Rogue Force

  Annotation

  AN EAGLE FOR THE KILLING.

  A covert clique within the U.S. military is set to launch an all-out war in Central America. This secret cabal of generals believes the American people are being betrayed by a soft U.S. government. Their idea is to stage another "Vietnam." But this time on America's doorstep.

  There's only one way that Washington can neutralize these superpatriots: pit its supersoldier against the very men who trained him!

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Prologue

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  Epilogue

  * * *

  Don Pendleton's

  Mack Bolan

  Rogue Force

  There is no greater fatuity than a political judgment dressed in a military uniform.

  Lloyd George, 1863–1945

  I believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right.

  Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Gen. Hooker, January 26, 1863

  A nation's first, and last, line of defense rests squarely on the shoulders of her military, on the spirit of soldiers dedicated and true. I speak from grim experience.

  Mack Bolan

  To the members of the original Delta Force

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Mike Newton for his contribution to this work.

  OCR Mysuli: denlib@tut.by

  Prologue

  The night patrol had been a practice run, but it was turning into something else. The soldier had no fear of darkness, or the forest, but he didn't like the way his three companies had been acting. There had been none of the hilarity that usually accompanied their jungle milk runs, no suggestion that they ought to take it easy for an hour or two, then head on back to give the customary all-clear signal. Everybody knew the night patrols were basic drills that any trooper worth his salt had mastered long ago. The enemy was miles away — assuming that there was an enemy — and it would be a frosty day in hell before they got this far.

  He didn't mind the night patrols… until this one. All day long the others had been looking through him as if he wasn't there, responding to his questions curtly, if at all. He wondered whether he had unwittingly stepped on someone's toes, or if he had begun to snore in barracks after lights-out. Anything, make it anything, as long as no one knew.

  It had been stupid of him in the first place, poking his nose in where it didn't belong. His curiosity had gotten the better of him, and what curiosity could do for cats it certainly could do for men. In spades.

  He hadn't meant to eavesdrop on the others. Not exactly. It was their fault for discussing private business in the latrine and forgetting to check out the stalls. So what if he had lifted up his feet the moment he'd heard them enter, praying that they wouldn't kick the doors back one by one? When it came down to lethal accidents, the crapper led all other sources by a mile.

  But if he hadn't meant to eavesdrop — and he hadn't — he had to admit that what had happened next was certainly deliberate. You couldn't follow someone through the streets by accident, not ducking in and out of doorways like a frigging TV private eye, afraid that one of them will turn around and catch you at it, maybe notice your reflection in the windows of a shop or restaurant.

  Okay, so he had followed them deliberately. Their conversation had raised some questions in his mind that wouldn't let him rest. Together with some incidents of strange behavior that he had observed from time to time — the pieces of a complex puzzle recognized subconsciously perhaps — the stolen snatch of conversation had begun to haunt him, made him wonder what the hell was going on.

  The wise thing would have been to put it out of mind, of course. Wise and safe. And now he wished that just for once he might have opted for the course of wisdom. Too damned late.

  There was a chance to save it even after he had followed them to town — not once or twice, but three times — if he had failed to put the pieces together or had simply kept the finished picture to himself. Approaching the CO had been a stupid trick; not only had he ratted on the men of his platoon, but it had gotten back to them somehow. He was convinced of it.

  He could have sworn that the commanding officer had promised to investigate his charges in the strictest confidence. Of course, you had to figure that the old man wouldn't do it by himself, but you would still expect his chosen bloodhounds to be careful when they started throwing names around. Unless…

  The sudden gooseflesh crawling on his back and arms bore no connection to the temperature, which seldom dropped below the seventies. The short hairs on his neck were standing at attention now, and he was acutely conscious of the fact that there were three of them behind him, armed and in a prime position if they meant to take him down.

  "Let's take a break," DiSalvo called from somewhere close behind him, knowing they wouldn't be overheard.

  "Sure. Why not?" The point man, Rafferty, was thirty yards ahead, but in the darkness he might just as easily have been standing right beside him, maybe with a Ka-Bar in his hand. "I've got a spot up here. C'mon."

  On other night patrols, the break would be the high spot of their wasted evening. One of the others, usually Broderick or Steiner, would produce a couple of six-packs they had brought along in place of field gear, and they'd pass the cans around. It wasn't much, but it was a damn sight better than a ten-mile hike through jungle blacker than the inside of a coal mine, looking for an enemy who wasn't there.

  Tonight, the soldier didn't think the others would be breaking out a six-pack. He couldn't be sure, but from the tone of conversation — or the lack of any conversation — it didn't take a genius to figure out that they were royally pissed. If he wasn't the focus of their anger, then he was free and clear. Next time a night patrol came up and they were teamed together, he would stand for sick call, shove a finger down his throat if necessary.

  But he wouldn't fucking go out in the jungle with these guys again.

