Floodlights swerved to her position and shots sounded immediately, pinging off the Knight XV’s bulletproof glass and armored body. Merice unbuckled herself, grabbed the remote fob, leaving the key itself in the ignition, and dove into the backseat. The gunfire continued, and the shouts of Sureno’s men were closing in on her fast.
The back passenger door, closest to one of Sureno’s trucks, was her escape route. She didn’t need to open it all the way, just enough for her tiny frame to slip through. It was a tight fit, and the thick metal chafed at her jacket, scraping the skin beneath painfully, before she managed to get out, pulling her rifle behind her.
Merice shut the door, then hit the dirt, sliding under Bricker’s truck then crawling forward. Sureno’s men were still focused on the SUV, no doubt wondering why it was still parked there and still running. She could see their boots as they approached. When she reached the second of Bricker’s trucks, she sped up and popped out from behind it like a rabbit out of a hat. Then she pushed the button on the key fob and the SUV exploded in a giant fireball.
The trucks shielded her from most of the blast, but the men closest to the Conquest had no cover at all and died, screaming and burning. Merice turned her attention to the inside of the compound and opened fire with the rifle, running along the wall to take advantage of the confusion. Her bullets sprayed across the main house, shattering glass and sending shards of adobe flying through the air.
Sureno’s men were realizing that whoever had been in the truck was now loose in the compound, and she felt the bullets coming her way as she dodged into a small courtyard and vanished into the shadows. She was contemplating her next move when a slender hand reached out of the darkness and grabbed her arm. Before she could act, the woman spoke, sounding a bit winded.
“You’ll die if you stay here,” she said. She stepped closer, revealing an attractive, if bruised, face with dark eyes.
“I’ll probably die if I don’t,” Merice replied. “Who are you?”
“Isabel,” she said. Shouts echoed nearby. “I helped your friend when he was here.”
“Let’s go then,” Merice said, eyebrows raised.
“This way,” Isabel said, leading Merice to the far side of the courtyard. She slipped through the shadows with ease, indicating to Merice that she’d had some kind of official training.
They came to the wall of the main house, then the woman turned again, tracing a path alongside it. Behind them, Merice could hear men massing outside the entrance to the courtyard. She recognized the word for spotlight. “We’re about out of time,” she hissed.
“Here,” Isabel said, stopping suddenly. She pushed on a section of the wall, which in turn spun on a silent pivot. “Quickly.”
Merice followed her into a cramped, dim space and Isabel shut the door just as one of the spotlights flooded the courtyard. “Close,” she whispered. “Where are we?”
“This passage leads right into the house,” Isabel said. A string of tiny LED lights was hanging from the ceiling. “From here, it slopes down, then there is another door and we will be in the basement.”
Merice considered carefully. By now, Cooper should have completed his part of the plan. She hadn’t really expected to escape the courtyard so easily, but now that she had, she could adjust and lend Cooper a hand, instead of just acting as a distraction. “They brought a man in here earlier. His name is Tony. He’s a friend. Did you see him?”
“Sí,” Isabel said. “He was in Sureno’s office when the explosion went off.”
“Can you take me there?” Merice asked.
Isabel was silent for a moment. “He’s probably dead,” she said. “We would risk our lives for nothing.”
“Friends are too rare in my line of work to leave them,” Merice replied. “If you don’t want to go, then give me directions.”
“I’ll take you,” Isabel said. “If we’re lucky, we won’t find either Sureno or Jesus there. If that is the case, your friend may still be alive.” She turned and headed down the tunnel.
Merice followed close behind. Above them, the house was silent, but she didn’t expect it to remain that way for long. Cooper wasn’t the kind of man who took on a mission like this and didn’t leave a few bodies behind.
The least she could do was help.
Chapter 20
Bolan moved from one desert shadow to another. With Sureno and Bricker both holed up in the compound and Tony now captured, he was out of time and options. The original plan had been for Tony and Merice to distract the guards on the walls while he slipped inside and took out the leaders. With Isabel’s help and a position inside the compound, taking out the rest of the men shouldn’t have been impossible. As usual, however, even the best-laid plans weren’t worth much when the metal started flying. They’d patched together a new strategy, and all he could do now was hope like hell that Merice didn’t get killed pulling off her part of it.
He reached the back wall of the compound and counted down in his head. She should be hitting the gate in about three...two.... He had just enough time to wonder if something else had gone wrong when he heard the Conquest smash into the front gates. Above him, guards shouted and scrambled in all directions. They were shooting already, which was a good sign. All the training in the world doesn’t do much for a man who’s been on pins and needles too long.
Bolan glanced up and saw the two guards who had been patrolling this section running toward the sound of the crash. He removed the line and grapple from inside his jacket, then sent it spinning in a tight circle. When he had enough force built up, he threw it upward. It cleared the top of the wall and he yanked on the rope, feeling the tines of the grapple bite into the adobe above him. He checked his weapons one last time, then started quickly up the wall. It wasn’t particularly high—about twenty-five feet—and he reached the top in short order.
