Survival Reflex

The weak part of his plan was still Marta Enriquez. Spooks had followed her to San Diego, where they’d picked up Bolan’s trail without him noticing. That was a personal embarrassment, but he could live with it. The extra bad news was that if they’d spotted him, they also had to have marked Pol Blancanales, which, in turn, might lead them back to Able Team and Stony Man, if they dug deep enough.

Granted, the Company had been aware of Stony Man from the beginning, and a team of Langley rogues had once attempted to destroy the Blue Ridge Mountain farm, but general knowledge and specific details were two very different things. Bolan was on a private errand in Brazil, albeit with the knowledge of his old friend Hal Brognola, who ran Stony Man from Washington. What Bolan hadn’t known, before he left the States, was that his mission placed him in direct conflict with agents of the CIA.

That was the kind of problem that could boomerang on Brognola in nothing flat, and friendship demanded that he warn Brognola at the very least.

And if the big Fed tried to call him off, then what?

He couldn’t answer that until he reached Cuiabá. Enriquez was supposed to meet him there and help him with the next stage of his journey. If she didn’t show, or if a swarm of spooks was trailing her, he might be forced to scrub the play.

As for the risk that he might pose to Brognola and Stony Man by pushing on, Bolan would have to weigh that against his prevailing sense of duty to an even older friend.

Cruising over the primeval forest at 130 miles per hour, Bolan reviewed what he knew so far. Blaine Downey hadn’t mentioned Nathan Weiss at their brief meeting in Belém. Rather, he’d warned against collaborating with Marta Enriquez—but why?

Was the woman herself a target of investigation, distinct and separate from Weiss? It seemed unlikely, but Bolan had seen enough of politics in various banana republics to know that anything was possible.

Then again, if the Company was after Weiss, presumably acting in conjunction with the Brazilian government, what had Bones done to provoke their anger? Was it really just a matter of him helping persecuted aborigines, or was there something else at stake?

Bones was a healer. Even in the midst of war, he’d treated wounded soldiers of both sides impartially. His dedication was to mending flesh and lives, not scrutinizing racial pedigrees or weighing ideology. A man of peace, he’d volunteered to serve in combat, where he thought his skills were needed.

Most people found that kind of dedication laudable, until it trespassed on their politics. Healing our side was fine, of course, but hands off the alien-radical-subversive-demonic other side. Under no circumstances could healers help them.

Bones hadn’t toed that line in Asia, and the odds against him heeding it now were astronomical.

But had he tipped the other way at some point, in the years since Bolan saw him last? Had he abandoned his trademark impartiality to join some cause that placed him in the outlaw ranks?

And if so, what could Bolan do about it?

Nothing, Bolan thought.

Not if the doctor’s mind was set.

But he was flying on the wings of guesswork now, and that was reckless. He would wait to see if Marta met him in Cuiabá, if she had the means of putting him in touch with Nathan Weiss. And if she could, he’d find out what Bones had to say for himself.

Until then, the trick was just staying alive.

Belém

“YOU STINK, the two of you,” Blaine Downey said.

“Yes, sir. We came straight back,” Sutter replied. “I didn’t want to phone it in.”

“Straight back from where? The city dump?”

“Almost.”

“Explain yourself.”

“You ordered us to keep an eye on Cooper, sir, and follow him if he left the hotel.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my memory, Sutter.”

“No, sir. Anyway, he did leave the hotel, and we trailed him. Making it obvious, just like you said. He saw us, all right, started boxing the block to make sure, then he led us downtown. Parked on the outskirts of the red-light district.”

“Window shopping?” Downey asked.

“That’s what we thought,” Sutter replied. “We figured if he tried to score a little action, we could break it up and spoil his evening for him.”

“Fair enough. How does that bring us to your tragic choice of aftershave?”

“We followed him a couple blocks from where he parked, and then he ducked into an alley.”

“And?”

“We went in after him.”

“Of course you did.”

“First thing, I thought we’d lost him somehow. Maybe he ducked through a door we didn’t see or something. Then, before you know it, he’s behind us.”

Downey saw where this was going, but he let the flow of words continue.

“Anyway,” Sutter continued, “we had words.”

“Such as?”

“He challenged us,” Sutter said.

