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  Behind her, frighteningly close, she heard a man’s voice. “You should not play with guns.”

  * * *

  GRIMALDI CALCULATED THAT he had enough rounds still remaining in his ammo bin to make one final strafing run. He’d save enough to cover Bolan at their pickup, say a couple hundred rounds, but he would use the rest to finish off the nightmare scene he’d sketched over the formerly calm facade of Joaquim Braga’s jungle hideaway.

  Once more around the battlefield for Bolan and their mission.

  Deftly handling the Huey’s cyclic stick, collective lever and antitorque pedals, Grimaldi took her down into the valley of fire. Braga’s men didn’t load their autorifles with tracer rounds, so Grimaldi couldn’t spot the bullets arcing up to meet him, but the muzzle-flashes blinking at him from below were proof enough of murderous intent. Grimaldi couldn’t blame them, but he wasn’t any man’s clay pigeon, either.

  This war bird was coming in to kill.

  He milked the miniguns for short precision bursts, not hosing down the camp, but spotting pairs and clusters of defenders as Grimaldi swooped to meet their rising fire. It was a hairy ride, but nothing Grimaldi hadn’t done before, risking his life for his country and the Executioner.

  He watched it all: the bodies jerking, falling as Grimaldi mowed them down; his ship’s altimeter; the ammo counter; muzzle-flashes blasting at him from both sides. Banking, as if to come back for another pass, Grimaldi changed the game and hovered where he was, then let the Huey rotate counterclockwise while its miniguns carved out a circle of annihilation in the middle of the compound.

  Blood and thunder all around.

  He couldn’t get them all though, and the ship was taking steady hits. Reluctantly, his ammo counter sitting on a short 225, Grimaldi took the chopper up, ascending vertically to treetop level, then beyond the clearing, for a pass over the forest canopy where bullets couldn’t reach him from below.

  If he went down again, he would exhaust his ammunition in a fraction of a second, and the odds were even that he’d suffer vital damage to the chopper or himself. That didn’t worry Grimaldi so much—he would have done a kamikaze number for the big guy, if required—but Bolan needed Grimaldi alive and airborne at the moment, for the wrap-up of their job.

  They also serve who only stand and wait.

  Or circle over treetops, as the case may be.

  But damn he wished he was down below with Bolan, kicking ass.

  * * *

  JOAQUIM BRAGA COULD not believe his bleary eyes. In front of him, two figures lurched and shambled through the haze of dappled sunlight dimmed by smoke. He stood and gaped at them, blinking, at first believing he’d conjured them from his imagination. Blood loss could produce hallucinations, he was sure, and he’d also struck his head while tumbling off the Kawasaki trail bike. A concussion might have rendered him delusional.

  But, no. His eyes and mind were not deceiving him.

  Hugo Cardona was approaching with Mrs. Missionary, one hand clamped around her slender arm, the other dangling a pistol. Braga also noted that Cardona had a second sidearm tucked under his belt. He was a two-gun man.

  Braga stood ready with his IMBEL carbine as the pair came closer, Cardona wearing a sardonic smile. “You thought to leave without me, eh, socio?”

  “In my language,” Braga answered, “it’s parceiro. Partner. I supposed that you were dead.”

  “A grave mistake.”

  “And you have found the woman. Not that she has any value to me now.”

  “But she may still be of some use to me,” Cardona said.

  “We can discuss that when we are secure, away from here.”

  “Secure, you say? Roaming around the Mato Grosso like tourists?”

  “I have people waiting in Cáceres,” Braga answered. “It will be a long walk, certainly, but we’ll make it. I have packed supplies.”

  Enough for one, but that would be his secret. All he needed, at the moment, was a chance to raise and aim his weapon.

  The Colombian snorted, a sound of rank derision. “I’m afraid this is the end of our relationship, Joaquim. You are unreliable.”

  “How do we know this trouble did not follow you from Medellín?”

  “Blame me if that’s your pleasure,” Cardona said. “We are finished, either way.”

  “So be it. Take the woman and be gone.”

  “There is one final piece of business to complete, before I go.”

