Had Bolan been the kind of man who allowed himself to get depressed, these thoughts would have been enough to do it. It seemed that partially solving the Colombian problem had done little but shift the drug traffic to other points of origin.
But Bolan was no quitter. Giving up simply wasn’t in his DNA. And he would not cease his pursuit of anyone smuggling illegal drugs until every tiny nook and cranny of the business had been destroyed.
Or they destroyed him.
Looking out through the windshield of the Learjet again, Bolan saw glimpses of Bogotá. The city was sheltered by a ring of mountains, some of which grew a precipitous two thousand feet in the air. Grimaldi was on the radio again as he flew over the jagged rock, then began a quick descent toward a private runway on the east side of the huge airport.
Bolan closed his eyes once more. He had left Kunkle back at the Hotel Lafitte with a week’s worth of groceries and money to pay the manager. The born-again New Orleans cop had wanted to come along, but Bolan was afraid someone they met in Bogotá might recognize him. McFarley had made it clear that almost everyone he did business with had spent time with the prostitutes on the lower floors of his old plantation house, and Bolan saw no reason to take any chances.
Bolan’s eyelids lifted again when the tires hit the runway. Grimaldi slowed the plane to a crawl, then stopped it all together when the order to do so came over the radio.
The soldier looked out to see a Colombian army jeep heading toward them. The man driving wore the uniform of a colonel. The other two men were dressed in civvies. One wore a white suit similar to Bolan’s, while the other was dressed in light blue-and-white-striped seersucker.
“Looks like your taxi’s here,” Grimaldi said. “Sure you don’t want me to come with you?”
“Uh-uh, Jack,” Bolan said as his hand reached for the door handle. “McFarley told them there would be one man coming alone. I don’t want to do anything out of the ordinary that might arouse their curiosity. At least not until I have to.”
“Okay,” Grimaldi said. “But killing Guzman is going to be a little off the flight plan.”
“Yeah,” Bolan said. “From there on, it’ll be a race to see if I can get back here and we can lift off before we become lead magnets.”
Grimaldi smiled and shook his head. “If it was anybody but you, big guy,” he said, “I’d bow out of this assignment right now.”
“No you wouldn’t,” Bolan replied as he swung open the door. “You’d do the same for Able Team or Phoenix Force, or any other warriors you were fighting with. You’re as much a soldier as any of us, Jack. And you’d do what was right.”
“Okay,” Grimaldi said. “But you do the shooting on this one. I’ll do the flying.”
“You’ve got a deal.” Bolan disembarked from the plane and turned to pull a small suitcase after him. By the time he had turned, the jeep had stopped at his side.
The colonel stayed behind the wheel. The two men in lightweight suits got out.
“We speak very good English,” were the first words out of the mouth of the man in the white suit. He was tall for a South American, and had bleached blond hair that was as fake-looking as Kunkle’s ponytail and contrasted sharply with his olive-colored skin.
“And I speak decent Spanish,” Bolan said. “So we ought to be able to understand each other one way or another.”
The man in the seersucker suit stepped forward. He was shorter but with wider shoulders, and had stubby dark curls for hair. “I am afraid we must disarm you before we go any further,” he said.
Bolan had expected that. So he dropped his bag, raised his arms and waited while the cartel man patted him down and removed the Desert Eagle, the Beretta, and finally the knife. Bolan glanced at the colonel still in the jeep. The man had turned his face away, staring off into the distance in order to avoid seeing the weapons violation.
It might have slowed down some, Bolan thought again as he waited, but payoffs were still happening in Colombia. “And now, señor,” seersucker-wearing man said, “the little baby gun you are known to hide on your body.”
As quickly as a flash of lightning, Bolan knew that McFarley had to have provided the Guzman mob with the information on the North American Arms .22 Magnum revolver. There was no other way they could have known about it. But what did that mean?
Had his cover been burned somehow? Had McFarley set him up to be killed?
