Killing Trade

by Don Pendleton

  “What?” Bolan demanded. He glanced at the papers and then back to the smug Almarone, who was whispering something to the lawyer. “Lack of evidence? The man stabbed Reynolds to death right in front of me.”

  “Self-defense,” Almarone said. “Clearly, the powers that be understand that a man cannot be held accountable for what he does in the heat of the moment, in defense of his own life.”

  “The fix is in, Cooper,” Burnett said through clenched teeth. “Someone upstairs has pulled strings.”

  “You will excuse us,” Almarone said, ushering the lawyer toward the doors. “We are going to escort my family’s trusted friend. I will be seeing you, cabron. I will be seeing you very soon.”

  6

  “Do you really think anything will pan out?” Burnett asked, sitting in the passenger seat of the parked Crown Victoria. He had the directional microphone pointed out the window, where he leaned his elbow on the door. A half-empty coffee cup was cradled in his free hand.

  From the driver’s seat, Bolan swallowed the last of his hamburger, watching through the high-powered monocular he usually kept in his war bag. From their vantage point in the parking lot, hidden in plain sight among the rows of other cars, they could see Carlos Almarone, Razor Ruiz and two bodyguards seating themselves in the chain restaurant just off the Garden State Parkway. Fortunately, they chose a smoking-section booth near a window, making it easy to pick up their speech.

  “I want Ruiz,” Bolan said. “If we let him go to ground, there’s no telling how long it will take to pick him up again. Caqueta was ready to tell us something, something useful. He knew this goes farther than West. Ruiz is the most direct route.”

  “We’re obviously dealing with a lot of power in high places,” Burnett countered.

  “A predator is a predator,” Bolan said simply. “I don’t give a damn how many connections Almarone or his organization might have. I want Ruiz, and I intend to take down Almarone in the process. They’re a means to an end.”

  Burnett looked at him, then back across the parking lot to the restaurant. “You’re just lucky I had the surveillance equipment in the car. This morning I was lying in the hospital talking to a pretty nurse. I didn’t figure I’d be on stakeout a few hours later.”

  It had been a fast ride from the city to just inside New Jersey, Bolan using all his wheelman experience to stay with the drug lord’s Mercedes while remaining undetected. Burnett, with one eye bandaged, had been happy to let the soldier drive. Once Almarone and his men had chosen a place to stop, Burnett had gone on foot to a neighboring fast-food place and returned with lunch.

  They’d picked up Almarone fairly easily. That, too, had been Burnett’s idea. They’d merely tailed the man from the detention center’s parking garage, Bolan being careful to use the heavy traffic to camouflage them. The Executioner had worried initially that Almarone would be looking for a tail, but his arrogance had apparently left him complacent. During the drive out of the city and into the neighboring Garden State, there had been no indication the drug dealer or his bodyguards suspected they were being followed.

  Bolan took one of the two earbuds snaking from the directional microphone and placed it in his ear. Burnett did likewise. There was a lot of background noise and radio-frequency interference, but they could easily separate the target conversation from the rest.

  “You realize what this means?” Ruiz was saying angrily. “Luis is dead, Carlos! Your own blood decorates the streets of New York! Taveras will be looking to take us down while we are weak!”

  “What would you have us do?” Almarone said dismissively. “Go to war, now? Burn Taveras’s home? Kill his family? Torture his pets, perhaps?”

  “Damn you, I am serious,” Ruiz said. “We are at war already! We have been killing El Cráneo soldiers for weeks. They have been killing our men. Now Luis has been murdered. Do you wish to appear weak?”

  “I am serious, as well,” Almarone said, his tone softening. “Do you not think I want to avenge my brother’s death?”

  “Now he is your brother,” Ruiz said bitterly. “Yet when he was alive, he was but the half brother you tolerated for the sake of business.”

  “You give me too little credit,” Almarone said. “Blood is blood. I would hardly have gone to so much trouble, called in so many favors, if I did not care for family. Are you any less my family? Luis was no kin to you, after all. Do not forget that I got you out of custody.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?” Ruiz demanded. “We know where to strike. We must kill Stevens and any he has helping him. We must choke off the flow of arms before El Cráneo’s advantage cannot be overcome! Do you want to lose this war?”