  Cardona had begun to raise his pistol, but the missionary’s wife chose that moment to lurch against him, striking at him with an elbow, struggling to escape. Braga was not about to waste his golden opportunity. He raised the MD-2, aimed hastily and squeezed the trigger, unconcerned with the woman as he sent three 5.56 mm rounds crackling across the thirty feet that separated him from the Colombian. In fact, he’d missed the woman altogether, and it seemed that only one shot had struck Cardona, but it had done the trick, drilling his jaw and dropping him before he had a chance to fire his pistol.

  Slumped on hands and knees, the missionary’s wife was sobbing, maybe gathering the nerve to break and run, when Braga reached her. Bending down and wincing at the pain it cost, he wedged his carbine’s muzzle underneath her chin and forced her head back so that she was facing him.

  “It seems you cannot escape me, little dove. Get up now. It is time for us to start our final journey.”

  * * *

  OUR FINAL JOURNEY. Mercy Cronin knew what that meant. Wherever the drug lord planned to take her, it would end for her when she was dead. After all that she’d been through—twice kidnapped, threatened with torture and murder, nearly shot just now in a duel between two of her captors—it was enough to make her break down and cry hopelessly.

  But the tears didn’t come.

  Instead, she felt anger’s heat warming her face. She stood her ground with fists clenched. To hell with this, she thought. To hell with all of it.

  “Go on and shoot,” she said. No stammer, no suggestion of a tremor in her voice.

  Braga stepped back a pace, the carbine muzzle moving out from under Mercy’s chin. He frowned at her, a curious expression on his bloodied face, and asked, “You want to die now?”

  Mercy answered through clenched teeth. “Why not? A bullet’s better than whatever you’d come up with later. Get it over with.”

  “Suppose I take you to a city and release you, eh?”

  A tiny spark of hope flared, but she smothered it. “No thanks. I’ll take my chances here.”

  “You have no chances here,” Braga replied.

  “You want to shoot me, so do it. Otherwise, you should be running.”

  “Running, eh? You think I am afraid?”

  “From the looks of you, I’d say you were about half dead yourself.”

  “Far from it,” Braga answered. “Maybe I prove it to you now.”

  “Stick with the gun,” she said. “We know that works.”

  With a snarl, Braga triggered a rifle shot that lifted Mercy’s hair on the right side, missing her cheek by half an inch or less. Recoiling from the blast, she dropped to one knee, left arm raised to shield her face, the right flung out to brace herself on the ground—and felt the dead man’s pistol shift beneath that hand.

  “Last chance,” Braga said. “You come with me and live, or stay and die.”

  Mercy knew the gun she felt was backward, maybe even upside down. She’d have to scramble for it, try to aim before Braga could fire and pray that she could squeeze the trigger. Anything more complicated was beyond her, and she had no time to learn.

  “All right, all right,” she said, starting to rise, putting a whine into her voice, head down in hopes her dangling hair might help conceal the weapon as she fumbled with it. “If I don’t have any choice—”

  She c
ame up firing, startled by the pistol’s noise and recoil, eyes closing involuntarily. She heard another blast from Braga’s rifle, before something hot and wet spattered her face. Gasping, she dropped her gun and raised both hands to touch her face, feeling for wounds.

  “You’re fine,” said a familiar voice.

  Matt Cooper. Standing above the corpse of Joaquim Braga, where Cooper must have fired his gun. Mercy saw the gaping wound in Braga’s forehead, knowing instantly that he’d been cut down from behind.

  “I didn’t even scratch him,” she said, bitterly.

  “You almost got me, though,” Cooper replied, as he reached down to help her rise. “You want to ditch this place or what?”

  Mercy felt herself smiling, had almost forgotten she knew how.

  “I thought you’d never ask,” she said.

  * * *

  BOLAN STUCK CLOSE to Mercy as they left the compound, scattered shots still ringing out behind them, but no sounds suggesting organized pursuit. If they met stragglers in the jungle he would deal with them. Meanwhile, he raised Grimaldi on the sat phone and arranged a pickup on a hilltop they had seen from outer space, through satellite photography, standing a quarter mile due north of Braga’s camp.

  Make that his former camp. The former drug lord’s final resting place, perhaps.

