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  So he was rich and powerful, with politicians, judges and police commanders on his payroll—none of which meant anything to Bolan. Every mob boss the Executioner had ever toppled from his high roost had the same connections, none of them enough to save them from a skilled, determined warrior.

  That, in nearly every case, had turned out to be the weakness of Bolan’s enemies. For all their innate ruthlessness and cunning, by the time they’d reached the pinnacle of influence and power, they had begun to count on the protection of the same society they had fastened on, feeding like parasites. Police—the honest ones—played by a set of rules that Bolan recognized but totally ignored. He wasn’t taking prisoners, collecting evidence for an indictment or a trial that might drag on for years before a jury deadlocked, only to have the sad charade began again from scratch.

  Bolan believed in more direct solutions, in excision of the cancer growing on society. And while he knew that taking out one boss only made way for his replacement—that no victory was ever permanent—Bolan did his part to stem the filthy tide. At home, abroad, it made no difference. The human predator had not been born who was invincible.

  Joaquim Braga would die like any other man, if it came to that. His time was running out.

  The drug lord simply didn’t know it yet.

  Chapter 6

  Missão Misericórdia

  Abner had made it back alive and more or less unscathed—except for bruises from a fall along the way. Who could deny the hand of God at work in a journey through the forest after nightfall, without any instruments to guide him through the dark and hardly any moonlight? After he’d evicted several pouting spider monkeys from the mission, he had knelt to offer up a prayer of thanks, then fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

  The guilt was waiting for him when he woke, of course. He had left Mercy on her own—or, more correctly, in the hands of Matthew Cooper, assuming he returned—and Abner only hoped she could understand someday. That she’d forgive him for the choice that had been unavoidable. His call from God had simply been an offer he could not refuse.

  Or had he lost his mind?

  Several of Abner’s so-called friends had offered that opinion back in Florida, before he’d departed for Brazil. Without mincing words, two had told him that he was crazy. Another had thought he was “going overboard on the religious stuff,” while yet another had suggested that he “needed rest.” Until they turned on him, Abner had not been conscious of the fact that his acquaintances—though self-identified as Christians—were, in fact, the tools of Lucifer.

  He prayed again on waking in the first gray light of dawn, and then he heard his stomach growling. Abner wished he’d taken some of Matt Cooper’s MREs before he left the forest camp, but that would have been stealing. Strange how that seemed more repugnant than abandoning his wife of fourteen years. He thought about the seeming contradiction for a moment, then dismissed it with a mental rundown of the Ten Commandments. One banned theft. Another banned the coveting of someone else’s wife, but not a word was said about deserting home and family in answer to a holy summons.

  Abner found some cans of food in a cupboard, picked one filled with pork and beans for breakfast and prepared to light the mission’s small wood-burning stove. The smoke might lure his enemies, but it would also send a signal to the Mundurukus, to let them know that he was back and ready to continue with their spiritual instruction.

  Whether they would come or not was something else entirely. Abner trusted God to bring them back, if it turned out to be His will. If not...well, he would certainly feel foolish in that case. His long trek through the jungle would have been for nothing then, if he had no flock to receive his message.

  Not my message, Abner thought immediately. God’s.

  But if the Mundurukus did not come, then what? If they’d been frightened off by Braga’s gunmen and the murder of their kinfolk, what would Abner do? Without his wife, with no link to the outside world, how was he going to proceed?

  He would give it time. A few days, at the very least. If no one came to him by then, he’d reconsider staying. He could make it to Cáceres, probably. A long walk to the Rio Paraguai, then follow it downstream to reach the city. From there, a bus ride to the capital, Cuiabá, and he could decide his next move. Try to find out whether Mercy had returned to Florida, gone back to stay with family in Illinois, or if she’d waited somewhere in Brazil to hear from him. Abner had no idea how to begin a search for her among the nation’s more than 200 million people, but if he was meant to find her, something would occur to him.

  The Lord would help him.

  Abner ate his pork and beans. He watched the forest in the vain hope that he’d see at least one Munduruku tribesman peering from the foliage, drawn back to the site where they had shared God’s word.

  Too soon, he thought. Of course they wouldn’t rush back to the mission one day after it was raided and their loved ones were shot. Time was required for mourning rituals, recouping courage.

  He’d have to wait and see. But in the meantime, he could fix some of the damage done by Braga’s people to the mission.

  There was always time to tidy up the house of God.

  Cold Camp, Mato Grosso

  BOLAN ATE BREAKFAST early, when it was still dark in the forest. He chose an MRE containing maple sausage and hash browns with a slice of bread and blackberry jam. Twelve hundred calories to keep him going through the morning and into early afternoon, and if it wasn’t gourmet fare, so what? He wasn’t on vacation at the Ritz.

  Bolan left Mercy Cronin with instructions to remain exactly where she was, stray no more than a few yards from the camp and keep the clearing in her line of sight regardless. If some prowling forest denizen came by, there was a tree of reasonable size that she could climb, for all the good it would do. This time he left the bolo knife and one of his canteens, then picked up what was left of Abner’s trail from his departure in the middle of the night.

