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She could see the thing clearly now. The arachnid had a brown banded back and abdomen set in the dull yellow amber color of the body. The stinger was raised like a fist over the segmented and armored torso. It was ugly and with a sinking sense of horrified certainty, Saragossa realized it was as deadly a scorpion as there was—the Death Stalker. Ounce for ounce it was one of the most poisonous creatures on the planet.
The rebels began to chatter in earnest. Articles of clothing began to litter the floor at their feet. A new voice called out from the hallway, and one of the men beside Saragossa’s bed answered.
There was laughter from the hall, then the bed suddenly sagged as one of the rebels fell onto the mattress, roaring with laughter. The tired old bedsprings sang in protest, and the bottom sank so low it smacked Saragossa hard on the top of her head. Her chin bounced off the floor, and she hissed in surprise as she bit down on her tongue. The copper-tang metallic taste of blood filled her mouth. Her body tensed tight against the sudden pain.
That pain was nothing compared to what came next.
She felt like her hand had been struck by a baseball bat. She spasmed at the brutal, all encompassing shock of the scorpion strike. She bit down hard against the pain. Tears filled her eyes.
Then the scorpion struck again.
This time she couldn’t control herself. The moan was ripped from her body. The scorpion scurried off her arm and disappeared into the gloomy shadows at the head of the bed. Through a prism of involuntary tears Saragossa’s vision swam. She was in trouble.
The two men above her were quiet. For one long moment they were simply still and silent as the voice from the hallway called out to them. Then there was an explosion of motion.
The man on the bed sprang up and off the mattress, knocking Saragossa’s luggage to the floor. The rebel gunman already standing ripped the cover of the bed up. Saragossa was suddenly confronted with a grimacing male face, eyes wide with emotion and red veined with drug use.
The man snarled something and a hand the size of a dinner plate reached out and grabbed her by the arm. Saragossa let herself be taken without a struggle.
Saragossa looked up as the gunman dragged her clear of the bed. The scorpion’s poison was taking effect, and her vision had already begun to blur. Her left arm felt at once as if a hundred hot needles were gouging her, and as if it were made of lead.
She saw the gunmen looking down on her. Both men instinctively grabbed for the pistol grips of their Kalashnikovs, but at the sight of her small feminine form they relaxed and neither one assumed an aggressive stance with their assault rifles. Their bloodshot gazes roamed the curves of her body.
Saragossa whispered hate-filled curses at them in Spanish and brought up her mini-Uzi. Both men’s eyes expanded in shock and dull-witted horror.
Saragossa was merciless.
She triggered the mini-Uzi, and the little kill box chattered and shook in her hand. She stitched a line of 9 mm slugs straight into the first man’s throat. She shredded his neck, and the blood splattered across her upturned face even as the rebel was driven back. Hot shell casings bounced off the flat stretch of her belly.
Still firing, Saragossa shifted the compact machine pistol and took out the second man who stood frozen, mouth gaping. Her first two rounds hit his left deltoid and then shattered his collarbone before she put a bullet in his jaw, nasal cavity and right eye. The gunman crumpled without ever firing back.
Saragossa didn’t think, didn’t reflect, she merely acted. She pushed herself up to her knees and sprang to her feet. Her left arm hung useless from her side, as dead as the two African men lying on the floor behind her.
She crossed the room and was at the door while voices in the hallway were still calling out in confusion. She twisted around the door frame, her weapon already firing. The exertion made her dizzy, and her vision was badly blurred from the scorpion’s neurotoxin. She caught the shape of a man, the hall light behind him, standing at the top of the stairs leading up from the front lobby.
She fired and knocked him down even as he triggered a burst of his own. The bullets from his assault rifle burrowed into the wall on her right, and Saragossa staggered off the door frame as he went down.
She rushed forward. There were blind spots in her eyes now, and she was frantic to kill all the rebels before she blacked out. She came to the top of the stairs and tripped over the outstretched arm of the man she had just killed. She fell hard and landed on her knees. A burst of automatic weapon fire passed through the space above her head.
Saragossa thrust out her arm and pointed the machine pistol down the narrow staircase. Her eyes were too dilated to focus, and she couldn’t see much. She pulled the trigger and poured 9 mm rounds down the stairwell toward where she’d sensed the muzzle-flash.
She heard a cry. The man on the stairs gurgled loudly and dropped his weapon with a clatter onto the wooden steps. There was a sound like a basketball bouncing off a backboard as the rebel’s head struck each step on his long slide down.
Saragossa fell backward.
