Don Pendleton - Predator Paradise

The soldier gave a moment’s thought to the mission, the parameters, endgame, reasons why he had accepted. For starters, it angered Bolan deeply that in this part of the world, where those who needed food and medicine the most, cried out for a helping hand just to get through the day, were not only denied the basics, but viewed as a blight to be removed from the body whole. In other words, those unfortunate enough not to be able to defend or fend for themselves, whatever the circumstance, weren’t worth protecting or sustaining, seen as deadweight, a possible contagion to the power structure, worthy of only subjugation or death.

Dugula had been on the soldier’s removal list for some time, the warlord living up to his ghoul’s handle given him by the UN for too long now. In a land where lawlessness ruled, where there wasn’t even the first fundamental institution, bureaucracy, no media or government whatsoever, it was impossible for even the World Health Organization to state the number of Dugula’s victims. Western intelligence could emphatically claim that entire villages had been wiped off the plains in a genocide campaign where Bolan assumed the warlord meant to do nothing but spread fear and terror.

The soldier had been around long enough to know that whatever they did here would make little difference in the long run. One less Dugula, one less army of murderers, though, terrorizing the countryside might tip the scales an inch or so in favor of the oppressed. What was true, in his mind at least, that all it took for evil to triumph was for good men to turn a blind eye, wash their hands of atrocity and man’s inhumanity to man as long as it didn’t encroach on their own world. If all of it boiled down to the power of the gun winning over evil, the Executioner was a proved old hand at the game.

A little over three days ago, Bolan recalled, he had been standing down at Stony Man Farm, the ultracovert intelligence agency in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and overseen by his longtime friend, Hal Brognola. Brognola, a high-ranking official of the Justice Department who was—in addition to routine Justice duties—a cutout between the President of the United States and the Farm, had presented the soldier with quite the unusual mission. How the channels ran through the various intelligence agencies to launch this mission and who, exactly, had brainstormed this campaign, not even Bolan or Brognola was sure. Assume Pentagon brass, CIA, NSA, but the Man—who green-lighted all Stony Man operations—wanted what he called the best of the best on board a black ops team called Cobra Force Twelve.

It seemed the President—or whoever had put the idea in his head—felt the need for a second holding pen outside Guantanamo Bay. Gitmo, or so Brognola had been told by the Man, Bolan recalled, had gotten a bit overcrowded with bad guys. And secondly, or so the line of reasoning went, there was too much spotlight glaring on Gitmo, thanks to the media, which, in the usual convoluted political thinking, could end up smacking Washington with a black eye. Prisoner mistreatment, abyssmal living conditions, individual rights of terrorists denied, and so on. It hadn’t been spelled out one hundred percent, but Bolan’s gut told him the next prison camp for international criminals wouldn’t pop up on CNN.

Usually the soldier operated alone, or as part of the two Stony Man commando teams. Working with unknown factors, CIA or bona fide military men with combat experience, had proved perilous to his health in the past. Brognola, however, had laid it out, convinced him to colead Cobra Force Twelve. Never one to unduly swaddle himself in the Stars and Stripes, the big Fed had told him twenty to thirty of some of the most wanted terrorists, depending on how many could be taken alive, could prove intelligence mother lodes in the war on terror. Somalia was first on the roundup list.

Not even Brognola had been told where this military tribunal would be held, and Bolan wasn’t quite sure what to make on the lack of concrete details. It smacked of dark secrecy to the soldier, all around, and Brognola had as much as said if it blew up in the faces of those in the field doing all the hunting and capturing then America would take a verbal shellacking by the UN, her supposed allies, not to mention the Muslim world cranking up the heat for jihad.

And even with intelligence operatives all over the map, guiding them from hit to hit, they were on their own. The Executioner understood and accepted his usual role as a deniable expendable if he was caught or killed by the enemy. That was acceptable. What wasn’t were a few nagging speculations tossed his way by Brognola before he headed out to Fort Bragg to introduce himself—Colonel Brandon Stone—to the Cobra troops. The file on Collins and Cobra was classified, but the cyber sleuths at the Farm had unearthed a few questions, framed as suspicion, about the man and his team. They were terrorist headhunters, with a trio of successful outings to their credit, only a “but” in caps hung over their heads. The thing was, they had been in the general vicinity when a spate of kidnappings and murders of American citizens in Egypt, Pakistan and Indonesia sullied their record. Coincidence?

Another reason to hop on board.

The soldier was there now, willing to let battle and time tell the truth.

He turned to the driver—Asp—the op’s mane of black hair and facial scruff framing the portrait of a mercenary. The pager on Bolan’s hip vibrated, the same signal transmitted, he knew, to the other ground troops. The bird had landed.

“Listen up,” Bolan told Asp, turning to make sure the lone black commando on the team—Python—heard him loud and clear. “There’s been a little change in plans.”

DUGULA WAS beyond troubled, and he couldn’t simply will away the gnawing in his belly. Something was shooting him to new heights of fear, a feeling so alive it had become a living monster in his face.

As the day ground on, everything appearing to go as planned, the worm in his belly squirmed harder, terror not far behind the unease, threatening, he imagined, to uncoil an adder in his guts, devour him from the inside out.

He had placed the call to the man in Saudi Arabia, more out of nagging paranoia than curiosity. Sure enough, the cutout who had arranged safe transport for freedom fighters he was harboring, so high up the chain of command in the Islamic jihad that disobedience was a death sentence, had confirmed what the whites had told him.

There was, so the middleman said, a series of big events about to unfold, fear not, perform the holy duty, whatever it was. The Saudi had instructed him to comply with whatever the foreigners wanted him to do, no matter how bizarre their requests seemed. Again he was told he would know when it started, but not knowing when or what disturbed him the most, visions of the noose once more tightening around his neck flaming to mind. He was to have faith as strong as steel, ask no questions. He would be an important, even a glorious instrument exercising the will of God in the coming days. He was being called, perhaps by the Prophet himself, a holy decree he was to carry out, once again, on faith. And he would be paid—the bottom line in his ultimate decision—more than he could ever spend in two lifetimes. Woe be to anyone who attempted to betray any of them, chisel out of the bargain, or so the Saudi told him.

Still, he had many questions, all of them bringing on doubt and worry that would see him thrash through one or many sleepless nights before this big event. Beyond that, he was angered that forces beyond his control had assumed he would obey their mysterious dictates, even order him to relegate his power to the enemy. Being on an overseas line, though, the conversation was brief, code words and phrases that should leave any enemy eavesdroppers guessing.