Oblivion Pact

“Sir, does this base have a bomb shelter, or some sort of hidden panic room, whatever the military calls them these days?” LoMonaco growled, brushing debris off her police uniform.

“If so, it didn’t appear in any of the floorplans I stole!” Greene snarled, slowly pulling a long sliver of steel from his bloody arm. “Okay, Layne, your turn. Kill them!”

“On it!” the man yelled, starting forward at a full run. “Thomas, Hannigan, Stone, Ferguson! Follow me, boys! It’s showtime!”

Spreading out so that they wouldn’t offer the hidden Mexican soldiers a group target, the terrorists raced across the base, darting from building to building, bushes to cars, never fully exposing themselves.

“Okay, LoMonaco,” Greene started, then stopped.

Buckling on a flamethrower, the woman ignited the pre-burner, then sent out a hissing lance of flame and started setting fire to anything between the library and the all-important helicopters.

As a wall of fire rose high, the billionaire nodded in approval. LoMonaco was hiding the machines from any further attacks! Smart girl. The Mexicans might still shoot more rockets, but, unable to aim properly, it would be a total gamble on their part.

Suddenly, a great commotion came from the base garage, and the metal doors were battered open as a pair of Bradley Fighting Vehicles surged into view. The squat machines charged at the library, rolling over debris, rubble and corpses. Smashing aside parked cars, the vehicles cut loose with 7.62 mm chain guns, arcs of spent brass flying away, then the 25 mm rapid-fire cannons roared into operation, the streams of high-explosive shells chewing a path of destruction across the marble face of the building. Windows shattered, doors disintegrated and hundreds of burning books were blown out of the library to flutter away like dying birds.

There was a flash on the roof, and a rocket streaked down to explode in the street only feet away from one of the Bradleys, then another from the first floor flashed right past the second one to continue onward and disappear into the distant mountains.

Slamming headfirst into the side of the burning building, the Bradley crashed through the brick wall and men briefly screamed, their cries barely discernable over the blazing chain guns. Then the second Bradley slammed through the opposite wall, and the whole library visibly shook, loose bricks tumbling off the cracking walls.

Revving their big Detroit engines to full power, the pair of Bradleys smashed through the interior walls in irregular patterns, crashing through offices, computers and lavatories, crushing a dozen scurrying soldiers. Smashing out the other side of the sagging building, the armored hulls of the Bradleys were covered with plaster dust, blood, paperbacks.

Stopping only a few yards from each other, the Bradleys unleashed their 25 mm rapid-fires again, tearing holes in the weakened walls and blasting apart support columns.

The roaring conflagration inside the library blocked most of what was happening, but everybody on the base could hear the groan of the structure as it finally succumbed to the brutal attack. A wall broke free to fall across the street, scattering loose bricks for several blocks. The roof bowed, another wall cracked open wide and the entire building collapsed into itself, throwing out a thick gray cloud of concrete dust.

Still firing, the crews of the Bradleys sent in waves of 25 mm shells, pounding the library nonstop, grimly determined to permanently end the threat of the soldiers inside the hidden bomb shelter. Tons of loose masonry tumbled into the basement, along with broken slabs of concrete, and endless piles of hardback books. Soon the basement was an inferno of fiery chaos, the roiling clouds of dense smoke rising high into the sky to form the classic mushroom pattern of any intensely hot ground fire.

Pulling back a safe distance, the Bradleys stopped and the triumphant crews climbed out to start walking back to the airfield with Layne in the lead.

“It looks like we nuked the base,” LoMonaco chuckled, easing off the straps of the flamethrower to set the empty canisters on the sidewalk.

“Pretty damn near,” Greene said in agreement, slinging the Minimi machine gun across his chest. “All right, let’s do a sweep and recover any of our people who died. Bring the bodies along, and we’ll bury them at sea.”

“Razor up, people! Get those birds hot!” LoMonaco added through cupped hands. “We need to be airborne in fifteen minutes!”

As a clean-up squad got busy with body bags, a small man wearing thick glasses stumbled out of a prefab hut. “Mr. Greene, sir! I found the Gladiator!” the technician shouted happily, triumphantly holding up a control box.

“About damn time,” LoMonaco muttered with a disgusted expression. “Is it a newer model?”

