What, then? The walls of his ghetto hideout felt as if they were closing around him, and the ganja was not helping.
Well, not much. He lit another spliff and drew the smoke into his lungs, hoping he could relax a little, at the very least. Being a target was hard work, and all the worse when Channer could not say exactly who was stalking him.
Brouard would want his Rasta scalp, of course, but it was obvious the Haitian had not killed his own soldiers, much less his daughter. That sounded like Quarrie, and yet….
Channer thought of the white man, and that confused him even more. Why would the stranger pluck Garcelle Brouard from Channer’s clutches, just to kill her hours later? Something strange was at work here, and his poor brain, fogged by pain and drugs, could not make out the details.
Rum might help.
He’d already killed the best part of a brand-new bottle, but his tolerance was high these days. He barely wobbled on his feet while crossing to the liquor cabinet, filling a glass and walking back to settle on the sofa. He had submachine guns lined up on the coffee table at his knee—two Uzis and an MP5, all cocked and locked—together with a pair of pistols and a switchblade with a polished ebony handle. His men were standing guard in shifts, inside the house and outside, prepared to sacrifice themselves in his defense.
Now what?
He smoked and drank, turned on the television set once more and started flipping through channels. Nothing he saw amused him. Channer needed action, some means of proving himself to himself—and to Quarrie in Kingston. An opportunity to make things right and lift the pall of failure that had settled over him.
He found a cop show on TV, some kind of SWAT team battling a gang not very different from his own. The shooting soothed him, brutal scenes requiring no analysis of any kind. Seconds later, when one of the officers from Babylon set off a stun grenade, the windows of his own house rattled.
What the—?
Channer bolted to his feet, dropping his nearly empty glass and scooping up one of the Uzis. He could hear his soldiers shouting, smelled the smoke of ordnance, realizing in a heartbeat that the blast had not been on TV.
Trembling, he went to seek redemption with the Uzi clutched against his chest.
* * *
FINDING CHANNER’S HIDEOUT hadn’t proved as difficult as Bolan had expected. He’d snatched one of the Viper Posse’s stragglers from a club in Kendall, squeezed him till his courage snapped and filed the address in his head. Liberty City was predominately black, but had enough whites and Hispanics salted through the mix to let him move with confidence along its streets. The hour helped, as well. Most of the district’s people were home in bed, regardless of profession or their standing with the law.
Even the predators need sleep.
He found the house and made a drive-by recon, spotting two men on the stoop. They had no weapons showing but he knew there would be hardware within easy reach. Bolan considered stopping at the curb, out front, and wasting them before he rushed the house, but then decided to employ a bit more subtlety.
Not much, but just enough.
He parked down range and took the Barrett sniper rifle from its place on the Marauder’s broad backseat. He screwed a bulky silencer onto its muzzle, knowing its efficiency was compromised by the .338 Lapua Magnum ammo’s muzzle velocity, but it would still muffle the shots and buy some time for him to close the distance from his auto to the target house on foot.
Slinging the Steyr from his shoulder, Bolan peered through the rifle’s telescopic sight and found his first mark lounging underneath a yellow porch light chosen to repel mosquitoes. He timed his shot, working the bolt action in his mind before his index finger curled around the trigger, taking up the slack.
He squeezed and rode the big gun’s recoil, didn’t bother watching as his target’s skull exploded, shifting toward the second while the bolt slid smoothly, out and back. A second round reached out to tag the other goon, making a crack in midflight as it broke Mach 3. He stowed the piece before his secondary target finished thrashing on the porch and locked the car behind him, sprinting toward the house Channer had chosen as his hideaway.
Before he hit the sidewalk, starting up a grassy pathway to the house, Bolan had palmed a frag grenade and pulled its pin, pitching the green egg through a window facing the street and crouching while he counted down the short life of its fuse. On detonation, he was up and moving while the M68’s shrapnel ripped into flesh, walls and furniture inside the house. At the door, he kicked through and burst in with his rifle leading, to a parlor that had turned into a slaughterhouse.
