“Nervous?”
“Something like that.”
“Up them stairs there,” Henshaw said, gesturing. Bolan nodded and shot a look at James. The other man inclined his head. Bolan turned toward the stairs, satisfied that the younger man had understood him. He needed to scout the area.
Instincts honed in countless undercover operations prickled in warning as he made his way up the stairs. Like as not, the bulk of the terrorists were waiting for an “all-clear” signal to come into town. But there would have to be someone here to give that signal. And if Bolan were any judge, that man would be the one called Tuerto.
At the top of the stairs, Bolan let his fingers drift toward the pistol clipped to his belt. It wasn’t an ideal situation, but he couldn’t let pass the opportunity to take the head off the snake first thing, even if he’d have to shoot his way out of town after the fact. His partner wouldn’t like it, but Bolan was damned if he was going to let a hundred armed terrorists get anywhere near the American border, sting operation or no sting operation.
The corridor was narrow and there were four doors, two to either side, plus a bathroom that Bolan smelled well before he spotted it. Stepping lightly down the hall, he let his senses drift in such a way as to catch the smallest sound. If you tried to listen for one thing, you almost always missed everything else. But experience had taught him that listening to everything was a sure way not to miss anything.
There was a low buzz of what might have been conversation coming from one room. But from another... Bolan’s nostrils wrinkled. He smelled blood and lots of it. He pulled the pistol and went to the latter door, a wordless warning siren pealing in his head as he turned the knob. The door opened on darkness and Bolan stepped through.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. The blinds were pulled tight and only a thin drizzle of orange Sonoran light was available to see by. Head cocked, he looked around. There was a bundle wrapped in red-stained sheets on the bed, and the abattoir smell was getting worse for every moment he stood there.
“Who are you?”
Bolan spun quick as a cat, but not quickly enough. A meaty paw slammed down on his wrist and the Executioner found himself jerked into the air and slung back the way he had come before he could do more than blink.
Chapter 6
The Executioner hit the door at high speed, taking it off its hinges, and bounced off the opposite wall. He rolled to his feet, weaponless, his ears ringing. A monstrous shape filled the doorway. Hands like slabs of cured ham stretched toward him and Bolan narrowly avoided what he knew would surely be a crushing grip. “Who told you that you could come in here?” the man-mountain squalled, sounding more like a petulant child than a monster.
“I was looking for the bathroom, actually,” Bolan said, balancing on the balls of his feet. “Guess I made a mistake.”
“That was my room! Nobody goes in my room!” A big fist looped out and punched clean through the drywall, showering Bolan with dust. He tried to return the favor, digging his knuckles into a spot just beneath his opponent’s sternum. The big man grunted and twisted, pushing Bolan and sending him sprawling down the stairs. “Nobody!”
Bolan clambered to his feet, using the wobbly banister for help. He hadn’t been punched that hard in a long time, and he didn’t intend to let it happen again. The man was big, a little over Bolan’s own six and change in height, and built wide, with a layer of cherubic flab over muscles built by labor, rather than exercise. He was quick, as well, not so much as Bolan, but light on his feet. His eyes bulged and his mouth worked silently as he advanced on the Executioner. Bolan’s palm itched for the feel of a pistol. Lacking that, he went for his knife. He ducked under a backhanded swipe and pulled the blade. It closed the gap with his opponent’s belly, but viselike fingers swallowed his own, forcing the blade aside. Knuckles scraped his cheek and Bolan brought his knee up. The big man uttered a shrill cry and threw Bolan over the banister as if he weighed no more than a bale of hay.
Bolan hit a table and it broke in two at the point of impact. All the breath had been forced from his lungs and it was all he could do at the moment to roll over and grope for the KA-BAR, which had landed point first into the rough wooden floor. But even as his fingertips found the handle, he heard the ominous click of a gun being cocked. He looked up. The big man glared down at him, a Glock aimed at a point somewhere between Bolan’s eyes. Bolan tensed, preparing to roll aside.
