personnel. That was a major warning sign. The slower Narmada spoke, the angrier he was, and nobody sane ever wanted to tangle with the captain. Once, in a bar fight in Madrid Chung had watched Narmada kill twenty men while crossing the room at a regular pace, his hands bloody pistons that crushed faces and snapped necks with every strike.
“Yes, sir! My apologies, sir.”
Narmada waved the matter aside. “Please dispose of the body overboard.”
“At once! So, do we have a destination?”
“Of course,” Narmada replied, leaving the room.
Left alone with the corpse, Chung scowled in annoyance, then hit a control on the wall to summon a cleaning crew.
On the main deck, Captain Narmada stood with both hands on the gunwale, breathing in the cool salty air. Inside the nearby wheelhouse, three men were watching a Chinese anime movie on a portable DVD player, eating sandwiches and drinking German beer. Just for a moment, Narmada longed for the company of other men. His colossal size had always kept him alone and separate. Doorways were too narrow, every chair was a potential danger, and very few women were attracted to giants.
Shaking his head to dispel the dark thought, Narmada focused on the next part of the journey. Key West. He had never been there before.
Across the deck, Chung appeared from a gangway with several men carrying a canvas bundle. Shuffling to the gunwale, they heaved it overboard, and Chung turned away before the body splashed into the water.
“Helm!” Narmada shouted over a shoulder.
The door to the wheelhouse opened, throwing a bright rhombus of light across the deck of the Russian trawler. “Yes, sir?” a burly man replied around the cigar in his mouth.
“Head south! We refuel at Buenos Aires,” Narmada said, rubbing his rough palms along the painted iron railing.
“But sir, the canal...”
“Too dangerous! Best we keep to the open sea.”
“Aye, aye, skipper!”
“And along the way?” Chung asked hopefully, coming closer.
“Along the way there will be many fine ships for us to choose from,” Narmada said with a half smile. “Bullion from Chile, emeralds from Argentina...and that silly French billionaire we’re supposed to sink just off the Galapagos Islands.”
“Another angry wife?”
“Gambling debt.”
“Mafia?”
“The Fifteen Families.”
“Idiot!”
“Agreed,” laughed Narmada. “But keep most of the hold empty. We have a lot of American microchips to steal in Key West...”
Caracas, Uruguay
TWO DAYS LATER, Bolan was driving a battered jeep, rattling through an entirely different kind of jungle.
The midnight raid on the Caracas Police Headquarters had gone off without a hitch. Dozens of armed officers saw Bolan enter, but his forged papers passed muster, and an EM scanner jammed the expensive electronic lock on the master file room. Five minutes later, he was driving across town with a series of clandestine photographs tucked into his pocket. So far, so good. Now it was time to kill a traitor.
Always trying to keep tabs on freedom fighters around the globe, Bolan knew several details about the Ghost Jaguars—a medium-sized group of rebels fighting Uruguay’s incredibly corrupt government. To the best of his knowledge, they had never crossed the line into unwarranted violence. Never kidnapped an innocent family member to force a crooked cop into confessing or conducted any blanket executions—although the government had certainly given them enough excuses to do so.
The Jaguars stayed the line, kept hard and simply did not take any crap from anybody. Bolan liked that. All too often, fighting an evil turned even the best intentions dark, and soon, one became the very thing one detested. It was a constant fear of his own, and one that Bolan kept a very close eye on. The moment he started to enjoy killing people was the day he would toss his weapons into the sea and go retire somewhere. Bali, maybe, or Kalamazoo.
Just not today, Bolan added privately, steering his rented jeep deeper into the wild jungle.
The jeep was old, circa World War II, but still in excellent shape, and the studded tires were getting excellent traction from the weight in the rear. Lashed securely into place were nine heavy wooden boxes, all of them marked “soil samples.”
Leaving the paved highway behind, Bolan started down a gravel road, switched to four-wheel drive and trundled up a dirt path that snaked deep into the misty mountains.
The Ghost Jaguars constantly asked for help from America, but Bolan knew that would never happen. Uruguay was an oil-producing nation, and it sold thousands of barrels a year to the good ol’ USA. In these troubled times, that was a powerful incentive for America to leave the internal politics of Uruguay alone. Happily, Bolan had no such restrictions.
Time passed, as did the long miles. Double-checking his GPS, Bolan parked the jeep in a cluster of giant ferns, letting the engine cool while he rechecked his maps and notations. If his original intel was good, combined with the crude notes stolen from the police files, then the main camp for the Ghosts would be somewhere inside the mountain range just ahead. The crosswinds between the jagged peaks were brutal, making an aerial reconnaissance damn near impossible. Countless waterfalls could help mask any minor heat signatures, such as truck engines or campfires, and the area was a favored hunting ground for jaguar.
The situation reminded Bolan of an old trick—hide in plain sight, with the warning, “Here be Monsters.” It kept out most of the innocent bystanders, and if there was an invasion, disposing of the body afterward could be left entirely to the animals. Alexander the Great had used something similar in his military outposts around the world, as had the Romans.
Sliding on a backpack, Bolan checked over his weapons, then started climbing up the steep hillside. The footing was tricky because of the deep carpeting of loose leaves and the many snakes hidden beneath them. After a few miles, Bolan’s EM scanner had yet to find a single live microphone hidden in the trees, a land mine or even a proximity sensor. Could he be wrong? Had the rebels moved to another location? It was possible. Perhaps the real reason the secret police had never found the Ghost Jaguars was because they had disbanded or...
Bolan froze as the needle of the EM scanner jerked wildly. Straight ahead of him was a land mine. No, a field of land mines, spread out in every direction. Dozens...hundreds. His intel had been right—this was the place. Now, it was just a matter of cutting a deal with people who disliked outsiders, had no reason whatsoever to trust him and hated most Americans.
Warily, Bolan moved through the maze of high-explosive death traps, keeping a constant watch on the flickering indicator. If the needle ever swung into the red, it would be too late. Red would mean the mines were about to explode. But there was no other way to reach the rebel camp.
Edging steadily closer, Bolan caught a glimpse of a massive wall of upright logs hammered into the dark soil. The jungle grew right up to the wall, helping to mask its presence. The logs were at least a foot thick, patched with concrete, draped in camouflage netting and topped with concertina