A dead man was on the sofa, head down, dreadlocks dangling, blank eyes staring at the blood pool in his lap. Not far away, a second Viper Posse goon was wriggling on the carpet, pushing with his elbows, dragging shattered legs behind him, leaving rusty-colored tracks. Bolan couldn’t understand what he was saying to himself, a steady muttering, and didn’t try to work it out, just tagged him with a mercy round behind one ear and finished it.
It was a start, but only that. Until he’d dealt with Winston Channer, Bolan’s labors in Miami were not done.
* * *
LINTON FRASER KNEW his place, and that was watching over Winston Channer. The odds were good that he would die along with Channer, cut down at the tender age of twenty-three.
No matter. He’d been born dead—the Viper Posse’s motto—one of thousands in Jamaica who’d faced a hopeless life of poverty until he’d been discovered by the men who made him special, someone admired by the younger street urchins of Tivoli Gardens in Kingston. Preachers might decry his lifestyle, but he wasn’t hungry anymore, and never would be in his life again.
However short that was.
“We need to go now, Boss,” he said, and got a nod from Channer in return. The boss man reeked of ganja, which was normal, and of spiced rum. He was on his feet, though, fairly steady, and he seemed to have a firm grip on the Uzi SMG.
“Out through the back,” Fraser suggested, since the front had obviously gone to hell with the explosion, gunfire and his fellow soldiers shouting. Fraser didn’t know who was attacking them—police, the Haitians, someone else—and at the moment, it was of no interest to him. Getting Winston Channer clear of danger was the only thing that mattered.
You could say his life depended on it.
“Did you see a white man?” Channer asked.
White man? Fraser had no idea what his boss was talking about. “No, sir,” he answered. “Come with me, now.”
“If he’s here, I’m gonna kill him,” Channer said.
“Maybe tomorrow,” Fraser suggested, as more gunfire rang through the house. “The brothers are dealin’ it now.”
“All right,” Channer agreed at last. Fraser began to lead him toward the back door, hoping they weren’t too late already. Even as they passed into the hallway, bullets ripped through drywall close behind them, spraying chalky dust.
Too close for comfort.
If they escaped from the house, they had a choice of exiting the neighborhood on foot, or using one of the cars parked on a nearby lot, fenced in and under guard to keep the local thugs from stealing them or vandalizing them.
Driving was better, safer, but it suddenly occurred to Fraser that he didn’t have keys to any of the posse vehicles. For that matter, he couldn’t even clear the padlocked gate that foiled casual trespassers, and agile as he was, he didn’t fancy scaling the fence with its coil of razor wire on top.
“Wait, Boss,” he said. “You have the car keys?”
“Why’n hell would I?” Channer demanded.
“I’ll go find them,” Fraser said. “You stay here.”
Channer responded with a wobbly nod. “Don’t drag your ass,” he added. “Hurry!”
Fraser almost had to laugh at that. As if he’d dawdle. As if both of them weren’t running for their lives.
He knew exactly where the keys were kept, inside an ornate little cabinet, nailed to the kitchen wall. That meant heading toward the sounds of bat
tle, not something he relished, but he had no choice.
Get on with it.
Cursing under his breath, he ran back toward the fight.
* * *
AFTER THE SECOND FRAG grenade went off, Bolan rose from the cover of an upturned dining table and surveyed his fallen enemies. There had been four of them, and all were down, though not entirely out.
One man was obviously dead, his face reduced to something the consistency of hamburger, one arm almost detached from its shoulder. Another, lying close by, seemed to be gurgling his last breaths through holes in his chest. The other two, by contrast, might have some fight left in them. One was whimpering, a red hand covering a shrapnel wound in his left thigh, but he was straining for the TEC-9 he had dropped when the explosion knocked him sprawling. Farther off to Bolan’s right, a gunman scalped by flying steel was on his knees, shaking his head, still clinging to the MAC-10 he’d been holding when it all went down.
