Chapter 9

Sucking

Mack Bolan was a supreme military strategist, his expertise acquired in the crucible of Southeast Asia. He had long ago learned that the best offensive tactic is seldom a wild-assed charge into the stronghold of an unknown enemy. Such kamikaze tactics might suffice on certain rare occasions but generally tended to be suicidal. Discretion often was the better part of valor, and the Executioner knew from practical experience that an overzealous enemy may sometimes be lured into a rash offensive with suitable bait. Invested with a false sense of progress, the enemy may be sucked to his doom in a prearranged ambush. The tactic was especially useful when the enemy was successful in camouflaging his base of operations, as Nick Bonelli's strike force had done so far.

Yeah, a suck play was clearly indicated. It remained only for the Executioner to choose the site and the bait.

The site was a shallow horseshoe basin on the western fringe of Echo Canyon Park, a miniature valley, really, bisected by a two-lane highway with lightly wooded hills on three sides. He parked the warwagon atop a shaded knoll on the left or northern tip of the horseshoe, nose toward the highway and rocket pod elevated. From his Position he held a commanding view of the basin and the highway leading into it, ready to unleash his lethal firebirds on selected targets as they Presented themselves.

Next on tap was the matter of bait.

He made the necessary call and again received instant pickup. "Ranch."

"It's me again. Put the man on."

"That was some damn fancy shooting, mister. Just a minute."

It was not a minute but a mere second before another instrument clicked into the line and Kaufman, very subdued, said, "Okay, you proved your point. We need to talk. Let's meet. You say where."

Bolan told him where, adding, "Ten minutes. If You're later than that, I won't be there."

"I can make that. I'll, uh, have some people with me."

"I strongly advise it. Bonelli has troops out scouring the countryside for you. You'd better travel heavy. But this is the way you do it. Two-"

"Wait a minute!"

"Shut up and listen. It's this way or no way. Two cars. Yourself and a wheelman in the first. A backup crew following at 100 yards. The second car keeps its distance."

"How do I know?"

"Use your head," Bolan said disgustedly. "If I wanted it, I'd have had it instead of your telephone. I'm not your present hazard. Do we meet or don't we?"

"We meet," was the instant response. "Your way. But it better be cool."

"Ten minutes from right now," Bolan said and hung up.

It was a gamble, sure. Chancey as hell. A guy with Kaufman's resources could pull a lot of fancy strings in ten minutes. He could send police helicopters. He could probably field a makeshift force of forty to fifty men on a moment's notice, even should he elect to keep the cops out of it. And that was only half the risk.

He was gambling also on Nick Bonelli's field forces, practically certain that the telephone surveillance wires on Phoenix were Bonelli's wires but decidedly uncertain as to the number of guns in the Phoenix task force and their deployment.

It was purely an educated estimate that Bonelli could send no more than two or three cars to any point around the city with no more than ten minute's notice. If that estimate should prove wrong ... then Bolan knew who could just as easily get sucked into this one.

It was possible, even, that he would be contending with two massive forces, one from each side of the set. And that could be curtains, for sure.

He had tried to foresee and to prepare for any contingency to the limit of his combat capabilities. But only the "meet" itself could tell the final tale.

He used the ten-minute wait for final preparations. The rocketry was "enabled" by electronic command, automatically superimposing the control system upon the optics, the electronic grid glowing red from the viewscreen. From the console: Fire Enable Go.

He set it up for manual command and made a slight adjustment to the optics, refining the focus, narrowing the vision field to a fifty-yard radius surrounding that fated slot on the desert floor.

Target selection, now, would be "gunner's choice." Wherever the optics wandered and settled, a simple bang on the knee would dispatch a firebird unerringly to the target centered there. Combat capability was limited to four birds, how ever. A reload would require sixty to ninety seconds at best — and many a battle had been lost in a single heartbeat.

But he settled into the wait with a satisfied mind. He had done all within his power to set the contest. The rest was in other hands.

He had chosen the site well. Not a vehicle strayed into the trap — not even a jackrabbit — when the thing began falling into place at minute eight. The first to enter was a speeding Continental — a burly, crew-cut man at the wheel, Moe Kaufman seated stiffly beside him. The optic system reached out at first contact to pull the vehicle into Its resolving field, locked on, peering within to divine by long-range surveillance the true interior status. It was clean, straight.

