Predator Paradise. Don Pendleton

three, then four technicals already in flight, dust billowing around the vehicles as they reversed away from the C-130, Thunders Three and Four charging to outflank them. Collins took a moment to watch the action.

      Autofire chattered around the technicals, two vehicles sitting, shooters steeled to go to the mat, two more murderous goon squads on wheels rolling to break out, but the noose was tightening, he saw. Screams of pain lanced out of all that swirling dust, but Collins felt grim satisfaction it was nearly a lock. Still, he saw two technicals break out of the ring, racing across the plain. His commandos were alternating bursts between shooting gunmen out of their technicals and blasting out tires.

      He was grinning to himself, his Black Hawks soaring overhead to run down the rabbits, the Apache strafing the troops and transports at the command post to the northeast when he found only one of his ground Hummers barreling in from the wadi.

      “What the—?”

      The M-60 gunner on that rig—Lionteeth—told him the colonel was engaged somewhere with Somali gunmen. Or had he broken off, purposely changed their role on his own command? If so, why?

      Scouting the plain, Collins spotted the other Hummer. Thunder One was rolling slow, nearly creeping toward the fleeing Somalis. The Cobra team leader figured out the strategy. A lone figure peeled off from the Hummer, M-16 blazing at the profiteers who were squirming from an overturned transport rig, an APC near them demolished, swathed in leaping flames, treated, he reckoned, to a direct hit from the Apache’s Hellfire missile.

      Wild Card was doing his thing, Collins thought, and cursed. So he had a prima donna on the team, the guy might as well have told him to kiss his ass, he’d do it his way.

      A few choice words, assuming the colonel survived, had to wait as Collins drew a bead on a Somali gunman still standing in the dust, and drilled a burst into his chest.

      THE EXECUTIONER sensed Asp and Python weren’t happy about being ordered to change the game plan right before the shooting started, but they did as ordered. The shift in strategy, at least on his part, had one goal in mind. Cutting off any retreat on foot, he knew, was a dicier proposition than simply allowing the Black Hawks and Apache to blow the enemy off the plain. Say the warbirds ground up the Somalis with lead and Hellfires from above, and any capture of Dugula was all but lost. If their job was to cuff and stuff the world’s most wanted international terror mongers, then anything short of bringing Dugula and top henchmen to justice spelled mission failure.

      Bolan left the Apache to its Hellfire-and-chain-gun demolition. The command post, with any radar and tracking goodies, was blown away by the warbird, six or so Somalis scythed by 30 mm doom as they were bolting from the flying rubble. Before that round of destruction, the warbird had plowed a missile into one of the transport trucks, dead ahead to Bolan’s twelve, wreckage spewing out of the fireball bowling another canvas-covered transport onto its side.

      The soldier cut a wide berth around the hungry flames and oily smoke, his M-16 leading the way, the stink of burning diesel fuel and toasted flesh swelling the air, grinding into his senses as he closed on the cries of panic. His vector, if he nailed the enemy before him in seconds flat, would land him directly in the path of two technicals charging away from the ring of Cobra lead. It was a dust bowl near the C-130’s nose, armed combatants blazing away, he saw, commandos then chasing down Somalis who had decided it was better to flee than stand and fight. It was hard for the soldier to tell which was which and who was who, but a split-second assessment of the numbers of bodies flying from technicals signaled to him the Somalis were clutching the short end of the stick.

      Maybe ten Somalis, he viewed, came crawling or staggering out of the bed of their dumped transport. They were lurching to their feet, punch-drunk from the hard topple, AKs jerking in different directions, uncertain where the next immediate threat would rear up.

      Bolan took care of their confusion, finger caressing the M-203’s trigger. He dumped the 40 mm fragmentation bomb into their ranks—no point in wasting precious seconds when the prize was maybe on the fly. The blast ripped out the heart of the pack, torn figures kicked in separate directions. Three hardmen with the quickest feet and the most luck, knocked down by the concussive force but clearing the fireball and shock waves, scurried to get back in action. The Executioner tagged the trio with a raking burst of autofire, left to right and back, bodies flung into tight corkscrews, dropping. Two of the warlord’s goons then popped into the soldier’s gun sights on the other side of the downed transport, running for the oncoming technicals, arms flapping as if they were hailing a cab.

      Bolan shot them both up the back, flinging them ahead, their arms windmilling, faces hammering down with such force their legs flew up. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Asp charging the Hummer at a group of Somalis pouring AK-47 autofire from the bed of a technical, Python opting to help hose down those survivors still in the fight with his M-16.

      Bolan cut his path hard and fast toward the racing technical, drawing target acquisition on three gunmen in the jeep’s bed. Rotor wash from the Black Hawks, hovering thirty yards behind, kicked up a cyclone of grit and dust, obscuring confirmation until the technical was nearly on top of the warrior.

      But Bolan pinned down their man, Dugula’s face of terror and outrage framed from the shotgun seat of the technical, the soldier’s attention shifting back to the M-60 gunner who swiveled the machine gun in his direction. There was a moment’s hesitation from the hardman on the M-60, a spray of bullets flying wild past the soldier, before he hit him with a burst of 5.56 mm tumblers and sent him flying. Two Cobra Hummers then burst out of the dust storm, an M-60 roaring, other Cobra commandos racing on foot ahead to help lay waste to the pack of Somalis in the trailing rig.

      The Executioner focused on the big catch charging his way.

      Dugula, Bolan glimpsed, was flailing his arms, raging at his driver, when he hit the M-16’s trigger. The windshield imploded, a crimson halo where the wheelman had sat bearing grim testament that Dugula was the last passenger. The Executioner sidled away from the unmanned jeep, one last Somali launched from the bed of Dugula’s getaway, then he blew out the port tires with a long burst of autofire. He let it surge past, saw Dugula’s eyes bugging out, mouth vented, a silent scream lost to the din of autofire from some point downrange. Deflated tread slammed down into a rut, and the jeep shot up and over a jagged rip in the land, sailing a few yards, before it flipped onto its side.

      THE WORLD WAS a shattered hell of noise, foul smells and choking dust from where he lay, slumped against the door, spitting flecks of blood and glass chips from his lips. Dugula heard the bitter chuckle next, but the sound was chased away by the Black Hawks, the bleat of massive blades a pounding racket that washed fire through his brain. They were nightmare specters suspended in the sky, two giant prehistoric birds of doom.

      American commandos! He hadn’t clearly seen the faces of their attackers, but he had been there in Mogadishu when the infidel forces had come to supposedly restore order to a lawless country, when he had been on the shortlist of kill or capture. The infidels had returned.

      Black Hawks. It was happening again, only this time it appeared the invaders would create a different outcome. The three white devils had maneuvered him into this trap; he was sure of it. But if they were working with his own Muslim handlers, why? It made no sense, a preposterous riddle without the first clue. He had made every accommodation possible to the freedom fighters, arming them, refuge inside his borders, food, women and qat. Or had they, too, been deceived? Beyond his sense of outrage over the betrayal, pure fear began writhing in his belly.

      “You’ll know when it’s begun.”

      He ran those words through his mind again, hatred burning. Now what?

      His clansmen, he was sure, were all dead. If there were any survivors, could they stand and fight while…?

      What? Should he attempt to flee again, but this time on foot? That he was still alive was no guarantee he wouldn’t be shot down in the next few moments. Where was his AK-47? And what would he do if he found the weapon? He was outnumbered, outgunned, alone most likely, autofire withering, no more screams, the lopsided battle winding down. There was a silence beyond the whapping rotors that sparked new fear. There really