  The spot that Rafferty had chosen was a marshy clearing, maybe forty feet across and twice that far around its kidney-shaped perimeter. It took a second, squinting look before he realized the center of the clearing wasn't solid ground at all, but some kind of bog with moss and shit covering the surface. Jesus, if a man blundered into that unknowingly…

  The pain exploded in his kidneys and brought him to his knees before he knew that he was falling. In his sudden agony, he never felt the others pull away his M-16 or the survival knife he wore suspended upside down in shoulder rigging. By the time his guts stopped turning over, he was lying on his side, unarmed, the others looming over him like giants.

  "It was stupid, man. You should've kept your nose clean," Steiner told him.

  "Stupid," Rafferty agreed.

  "The stupidest," DiSalvo offered.

  "You're going to learn a lesson, boy."

  "You're going to have an accident."

  He didn't even try to match the voices with the speakers now, for they were all intent on killing him. He had to concentrate on getting them to reconsider while some hope remained.

  "Wh-what's this all a-about?"

  "You fucking spied on us, you shit."

  "I didn't!"

  And of course he had, but when your life is on the line you lie as i
f there were no tomorrow. He shuddered at the thought.

  "Save your breath, man," Rafferty advised him coldly. "We already heard your story from the horse's mouth."

  He knew that it was hopeless then, because the fucking CO had betrayed him to these animals, for reasons he couldn't fathom. Reasoning with them would be impossible; if he was going to escape the fate they intended for him, he would have to do it now, without resorting to words.

  He rolled away from Rafferty and toward DiSalvo, groping for the man's ankles, jerking them from under him and bringing down his captor with a startled grunt.

  A boot heel slammed between his shoulder blades and emptied out his lungs. He tasted dirt before another boot caught him in the testicles, and it was over. Curled into a fetal ball, unable to resist them as they hauled him to his feet, he knew that he was dead.

  "Y-you can't d-do this," he stammered. "You w-won't get away with it."

  "Won't get away with what?" one of them asked, sounding small and far away, beyond the curtain of his pain. "We told you to stick with us. It's not our fault you wandered off."

  "We wasted hours lookin' for you," another voice chimed in. "Too bad we couldn't find a trace."

  And he was moving now, too weak to struggle as they dragged him toward the marshy center of the clearing. For an instant he was curious to know how they would make his death look accidental, and at once he knew. It wasn't water underneath the moss and scum at all, but quicksand.

  Somehow he discovered strength to struggle then, but it was feeble, and far too late. Another few strides and they were shoving him ahead of them, releasing him, allowing him to fall. His arms flailed madly for an instant, fingers clutching blindly for salvation, seizing only vacant air. He splashed down heavily, his face submerged, thrashing back to reach the surface, gasping desperately for air.

  Don't struggle! He remembered that much about quicksand: if you fought and struggled, it would eat you quicker. There were ways to beat it if you kept your head. A lucid portion of his mind remembered stories of assorted victims who had saved themselves by floating or by swimming out of quicksand. Sure. Except he doubted they had been surrounded by four men intent on seeing them go under.

  His equipment was dragging at him like a diver's weight belt, and his slimy fingers fumbled with the buckles while he tried to keep the rest of his body immobile. Before he even had the pistol belt unhooked, his boots had filled with mud, and now his legs were being drawn down inexorably. The suction made an aching bow out of his spine.

  "Be seein' you," DiSalvo called. "You rotten shit."

  The quicksand must be somewhere near his armpits now, for it was getting hard to breathe. No matter. He was worried most about the water that was lapping underneath his chin. It was the layer of water lying over quicksand that most often finished victims, he remembered. You weren't simply sucked away, you fucking drowned, sometimes mere inches from dry land.

  Hopelessly, aware that there was no one in the world to hear him but his murderers, the drowning man began to scream. It took eight minutes for the marsh to silence him forever.

  1

  The viper hesitated on its perch, head slightly elevated, lidless eyes alert for any trace of movement while its forked tongue darted in and out to taste the air. A slender reptile, mottled green from nose to tail, it had been born for hunting in the trees, its form and function predetermined by a billion years of evolution. Its satin belly scales had never touched the forest floor below and never would unless the hunter lost its purchase in the canopy or was compelled to flee another predator by plummeting to earth.

  The reptile sensed that something was amiss with its environment. It couldn't determine precisely the strange sensation, but it knew. Some of the viper's "modern" relatives possessed a facial organ capable of registering heat within a given range, thereby detecting prey and predators more easily, but they were creatures of the ground, competing with the mammals for their daily food supply. The arboreal viper had no warm-blooded natural enemies; its prey consisted of birds, amphibians and other reptiles, hunted by their scent, detected by the sudden movement of their flight. In mortal danger now, the viper was completely unprepared to face a different kind of enemy, completely foreign to its prior existence.