Bolan dealt with the kneeling gunner first, drilling his bloodied forehead with a 5.56 mm round that slapped him over backward, dropping with his legs folded beneath him in a posture that would certainly have spiked his knees with pain, if he’d still been alive. A problem he would never have again.
The soldier with the wounded leg was cursing, scrabbling for his weapon, but it lay beyond his reach. Bolan had no time to play games with him, just hit him with another single shot that silenced him for good. The other two were no concern of his, so he moved on.
Beyond the room where he’d taken out the four defenders, Bolan heard more shouting, cursing, scrambling, as surviving members of the home team rallied to repel the invaders. Most of them were brave enough, their courage likely boosted by a mix of ganja and religious fervor, but it wasn’t helping them so far. Still, their response—wild fire with automatic weapons, and to hell with consequences—posed a threat to Bolan as he moved deeper into their lair.
He was looking for Winston Channer, hoping to find him before he slipped away. Bolan’s time in Liberty City was running short. Police were bound to turn up soon, and a shooting call from the ghetto would bring uniforms out in force.
Bolan ducked into the kitchen, where he found a solitary Rasta soldier sorting through a rack of keys inside a wooden cabinet. The shooter caught a flicker of motion in his peripheral vision, spinning to face his opponent. Keys rattled onto the floor around his feet, as he blurted, “You’re in big trouble, comin’ here. You’re gonna die!”
He’d tucked a pistol into his waistband while he fiddled with the keys. Now he tried to draw it in the face of sudden death but Bolan’s double-tap got there ahead of him. His target squeezed off a shot by reflex with the muzzle of his handgun still tucked in his pants, a splash of blood he likely never felt staining the fabric at his fly. He dropped, half sitting with his back against the wall below the cabinet, keys spread around his legs.
Evacuating on his own, or with somebody else?
Bolan checked on the AUG’s translucent magazine, and went back to the hunt.
* * *
TWO MINUTES LATER, Channer guessed that Fraser wasn’t coming back. It was a thirty-second walk to the kitchen, less than half that running, and he clearly should have returned with the keys by now.
So he was dead or dying. Channer’s only hope now was to take his Uzi and depart on foot, run as fast and as far as he could without meeting the invaders or stumbling over police. Liberty City was a ghetto, granted, but one of his neighbors was bound to call Babylon, what with the volume of fire coming out of the house.
It was enough to wake the dead, or maybe put them down again.
Where would he go? No matter. Getting out was all that counted, at the moment.
And he had to start right now.
“I’m outta here,” he muttered to himself, and turned toward the back door.
Before he moved, though, legs still rubbery from too much rum and ganja, Channer heard the gunfire from a nearby room increase in volume and intensity. The enemy—whoever he was—must have met his last line of defense. That line was holding, by the sound of it, but might not do for long.
When the explosion came, it was as loud as thunder to his ringing ears. Channer dropped to one knee, his wounded arm reaching out instinctively to find a wall and lancing him with pain, while his left hand clutched the Uzi. It felt heavier than usual, as if his strength was starting to desert him by degrees.
A cloud of smoke and dust rolled toward him from the room where Channer’s men were dying. All for what? To keep him safe? And there he was, unfit even to stand and run away.
Smoke stung his eyes and tried to choke him. Channer was struggling to his feet when he saw something—someone—moving in the haze before him. He was tall, no features visible as yet, impossible to say if he was friend or foe.
“Who’s that?” he demanded, barely croaking out the words.
No reply from the smoke.
“Somebody better answer me!” he barked.
In spite of all he’d seen and heard that night, the shot was a surprise. It struck his left shoulder, ripped through the ball-and-socket joint, spinning Channer ninety degrees to his left as he fell—and landed, naturally—on the right arm. He nearly passed out then, but bit his lip to keep a fragile grip on consciousness as he lay trembling on the floor.
Waiting to die.
It was the only end he could envision—no mercy from his enemy. If their positions were reversed, Channer would kill his adversary without thinking twice, unless he had an opportunity to question him before the end. In this case, clearly, there was no time for interrogation.