A second before his opponent fired, however, there was a second click. The big man stopped dead, his eyes widening as a dark-skinned, one-eyed man pressed the barrel of Bolan’s dropped .38 to one pudgy cheek. “I was attempting to sleep,” the one-eyed man purred.
“What the hell is going on here?” Sweets cried out, kicking aside the broken chunk of table. He glared first at Bolan, and then up at the tableau above. “Damn it, Digger! What did you do?”
“He came into my room, Django,” the big man said, cutting a glance at the man pressing a pistol to his face. “Nobody comes into my room. You said, Django. You said nobody would come into my room.”
“I was just looking for the toilet,” Bolan said, getting to his feet slowly, the KA-BAR in his hand. Sweets eyed him suspiciously.
“Were you now? Cousin Frank, you do seem to get into fights.”
“It’s a bad habit,” Bolan said, trying for nonchalance. He sheathed the knife. “If it’s any consolation, I don’t have to go anymore.”
Sweets guffawed. Then he looked up at Digger and said, “Mr. Tuerto, if you’d kindly take that gun out of my brother’s face, I’d be most obliged.”
Bolan fought the urge to whip around. Tuerto! The man with one eye smiled genially and moved down the stairs, the revolver dangling from the trigger guard. He tossed it to Bolan nonchalantly. “I believe that this is yours?” he said.
“Close enough,” Bolan said, holstering the weapon. Tuerto smiled again and bowed his head. He looked at Sweets.
“Your men are rowdy,” he said.
“Obviously they ain’t got enough to do,” Sweets said, looking around. The other coyotes had gathered and one or two of them, including James, clutched weapons. The agent met Bolan’s eyes and the Executioner gave a slight shake of his head. The younger man relaxed. Sweets looked up at Digger. “Get your room cleaned up, Digger. We’re rolling out as soon as the rest of our cargo gets here.” Digger turned away without a word. Sweets turned and poked a finger in Bolan’s chest. “And you, LaMancha, don’t screw with Digger. Otherwise he might just pop your head off. And if he doesn’t, I’ll shoot you myself.”
“Lesson learned,” Bolan said.
“Good. Come with me. You, too, James, Eddie,” Sweets said. “We got some folks to get loaded.” He looked around the bar. “Everybody else, follow as best you can.”
“I will come, also,” Tuerto said.
“Ain’t necessary,” Sweets said.
“What is it you Americans say? The customer is always right?”
“I think that’s meant in a more general sense, like buying trends and such, but fine,” Sweets said. “Whatever floats your boat.” Bolan followed the others as they left the cantina, covertly studying Interpol’s most wanted as he did so. Tuerto was lean and professional looking, dressed in faded knock-off Levi’s and a loose T-shirt. He wore a ragged jacket and could have easily passed for a seasonal worker from south of the border if it weren’t for the Seal of Solomon picked out in green thread on the black of his eye patch. His good eye flickered Bolan’s way and he drifted toward the Executioner.
“You handled yourself admirably back there,” he said.
“I was sloppy,” Bolan said, gently prodding the bruise he knew was forming on his jaw.
“Well, yes. But I didn’t want to say anything,” Tuerto said, grinning. Bolan grunted. “What were you doing up there, if I might inquire?” Tuerto continued.
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“Looking for the bathroom,” Bolan repeated.
Tuerto looked hard at him. “Were you? I recall that the lavatory was singularly hard to miss.”
Bolan glanced at him. His estimation of the man’s intelligence, already high, drifted up by several notches. His own eyes narrowed. He decided to go for belligerence. “Are you accusing me of something?”
Tuerto laughed. “Quite the opposite, I assure you.” He looked over his shoulder. “You strike me as an intelligent man, Mr....LaMancha, was it?”
“Frank,” Bolan said.
“Hello, Frank. Did you smell blood, Frank?”
Bolan blinked. “Yes.”
“Ha. Yes. So did I. And being curious, you investigated. What did you see?”
