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  “He was SEBIN, not from the PNB,” she said. Meaning the Policía Nacional Bolivariana—Venezuela’s national police. “Their leaders barely speak, much like your FBI and CIA.”

  “And does Mossad do any better with Shabak?” Bolan countered, referring to the Israel’s internal security service.

  Geller shrugged and then said, “At least sometimes, when dealing with the Palestinians.”

  “Depending on the urgency,” Bolan observed. “It’s pretty much the same with us.”

  “Since you propose a partnership,” she said, “how do you picture it proceeding?”

  “With a common goal in mind, we make it work,” he answered. “And if that breaks down...”

  “We kill each other?” she suggested with a small, off-kilter smile.

  “It wouldn’t be my first choice,” Bolan said, and left it there.

  “And would you seek advice from your superiors, whoever they might be?”

  “I’ve generally found it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than it is to get permission.”

  “That is often true in Israel, also. Still...”

  “No problem, if you’d rather not team up,” he interjected.

  “I have not said that,” Geller told him. “Now that we have broken bread together, it would seem a shame to execute you.”

  “Likewise. I suppose you have the layout for Las Palmas?”

  “Topographic maps and satellite photography,” she said. “And you?”

  “Same deal. I won’t try to one-up you on technology.”

  “But now we may have caused a problem, yes?”

  “You’re thinking that they’ll change the venue?”

  “It’s a possibility.”

  “In that case,” Bolan said, “we’re wasting time. Let’s roll and have a look-see for ourselves.”

  Las Palmas Resort

  Colonel Miguel Pérez of SEBIN was out of uniform, a circumstance that made him feel vaguely uneasy despite long experience working in plain clothes, undercover with a wide range of disreputable individuals.

  At forty-eight years old, Pérez had entered service with his government some thirty years ago, as an agent of DISIP, Venezuela’s General Sectoral Directorate of Intelligence and Prevention Services. He and his homeland’s foreign intelligence agency—formed in 1969 from the ashes of DIGEPOL, the Interior Ministry’s General Police Directorate—had grown up together, Pérez promoted and transferred when SEBIN succeeded DISIP in 2010.

  Since then, he’d dealt with ranking Venezuelan politicians on one hand and felons on the other, a mélange of spies and double agents, narco traffickers, blackmailers, kidnappers, arsonists, political extremists and assassins. Nothing much surprised him now, except discovering how many categories any given contact might inhabit simultaneously, often while preserving a “respectable” façade.

  And now he was assigned to babysitting terrorists, invited by his government to meet on Venezuelan soil and hatch new plots against the fabled “Free World” run by leaders his country’s president deemed enemies.

  To what end?

  Truth be told, the colonel neither knew nor cared. Survival and advancement were the beacons that he had pursued since graduating from high school thirty years ago. By then, he’d seen and learned enough to understand that people seeking success achieved it by first emulating their superiors, then scheming and maneuvering to take their place.

  With any luck, and granting that his new assignment brought at least some measure of success, he should be in line for promotion to brigadier general, with a corresponding boost in salary and greater opportunities for banking bribes.

  What else was life about?

  Just now, Pérez was waiting to welcome another pair of delegates to the confab of the world’s most wanted—or perhaps least wanted—terrorists. Delegates Julian Cepeda and Carolina Salazar had not traveled far from home, appearing on behalf of neighboring Colombia’s National Liberation Army. Both were seasoned warriors, steeped in Marxist revolutionary theory traceable to Che Guevara’s struggle in Cuba, and later in Bolivia.

  Beyond that, Salazar would also be the only woman in attendance at the meeting, something Muslim delegates could never understand or tolerate.

  Colonel Pérez stood waiting in the shaded porte cochere of the elite Las Palmas hideaway as a Mercedes-Benz G-Class midsize luxury SUV rolled in and stopped in front of him. Its driver exited, saluted his superior and then opened a rear door for his two passengers. As they emerged, Pérez took stock: a short man with long hair, oiled liberally, combed back from his face, and a woman some five inches taller, green-eyed—who Pérez found instantly desirable.