  It led back toward the mission, no surprise, and when the tracks had played out, Bolan kept going in the same direction. He made no attempt to fathom Abner’s thought processes, to determine what would make him leave his wife behind and strike off through the midnight jungle to a site that had been raided once already by his mortal enemies. Religion, when it gripped a mind, sometimes evoked the most bizarre behavior. Only later—sometimes long after the fact—could that behavior be identified as bold or foolish, brilliant or insane.

  Motivation held no interest for Bolan this morning. He simply wanted to find Abner Cronin, extract him by any means required and get him on Grimaldi’s chopper bound for Várzea Grande. Grimaldi could hand off the missionary couple to consular officials and let the diplomatic red tape stall them for a few days, buying time for Bolan to complete his work against the Braga syndicate. From there on, whether Abner and his wife returned to “save” the Indians or went back to the States meant no more to the Executioner than who won American Idol. Once neutralized as obstacles, they were irrelevant.

  Monkeys chattered in the trees as Bolan passed beneath them, pausing now and then to check his GPS and verify the course he’d chosen through the forest. Birds screeched, and at a turning in the trail, Bolan surprised a giant peccary some three feet tall that studied him with little piggy eyes before it ambled off into the shadows. Watching out for more of them as he proceeded, Bolan cleared the area without sparking a hog stampede, but he kept the safety off his Steyr AUG as he pressed on.

  The jungle wasn’t hostile to humanity, per se, as some contended. Personal experience had taught him that the jungle simply didn’t care if any given creature lived or died. The wheel of life—and death—kept turning day and night, around the clock, uninterrupted.

  In the rain forest, death never took a holiday.

  In Medellín, or wherever the cartel’s shipment was coming from, he knew the cocaine would be packaged, crate
d and probably already loaded in the helicopter. Bolan was determined to meet it on arrival.

  And he did not plan to let the Cronins keep him from that rendezvous.

  Condor Acampamento

  JOAQUIM BRAGA WATCHED his men assembling into teams, some of them bleary-eyed from sleep but still on time. They were aware of the penalty for tardiness or any other small infraction of the rules, and each of them had lost friends in yesterday’s massacre. They wanted revenge, were thirsty for blood, but Braga knew they would obey his order to return with living prisoners.

  If nothing else, they would look forward to the show as he interrogated them.

  Hugo Cardona had turned out to watch the hunters leave, although he did not seem to be a morning person. Late nights in the high-priced clubs of Medellín were more his style, Braga supposed. It was a lifestyle Braga, too, enjoyed, during his time in Rio and São Paulo. This was time for work, however.

  Time perhaps for war.

  Overnight, Braga had hatched a theory—or a strong suspicion. Suppose that he was not the target of whoever had attacked his men. What if it was someone who had trailed Cardona to his camp from Medellín? That would explain why Braga, so secure within his jungle fiefdom, suddenly found himself besieged by unknown enemies.

  And who would hate Cardona that much? A rival cartel, perhaps: Colombian, Bolivian, Peruvian, pick one. Or could the attackers be government agents? The United States had given up trying to extradite Cardona, but they had other means. Navy SEALs, for example, or the DEA’s Special Operations Division. That seemed fitting, since Cardona was charged in the States with killing two DEA agents. Granted, a robot drone attack would be more in keeping with Washington’s modern techniques, but who said they couldn’t go old school?

  Braga reviewed his troops prior to departure. Three teams of twenty men each, all clad in camouflage fatigues and armed with IMBEL rifles furnished by a contact in the Brazilian Army. No one missed the guns or other weapons sold to Braga out of military stores, providing the price was high enough.

  His men weren’t spit-and-polish perfect, like a normal military unit, but they stood before him at attention, more or less. Braga felt reasonably certain he could trust them to perform the task he’d set—avenging their dead comrades and returning with at least one prisoner who could explain what had prompted yesterday’s attack.

  Of one thing he felt certain: it could not have been the two preachers. They were nothing, no one, in the global scheme of things. Braga had done his homework and discovered that they were not linked to any major church, sect or denomination in America or Brazil. They had no pope, bishop or ayatollah to concern himself with what became of them. In short they were alone, the very orphans of religion. He could kill them if he liked, and it was probable that no one in the outside world would even notice.

  When he had a prisoner in hand—or better, several prisoners—Braga would soon sort out the truth. And he would have a good time doing it, impressing both his soldiers and Hugo Cardona with the way in which he punished upstart enemies. Should it turn out that he was right, and his Colombian guest had drawn this trouble to his doorstep, it would give Braga a bit of leverage over Cardona. He did not believe for one split second that Cardona would feel guilty; that was not within his range of recognized emotions. But as businessmen, they could negotiate some kind of compensation, possibly a price cut on his next shipment from Colombia.

  He spared the hunters any sort of pep talk, trusting them to nurse their anger and vent it on the enemy when he was placed before them. Roughly half the men in Braga’s army had some military service in their background, and while most of those had been dishonorably discharged, they had managed to acquire the basic skills. Beyond that, shooting for his syndicate had toughened them, ensuring they knew exactly when and who to kill.

  And he had also taught them who to fear. O chefe was their lord and master. He possessed the power of life and death—one profitable and luxurious, the other painful, bloody, absolutely final.

