Line Of Honor. Don Pendleton

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      2

      CIA safehouse, Abeche, Chad

      Bolan regarded the files in front of him. He had turned his back on whatever flapping and squawking was going on in Washington and charted his own course. He now found himself in Chad. He trusted Kurtzman and the Stony Man cyberteam implicitly, but privately even Bolan had been forced to wonder what kind of men would fly halfway around the world on twenty-four hours’ notice to hear a suicide proposition in Chad. Bolan had his answer, and he had his men.

      And his woman.

      Kurtzman spoke from four thousand miles away over the tablet’s sat link. “So what do you think?”

      Bolan swiped his finger across the tablet and flipped the files back to the beginning. He had been expecting to see mostly Americans. Bolan looked at the sole Yankee on his team. Yankee was a loose term. Corporal Alejandro “Sancho” Ochoa wasn’t exactly a Yankee. In his mug shot, the corporal was built like the light-middleweight boxer he had been. The tattoo of an outrageously buxom Latina in a sombrero and peasant dress covered his right arm from shoulder to elbow. A similarly shaped woman dressed like an Aztec priestess covered his left. An Aztec pyramid with the sun rising behind it covered his abdomen from belt line to sternum. Above that, San Jose 408 designated his hometown in California and its area code across his pecs.

      Ochoa was grinning and throwing gang signs at the photographer. The only thing even vaguely military about the man was his high and tight haircut. Bolan shook his head. The jailhouse mug shot was hard to reconcile with the Army file photo of a grimly determined young corporal in dress uniform with the ranger tab on his shoulder.

      “What happened?”

      “It’s hushed up, but basically his unit was involved in a bad civilian casualty situation in Iraq. He was individually cleared, but…”

      “But his unit was made an example of. I remember something about it.”

      “His unit was sent home, then he had some brushes with the law,” Kurtzman stated.

      “Tell me he wasn’t dishonorably discharged.”

      “Corporal Ochoa was given the opportunity to take an early discharge rather than face trial. He took it.”

      “And?” Bolan prompted.

      “Our boy turns right around, joins Blackwater as a private contractor and heads right back to Iraq. He distinguishes himself and—”

      “And Blackwater gets thrown out of Iraq for a civilian massacre.”

      “So Sancho went south and was doing bodyguard work in Central America, and, can you guess?” Kurtzman asked.

      “He shot some people he shouldn’t have.”

      “Well, rumor is they needed shooting, and rumor is a cartel down there wants him dead. Regardless, his privileges below the Rio Grande have been revoked.”

      “What’s he up to now?”

      “He’s eking out living as a bounty hunter in the L.A. Latino community. His name is in every private security database in the U.S., but his record and his brushes with the law have him kind of blackballed.”

      Bolan sighed.

      “You gave me forty-eight hours and some very interesting recruitment parameters, Striker.”

      Things looked a little better with the next two. Both men were South African National Defense Force, 44th Parachute Regiment, Pathfinder Platoon and had made warrant officer. The pair currently worked for Transvaal Security Incorporated. TS Inc. provided security for African VIPs and were widely reputed to have supplied mercs during the Diamond Wars. The similarities ended when you looked at the picture of the two grinning men arm in arm СКАЧАТЬ