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“Fala inglês?” Bolan asked, thus exhausting his Portuguese vocabulary.
“English, yes, I speak. How may I help you?” Bolan spoke the phrase Blancanales had provided, watching as the merchant’s face registered first surprise, then caution.
“Ah. You wish to see my special stock?”
“That’s right,” Bolan confirmed.”
“One moment, please.”
The shopkeeper rose from his stool and limped past Bolan to the door, which he locked while reversing a small cardboard sign.
“Is siesta time now,” he explained with a smile. “You will please follow me.”
Bolan trailed him through a curtained doorway to a tiny, cluttered storeroom, where another door opened on steep wooden stairs. The proprietor descended first, taking the stairs without complaint despite his limp. Bolan followed into another storeroom, this one spotless and smelling of gun oil.
Bolan could’ve launched a small war with the dealer’s inventory, but he had no plans to mount a grand offensive. He passed on the heavy machine guns, rocket and grenade launchers, and the Barrett M-82 A-1 Light Fifty sniper rifle. In their place, he chose a Steyr AUG assault rifle, a Beretta 92-F semiauto pistol and a Ka-Bar combat knife. Spare magazines and ammunition, with a side order of frag grenades, completed his heavy-metal shopping list. The rest came down to camouflage fatigues, web gear, an Alice pack and shoulder rig for the Beretta, two canteens and sturdy hiking boots. The purchases filled two stout duffel bags and took a fair bite out of Bolan’s bankroll, but he didn’t quibble over price.
The money, strictly speaking, wasn’t even his.
Before leaving the States, he’d tapped a San Diego crack dealer for sixty thousand dollars and some pocket change. Six different banks had sold him nine grand worth of AmEx traveler’s checks, and thus avoided mandatory red flags to the IRS. The rest had funded Bolan’s flights, the rented car and his unused hotel room where his bag and civvies were waiting to be seized by someone from the Company.
He hoped the clothes turned out to be a lousy fit.
Before packing the gear, he loaded the Beretta and two spare magazines, adjusted the quick-draw harness to fit his torso, and covered the setup with his windbreaker. The waning day outside was cool enough, here on the coast, to prevent him from standing out by the jacket alone. After he cleared Cuiabá, farther in-country, concealment of his weapons would no longer be an issue.
Climbing the stairs behind the shop owner, Bolan slung one bag over his left shoulder and carried its mate in his left hand, leaving the right free for action if need be. He didn’t anticipate trouble this early, but in most cases preparedness was more than half the battle.
Exiting the shop, he paused to scan the street in both directions, but aside from the neighborhood pusher, he saw no one who qualified as suspicious. Bolan walked back to his car and stowed both bags in the trunk, satisfied with the pistol for now. He would bag it, as well, when the time came to fly, but he still had hours to burn in Belém before his crack-of-dawn rendezvous with a charter pilot who asked no impertinent questions where payment in cash was concerned.
Bolan used an hour of that time to scout the airstrip, studying the hangar and its layout on the drive-by. He would return before dawn to check it again, watching closely for any lurkers in the shadows, but he retained an air of cautious optimism.
So far, so good.
And if experience was any guide, his chosen road could only go downhill from here.
Belém isn’t Rio, but Bolan had no problem getting lost in the crowd, alternately driving and walking, never straying far enough from the rental to put his new hardware at risk from light-fingered locals. Staying awake through the night was no challenge. Call it a familiar ritual, divorced in Bolan’s mind from any concept of fatigue.
He could sleep in the air, on the long flight westward to Cuiabá. And after that—who knew?
In the grand scheme of things, feeling weary was the least of a combat soldier’s problems. In the days ahead, Bolan expected to be faced with worse.
All for the sake of friendship.
For the sake of duty.
And to find out what in Hell was going on with Nathan Weiss.
CHAPTER FOUR
The pilot was a twenty-something woman with short red hair and a black patch covering her left eye. The one Bolan could see was emerald-green and flicked suspiciously in the direction of his duffel bags before he loaded them aboard a Piper PA15 Vagabond at least a decade older than its owner.
Whatever she was thinking, cash resolved the lady’s doubts about her passenger, and they were in the air by 6:15 a.m., soaring southwestward over rain forest that could’ve swallowed regiments with ample room to spare.
Where are you, Bones? he thought. What brought you here?
Bolan was glad to get out of Belém and out from under scrutiny, at least for the time being. He had no illusions about pulling off a long-term fade, if agents of the CIA made any serious attempt to locate him. They’d find him in Cuiabá, given time, but Bolan didn’t plan to hang around to see the sights.
If they pursued him on his mission through the jungle, it would be another story. They would be on his turf, then, and nothing in their past experience would’ve prepared them for a contest with the Executioner.
The weak part of his plan was still Marta Enriquez. Spooks had followed her to San Diego, where they’d picked up Bolan’s trail without him noticing. That was a personal embarrassment, but he could live with it. The extra bad news was that if they’d spotted him, they also had to have marked Pol Blancanales, which, in turn, might lead them back to Able Team and Stony Man, if they dug deep enough.
Granted, the Company had been aware of Stony Man from the beginning, and a team of Langley rogues had once attempted to destroy the Blue Ridge Mountain farm, but general knowledge and specific details were two very different things. Bolan was on a private errand in Brazil, albeit with the knowledge of his old friend Hal Brognola, who ran Stony Man from Washington. What Bolan hadn’t known, before he left the States, was that his mission placed him in direct conflict with agents of the CIA.
That was the kind of problem that could boomerang on Brognola in nothing flat, and friendship demanded that he warn Brognola at the very least.
And if the big Fed tried to call him off, then what?