  These were men who would not let him down, because their lives depended on success.

  Cold Camp, Mato Grosso

  MERCY GAVE MATTHEW COOPER ten minutes, all that she could spare under the circumstances, then set out to follow him. If she waited any longer, it was virtually certain that she’d lose him in the forest. Lose herself, in fact, and wander aimlessly until she died from thirst, starvation or the fangs of some cruel predator.

  It was embarrassing that she couldn’t retrace her steps from where they’d camped last night, back to the mission named for her, but in all fairness it wasn’t her fault. She’d been abducted from the mission and was halfway to some other place she’d never seen before—a place where she was likely meant to die—when Cooper had rescued her and Abner, leading them away by other paths to last night’s resting spot. And, truth be told, she’d never shared her husband’s innate, almost eerie skill at finding his way through new territory.

  Some had it, some didn’t. Abner had joked with her once, about his days as a Boy Scout hiking and camping in wilderness areas. She’d laughed along with him, enjoying his easy, self-deprecating sense of humor, but in fact she’d been impressed. Mercy could get lost in a shopping mall and then come out to find her car had disappeared, as if by magic. Hours wasted, roaming back and forth through parking lots, until she found the vehicle exactly where she’d left it in the first place.

  Not this time.

  She wasn’t taking any chances with Matt Cooper or her husband’s life.

  Cooper would be angry if he caught her trailing him, but realistically what could he do? Take her back to their camp, tie her up and then set out all over again? There was a possibility, of course, that he’d abandon Abner—possibly abandon both of them, and go about his strange, unstated business—but she was a fairly decent judge of character and didn’t read him as a man who’d be so heartless.

  Then again, perhaps she ought to ask the dozen men he’d killed just yesterday.

  That had been terrible, and yet she still couldn’t help thinking, better them than me.

  Was that a sin? Perhaps. She had already asked forgiveness for it, but the attitude hung on.

  Trailing the man who’d saved her life back toward the mission, Mercy Cronin was reminded of her feelings when she’d first come to the Amazon with Abner. In those days she had been afraid of everything—the animals, the plants, the weather, terrorists and bandits, even those she’d come to serve among the native tribes. It was a world as alien to her as anything she might have found in outer space and, even trusting God, trusting her husband, had not eased her fears. Time was required to make her feel somewhat at ease, but now she’d been propelled backward in time, reliving all the terrors she had experienced upon arrival in the jungle.

  Kidnapped. Nearly murdered. Then abandoned by the man who’d sworn to never leave her side. Now she was following a homicidal stranger through the forest, hoping he would reunite her with her husband.

  To what end? She wasn’t sure about that, either. If and when she found Abner, would he be pleased to see her, or would he insist that she depart without him? Matthew Cooper had promised to bring Abner out, even if that meant taking him against his will, but what would that accomplish for their marriage? Clearly she and Cooper had different priorities. He was intent on getting rid of obstacles—or witnesses—before he started his mission, while Mercy wanted...what?

  In her disoriented state, she couldn’t say.

  Cooper did not blaze a trail, as such, but rather used a track that had been cleared by animals, perhaps by humans. Had the Mundurukus passed this way on hunting expeditions or while waging war against some rival tribe? Headhunters were another thing Mercy had feared when she and Abner had embarked on their mission, though she had not actually seen a shrunken head so far.

  So many things to fear.

  But the worst of them was bein
g left alone.

  Chapter 7

  Two Miles Northeast of Condor Acampamento

  Rain dripped from the brim of Felix Lima’s bush hat as his team moved farther away from camp. The rain was warm, and while it plastered camo fabric to his skin, he knew his clothes would dry after a fashion once the rain stopped falling. Soon he would be steaming like some creature in a horror film, and the evaporative action would cool him.

  What else could you expect from a rain forest, after all?

  Leading the search team—and the first team chosen by o chefe—was an honor and a privilege Lima had not enjoyed since joining Joaquim Braga’s private army. He was not physically leading them, of course, a scout had gone ahead on Lima’s orders, but he had command of nineteen men and counted that as some kind of promotion, even if no boost in rank had come along with it.

  Once he had proved himself, then he would be rewarded handsomely. The fastest team to bring back a living captive for interrogation had been promised a bonus of twenty-five thousand reals, about half that amount when converted to U.S. dollars. Hardly a fortune, but the leader’s share traditionally came to one-fourth of the total, plenty to raise hell with the next time Lima found himself in Rio de Janeiro.

  On the down side, Lima knew he was looking for a team of killers who had slaughtered thirteen of his friends without a second thought and left all their equipment lying with their bodies. That was simply showing off, a gesture indicating that the enemy had no need to collect supplies after he had killed. It also indicated ruthlessness that Lima could admire, while fearing it at the same time.

  But when the shooting started, as he knew from experience, he would not be afraid.

  Lima was somewhat jealous that the second team, led by Djalma Barbosa, had been sent to check the mission founded by the preachers. The place might be deserted, but they had a clear-cut destination to begin with. Lima’s squad and the third one, led by Sérgio Ribeiro, had simply been ordered to fan out and search the jungle for targets.