He’d landed right across from a small wooden shack that looked to be an outhouse. As if on cue, the door pushed outward and a rebel exited, zipping up his pants. Spotting Bolan, the rebel cried out, clawing for a holstered pistol on his hip. Bolan put two tranquilizer darts in his chest and moved onward.
Six more guards fell under the gentle assault of the tranquilizer darts, and soon Bolan was standing inside a battered old canvas tent. There was nothing special about the tent, from the outside, but its position was the logical location for the commander.
A fast glance around the interior told Bolan that he was correct. He spied a weapons cabinet containing advanced armament—an Atchisson auto-shotgun, a Milkor grenade launcher, several 66 mm LAW rocket launchers, five or six Neostead shotguns and enough spare ammunition and assorted grenades to punch a hole in the moon. Whatever else they were, these rebels weren’t poor. A small bookcase next to the cabinet was filled with assorted legal volumes dealing with international law, war crimes and joining the UN. These folks thought big. Bolan liked that.
A large folding table was covered with detailed maps of the capital city, Montevideo, the president’s palace and the complex sewer system underneath. It looked as if a sortie was being planned, possibly an assassination. Then Bolan spied an old, battered medical case. A quick glance inside showed only surgical instruments, mostly dental. Apparently, the rebels also believed in torture.
Off in the far corner, a folding cot stood near a small wood-burning stove, and on a worktable were boxes of camouflage paint sticks, a hairbrush and several tampons. Bolan had no idea what the military function of the tampons might be. He’d heard tales of wounded soldiers in battle jamming a tampon into a deep bullet hole to act as a crude blood stop, but he’d always considered it an army legend. Maybe the trick really did work.
Suddenly, there came the sound of multiple engines. Bolan quickly grabbed a pair of M35 anti-personnel grenades from his pack, pulled the pins and held tightly to the arming levers. He listened to the shouting over the discovery of the unconscious guards, running, cursing in several different languages, a few wild bursts from assault rifles.... Then the tent flap was pulled aside.
Six armed people stood in the opening, their faces registering shock and then raw hatred.
“Filthy dog!” a rebel snarled, swinging up the barrel of his AK-47.
“Stop that, Jose!” snapped a woman, slapping the weapon aside. “Did you not see the grenades?”
“Live, I assure you,” Bolan said, beaming a friendly smile.
“I assumed,” she said, cocking back the hammer on the Colt Commander semi-automatic pistol in her grip. The weapon looked very old, but it was spotlessly clean and shone with fresh oil.
She was a beautiful woman, and not even the long jagged scar bisecting her face could affect that. Her figure was tight and firm, as befitting a leader of combat soldiers. Her camouflage-pattern uniform was patched, the boots old, but everything was clean.
More important, she stood with the calm assurance of a leader. Clearly, this was the person in charge of the operation. The government called her Sergeant Gato, Spanish for “cat.” But giving your enemy a silly nickname to make them sound weak was one of the oldest tricks in the book.
“What do you want here?” the woman demanded, the pitted barrel of the handgun never wavering.
“You,” Bolan replied. “You, your men and that warship you’ve been secretly building for the past ten years.”
A collective gasp from the rebels told Bolan he’d made a direct hit.
A burly man with a large black mustache frowned. “How did you find us?”
Bolan gave a small shrug. “A friend of a friend.”
“I want names, gringo! Names!” the man demanded.
“Look, amigo. If I wanted you dead, I would have sold the information to the government,” Bolan said bluntly. “And right now, this base would be getting firebombed out of existence from what the president laughingly calls an air force.”
That yielded a small chuckle from the soldiers, but none of the weapons shifted direction, and the woman did not respond.
“We can leave and shoot you through the tent walls,” she said. “Use one grenade, or two.... But you would die, and we would simply be out a tent.”
“Absolutely true,” Bolan said. “But I’m here to cut a deal. Shoot if you want, but it’s a good deal.”
“Amnesty?” sneered a rake-thin teenager, his hands nervously twisting on the wooden grip of an old Browning automatic rifle, now topped with a state-of-the-art Zeiss long-range sniper scope. A bandolier of shells crossed his chest, and an optical range finder was tucked into a shirt pocket.
A fellow sniper? Good to know. “Fuck amnesty,” Bolan said. “I’m talking about missiles.”
“Missiles?”
“Missiles. Carl Gustav, LAW, Sidewinders, Redeye, Loki, Javelin—a truckload of them. Enough to tip the fight in your favor.”
“And what is the cost of this largesse?” asked the woman coolly, her eyes narrowing.
“Your rebellion is not going very well,” Bolan said, choosing his words carefully. “For more than five years, you’ve been doing a major overhaul on an old Mexican cargo freighter, formerly a Canadian steel freighter.”
Nobody said a word, but nervous glances were exchanged.
“You’ve added firewalls and armor below decks, modified the engines, reinforced the main deck, tacked on torpedo tubes and missile launchers.” Bolan smiled. “All of which is carefully out of sight.”
“Supposing what you say is true,” Sergeant Gato said slowly.
“It is.” Bolan interrupted.
She scowled. “Supposing so, you wish to do what, exchange your imaginary stockpile of missiles if we give you this vessel?”
“Oh, hell no. I merely want to rent it for a while. Maybe a few weeks, possibly longer.”
“Rent?” A young girl laughed. “You wish to rent the...” She closed her mouth with a snap.
“I never could find out the name, much less the location,” Bolan admitted. “You security is good. Damn good.” He proffered the grenades. “That’s why I had to go to such an extreme measure.”
“Rent.” The burly man shook his head in disbelief. “You have cojones, I’ll give you that, dead man.”
“I’ll pay with a hundred missiles...and a name.”
“What did you just say?” The man gaped.
“In exchange for renting the warship, I will pay you one hundred missiles per month, until the end of my mission.”
“Per month?”
“Or twenty-five a week. Whichever you prefer.”
“Madre mia,” a bald man exhaled. “With such ordnance....” Abruptly, his face took on a terrible expression. “Bah, it’s a trick! Just more lies from the president, eh? Everybody out of the tent. I will handle this pig personally.”
“Thank you, Miguel, but not this time,” the commander said, lowering her weapon. Her actions were slow but deliberate. “There is no fear in the eyes of this man, and his words carry the ring of truth.”
“But—”
“Let him talk for a little more,” she said, dragging over a folding canvas chair. “Let us see if the strength of his words equals the strength of his hands.”
“Sure as hell