Bolan punched back to wide-field surveillance, Immediately picking up the trailing vehicle — a nine-passenger station wagon crammed with tense flesh, obediently maintaining a 100-yard separation behind the Continental. He localized momentarily to read the firepower in that wagon then punched back to wide field to track both cars on into the slot. Kaufman was indeed traveling "heavy." Bolan had read a couple of choppers, a long rifle with telescopic sights, and several shotguns among other armaments bristling from that crew wagon.

They were a minute early.

Both vehicles pulled to the side of the road at the designated spot. No one stood down. Both engines kept firing. After a moment, the Continental backed around to a position ten yards off the highway — poised Perpendicular to the ribbon of blacktop, leaving the option open for fast take-off in either direction. Instantly, the station wagon did likewise. A couple of guys stood down, shielding eyes with the hands and craning the heads in nervous inspection of the surrounding terrain.

They didn't like it.

With good reason. It was the sort of place where wagon trains of old ran tautly at full speed in fear of red man ambush.

But it was perfectly to Bolan's liking.

Minute nine arrived, and, with it, another vehicle running swiftly into the focal field. But it was not the hoped-for Tucson task force. It was a pretty girl moving a small British sports car with the hammer down, long hair riding the wind inside that open convertible, face set in grim concentration. There was no time for Bolan to speculate upon the presence of Sharon Kaufman. Obviously she had followed the convoy from Paradise Ranch — Perhaps arriving there just in time to note the hurried departure and opting for pursuit.

There was no time because a grimmer presence had also made an entrance into the set. It began as a dark mass at the extreme edge of vision, separating quickly under the probing focal finesse of the optics system into a four-car caravan, big black crew wagons running in close consort and closing quickly.

A quick pull-back to wide field showed Moe Kaufman stumbling from his vehicle and running with arms flailing toward the blacktop, galvanized by the unexpected appearance there of beloved flesh — the little sportster burning rubber and fish-tailing to a quick halt.

Another punch of the optics revealed the prime enemy in disturbing close-up. A black face there, eyes concealed behind dark glasses, lips moving rapidly in final instructions, a black beret perched jauntily at the side of the head. Another — lean and brown, narrowed eyes harshly scanning the terrain from the tail car. The rest of those faces were stereotypes. Bolan had seen thousands just like them. But those other two — yeah, it all flooded back, ghosts from the past, psychotic goons in army O.D.

Now he knew his enemy.

Another face from the same past should have been present also. That it was not brought a chill to the Bolan spine. Hinshaw was the name, cannibalism was the game — but cannibalism with a difference — a military difference.

And now he knew that the die was cast. He'd sucked a bit more than he'd expected — and now Kaufman and his girl may have to pay the price for an Executioner's sloppy intelligence effort.

The hit team was speeding into the slot.

Kaufman's crew was now electrically aware of the "betrayal," scrambling for position and sending frantic signals across the 100-yard separation from their boss. Kaufman had the girl in tow, and the two Were sprinting toward the Continental.

Bolan hoped the big vehicle was a "tank!" — an armor-plated retreat — but it did not bear the telltale signs, and even that would not prevent disaster should the "betrayal" become a fact.

Mack Bolan was resolved that it would not.

He banged his knee when the charging lead vehicle was three lengths into the slot. An angry firebird lifted away with a rustling whoosh to sizzle along the target track on a tail of flame and smoke. He saw their flaring eyes in the vision field as the fiery missile closed — then flaring eyes and all disappeared behind a mushroom of roiling flames. The vehicle reappeared a moment later as it careened onto the desert, first kneeling then shuddering onto its crumpled nose and doubling back in an end-over-end barrel roll of disintegrating metal. The fuel tank caught the spirit of the thing on the third bounce and completed the destruction with a secondary explosion that littered the area with smoking flesh and shredded hardware.

Meanwhile, the closely following second vehicle discovered the hard way the hazard of running too close in a pack. At the moment of rocket impact, something had blown back and smashed the windshield of that second car, sending it spinning out of control along the blacktop and coming to rest on its side in a grinding slide almost to the doorstep of Moe Kaufman's outraged crew.

Automatic weapons fire immediately joined the cacophony of doom, accompanied in concert by the basso booming of rapid-fire shotguns — and there was no comfort there for the survivors of that second pile-up.

Cars three and four were meanwhile reacting in the only sensible manner, both of them peeling instantly away from the blacktop and jouncing across open country on widely diverging courses.

