Savage Rule

“Then I have nothing to worry about, do I?” Castillo said. “So I’m moving my people into position earlier than we discussed. It means little, provided the pipeline does go through. And, frankly, if you fail, Ramon, I will not be held back by your weakness. The Race demands more. It deserves more.”

“Just tread carefully,” Orieza said. “Remember what I have said.” He looked up at Del Valle as his adviser snatched the receiver and slammed it down on the cradle.

“That miserable pig!” Del Valle hissed. “He could ruin everything!”

“Roderigo…” Orieza said hesitantly, gazing directly at him for the first time since he’d entered the room.

“You look terrible. Are you all right?”

“I am fine,” Del Valle said sharply. He softened his tone, catching himself. “Please, General, think nothing of it. All is well. There are simply many things to monitor, many things I must keep a watchful eye on.”

“Yes, I suppose that would be so,” Orieza said, sounding unconvinced. “But who is it that attacks us? Have they done us much harm?”

“No, no, General.” Del Valle spread his hands, smiling broadly. “You know that a man like Castillo must always try to impress others with his great power. If he makes us believe he thinks us weak, he gains an advantage. We are in no danger, and our plans progress according to schedule. Our dream for our great nation progresses accordingly. There is no need to worry.”

“But, Roderigo, I have doubts. I have heard from some of the men that the people are angry.”

“Angry? Who told you that?”

Orieza shrugged. “One hears things from the staff. Is it true that the elite guard are interrogating our own people?”

“My men? Your bodyguards? That is absurd,” Del Valle lied. “Really, General, you must give this no thought. These are the kinds of rumors spread by the bored, the idle and the envious. You must know that your great power and popularity will bring unfair criticism.”

“I suppose,” Orieza said, his forehead knotting. “I simply do not understand—”

The intercom buzzed. Del Valle, grateful for the distraction, pressed the button before he could continue, and made a mental note of the fact that some people had been far too free in their conversation with Orieza. Roderigo would determine who the general had been listening to, and would make sure those persons disappeared permanently. Orieza was asking far too many inconvenient questions.

“Yes?” he said, leaning over the intercom.

Orieza’s secretary spouted a stream of apologies for interrupting, and then begged their pardons, but could Commander Del Valle take an urgent call from the field? One of his men had been trying to reach him for some time, she said, and she had delayed connecting the call for as long as she thought prudent.

“Yes, yes,” Del Valle said testily. “Put it through.” He picked up the large receiver. “Yes?” he said again in Spanish.

“Commander,” stated one of his field lieutenants, whose name escaped him at the moment. The soldier was out of breath, or frantic in some way, as if he was frightened or had run to reach the phone. “Sir, I must sound the alarm urgently, sir! There is great trouble here at the terminal!”

“The pipeline terminal?” Del Valle demanded.

“Yes, Commander, yes!”

“Well?”

“Sir…it…”

“What, damn you?” Del Valle roared. “Spit it out, or I will wring your neck!”

“Sir, the terminal burns.”

“What?” Del Valle shouted. “What are you talking about?”

“Sir—” The voice was cut short by a loud clap of sound, a noise Del Valle couldn’t escape.

“Report!” he yelled. “Report, damn you!”

The muffled click of the receiver being replaced in its cradle was the only reply.

CHAPTER FIVE

Thick undergrowth between closely packed trees gave way to the blade of Mack Bolan’s machete, ending abruptly at a large clearing that was dominated by the pipeline terminal. This, too, was concealed beneath camouflage netting, but the NSA’s satellite surveillance had easily picked out the facility with thermal imaging. Bolan was no expert on the technology used for oil drilling, but he gathered that this nationalized plant had been an innovative one before it was essentially stolen from its owners by Orieza’s regime.

Intelligence operatives posing as interested parties from the United States government’s international trade commission had interviewed key employees of O’Connor Petroleum Prospecting, according to the files sent to Bolan by the Farm. They had provided blueprints of the proposed plant layout, which Bolan consulted on his phone’s muted screen. There were supposed to be changes made to these preliminary plans, alterations that would be filed on-site only. If there had been any major departures, he couldn’t see them as he surveyed the terminal.

Of particular interest to him were the office buildings, a collection of interconnected, prefabricated sheds south of the pipeline cluster. The cluster—it was designated as such on the plans—was a complicated mass of piping, tributaries of some sort that came together at a junction of the oil line. That pipeline, constructed by Orieza’s people after the takeover, stretched off into the distance, the way Bolan had come. It ended, he knew, at the advance camp he had just destroyed.

There had been no point in targeting the pipeline itself, for it was far longer than Bolan could deal with. Destroying portions of the line would slow the progress of Orieza’s invading teams, but Bolan didn’t believe in chopping off tentacles when he could attack the head of the monster. The OPP terminal had to be destroyed, if the pipeline project was to be ended effectively. Destroying the equipment would deny Orieza’s regime access to the oil, which, in Bolan’s relatively limited understanding of petroleum prospecting, wasn’t accessible without the new technology OPP had brought to the project. Once the terminal was eliminated, there would be no point in continuing to invade Guatemala in order to bring the pipeline through to Mexico.

