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  While any of the terrorists survived, Bolan still hoped to run them down and finish them.

  Beginning now.

  South Wing

  Adira Geller heard a loud explosion. It was followed swiftly by another, and it came from the general direction where she understood a helicopter had touched down around the same time she’d crawled from a bathroom window in the north wing of Las Palmas.

  The echoes of those blasts inevitably drew her northward, retracing her steps over familiar ground. She checked her watch, saw that it read 11:46 p.m., and didn’t have to wonder where the night had gone so far.

  She had spent it fighting for her life.

  Geller wondered if she’d have a chance to contact Tel Aviv again. But if she didn’t...well, what of it?

  She was not the only agent from Metsada presently working in Venezuela, even though she had been sent alone to see what could be done about the gathering of terrorists the Venezuelan president had arranged. By one means or another, she knew word would make it back to Israel that the gathering had been aborted.

  Beyond that, details would not concern her when she’d drawn her final breath.

  There was no unanimity among the followers of Judaism as to what may constitute Olam Ha-Ba—the “World to Come.” Most think of hell, if it existed at all, as someplace more akin to Purgatory, where the souls of those deceased were cleansed, refined and purified before transitioning to Heaven, with the latter terminus poorly defined. Most planned to face a day of judgment, but without the Christian need for everlasting punishment.

  Geller, for her part, thought that death was simply that—an end to life and consciousness from which no one returned or journeyed onward into blinding light.

  Whichever vision proved to be the truth, Geller knew the odds were good that she would learn the answer soon enough—or not, if she turned out to be correct.

  But while she lived, she might as well try to pair up again with Matt Cooper.

  Who else, given her surroundings, had a fighting chance to help her stay alive?

  Suite 121, North Wing

  Teuku Beratha heard the shouting from outside and peered with one eye through the drapes shielding broad windows of the suite he shared with fellow Indonesian terrorist Irwandi Malik.

  “Who is that?” Malik demanded, rising from the sofa where he had been watching some inane game show on television with the volume muted.

  “It’s the Pakistani, Khosa, and some soldiers,” Beratha said. “They are trying to collect the men from suite 115.”

  Beratha and Malik were members of Jemaah Islamiya. Its full name in Arabic translated as “Islamic Congregation” in English, but the JI would not be confused for a religious congregation or sharia study group. Since its birth in October of 2002, announced by a triple bombing in the tourist zone of Kuta, Bali, which had killed 202 persons, wounding 209, the JI had expanded beyond Indonesia to plant active cells in Brunei, East Timor, Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. Its goal—creation of a fundamentalist Islamic state in Southeast Asia—had not been achieved so far, but its current commander had settled in to play a long game with the heathen West.

  To that end, Beratha and Malik had been sent to Venezuela on the off chance that the meeting called by the country’s president might advance their cause. But JI’s delegates were convinced it would do no such thing, and they were focused on escaping from Las Palmas with their skins intact.

  As if in answer to that thought, gunfire erupted from suite 115, some thirty feet across dual concrete pathways and an intervening greensward.

  Malik flinched at the first shots, but he recovered quickly, drew the Glock provided by their Venezuelan guards, and tossed Beratha his FN P90 submachine gun, fielded with a deft hand from midair.

  Outside, the Venezuelan SEBIN soldiers were returning fire with automatic rifles, breaking off negotiations with the two al-Shabaab delegates inside. Beratha could not say why the Somali and Yemeni had chosen to open fire, but now he had to think about what their choice meant for him and for his compatriot.

  Malik moved to join him at the window, pistol cocked and ready in his right hand. “Shall we try to help them?” he inquired, voice calm, no tension readily apparent in his stance or attitude.

  Beratha did not care what happened to their neighbors, or to any of the other delegates, but if the Venezuelans were approaching their invited guests as enemies tonight, he knew that would rebound against himself and Malik soon.

  “We seem to have no choice,” Beratha told his comrade as he drew the submachine gun’s bolt back, chambering the first of fifty 5.7 mm rounds from its top-loaded horizontal magazine. Mindful of the weapon’s cyclic rate, fifteen rounds per second on full automatic, he set the P90’s ambidextrous fire selector for 3-round bursts to conserve ammunition while enhancing accuracy.

  “Kill the lights, Irwandi,” he instructed. He waited until darkness filled their suite before he drew the curtains back and then asked his partner, “Are you ready?”

  “I am with you in this, my brother,” Malik answered in the affirmative. “We shall prevail!”

  “We shall prevail,” Beratha instantly replied then raised the submachine gun’s butt plate to his shoulder, index finger curling through the trigger guard.

  * * *

  Major Khosa hunkered down behind the thick stem of a pindo palm, clutching the Browning Hi-Power that he had yet to fire since suite 115’s occupants had started shooting at the SEBIN soldiers under his command.

  Shooting at me, he thought, and felt a surge of anger override his original panic. While his support troops—those still standing, anyhow—were shattering the suite’s windows, stitching its outer wall with bullets, Khosa risked a hasty glance around his palm tree. He squeezed off a 9 mm round that struck the door of number 115 and drilled a neat hole through the paneling beside its second mullion.