  Bolan had no choice but to break the news while they were hiking, speaking softly both to listen for pursuers and because the news was grim. He sketched the scene of Abner’s death, no sugarcoating it, but may have made the missionary sound a little braver than he was. Why not? The tears came then, but Mercy didn’t ask to stop. She kept on walking, muttered something that he didn’t catch, then lapsed back into silence for a while.

  When they had halved their distance to the LZ, she inquired, “What now? For me, I mean?”

  “You’ve still got people from the consulate waiting to see you,” Bolan said. “They can review your options, but in light of all that’s happened, I’m inclined to say your best move would be going home.”

  “Home.” She pronounced the word as if it had no meaning for her. “Where is that, exactly?”

  “Florida, I thought you said.”

  “What about Abner?”

  “I returned him to the site of last night’s camp,” Bolan said, “thinking you’d be there.”

  “Of course, I wasn’t. Stupid!” Mercy said, clearly referring to herself. “Is there some way we could...get him?”

  “Our chopper likely won’t have fuel enough to make another detour. Once you get back to the city—”

  “Never mind,” she said. “He loved this place. More than he loved me, I suppose. More than he loved his own life. Let him stay here.”

  “No need to decide right now,” Bolan said. “When you’re sure...”

  “I’m sure,” she told him. “How much farther?”

  “Twenty minutes, give or take, the pace we’re going.”

  “Can we step it up a little?”

  Bolan had to smile at that. “Why not.”

  They found Grimaldi waiting for them, his Huey rotors spinning lazily, not stirring up much breeze at all. He had the Heckler & Koch UMP in his lap, watching the rain forest behind them as they climbed the grassy hill and came on board. He nodded to Bolan, then to Mercy, told them both to buckle up, and in another moment, they were airborne.

  Every jungle in the world looks peaceful from the air, a kind of never-never land where iridescent birds and butterflies swarm through the treetops, worshiping the sun. A passerby in flight can’t see what lurks below, who lives or dies to keep the food chain operational.

  The same is true of cities, more or less, minus exotic creatures on the wing. Bolan had seen both kinds of jungles from the ground, where life and death depended on a combination of intelligence and savagery. He knew the rules of brute survival in the wilderness.

  Next time, perhaps, concrete would be beneath his feet. Or maybe sand. Who knew?

  Whatever came his way, the Executioner would be prepared.

  Epilogue

  Congonhas—São Paulo Airport

  “How do I know I can trust them?” Mercy Cronin asked, peering through the tinted windshield at a nondescript man and his attractive female companion who stood on the airport tarmac near their Ford EcoSport SUV.

  “They’re legit,” Grimaldi assured her. “U.S. State Department, bona fide.”

  “Are they deporting me?”

  “They can’t do that,” Bolan replied. “They’re from the States. Only Brazilians can deport you from Brazil.”

  “I bet they’d like to, wouldn’t they?” she asked.

  “Give them the benefit of the doubt,” Bolan suggested. “I suspect they’re here to help.”

  “What if they ask about...you know?”

  “They won’t. It’s need-to-know,” Bolan replied.

  “I don’t know how to thank you,” she said. “For everything.”

  She had thanked him, in fact, more than once, but Bolan let that go. “The best thanks is just getting on with your life.”

  “Whatever that is.”

  “Anything you want to make of it,” Bolan replied. “It starts right here, today.”

  Nodding to herself, Mercy got out and closed the EcoSport’s rear door behind her, moving toward the consular officials with determined strides. If she looked back, it was already too late. Grimaldi had the SUV in motion well before she reached the couple who’d been sent to shepherd her through reams of diplomatic red tape at the U.S. embassy.

  “You’ve been in touch with Stony Man?” asked Bolan, as they cleared the runway area.

  “They’re satisfied and then some,” Grimaldi replied. “Hal asked me to find out if you need any downtime.”

  “Something new?”

  Grimaldi shrugged. “Isn’t there always?”

  And there was, of course. In Bolan’s world there were no holidays, legal or otherwise. He grabbed some R & R between assignments, when and where he could, but always knew another challenge would be coming up. Another test of strength and cunning against wily human predators.

  It was the world he lived in, while it lasted.

  And the Executioner was living large, one battle at a time.

  * * * * *

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  ISBN-13: 9781460327791

  First edition March 2014

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

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