  Greeting them with his hand outstretched, Pérez remembered that Cepeda and his traveling companion were booked into separate rooms. Not lovers, then, and as he welcomed them to Venezuela, the SEBIN colonel wondered whether he could steal some private time with Carolina Salazar before she and the other terrorists got down to plotting global war.

  Santiago Mariño Municipality, Aragua State

  Adira Geller drove her black Toyota Avalon westward along Autopista Caracas-Valencia, ever mindful of the rural Venezuelan speed limit fixed at fifty miles per hour. The last thing she desired was an encounter with the Bolivarian National Guard, which doubled as Venezuela’s highway patrol. A stop for any moving violation—solitary female driver, firearms in her vehicle, confronting officers who might be little more than criminals themselves—could not end well.

  For the police, that was. Geller had no fears on her own account, at least from that quarter.

  On the other hand, her task in Venezuela might turn out to be her last.

  The tall American who called himself Matt Cooper complicated matters seriously, though she also felt an undeniable frisson at the idea of working in collaboration with him. Never mind that he was handsome and athletic, both attractive qualities, particularly when combined with his stern soldier’s bearing. She was more concerned that teaming up with him, and failing to advise her Metsada superiors of that unorthodox development, might get her killed.

  Almost as bad, if the assignment went to hell through no fault of hers, it might short-circuit her career.

  Geller’s primary target—and Cooper’s—was located one hundred miles west of Caracas, ten miles north of Ocumare de la Costa, one of Aragua’s eighteen municipalities and its farthest to the northwest. Normally, Las Palmas welcomed affluent tourists, some of them celebrities, but the president had demanded that the luxury resort be made available this week for his bizarre and deadly terrorist’s convention.

  If she had her way, El Presidente would regret that rash decision, and his guests—or most of them, at least—would be returning to their sundry homelands in sealed caskets.

  To that end, she’d been supplied by undercover Mossad agents in Caracas with a Jericho 941 semiautomatic pistol, an M4A1 carbine, ammunition for both, a quantity of M26 fragmentation grenades, and a Lotar Kobra fighting knife with a four-inch recurved blade of D2 steel with titanium coating.

  So far, only the Jericho pistol had been utilized.

  Venezuela’s ties to Israel had seemed solid until 2009, when President Chávez severed diplomatic ties, expelling the Israeli ambassador and his staff after the Gaza War that left 1,200 Palestinians dead and some 5,000 wounded. Israel had responded in kind, and by June 2010, Chávez claimed, “Israel is financing the Venezuelan opposition,” including alleged attempts on his life by Mossad assassins. Seven years later, the new president had voiced a “desire” to reestablish relations with Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had rebuffed that olive branch in 2019, endorsing the president’s rival as Venezuela’s interim leader.

  Viewed against that background, the impending terrorist summit could be seen as a clear-cut assault upon Israel, which Metsada and its woman on the scene were not prepared to tolerate.

  W
hether the American would be useful to her or turn out to be an obstacle, remained to be determined.

  But she hoped that killing him might not be on her list of things to do.

  Las Palmas Resort

  “Not bad,” Brendan McGarry said, surveying the suite he would be sharing with his fellow warrior from the Continuity Irish Republican Army.

  “Beats hell out of any place I’ve stayed in Belfast,” Dara O’Banion opined, already halfway through his first beer from the minibar.

  Their escort from SEBIN, Sergeant Who-Gives-a-Shit, beamed satisfaction at the positive reaction of the CIRA delegates, then checked his watch and said, “We should join your friends.”

  “Associates,” McGarry corrected him.