  Secure in its speed, protective coloration and the venom in its fangs, the viper slithered forward, following the giant knotted limb, alert for any movement that was close enough to constitute a threat. The unfamiliar scent was stronger now, compelling in its promise of a feast to come. Days had passed since its most recent feeding, and the serpent's innate caution took a back seat now to gnawing hunger.

  Sudden movement from above, a looming shadow closing swiftly, and the reptile had no time to coil or strike in self-defense. The needle tip of a commando dagger sliced through bone as thin as tissue paper, skewering the viper's brain and sinking half an inch into the bark beneath the viper's head.

  Straddling the limb, Carl Lyons watched the viper thrash from side to side, impaled, the reflex action of its muscles taking over for a brain already dead. The hypodermic fangs could deal a lethal dose of venom even now, and he was cautious as he stretched to grasp the wriggling tail, his free hand wrapped around the dagger's grip, prepared to synchronize the move. In one deft motion, Lyons stretched the viper's body taut and pulled it toward him, pivoting the knife meanwhile until one razor edge was pressed against the reptile's neck. A twist and drag, a ripping sound and Lyons held three feet of headless snake in his fist, suspended forty feet above the forest floor.

  He leaned out from the trunk, knees locked around the branch that was his sole support. He counted three and let the headless viper fall, its body twisting, wriggling as it pierced the nearest barrier of leaves and disappeared.

  Five more seconds passed until he heard the sound of thrashing impact and muffled curses rising toward him through the verdant canopy. The Able warrior grinned, imagining the shocked reaction of his two companions as the viper had made its unexpected entrance from above. They would be pissed, of course, when they discovered Lyons's prank, but they would soon get over it, and there was no harm done. He had been confident that they were too professional to open fire and give themselves away. If only Lyons could have seen their faces.

  He worked the dagger free and flicked it sharply to his right, the serpent's mangled skull sailing through the leaves. Carefully he wiped the dagger's tip between two leaves, sheathed the weapon, double-checked his landmark, then began his slow descent. Decked out with lineman's climbing spikes and safety rigging, Lyons could have slithered down the rugged trunk in minutes, but he took his time, allowing those below to nurse their irritation.

  At fifteen feet he saw them glaring at him through the leaves and lianas, the viper stretched out dead between them on a bed of mulch. When he had halved the distance, Lyons shook his safety rigging free, kicked off the spikes and did the final seven feet in free-fall, landing in a combat crouch one yard from his companions.

  "That's some killer sense of humor," Hermann "Gadgets" Schwarz told him tersely.

  "Yeah. A scream," Rosario "Politician" Blancanales commented, glowering.

  "Jeez, I thought you guys could take a joke."

  "I've got your joke right here."

  "Guys, please," Pol Blancanales said, raising both hands in supplication. "Can we put the vaudeville routine on hold and concentrate on business?"

  Lyons shrugged good-naturedly. "Why not?"

  "I owe you one," Gadgets said.

  "I'm quaking."

  "Did you see it?" Pol demanded.

  "Mmm? Oh, sure. Right where it was supposed to be. I'd estimate two klicks, southeasterly."

  The landmark was a solitary mountain peak that thrust above the jungle treetops like a naked fang, apparently devoid of vegetation at its summit. Able Team would find its destination in the shadow of that mountain, two kilometers away.

  "Okay." Blancanales checked his watch. "Let's figure four, four-thirty. We'll have time to kill."


  "Suits me. I'd rather scan the place firsthand than trust those aerials," Lyons said.

  "You'll get your chance. We need a recon on the compound anyway."

  "So, let's get moving."

  "Ironman," Gadgets said. "Sometimes I wonder if the guy who called you that was thinking of your head or your feet."

  "What makes you think it was a guy, compadre?"

  "I was betting the percentages."

  "Let's move it, shall we?"

  They had crossed the Rio Coco, from Honduras into Nicaragua, shortly after dawn. They had been marching south by southeast ever since, except for one midmorning break, the forest covering their tracks and letting them proceed without the threat of being spotted from above. The ground patrols were something else again, but fortune had been smiling on them so far. There had been no sign of scouts, although the probability of hostile contact was increasing with each stride they took in the direction of their final destination.

  Able's target was a Sandinista base camp, eighteen klicks inside Nicaraguan territory. There were others like it ranged along the border with Honduras, granting rapid access to an armed frontier, but this camp had been rendered momentarily unique. According to the CIA's "informed" report, it was the one and only Sandinista base where field interrogations were routinely carried out on hostage VIPs before their one-way journey to the dungeons of Managua. And, again according to the Company, there was a client hostage currently in residence.

  Their pigeon was a field commander for the counterrevolutionary forces, and he knew enough to seriously undermine the "Contra" government in exile if his captors managed to elicit full disclosure.

  Able Team had been detailed to bring him out alive — or, failing that, to guarantee that he would not be talking under torture somewhere down the line. It was a dirty job, but one the Contras couldn't handle by themselves just now, with Congress arguing "humanitarian" appropriations versus "military" aid.