Or had McFarley given that information in order to further the guise that he was there to work out a peaceful solution? If so, why hadn’t he let Bolan in on that aspect of the plan?
The Executioner wasn’t sure, but the only thing he could do at this point was play along with the game.
Letting a smile cross his face, Bolan reached just behind his belt buckle where he’d secreted the NAA Pug and pulled it out. “You guys are thorough,” he said as he handed it to the shorter of the two men. “I’ll give you that.”
“Gracias,” the man in the seersucker suit said. “And now…” He stepped back, bowed slightly at the waist and waved his arm dramatically for Bolan to get into the jeep.
He complied, taking a seat behind the colonel.
A moment later, the two cartel men pulled themselves up and into the jeep. The colonel took off across the runways and access roads of the airport, finally stopping behind a new Mercedes-Benz in a parking lot next to the terminal. It reminded Bolan of the car he and Kunkle had taken from Bill Dill’s house to return to the Cadillac.
Bolan watched as the tall blond man took a quick look around, then reached inside his jacket and pulled out an over-stuffed white envelope. A flash of Colombian bills caught Bolan’s eye beneath the flap as the colonel grabbed the envelope and hid it inside his uniform blouse.
No, Bolan thought again. Business might have slowed, but baksheesh certainly hadn’t died out completely in Colombia.
The two cartel men and Bolan transferred to the Mercedes, with the Executioner in the backseat. They remained silent as the blond man guided the vehicle off the airport grounds.
Bolan was slightly surprised when the driver navigated them away from the city, to the north. If he remembered correctly, that area consisted of salt mines left from an earlier age when a mountain lake had once covered Bogotá.
Bolan leaned forward. “Where are we going?” he asked.
The man behind the wheel of the Mercedes spoke out of the side of his mouth. “You’ll see,” he said. “Just a friendly meeting place where you can speak with Don Eduardo.”
Bolan leaned back in his seat. There was nothing he could do at this point. But he had kept track of his weapons since they’d been taken from him, and had made note of the man wearing seersucker shoving the Desert Eagle into his belt and handing the blond man the Beretta. The .22 Magnum Pug had gone into the one man’s right front pocket, and the Beretta—still complete with sound suppressor—was lying on the front seat between the two men. The tall blond man had dropped the Espada knife into his right front pocket.
The Mercedes slowed as it passed through a small mountain village, and Bolan saw a sign that identified it as Zipaquirá. They passed more signs directing them to the underground Salt Cathedral, formed where salt had been mined by members of the Chibcha tribe.
Everyone they passed in the village took a look at the Mercedes-Benz, then looked quickly away. It was obvious that the car was known—and feared—and that the residents wanted nothing to do with it.
Roughly a mile from the village, the blond cartel man turned the wheel and drove the car into another dark mine tunnel. The smell of salt grew strong in Bolan’s nostrils as the Mercedes twisted and turned for perhaps another quarter mile. The only light came from the headlights, but it was enough to finally spot another, almost identical, Mercedes facing them.
The blond man slowed the automobile, then stopped. “Let’s go,” he said over his shoulder as he and the other man vacated the front.
Bolan opened the door and got out of the backseat. He had expected a meeting i
n an office or home—not a salt mine, and he had expected to still have the NAA Pug on him at this point, too. But both of those expectations had proved faulty, which meant he would have to improvise.
The two men who had picked him up at the airport each took one of his arms and guided him toward the Mercedes. Four more men had gotten out of that car, and each cradled either an M-16 assault rifle or a Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine gun. A stubby, shadowy form could still be seen in the backseat.
One of the men with the H&Ks opened the back door and directed Bolan to get in. But before he could comply, the dark shadow in the back said, “You have checked him well for weapons?”
“We have, Don Eduardo,” the man in the seersucker suit replied.
The man in the back waved Bolan in and motioned for him to shut the door behind him. When he had, Bolan found that he and Eduardo Guzman were in semidarkness, illuminated only by the headlights of the other Mercedes.
