Killpath

by Don Pendleton

  This had to be that spy’s fault. Teresa, of the pretty eyes and soft mouth, had managed to worm her way into his office. Then he’d discovered her going through his shit. After a week in the hands of a Zeta interrogation specialist, it came out that she was a US Drug Enforcement Agent.

  Carbonez grimaced. He’d heard about a Zetas operation in Texas hit a few days before. He’d wondered if that might have had something to do with the spying Teresa. Even now, that woman was still bedeviling him.

  Carbonez rubbed his brow.

  “Get the captains on a conference call,” Carbonez barked at his secretary. “We’re on war footing now. Trouble has come to town.”

  * * *

  EVEN WITHOUT OPENING his eyes, Mack Bolan knew that Miguel Villanueva had shown up at the safe house he was sharing with Brunhilde Rojas. The sound of the inspector’s car was unmistakable, as was the slam of the car door. One door. This wasn’t a group of men disembarking from their shared ride, though Bolan guessed that professionals like the SNC would have parked out of earshot if they were staging an ambush. A kill crew would have hoofed it from a distance rather than give their target any warning.

  It had to be Villanueva; he was the only one who knew about the safe house, and they’d dumped the borrowed SNC car miles away. Bolan had also ripped out the dashboard-mounted GPS to prevent tracking, and deactivated the SIMs in both their own phones and the one he’d taken from Arnaz. It was possible the car was still bugged, but they hadn’t seen any sign of pursuit since they’d ditched the vehicle, and Bolan doubted the Soldados would have kept their distance once they’d located La Brujah and the dark, deadly stranger by her side.

  On foot, Bolan and Rojas were untraceable. Two anonymous humans, making their way through the city.

  Once they arrived at the safe house, Bolan changed out of the remnants of his disguise and opted for BDU pants and a short-sleeved shirt with enough room under it to disguise a shoulder holster. He traded the Browning Hi-Power for his preferred sidearms—the Desert Eagle, which he tucked into an inside-the-waistband holster, and his Beretta 9 mm machine pistol, which fit into the shoulder holster.

  He was at the front door and opened it before Villanueva could even knock.

  “Hola,” Bolan greeted the inspector.

  “Thanks for not leaving a bunch of bodies at the airport,” Villanueva said.

  “Was that sarcasm?” Bolan asked, letting the Colombian cop in.

  Villanueva shook his head. “I mean bodies of people that count. Not animals like Arnaz or Carrillo.”

  “I know Arnaz. Which one was Carrillo?” Bolan asked.

  “The nobody you left in the washroom. He was from another local gang. Of course, the SNC popped him twice in la cabeza after you got away. I guess they shot the messenger,” Villanueva said.

  Bolan curled his lip. He wasn’t too concerned for a would-be assassin’s life, but the action of the SNC reinforced their ruthlessness. Carrillo hadn’t been a threat, not after being battered and disarmed. The execution of an unarmed man was further proof that he was dealing with barbarian scum.

  Bolan waved Villanueva toward a seat.

  “Fine. Though I’d hoped that the rest of the Cali thug community would get the word from this Carrillo and stay out of my way,” Bolan said. “The more bad guys on the streets, the more chance that a bullet’s going to hit a bystander.”

  “I ordered the clean cops away from the airport,” Villanueva assured him. “And all the rotten ones got paid to step off,” Villanueva said.

  “Not just the cops. Citizens,” Bolan corrected.

  “I agree. So, you brought in the Brujah?”

  Bolan confirmed the question with a bob of his head.

  Villanueva swallowed, then tapped his side, where Bolan could make out the shape of a concealed holster. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”

  “When am I not, Miguel? Right now, my gamble is that she has two things more important to her than escape and hurting me. That’s protecting her sole remaining kid, and getting revenge against the SNC for killing her older sons.”

  “This is the woman who personally executed at least one of their fathers,” Villanueva warned.

  “Then you don’t have to join us. Just stay the hell out of our way.”

  Bolan caught sight of Rojas in the next room. She’d taken off her masculine disguise and was now wearing a snug white tank top and jeans. She’d washed off the stubble makeup and applied some lipstick. Around her hips hung a gun belt, a Glock 19 sitting in the holster.

