Survival Reflex. Don Pendleton

never straying far enough from the rental to put his new hardware at risk from light-fingered locals. Staying awake through the night was no challenge. Call it a familiar ritual, divorced in Bolan’s mind from any concept of fatigue.

      He could sleep in the air, on the long flight westward to Cuiabá. And after that—who knew?

      In the grand scheme of things, feeling weary was the least of a combat soldier’s problems. In the days ahead, Bolan expected to be faced with worse.

      All for the sake of friendship.

      For the sake of duty.

      And to find out what in Hell was going on with Nathan Weiss.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      The pilot was a twenty-something woman with short red hair and a black patch covering her left eye. The one Bolan could see was emerald-green and flicked suspiciously in the direction of his duffel bags before he loaded them aboard a Piper PA15 Vagabond at least a decade older than its owner.

      Whatever she was thinking, cash resolved the lady’s doubts about her passenger, and they were in the air by 6:15 a.m., soaring southwestward over rain forest that could’ve swallowed regiments with ample room to spare.

      Where are you, Bones? he thought. What brought you here?

      Bolan was glad to get out of Belém and out from under scrutiny, at least for the time being. He had no illusions about pulling off a long-term fade, if agents of the CIA made any serious attempt to locate him. They’d find him in Cuiabá, given time, but Bolan didn’t plan to hang around to see the sights.

      If they pursued him on his mission through the jungle, it would be another story. They would be on his turf, then, and nothing in their past experience would’ve prepared them for a contest with the Executioner.

      The weak part of his plan was still Marta Enriquez. Spooks had followed her to San Diego, where they’d picked up Bolan’s trail without him noticing. That was a personal embarrassment, but he could live with it. The extra bad news was that if they’d spotted him, they also had to have marked Pol Blancanales, which, in turn, might lead them back to Able Team and Stony Man, if they dug deep enough.

      Granted, the Company had been aware of Stony Man from the beginning, and a team of Langley rogues had once attempted to destroy the Blue Ridge Mountain farm, but general knowledge and specific details were two very different things. Bolan was on a private errand in Brazil, albeit with the knowledge of his old friend Hal Brognola, who ran Stony Man from Washington. What Bolan hadn’t known, before he left the States, was that his mission placed him in direct conflict with agents of the CIA.

      That was the kind of problem that could boomerang on Brognola in nothing flat, and friendship demanded that he warn Brognola at the very least.

      And if the big Fed tried to call him off, then what?

      He couldn’t answer that until he reached Cuiabá. Enriquez was supposed to meet him there and help him with the next stage of his journey. If she didn’t show, or if a swarm of spooks was trailing her, he might be forced to scrub the play.

      As for the risk that he might pose to Brognola and Stony Man by pushing on, Bolan would have to weigh that against his prevailing sense of duty to an even older friend.

      Cruising over the primeval forest at 130 miles per hour, Bolan reviewed what he knew so far. Blaine Downey hadn’t mentioned Nathan Weiss at their brief meeting in Belém. Rather, he’d warned against collaborating with Marta Enriquez—but why?

      Was the woman herself a target of investigation, distinct and separate from Weiss? It seemed unlikely, but Bolan had seen enough of politics in various banana republics to know that anything was possible.

      Then again, if the Company was after Weiss, presumably acting in conjunction with the Brazilian government, what had Bones done to provoke their anger? Was it really just a matter of him helping persecuted aborigines, or was there something else at stake?

      Bones was a healer. Even in the midst of war, he’d treated wounded soldiers of both sides impartially. His dedication was to mending flesh and lives, not scrutinizing racial pedigrees or weighing ideology. A man of peace, he’d volunteered to serve in combat, where he thought his skills were needed.

      Most people found that kind of dedication laudable, until it trespassed on their politics. Healing our side was fine, of course, but hands off the alien-radical-subversive-demonic other side. Under no circumstances could healers help them.

      Bones hadn’t toed that line in Asia, and the odds against him heeding it now were astronomical.

      But had he tipped the other way at some point, in the years since Bolan saw him last? Had he abandoned his trademark impartiality to join some cause that placed him in the outlaw ranks?

      And if so, what could Bolan do about it?

      Nothing, Bolan thought.

      Not if the doctor’s mind was set.

      But he was flying on the wings of guesswork now, and that was reckless. He would wait to see if Marta met him in Cuiabá, if she had the means of putting him in touch with Nathan Weiss. And if she could, he’d find out what Bones had to say for himself.

      Until then, the trick was just staying alive.

      Belém

      “YOU STINK, the two of you,” Blaine Downey said.

      “Yes, sir. We came straight back,” Sutter replied. “I didn’t want to phone it in.”

      “Straight back from where? The city dump?”

      “Almost.”

      “Explain yourself.”

      “You ordered us to keep an eye on Cooper, sir, and follow him if he left the hotel.”

      “There’s nothing wrong with my memory, Sutter.”

      “No, sir. Anyway, he did leave the hotel, and we trailed him. Making it obvious, just like you said. He saw us, all right, started boxing the block to make sure, then he led us downtown. Parked on the outskirts of the red-light district.”

      “Window shopping?” Downey asked.

      “That’s what we thought,” Sutter replied. “We figured if he tried to score a little action, we could break it up and spoil his evening for him.”

      “Fair enough. How does that bring us to your tragic choice of aftershave?”

      “We followed him a couple blocks from where he parked, and then he ducked into an alley.”

      “And?”

      “We went in after him.”

      “Of course you did.”

      “First thing, I thought we’d lost him somehow. Maybe he ducked through a door we didn’t see or something. Then, before you know it, he’s behind us.”

      Downey saw where this was going, but he let the flow of words continue.

      “Anyway,” Sutter continued, “we had words.”

      “Such as?”

      “He challenged us,” Sutter said.

      “Challenged us,” Jones echoed, speaking for the first time since he’d entered Downey’s office. “Right.”

      “Who made the first move?” Downey asked.

      “Well…”

      That answered it.

      Downey refused to let the two incompetents provoke a raging outburst, though the pair of them deserved no better. He preferred to take his time, dissect them with a surgeon’s skill, enjoying every slice.

      For all the good that it would do him now.

      “I see,” he said. “The target challenged you, and one