“Painful?” Rene laughed. “He might have killed you.” He preferred to speak in English, knowing that disappearing inside the U.S. required the ability to speak without an accent.
“Maybe,” Jesus admitted. “But I knew you were there.” He looked down at the man groaning and bleeding on the stones. “It’s never personal,” he said, loud enough for the others to hear. “You cannot let it be personal. This man allowed his anger to get the better of his judgment. See what it cost him?”
The other soldiers agreed quite loudly that the man had made a mistake. “You two,” Jesus said, gesturing at two men nearby. “Get him out of here. Put him in the hot box.” Eyes wide at this cruelty, the men did as they were told, and Jesus turned his attention back to the fighters he’d been training.
Rene contemplated having the man killed outright, but Jesus’s choice would send a clear message—those foolish enough to bite the hand that fed them would not just be killed, but would die horribly. Behind him, the phone on his desk rang, and he turned his attention back inside, shutting the balcony doors behind him.
“Hello?” he said, picking up the handset.
“Rene, this is Kingston. We have a problem.”
“What problem?” Rene asked, annoyed. Kingston had proven useful to his weapon smuggling plans and was even more helpful with information. Still, he could be overly jumpy, and he was only one cog in the chain. Paranoia had its place, but a man should still be able to sleep at night.
“There’s a guy sniffing around where he doesn’t belong. He’ll be with that Border Patrol agent who interrupted our last shipment.”
“They’re going back?” Rene asked.
“Yes, so I’ve heard.”
“I’ll take care of it. You keep working on the next shipment.”
“Don’t you want to let things cool off a bit?” Kingston asked. “We can’t afford to get caught.”
“Shut up,” Rene snarled. “I said I will take care of this man. You just do your job. Everything stays on schedule. Understood?”
The silence stretched for several seconds. “Understood,” he replied.
“Good,” Rene said, then hung up the phone. He returned to the balcony and called Jesus inside. They had some planning to do.
Chapter 5
Dinner the night before with Rivers and his young family had reinforced Bolan’s opinion of the man—he was one of the good guys. His wife, Olivia, was a down-to-earth, dark-haired, dark-eyed beauty from a wealthy Greek family. They had a wonderful eight-year-old daughter, Katrina, who was the spitting image of her mother and had the laugh of an angel. Bolan was charmed by the little girl. Her dark eyes stared directly into his as she asked very adult questions about everything from where he was born to why he carried such a big gun. The evening had been a pleasure, with good food and laughter and the sharing of peaceful company—a situation Bolan valued more with each passing day of his life. Colton Rivers was obviously a family man of the first order.
Early the next morning, Bolan found himself some black coffee and a woman selling warm tortillas and eggs from a hot cart near his hotel. He drank the coffee and ate his breakfast while he waited for Rivers to arrive. Once he did, they headed out of town, following Highway 80 West, then cutting north toward Tombstone. Rivers explained that there was a lot of big empty nothing out there—mountains, desert, cacti and the occasional cougar hunting free-range cattle when the opportunity arose. “And in between Bisbee, Tombstone and Sierra Vista, there’s an area of about a hundred square miles where we’ve seen a lot of illegal traffic in the past year or so.”
“You do flyovers, right?” Bolan asked.
Rivers nodded. “Sure, but it’s a big desert and we’ve got limited resources. The only reason we were out that night is because one of the unmanned drones picked up some unidentified movement during the day that was too big to be humans. We figured maybe a couple of mules—the guys who run illegals up into Tucson or Phoenix—had some trucks out there.”
Ten miles or so outside of Tombstone, Rivers cut back west, using a dirt track that made the one Tony lived on look like a well-maintained, big-city street.
“The San Pedro Conservation area is about ten miles west of here, but it gets a lot of tourist traffic—bird watchers, mostly—so the illegals tend to avoid it.” Rivers pointed to a series of large, rocky hills in the distance. “That’s where we were when they hit us.”
