Volatile Agent

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.”