Revolution Device Read online

  Her grip tightened on the pistol.

  As Katz moved closer to the craft, she slowed her approach. Her eyes darted around, looking for some clue about the pilot’s whereabouts.

  He’s not here. She stopped and stared at the helicopter, as though she could will him to appear. Katz threw a glance to her left at the hangar. It was her only chance to find him, and even then there was no guarantee it would do any good. With every passing second, the chance that Escobar would come looking for her increased.

  She had to do something.

  The sensation of something white-hot tunneling into the back of her calf, just below her right knee, registered with her, accompanied by the sharp crack of a pistol. Her breath hissed through clenched teeth. She tried to whip around, but her right leg faltered under her, causing her to crash to the ground.

  Jaw clenched, she rolled onto her back. The hand clutching the Glock swung around in an arc at the same instant she saw him standing there.

  Escobar was positioned maybe twenty yards away, right arm extended forward, hand filled with that damn Colt of his. The gun cracked again and a hot sensation drilled through her shoulder, elicited a cry of pain.

  The Glock slipped from her fingers. Furiously she shoved her left palm into the earth and tried to push herself up from the ground. A second dose of white-hot pain lanced through her body.

  Escobar was standing next to her, the Colt’s barrel pointed at her face, its snout locked on her forehead. His eyes stared down at her. She saw no traces of pity or compassion, no signs of rage or betrayal in his eyes. Just that same damn dead-eyed stare of his.

  “Nikki?” he said.

  She said nothing.

  After a few seconds he continued. “I’m disappointed.”

  “Good,” she said, the effort causing her to wince.

  “Are you disappointed? I mean, here you are, stuck in a jungle, and yet you know so much. You could do so much to help your homeland. Yet here you lay, bleeding in the grass, sweating like a cheap hooker. You’re going to die and for what?”

  Her vision blurred and a shudder seized her. The cold meant shock was setting in.

  “You almost made it to the helicopter. Do you feel like you’ve won?” he asked.

  She didn’t, but she also wasn’t going to admit it. Had Perez made it out? She thought she heard the pop of gunfire in the distance, but she couldn’t tell for sure; everything she heard sounded like it was coming to her through a long tunnel.

  “I knew you’d come to the helipad,” he said. “You always were predictable.”

  She heard voices and felt hope surge through her. Perez? Was he coming to help? Her eyes drifted past Escobar and she could see two figures moving toward them.

  Following her gaze, the crime lord looked over his shoulder before he turned his eyes back on her and shook his head.

  “Mine,” he said.

  “You’ve met Mr. Boudri already,” Escobar said. “The others are his associates.”

  Her tongue felt dry and swollen, the flesh of her throat felt dry, tight, as though it could crack. She wanted to say something to him. Do you think this will work? Do you think al-Jaballah will let you in his inner circle? She wanted to say all these things. But when she spoke she could only emit a pitiful-sounding croak. Her gun had fallen out of reach and he had kicked it away from her.

  Even through the veil of pain, she could see his black eyes held no warmth for her. An Iranian walked between them, throwing her a glance before continuing on. Another of the men, Hezbollah or IRG, she couldn’t really tell, stopped, stared down at her and grinned before moving on.

  “I considered taking you with us,” he said, “but decided not to. Even if we tortured you, you’d never tell us anything. Besides, the real problem isn’t what we know about you, but what you know of us. That’s the real danger. It can be fixed easily.”

  Bastard!

  She forced herself to speak.

  “Fix it,” she said. Her voice was cold and resolute.

  The pistol cracked once and she was gone.

  * * *

  ESCOBAR STARED DOWN at the woman, his expression flat. He’d lost his capacity to feel anything, save for rage, decades ago. He felt no attachment to her, certainly no guilt for slaying her. She’d been little more than a sack of meat to him while alive. Now, sprawled on the ground, her life fluids all but drained from her, she was even less.