So, all his hopes and aspirations finally came down to nothing.
A shadow fell across his face, and Channer stared up at his executioner.
* * *
“WHAT’S YOUR NAME?” Channer asked.
“Not important,” Bolan said, denying him even that much.
“You gonna kill me?”
“Any reason why I shouldn’t?”
“None I can think of.”
“Well, then.”
Numbers falling in his head. Time running out.
“Who sent you after me?”
“Enough talk,” Bolan said, and put a NATO round through Channer’s left eye at a range of six feet, tops. Impact distorted his pain-twisted features into something like a fright mask, while a slick of blood began to spread beneath his shattered skull.
Over and out.
Bolan went out the back door, circling around behind the house and back toward Northwest 62nd Street. The Marauder sat where he’d left it, unmolested, although there were people on the street now, craning for a look at Channer’s house. Some of them gaped at Bolan as he sprinted past, mostly looking at his weapons, but they didn’t try to stop him.
Wise decision.
He assumed someone would describe his ride to the police when they arrived, maybe recall his license number, or at least a fragment of it. None of that was his concern. He had a drop planned for the car, and by the time he ditched it, he’d be on his way to Miami International. Sometime within the next few hours, he’d be airborne, on his way to Kingston and the next phase of his mission.
Given time and opportunity, he would have liked to pay a call on Jean Brouard, arrange a father-and-child reunion, but that was off the table for the moment. He would file the Haitian’s name away, remember him, and possibly return to settle that account another time.
Sitting in the airport’s long-term parking lot, he placed a call to Stony Man and told whoever answered where the Mercury could be retrieved. If cops arrived before the pickup driver came, so be it. Either way, the arsenal locked in its trunk would be secure, not lifted to supply a local street gang. Bolan left his parking ticket in the glove compartment, with the keys, and locked the driver’s door behind him as he went to catch the airport’s shuttle bus.
He’d made it through Miami one more time, leaving his enemies in disarray. Feds and police could do the mopping up, and maybe build some decent ca
ses from the wreckage Bolan left behind. He had another job to do, meanwhile.
It was waiting for him in Jamaica, and the worst was still to come.
7
Windward Road, Kingston, Jamaica
“When they get here, we’ll be ready for them.”
“When who gets here?” Trevor Seaga asked.
“Whoever’s comin’, brother,” Jerome Quarrie said. “You don’t think the trouble in Miami’s a coincidence? They’ll be here soon.”
“But who?”
“Winston said it’s one bad boy, but he couldn’t stop ’em. Now he’s dead. We won’t make the same mistake.”
“I got the brothers ready. We won’t have any trouble here.”
“We’d better not,” Quarrie advised him.
He was troubled, all the same. Miami was—had been—his gateway into the United States, his richest market. New York, with its teeming millions, had been resisting strong incursions by the Viper Posse. It would take time to rebuild the operation in Miami, if it could be done at all. Police of every stripe were swarming through the city, hunting Quarrie’s men who’d managed to survive the firestorm.
Not too many, if he understood the last reports correctly.
At first, he’d suspected Haitians. Winston Channer had been tussling with Jean Brouard. Still, the news from Florida and Channer’s own reports failed to support that notion. Channer had been up against a white man, maybe more than one, and while Brouard could certainly afford to hire an assassin—or an army of them, for that matter—it wasn’t his style.
So, someone else. But who?
The killings in Miami didn’t seem official. Quarrie knew how devious the ways of Babylon could be, had taken full advantage of them in his rise to power, but the beast had rules. Given a choice, Miami officers, the FBI or DEA, whatever, would prefer to operate within the framework of their laws. Get warrants from a court before they staged raids, ransacked homes and offices, killed people with the television crews recording it. They wanted glory to justify their swollen budgets, and they couldn’t have it if they posed as gangsters running wild.
That brought him back to someone else, which left him nowhere.
Blood Rites Page 7