“Challenged us,” Jones echoed, speaking for the first time since he’d entered Downey’s office. “Right.”

“Who made the first move?” Downey asked.

“Well…”

That answered it.

Downey refused to let the two incompetents provoke a raging outburst, though the pair of them deserved no better. He preferred to take his time, dissect them with a surgeon’s skill, enjoying every slice.

For all the good that it would do him now.

“I see,” he said. “The target challenged you, and one or both of you attacked him. Did I order you to rough him up, Sutter?”

“You didn’t say—”

“Thank you. I’ll take that as a no. The two of you exceeded your instructions and then, what? He kicked your asses, I suppose?”

Jones fidgeted with eyes downcast. Sutter was fuming, anger radiating from his body like the stench of garbage that surrounded him, but he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.

“Right,” Downey continued. “So, he kicked your asses for you. Knocked you both unconscious, I presume, since your report is hours late. And from the way you stink, I’d guess he dropped you down a manhole. Were you floating in the sewer all this time, ladies?”

Nothing.

“I can’t hear you.”

The crunching sound from Sutter had to be grinding teeth. His face was red enough to fit a stroke victim. Beside him, Jones reluctantly answered, “A garbage Dumpster, sir.”

“How’s that?”

“He put us in a Dumpster, sir, not down a manhole.”

“I’m relieved,” Downey said. “I don’t think that I could stand another load of shit from either one of you.”

“No, sir,” Jones answered.

“Will you shut up!” Sutter hissed.

“I’m gravely disappointed in the pair of you,” Downey announced. “You’ve turned a simple job into a screwup that’s left the Company exposed on levels you don’t even understand. You wouldn’t catch me lighting any candles if the mark had bled you out instead of marinating you in garbage. Are we clear?”

Apparently, since neither of the smelly two replied.

“My choices, broadly speaking, are to can your asses on the spot or to send you back to Langley for retraining and potential reassignment. That’s if I report your sorry asses for the mess you’ve made.”

“And if you don’t? Sir?” There was something close to hope in Sutter’s surly voice.

“You must redeem yourselves,” Downey said.

“How can we do that?”

“Begin by thinking for a change. What do you think might change my mood, right now?”

“Locate the mark!” Jones said, pleased with himself despite his reek.

“And…?”

“And…trace him to his contact?” Sutter asked.

“At which time,” Downey prodded, “you would…?”

That one stumped them for a moment, until Sutter hit upon the obvious. “We take ’em out,” he said. “Use locals if we can. No comebacks on the Company.”

“Be careful, gentlemen, and shower thoroughly before you start, for God’s sake. I’ll expect good news within…shall we say, forty-eight hours?”

“Yes, sir.” A two-man chorus.

“If you can’t manage that, I suggest you keep going. Find a hole and burrow deep. Pray I don’t find you alive.”

Cuiabá, Brazil

THE RED-HAIRED PILOT beat her own best ETA by forty minutes, even after bucking killer turbulence over the Serra Formosa. Bolan tipped her thirty percent of her fee and got an inkling of a smile in return before she left him to fuel the plane for her return trip to Belém.

When Bolan turned, hefting his bags, he saw Marta Enriquez standing in the shadow of the airstrip’s terminal. She raised a hand and Bolan nodded in return, while scanning left and right for any sign of watchers in the neighborhood. He’d missed them back in San Diego, and he was determined not to make the same mistake again.

This time around, his life depended on it.

Bolan crossed the tarmac and a strip of poorly tended grass to reach the terminal. He didn’t go inside, because the country’s rural landing strips demanded nothing in the way of customs declarations or security procedures. It was why he’d gone the charter route, instead of booking a commercial flight.

Enriquez put on a smile to greet him, saying, “I was worried that you wouldn’t come.”

“I’m here. You have a car?”

“This way.” She eyed his bags. “May I…?”

“No, thanks.”

She led him to the far side of the small building and a bare-dirt parking lot of sorts. Three vehicles stood baking in the sunshine, the woman’s four-door model Bolan didn’t recognize. Something domestic, he decided, patterned on some U.S. model from the 1960s.

Bolan put his bags in the back seat and let himself into the oven on wheels. The sedan’s air-conditioning gave out asthmatic wheezing sounds, and Enriquez left the windows down, raising her voice as she accelerated on the highway to Cuiabá.

