Grave Mercy

“Jack!” Bolan called over his throat mike. “I need a pickup, fast!”

“I saw the lab go up just now,” Jack Grimaldi, one of Bolan’s oldest surviving friends and allies, answered. Instants later, the bulbous form of a Hughes 500 helicopter rose over the trees, its downward rotor wash buffeting the Executioner with heavy winds.

“Jesus, Sarge!”

Bolan threw the M-4 onto the floor of the passenger cabin, then dragged himself into the back seat. “Do you see Long Eddy’s boat?”

“You need medical attention first. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig,” Grimaldi countered.

“I’ve come this far to bring down Eddy, I’m not going to let a couple of flesh wounds stop me from finishing the job,” Bolan said. “Go.”

Grimaldi was torn between obeying his friend’s order and concern for his health. “Take care of yourself while we catch up, damn it. I don’t want you bleeding to death—this is a rental, after all.”

It was one of those rare moments when the Executioner would have smiled, suppressing a chuckle at Grimaldi’s smart-ass remark, but the pain of wrenching off his load-bearing vest had overridden that bit of levity. The blood-smeared ballistic nylon shell dropped to the floor in a clump, and Bolan could see multiple deep gouges and burns where shrapnel and flame had tried to reach him. He gently touched his shoulder again and felt for the biggest pieces of broken glass. There were four jagged shards, and he’d have to take care of them before peeling himself out of his blacksuit top.

The largest piece of glass had plunged into Bolan’s shoulder muscle and come out far too easily for Bolan’s taste. He grimaced as he saw bits of human tissue—his muscle fibers to be exact—clinging to the blast-sharpened tip. The soldier let it tumble out into the wind. The other three pieces were smaller, but Bolan had to explore the wounds with his fingertips. He felt the ragged gash, wincing as he carefully advanced deeper into the rift of flesh, looking for any remaining bits that might not have come with the big shard. The cut was wide, and deep, so the soldier reached into a pocket of his vest for a packet of coagulant powder. The moment the compound hit the cavity of his shoulder wound, it turned into a semisolid gel that conformed to the shape of the injury, sealing off severed capillaries and damaged veins.

It wouldn’t last long, but Bolan could hold on long enough. Now that he’d stopped the bleeding, he plucked out the other square pieces of glass. A splinter at the top of his right biceps slid out with sickly stickiness, but none of these lesser lacerations were going to be a problem. The soldier slapped gauze and tape on the smaller cuts, then laid a thicker pad of sterile dressing on top of the shoulder wound, with medical tape sealing the clotting agent in place.

“Sarge, that boat must be rocket-powered,” Grimaldi said. “I’ve got this baby up to 110 miles per hour, and he’s still holding his distance.”

“Are you saying you can’t catch up with him?” Bolan asked, shrugging into the bloodied load-bearing vest. He winced as the shoulder wound took the pres sure, but the field dressing would stay in place, ironically thanks to the added weight. A fast pat-check showed him that he had three magazines left for the M-4, and the Beretta 93-R stored in a holster clipped to the side of the vest. Usually the Executioner liked having a shoulder rig for the sleek 9-mm pistol, but with heavy kit like the armored vest, he didn’t have space beneath the shell to fit his holster straps.

He zipped up the armored vest, tugging on its side vent straps to accommodate the lost layer of clothing. He didn’t need his gear bouncing and jiggling around, possibly doing more damage to his injured arm. Bolan flexed his right hand, then bent the arm a few times. He had movement, enough to handle his weapons, but it would be a temporary thing. He’d taken serious injuries before, and experience taught him that anything more than a few minutes of activity would sap the strength from the wounded limb.

Bolan transferred the M-4 to his left hand. While he was born predominantly right-handed, years of warfare had made him ambidextrous. He was glad he hadn’t taken a bullpup rifle into this fight because he didn’t have the time now to shift an ejection port for left-handed use. The M-4, as it was configured, was relatively friendly to left handers, especially with its selector switch and magazine release on both sides of the receiver. He adjusted the holographic scope atop the weapon, adjusting it for his “off-side” eye, knowing that the settings for his normal use would be way off target for his left eye. The new parallax was perfectly aligned now, enabling Bolan to put every bullet where he needed it to be.

He put Long Eddy in his sights, the red holographic dot centered on the Jamaican’s spine. Bolan pulled the trigger, but the physics of the helicopter and the cigarette boat over choppy waves sent his bullets careening over the side of the speedy watercraft. The tall Jamaican whipped his head around as fiberglass was chewed by autofire so close to his spine. Though there was no magnification on the holographic sight, Bolan knew that Long Eddy was shouting something. There was someone else on the boat.