  Now, at least, none of the SEBIN riflemen could carry tales back to Colonel Pérez depicting Khosa as a weak-kneed coward.

  Of the fifteen men in uniform who’d been supporting him since Khosa reached the north wing of Las Palmas, three were down and one of them—the wounded soldier who had left a trail of blood behind him, seeming weaker by the moment—clearly was not breathing. His reaction to the pistols firing from the second floor had been too slow to save him, and a round had pierced his skull as he’d sought cover for himself.

  The other two, as far as Major Khosa could determine, were alive so far but hesitant to move and thereby draw attention to themselves. That left Khosa with twelve men against two in suite 115, their opponents armed only with handguns from the SEBIN armory. If he meant to reach them, he would have to send the soldiers upstairs, in clear view of their sheltered enemies.

  It could be done, of course, but only at great cost to life and limb. Still, if he did not give the order—

  Khosa had his mouth open, prepared to do exactly that, when bullets started raking his position from the far side of the greensward, coming from another suite entirely. Frog-walking around the palm that sheltered him, trying for cover from a new direction now, Khosa saw muzzle-flashes winking from the windows of a darkened room. He had no idea who occupied that space but did not need a psychic to inform him that the terrorists on that side were supporting the opponents who had first brought Khosa’s soldiers under fire. Now he was trapped between them, and the fact that one of his attackers had an automatic weapon boded ill for Khosa’s chances of escaping from the trap alive.

  Two more of his SEBIN gunmen were down and out before the others recognized the danger at their backs, then roughly half of those still able started firing at suite 121, the second sniper’s nest.

  “God help us!” Khosa muttered to himself in Pashto, confident the Venezuelans could not understand him even if they overheard the plea, and started looking for an opportunity to run.

  To hell with saving face in front of st
rangers when his life was riding on the line.

  * * *

  Bolan was headed toward the east wing of Las Palmas when gunfire erupted from the north and changed his mind. It sounded like a fierce skirmish in progress, with assault rifles, pistols and one light automatic that was probably a submachine gun tossed into the mix.

  No matter who was pumping lead at whom, Bolan intended to be part of it and bring the battle of Las Palmas to an end as soon as possible.

  What of Adira Geller? Would she have the same thought and appear where Bolan could team up with her again? Or was she even still alive?

  Priorities, he thought, and started jogging toward the sounds of combat echoing from the north wing.

  Geller had made it this far, with the IDF and then Mossad. She wouldn’t thank Bolan for treating her as someone who required protection.

  In his experience, from taking on the Mafia, then signing up with Stony Man, female combatants generally didn’t need a man’s help when it came to kicking ass. Some died, of course, but they had known about that risk from day one on the job.

  Watching for SEBIN sentries as he went, Bolan prepared for his next meeting with the enemy, snapping a 22 mm rifle grenade onto his Steyr’s muzzle in preparation. His AUG and twin Glocks were fully loaded, and he still had multiple M26 grenades ready at hand to thin out any hostile odds he met along the way.

  Beyond that point, it all came down to guts and willpower, two traits Bolan had cultivated from his youth, through military service and beyond.

  That didn’t make him bulletproof by any means, but he’d survived this long against odds lesser men would have dismissed as hopeless and impossible.

  Three hundred yards to go, approximately, and the sounds of battle had begun to slacken off. Whichever side had claimed the momentary victory, it made no difference to Bolan. Both sides were his enemies this time around—SEBIN and the invited terrorists, both scheming to disrupt the world at large. If they annihilated one another, in accordance with his plan, it would save Bolan time, ammo and energy.

  And if he had to deal with some of each, so be it.

  That was what he’d planned since meeting Hal Brognola some two thousand miles away, in Arlington.

  Granted, it hadn’t gone exactly as he’d hoped—but, then again, what did in life?

  Winners were not decided by their battle plans or the diversions they encountered while pursuing same. Only results counted, and whether enemies might rise to fight again another day.

  Scorched earth was Bolan’s plan from here on in, and he had flame enough to spare.

  Chapter Thirteen

  East Wing, Las Palmas

  Colonel Pérez snapped orders at his SEBIN troops, demanding greater speed as they advanced toward escalating sounds of battle from the north wing. Even so, they had to pause at each juncture where paths or buildings met, scanning for enemies who might be lurking anywhere.

  By now, Pérez’s men were armed with FN FAL rifles and MP5 submachine guns, besides their pistols, and one of them had fetched the colonel a Venezuelan-manufactured CAVIM Orinoco SMG, essentially a knockoff of the classic Uzi pioneered by Israel back in 1954.

  President Carlos Andrés Pérez Rodríguez had launched CAVIM—in English, “the Venezuelan Company of Military Industries”—by decree in 1975, hoping to jumpstart a self-sufficient domestic arms industry, but later found himself impeached for embezzling 250 million bolivars from a presidential discretionary fund.

  On balance, though, the Orinoco wasn’t bad. Miguel Pérez was confident that he could drop an enemy with it at any reasonable range, unless one of his adversaries drilled him first.