  He kicked some dirt on her face, whirled around and started back to the main building.

  The men who’d attacked his compound had taken so much from him, nearly everything as a matter of fact.

  He’d allowed the Hezbollah operatives to flee, so they could follow their mission in Baghdad. He’d stayed behind on purpose—he wanted to finish this.

  But first he had a stop to make.

  He walked to the hangar, found the side door and slipped inside. At the far corner of the building stood a small office. He made his way to it, tried the knob and found it was locked. He drove the point of his elbow into the glass. When it broke, it made a sharp snapping noise, like a branch breaking. The shards rained onto the floor, most shattering when they struck the concrete.

  Reaching through the glass, he unlocked the door and stepped inside the office. On the other side of the room stood a large gun safe. Crossing the floor, he punched a code into the keypad and listened for the lock to release. When it did, he pushed the lid up and sorted through the contents of the rectangular cabinet, which in some ways reminded him of a refrigerator lying on its side.

  He found an FN P-90 submachine gun chambered in 28 mm ammo. With its bullpup design, the weapon had a rate of fire of 900 rounds per minute. He loaded a magazine into the P-90 and strapped on web gear that enabled him to carry four more magazines. In addition, he grabbed a pair of M-67 grenades.

  Leaving the hangar behind, he moved back in the direction of the main building and training center. The Americans had stripped away or destroyed everything that mattered to him, that he’d built. A lot of those things he’d have to rebuild or buy back. It would take time to accomplish this. One thing he could do right now, though, was to get revenge on the bastards who’d done this.

  * * *

  BLANCANALES SPRINTED ACROSS the lawn. He could hear the thrumming of the helicopter blades and knew he needed to act. He already had seen Escobar and the Iranians duck out, leaving their foot soldiers to fight the battle. Katz had mentioned there was a helipad on the compound. And, while he had no idea where it was, he’d assumed that was their destination.

  Now that he was outside, he could hear the helicopter’s engine and the whipping of the propeller blades. He headed for the sound. He’d put maybe one hundred yards between himself and Escobar’s stronghold when he heard the whine of the engines climb in pitch. He swore. An instant later the whirling propeller came into view, followed by the body of the craft.

  Sunlight glinted off the craft’s exterior and suddenly the crackle of gunshots intermingled with the helicopter’s rhythmic beating. Yellow muzzle-flashes winked at Blancanales, and the deadly storm of bullets drilled into the ground around the Stony Man warrior.

  He dropped into a crouch, angled the Kalashnikov up at the helicopter and squeezed the trigger. Bullets struck the Sikorsky, sparked against its hide and whizzed away. When a couple of steel-jacketed slugs pierced the windshield, someone in the craft apparently decided to declare victory and run. The helicopter turned ninety degrees and skimmed off over the treetops.

  With a pause in the shooting, Blancanales hoofed it in the direction of the helipad. He could now see that the ground sloped upward a few dozen yards before leveling off again. He ran up the short hill and when the ground leveled off again, he could see the helipad and a building that appeared to be a hangar or maintenance structure.

  He saw something else that caus
ed his blood to run cold.

  A crumpled form lay on the ground; one leg bent slightly and the other jutted straight out. Her arms were twisted at awkward angles.

  Damn. He ran for the fallen woman.

  * * *

  BLANCANALES LOWERED HIMSELF to one knee beside Katz’s corpse and surveyed the body.

  The killer had put a single round into her heart, the fabric around the hole burned black by the muzzle-flash. Blood drenched the front of her shirt. Her head lolled to the right, her unseeing eyes open, lips slightly parted. The Able Team fighter reached out and closed her eyelids. Gently he wrapped his fingers around her right wrist and moved her arm so it lay parallel to her ribs. He did the same thing with the other arm before straightening her bent leg.