  In the Crown Victoria, Bolan turned to Burnett. “Do you know a Stevens?”

  Burnett shook his head. “No idea.”

  “Then it’s a lead,” Bolan said. He took out his secure phone and tapped out a quick text message to Stony Man Farm. Check STEVENS. DU ammo source?

  “You,” Almarone told Ruiz, his voice transmitted clearly enough through Burnett’s directional microphone, “are going to the safe house. As am I. If we move now, mark my words, Razor—we will lose. I have contacted our people back home. We need reinforcements, heavy weapons. Our own supplies are dwindling and El Cráneo has too great an advantage if we cannot meet them with the same.”

  “How do you propose to smuggle these reinforcements into the country?” Ruiz asked.

  “You leave that to me,” Almarone said. “Until they arrive, until we are ready, we are staying the hell out of New York. Let Taveras believe he has won, for now. Let him think the death of Luis has forced us to flee the city.”

  “Hasn’t it?” Ruiz said scornfully.

  “Keep your head, damn you,” Almarone hissed. “If it were up to you, we would let foolish pride lead us to our deaths! Would you not rather win?”

  Ruiz had nothing to say to that, apparently. Bolan and Burnett listened as the men ate, talking business and revenge in vague terms. Eventually they prepared to leave. Bolan and Burnett packed up the surveillance equipment quickly and pulled out of the parking lot before Almarone and his men left the restaurant.

  The Executioner gambled that the safe house of which Almarone spoke would be farther along the parkway. He floored the accelerator and took the vehicle two miles down the road until he found a suitable off-ramp. Then he took the on-ramp again, positioning himself on the shoulder so that he and Burnett could monitor traffic but remain relatively hidden by the slope of the ramp.

  “Eyes open,” Bolan said unnecessarily.

  Burnett laughed. His attention did not waver, but he shook his head. “Eye open,” he corrected.

  It was only a few minutes later that the metallic-beige Mercedes cruised past them. Bolan waited before pulling into traffic behind a merging SUV, using the large truck to screen the Crown Victoria. Then he fell into the same pattern he’d used to follow Almarone from New York, always staying several cars back, being careful not to change lanes too often or mirror Almarone’s driver as he moved in and out of traffic.

  A short drive later, Almarone, Ruiz and the two bodyguards arrived in a suburban housing development in a nondescript neighborhood, within a nameless section of sprawl that looked like countless other square miles of the surrounding area. Bolan parked the Crown Victoria well short of the actual house, leaving Burnett to watch the car and monitor the radio. His weapons concealed under his long duster, the Executioner did his best to look casual as he surveyed the nearby houses. Next door to Almarone’s safe house, there was no car in the short driveway. No activity was evident through the windows. Careful to stay out of sight of anyone peering out a window in the safe house, Bolan approached the adjacent house from the narrow side lawn between it and the next structure in the row. When he got close enough to see the small front porch, he saw a pair of newspapers, still rolled and banded, waiting to be open and read.

  Bolan circled around to the back of the house, monitoring the next house to make sure
he wasn’t spotted and called in by the local Neighborhood Watch or a busybody. At the rear of the house, he found a UPS package left by a driver, dated the previous day. It seemed very likely nobody was home. Quietly, Bolan removed the small pistol-grip lockpick given to him by Stony Man’s Gadgets Schwarz. He jimmied the rear door lock with little trouble and eased the door open as quietly as possible.

  Once inside, Bolan quickly checked the house. This was no time to discover a homeowner napping. Once he was satisfied that no one was home, he concentrated on what he could see of the safe house from the widows facing that side. As houses in suburban developments like this one often were, the neighboring home was identical in structure to the safe house next to it. That meant Bolan had the perfect vantage point to monitor movement in the house next door, without fear of discovery as he moved from room to room.