  There was no doubt in Bolan’s mind that Rojas was a strong and capable fighter. When he first met her, she’d just survived the attack in the prison showers. Naked and unarmed, she’d managed to hold her own against three larger women. Now, seeing the lean and well-defined muscles the tank top revealed, he had an even sharper impression of La Brujah’s strength and power.

  He knew it wasn’t all physical, though. She’d had iron-fisted control of her operation in New York City, getting personally involved in much of the frequent, brutal violence her cartel inflicted.

  All that beauty, all that grace, and yet she still dealt poison, still ordered the deaths of entire families. There was a dark evil inside of her, and Bolan had to remain fully aware that he was dealing with someone who could easily turn on him.

  Rojas caught his eye, then smirked.

  “Don’t worry, I’m not going to bite anyone here.”

  Villanueva raised his eyebrows but didn’t say anything more on the subject. “So what’s the rest of your schedule today?” he asked Bolan.

  “Waiting for darkness to come.”

  Rojas stepped out of the bedroom and bared her teeth in joyous malice. “That’s right,” she said. “Los Soldados better prepare for the witching hour.”

  7

  Guillermo Macco—El Tiburon, to his friends—was surprised that the general put the whole city of Cali on alert. One of the reasons why he’d thrown in his lot with the SNC was because of its elite standing. Los Soldados wouldn’t be intimidated or pushed into a panic.

  But that was before the rumors that La Brujah was coming to town. Brunhilde Rojas had mentored under Medellin’s last big boss before that man died in a blaze of glory and gunfire. She was heir to a throne of blood and thunder, and if the US government had sent her back to Colombia, they were either looking to kill her, or to drop a live grenade amongst the Cali cartels.

  And from the way Carbonez was talking, the grenade theory didn’t seem so far from the truth. So far, three Soldados were cooling meat on a slab, and the cops from every precinct had developed a sudden urge to take vacation time—even the honest ones.

  With Carbonez on the paranoid path and the cops taking to the sidelines, Macco was fully aware how serious the situation was. But that was all right. He hadn’t earned the name El Tiburon because he loved eating fish. He’d worked his way into the SNC with his own dangerous, deadly skills. He took bites out of his competition—literally—and he was a savage predator who’d stalked Cali for long enough to build a reputation and merit a good ranking in the SNC.

  Macco heard from Carbonez that another man was in town, working arm in arm with the Colombian Witch.

  Macco had placed armed men at all the doors of the tenement, and more than a few of them had taken a snort of nose candy in order to maintain their “edge.” Macco wasn’t normally one to have his people use the product, but a small hit was just the thing to sharpen their focus and keep them alert.

  So what if La Brujah and her little friend were in town?

  He was the Shark, dammit! Macco was the apex predator in this part of Cali.

  And to enforce that, Macco had his “teeth” ready. The weapon had taken years of cobbling and refinement, but now it was one of the most devastating guns on Cali’s streets. It was a standard RPK light machine gun, but with many of its parts changed over to make it handier, quicker to use in combat. Its 23.2-inch barrel had been replaced with an 8-inch front end, enabling Macco to m
ove swiftly through tight doorways. He’d also put a fore grip on it, along with a laser pointer which allowed him to shoot from his hip. He wore a sling, which helped balance the heavy laser, drum and stabilizing weights he’d put into the forward grip to control recoil. On full auto, the gun produced a fireball the size of a soccer ball that could cut a man in half, five 7.62 x 39 mm rounds tearing into a human torso in less than a second.

  Macco had the weapon resting on his desk, a live round in the chamber, and another seventy-five ready. More drums were clipped to his load-bearing vest; he and the rest of his crew were all in full military gear, as per SNC standard combat protocol. Backing up his deadly little chainsaw-like submachine gun was a brace of .357 Magnum revolvers. Macco was ready for war.