“No, sir. But it’s still fully functional.”

“Good work, Langstrom!” Greene shouted, giving a thumbs up. “Take everything! We can use it in the Triangle.”

“Don’t forget spare batteries!” Layne added over a shoulder, already heading for a Black Hawk.

A few minutes later, everybody had a seat in a helicopter, and the stolen armada gracefully lifted off the tarmac in a whirlwind of smoky exhaust and acrid smoke from the countless small fires.

Quickly rising high, the helicopters angled away from the obliterated base and followed a whitewater river to disappear into the nearby mountains, heading due north toward the United States.

CHAPTER FOUR

Bethesda, Maryland

The dark sedan pulled into the parking lot of the Ambassador Hotel and took the first spot available among the limousines and imported sports cars.

As the door opened, a middle-aged man got out and started walking briskly toward the outside swimming pool. He wasn’t quite running—that would have drawn unwanted attention—but the man certainly wasn’t out for a casual stroll, either.

Hal Brognola was a bulldog of a man, still physically fit even though middle age had added a light sprinkling of gray to his dark hair and a bit of paunch to his midsection. Brognola was also the person in charge of the Sensitive Operations Group, a clandestine antiterrorist organization based at Stony Man Farm, Virginia. He handled a lot of black-bag operations, ferreting out the secret enemies of freedom, and bringing them to a hard and swift brand of justice.

Mack Bolan had helped put the Stony Man teams together and at one time had had a hand in running the program, but these days Bolan had an arm’s length relationship with the big Fed. He’d take on a mission if it was mutually beneficial. He rarely turned one down.

The hotel’s swimming pool was particularly busy on such a warm day, families splashing about, bored teenagers texting, a cadre of diplomats and attachés at the bar already knocking back shots of straight vodka in a futile effort to hide their early morning consumption of alcohol.

Mixed in with the others were quite a few strikingly beautiful women in skimpy bathing suits. Relaxing on chaise longues, the ladies were slowly oiling their perfect skin, obviously enjoying the admiring looks they garnered.

Slowing his brisk pace on the wet concrete, Brognola smiled at several of the older women. Then one of them smiled back, and shifted on her longue to make room for a guest. Pausing for only a moment, Brognola nodded in thanks for the offer, then touched the plain gold wedding ring on his finger and moved on. A man could appreciate a gorgeous sunrise without trying to take it home.

The damp air was redolent with the aroma of pool chlorine and coconut-scented suntan lotion, the dulcet smells of summer, and Brognola breathed it in deeply, briefly invoking memories of his younger, more carefree, days, days before he’d joined the police force and eventually entered government service.

Times past, youth gone, but sweeter still for the missing or however the poem went, Brognola thought he couldn’t recall the last time he’d read a book for the fun of it. His life was purely work, with little time for family and friends anymore. Just another sacrifice for the greater good.

A velvet rope closed off a private section of the swimming area, but Brognola walked in as if he owned the place. A frowning lifeguard started his way, but the big Fed simply flashed his Justice Department credentials, and the man turned and went back to his business watching over the assorted swimmers. This was Washington, and everybody knew not to bother a member of the Alphabet Gang at anything they did.

Stretched on a cushioned table, Mack Bolan was getting a vigorous massage from an elderly Chinese woman, his face set into an emotionless mask of control as her strong hands kneaded his bruised skin to reach the hard muscles underneath.

“Does this story have a happy ending?” Brognola joked.

Looking up, Bolan grinned at his old friend. “Better not say that again, or Mrs. Feinstein will kick your ass.”

Brognola arched an eyebrow at the Jewish name, then shrugged. After he had learned that back in the sixties the mayor of Dublin had been a rabbi, he’d stopped trying to pigeonhole anybody and simply took people as they came.

“Wu, my last name is Wu,” the woman said in lightly accented English. “My old friend is trying once more to be funny.”

“Trying?”

“No wonder so many people shoot you,” Mrs. Wu snorted, drying her hands on a towel. “You wouldn’t know a joke if it bit your ass.” With that, she slapped him on the said area, then turned and walked away, humming a tune.

“You have the strangest friends,” Brognola said with a chuckle.