He couldn’t answer that until he reached Cuiabá. Enriquez was supposed to meet him there and help him with the next stage of his journey. If she didn’t show, or if a swarm of spooks was trailing her, he might be forced to scrub the play.
As for the risk that he might pose to Brognola and Stony Man by pushing on, Bolan would have to weigh that against his prevailing sense of duty to an even older friend.
Cruising over the primeval forest at 130 miles per hour, Bolan reviewed what he knew so far. Blaine Downey hadn’t mentioned Nathan Weiss at their brief meeting in Belém. Rather, he’d warned against collaborating with Marta Enriquez—but why?
Was the woman herself a target of investigation, distinct and separate from Weiss? It seemed unlikely, but Bolan had seen enough of politics in various banana republics to know that anything was possible.
Then again, if the Company was after Weiss, presumably acting in conjunction with the Brazilian government, what had Bones done to provoke their anger? Was it really just a matter of him helping persecuted aborigines, or was there something else at stake?
Bones was a healer. Even in the midst of war, he’d treated wounded soldiers of both sides impartially. His dedication was to mending flesh and lives, not scrutinizing racial pedigrees or weighing ideology. A man of peace, he’d volunteered to serve in combat, where he thought his skills were needed.
Most people found that kind of dedication laudable, until it trespassed on their politics. Healing our side was fine, of course, but hands off the alien-radical-subversive-demonic other side. Under no circumstances could healers help them.
Bones hadn’t toed that line in Asia, and the odds against him heeding it now were astronomical.
But had he tipped the other way at some point, in the years since Bolan saw him last? Had he abandoned his trademark impartiality to join some cause that placed him in the outlaw ranks?
And if so, what could Bolan do about it?
Nothing, Bolan thought.
Not if the doctor’s mind was set.
But he was flying on the wings of guesswork now, and that was reckless. He would wait to see if Marta met him in Cuiabá, if she had the means of putting him in touch with Nathan Weiss. And if she could, he’d find out what Bones had to say for himself.
Until then, the trick was just staying alive.
Belém
“YOU STINK, the two of you,” Blaine Downey said.
“Yes, sir. We came straight back,” Sutter replied. “I didn’t want to phone it in.”
“Straight back from where? The city dump?”
“Almost.”
“Explain yourself.”
“You ordered us to keep an eye on Cooper, sir, and follow him if he left the hotel.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my memory, Sutter.”
“No, sir. Anyway, he did leave the hotel, and we trailed him. Making it obvious, just like you said. He saw us, all right, started boxing the block to make sure, then he led us downtown. Parked on the outskirts of the red-light district.”
“Window shopping?” Downey asked.
“That’s what we thought,” Sutter replied. “We figured if he tried to score a little action, we could break it up and spoil his evening for him.”
“Fair enough. How does that bring us to your tragic choice of aftershave?”
“We followed him a couple blocks from where he parked, and then he ducked into an alley.”
“And?”
“We went in after him.”
“Of course you did.”
“First thing, I thought we’d lost him somehow. Maybe he ducked through a door we didn’t see or something. Then, before you know it, he’s behind us.”
Downey saw where this was going, but he let the flow of words continue.
“Anyway,” Sutter continued, “we had words.”
“Such as?”
“He challenged us,” Sutter said.
“Challenged us,” Jones echoed, speaking for the first time since he’d entered Downey’s office. “Right.”
“Who made the first move?” Downey asked.
“Well…”
That answered it.
Downey refused to let the two incompetents provoke a raging outburst, though the pair of them deserved no better. He preferred to take his time, dissect them with a surgeon’s skill, enjoying every slice.
For all the good that it would do him now.
“I see,” he said. “The target challenged you, and one or both of you attacked him. Did I order you to rough him up, Sutter?”
“You didn’t say—”
“Thank you. I’ll take that as a no. The two of you exceeded your instructions and then, what? He kicked your asses, I suppose?”
Jones fidgeted with eyes downcast. Sutter was fuming, anger radiating from his body like the stench of garbage that surrounded him, but he was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.
“Right,” Downey continued. “So, he kicked your asses for you. Knocked you both unconscious, I presume, since your report is hours late. And from the way you stink, I’d guess he dropped you down a manhole. Were you floating in the sewer all this time, ladies?”
Nothing.
“I can’t hear you.”
The crunching sound from Sutter had to be grinding teeth. His face was red enough to fit a stroke victim. Beside him, Jones reluctantly answered, “A garbage Dumpster, sir.”
“How’s that?”
“He put us in a Dumpster, sir, not down a manhole.”
“I’m relieved,” Downey said. “I don’t think that I could stand another load of shit from either one of you.”
“No, sir,” Jones answered.
“Will you shut up!” Sutter hissed.
“I’m gravely disappointed in the pair of you,” Downey announced. “You’ve turned a simple job into a screwup that’s left the Company exposed on levels you don’t even understand. You wouldn’t catch me lighting any candles if the mark had bled you out instead of marinating you in garbage. Are we clear?”
Apparently, since neither of the smelly two replied.
“My choices, broadly speaking, are to can your asses on the spot or to send you back to Langley for retraining and potential reassignment. That’s if I report your sorry asses for the mess you’ve made.”
“And if you don’t? Sir?” There was something close to hope in Sutter’s surly voice.
“You must redeem yourselves,” Downey said.
“How can we do that?”
“Begin by thinking for a change. What do you think might change my mood, right now?”
“Locate the mark!” Jones said, pleased with himself despite his reek.
“And…?”
“And…trace him to his contact?” Sutter asked.
“At which time,” Downey prodded, “you would…?”
That one stumped them for a moment, until Sutter hit upon the obvious. “We take ’em out,” he said. “Use locals if we can. No comebacks on the Company.”