  It was getting dark outside, and there seemed to be a pall over the whole city. What had earlier been a bustling, active neighborhood where Macco’s boys could sling coke with impunity was now barren and quiet. Street lamps burned orange, and it was eerily silent. Usually, Macco didn’t mind the heat and humidity, but tonight it was absolutely stifling, smothering him.

  Maybe La Brujah really did have some kind of magic power; perhaps she was controlling the weather, making things thicker, mustier. Or maybe his nerves were so on edge that he was willing to believe anything.

  Gullibility was one thing that he couldn’t afford right now, not when there was a storm coming to town. Weather didn’t bend itself to the will of any woman, especially not some bitch who’d managed to get herself thrown in prison seven years ago.

  The other man, well…his presence had probably just been hyped by rumors. The guy had been talked up enough to get Carbonez all wired up, and if the general was nervous…

  Shit rolls downhill, Macco thought. El Tiburon didn’t feel too much need to worry. He had an army of twenty guys ready to throw down on any fool who tried to step up to them.

  A strange pop sounded in the office, and suddenly, Macco’s desk lamp went out. For a moment, he thought it might have just been the bulb, but then the ceiling fan slowed. He scooped his RPK off of the desk, throwing the strap over one shoulder for support.

  He turned the laser on and flicked the switch on the gun’s mounted flashlight, a big blazing halogen unit running off two big D-cell batteries. It would light his way and blind anyone in his path.

  “Nice try!” Macco shouted. “But this is the twenty-first century. We have flashlights!”

  A moment later, Macco’s window shattered, and something slammed into his RPK. The halogen light hit the floor, plunging the office into darkness once more.

  Macco tried to recover control of the rifle, but a massive impact struck his body, sending him spinning. He bounced off the top of his desk and spiraled into the wall, bashing his head on the windowsill. He reached out to catch his balance, but both palms landed on jagged splinters of glass.

  “Fuck! Fuck!” Macco shouted. He withdrew his bleeding hands and lost his footing. His face met with the same shards that had torn his palms to ribbons. Macco struggled to crawl across the floor despite the agony of his butchered hands and the blood flowing into his eyes. Thumps of suppressed gunfire filled the air. Macco’s shoulder bumped the side of his desk, and he inched along until he could get beneath it for cover. As soon as he was underneath, he rolled on to his back, plucking at the splinters with trembling fingers.

  A body crashed to the rug next to him, and Macco let out a yelp of surprise. He turned and saw one of his best gunmen lying on the carpet. Well, most of him. There was a cavernous hole where the top of his head should have been. Even louder gunfire rippled up from downstairs. Someone was going to town with a non-silenced weapon. On this floor, windows shattered in the other rooms along the corridor. “Stop it!” Macco yelled, catching sight of his gunman’s ruined face once more. “Just stop it,” he murmured. “I’m the goddamned Shark…”

  * * *

  THE PLAN WAS FOR Rojas to man the sniper rifle while Bolan went inside the tenement. Rojas was in position, using an M4 rifle with a 300 AAC Blackout and a suppressor baffle. The gunshots wouldn’t be audible or bright enough for the men in the building to see them coming, or home in on Rojas herself.

  “How’s it going?” Bolan asked over his hands-free radio.

  “This is fun,” Rojas answered with grim satisfaction in her tone. There was a true note of enjoyment, too, but mostly she seemed relieved. Each pull of the trigger allowed her to vent anger and grief over the callous, cowardly murders of her sons.

  Bolan allowed her that.

  He was also carrying an M4, but his was loaded with .30 caliber rounds that produced minimal muzzle flash. Sure, the blasts were loud and bright, but they wouldn’t be blinding or deafening.

  Bolan expected the SNC gunmen in the tenement to be on full alert. Stealing a glance through a first-floor window, he saw that they seemed jittery, on edge. They were alert, but they were clearly so overstimulated—possibly on coke—that the first sign of danger was all it took to unleash chaos. Bolan simply tossed an empty can through the front doorway and three of the Soldados opened fire. One of them took out another, leaving only two guards in the foyer.