Bolan nodded, glad he’d brought his sunglasses along. The desert sun was reflecting off every light-colored surface and would have been blinding without them. “Let’s start there, then,” he said. “I want to see where you were positioned.”
Rivers guided the SUV around rocks, saguaro cacti, a few stunted mesquite trees and plenty of low, pointy scrub brush. The wandering route made Rivers chuckle. “Tony says that everything out here will stick you, prick you or kill you. Some of those damn Mesquite needles will puncture a tire.”
They were within a couple hundred yards of the rocky terrain. “This is close enough,” Bolan said. “You came in this way with your men, right?”
“More or less,” Rivers replied. “There’s hardly a path.”
“Let’s walk from here,” Bolan suggested.
The agent shrugged and pulled the SUV to a stop, cutting off the engine. Both men climbed out and into the staggering heat. Rivers unpacked a shotgun from the back and offered it to him, but he shook his head. It wouldn’t make sense for any of the illegals to still be in the area after the recent firefight. Their operations depended on not getting caught in the open.
They moved across the intervening terrain, and Bolan noted that there were plenty of tire tracks and crushed plants to show how much vehicle movement had occurred in the area. “Are all of these from your guys?” he asked, gesturing at the imprints in the sand.
Rivers nodded. “We had to bring in a flatbed to pull our vehicles, plus the ambulance and field people. It was a goddamn mess.”
“I bet,” Bolan said, scanning the horizon. They were in a lousy position, and although he didn’t expect trouble, it never paid to be stupid about such things. They climbed up the rocky hillside and surveyed the lee where the ambush had happened. There was still plenty of evidence that a little gate into hell had opened down there.
“They were moving over there when we spotted them,” Rivers said, pointing to the valley floor and another, still larger set of rocks and hills, perhaps three-quarters of a mile or a little farther away. “We checked it out the next day. They left some tracks, but we still haven’t figured out how they got there.”
“Odd,” Bolan said, thinking. The agents’ post was a good place to watch the area, with plenty of cover. “I’m trying to figure out how they got so close to your position.”
“It happened damn fast, Matt,” Rivers said. “I saw them moving around and they disappeared. We were getting ready to pull out, and I saw them again, and then bam, they were on us.”
“Maybe—” Bolan started to say when a shot rang out, and the back of Rivers’s head exploded in a gruesome shower of blood, bone and brain.
Diving for cover, the Executioner cursed to himself. The Border Patrol agent was dead before his body hit the ground, and now Bolan was out here without any backup and no idea where the shot had come from. He rolled to a well-protected spot behind a cluster of rocks and drew the Desert Eagle from his shoulder rig. Unfortunately, the round that had killed Rivers was from a rifle, and a handgun was not a long-distance weapon.
He heard scuffling feet and rolling rocks and turned, scanning in every direction. From the far side of another collection of boulders, a voice called, “Do you want to die, too, gringo?”
The sounds of movement were now surrounding him from all sides, and Bolan knew he was in real trouble. “Not really,” he called. His assailants had him cornered. All they were trying to do now was
avoid casualties on their end. “On the other hand, I’m happy to take some of you with me if this gets out of hand.”
The man Bolan presumed was the speaker stepped out from his cover. He had a Heckler & Koch sniper rifle over his shoulder and was now pointing a simple, tactical shotgun on Bolan. He wasn’t a big man, but he was compactly built, with the lean muscle and steady gaze that said he was not a man to screw with.
“You don’t have to die today,” the man said. “But if you don’t throw down your weapon, you will.”
Bolan nodded and got slowly to his feet. He had considered fighting back, but the moment Rivers hit the ground, he’d decided that would be counterproductive. He was alone and outnumbered, and allowing himself to be captured would give him access to the people behind all of this.
“Easy,” Bolan said. He dropped the magazine out of the Desert Eagle, then worked the slide, emptying the chamber. He reversed the gun and held it out butt-first to the man. “It’s my favorite, so I’d just as soon not throw it on the ground.”
