Don Pendleton - Pirate Offensive

Studying the flutter of a rag hanging on a bent nail overhead, Bolan concluded the wind was likely a steady north-by-northwest, blowing five to six miles per hour. He mentally added that to the equation of trajectory, caliber, speed and distance, and minutely adjusted the scope again. Bolan had specific goals tonight, and killing civilians was not among them. Very long ago he had sworn never to take an innocent life. He did not kill randomly or without purpose. Every bullet had a goal—the preservation of life.

Gunning down a mad dog in the street before it could attack innocent bystanders was not sport for him, or fun, or even very interesting, except in the purely intellectual aspect of tactics and deployment. It was a job that needed to be done. Nothing more. A job that he was uniquely suited for.

I am not their judge. I am their judgment. The criminals and mad-dog killers of the world had forged their own destiny when they turned against the rest of humanity. Bolan was merely the instrument of the payment.

Bolan adjusted his sights again. The low roar of a jet sounded overhead. Out in the canal, a cruise liner the size of a small city maneuvered through the array of elevated locks connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific. A full moon shone in the starry sky over Panama City, the silvery light reflecting off the ocean’s low swells. In the far distance, the horizon glowed from the electric lights of the busy port town. Ships from every nation were waiting in a long queue to trundle through the canal.

Once a poverty-stricken nation, nowadays Panama was thriving from the steady influx of fees and import duties that accompanied the massive flow of cargo.. Almost a million tons of produce and manufactured goods moved through the canal every week, making it one of the most important arteries in world commerce.

Turning away from the bustling city, Bolan focused the telescopic sights on a warehouse in an isolated inlet to the south. Down here in the darkness of the Cordan Quay, roughly a million dollars of goods were moved on an almost daily basis. Only none of it was legal, sanctioned or even registered. Cordan was a known focal point for smuggling narcotics, slaves, gold and—of course—weapons.

Built to merge seamlessly into the rolling sand dunes and rocky hills, the disguised warehouse had an irregular rooftop covered with bushes and trees to help mask it from aerial observation. In front, a splintery wooden pier looked just about ready to collapse. But Bolan knew it was actually made of welded steel recovered from a stolen Brazilian battleship. The rust was painted on, and the thick corrosion was merely plastic flakes. To a casual observer, the warehouse and dock appeared long-abandoned, as lifeless as the dark side of the moon.

In reality, the warehouse was a hardsite, the reinforced walls thicker than those of many military forts. Hidden in the sand and mounds of garbage were enough surface-to-air missile, or SAM, bunkers to hold off any conventional attack. Bolan estimated the area could be destroyed by heavy bombing, but even then, unless a nuclear charge was used, the people inside the building would be long gone before any significant damage was done—the warehouse was built very deep into the ground. Besides, there were more important things inside that warehouse than merely the men who sold death to the highest bidder.

Hidden in plain sight. It was a bold move for Pierre Cordan, the so-called king of South American smuggling, but so far it had paid off big.

He’d even heard rumors that Cordan was attempting to expand into Asia. However, his every effort had been met with deadly resistance from the Sun Nee On, the largest Chinese triad in the world. Bolan had tangled with those lunatics before—and carried the scars to prove it.

The smell of diesel fumes grew stronger, and a diesel engine rumbled into life with a sputter. An old Russian fishing trawler, covered in camouflage netting, was moored at the dock. Wavecutter was the name on the stern. But under the magnification of the sniper scope, Bolan saw that was just a magnetic banner placed over the real name. If it had one. According to his intel, as soon as the ship was in deep water the banner would be tossed aside, and a new name would be slapped onto the hull. Fast, easy and much cheaper than repainting. The ship got a new name at every port.

Burly men stood guard on deck, openly holding Atchisson auto-shotguns, pistols holstered behind their backs. The crew was busy lashing down a pair of unmarked crates to the aft deck. They were a mixed group—most looked European, but there were more than a few East Asians. The ship was old, but through the dirty windows of the wheelhouse Bolan could see that it was equipped with state-of-the-art navigation equipment, GPS, radar, sonar and what looked suspiciously like a radio jammer. A Russian ship with Chinese electronics? Yeah, the Wavecutter smelled like a smuggling vessel. Which meant that Bolan had no interest in it—the captain or the crew—right now. Tonight, he was only interested in the warehouse.

A man cursed on the foredeck as a static line snapped loudly. The heavy rope slashed across the deck like a bullwhip, smashing a wooden barrel into splinters then lashing right through where the sailor had just been standing. Now, the sailor was flat on the deck, alongside his huge captain.

Bolan was impressed. In spite of his size, the captain of the trawler was fast, quite possibly the fastest man Bolan had ever seen. As the two men got back up, Bolan briefly studied the captain. He moved with catlike grace, always on the balls of his feet, not the heels. That was a martial arts stance. Perhaps he was a sumo wrestler, although the captain did not look Japanese. They were huge men who could move with lightning speed. It was a deadly combination of size and speed. While the crew checked the other lines, the captain waved at the dockworkers, then tossed over a small packet of money. Grinning widely, a skinny man with a beard made the catch and nodded in thanks. Bolan recognized him as Pierre Cordan. The man climbed onto a forklift and drove back toward the warehouse, the rest of the workers following on foot.

As the crew of the Wavecutter tossed off the mooring lines, the workers disappeared inside the warehouse, a huge steel door closing behind them with a muffled boom. Instantly, Bolan stroked the trigger of his rifle. A soft cough from the weapon went unheard, the noise completely lost in the sputtering roar of the fishing trawler’s big diesel engines.

Arching high into the night, the 20 mm grenade landed on the roof of the warehouse with a clatter and rolled across the patched surface, coming to rest directly alongside a spinning intake vent. The canister began issuing a steady stream of light gray smoke.

Changing targets, Bolan fired five more times. Soon, the entire roof was covered with thick, dark gas, the vents sucking it all down into the building.

* * *

BOLAN WAITED TEN MINUTES for the sleeping gas grenades on the roof to stop working, and then another five for everybody inside the warehouse to be overcome. Then he pulled on a gas mask and climbed down from the water tower. Retrieving a heavy backpack from the bushes, Bolan drew his silenced Beretta and boldly walked across the open ground of the garbage dump toward the warehouse.

He encountered trip wires, easily avoided, and proximity sensors, rendered useless by an EM broadcast unit tucked into Bolan’s equipment belt. The two guards hidden in the garbage dump were slightly more trouble to neutralize, but Bolan had marked their locations well. The first died under an expert knife thrust to the back of the head, the “doorway of death” located just behind the right ear. The man went stiff and stopped breathing, dead before his mind could even register the attack. But the second guard must have heard something, and she spun around, frantically clawing for the Steyr machine pistol on her hip. Although Bolan disliked shooting any woman, he put a single hollow-point 9 mm into the bridge of her nose, blowing out the back of her head, and kept going. Swim in blood, you pay in death, he thought. End of the discussion.