A mangled light machine gun with a stubby barrel hung off the man’s shoulder, but Macco seemed to have forgotten it was there. “No…no…no…” Macco swayed side to side beneath his desk. El Tiburon, once the top of the food chain in this neighborhood, had been reduced to no more than a nervous flounder.
“Si,” Bolan said.
Macco looked up, his good eye wide with shock.
Bolan let his carbine dangle in its sling. “Your phone.”
Macco glanced around. He’d lost a lot of blood, so he seemed almost drunk, no longer with it. “On the desk…don’t…”
Bolan spotted the cell phone at the edge of the desk. He grabbed it and pulled up the recent calls screen. There was an unlisted number, likely a call from Carbonez on a burner phone. He hit the dial-back and waited.
“You gonna kill me?” Macco whimpered.
Bolan put his index finger to his lips, shushing the dazed Macco. The number had been disconnected, so Bolan hung up. “How do you get in contact with your general?”
“Contacts…under floater,” Macco said. He held out a shredded hand in front of his face. “How’d my hands get so messed up?”
“Your window broke. I think you tried cleaning it up,” Bolan said gently, in an effort to keep the dazed, bleeding man calm as he found the entry in the SNC lieutenant’s phone.
“Macco? What is it?” said the voice on the line. “Did you make contact?”
“He did,” Bolan said, his tone icy. “Right now, he doesn’t look like he’ll be much use to anyone.”
There was silence on the other end.
“What’s wrong, General?” Bolan pressed.
“Nothing your death wouldn’t fix,” Carbonez said after clearing his throat.
“Your boys tried their best, but they’re only pretenders to the throne.”
“Boss! I can’t see out of one of my eyes!” Macco shouted. “What’s wrong with me?”
“Shut that son of a bitch up,” the SNC commander snarled.
“Fine,” Bolan returned. He pulled his Beretta and fired twice, the sharp crack of the pistol resounding in the room. He would have bled out, and it was likely that the glass had punctured the thin bone at the back of the socket, affecting Macco’s brain. He was already a dead man; the Executioner had just cut his suffering short.
“That’s one group down,” Bolan told Carbonez. “Tell your boys not to use coke to keep their edges sharp. Not that it matters for Macco and his school of dead fish.”
“Why are you doing this?” Carbonez asked.
“Teresa. The girl you sent to be tortured and killed,” Bolan answered.
“What? You were in love with her or something?”
“No. I didn’t even know her. But I saw what you asked the Zetas to do for you. So I’m going to take you and your whole army apart so you can’t do that to anyone else. By the time I’m finished, you’ll be begging for a bullet in the head.”
With that, Bolan shut off the phone. He looked down at Macco. He could tell that the poor bastard had done most of this damage to himself, that it hadn’t been Rojas’s shots, exactly, that had left him in this state. But it was still a gruesome scene.
This was just a little evidence of the hatred Brunhilde Rojas was harboring for those who had killed her sons. Her quest for vengeance would likely make death seem preferable to anyone who tried to get in her way.
Bolan would ride this tiger for now. He had experience with lethal, potentially traitorous allies.
Right now, he knew he’d picked the right weapon for the job. He just hoped it wouldn’t explode in his face.
8
Carbonez grumbled as the phone went dead. “You want me to beg for a bullet in the head? You want me to beg?”
He hurled the device across the room, and it shattered against the wall. The commotion and his accompanying roar brought a couple of his bodyguards racing through the door, rifles out and ready. Carbonez glared at them. Standing unarmed, in front of his desk, seething with rage, he made the two gunmen lower their weapons and back out slowly, eyes wide at the sight of him.
Carbonez was not a small man, but he wasn’t a tall stack of muscle, either. He was wiry, just under five foot ten, but his body was hard as steel. His clenched fists and the blaze of hatred in his eyes was enough to cow even the hardiest of soldiers.
“Lo siento,” the bodyguard whispered.
“Leave me be.” Carbonez stuffed his fiery temper back down into his gut. His tone cooled, and he felt the blood pressure ebb from his cheeks and the veins on his forehead.