The man nodded and whistled softly. Six more men appeared from hiding, their weapons trained on Bolan, who kept his hands up. “I understand,” the man said, moving in and taking the weapon from him. “I’ll see that it’s well taken care of.”
“I’d appreciate it,” Bolan said. “What now?”
“Now?” the man said. “We drive.”
* * *
BOLAN WAS IN the back of a truck that was rattling along on either a rutted dirt road or barely a road at all. He was blindfolded, and his hands were tied together with plastic zip ties, as were his ankles. The men had searched him, confiscating his wallet, keys and the other documents he had on him.
Gritting his teeth at a massive bump, Bolan tried to hold himself as still as possible and replay the day’s events in his mind. He’d been too casual, thinking the ambush Rivers had called him about was most likely someone—maybe a single individual—selling weapons to a small cartel, who had panicked when confronted by the Border Patrol. Maybe both sides had panicked—it had been dark and confusing. Bolan had underestimated the situation and those involved, and it had cost someone, a good man, his life.
Rivers was dead, and Bolan had to accept some of the responsibility for that. Owning your mistakes, he knew, was at least as important as owning your successes, maybe even more so. He intended to do everything he could not only to put an end to whatever was really going on, but also to ensure that Rivers hadn’t died in vain. Someone had a bill to pay, and the Executioner intended to collect in full.
It seemed like a smart bet that he’d been taken into Mexico, though he couldn’t know for sure how far they’d come. He estimated they’d been driving for at least two hours when the truck slowed, turned and then rolled to a stop.
Bolan heard the tarp covering the back end of the truck get shoved aside, and then his blindfold was ripped off. Several faces peered in at him—every look one of contempt and anticipated violence. Two large men reached in, grabbed him by the ankles and dragged him out into the midday sun. Once he was clear of the tailgate, they hoisted him into the air like a trussed-up turkey and pulled him forward. The toes of his boots trailed dust in his wake.
Bolan did his best to stay upright and scan his surroundings. They’d obviously brought him into the courtyard of an old hacienda. Many of the buildings were little more than basic adobe structures, with no windows and blankets for doors. He saw the main house at the far end of the courtyard, and it was either much newer than the adobe huts or had been massively renovated. Second-floor balconies overlooked the compound below, and on the roof he spotted heavy air-conditioning units and several satellite dishes.
Bolan’s two escorts came to a halt before a small structure, not much larger than an outhouse. One of the men opened the door, and the other tossed him inside, then slammed it shut, leaving Bolan in near total darkness.
Bolan readjusted his position, knowing that if he struggled, his bonds would only get tighter. He flexed his wrists and ankles, trying to get the blood flowing into his aching limbs. The hospitality of this particular group of thugs left a great deal to be desired. He closed his eyes, taking in several deep breaths.
That was when he noticed he wasn’t alone.
Chapter 6
It was the copper scent of blood that first alerted Bolan’s senses to another presence. In the dim light, it took him several seconds to establish that his cellmate was alive, if barely. His chest rose and fell in stuttering stops and starts. Scooting along the floor, Bolan moved closer, trying to see if there was any hope for the man.
From what he could tell, short of an emergency room and an operating table, the man was too far gone. Blood caked his abdomen in a thick layer. He didn’t stir, even when Bolan nudged him gently and asked, “How badly are you hurt?” in both English and Spanish.
Giving up, he leaned back against the wall, doing his best to stretch out his legs. The cell was stifling, and what little fresh air had entered when they’d tossed him in was being rapidly overwhelmed by the heat. He realized that the cell was a hot box, like the kinds used in harsh prisons for solitary confinement. A tiny slot at the top of the door let in the only light, and the structure itself was made from heavy, dried oak rather than adobe. It was like being inside a wood oven, and left there too long, a person would die from heat stroke.