But Bolan had punched back to target focus and he had one of them in the range marks. The console sent him an immediate Target Acquisition Go. He thumped his knee and sent another terror. It rustled along the range and overtook the target vehicle, punching in from the rear and lifting the whole works in a thunderous plunge to nowhere. Two of Kaufman's boys immediately trotted off in pursuit to assure the fate of the occupants.

The fourth car from Tucson was executing a tight circle, careening along the reverse course in a desperate effort to regain the highway and put those hellgrounds behind them. Bolan acquired them on his grid, doubled fist poised above the knee, then he changed his mind and instead disabled the rocketry. The pod retracted and locked Into place beneath the sliding roof panel. He sent a quick probe into the slot, saw that all was well there with the Kaufman camp, then instantly returned his attention to the fleeting prime enemy. He watched the wild fish-tailing as some newly educated goons in O.D. found their purchase on solid surface and began the streak to safer ground.

Moments later, the warwagon was moving smoothly along the track, the optics maintaining "shadow distance" behind the remains of the retreating task force.

Bolan had not spared them ... and they would never again find "safer ground."

"Take me home, boys," he said quietly to the optics monitor. "Let's take it all the way to hell."

Chapter 10

Audacity

Mack Bolan had first encountered Jim Hinshaw and his two sidekicks during his second Asian tour of duty. Their encounters had been rare, brief, and — for Hinshaw at least — very unfortunate. The last of those encounters had resulted in Hinshaw's brief imprisonment, and the less than honorable discharge of all three men. Bolan had known only part of it then, picking up bits and pieces as the court martial progressed, and the sequence flashed before him now as he tracked Angel Morales and his raiders toward their lair.

Hinshaw, Morales, and Worthy were lifelong natives of Tucson. They had become fast friends in grade school and remained so ever since, their interracial camaraderie a minor curiosity in a city whose schools were not entirely unfamiliar with ethnic antagonism. While other adolescents banded together for safety, and sport in racially homogenous gangs, Hinshaw, Morales, and Worthy stood apart, dubbing themselves "The Desert Rats" and displaying a belligerent pride in their mutual alienation.

Fighting and rumbles were inevitable, and with them came a string of adolescent capers beginning with shoplifting and gradually progressing to car theft and assault. Through it all, Jim Hinshaw emerged naturally as the head of the tiny gang, the strategist and "brains" for a series of minor-league depredations. Worthy and Morales recognized Hinshaw's native craftiness and qualities of leadership, deferring to him without protest, accepting his counsel readily and generally profitting thereby. Hinshaw's operations were logically and meticulously planned, lucrative more often than not. Only the hot car ring had gone sour, and even that was a blessing in disguise, for it inspired Hinshaw's Rats to join the U.S. Army en masse one step ahead of nosy police investigators.

The trio from Tucson had enlisted and trained together, volunteered for the Special Forces together at Hinshaw's earnest suggestion, and arrived in Vietnam together as members of the same Green Beret A-team. Comrades and superiors found them zealous and adept at the martial skills, and then-Corporal James Hinshaw was especially singled out for praise concerning his selfless devotion to duty.

Those commanders had missed the mark there, badly misreading their man. For Jim Hinshaw was devoted not to duty, but to power. He lived for power, worshipping it as some men do their gods, lusting after it as other men do beautiful women. He cared not so much for money, though he never passed up an easy profit, recognizing material wealth for what it was, a means to an end and a symptom of deeper power and influence. To Hinshaw, power was an almost spiritual concept, the ultimate goal of all endeavor, the ability and right to impose order on the lives of lesser individuals. Floyd Worthy and Angel Morales understood their comrade and were content to board the bandwagon in subordinate positions, assured in the knowledge that Hinshaw's ultimate success would bring benefits to all.

Vietnam had been heaven on earth for Jim Hinshaw and his Desert Rats. Assigned to the Army's pacification program in Trah Ninh Province, operating out of My Hoi village, they immediately began taking stock of the local situation and its potential for manipulation by skilled hands. Shortly after their arrival, the sergeant in charge of Hinshaw's A-team was the single casualty of a midnight "guerrilla raid." The attackers were never identified, although troopers Worthy and Morales did bag three peasants near the camp an hour later, riddling them before they could escape or surrender. Hinshaw was routinely elevated to the rank of sergeant, and the marksmanship of his friends was rewarded with commendations and, in Worthy's case, promotion to corporal.