  It took him twenty minutes to assess the situation. Almarone had wasted no time going upstairs. He hadn’t moved since and was probably taking a nap, as the room in which he’d stopped corresponded to the bedroom where Bolan stood. The Executioner took in the pink wallpaper and posters for teenage boy bands that decorated this room. The bed was rumpled but made, covered in stuffed animals. He paused to pick up one of them, a life-size plush penguin, and placed it back precisely as he had found it. If all went as planned, the girl who slept there would come back from vacation with her family, or wherever she was, never knowing that the shadow of death had passed over her house.

  The two bodyguards were posted at the front and back of the ground floor—one in the family room, one in the kitchen. The Mercedes was parked in the single-car garage. There were no other personnel in evidence and no other vehicles had arrived. Bolan knew that could change at any time, especially if Almarone was planning to conduct business from this location. He could have any number of people arriving, from drug-running contacts to more guards to the reinforcements he was bringing in to fight his war with El Cráneo. If Bolan’s plan had a chance of working, he had to move fast.

  The problem was Ruiz. He was the wild card, pacing nervously from room to room, on the move constantly. He had stayed on the first floor. Twice in twenty minutes he’d gone out back to have a cigarette. He could as easily have smoked inside, but Bolan suspected the walls were closing in on him in there. The smokes were probably an excuse to get out into the air as much as they were a means to feed his habit.

  Moving quickly around the back of the house, keeping low, Bolan vaulted the waist-high picket fence and made a beeline for the small rear porch. Throwing himself flat on the ground, he rolled up against the bottom of the porch at the side, the Ultimax digging uncomfortably into his ribs under his coat. Then he drew the Beretta 93-R and started rapping the butt of the gun in a slow rhythm on the wooden slats enclosing the porch.

  The bodyguard in the kitchen responded almost instantly, nosing out onto the porch to see what could be the source of the noise. Bolan kept his raps slow and spaced like a heartbeat. The bodyguard’s face, his expression more curious than suspicious, suddenly appeared over the edge of the porch.

  Bolan shoved the butt of the machine pistol hard into the bodyguard’s face, rolling away from the edge of the porch as he did so. The thick-necked man slumped over the rail.

  The Executioner hurried up the steps of the back porch and into the kitchen. It was clear for the moment, but he could hear movement from the front of the house. Razor Ruiz, carrying a bottle of beer in his hand, walked into the kitchen through the attached dining room and straight into Bolan.

  “Wha—” Ruiz’s jaw dropped.

  Bolan fired a left-handed palm heel up under Ruiz’s jaw. The blow snapped the Caqueta Cartel killer’s head backward, his teeth clicking as his mouth slammed close. The back of Ruiz’s head left a dent in the drywall as the man ricocheted off the peeling wallpaper near the kitchen doorway. He stayed down.

  “Razor?” the bodyguard called from the family room. “Hey! Razor!”

  Bolan waited, unmoving, until the man came to investigate. He dropped him with a single blow to the temple. He fell without a word.

  The Executioner secured all three men with strong plastic riot cuffs from a pocket of his blacksuit. On the kitchen table, a cheap card table covered in beer bottles, he saw a set of keys bearing the three-point Mercedes star on the fob. He pocketed them and then took the stairs, wincing as his combat boots made the carpeted steps creak under his weight. On the second floor, he checked the first bedroom, then the second, but Almarone was not in either of them. Bolan found him asleep in a large four-poster in the master bedroom. He holstered the Beretta, knowing that the next step of his plan called for more intimidation.

  “Almarone,” he said.

  When Almarone didn’t wake, Bolan kicked the bed, hard. The drug lord opened his eyes groggily, wiping a hand down his face before he realized what was happening. He made a grab for a weapon under his pillow.

  “Don’t,” Bolan warned. Almarone stopped where he was. He was staring into the barrel of the Executioner’s massive .44 Magnum Desert Eagle.

  “So, pendejo,” Almarone said, “I see you sooner than I predicted, it would seem.”

  “So it would,” Bolan said. “Do you know why I’m here?”

  “You are here to kill me, of course,” Almarone said. “You are not the sort of puto who shoots a sleeping man. I give you credit for that, at least.”