  In fact, Basque ETA representatives Xabier Biscailuz and Sabino Urkullu were the CIRA’s closest allies attending the sit-down, both geographically and philosophically. Their ancestral homeland in the Pyrenees lay thirteen hundred miles due south of Belfast, as opposed to half a world away in Africa, Asia or South America. The separatist ETA had also cultivated ties to Provisional IRA since 1974, shifting allegiance to the CIRA when PIRA leaders—sellouts in McGarry’s eyes—voted for a ceasefire against Britain twenty years later, finally dissolving for good in 2005.

  Cooperation between the two like-minded groups, both nationalists steeped in revolutionary socialism, had included weapons trafficking and targeted assassinations of mutual foes. Beyond that, most Basques, like the Irish, were loyal Catholics, a far cry from the Muslim fundamentalism preached by other freedom fighters from the Middle East to Indonesia and the Philippines. And even language ceased to be a barrier in these days, when no more than 25 percent of Basques in Europe still spoke the traditional Euskara tongue.

  With some finesse, McGarry reckoned that he and O’Banion, coupled with Biscailuz and Urkullu, might comprise a four-vote bloc—roughly 15 percent of the assembled delegates, if all those on the list were able to attend. And if their wishes were ignored by the majority...well, might they not secede and go their own way in the end?

  If he could change one thing about the conference, McGarry would have wished to have weapons on hand. He understood the downside of that proposition, given that some of the groups involved were enemies with bloody histories of schism and betrayal that obsessed them, but McGarry would have felt more confident with a Kalashnikov or AR-10 in hand.

  But if it came to that, Brandon McGarry had a plan.

  He had interrogated their SEBIN escort, while being casual about it, and discovered that the agency had stocked one suite at the resort with weapons to be used in case of an emergency, either involving rival delegates or some intruder from outside the rural getaway. If necessary, he was confident that he could penetrate that arms cache with O’Banion, maybe with the Basques in tow, and be prepared for self-defense at any cost.

  And while that would signal failure of McGarry’s mission, it might offer some diversion from the round of speeches and debates that he expected to be tiring, if not totally a waste of time.

  At least, in that event, McGarry could eliminate some foreign adversaries and resolve a few old feuds.

  “Come on, then,” he told Sergeant Whoever-the-Hell-He-Was. “Let’s not keep anybody waiting, eh?”

  * * *

  Major Riaz Khosa, of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, was not a happy traveler. Although his profession had required him to visit thirty-nine assorted, mostly hostile nations in his eighteen years of service, Khosa found that his uneasiness increased proportionately to his distance from headquarters in Islamabad.

  Khosa was not a victim of homesickness, in the common sense, but rather feared what might be happening behind his back while he was absent from his homeland’s capital. There were so many backstabbers at ISI headquarters, each intent on personal advancement, heedless to the fate of other dedicated agents, that the simplest trip abroad might find the major’s job in jeopardy when he returned.

  That was particularly true of his assignment to the wilds of Venezuela, cohosting a terrorists’ convention that could easily explode in Major Khosa’s face and damage his career beyond repair, if he survived at all.

  And now, as he had learned within the past ten minutes, it was getting off to a bad start.

  Khosa saw Colonel Miguel Pérez standing beside the posh resort’s Olympic-size swimming pool, amiably chatting with a couple of casually dressed Latinos, indicating they were not agents of SEBIN nor staffers of Las Palmas, but invited guests. One of them was a woman, which surprised Khosa and rankled his Islamic sensibility, but he could see why someone like Colonel Pérez might waste time fawning over her.

  He was what an American might call a “horn dog,” always on the make.

  But there was no time now for Pérez to indulge himself. The news that Khosa had for him might well disrupt their conference before the final delegates had even reached the resort.

  “My apologies, Colonel,” Khosa said without meaning it. “If I might have a moment of your time...?”

  “Of course, Major,” Pérez replied. “If you can only wait a moment—”

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Khosa replied, talking over his cohost. “Something demands our mutual attention at the moment.”

  Frowning, the SEBIN colonel excused himself from his two guests and followed Khosa to a point where they would not be overheard by passersby.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “Have you heard from your agent in Maiquetía, Colonel?”