“Jack! This has got to end!” Bolan roared. Grimaldi checked over his shoulder. Even through the dark visor of his pilot’s helmet, the soldier could see the look of concern on his friend’s face.

“You’re hurt!” Grimaldi called back, but already the sleek helicopter nosed down, its bulbous front locked on to the rapid, dartlike boat. “Too hurt for close quarters!”

“But not hurt enough to accept collateral damage,” Bolan growled. “He’s got someone down there.”

Grimaldi’s sigh hissed over their intercom. The Executioner knew that the pilot, his faithful friend through countless wars, had given himself over to the orders he had received. The two men had been working with relentless urgency in an effort to stop the Jamaican drug dealer, especially since Long Eddy had taken captives. For a brief few minutes, before Bolan had turned the heroin lab into a blazing funeral pyre for contraband and bandits alike, he had been under the impression that he had rescued all but one of the USO performers who were contributing their time and effort to American servicemen engaging in humanitarian aid in Haiti.

It had been a reckless firefight in an arena where there were plenty of volatile chemicals, but the one hostage that the Executioner had thought he’d failed was a young woman whose stage name wasn’t much different from the one she’d used when they’d first met in Japan. Punk singer Vicious Honey, despite her nearly anarchist lyrics and music, was still an artist who gave her all for the U.S. military. With the thought that Honey might have been dead in a ditch somewhere, Bolan had shut down and became an unstoppable killing machine. Only the blast of burning lab chemicals hurling him to the sand had snapped him out of his numbed warrior state.

For a moment Bolan wished that he’d still been in that war fury, as pulled muscles, bruises, burns and lacerations were weighing heavily on his shoulders. A flash of the familiar mix of pink-and-blond hair appeared in the cockpit of the speedboat.

“She’s alive!” Grimaldi spoke up. “But you already knew that.”

“Get me close,” Bolan said, discarding the M-4. In the tight quarters of the racing watercraft, even its compact length would be too unwieldy. This fight was going to need speed and brutality, so the Executioner drew his Beretta, removing its blunt suppressor so it would move even faster in his grasp. He wrapped his right hand around the handle of his combat knife, his teeth gritted as he knew that violent activity wasn’t going to do his injured arm any good.

Pain and convalescence were going to have to wait until a life was saved.

Bullets peppered against the bottom of the helicopter as Grimaldi swung the aircraft close enough for the warrior to jump. With a kick, Bolan hurled himself toward Long Eddy and the renegade Rasta who held Honey by the back of her neck.

For a brief heartbeat the world came to a stop, the roar of the rotor, the chatter of autofire, the rush of wind. Bolan was free from gravity, sailing to a spot between the tall masts of the cigarette boat’s airfoil spoiler. Even as he hung weightless, traversing from air to watercraft, he saw Honey’s blue eyes lock on him with recognition.

The shock of the diving Executioner left Long Eddy’s man staring at him, agape. Long Eddy himself, clutching the wheel of the boat with one hand and a sawed-off shotgun in the other, was also frozen in surprise.

The audacity of Bolan’s attack had bought him vital moments as his waffle-treaded boots slammed hard into the fiberglass shell between the spoiler’s supports.

Long Eddy recovered his wits, swinging up his shotgun up as Bolan pushed himself forward. Honey twisted, lowering her head, making herself even smaller than her petite five-foot-one. The Rasta struggled to keep Honey’s head up with his forearm under her chin, the Uzi in his other hand still aimed up toward the helicopter. The Executioner knew that he was going to take some pain, but he had committed to this, his lightning-fast mind plotting out the angles even as his forearms uncrossed.

The knife in his right hand struck the barrels of the stubby shotgun that Long Eddy raised, steel clanging on steel just a moment before the twin 12-gauge shells within detonated, launching their payload. Struck with twelve .36-caliber pellets just above his ribs, Bolan willed himself past the pain that slashed him from shoulder to right hip. The Beretta 93-R’s extended 6.5-inch barrel touched the captor in control of Honey, and as soon as Bolan felt that spongy contact, his finger closed on the trigger.

A 3-round burst tore through the gunman’s face, emptying his head of brains as if it were a gore-filled piñata. Honey snaked herself loose from the dead man’s grasp, pushing herself away from Long Eddy, who was still in the fight.