Things began to change in Trah Ninh Province, as Hinshaw led his henchmen in the subtle establishment of a personal jungle fiefdom. Their commanding officers were naturally preoccupied with the broader conduct of the war, leaving the trio more or less free to institute a campaign of intimidation against inhabitants of the region. The Desert Rats gradually became a greater object of local fear than the Viet Cong, and the local peasants accepted their plight with a stoicism born of centuries-long oppression. That is, most villagers accepted it, although two village chiefs in My Ho were assassinated by "known terrorists" before Hinshaw could install a leader of suitable pliability.

Then began the long night of Trah Ninh Province. Artisans, Politicians, and eventually almost everyone Was forced to pay "Insurance" premiums to Hinshaw or face arrest on charges of subversion and involvement with the communists. Local girls and women were recruited and sold like chattel to whore-masters in Saigon, while a few were retained by Hinshaw for a local prostitution network of his own. Persons of every age and both sexes were forcibly enlisted as couriers of drugs and other contraband between villages and into neighboring provinces. Dissenters were rare, due primarily to the overabundance of lethal accidents which haunted the exponents of discontent. When Hinshaw's commanding officer responded to rumors of unorthodox proceedings in the province, he gained dubious distinction as one of the earliest victims of "fragging" in the Asian war. A black GI was observed running from the scene of the grenade blast, but no assailant was ever identified.

Disaster came to Hinshaw's personal kingdom In the Person of Mack Samuel Bolan. Bolan had met Hinshaw several times while working the delta with Sniper Team Able and had considered him a competent, if unusually stern, soldier. His opinion changed drastically following a raid during which Bolan executed VC Colonel Tra Huong and two lesser associates in the south of the province. Returning toward their base camp outside My Hoi, Bolan and Corporal T. L. Minnegas had encountered Hinshaw, Worthy, and Morales in the act of executing three unarmed villagers. One was already dead, but Bolan's intervention had rescued the others and resulted at length in the indictment of all three men on manslaughter charges. Villagers slowly and cautiously came forward with tales of coercion and violence, and other charges were added. Military prosecutors did their best, but matters were seldom clear in Vietnam during the late sixties, and the Desert Rats offered a vigorous defense, asserting their efforts were to stem Red aggression in the province, portraying their accusers as communist partisans. The final verdict was at best a compromise. Morales and Worthy escaped with less than honorable discharges, while Hinshaw was sentenced to six months in the stockade and a similar discharge.

Mack Bolan had recognized the vengeful bitterness in Hinshaw, but chose to forget it as the Asian war and a later, more personal one enveloped his life and transformed it into a never-ending cruise down Blood River. Now the shadows of the past had been resurrected, and much of what had only been confusion now made grisly and ominous sense.

James Hinshaw was an organization man, a master strategist backed by two guns as lethal as his own. Or rather, one other gun now, with Floyd Worthy a smoking twist of lifeless meat back there at the ambush site. Hinshaw with his team had been the perfect man to train and lead Nick Bonelli's private military force, a totally ruthless and immoral man whom the Tucson capo could count upon to serve the project with unswerving dedication and zeal.

A serpent, yeah, and a damned lethal one at that. A sidewinder.

Bolan tracked the hastening crew wagon north out of Echo Canyon Park, following Morales and his men as they swung west onto MacDonald Drive and skirted the limits of Paradise Valley. He was with them when they veered due south on 44th Street, pursuing discreetly but inexorably as they angled back toward the heart of Phoenix. The Executioner remained alert for any deviation from the track, dreading the confrontation to come if Morales should lead him back into the teeming center of the desert metropolis.

Bolan's silent prayer was answered. The crew wagon chose an intersecting desert highway, nosing eastward in an apparent effort to complete a perfect rectangle with its progress. Bolan gave them a lead, then resumed the track, driving on by as the limo swung onto a graveled access road and faded into a screen of dust.

The Executioner sought a parallel track and found it a quarter-mile further on. A mile from the paved highway he was able to pick out buildings off to the side, and leading to those structures, the plume of dust trailing Angel's vehicle. Bolan found his own track circling slowly toward the distant cluster of houses and followed it gratefully, homing on what he knew to be the viper's nest he had sought since entering Phoenix.

Bolan left the warwagon where his route intersected a sagging barbed-wire fence, completing his cautious approach on foot. He circled the dry, rolling terrain warily, Big Thunder and the Beretta Belle ready for action at right hip and left armpit. No man opposed his penetration. Judging from the known body count in Phoenix and a mental sizing of the barracks at the Tucson hardsite, Bolan estimated that close to two-thirds of Hinshaw's force had been eliminated. He hoped to confirm that estimate by direct observation preparatory to any penetration of that armed camp.