  “Regarding what?” Pérez asked tersely.

  “The killings there.”

  “Explain yourself, Major.”

  “Three persons have been shot,” Khosa informed him, “from what I understand so far. Two Filipinos and a man who thus far has not been identified. From the police description, I suspect that he was one of yours, greeting a pair of delegates.”

  “Jesus! Are you certain, Major Khosa?”

  “I regret that there is no mistake, unless reports from your police are wrong.”

  “Who is responsible for this?” Pérez demanded.

  “It’s been reported that the murderers escaped. So far, there have been no arrests.”

  “Son of a whore!” Pérez raged.

  “Perhaps the conference should be postponed, or relocated?”

  “That is not possible. The delegates have all arrived by now and are en route to this location.”

  “Then we must prepare for interference, Colonel.”

  “I shall call my headquarters immediately,” Pérez said. “We may be forced to go ahead, remaining here, but we will be ready for trouble.”

  “And warn the other delegates?”

  “Perhaps, Major. Let me think on how to impart this information to our guests.”

  Chapter Five

  Ocumare de la Costa Municipality, Aragua State

  Mack Bolan overtook Adira Geller’s black Toyota Avalon and led her to a turnout off the two-lane rural highway, headed northward. She followed Bolan’s Land Cruiser, pulled in behind him, and parked beside him in a sheltered clearing where their vehicles should be obscured from passersby.

  But it could be a different story if an all-out search was mounted once they’d gone to work.

  The CIA and Stony Man could access his SUV’s LoJack tracker if necessary, but if that turned out to be the case, he knew it likely wouldn’t matter anyway.

  “We should be roughly two miles from Las Palmas,” he advised his companion as they stood between their cooling vehicles. “Due north is—”

  “I know where it is,” she interrupted him. “Shall we prepare?”

  “Suits me.”

  He didn’t bother making small talk while they changed into fatigues, his printed in a digital motif called UCP, short for universal camouflage pattern, while her full-body outfit had a printed pattern the Israel Def
ense Forces called “mountain python.” Bolan’s combat boots were Nike Gen 2 made from Gore-Tex; Geller’s were black Golani leather models, designated A-32 by IDF headquarters.

  When they’d finished dressing, both saw to their weapons, starting with web gear that featured holsters, knife scabbards and pockets for spare rifle and pistol magazines. Bolan noted that they both were packing US-made M26 grenades, designated “M26 A2” by Tel Aviv, although there was no deviation in performance. Bolan also had a complement of 22 mm rifle grenades for his Steyr AUG.

  “Ready?” he asked her.

  “As I’ll ever be,” Geller said.

  Bolan did not insult her by inquiring as to whether she had done her homework on the perils of the Venezuelan rain forest. Its wildlife included cougars and jaguars, spectacled bears weighing up to 440 pounds, wild bush dogs, eight species of pit vipers plus a semiaquatic coral snake, and three species of vampire bats. The list of creepy-crawlies featured scorpions, including Earth’s second-deadliest species; black widow and brown recluse spiders; tarantulas topped off by Goliath bird-eaters; foot-long centipedes with venom deadly to small children; and army ants. Rivers were no safer, hosting three species of caimans, piranhas, and electric eels packing charges that maxed out around six hundred volts.

  Even without human predators armed to the teeth, it was no Garden of Eden.

  Before they started hiking, Bolan checked his Eyeskey multifunctional compass with inclinometer and diopter sighting, while Geller did the same with her smaller Ueasy prismatic sighting model. He did not take offense at the Israeli second-guessing him, since that was only prudent and could be a lifesaver if he was taken out before time came for their withdrawal from Las Palmas.

  First, of course, they had to get there in one piece without being devoured by some forest predator, envenomed or picked off by snipers hidden in among the trees.

  No problem, Bolan thought.

  And if you bought that, he could let you have a certain bridge in Brooklyn, marked down to a penny on the dollar.