That was the plan, anyway.

Brognola had told Bolan that the employees present when the facility was nationalized had been killed or taken hostage. The Orieza regime had said nothing about them publicly, nor had the communications between the two nations intercepted by the Farm’s intelligence sources included any mention of them. This was likely because the human beings caught in the power play cooked up by Orieza and Castillo meant very little to the two leaders. It was Bolan’s hope that those OPP employees were still alive. If they were, the most likely location to hold them would be those offices, if the hostages were still on-site. The cyber team at the Farm had analyzed the available data and come to the same conclusion.

Bolan consulted another file on the phone, this one the instructions provided by OPP management for shut ting down the drill house and its pump valves. The deep-ranging equipment was connected to a series of turbines heated with geothermal energy, the briefing explained. Tapping this power helped make a project on the scope of the OPP operation possible, and it was the reason the company had managed to find oil where none had previously been detected. Bolan skipped over the technojargon elaborating on that. The gist was that if he shut down the pumps and valves in the order specified by the company’s technicians, then reversed the turbines, overrode the safety circuits and instructed the drill equipment to perform a self-cleaning procedure with the pump power at maximum, a mechanical disaster would occur.

The OPP technicians had been very clear on that point. A self-cleaning operation reversed the drills and drew full power from the pumping network. If the safeties were disengaged and the procedure implemented with the turbines also at full reverse, the harmonic vibrations created by the drills would shake the casings apart. The turbines, disconnected from the shafts and overdriving the pumps, would then overheat and explode, shattering the pumps. What was left of the terminal would be torn to pieces by the shrapnel. Any of the equipment still functioning would be so much scrap metal, useless to anyone without the associated high-tech equipment. With the valves shut beforehand, any environmental damage would be minimized; there would be no spewing geysers or burning plumes of oil smoke.

Bolan snapped his phone shut and stowed it. The immediate problem was how to penetrate the facility. It was heavily guarded by Honduran troops who, he could see through his field glasses, wore the blue epaulets of Orieza’s shock forces. They patrolled the fenced perimeter of the terminal, a chain-link affair to which strands of razor wire had been added. He could tell the wire was new because it hadn’t yet begun to discolor or corrode in the tropical climate, while the chain-link fence itself already looked much older than it could possibly be. No doubt Orieza’s thugs had beefed up security once they’d seized the terminal.

The men walking sentry duty in twos carried M-16 rifles. Bolan observed the guards for half an hour, timing them and judging the gap between patrols. It wasn’t a large one, but it was there. Orieza’s gunmen had become complacent. They would regret that—but not for long.

Bolan gathered himself for his charge. He didn’t have the advantage of darkness now. Once he began to fire on the shock troops, the element of surprise would be lost and full-scale combat would commence. There was no room for error.

He counted down the numbers. When he hit zero, he ran.

Bolan’s sprint across the clearing to the fenced perimeter carried him between the two closest pairs of sentries. He knelt, brought his rifle to his shoulder and waited, aiming in the direction from which the next team would come. The two men rounded the corner at the far end of the perimeter.

They saw Bolan and froze.

It was all the Executioner needed. In the fraction of a moment that the gunmen’s brains failed to process what their eyes saw, he fired a single round through the face of the man on the left. Bolan rode out the mild recoil of the 5.56-mm NATO round, acquiring his second target smoothly without delay. He squeezed the trigger, completely at ease, completely relaxed. The second shot was echoing as both bodies hit the ground.

Bolan let go of the rifle, trusting to his sling to keep it with him. He plucked a grenade from his combat harness, pulled the pin and let the spoon spring through the air. He threw the bomb underhand at the chain-link fence, just beyond what he judged to be a safe distance. Then he hit the dirt and covered his head with his arms.

The explosion did more damage to the ground than to the barrier, pelting Bolan with clods of moist earth. He drew himself into a crouch, bringing the rifle up again, and wasn’t disappointed. Armed men were running for him, firing as they went, spraying their weapons blindly.

The Executioner added his own weapon to the cacophony. While his enemies’ shots went wide and wild, his own precise bursts were true. First one, then another, then a third of the Honduran shock troopers went down. Bolan pushed to his feet and made for the opening torn in the fence.

He squeezed through with just enough room to spare, despite all the equipment he carried. Once on the other side of the fence he quickly dropped and rolled aside. Lines of automatic gunfire ripped into the dirt where he had stood, again spraying him with debris.

At the awkward angle he now lay, Bolan couldn’t bring his rifle to bear. Instead, he let it rest beside him, tethered to its sling, and drew the Beretta and Desert Eagle from their holsters. With a weapon in each hand, he waited, and when gunmen moved into view, he started shooting.

The .44 Magnum Desert Eagle bucked in his hand. The Beretta machine pistol chugged 3-round bursts with each press of the trigger. Like cattle driven to slaughter, the shock troopers kept coming—and kept dying.