Sitting up, Bolan stretched and flexed his arms, the muscles visibly moving under the skin. “A strange few,” he said. “There’s no better massage therapist than Cindy. She’s a black belt in kung fu, and can kill just as easily as heal with those old hands.”

Brognola paused, then realized it wasn’t a joke. “Cindy Wu? Like in the Dr. Seuss books?”

“I think that was Cindy Lu, and she prefers to be called Cynthia.”

Bolan slid off the table and pulled on a robe. “Walk with me.”

Moving away from the busy pool, the men entered a hedge maze and soon found a more secluded area. There was a table with two chairs, a pile of sandwiches and a pitcher of iced coffee.

“So what’s up?” Bolan asked.

“Sorry about this. I know you just got back, but I’ve got one of those feelings,” Brognola said, pouring himself a glass of the iced coffee.

“What happened?” Bolan asked, all of the humor gone from his voice and demeanor.

Laying a briefcase on the table, Brognola pressed a thumb to the glowing biometric lock. He felt a brief tingle as an electronic sensor confirmed that it was living flesh pressed against the contact plate, then it read his fingerprint, compared it to those on file. The case disarmed the self-destruct charge, then unlocked.

“Roughly twenty-four hours ago some people disguised as the Mexican police destroyed a Mexican military base in the Azules Mountains,” Brognola said, opening the case. Inside was a US Army laptop.

“They attacked the base?”

“Destroyed is the correct word.” Flipping up the screen, Brognola tapped a button, and the monitor flickered into life. “These shots were recovered from a dozen smashed cell phones, and the one security camera that the terrorists didn’t find and smash.”

“Terrorist is a big leap from thieves,” Bolan said, his full attention centered on the disjointed images: running shoes, a rain of spent shells, fire and destruction everywhere. A soldier firing his handgun from the ground, then instantly torn apart by converging streams of bullets from several different directions.

“Are those M16 assault rifles?” Bolan asked, furrowing his brow.

“F88,” Brognola corrected him. “Standard issue for the Australian military. They use the same ammo that we do, but it cycles a little bit slower than an American version.”

“That’s what caught my attention,” Bolan said, playing the images again.

Brognola was impressed. Bolan heard the difference in the middle of a firefight? “Now, they didn’t take the payroll in the commander’s safe, or even the loose cash in the register at the officer’s club. They did take a hundred kilos of pure heroin that was waiting to be incinerated, but ignored an even larger amount of crystal meth.”

Bolan gave a low whistle. That made no sense since the meth would be worth twice, maybe three times, more than the heroin. Everything seemed to point to the thieves being be narcoterrorists, but again, why leave behind the crystal meth? Why in the world would anybody need that much heroin?

“How do you know they’re not really the police, the drugs are purely misdirection, and in fact this was some kind of a political junta?” Bolan asked pointedly.

“No way they’re blue,” Brognola stated. “The fat guy is way too big. The woman is too short. The Mexicans have a minimum height requirement for female officers, and there is no record for anybody over seven feet tall ever working for the Mexican police.”

“Fair enough. Okay, what did they take?”

“Mostly heavy weapons, rocket launchers, Stinger missiles, radar defusers, VX nerve gas, and every working gunship on the base. Nineteen to be exact.”

“What types?”

“Mostly Apache and Cobra, but also a couple of armed Black Hawks. Not state-of-the-art, but all in perfect working condition, and armed to the teeth.”

“Maybe they plan on selling the helicopters. The Apaches alone would fetch a small fortune in certain parts of the world.”

“I wish it was true.” Brognola frowned. “However, they also took a Black Hawk medical unit.”

“Any blood missing from the base hospital?”

“According to the records, about a hundred units of blood plasma, and ten more of AB positive.”

“But nothing else?”

“Just the usual medical supplies, sutures, bandages, forceps and such.”

“AB positive is a pretty rare blood type,” Bolan said slowly.

“Yes, it is,” Brognola said. “So I ran that through the Interpol database, along with the general descriptions of the three people armed with unusual weapons.”

Bolan understood. Most of the thieves were carrying an F-8S. Anyone carrying a different weapon would be either a specialist, who might have a crime record, or else he or she was the person in charge.