Guzman was eating pistachio nuts, cracking the shells in his teeth, then spitting the two halves onto the floor of the backseat as he chomped on the nut itself. Even in the darkness, Bolan could tell that the man was vastly overweight, and smelled of salt, pistachios and sweat.
The cartel leader offered the sack containing the nuts to the soldier, who shook his head. “No, thanks,” he said.
“Then we should get right down to business,” Guzman said. “Your McFarley blames me for not being more careful in my delivery. I blame him for not properly bribing the correct U.S. Coast Guard officials to ensure that my product came through.” He grunted, then shoved another pistachio into his mouth.
Bolan heard a crunch, then a sickeningly wet sound as the two halves of the shell flew from Guzman’s mouth, hit the back of the front seat, then fell to the floor. In the dim light, the soldier could see spots on Guzman’s pants. Squinting, he saw that they were pistachio shells that had failed to fall all the way to the floor and stuck to the cartel man’s slacks.
The Executioner pried his eyes away from the sweating man and glanced through the windows of the Mercedes. The six men with Guzman had taken up positions around the car. There was absolutely no way Bolan could kill the cartel leader and get away. Besides which, he knew that Guzman would not have brought the money from his safe along with him in this elaborate setup.
“So,” Guzman said around another mouthful of nuts, “who is to say who is at fault?”
Bolan decided to play along as the rest of his mind tried to figure out a plan of action. “Well, Don Eduardo,” he said quietly, “it’s a little different in America. Paying off cops and military personnel there is tricky. It’s much more difficult trying to decide who’s susceptible to a bribe and who’s not.
And if you try to pay off the wrong guy, you’re headed for prison.” His eyes skirted the outside of the vehicle again. All of the men leaned against the car, their backs against the windows to allow their leader the privacy he had to have ordered. But they still cradled their weapons in their arms.
The Executioner knew he was fast, and he knew he was skilled in unarmed combat. But being unarmed in this situation, he didn’t know how he was going to take out six heavily armed men before one of them got to him.
“Bullshit,” Guzman said. “Perhaps it is more difficult— American cops and servicemen are paid better and don’t need to accept bribes. But here, it is expected. So who is to say which is wrong?”
He shoved the paper bag full of nuts toward Bolan again, and when he did, the soldier caught a glimpse of silver as his sport coat opened slightly. The item had been sticking out from under the man’s left armpit and had caught a flash of light inside the Mercedes.
Was it a gun? Bolan couldn’t be sure, but if it was, he saw a whole new strategy begin to form in his mind.
“I will return one-and-one-half million dollars to Senor McFarley,” Guzman said as he continued cracking and chomping on his pistachios. “That is my one and only offer. We split the loss.”
Bolan didn’t speak for a moment. Then, finally, he said, “I’ll have to talk to him first. Do you have the money with you?”
“I have one-and-a-half million,” Guzman spit out along with a nutshell. “In the trunk. That is my one and final offer.”
Bolan fell silent for a moment. Then, with a tone of exasperation, he said, “Well, the least you can do is offer me some more pistachios.”
Guzman laughed in triumph. Then, as he extended the sack toward the big American, his jacket fell open again.
Bolan’s hand shot under the jacket and into the man’s sweaty armpit. But it came out holding a nickel-plated snub-nosed .38 revolver.
“Don’t move, don’t make a sound,” Bolan whispered as he jammed the barrel of the revolver into the fat covering Guzman’s ribs.
Guzman froze in place. The sack began to shake.
“I said don’t move,” Bolan said in a gruffer voice.
“I…can’t help it,” Guzman whispered back.
Bolan reached out and took the pistachios, dropping them on the seat between them. “Well,” he said, “you’d better learn how to help it. Because you’ve got an acting job facing you, and if you don’t pull it off convincingly, you’re gonna die on stage. And I don’t mean that figuratively.”