His shotgun’s payload expended, the Jamaican drug lord sneered and whipped it around like a club, the hot double-muzzle slicing open skin on Bolan’s cheek. The twin barrels and their wooden furniture continued swinging after the bloody impact, cracking against the soldier’s left wrist. It was almost painful enough for the Executioner to drop his Beretta, but all it succeeded in doing was stopping the gun from aiming at Long Eddy. The only weapon Bolan had was in his right hand, and his right biceps had taken two pellets from the shotgun, the bare limb pouring blood from the injury. Agony seemed to be crushing half of his body, but the Jamaican drug lord was looking to make a far more impressive dent in his adversary’s skull with the empty shotgun.

It felt as if Bolan were pushing his knife-wielding fist through molasses, muscles screaming at him to stop even as the double-bladed dagger’s tip struck Long Eddy in his chest, between the fourth and fifth buttons of his vividly colored shirt. There was resistance as the knife encountered a Kevlar vest underneath the linen shirt, but Bolan pushed hard with both legs, using their tremendous strength to add to the penetration power of the knife. The Kevlar’s ripping gave way to the squishy parting of flesh and the grinding rustle of bone cut by steel.

Blood poured over Long Eddy’s lower lip, his big brown eyes bulging in horror.

“Fuck…er…” Eddy gurgled as the Bokor Applegate-Fairbairn fighting blade twisted in the man’s chest, tearing arteries and bronchial tissue.

Bolan didn’t respond except to bring up the Beretta. A stroke of the trigger left the would-be king of Jamaican crime without half of his face and skull. Bone snagged the knife blade between ribs, and Bolan didn’t have the strength to yank it out. He simply released the blade’s handle, and Long Eddy’s corpse toppled backward over the rail, gangly limbs flying in the air as he struck the water.

Honey had figured out how to work the throttle and had killed the boat’s engines, then turned to Bolan. “You came for me?”

Bolan nodded weakly, collapsing into the pilot’s seat now that the danger was over. Less than a hundred yards away, black dorsal fins broke the surface around the splashy froth where Eddy had gone into the Caribbean Sea. “It let me take care of two birds with one stone.”

Honey chuckled nervously. “What do I call you now?”

“Friend is good enough,” Bolan answered. The trembling young woman gave him a tight hug, her eyes clenched shut so she couldn’t see him silently redden as she aggravated his broken rib.

“They were going to sell us,” Honey whispered. “The bastards were going to sell us.”

Bolan stroked the frightened young woman’s hair. “You’re too rebellious to be for sale, Honey. You’d have found a way out.”

Sooner or later, Bolan was going to have to start the engines and head for land, but right now, he had to soothe a young woman’s trauma and recover enough strength to pilot the craft. Above, Jack Grimaldi orbited the Hughes over the speedboat. With luck, Bolan would have a week or three to recover from the injuries he received today, but Long Eddy, the King of the Caribbean, was dead.

Bolan put enough breath together for four words as he watched a shark swim past, a gangly leg in its jaws. “Long live the king.”

CHAPTER TWO

Three couples were entwined in each other’s arms on the bobbing yacht that was anchored at sea. They were watching the Caribbean sunset, yet seemed more interested in their partner’s curves and supple warmth.

It was an idyllic interlude, the soundtrack provided by an MP3 file pumping out tropic island tunes over the yacht’s sound system.

Pierre Fortescue felt a pang of regret for ruining such a perfect romantic vacation, but it was quickly subsumed as he remembered that these were Americans, the people who had withdrawn their approval and allowed the Duvaliers’ ceaseless control of Haiti to disappear. Since the end of Papa Doc’s and Baby Doc’s reign, Fortescue’s home nation had fallen into a sewer pit. The worst insult was when the earthquake that he and the rest of his cult had prayed for was misread as the punishment of God against the nation that had bartered their freedom to the Devil.

Fortescue snorted. The gods that he and the Black Avengers spoke with predated the quaint humanist concepts of a supreme being weak enough to let his son be nailed to a tree. The loa were no sniveling pacifists, no way in heaven or hell. When the Fortescue family’s first Haitian ancestors called them down, their vengeance against France was a total emasculation that had allowed the British, an insane emperor, the Nazis and now the Muslims to overrun them and bring them ruin. The loa didn’t caress their enemies, they scourged the fools until they were hollow echoes of their former selves.

France was but one crippled victim of the dark lords of voodoo. And now, America and Haiti would feel the harsh caresses of voodoo magic.