Look, amigo. If I wanted you dead, I would have sold the information to the government,” Bolan said bluntly. “And right now, this base would be getting firebombed out of existence from what the president laughingly calls an air force.”

That yielded a small chuckle from the soldiers, but none of the weapons shifted direction, and the woman did not respond.

“We can leave and shoot you through the tent walls,” she said. “Use one grenade, or two.... But you would die, and we would simply be out a tent.”

“Absolutely true,” Bolan said. “But I’m here to cut a deal. Shoot if you want, but it’s a good deal.”

“Amnesty?” sneered a rake-thin teenager, his hands nervously twisting on the wooden grip of an old Browning automatic rifle, now topped with a state-of-the-art Zeiss long-range sniper scope. A bandolier of shells crossed his chest, and an optical range finder was tucked into a shirt pocket.

A fellow sniper? Good to know. “Fuck amnesty,” Bolan said. “I’m talking about missiles.”

“Missiles?”

“Missiles. Carl Gustav, LAW, Sidewinders, Redeye, Loki, Javelin—a truckload of them. Enough to tip the fight in your favor.”

“And what is the cost of this largesse?” asked the woman coolly, her eyes narrowing.

“Your rebellion is not going very well,” Bolan said, choosing his words carefully. “For more than five years, you’ve been doing a major overhaul on an old Mexican cargo freighter, formerly a Canadian steel freighter.”

Nobody said a word, but nervous glances were exchanged.

“You’ve added firewalls and armor below decks, modified the engines, reinforced the main deck, tacked on torpedo tubes and missile launchers.” Bolan smiled. “All of which is carefully out of sight.”

“Supposing what you say is true,” Sergeant Gato said slowly.

“It is.” Bolan interrupted.

She scowled. “Supposing so, you wish to do what, exchange your imaginary stockpile of missiles if we give you this vessel?”

“Oh, hell no. I merely want to rent it for a while. Maybe a few weeks, possibly longer.”

“Rent?” A young girl laughed. “You wish to rent the...” She closed her mouth with a snap.

“I never could find out the name, much less the location,” Bolan admitted. “You security is good. Damn good.” He proffered the grenades. “That’s why I had to go to such an extreme measure.”

“Rent.” The burly man shook his head in disbelief. “You have cojones, I’ll give you that, dead man.”

“I’ll pay with a hundred missiles...and a name.”

“What did you just say?” The man gaped.

“In exchange for renting the warship, I will pay you one hundred missiles per month, until the end of my mission.”

“Per month?”

“Or twenty-five a week. Whichever you prefer.”

“Madre mia,” a bald man exhaled. “With such ordnance....” Abruptly, his face took on a terrible expression. “Bah, it’s a trick! Just more lies from the president, eh? Everybody out of the tent. I will handle this pig personally.”

“Thank you, Miguel, but not this time,” the commander said, lowering her weapon. Her actions were slow but deliberate. “There is no fear in the eyes of this man, and his words carry the ring of truth.”

“But—”

“Let him talk for a little more,” she said, dragging over a folding canvas chair. “Let us see if the strength of his words equals the strength of his hands.”

“Sure as hell hope so,” Bolan said.

Leaning forward, she rested both elbows on her knees. “A hundred missiles per month, you said?”

“Plus a name. The name of a traitor in your organization. A paid police spy.”

“Davido?”

That caught Bolan by surprise. “Yes, Davido Sanchez.”

She shrugged. “Killed him last week.” Then she smiled. “But nobody knows that yet.”

A tense minute passed in silence, then another.

“So, my intel was good,” said Bolan.

“Good, but late. Still, I like that you offered his name without a price,” Sergeant Gato said. “And a hundred missiles seems a fair price for the....”

Bolan waited.

“The Constitution,” she finished.

“Good name,” Bolan said. But remember, you get the warship back afterward.”

“Perhaps. And if we do not? If it sinks or is stolen or damaged beyond repair?”

“Then I help steal you another. But I want the Constitution.”

“Why, if you can so easily steal another warship? Probably something even better than what we have.”

“Because your ship will not look dangerous,” Bolan stated bluntly. “But it actually will be. I’ll need that to get close to my target.”