She felt flushed all over and nauseous. She lurched to her feet and stumbled back toward the door to her room like a drunk.
She’d been stung twice, and she knew that was enough to kill her.
3
Bolan sat in the back of the plane. The five-seat Aérospatiale AS350 was a charter aircraft from West African Trans-Cargo—a front company used by American intelligence concerns operating out of Liberia. He sat with a pen and notepad, making a list of equipment he’d need for the operation while Barbara Price gave him operational details over a secured line and into the headset he wore.
“It’s just you, Striker,” Price said. “This intel came through last minute, and other Stony Man assets have already been committed globally.”
“What’s going on?”
“A convergence of events has given us a window of opportunity to exploit, and Washington wants to really push it. You were the quickest resource we could deploy on such short notice.”
“This wet work?” Bolan asked.
“It could get pretty wet, but basically it’s a snatch op.”
“Who and why?”
“In the late eighties before Noriega was taken out, Langley was running an asset named Marie Saragossa inside the dictator’s security service. After the regime fell she went freelance. She’s worked for just about everyone in the Southern Regional Operational Zone.”
“Cartels? Castro?”
“Saragossa is mercenary. She doesn’t take ideological sides, but she came out of Cuba. She worked for Castro, she worked for Pablo Escobar, but she also worked against them, for us. So Langley kept a loose leash on her to piggyback inside those camps.”
“Did she know this?”
“Not always. Part of her contracts for us included payment in tech. Field gear and communications, mostly.”
“So as payment she was given encoded sat phones, laptops, stuff like that. Equipment she’d never hope to score on the open market. Only we made sure we were keyed in,” Bolan said.
“Exactly.”
“Sounds familiar,” Bolan said, his voice dry. “Go on.”
“Last week Saragossa took a job for the president of Venezuela. A reconnaissance and procurement gig in Burkina Faso. Seems they got wind of some kind of operation that Hussein had going down before the Iraq war. So he made a play-for-pay deal and sent her to West Africa.”
“With Langley watching every move?” Bolan asked.
“Exactly. With the information we got from Pucuro’s memory stick we could monitor almost all aspects of this event from all the players, not just Saragossa. Only as insane as South American politics can get, West Africa’s got ’em beat hands down. Whatever Saragossa was looking for, it was in the west of the country, along the border with the Ivory Coast.”
“I’m not up on that region,” Bolan admitted. “Are Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso engaged in hostilities?”
“Not openly, but the situation just went to hell. Both countries are controlled by military strongmen accused of corrupting elections to stay in power. They have a dispute about a couple of border markers. The Ivory Coast is in the middle of a three-way civil war. To give themselves some leeway Burkina Faso has been allowing members of the MPCI, the Ivory Coast Patriotic Movement, to use the area as a cross-border sanctuary.”
“So what happened?”
“Whatever Saragossa was looking for, she discovered its location,” Price said. “Unfortunately for her, two days ago the Ivory Coast national army began an offensive against the MPCI forces. They pushed them back across the border with Burkina Faso and kept on pushing right into the southern part of that country. The entire region is a combat zone with MPCI guerrilla units battling Ivory Coast government troops. Burkina Faso is massing its forces in the area, and if African Union diplomatic negotiators don’t reach a compromise quickly, we’re looking at another cross-border bush war.”
“Saragossa is caught in the middle of this?” Bolan asked.
“Yesterday Langley’s signal op center for this region intercepted a sat phone call by Saragossa to her Venezuelan control. Her township, Yendere, was overrun by elements of the MPCI who are now surrounded by army units. She’s trapped in a hotel in the center of town and under fire.”
“So I ride in on a white horse and she’s so grateful she gives us Saddam’s secrets?”
“It’s not quite that simple, I’m afraid. Venezuela really wants what Saragossa has. Plus, some intercepts suggest that Saragossa may have used her feminine charms on the president and he’s got a personal stake in her getting home.”
“Does Venezuela have the resources to pull a rescue operation off in western Africa?” Bolan asked.
“No. But they do have billions in oil money now that he’s nationalized all the wells in Venezuela. So he reached out to one James du Toit, former South African Defense Force special operator turned mercenary.”
“I’ve heard that name. Wasn’t du Toit mixed up in some bad business in New Guinea a while back?”
“Correct. He just got out of prison in New Guinea for his role in the failed coup attempt there. He’s got aircraft, soldiers and a logistics network throughout the continent. Venezuela has the cash, du Toit has the capabilities. From what Venezuelan intelligence told Saragossa, du Toit’s deploying a platoon in a Super Puma helicopter to pull her out of the firefight.”