“We’ve got word that someone hit El Tiburon’s…”
“Yes. That’s who I just got off the phone with,” Carbonez told the bodyguard. “Not Macco, but the bastard who killed him.”
“El Tiburon is…dead?” the guard asked.
Carbonez nodded. “Get on the troops. This is worse than we anticipated.”
The guard’s eyes widened, and then he turned, taking off. The other man stayed at his post but allowed the office door to close.
Carbonez leaned against the desk with one hand, brushing his hair back into place after his fit of rage. He’d allowed this man—this American—to get on his nerves with those petty threats. Even so, he resented losing his temper. Carbonez, after all of his years as a JUNGLA commando, prided himself on professionalism. As former members of the JUNGLA, an anti-narcotics arm of Colombia’s national police force, he and the rest of the SNC founders were highly trained special operations troopers. He’d worked side by side with the American Drug Enforcement Agency, and had received training from the US Special Forces, aka the Green Berets.
His was a lineage of warriors with impeccable skill and discipline. Losing his shit like that was something he’d thought that he’d left behind long ago. And yet, after the debacle at the airport and the death of El Tiburon and his whole team, Carbonez’s old temperament issues seemed to be resurfacing. He wished he hadn’t displayed that tiny weakness to his two guards.
When he lost his cool, he showed those two men that he was less than the cold-blooded, highly capable commander who would carry them through countless battles. Gaining control over Cali and developing a booming trade was one thing. He’d fended off other cartels trying to regain lost ground, and so far, the Soldados were still ruling the roost. This was the first serious challenge they’d faced, and he couldn’t have his men doubting his leadership.
“Keep your cool,” Carbonez told himself.
He strode over to his chair and plopped down into it.
He pulled out a replacement burner. With a few taps on his computer, he set up the network so that his soldiers could connect with the new phone—everyone except Macco.
That man, La Brujah’s “friend,” had killed Macco, quickly and cleanly.
And he’d promised that Carbonez would be begging for that same, sweet release.
The general grimaced at that concept. People were supposed to beg him for that mercy.
He ran his thumb along the armrest, feeling the knife he kept under there at all times. His office was festooned with hidden weapons; in fact, the entire SNC headquarters had similar caches. He’d prepared for all manner of crises.
He suspected this American was some kind of vigilante, or someone hired by a rival cartel to bring the SNC down without opening themselves up to assault.
The SNC had dealt with pretenders to the throne before, and they’d torn apart those vigilante sock puppets. Carbonez wondered who could have sent La Brujah and her American friend to challenge him.
If he figured that out, he could easily turn the tables on them. He was sure of it.
Someone was trying to play Carbonez, but that was their last, fatal mistake.
* * *
BRUNHILDE ROJAS RELISHED the role she’d returned to Cali to play. Cooper had told her she was essentially bait for the SNC, but she didn’t mind. People were paying attention to her now, and Cali was a hotbed of rumor and excitement; the Witch had returned, and she was
bringing hell with her. It was the same rush she’d felt when she’d reigned in New York.
It was nearing dawn, and tourists and shift workers were coming in from a night of activities. Most of the decent people on the main thoroughfares were oblivious to the war being waged in Cali right now. With her black skirt, her knee-high boots and red, form-hugging silk blouse, Rojas blended in with the people heading home from the clubs. She had a maroon clutch purse in faux crocodile hide, inside of which was her weapon.
La Brujah carried an FN Five-seveN pistol. The 5.7 mm round that the handgun was named after was capable of punching through Kevlar helmets and flak jackets at close ranges. With a twenty-round magazine in place and an extra one tucked in a garter under her skirt, she was more than capable of fighting off a small army.
She herself was wearing throat-to-crotch Kevlar beneath her clubbing clothes, complete with trauma plates. Armored as she was, Rojas was still vulnerable, particularly in the face and neck regions. Her shoulders, wrists and legs were also bare. But Rojas had the advantage of knowing the tactics of the drive-by assassins she was watching out for. It would be two men, one small, agile motorbike. The second rider would be packing a fully automatic weapon. Both men would be clad in full helmets and body armor under racing leathers.