  It was too late, he now understood, to salvage any part of the president’s plan to organize a global force of terrorists against the Anglo-American West. In fact, it would require a Herculean effort on his part to keep from being fired outright, perhaps imprisoned if his president required a scapegoat and decided that Pérez would fit the bill nicely.

  Was someone in Caracas shredding documents that very night, and forging others pointing to Pérez as the wild scheme’s originator? Would the ISI in Pakistan play ball, explaining Major Khosa’s presence at Las Palmas as the madness of a rogue agent, devoid of any sanction from Islamabad?

  Pérez knew stranger things had happened in the past, and doubtless would again, once he was rotting in a prison cell or in a shallow unmarked grave.

  What did he owe to a regime that might have marked him as a human sacrifice?

  Nothing, perhaps. And yet...

  From all his years in service to the Venezuelan government, he could not shake a sense of loyalty that forced him to press on against the odds, in spite of common sense, to spare the president and his coterie of aides from being pilloried by members of the fourth estate. If he could kill or capture those responsible for wreaking havoc at Las Palmas, the investigation still might veer away from the administration in Caracas.

  And if he could find a way to cast the US as Venezuela’s enemy—no great leap of imagination, based on CIA conspiracies that spanned the better part of eighty years—Pérez might even come through this debacle as a minor hero, finding favor with the president.

  But none of that would happen if he could not stay alive.

  Suite 115, North Wing

  Ifrah Tako fired the last three rounds from his Browning’s first magazine, ejected it, and slapped another into place. He now had twenty-six remaining cartridges and saw no realistic prospect for survival, much less for escape.

  “Shit!” Boushra Damari swore, discarding one of three mags that he had received for his Glock 17. It did not take a calculator to divine that he had thirty 9 mm Parabellum rounds remaining—fifty-six overall between the two of them.

  Outside, their SEBIN adversaries had been whittled down in number, although Tako could not risk counting how many still remained since unexpected backup from the Indonesian team in suite 121 had weighed in on the side of al-Shabaab. One of the freedom fighters over there possessed a submachine gun and had proved adept at using it, though Tako could not say how many of their enemies had been dispatched so far.

  Enough to let them break free of the SEBIN trap, perhaps?

  That was unlikely, he supposed, but every moment they delayed their enemies was something of a Pyrrhic victory, if nothing else.

  And then what?

  Ifrah Tako did not even have to ask.

  Risking a glance outside the shattered remnant of the suite’s broad windows, Tako glimpsed SEBIN combatants scrambling for cover, firing bursts of automatic fire toward his room and at suite 121. Rejecting any notion of capitulation, he squeezed off two hasty rounds without aiming, convinced that both were wasted.

  But at least he still was in the fight and making noise, if having no concrete result.

  Tako reached out and tugged at his companion’s sleeve, noting warm moisture there that stained his fingertips crimson.

  “You’re hit,” he said, stating the obvious.

  “It’s nothing.”

  “But we’ll soon be out of ammunition, Boushra.”

  “So?”

  “Perhaps our only hope lies with audacity.”

  Damari blinked at him, said, “That’s not hope, Ifrah. It’s suicide.”

  “But for a cause,” Tako replied. “At this point, what else do we have?”

  Before Damari could reply, a close-range, high-explosive detonation rocked the north wing, shaking free some shards of glass still clinging to the suite’s window frames.

  “Damn it!” Damari blurted. “Who is that, now?”

  Tako had no answer for him, but his mind was grappling with another question.

  Which side are they on?

  * * *

  Watching the north wing firefight from a cautious distance, Bolan quickly understood the gist of what was happening. SEBIN had been engaged in sear
ching, maybe trying to evacuate survivors from Las Palmas, when they had come under fire from terrorists in two posh suites at once.

  He could not say what might have touched it off, and Bolan didn’t care.

  His plan was working out in some respects, at least, and he would take advantage of it while he could.

  Bolan announced his entry to the melee with a 22 mm STANAG grenade that struck a palm tree’s stem and detonated in the midst of SEBIN soldiers fighting for their lives, pinned down under a cross fire. Before those marks could recover, he swung to his right, firing a short burst from his Steyr AUG at suite 121, then pivoted leftward and triggered another toward suite 115.

  Something for everyone involved.

  The uniformed SEBIN commandos seemed to have no clue regarding where his HE round had come from. As for the invited delegates firing on their ex-hosts, why would they care, while military guards once detailed to protect them, having failed at that, were now their enemies?

  Bolan attached another STANAG grenade to his AUG’s muzzle, thumbed the rifle’s gas valve to “GR” and aimed his next round toward suite 115. He rode the Steyr’s recoil as that round took off, slipping through bullet-riddled drapes to detonate on impact.

  A flash of light inside, a cloud of smoke, and suddenly the north wing’s fire alarms were clamoring, demanding anyone in residence to clear the premises. Unfortunately for the occupants of 115, if they were still alive and conscious, exiting their suite meant stepping out into a blaze of gunfire from their adversaries on the ground outside.

  Damned if they moved, damned if they didn’t.

  Reaching for his next-to-last rifle grenade, Bolan found that he couldn’t spare an ounce of sympathy for their dilemma. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  All sides in this conspiracy were equally at fault.

  And all could count on retribution from the Executioner.