  They hadn’t been allies for long, each mistaking the other as an enemy even as they fought for similar causes. But without her last-minute help, Blancanales figured he would have been dead or would have suffered vicious treatment at Javier’s hands. He’d seen other torture victims as he’d fought on the world’s killing fields and knew death would have been the preferable alternative.

  Distant gunshots grabbed his attention. He uncoiled from the ground and turned his head in the direction of the gunfire. Recognizing Lyons’s trademark spray-and-pray barrage, he turned his attention to the compound’s main building.

  He knew he needed to head in that direction and help his teammates as they mopped up Escobar’s men—and the man himself.

  Blancanales jogged toward the main building, at first unaware someone was watching him.

  * * *

  STILL INSIDE THE hangar, Escobar stood at a window and watched as Perez rose from beside the dead woman. The agent’s efforts to somehow make the dead woman more comfortable amused Escobar.

  Obviously this guy was weak. No doubt he was deadly. But at his core he was weak.

  He’d die easily.

  Escobar watched Perez turn and head back toward the barracks and training center. For a couple of seconds the Mexican considered moving in the opposite direction. If he ran two hundred yards in any direction, he’d find himself in jungle. As cautious as he was, he’d buried sealed plastic tubs filled with a couple days’ provisions, satellite phones, knives and Beretta 9 mm handguns at a various points in the surrounding wilderness.

  He could bolt from his property, dig up one of the phones, call for help and wait out the Americans who were tearing through his property.

  Forget it, he told himself.

  He’d rather die here than run.

  Glancing out the window again, he saw Perez crest a short hill and, without pausing on the top, start down the other side and quickly disappear from view.

  Exiting the hangar, he picked up the other man’s trail, slowly ascending the hill. He didn’t want to move too fast. He wanted Perez to stay just far enough ahead of him that Perez wouldn’t realize he was being followed.

  The way Escobar figured it, the closer the American got to the larger fight that lay ahead of him, the more focused he’d be on it and the less tuned in he’d be to his rear flank. That would make him an easy target for Escobar. Then he could deal with the other two, if his security team hadn’t already done so.

  With long, steady strides he rolled up the side of the hill, slowing his approach as he neared the top. If the American had realized he was being followed, he could be lying in wait, Escobar thought. Dropping into a crouch, he moved over the rise and could see Perez had already returned to level ground and was heading for the main building.

  He had him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The cluster of buildings that comprised the heart of Escobar’s complex lay a hundred or so yards from Blancanales. Only sparse cover stood between the buildings and him: three black Hummers parked on a large concrete pad and a small wooden utility shed.

  Before he’d covered a dozen or so yards, his combat senses began calling for his attention, warning him of danger.

  An instant later a man armed with an MP-5 surged from behind one of the Hummers. Jagged flames and bullets lashed out from the H&K’s barrel. Slugs chewed a line in the ground just a few feet ahead of Blancanales.

  The AK-74 in his hands chattered, letting loose with a maelstrom. The barrage lanced into the hardman’s chest, killing him. Propelled by momentum, the corpse hurtled forward another couple of feet before the legs gave out and it smacked facedown on the earth.

  Even as the hardman fell, a second popped up from behind the Hummer nearest Blancanales. Laying his SMG on the hood of the big vehicle, the gunman fired off two quick bursts that cleaved through the air just to Blancanales’s right.

  He threw himself down, putting him out of the shooter’s sights, and rolled to his left and unfolded from the ground in a kneeling position.

  Bringing the AK tight against his shoulder, he locked his sights on the vehicle the shooter had been hiding behind. From his line of sight, he couldn’t see the guy. He moved in a wide circle, hoping to outflank the shooter. He stepped onto the concrete pad where the Hummers were parked and moved a couple yards forward.

  More autofire rang out to his right. Blancanales whipped his head in that direction and spotted Escobar, a submachine gun tucked against his side, approaching him. Bullets ripped up chunks of concrete near the Stony Man commando’s feet. He squeezed off a fast burst in Escobar’s direction to disrupt his approach and bolted.