“Now, the fat guy has an XM-25 grenade rifle,” Brognola said flipping through the shots to find the ones he wanted, then freezing them. “The woman has a Neostead shotgun, while the giant is carrying an F88 assault rifle...but has a Falcon automatic pistol in his shoulder holster. Everybody else is carrying a police-issue Glock.”

“What did you find?” Bolan asked, suddenly interested.

“Again nothing,” Brognola admitted honestly, taking a sandwich. “The President thinks I’m overreacting. But he’s a politician, and I’m a street cop.”

“Correction. The top cop for the nation.”

“Just a cop all the same. Half of this job is going with a gut instinct, and I’ve got a bad one on this thing, Striker,” Brognola said with a grimace. “There was just something hinky about these three, so I ran their descriptions through the entire government database. That brought up something.”

He took a bite of the sandwich, chewed and swallowed. “The giant appears to be Dalton Greene, the Australian billionaire, which makes the other two his bodyguards, Victor Layne and Samantha LoMonaco.”

“How hard is that intel?”

“Weak, only around fifty percent accurate.”

“Weak is a nice way to put it.”

“Accepted. Then I read that Greene and his bodyguards all died in a fiery car crash last week, the bodies burned beyond recognition.”

As the pictures on the screen stopped, Bolan sat back in his chair. “Chalk up another win for the gut instinct,” he said slowly. “This reeks to high heaven.”

Dalton Greene had been on Bolan’s radar for quite a while. There was nothing specific, just a lot of little indicators that the Aussie billionaire was dirty.

“How did they take the base?” Bolan asked.

Brognola shrugged. “Forensics isn’t sure yet, but I think they staged a riot in Cancun yesterday, then ambushed the police and stole their cars.”

“You think?”

“None of the police officers who responded to the call have been found yet. The attack zone was swept clean. Literally swept clean, like it was a zen rock garden.”

“Which means the cops are most likely shark food at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.”

“Probably.”

This was an interesting puzzle, Bolan realized. Greene was rich enough to buy the number of stolen helicopters, plus the weapons, on the black market. So why would he go to all the trouble to steal them? Merely to hide his identity, or was there something darker at play, some twist that he couldn’t quite see yet?

Reaching out, he tapped a button to start the flow of chaotic images once more. By now, Bolan was starting to get a bad feeling in his own gut. Ruthless, patient, cool and bloodthirsty. These were hard boys with a game plan. That always spelled big trouble.

“It looks like I’m going to Mexico....”

CHAPTER FIVE

Mexico City, Mexico

The air was cool and crisp inside the Alhambra Night Club, scrubbed and sterilized by a host of machines designed to remove any trace of pollution from the bustling metropolis just outside the front door.

A sparkling disco ball on the ceiling filled the room with artificial starlight, and a live band on the stage softly played classical love songs. Young couples danced on the floor and old married couples looked on from their tables, holding hands and smiling in fond memory. Everybody was well-dressed, suits and ties for the gentlemen, flowing dresses with wrist corsages for the ladies.

Standing outside the club was a pair of former bank guards whose only job was to keep out anybody deemed unsuitable, no matter how much money they were offered as a bribe, or what amazing sexual favors were promised in exchange for a quick peek inside. Unfortunately, no security system was perfect.

With a lopsided smile, the drunk woman leaned closer. “I lo-love big men,” she slurred, a plump breast nearly falling out of her black satin dress.

Saying nothing in reply, Special Agent Willard Cinco moved one chair away at the hotel bar.

She followed along.

“I sa-said that I love big, muscular, men,” she whispered, attempting a sexy smile and failing utterly. “Don’t you like me?”

“I like you fine, sweetheart, but I’m married and my wife is the jealous type.” He flashed her an apologetic smile, stood and walked away without another word.

Going to a table, Cinco waved down a passing waitress and ordered another scotch and soda. Maria smiled in reply showing dimples, then walked away with a definite swaying of the hips, but slowly, to let him admire the view.

Six feet tall, and as almost as wide, the hulking Mexican intelligence agent liked to joke that he was built like a bull, and easily twice as smart. But that was just one of his many lies. An expert in cryptography, countersurveillance and high explosives, Willard “The Bull” Cinco was one of the top agents at Centro de Investigatión y Seguridad Nacional de Mexico—CISEN, Mexico’s intelligence agency.