“Were there any difficulties on your trip?” she asked.

“I had a welcoming committee in Belém,” Bolan replied.

“Oh, yes?” She sounded nervous.

“A guy from the U.S. embassy. He doesn’t like the company I’m keeping lately.”

“Oh?” Her eyes flicked back and forth between the road and Bolan’s face.

He didn’t feel like tiptoeing around it. “Did you know you had a tail in San Diego?”

“Tail?”

“That you were being shadowed. Watched.”

The horrified expression on her face answered his question well before she found her voice. “I didn’t know. I promise you.”

“You put them onto me, and they were waiting when I touched down in Belém.”

“What did they say?” she asked.

He gambled on the truth. “They called you ‘a subject of interest’ and told me to leave you alone, go back to the States, this and that.”

“But you came anyway.”

“I like to judge things for myself,” Bolan replied.

“Did they say anything about Na—About Dr. Weiss?”

It wasn’t the first time she’d caught herself speaking of Bones in a familiar way. Or was that intimate? Bolan couldn’t swear the question was relevant to his mission, but it might have some bearing on how much he trusted the woman.

“He wasn’t mentioned.”

“Oh? Perhaps they just want me.”

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“I’ve been involved in antigovernment protests since they began to drive my people off the land.”

“That’s a domestic problem,” Bolan said. He guessed the answer to his next question before he spoke, but asked it anyway. “What does it have to do with Washington?”

“Your country has involved itself in Latin American matters for two hundred years, from the Monroe Doctrine and the Panama canal to Noriega and the Contras. Some say Washington supports regimes that favor U.S. businesses.”

“And what do you say?” Bolan prodded.

“Dr. Weiss needs help,” she said. “Soon, it may be too late. If you’re his friend, please help him.”

“First, I have to find him.”

“I will show you where he is,” she said.

“That wasn’t part of the agreement,” he reminded her.

“How else will you locate him?” Enriquez asked.

“Technology. You give me the coordinates and I take it from there.”

“I’m sorry,” she responded with a calculating smile, “but I don’t understand such things. I’ll have to show you where he is. Are we agreed?”

Washington, D.C.

HAL BROGNOLA TOOK the call from California on his private, scrambled line. He recognized the voice at once and asked, “How’s Baja?”

“Hot and dry,” Rosario Blancanales said. “I’ve got another problem, though. You ought to know about it.”

“So, let’s hear it.”

“Toni had two visitors at the home office earlier today. They claimed affiliation with the State Department, but she says they smelled like Company.”

Brognola frowned at that. “How sure is she?”

“Ninety to ninety-five percent.”

“That sure. Okay.”

“They asked about Brazil,” Blancanales said.

“Asked what, specifically?”

“Whether Team Able handles foreign clients, and by any chance is one of them Marta Enriquez?”

“What did Toni say?”

“She cited confidentiality. We often work for lawyers, so it’s covered unless they come back with a warrant. In which case, there’s nothing to find.”

“But they still made the link,” Brognola said.

“Exactly. I don’t know how they tagged us, but I’m working on it. Anyway, it made me think about our friend.”

Brognola was thinking about Bolan, too. If the CIA had tracked Marta Enriquez from Brazil to San Diego, then it stood to reason they’d be waiting for her when she got back home. They might have Bolan’s face on film already, though it wouldn’t take them far. More troublesome, to Brognola’s mind, was the prospect of a hostile welcoming committee waiting for him in Brazil.

The private task Bolan had taken upon himself for friendship’s sake was difficult enough, without yet another chef stirring the pot. And if Langley backtracked Bolan far enough, under one of his code names, would the trail lead back to Stony Man Farm?

Brognola needed to check his firewalls, but first he asked Blancanales, “Did Toni get names?”

“Smith and Thomas, if you can believe it.”

He didn’t, but that was par for the course. The CIA had covert millions to spend, but Langley often suffered from a near-criminal lack of imagination. Mr. Smith, for God’s sake. Mr. Thomas.

“I’ll do what I can on this end,” Brognola said. “Thanks for the heads-up.”

“About our friend…”

“No word, so far. I don’t really expect to hear from him, since this is unofficial.”