  In the same moment the other shooter came into view and was lining up a shot at Blancanales, who hosed him down with a murderous barrage from the AK.

  Blancanales ejected the AK’s magazine, tossed it aside and fed a new one into the rifle.

  Escobar had followed him. The guy came around the back end of one of the Hummers and unloaded more fiery death at Blancanales. The Stony Man warrior wheeled around and fired the Kalashnikov, moving it in a figure-eight pattern.

  The 7.62 mm slugs stitched half a dozen holes across Escobar’s chest. The onslaught spun him halfway around. His finger in a death spasm squeezed the trigger and the rifle fired through part of its magazine, the bullets spraying into the sky. Blancanales ran to the fallen man. The PN-90 had slipped from the guy’s grip. He stared up at Blancanales, his breath coming in ragged gasps, a trickle of blood trailing from the left corner of his mouth.

  Escobar turned his head. “Hijo de puta,” he rasped.

  The soldier switched the rifle to single-shot mode and put a round into the crime lord’s forehead.

  Escobar’s body went still.

  * * *

  INSIDE ESCOBAR’S HOUSE, Blancanales found carnage but little else.

  The gunfire had ceased. He walked through the first floor, checking room by room for Lyons and Schwarz. He heard no voices, either, and for a chilling moment wondered whether his two friends had been injured or even killed.

  In several rooms he found Escobar’s men, dead, sprawled on the floor, draped over furniture like a discarded jacket. One body floated facedown in an indoor pool in the building’s gymnasium, the water turned red by blood.

  Riding the elevator into the basement, he stepped back into the corridor that led to the room where he’d been held captive. Immediately images and physical sensations from his time as a captive began to replay through his mind and body. Before he got too lost in that line of thinking, he heard the murmur of voices up ahead.

  With the AK held tightly at his side, he moved through the hallway, the voices growing louder the closer he moved to the sources. Finally he could make out Lyons’s voice and a smile ghosted his lips.

  “Hey, Ironman,” he shouted, “is that you?”

  A brief pause followed by, “None other. You okay?”

  “I’m alone, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Good.”

  “And I’m okay.”

  “Even b
etter.”

  In less than a minute the three men were face to face.

  “You’re a sight for sore eyes,” Lyons said. He extended a hand and Blancanales shook it.

  “Can I have a hug?” Blancanales quipped.

  “I’m going to stick my foot up your ass and break it off,” Lyons said.

  “That’s a no,” Schwarz said, grinning. “And don’t even bother to ask me.”

  “Fair enough,” Blancanales said, grinning. With the adrenaline beginning to subside, he was starting to feel tired.

  “You see Escobar?” Schwarz asked.

  Blancanales nodded.

  “Dead. I killed the bastard.”

  “Score one for the good guys,” Schwarz said. “We’ve got a helicopter about a mile west of here. You okay to walk?”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Hey, Escobar’s girlfriend, Nikki Vargas, is dead. She was Mossad. She’s the reason I’m alive.”

  Lyons nodded. “The Farm found out a couple of hours ago she had connections to Israel,” he said. “Worked out good for you. Helps to have a friend on the inside.”

  “Not so good for her.”

  “Yeah,” Lyons said, “not so good for her. Hey, she’d probably be dead anyway. I’m guessing Escobar would’ve figured it out sooner or later. At least she died on her terms, right?”

  “And we got Escobar for her,” Schwarz said.

  “Even so...” Blancanales responded, thinking of the sacrifice the Mossad agent had made to save his life.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

  David McCarter was the last member of Phoenix Force to enter the secure conference room in the basement of the U.S. Embassy. A cold can of Coke gripped in his right hand, he moved to one of the leather chairs surrounding the large circular table and dropped into the seat. Stifling a yawn, the tall, fox-faced Briton opened the soft drink can, took a long pull from it, set it on the table and swept his gaze over the occupants of the cramped, stuffy room.