  “I’ve put plenty of men just like you in the ground,” Bolan said frankly. “But that’s not why I’m here today. I need what you know. Luis Caqueta knew enough to try to make a deal. I’d have gunned him down like the rabid dog he was without a second thought, but not before doing just what he was hoping Burnett could do for him. I want to stop the flow of DU ammunition to El Cráneo.”

  “Luis was a fool,” Almarone said. “What did his deal get him but a trip straight to hell?”

  “You said yourself that blood is blood,” Bolan said.

  Almarone’s eyes widened. “What do you want?”

  “I want the information that Ruiz has,” Bolan said. “The same information Caqueta had. I want everything you know about the source, about how you made your purchases, and about this Stevens.”

  “You know much already.” Almarone nodded. “You do not need me.”

  “Then I’ll kill you.” Bolan gestured with the Desert Eagle, the barrel never leaving its target.

  “Then you will kill me.” Almarone shrugged.

  “Carlos!” Ruiz shouted from the bottom of the stairs. “Carlos, he is here!”

  Bolan backed off from the bed, still covering Almarone with the Desert Eagle. With his left hand he carefully drew the Beretta, covering the stairs. Ruiz, his eyes glassy, was inching his way up the steps like a worm, his feet bound at the ankles and his hands secured behind his back. What he thought he could do like that Bolan didn’t know, but he had to give the cartel thug credit for loyalty.

  “Tell him nothing!” Ruiz shouted.

  Bolan waited for Ruiz to crawl up the stairs and down the hallway to the bedroom. Almarone rolled his eyes as if he found the whole affair ridiculous. Finally, Ruiz managed to struggle into the room, snarling, pulling at the plastic tie that was biting into his wrists.

  The Executioner walked over to him and kicked him in the head. Ruiz lost consciousness and was still on the rug.

  “That was not necessary,” Almarone said. “You will not shoot a sleeping man, but you will kick one who is tied and helpless.”

  “He doesn’t play well with others,” Bolan said. “Now. Let’s talk about what Caqueta wanted to say.”

  “Where is your friend, Detective Burnett?” Almarone asked.

  “He’s not your concern right at the moment,” Bolan said. “Now. You have no choice and you’re acting in your own best interests, even if you don’t want to admit it. Tell me what you know.”

  “Very well.” Almarone sighed. “The man you want, the man behind Jonathan West, is Donald Stevens.” The drug lord shrugged. “West was his man in NLI
. Luis hired some investigators to look into both men once we learned that he was acting as representative for Stevens.”

  “How did you learn that?”

  Almarone smiled. “Every man has his weaknesses, does he not? West was very weak indeed. He was clumsy, so clumsy that his attempts to sell Stevens’s product brought him several times to the attention of the authorities. Did he not?”

  Bolan didn’t answer.

  “I will take that as a yes,” Almarone said. “West liked women. When he first contacted us and we arranged to purchase the special bullets, he was quick to tell us that El Cráneo was buying, too. He had limited supplies, he claimed, and how should he divide them, he wished to know. He said he could be persuaded to sell us more than he sold to our enemies. All it would take would be some…fringe benefits.”

  “You sent him hookers,” Bolan said.

  “Escorts. We run more than one such agency. West very much liked to talk. He spoke often of Donald Stevens, whom he resented. While West took the risks, Stevens sat safe in his factory here in New Jersey, he said. Stevens was West’s boss in NLI, and it seems he never lost the taste for telling him what to do. West was becoming very anxious. Stevens had promised him much money for coming to work for him, for making enemies of NLI and their hired soldiers. West was very unhappy. He was not seeing the payment for which he had lusted for so long.”

  “So your people learned what NLI has been trying to hide,” Bolan said. “The link between West and Stevens, and the fact that the problem goes deeper than a single rogue employee.”

  “More or less,” Almarone said. “West had ceased to be useful to us. He was making excuses, selling us no more of the bullets, telling us there were no more to sell and that we would have to be patient. My spies within El Cráneo warned me that Taveras was stockpiling more than ever, planning to run us—us!—out of New York for good. It was clear West was lying. So I had him killed.”