“Listen, please,” Guzman whispered. “I’ll give you all of the three million back. Just don’t shoot me.” He continued to tremble on the other side of the car.
Bolan did another fast 360-degree surveillance of the outside of the car. The armed cartel men were still standing with their backs to him and their leader, and had not picked up on what was going on inside the car. Turning back to Guzman, Bolan said, “We’re going to get out of the car, and we’re going to act like two best friends who haven’t seen each other in years. You’re going to tell your men we’ve worked everything out, and that you and I’ll ride in the front car back to your office.” Bolan dropped the revolver into the side pocket of his suit coat. “There’s no way I can kill six of your men before they get me,” he said, “but I can certainly kill you if anything goes wrong. So be convincing. Because I’ll blow your head off the second before I die if I even suspect you’re trying to alert these guys in any way.”
Guzman remained frozen.
“Loosen up,” Bolan said firmly. “Because I’m not kidding. I’ll kill you even if you are trying but aren’t doing a good job.”
The words seemed to snap Guzman back into reality. He took two deep breaths, then said, “I am as ready as I’m ever going to be.”
“That had better be very ready,” Bolan reminded him. He wrapped his fingers around the grips of the .38 and kept his finger on the double-action trigger. Then he tapped on the window behind him and the man leaning against the window moved away and opened the door.
Bolan crawled out then reached in with his left hand to help the obese man. His right hand stayed firmly around the grips of the revolver.
Guzman got out, and for the first time Bolan had enough light to get a good look at the man’s face. It was flabby like the rest of him, and his skin bore the scars of severe acne from his younger years.
“Tell them,” Bolan whispered.
“Muchachos!” Guzman shouted, and the word echoed off the walls of the old salt mine. “My American friend and I have come to an agreement. But we must return to my office for a few moments.” His eyes moved toward the headlights and he shaded them with his hand. “I will ride with my friend in the car he came in. Pedro—” he glanced toward the man in the white suit “—you and Luis will come with us. The rest of you follow in the other car.”
The blond man—Bolan now knew him to be named Pedro—frowned in the shadows. Luis did the same. “Are you sure everything is all right, jefe?” Pedro asked. “You look…concerned.”
Guzman forced a bright smile in the darkened cave. “Sí, sí, everything is all right,” he said as he waddled toward the car that had brought Bolan. The Executioner followed, keeping his hand in his pocket as one of the men opened the back door. “D
o not worry,” Guzman repeated. “My new friend…what is your name?”
“Cooper. Matt Cooper.”
“Matt Cooper and I have worked everything out and look forward to a long and prosperous business arrangement.” He slid into the backseat. Bolan got in next to him.
As Pedro and Luis returned to the front, Bolan angled the barrel of the .38 toward Guzman and smiled. “Now that we’re such good friends, Eddie,” he said, “don’t you think your men could give me back my weapons?”
Guzman closed his eyes, then opened them. “Certainly. Give them to him.”
The Beretta, Desert Eagle, NAA Pug and Cold Steel Espada were handed over the seat to Bolan. He replaced the two big guns in their holsters, dropping the Pug into his right pants pocket since it was no longer serving as a hideout weapon. The Cold Steel Espada came last, and he slipped it back in its usual place behind his hip.
The first Mercedes pulled forward and turned around, then the twin vehicles started out of the salt mine.
19
Eduardo Guzman, Bolan and the men in the other Mercedes got out of the cars in front of an office building in downtown Bogotá.
Bolan, fully armed again, continued to keep his hand in his jacket pocket and wrapped around the cartel boss’s .38.
But only Guzman knew that Bolan had turned the tables during their brief private conference in the backseat of the automobile, and that he, rather than the cartel drug runner, was actually calling the shots.
“Bring Luis and Pedro,” Bolan whispered into Guzman’s ear. “Have one of them get the million-and-a-half out of the other car first. And tell the rest of the men to stay in that other car.”
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