As he climbed onto the walkway, an explosion shattered the night, and Bolan grinned to himself. It had been Merice’s idea to blow the gas tank using little more than a bit of wire, the heating element from the lighter and the remote starter fob. Still, it was a bit of a shame—that had been a very nice truck.
Bolan got to his feet and scanned the wall for the nearest stairway down to the ground level. He spotted it near the corner and headed in that direction, thankful that the two guards were still distracted by Merice’s activity out front. Bolan reached them on cat’s feet and drew the KA-BAR knife from its sheath as he closed in.
The first man he took from behind, cutting him across his throat and tossing him over the wall. The second man turned, surprise etched on his face. He tried to bring his gun up, but Bolan lashed out with a boot and knocked it away. Instead of continuing the fight, the man spun and sprinted toward the stairs.
“Damn it,” Bolan cursed under his breath. The man began shouting for aid as he ran down the steps. Instead of giving chase, Bolan ran in the other direction, hoping to find a matching stairway in the opposite corner. He reached it just as the guard made it back to the top of the stairs with backup.
They opened fire, and Bolan heard the rounds striking the walls and walkway around him. He all but dove down the steps, taking them three at a time. His assailants lost the angle and the shots stopped as he made it to the ground level. He ran for the shadows of the main house, then pressed himself against the back wall, searching for the rear entrance he’d seen on the satellite feed.
He was almost to the door when it opened and Bricker stepped out, spotting Bolan immediately. He was carrying the standard Army-issue weapon, the Beretta M9, in his right hand.
“I figured it was you, Stone,” he snarled. “Couldn’t leave well enough alone, could you?”
“I hate to leave a job half-finished,” Bolan replied, moving sideways into the gap between the back of the house and the outer wall. He eased off his jacket, revealing the holstered Desert Eagle. “
How do you want to play this? Guns at ten paces?”
Bricker appeared to consider the comment, then shrugged. “Fuck that,” he said, aiming the M9 at Bolan’s chest. “I think I’ll just kill you and go get a drink.”
“Figured you for a coward,” Bolan said, playing for time. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the guard and his new buddies on the wall were now peering down to the ground level, looking for him. “At least they’ll know it.” He nodded in the guards’ direction.
Bricker fought the urge for a second, then risked the glance anyway. Bolan drew the Desert Eagle with lightning speed, rolled and came up firing, even as Bricker squeezed off two shots that went wide. The guards responded as Bolan expected, opening fire without being sure who was doing the shooting and forcing Bricker to throw himself toward the doorway.
Bolan fired again, his first round taking Bricker in the thigh and the second missing him by a razor’s edge as the man fell back into the house, cursing at the pain and Sureno’s guards.
The two guards were running toward them, and without a clear sight on either, Bolan held still, waiting for them to close in. Since Bricker’s movement was the last they’d seen, their eyes were focused on the doorway rather than the shadows on the far side of it. That was the only opening the Executioner needed as he dropped the closest one with a chest shot that drove him off his feet. The other guard stopped with a near-comic expression on his face, but before he could raise his rifle, Bolan finished him as well. He edged forward to the door and paused, trying to hear over the gunfire from the far side of the compound. It sounded as though Merice was having a fine time of it.
Bolan peered cautiously through the doorway and saw that Bricker was gone. After a quick check to ensure that both guards were truly dead, he crept inside and closed the door behind him.
Ahead, on the left was an open door leading to a room with the lights on. Directly across from this was a shut door. Bolan knelt down to study the floor and saw the trail of blood Bricker was leaving behind. He’d obviously dragged himself a couple of yards, then managed to get to his feet, judging by the bloody handprint on the wall. The Desert Eagle was a powerful handgun and tended to leave large holes in people. Bricker must be bleeding badly.
Bolan watched the doors carefully for a full minute, and when nothing moved, he eased forward. It was impossible to know where Sureno, Jesus or Bricker were in the large house, let alone any of their men. Success in this kind of combat depended as much on patience and sharp reflexes as it did on aggression. To rush now would be unwise. Staying close to the left side of the hall, Bolan reached the open doorway and stopped yet again. Bricker’s blood trail led into the room. Bolan paused to listen, and when he didn’t hear anything, he went through the door, ducking low and scanning everywhere at once. He was in the kitchen, which was large enough to be a commercial operation. Sureno had men to feed.
Stainless steel countertops and hard tile floors combined with large refrigerators gave the space an antiseptic feeling. A line of ovens, grills and other cooking surfaces ran along the back wall of the house. The blood trail stopped a few feet inside the door, and from the look of the small pool, Bricker had paused long enough to tie off his wound in some fashion.
Bolan eased deeper into the kitchen. He spotted another doorway, leading—he supposed—into the rest of the house. Shelves of spices and baking supplies lined the walls, and on another wall, what appeared to be open pantries held yet more food. Bolan had moved forward between the ovens and the main counter almost ten feet when he heard a sound behind him and lunged to his right. Bricker’s shot just missed his left shoulder. Bolan hit the stainless steel countertop and slid across it, coming down on the other side.
Damn it, he thought. Bricker must have backtracked to the other doorway.