He found a low ridge 100 Yards from the cluster of buildings, with desert sagebrush and stunted trees combining to offer adequate concealment for his purposes. Prone amid the thorny vegetation, Bolan scanned the compound with his field glasses, taking in the reception for Morales and his surviving raiders. Counting Angel and his crew, there were eleven heads down there, hardmen all, milling about the dusty Crew wagon and peppering the new arrivals with demands for information.

And Jim Hinshaw was present and accounted for at the heart of the miniature mob scene, questioning Morales, and not at all happy with the answers he was getting. Bolan could not hear what Hinshaw was saying, but he could read plainly that furrowed brow and the grim set of the mouth. The guy was anything but happy, but he seemed to be maintaining control of his temper. As always, control and order were Hinshaw's watchwords. Even when Hinshaw resorted to torture and murder, it was done methodically, devoid of emotion.

Cool as ice ... and deadly.

Bolan's eyes narrowed as he watched Hinshaw lead his shrunken hardforce into the largest of three buildings. The man was a menace, his lethal potential compounded by the almost phlegmatic precision he brought to every endeavor. Whatever the end goal of the Arizona game plan, Jim Hinshaw was the man who could carry it off.

Unless he was stopped ... totally and permanently ... cut off at the knees by a superior force.

Bolan scanned the buildings and grounds through his glasses, noting relationships and proportions, angles and planes. The largest and central building was probably Hinshaw's command post, with space reserved for quartering at least some of the troops. The function of the other structures was open to surmise, but the tall radio antenna erected beside one of them gave Bolan a clue to its primary purpose. He felt safe in assuming that he had found the nerve center behind the "ears" in Phoenix ... the alert and deadly head of a serpent whose heart lay to the south in Tucson.

A penetration was indicated. More, it was mandatory at this stage of the Executioner's Phoenix campaign. The suck play had now fulfilled its purpose by leading Bolan to his ultimate target in the desert city, and he meant to strike against that serpent's head before the brain could recover from earlier stunning blows to marshal a venomous counter-stroke.

Bolan was formulating his strategy as he turned away from that and tableau and retraced his steps to the battle cruiser.

An effective strike would require an effective penetration — and that could be tricky with a pro like Hinshaw. But Bolan was not going for a simple hit-and-run, he was hoping for the knockout — a quick one-two — not just to the head of this beast but to the entire fetid structure. That would call for a bit of audacity. Audacity, hell, he had plenty of it.

Chapter 11

The message

Hinshaw's voice was tense, taut — dangerous. "From the top, Angel. What went sour?"

"It all went sour, Jim," Morales replied with a disgusted gesture. "I think it started sour. It was a suck play straight from the jungle book."

"You said a rocket attack?"

"Yeah. They sucked us into a horseshoe slot, then layed into us from the high ground. There was no way to save it. I'm damn lucky I got out. Poor Floyd ..."

Hinshaw kicked the desk and raised his eyes to the ceiling. "Bastard!" he growled. "He must have tumbled to the telephone tap. How cute. Did you eyeball the bastard?"

The little Latin shook his head and said, "All I eyeballed was them damn rockets whooshing down from the heights. He's got some kind of fancy firepower. Forget them fucking LAWS, this was big stuff. More like guided missiles."

Hinshaw muttered, "So he's teamed up with Kaufman."

"Looks that way," Morales quietly agreed. "You know what this means."

"Yeah," Morales said, sighing. "And we're running about 70 percent casualties as of right now, man."

"So what are you reading?" Hinshaw growled.

"I'm reading scratch," the surviving lieutenant replied. "We can't pull it now. Not without reinforcements anyway."

"You ready to tuck your tail?" Hinshaw asked heavily, "and slink back to Tucson? You ready to face the old man with that?"

"You should've seen what I faced a little while ago, Jim. Listen. That guy deserves his reputation."

"So does Bonelli," Hinshaw said worriedly.

"Well, shit." Morales threw up his hands and walked nervously about the room waving them as though seeking applause from some invisible audience. "This is crazy. I say we call out the hole card and tell them all to go to hell."

"Not yet," Hinshaw said. He gnawed on his lower lip for a moment, then added: "We can still pull it out, maybe." His eyes gleamed with silent speculation, then: "There's a million bucks on Bolan's head. Right?"