Bolan frowned. Was this professional paranoia or something else? “Nothing much before Magilla used me for a lawn dart.”
“Magilla?” Tuerto asked, frowning.
“As in Gorilla...”
Tuerto shook his head. “You saw nothing?”
“Just some bloody sheets.”
Tuerto sighed. “Fine, fine, thank you, Mr. LaMancha...Frank.”
Bolan processed the disappointment in Tuerto’s voice. What had he been hoping for? Was there something here he could use? The Executioner had an instinct for weaknesses; he sought the soft points and found them as often as not. It was what had made him as effective as he was during the years of his long, lonely war. He needed time to confer with James, but would he get it before it was too late?
“Where are we going?” he said out loud, trying to sound curious rather than probing.
“Like I said, to pick up cargo,” Sweets said, leading them outside. “If you’re hauling contraband, you have got to hide it, Cousin Frank, you know that.” He glanced back at Bolan. “Or maybe you don’t. Is that why you need money, Cousin Frank?”
“No,” Bolan said, remembering James’s warning.
Sweets snorted. “You could have fooled me. How about it, Jorge? Cousin Frank bet on the wrong pony?”
“Everybody is hurting these days, Django, you know that.” James was trying to act nonchalant, but Bolan could tell how tense he was. He hoped no one else could. He turned slightly and caught Tuerto looking at him, one long finger stroking his eye patch.
Bolan turned away, resisting the urge to touch the .38 resting on his belt.
* * *
AMIRA TANZIR SAT in the back of the tractor trailer, its metal walls growing hot beneath the Sonoran sun, and she tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. She had been trained for this, so there was little difficulty. Slump the shoulders, thrust out the feet. Erase all poise and precision and roughen the edges of dignity until it overcame pride. That was how one looked like a peasant, and peasants the world over had a depressing similarity. Dressed in castoff and homespun clothing, she was the very picture of a woman seeking a better life, her natural beauty hidden behind a facade of desperation.
Born in Portugal to a Latin father and an African mother, Tanzir had three degrees and a decade of law enforcement experience. She could speak five languages and four of those fluently, as well as converse in four dialects. She had hunted Basque separatists through the snowy Pyrenees and faced down detonator-happy would-be martyrs—and had done so with pride. And here she was presently on what was possibly the greatest hunt of her career, in pursuit of one of the most dangerous participants in the War on Terror—El Tuerto.
Eyes closed, she pretended to pray. Instead of catechisms, however, what went through her mind was all that was known about Tuerto. He was the current organizer for the so-called “Holy One Hundred,” a splinter faction of al Qaeda whose goals were not so much the establishment of a holy caliphate, as it was to “water Allah’s fields with martyr’s blood.” This likely meant they were planning something big and suitably bloody, rather than the more pedestrian running of a bomb into a military base or shopping mall. No, these men wanted another 9/11; they wanted to leave a burning black scar across America’s face. Something Tanzir was determined to prevent at any cost.
But she was even more determined to prevent Tuerto’s escape. Unlike his men, he was no martyr. Tuerto was a mercenary, an idealist-for-hire who was far more valuable to his current employers alive than dead for the cause. What little Interpol knew of the operation suggested that he intended to cross the Canadian border within the next few weeks and be on a plane to Algeria soon after. It was his standard M.O.—overseeing operations until just before the net closed and then slipping away.
But just what his current operation was, she didn’t know. She blinked, trying to ignore the itch of the contact lenses she wore. They were thicker than what she was accustomed to, and less comfortable than the ones she normally used to change her eye color.
“Stop blinking so much,” a quiet voice said in her ear in German. She nearly reached up to touch the flesh-colored communications bud hidden in her ear canal. Instead, she muttered, “How’s the picture?”
“Blurry,” the voice said. She had to strain to hear it over the rumble of the trailer. She turned her face to the wall of the trailer, ignoring the ovenlike heat radiating from it. No one could hear her, and if they saw her, they’d likely think she was praying, like several others. But there was no sense in taking any chances.