“So she’s not going to be all that happy to see me,” Bolan stated.
“No. You have to get in ahead of the South Africans, convince Saragossa by any means necessary to flip, and then extract her from the middle of the Yendere township, which is currently filled with MPCI guerrilla gunmen and surrounded by hostile army troops from the Ivory Coast.”
“With Burkina Faso forces closing in,” Bolan added.
“That’s right,” Price agreed.
Bolan fitted the drum magazine into a Mk 48 light weight machine gun. The weapon’s green plastic drum snapped into place with a reassuring click. Bolan took the loose belt of 7.62 mm ammunition and fit it into place before slapping the feed tray cover down and locking it into place.
“All right. Let’s talk details,” he said after thinking things over.
Price immediately began filling Bolan in on the logistical and support elements of the last minute, rapid deployment operation.
4
Saragossa lunged for her pack. Her left hand was frozen, cramped, and she worked at the buckles and drawstring with only her right. She felt her throat squeezing closed, and forced air into her lungs with a harsh, wheezing sound. She managed to open the first-aid pack, then bent down, using her teeth to help prise off the Velcro fastener on the top flap pouch.
Her all-purpose antivenin kit spilled out. Her throat closed up and she made a high-pitched barking sound like a seal, a condition known as stridor. Two breaths later Saragossa realized air was no longer making it through. Her mind was a white blank of panic. Death hugged her close. She opened the kit, but her shaking hand spilled the contents across her lap.
Her heart lurched abruptly in her chest. She knew she was dying. She didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know whether to use the venom-antagonist to neutralize the poison or to use shock medicine syringes. She fumbled ineffectually as her vision continued to dim around the edges.
Saragossa looked down. Her lap felt as if it were a mile away. She lifted her arm, and the feeling was completely disassociated. It could have been someone else’s arm for all she felt connected to it. She felt for the epi-pen and thumbed off the cap. It was military-grade atropine meant to counter chemical or biological warfare agents in addition to more pedestrian utilizations.
She lifted her arm as her vision went completely black, though her eyes remained open. She felt a falling sensation and snapped her arm down. The spring-loaded syringe shot into her leg and the needle discharged. She was immediately jolted back into herself. The effect on her airway was nearly instant.
She dropped the autoinjector and sucked in a lungful of life-giving air. She could breathe, but the adrenaline-hormone cocktail only added to the feeling of crushing pressure in her chest. She scooped up her kit and plucked out a little brown bottle. She put her teeth against the snap lid and let two tiny white pills fall out into her mouth.
She caught the nitroglycerin pills under her tongue and let them dissolve there. The pressure in her chest began to ease. She dropped the bottle and reached for her antivenin kit. She felt much better, but knew she was still in dire trouble. So far she was only combating symptoms and side effects—deadly symptoms and side effects, but still only secondary presentations.
She saw the green autoinjector filled with venom-antagonist. She juggled the syringe with fingers that felt as thick as sausage links. She pushed the nose of the autoinjector pen against her hand in the meaty part beneath the thumb.
The infected hand still burned, and the needle felt icy cold as it punched into the venom-filled muscle. Saragossa dropped the injector and sagged back against the wall, fighting for air and terrified by the continued crushing pressure behind her sternum.
The tablets continued dissolving beneath her tongue as she lay there, helpless. Breathe, she told herself, just breathe.
She lay helpless in the stink, the heat and the damp, and concentrated on breathing in and out. She thought about nothing else beyond filling her lungs with good air, then pushing out the bad air.
Gradually she felt the pressure reduce to a simple feeling of heaviness. Then, as the muscles of her abdomen began to unknot, that too dissipated. She was covered in sweat. She lay with her head on the ground and lifted her feet up and rested them on her pack. She knew by elevating her extremities she reduced the workload of her heart.
Saragossa pulled her machine pistol closer to her. She rested for a moment after the activity and let her breathing even out and her heart rate slow. When she felt stronger, she reached over and grabbed her left wrist with her right hand and rested it across her chest. She paused to take in her surroundings. She could detect no immediate threats and focused on taking care of herself.
She looked at the scorpion stings. Her veins stood out in vivid relief, and red streaks turned her dusky colored skin ashen from the puncture wounds in her hand. Pustules were already forming into fat pimples above the sting marks. In a few minutes she would need to pop and drain them before covering the area with antibiotic ointment and a clean, dry dressing.
In this kind of an environment infection would set in quickly and hang on stubbornly. Saragossa knew her arm, despite the work of the venom-antagonist in killing the active poison, was damaged by the necrotic effects of the scorpion stings and would continue to be hampered until a full recovery was made.