The motorcycle would pull up on a target and open fire before zooming off. The driver would duck through an alley or circumvent a traffic jam. If the target was in motion on the highway, the bike would still be able to catch up and riddle the passengers with bullets. Despite the din of the late-night crowds, Rojas had her ears pricked for the whine of a bike motor. Somewhere on the streets, Cooper was shadowing her, but she saw no sign of him.
“When you say shadow, you mean it,” she said into her hands-free radio.
“You’re looking a little paranoid there,” Cooper responded.
Rojas smirked. So he was nearby. Watching and listening.
“Hilde Rojas wouldn’t be on the streets of Cali without being aware of her surroundings,” she shot back. “And don’t worry, I can’t detect a single hair’s worth of your presence.”
“What matters to me is the rest of the folks looking for us,” Cooper said. “I’ve got movement.”
Rojas glanced over her shoulder, and sure enough, a block away a single headlight blazed in the predawn gloom. The unmistakable snarl of the engine reached her ears, and as it approached, she made out the two helmeted figures riding it. She popped the clasp on the clutch casually, readying herself to pull out the Five-SeveN when the moment came.
The crowd had thinned around her. Even the most dense and inebriated carousers understood that a dirt bike on a city street meant bad news, especially in Cali. Rojas stood boldly in the open, another sign that there was trouble afoot. Her red lips turned up in a smile, dark eyes unblinking as the would-be assassins drew closer.
“Them?” she whispered.
“Gun,” Cooper confirmed.
She gripped her pistol, letting the clutch fall to the ground as she brought the Five-SeveN to eye level. The muzzle flashed brilliantly, producing a fireball and a harsh crack. She’d aimed a few feet ahead of the motorcycle driver’s helmet, and as the gun jumped with the slight recoil, the bike swerved violently. The tinted visor of the rider’s helmet disappeared, shattering as a bullet punched through it. Once the slug hit the man’s skull, he lost all control of his vehicle.
The gunman on the back triggered his own weapon, but with the bike careening in the street, his burst of automatic fire sizzled skyward before both men caught a case of road rash, skidding on the pavement with the motorcycle pulling them along.
Rojas sighted the two fallen assassins, then tapped off high-velocity bullets as quickly as she could. La Brujah was nothing if not precise when it came to shooting, and by the time the killers and their motorcycle ground to a halt, the driver was most certainly dead, the other man wounded and struggling to get out from under the weight of the vehicle.
Rojas strode off of the curb, glad she wasn’t wearing stiletto heels as she charged toward the downed gunner. He still had his weapon in hand, a stubby little machine pistol, but Rojas took aim as she walked, pumping three bullets into the shooter’s chest.
In moments, the motorcycle assassination crew was finished, and Rojas lowered the gun, sweeping the safety on. She looked back to see where she’d dropped her clutch as another warning growled in her ear.
“Cover!” Cooper ordered.
Two more bikes swung on to the street. The first pair of bikers must have been keeping in touch with their colleagues.
Rojas found the solid protection of a stone planter in front of a hotel, ducking behind it as automatic weapons fired hot streams of death toward her.
Another type of gunshot mixed in with the sound of the machine pistols. It was a dull drumbeat in the middle of the staccato rat-a-tat-tat, followed immediately by human yelps and the screech of metal as the bikes were hit.
Safe behind the planter, Rojas reached down and pulled the spare Five-SeveN magazine from her thigh strap, feeding it into the handgun. She hoped it would be enough.
She peered cautiously at the street and saw the skidding motorcycles smash into each other, throwing the riders off their backs. She heard more dull gunshots and saw blood begin to pool beneath the fallen thugs. Thanks to Cooper, none of these men would be getting back up.
“Fall back to rendezvous B,” Cooper said over the hands-free device. “We’re drawing attention further up the road.”