That was what Eugene said, at any rate. Thinking of him made her smile, though only slightly. She was still furious with him, for putting up such a fight with her concerning this assignment. He loved her, she knew, and she loved him, but for all the love between them, he did not truly understand why she had to do this. For all his insight, Eugene Chantecoq did not understand why Tanzir had to be the one to bring Tuerto to heel.
How to explain? she wondered. How to explain the months of grueling work that had gone into so many close calls, so many narrow escapes on Tuerto’s part. It was almost futile, the hunting of a man so lucky. But she kept at it, not for anyone else, for any government check or ethereal obligation. No, she hunted Tuerto for herself alone.
It was a selfish thing, she knew. Not good policing. She wasn’t being a team player. That was how Control would put it, if he ever bothered to share his opinion with anyone of a lesser rank. “Fuck being a team player,” she muttered.
“What?” the voice said, momentarily surprising her.
“Nothing,” she grunted. “These contacts are killing me.” The lenses were fitted with state-of-the-art transmitters, broadcasting everything she saw back to the joint Interpol-Border Patrol task force at their base of operations. It was cutting-edge technology, which just meant that it was more likely to screw up, in her experience. She fought the urge to blink, and let her hair fall to cover her face.
“Don’t mess them up. They’re worth more than you.”
“I’ll remember that,” Tanzir muttered. Then, “Has Agent James checked in?”
For a time there was no answer. Then the voice said, “Negative. But our associates assure us that he’ll be in position come the time.”
Tanzir frowned. She’d only met her partner for this operation briefly, a result of the rushed nature of things. The latter didn’t bother her as much as not knowing whether or not she could count on the person who was there to pull her fat out of the fire if things went bad. The American federal agencies had insisted on an American presence in the operation. True to form, Interpol had acquiesced. If this operation had any chance of succeeding, they needed the Americans to do it. Or so Control said.
Personally, she wasn’t so sure of that. Besides which, this was her operation, and had been for three years. Three years, she thought, chasing that one-eyed bastard from one country to the next, always arriving just five minutes too late and just in time to pick up the pieces. Unconsciously, her hands clenched and she bit her lip to stifle a grunt of frustration.
“What is your status?” the voice murmured.
>
She looked around at the packed ranks of humanity huddled in the trailer. All had the same expression...hope, mingled with anxiety and not a little fear. She felt a brief pang of sympathy, which she ruthlessly squashed. “We’re being moved to the handoff point now,” she said.
“I meant your status. As in you, personally.”
Control was, despite the stick up his rear, an observant man. The German knew how she felt, though he’d fully backed her desire to do this. Like as not, he reasoned that her eagerness made her more efficient. It wouldn’t do to make him have doubts as to that fact. She didn’t intend to let another mission get scrubbed out from under her.
She forced her hands flat. “I’m fine, Control. I’m just fine.” Eagerness flooded her. She had hunted as a child, following her father and his friends into the Cadiz Mountains, and the sensation she presently felt was much like she had felt then. The thrill of the hunt was burning in her system.
Tuerto was hers, one way or another.
Chapter 7
“Coyotaje is what you might call an art, Cousin Frank,” Sweets said, glancing over his shoulder into the back of the van. “We operate on whatchacall ‘social capital,’ if you can picture it.”
The back of the van was sweltering, and Bolan felt a thin trickle of sweat roll down under his collar. Tuerto, sitting across from him, showed no signs of discomfort. They sat surrounded by heavy crates that smelled of gun oil and packing straw. Bolan hadn’t tried for a look inside, but he suspected the contents wouldn’t surprise him. Behind them, surfing through the dust kicked up by Sweets’s van came three others. If Bolan had been a betting man, he would have put money on each of the other vehicles carrying a similar load of weaponry.
“Are you listening, LaMancha?” Sweets asked. “Best be, because I’m trying to educate you here.”
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