“Come on, Stone,” Bricker said. “Let’s finish this like men.”
Cabinets beneath the countertop prevented Bolan from pinpointing Bricker’s precise location without standing. Thinking quickly, Bolan crawled back toward the kitchen entrance. Bricker fired again, the round pinging off the stainless steel surface then ricocheting away over his head.
Bolan reached the end of the counter and shoved the Desert Eagle overhead, firing twice in Bricker’s general direction.
“Nowhere to run, Stone,” the man said. “And nowhere to hide. You think Sureno will give me a bonus for bringing him your head?”
Bolan slid forward and popped out low, almost at Bricker’s feet. He fired twice more. The first round took him in the crotch and Bricker screamed, dropping his bloody M9. The second round was more accurate and the lower half of his jaw disintegrated. Teeth, bone and blood splattered in all directions as the scream became a screech of agony.
Bricker went down as Bolan rose to his feet, kicking the M9 beneath the stoves.
The man was a mess. The earlier shot had taken him in the meat of his left thigh, which he’d tied off using his belt over the top of a kitchen rag, and the other two shots from the Desert Eagle had left him looking like a ragdoll. One hand clutched at his ruined manhood, the other at what was left of his face. He was dying fast, rolling back and forth in his final agony, one eye fixed on the man who’d killed him.
Standing over him, the Executioner said, “No bonus for you today, Bricker, but I get to put a down payment on a debt.”
He was still alive enough, man enough, to know what was coming, and his eyes widened even as he tried to find his belt knife. Bolan shook his head at the vain attempts. “You’re dead and you don’t even know it,” he said. He aimed the Desert Eagle at Bricker’s forehead. “You’re bleeding out, Bricker. It’ll be slow. But I won’t let that happen. This mercy round is from Colton Rivers.”
He squeezed the trigger and it was done. Bricker had one spasmodic jerk left in his legs and fell still.
Spinning on his heel, Bolan turned and strode across the kitchen. It was time to find Sureno and put an end to this, once and for all.
Chapter 21
The basement was little more than a concrete floor, three connected water heaters and a furnace that probably saw use once or twice a year in this part of the world. As the noise from outside died down, Merice realized that at least one of the problems with the plan she and Cooper had thrown together was that there was no way to know the other person’s status without radio contact. They’d had to ditch their comms for fear Sureno’s men would intercept their messages. For all she knew, Cooper hadn’t gotten over the wall. Or he’d died trying. Or he’d died ten seconds after he got inside.
The other problem was that their separation limited the amount of damage they could each do in one area and made it more likely that one of Sureno’s men might figure out what was going on. She felt the seconds ticking by and knew this had to be finished quickly.
“Where does that go?” she asked, pointing to a flight of wooden steps leading to a door.
“It opens into the foyer,” she said. “In the back of the coat closet.”
Merice took this in. Obviously, Sureno was more than just a tad paranoid—an annoying habit in a drug-dealing, weapon-smuggling thug. “Let’s go,” she said, starting up the stairs.
Isabel nodded and stayed close behind her. Merice paused to listen at the door before easing it open. As Isabel said, it opened into a long, narrow closet that was mostly empty and almost entirely dark. “How big is the foyer? Will we be seen?” she whispered.
“It’s large,” Isabel replied. “The front door is across from us. There are stairs going up to the second floor on both sides of the foyer. The dining room is to our right, the living room to the left, plus the main hallway that leads to the kitchen, the servants’ quarters and Sureno’s...interrogation room.”
“Which way to his office?” she asked.
“Out the door, then left, through the living room is the fastest way from here,” Isabel said.
Isabel shook her head. “No, not usually. Sureno has had them outside, patrolling the grounds and the walls since Bricker arrived.”
“Makes sense,” she said.
She eased open the door a crack, thankful for the well-oiled hinges. A shout from outside the front door gave her a start, but the person moved on. She opened the door wide enough to slip through, and Isabel followed on her heels. Merice veered left and found herself in the comfortably furnished living room.
The room was decked out in white and brown leather furniture, traditional Mexican throw rugs and pottery from various regions—all of which was covered with twinkling shards of glass. Most of the windows were broken from the earlier panicked gunfire in the outer courtyard. Now, with the exception of the occasional barked order, silence ruled the night. What it really meant was that she and Cooper were now being hunted.
On the far side of the room was a closed set of double doors. “Is the office through there?” she whispered.
“Yes,” Isabel said. “Go quickly.”
Merice crossed the room silently, then stopped short. There was no opening the doors without being spotted by whoever might be in the office. She gestured for Isabel to move behind her. “Stay here,” she said, then pushed the doors open, stepping back and waiting for the sound of gunfire. When no shots rang out, she headed inside.
Amid more broken windows, she noticed that the office led into the small courtyard she had crossed when she’d hooked up with Isabel. Several overturned chairs littered the floor and in one of them, she saw Tony. He was tied to it, lying completely still, in front of the large desk. Scanning the office for any hidden assailants, she approached the older man and knelt down beside him, removing the gag in his mouth.
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