But she didn’t have time for a full recovery. She had a tight schedule for operations. She needed the use of her arm immediately. Saragossa scooted over to one side. Now that she was breathing freely she reached into her pack and pulled her general first-aid bag free.
Moving slowly and becoming more clearheaded by the moment, Saragossa opened the minipack and began to rummage through her kit. She pulled out two syringe bundles held together by white medical tape. Pulling her boot knife free, she slipped the tip of the blade under the tape and in between two of the syringes before plucking a single needle free.
Saragossa took the syringe filled with antinausea medicine and pulled the needle cover off with her teeth. She spit the plastic cap away and stuck the needle into her exposed shoulder. She pushed the plunger down and injected the medicine smoothly before discarding the syringe, needle down, into the wooden plank of the floor.
The next bundle she opened was a painkiller. The narcotic would completely numb the area it was injected into. It had euphoric side effects that Saragossa knew could hamper her judgment, but without it her left arm would be useless. After injecting her shoulder she repeated the process in the exposed muscles of her inflamed forearm.
Saragossa tossed the needle aside and picked up the feeder tube from the water bladder in her pack. She sucked slowly, drinking carefully. Then she lay still for twenty minutes, collecting herself.
As she let her medical cocktail take effect, Saragossa began the process of survival. Carefully she began to compartmentalize the incident, to wall it off away from the front of her mind. It was just something that had happened.
“Bad day, screw it,” she whispered.
She pushed the fear away, along with the helpless rage and the queasy sensation that the memory of the scorpion clutching tightly with its prickly legs to her hand gave her. She pushed the memories and the feelings down, then bricked them over. She began to test her senses, taking in stimulation from the building around her. She heard a scream over the drone of falling rain.
She slid her boot knife away and slowly secured the loose parts of her medical supplies before packing them back into the first-aid bag and the smaller antivenin kit. After glancing at her hand Saragossa slid the antivenin kit into the cargo pocket on her leg instead of putting it back in the top of the backpack.
She slowly rose into a sitting position. The feeling of dizziness nearly caused her to swoon, but the sensation passed. She lifted her red and swollen arm and looked at it. She felt no pain. She experimented with opening and closing her hand. The motion was stiff but didn’t hurt. She looked at her watch and frowned.
It was then that a multitude of weapons opened fire on her room.
5
Bolan shoved a fistful of local currency over the battered seat to the cabdriver and got out. He leaned in the open window of the passenger door and instructed the driver to wait for him around the block. The taxi sped away, leaving him standing on the edge of an unpaved street. There was an open sewer off to his right, and the stench was ripe in his nose.
The Executioner looked around. He was on the opposite side of the township of Banfora from the international airport. Banfora was the capital of Komoe, Burkina Faso’s south-westernmost province and the one sharing a border with Ivory Coast. The dirt street was lined with shanties, and what light there was escaped from boarded-up windows or from beneath shut doors. A pair of mongrels fought over some scraps in a refuse pile several yards up the road. Other than those dogs fighting, the stretch of grimy road was deserted.
The previous day, intelligence had noted that a brigade-sized element complete with field artillery and armored vehicles had been speeding through the regional center toward the villages of the border area. War had come once again to one of the poorest countries in the world.
Faintly, Bolan could hear the sound of music playing and then voices raised in argument. A baby started crying somewhere, and farther away more dogs began barking in response. Bolan looked up at the sky, noting the low cloud cover. The road was thick with muck from the seasonal rains, and it clung to the soles of his hiking boots.
Bolan set down the attaché case he was holding and reached around behind his back to pull his pistol clear. He jacked the slide and chambered a .44 Magnum round before sliding it into his jeans behind his belt buckle, leaving it in plain sight. He leaned down and picked up the case. He shifted his grip on the handle so that his gun hand was free.
Bolan took a quick look around before crossing the road and stepping up to the front door of one of the innumerable shacks lining the road. He lifted his big hand and pounded three times on the door. He heard a hushed conversation break out momentarily before the voices fell quiet.
“Le Crème?” Bolan asked.
Bolan felt a sudden damp and realized it had started to rain while he was standing there. Despite the wet, he was still uncomfortably warm in his short-sleeve, button-down khaki shirt and battered blue jeans.
The door opened slowly and a bar of soft light spilled out and illuminated him. A silhouette stood in the doorway, and Bolan narrowed his eyes to take in the figure’s features. It was a male, wearing an unbuttoned and disheveled gendarme uniform.