  The stubby M4 growled, ripping through muscle and ribs, shredding lungs and hearts with brutal efficiency. Within an instant, there were three dead thugs in the room. Bolan leaped into the hallway to see men reacting frantically to Rojas’s window-shattering shots. Bolan charged down the hall, greeting every challenge with a snarl of bullets, blasting craters into the torsos of El Tiburon’s fighters. Some of them wore body armor, but the M4’s deadly sputter struck with enough force to slow them down, allowing Bolan to adjust aim and put bullets into their exposed heads and throats.

  The Executioner surged across the ground floor, his senses fine-tuned to everything around him. Between Rojas’s sniping, Bolan’s blitz and the gunmen’s agitated state, the SNC didn’t stand a chance in this tenement.

  It took all of a minute and two thirty-round magazines to completely clear the first story. The second story was alive with breaking glass and screams of terror and pain. Rojas wasn’t allowing the Soldados a moment of respite.

  Bolan had supplied the woman with low-light and magnification optics which could squeeze every ounce of accuracy out of the rifle, and from the sounds of it, she was taking advantage of her concealed position.

  She’d obviously done a lot of long-range shooting, even though the distance wasn’t great. At most, her shots would have to travel forty yards, but even so, her accuracy and the sheer amount of destruction she was wreaking on the tenement were impressive. By the time Bolan reached the second floor corridor, only a few men remained within sight. They were cowering in a corner, seeking protection against the drywall.

  The Executioner shouldered his rifle and drilled one of the men through the side of his head with a single round. The other Soldado let out a scream as he saw his friend’s head go to pieces, and waved his machine pistol wildly. In the dark hallway, Bolan was a wraith among the shadows.

  Bolan ripped the terrified gunman open with a tri-burst from his compact rifle, eliminating that threat before continuing across the floor.

  “On two,” Bolan told Rojas. “Don’t shoot me.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” La Brujah replied. “I’m saving all my ammo and hatred for the enemy.”

  Bolan checked each small apartment, sweeping doorways with cautious efficiency in case there were gunmen inside. Alert and in the moment, he moved onward, keeping close to the interior wall to protect himself against a potential ambush. The drywall between the hall and the residences wouldn’t stop a bullet, especially not at close range, but if he wasn’t seen, he wouldn’t provoke a shot through the flimsy barrier between himself and the enemy.

  Easy, certain steps carried him to the end of the hallway, and sure enough, all he found were the dead Soldados that Rojas had taken out of the game. One floor left.

  He crept back to the stairwell, pausing at each doorway in case someone had been playing possum
on his first pass.

  That precaution saved Bolan’s life. A wounded gunman in an otherwise empty foyer struggled to his knees, bracing himself with one hand and gripping a pistol with the other. With a lightning-fast reflex, the Executioner riddled the Colombian with a burst of auto fire.

  That was the last of any opposition on the floor, and all Bolan heard as he climbed the next flight of stairs was a lone grunt of pain and effort. The sound told the Executioner that he was dealing with someone who was still striving to stay alive and keep going.

  “Anyone else on the top floor?” Bolan asked Rojas.

  “No movement. They’re either hiding from the slugs I put through the windows, or dead,” she replied. “I left Macco…able to communicate.”

  “I hear him. Keep an eye out for anyone else showing up to this party.”

  It wasn’t just a cursory warning. Los Soldados de Cali Nuevos were ruthless, and sacrificing one of their own officers and his men was not beyond them. Sending out advance scouts was one way that commanders could make certain that the route they were taking wasn’t lined with ambushes. It meant sacrificing the men sent on ahead, but for the greater good of the force, an officer could accept the losses.

  Still, it was highly unlikely that General Carbonez would have had the prescience to pick the exact commander the Executioner would go after. All of the SNC’s forces in the city were targets. Macco was just important enough to send a message, but he wouldn’t have been an obvious first hit in Rojas’s revenge sweep.

  Bolan scanned each room as he had on the lower levels until he reached Macco’s office, making certain no one was lying in ambush. He swung into the room, taking in the grisly mess Rojas had made of the cocaine commando. One eye had a shard of glass sticking out of it, and he was bleeding from his hands and face. Macco wore an armored vest, but it had been torn, a breast pouch smashed by La Brujah’s shot.