“Then we won’t know if he hits a snag.”

Brognola had considered that when Blancanales briefed him on the woman’s story, asking for a dossier on Dr. Nathan Weiss. It made him nervous, then and now, but there was little he could do about it. Part of Bolan’s deal with Washington and Stony Man included freedom to reject assignments, or to tackle missions of his own when he was off the clock. It hadn’t often been an issue in the past.

But now…

It galled Brognola, thinking that his best field agent, one of his oldest living friends, might come to fatal grief while handling a private errand on the side. He’d braced himself a hundred times for news of Bolan’s death, had privately rehearsed the secret eulogy, but this eventuality had troubled him beyond all else.

The Executioner was only human, after all.

Like all flesh, he was prey to accidents, disease and plain bad luck. The fact that he had led a more or less charmed life to this point didn’t mean it would continue.

Luck could turn in a heartbeat.

Life could stop on a dime.

“I need to make some calls,” Brognola said. “Take care, and call me back if anybody gets in touch.”

“Will do.”

Brognola cradled the receiver, scowling at the modest clutter on his desktop. Life went on in Washington, no matter who was being threatened, maimed or killed halfway around the world.

He started taking stock.

Brognola knew where Bolan was, at least approximately, and he knew one contact’s name. He had a slim file on the man Bolan had gone to see, perhaps to extricate from trouble of the killing kind—and possibly in contravention of local authority. Now Langley had a fat thumb in the pie, and that potentially changed everything.

Except the fact that Bolan’s mission was a private one, unsanctioned by Brognola’s superiors. And if Bolan’s personal pursuits placed him in conflict with the government, where did Brognola’s loyalty lie?

His paychecks came from Uncle Sam, but Brognola had forged a bond with Bolan long ago, back in the days when the Executioner was a Top Ten fugitive and the big Fed had been assigned to bring him in, dead or alive. He’d bent the rules to work with Bolan then, against the Mafia—but could he do the same against the CIA, despite the closed-ranks posture of the War on Terror?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Before he made his choice, Brognola needed more hard information.

And he needed it right now.

Cuiabá, Brazil

“I UNDERSTAND,” Anastasio Herreira said. In his rage, he clutched the telephone so tightly that his knuckles blanched from olive to a shade of ivory.

“Do you?” the sharp voice in his ear demanded. “Do you really understand our problem? I’m not sure you grasp it, Major. I don’t think you’re up to speed on this at all.”

Stiffly, cheeks aflame, Herreira answered, “Mr. Downey, I assure you that I’m doing everything within my power to locate this rogue American. He has invaded my country, not yours, where he would be at home. He serves my enemies, not those of the United States. And frankly—”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Downey said, interrupting him. “I hear you say something like that and I can tell you haven’t got a clue about the big picture. When we talk about big pictures in the States, we don’t mean giant paintings on the wall. Understand?”

“Senhor Downey—”

The caller forged ahead, oblivious. “When we say big picture, we’re talking the long view, wide-screen, all-inclusive. A man coughs in Moscow, they catch cold in China and sneeze in Manila. You get me?”

“If you have some point to make—”

“That is my point, amigo. Right there, in a nutshell. You’ve got creeping Red cancer in your country, and it’s going to eat you alive if you cut it out, root and branch. Now, if you think that only affects Brazil, and not the States—or the whole freaking world, for that matter—you’re not only blind, you’ve got your head stuck in your ass.”

Major Herreira wasn’t sure how many more insults he could endure from the crude Yankee before he exploded in fury. That, of course, would jeopardize his agency’s relations with the CIA, which in turn would outrage his none too tolerant superiors. Better, perhaps, to rage in private and placate the Yankee. They were allies, after all, engaged in a common struggle.

“What would you have me do?” Herreira asked Downey.

“I’m sending a couple of men out to help you,” Downey said.

Herreira bristled at the notion. He needed Yankee “helpers” as he needed jungle rot or syphilis—and having suffered both, the major knew the irritations they produced.

“Senhor Downey—”

“Before you get all territorial, they have information that can help you wrap this up, okay? They’ve seen the new kid on the block, this guy recruited by your woman for whatever reason.”

“She is not my—”

“Anyway, they’ve met him. They can spot him, where your men might think he’s just another gringo tourist looking for some action.”