Bolan passed the time reviewing everything Rivers had told him, as well as what little he’d seen before he’d been captured and on his brisk afternoon drag to the hot box. It wasn’t much to go on, but it was something. His instincts told him that the man he’d spoken to earlier wasn’t the boss, but an underling sent on a specific mission. It was also a safe bet that this wasn’t just a simple weapon-smuggling ring, but a much larger operation.
Whether they dealt in weapons, drugs or human trafficking, Mexican cartels were not known for their merciful qualities. They functioned in a world of violence and death, where only the very strong survived. Cartel leaders regularly killed those who crossed them—police and journalists were favorite targets—and those who disobeyed orders often suffered the same fate.
Which was why Bolan had been surprised by the man he’d spoken to in the desert. He didn’t carry the weapon of a typical cartel thug, and he didn’t act like one, either. That HK looked brand new, and it was the kind of sniper rifle used by advanced military forces. Bolan guessed the man was a paid mercenary with real field experience. He might be even more dangerous than the big boss, though whether the big boss knew it or believed it was another matter entirely.
He’d been sweating for about two hours when the guards came for him, and Bolan put up little resistance as they ordered him to his feet. Beads of sweat stung his eyes, and as he was trying to get his bearings, the zip ties on his ankles were cut loose. Blood flowed back into his feet with a sharp, burning sensation, but he was grateful nonetheless.
“Get moving,” the man holding his arm said. “To the main house.”
“Are you sure we couldn’t stop at a bar for a cold beer?” he asked. “I’m kind of thirsty.”
The guard had the good grace to laugh. “No cerveza for you, my friend. Mr. Sureno wants to talk to you.”
Sureno, Bolan thought. This was progress. They reached the house and climbed a short flight of steps to a large door. When they entered, Bolan felt the cooling breath of air conditioning and sighed in relief. It wasn’t something cold to drink, but it was at least a better environment and helped clear his head.
He was guided through the foyer and down the hall, then into a room that looked to be a study. It housed comfortable furniture in the form of two couches and several overpadded chairs, and the walls were lined with bookshelves. Most of the far wall was made up of windows that looked out into a small flower garden. In the middle of it, Bolan could see a fountain with clear water bubbling up through the top.
At
one end of the room was a simple desk, and the man seated behind it rose to his feet. “Ah, our guest,” he said. “You can cut the ties on his wrists,” he told the guard. “I’m perfectly safe.”
“Sir?”
“Do it,” the man said, his voice sharpening just the slightest bit.
The man sat down again as the guard cut Bolan’s hands free. He moved them from behind his back, gently stretching his shoulders and working his wrists to get the blood flowing again. “Thank you,” he said, meaning it. Although he had every intention of taking this man down, the time wasn’t right. He had no reason to play the antagonist—at least not yet.
The man nodded and waited for the guard to leave the room. Once they were alone, he gestured for Bolan to sit and poured two glasses of water from a pitcher on the desk, keeping one and passing the other to Bolan. “Drink,” he said, sipping some of the icy water to show that it wasn’t poisoned. “The hot box can suck the life out of a man in a very short time. You must be thirsty.”
“It’s not the coldest place I’ve ever been,” Bolan said, picking up the glass and drinking deeply. He imagined that if he’d been in the cell much longer, he might be gulping straight from the pitcher. When he finished, he set the glass back down and looked at the man on the other side of the desk. He wore a nice suit—not tailored, but well cut. “Mr. Sureno, I presume?” Bolan said.
“Yes. Rene Sureno.” He opened a drawer and pulled out Bolan’s wallet. “And according to this, you’re Matt Cooper.”
Bolan nodded, wondering what they’d done with his Colonel Stone credentials. Surely someone had noticed he’d been carrying two sets of identification. “That’s me.”
“Yet you are not with the Border Patrol and you don’t carry identification from any other law enforcement agency I know of. How is it that you were in the desert working with them?”
He shrugged. “I do some consulting work from time to time.”
“Consulting?” Sureno asked, laughing. “And what is it you consult on?”
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