Rojas obeyed, pushing to her feet and racing up the driveway beside the hotel. Behind it, she turned into a back alley, then continued on. How she got to the second meet-up spot was just a matter of details, but she wasn’t going to take a straight line. Pausing at a dumpster, she found a paper bag and jammed the handgun into it. The bag didn’t match her outfit, but it was better than racing through the streets with a huge pistol in her hand.
As she continued on her route, she wondered at the nature of the “attention” Cooper had mentioned, and why he’d asked her to retreat.
Whatever it was, Rojas couldn’t help but feel a pang of concern for the big American.
* * *
FORTUNATELY, THE CROWDS had dispersed when the first shots had been fired, and from his vantage on the second floor of an aboveground parking garage, Bolan could see that this stretch of city street was now empty.
Except, of course, for the two SUVs rushing up the boulevard. These had to be more Soldados. The headlights were off, and the vehicles approached like shadows in the half light.
Bolan shouldered his rifle; he was still making use of the M4 with .300 Blackout cartridges. The black trucks were big enough targets that he could afford to switch to full-auto.
Bolan opened up, sending a stream of slugs crashing into one windshield. The heavyweight sniper rounds turned the tinted windscreen into a spider web of cracked glass. The SUV swerved under the assault, but the driver showed good reflexes. He pulled a skid, yanking the parking brake on and letting the big ride slide sideways on its tires, bringing it to a halt.
The other truck came to a more controlled stop, but the Executioner rained down a burst into its hood. Fifteen rounds tore through the black sheet metal, and within a moment, smoke wisped out of the grille. Bolan dumped the spent magazine and fed it another.
There was no way he would allow two death squads to remain on the streets of Cali. The more Soldados he took out down here, the fewer he’d have to deal with later on.
Riflemen spilled out of the first vehicle, brandishing M4 carbines. Being former JUNGLA commandos, the Soldados were packing Colombian military hardware and the same jungle fighting gear that they’d been trained with during their time in joint DEA and Special Forces operations.
Though Bolan had been well-concealed in the garage, the muzzle flash of his M4 had given the thugs a clue to his location. The Soldados’ auto fire hammered at the concrete rail a few feet to his right.
Bolan made his way around a pillar and had
a better angle on the shooters who were using their well-armored truck for cover. The Executioner disabused them of their illusion of safety with a suppressed growl from his Beretta, blowing the brains out of one of the Cali soldiers.
The Beretta had a much lower profile than the rifle, so for a few moments, his opponents didn’t know where the attack was coming from. They seemed to be trying to sight a second sniper, not expecting the same man to switch weapons mid-battle. Bolan punched out two more tri-bursts, downing a pair of Soldados before someone spotted his shadow next to a support pillar.
Bullets zipped by Bolan’s position, but he had plenty of concrete to shield him. However, several men were now making for the entrance of the garage.
The Soldados would be coming at him in close quarters, which didn’t bother Bolan in the least. The more contained the combat, the less likely that civilians could get caught in the cross fire. But he still had to deal with the men who remained by their SUVs. He pulled a hand grenade from his battle harness and lobbed it out of the garage. It bounced twice and came to a rest underneath the first SUV he’d fired on.
The gruesome crack of explosives filled the air, and the truck flipped over. Shrapnel tore at the ankles of the gunmen using the vehicle as cover, and the driver was still inside. Flames licked off the undercarriage of the shattered vehicle, growing closer to the fuel tank. A secondary explosion shook the truck, crumpling it like a pop can.
The blast caused a couple of the men heading for the garage to pause, looking back at the column of fire and devastation. Shocked and dismayed, they were flat-footed and easy targets for the Executioner. The two Soldados fell to the ground with a single .300 Blackout bullet in each of their skulls.
That left four more men rushing into the parking garage for Bolan to deal with.
So far, so good.
9
Hector Delapaz paused as he watched two of his brethren fall, cored through the head with a rifle bullet in the wake of the erupting van. Though he had his combat rifle in hand, he suddenly felt very small and vulnerable. The three other SNC commandos with him were equally hesitant to bring this battle ever closer to the man who had killed so many of their own. Six men on bikes, a half dozen from the SUVs.
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