“Photographs would do as well,” Herreira said.

Downey ignored him, saying, “More importantly, my men can take him out with no reflection on your team.”

Herreira wasn’t easily deceived by specious arguments. The Brazilian government had no qualms about jailing foreign intruders or killing those who resisted arrest. A simple-minded blind man could’ve seen that Downey’s primary concern was to prevent embarrassment for the United States.

The doctor had been bad enough, but if he’d started to recruit allies from the U.S., some might regard it as more than intrusion. It could mean invasion, perhaps an act of war.

“Your men must willingly submit themselves to my authority,” Herreira said.

“Sure thing, Major,” Downey answered with a broad smile in his voice.

Herreira knew that he was lying, that his agents would behave as they had always done in “Third World” countries for the past two hundred years. Imagining that only the U.S. was fit to form opinions, dictate terms, decide what should be done in any given situation from Latin America to Europe and Southeast Asia.

“In that case,” Herreira replied, “I welcome their assistance.”

“That’s my boy. Expect a call within the hour.”

So, Herreira thought, they were already in Cuiabá or well on their way. His agreement, once more, meant no more to Downey than a rubber stamp on plans already finalized. He’d have to watch them every moment, to be certain they didn’t overstep their bounds.

Or if they did, and tragedy ensued, Herreira had to make sure that he couldn’t be blamed.

And if some accident befell them in the process, it was Downey’s job to deal with it, smother the breath of scandal.

Let the Yankee do his job, then. And together, they might just manage to save Herreira’s career.

“I STILL THINK it’s a bad idea,” Bolan insisted.

“Senhor Cooper, I’m Tehuelche. What you see—” the hands that smoothed her dress had polished nails “—is only one facet of what I am.”

“I understand that, but—”

“I know the jungle,” she informed him. “I was born and raised there, educated in a mission school. Your high technology may locate map coordinates, but it won’t tell you if the doctor has been forced to flee again or where he’s gone this time.”

“He’s moving?”

Marta Enriquez shrugged. “We won’t know that until we reach the meeting place.”

“I’ve done some tracking of my own, from time to time,” Bolan informed her.

“Were you hunting men?”

“Yeah, I was.”

She frowned at that. Sometimes the newbies asked what it was like, killing and almost being killed, but Enriquez had to have seen that for herself. Instead she simply asked, “Why are you here, really?”

“Bones is—or was—a friend of mine. If he’s in trouble now, I’d like to help him.”

“With no politics involved?” she asked.

“The man I knew wasn’t concerned with politics. He was a healer.”

“Tell me why you call him ‘Bones.’”

Bolan explained, briefly. When he was done, she asked, “And you would help him, even if he now heals those who might be enemies of the United States?”

“If he needs help—wants help—I’ll do my best. I didn’t come to join a cause or fight against one. If there’s fighting to be done, though, you’ll be in the way.”

“In any case,” she said, “it makes no difference. I have supplies for Dr. Weiss. If I don’t go with you, then I must go alone into the forest.”

Bolan saw that argument was futile in the face of such determination. He had no doubt that Marta would proceed without him, and it was entirely possible that she’d withhold Weiss’s location if Bolan refused to cooperate.

At last, resigned, he said, “All right. We need an early start tomorrow.”

“Is dawn early enough?” she asked him, smiling.

“Just about.”

“I’ll let you sleep, then.” At the door of Bolan’s hotel room, she paused and turned. “What if they follow us, your people?”

It was Bolan’s turn to shrug. He didn’t think he’d seen the last of Downey’s people yet. “I shook them once,” he said. “I can do it again.”

But shaking might not do it in the jungle. He might have to bury them, if they were bent on doing some irrevocable harm to Nathan Weiss or to himself. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d clashed with Company spooks, where lives were at stake.

“I hope you can do it,” she answered. “They may be here already.” And having said that, she slipped out of the room.

Alone, Bolan got busy with his fear. He would be wearing street clothes when they left the following day, in Enriquez’s car, but he wanted his canteens full and his weapons ready to go. He’d change clothes when they reached their jumping-off point, where they’d have to ditch their wheels and take to water, then proceed on foot. There were no roads where they were going, yet.