The television behind the bar was showing a football game, what the crazy Americans called soccer for some unknown reason, and Cinco heard the overly excited announcers talking about how one team’s defense was murdering the opposition, what a slaughter it was going to be this night, somebody wearing guts for garters, and how the blood would flow! Sipping his drink, the CISEN agent didn’t know whether to laugh, or cry.

Reaching into a pocket, Cinco pulled out a universal remote and shifted to the weather channel. Nobody in the club seemed to notice, or care. He liked the Weather Channel, it was oddly soothing, almost hypnotic.

Folding a stick of chewing gum into his mouth to help fight off the urge for a cigarette, Cinco chewed in peaceful silence for a while, and wasn’t terribly surprised when Maria delivered his drink accompanied by a free bowl of cheesy crackers, and a slip of paper bearing the name Rosetta and a local phone number. Exercising restraint, Cinco snacked on the first and burned the other in the ashtray, his impatience growing by the minute. His personal network of informants was rarely wrong about such things, but this time Cinco was starting to think that—

She walked into the nightclub as if she owned the place. Tall, slim and deliciously dark with raven-black hair and a wide generous smile, the woman was dressed in a designer gown that couldn’t have been any more formfitting if it had been sprayed onto her flawless skin. Diamonds sparkled from her fingers, circled both wrists and her neck. Her shoes showed toes, the nails painted the same color as her fingernail polish, and her long hair was swept forward across her face to help hide the jagged rope scar on her neck where she had been hung and hideously tortured by the formerly corrupt spy agency. Helping the federal army to bring it down hard, Lucia Cortez had been generously rewarded by Mexico by not being arrested for stealing millions of dollars from the secret coffers of the agency. Soon, Cortez had a string of restaurants, hotels, gas stations and nightclubs across the nation and happily fed CISEN any juicy gossip her employees heard in passing.

“Good evening, Bull,” Cortez said, sitting down at his table. Smiling, she placed a cigarette between her lips and waited.

Removing it, Cinco crushed the tube in one hand and sprinkled the remains into the ashtray.

Her dark eyes flashed with surprise, then Cortez laughed and relaxed in the cushioned leather chair. “You never change,” she said, reaching out to playfully ruffle his hair. “When the worms come to eat you in the grave, you’ll arrest them for trespassing.”

“My coffin, my rules.” Cinco smiled, then recoiled as the woman jerked backward in the chair, a small black hole appearing in the middle of her forehead. As blood began to trickle from the bullet wound, Cinco was hit twice in the back with something very hard.

Flipping over the table, he dove to the floor and came up with his Magnum pistol blasting. Standing near the fire exit was a man holding a silenced rifle, preparing to fire again. But the heavy slugs from the .357 Magnum slammed him against the fire door so hard his head audibly cracked on the metal, and he tumbled to the floor, gushing blood.

Panic filled the nightclub at the sound of the gunshots, and people started rushing about in a blind panic, screaming and shouting.

Ignoring the civilians, Cinco knelt by Cortez, and saw that it was too late to do anything. Her face was ashen, the pulse in their throat weak, and her skin already felt cold and lifeless.

“Lucia,” he whispered putting a lifetime of emotion into the name.

“Ca-Cancun...” she whispered in reply, the words almost lost in the general commotion of the rioting nightclub. She trembled once, then went still forever.

Laying her head gently on the floor, Cinco rose to his full height and proceeded directly out the fire exit. He passed by the killer without a second glance. He knew the man, Hector Martin, a contract killer from Quarez, who never asked why, merely who and how much? He had done a lot of work for the Sandanistas back in the bad old days, and Cinco knew that there was nothing new he could learn from the corpse. Martin cost a lot, so that meant whoever had had Cortez killed was very wealthy, and had good intel about the criminal underworld. That wasn’t much to go on, but he had to start somewhere.

The back alley was hot, humid and dank, ripe with the smell of rotting garbage. Feeling like a machine set on autopilot, Cinco strode through the reeking darkness, his fist clenched around the pistol, his heart pounding as he desperately sought somebody to kill in revenge for the senseless slaughter of his old friend. But the alley was clear, and the parking lot was total chaos, any possible clues destroyed by the mob of frightened civilians running for their lives.