He wondered what the man's name was. There had been no papers on him. Probably Cafu and his organization were taking care of manufacturing/counterfeiting a new identity.
Meantime, though, the dead man had answered to some name, had some identity to his fellow trainees. Then Bolan remembered the sign on a wall in Philadelphia:
SPEAK AMERICAN
THINK AMERICAN
BE AMERICAN
That could be his passport into the alien land.
His relief came an hour before dusk. Bolan heard the man thirty minutes before he saw the malacarni come into view down the trail. If they were all as clumsy and club-footed as this dude, then malacarni was a misnomer — a real badass does not fall and flounder and puff'n huff so a potential enemy can hear him coming a half-hour before he arrives.
Yet Bolan did not lower his guard.
Overconfidence had killed more men than caution ever would.
Standing fifty yards down the trail, the soldier paused. Bolan saw the sweat-soaked uniform, the heaving chest, the sagging shoulders, and Bolan shook his head. Cafu was selling shit for steel if this dude represented what he hired out for a grand a day.
The man down the trail, standing in plain view, called out hoarsely. Bolan did not understand the word. He had anticipated this. In thickly accented English, Bolan replied, shouting, "We have orders! Spik Eenglish! Training!"
Bolan got to his feet, but remained crouched, waved his left arm, "Come on up!"
Without a pause, the man resumed his climb. Bolan had long been ready to move, and once the man began climbing, Bolan went down the trail fast, and passed his relief before the man knew what had happened, calling out, "Hey, Gino — "
Bolan kept moving until he rounded the first bend in the trail, then he ducked for cover and stripped off his gear, wormed back around to a place of observation and looked up at the OP through his powerful Navy binoculars.
The exhausted, malacarni lay on his back, shirt unbuttoned, belts and packstraps unfastened, heaving. Bolan got back into his gear and went on down the trail.
Dusk settled quickly in these mountains.
As in every battlefield Mack Bolan had ever seen, known or read of, there was a central dispersal point between homeplate and outposts. In the dusk, with his phenomenal night vision, Bolan spotted the bare spot on a knoll about 700 yards down his trail before he got there. He faded off into brush and knelt behind a huge boulder, pulled out the night binoculars and glassed the meeting spot.
He felt all his combat senses warn him when he saw the big man with a clipboard awaiting the incoming watches from the outposts. The man had too many familiar moves, too self-assured, too much command presence. At one time or another, somewhere, the man with the clipboard had fought with United States military forces. Bolan knew he had as much chance getting past that dude while impersonating the malacarni he'd killed as he had shoveling snow in hell.
All right, Bolan thought, it did not work.
So what next?
Let's wait and see.
One by one, the big stud down there checked the men off as they came in, spoke briefly to each one, then sent them on down the mountain.
From his scout, Bolan knew there were eleven high outposts. Six men had been checking in when Bolan came down and began watching. Seven and eight came in almost simultaneously. Nine right behind them. Ten was very late, and it was so dark by then Bolan had to use the Navy glasses' maximum power to watch. Ten was drunk, and the big man awaiting him simply drew a trenchknife also equipped with studded brass knucks and broke the drunken malacarru's face to pieces, fast, rapid-fire, professional punches, six of them before the soldier could fall.
Part of being a superior combat tactician meant Bolan was an opportunist. He drew the Beretta, screwed the silencer down lightly, left his hiding post and walked down the trail. He ambled along humming aloud, and as he neared the big man with the clipboard, Bolan heard him say, "Oh, for Christ's sake! Another lousy drunk."
Bolan watched the man draw the knucks-equipped trenchknife. Then Bolan stopped and gestured out sideways with his left hand. The man automatically turned his head to look and Bolan shot him, sending a 9mm Parabellum slug straight into Eddie The Champ's heart.
Bolan collected the brass hull from his shot and ran to the body of the beaten soldier, jerked the man's Beretta from its holster, removed the clip, thumbed out the top round, checked to see if the chamber was empty, replaced the clip and jacked a round into the chamber. Then he put the gleaming empty brass in the center of the path so it would show and be found easily.
Fast, Bolan went past the dispersal point and down the main trail toward the training camp. He went less than a mile and found the whole setup inside a grove of trees, well camouflaged, even from the air with netting. They had the whole works: firing ranges, obstacle course, barracks, a chow hall, even a small outdoor PX where the soldiers could buy beer, sit at picnic tables, and drink.
Bolan went back up the trail, removed the silencer from the Beretta, fired a single shot into the air, stomped his brass out of sight under a bush, then pulled off to wait. In a few minutes a "patrol" came up the hill. He supposed that was what they would call it, pretend it was, a patrol. It was really five guys crowded together, half-jogging, talking, making noise enough for a full company of raw recruits.
He stayed out to the side, slipping through the bush while the patrol went up the trail. Then they found the two bodies, and the chattering became a loud shouting match. From what Bolan understood, there was no one man clearly in command and the "soldiers" were arguing about what should be done. Mack could not help but think of them in quotes, with contempt, as "soldiers." And had he been careless enough to leave any sign, any evidence of his own presence there, the dumb bastards wiped it out by walking all over it. One of them only found the empty shell casing after he stepped on it, then bent down and picked it up, destroying any fingerprints that might have been on it.
Bolan circled higher, up around to the trail he should come down from the outpost where he left the dead man, and in the almost full darkness he eased in among the men unnoticed. No one seemed to know for sure what to do, so Bolan took command, growling with heavy accent, "How many times you gotta be told, hah? Speak English, speak American!"
"Hah, Gino, thatsa you, eh?"
"What's going on here?"
"We trying to figure."
"Who got'm a light?"
"You know the rules," Bolan growled.
He knelt, and then said, "Hell, they fight, look. Smell."
Two of the men dropped to their knees beside Bolan. "Shhh. Get that! Drunk again," said one man. The other said, "Eddie beat him up bad, looka his face, Francesco got no face left."
"But he hadda gun. No more Eddie The Champ. Phutt!"
"Okay," Bolan said with authority, getting to his feet, "we better take'm in."
Without comment, two men got hold of Francesco's feet and started dragging him on his back down the trail. Two others following, dragging Eddie The Champ. Bolan fell in behind them.
Once back to the training compound, Bolan peeled off and while the barracks emptied and lights came on and men with lanterns and flashlights came running to see the sights, Bolan completed his recon of the site.
He located the armory, the food staples storehouse, the supply house with clothing, socks, shoes, other personal gear; then he found one of the two main objectives, the identity manufacturing shop.