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.
He held a bottle of grain alcohol in one hand, and the other rested on the pistol grip of a French MAT-49 submachine gun hanging from a strap slung across his neck like a guitar. He leaned forward, crowding Bolan’s space. The big American made no move to back up.
“Cooper?” the man asked.
His breath reeked with alcohol fumes, and the light around him reflected wildly off the glaze in his eyes. His words were softly slurred, but his gaze was steady as he eyed Bolan up and down. The finger on the trigger of the MAT-49 seemed firm enough.
“Yes.” Bolan repeated. “Is Le Crème here?”
“Colonel Le Crème,” the man corrected.
“Is Colonel Le Crème here?”
“You have the money?”
Bolan lifted the attaché case, though he knew the man had already seen it when he’d opened the door. The gendarme ignored the displayed satchel, his eyes never leaving Bolan’s face. His hair was closely cropped, and Bolan could see bullets of sweat beading on the man’s forehead.
“Give me the pistol,” the man ordered.
“Go to hell,” Bolan replied.
The drunken gendarme’s eyes widened in shock and his face twisted in sudden, instant outrage. He snapped straight up and twisted the MAT-49 around on its sling, trying to bring the muzzle up in the cramped quarters.
Bolan’s free hand shot out and grabbed the submachine gun behind its front sight. He locked his arm and pushed down, preventing the gendarme from raising the weapon. The gendarme’s eyeballs bulged in anger, and the cords of his neck stood out as he strained to bring the submachine gun to bear.
“Leave him!” A deep bass voice barked from somewhere behind the struggling gendarme.
The man cursed and tried to step back and swing his weapon up and away from Bolan’s grip. The Executioner stepped forward as the man stepped back, preventing the smaller man from bringing any leverage to bear.
They moved into the room, and Bolan heard chair legs scrape against floorboards as men jumped to their feet. He ignored them, making no move for the butt of the Desert Eagle sticking out of his jeans.
The man grunted his exertion and tried to step to the outside. Bolan danced with him, keeping the gendarme’s body between him and the others in the smoky room. Bolan’s grip on the front sling swivel remained unbroken. Finally, the gendarme dropped his bottle and grabbed the submachine gun with both his hands. The bottle thumped loudly as it struck the floor but did not break. Liquid began to gurgle out and stain the floorboards.
“I said enough!” the voice roared.
The gendarme was already using both his hands to snatch the submachine gun free as the order came. Bolan released the front sling swivel and stepped to the side. The gendarme found his center
