Lethal Vengeance

by Don Pendleton

  Vergara kicked the door, throwing it open and driving the man behind it backward, sprawling on the floor. The sergeant followed him, covering the shabby combination living room and kitchen with his pistol as he closed and locked the door. With his free hand, he flashed his FMP badge but concealed his ID card.

  “I’ll ask your name once more—and only once more.”

  The twentysomething occupant glanced at a coffee table where a plastic bowl of marijuana sat beside a cheap hookah and rolled his yellowed eyes. “All right,” he said, “you’ve got me. How much will it cost to make you go away?”

  Vergara stowed his bag but kept his sidearm leveled at the other’s face. “Jesús Enriquez?” he repeated.

  “Yes.” And then asked again, “How much?”

  “I’d be surprised if you have ten pesos to your name.”

  Enriquez sneered at him, starting to rise. “Do federal cops come that cheaply now?”

  Vergara took one forward step and kicked the smirking man’s face, breaking his nose and possibly a tooth or two. Since no one had emerged yet from the single bedroom or adjacent bath, the FMP sergeant assumed they were alone.

  “Son of a whore!” Enriquez sobbed, a new lisp robbing him of any menace he had once possessed.

  Vergara looked around the cluttered parlor, fast-food wrappers and take-out containers scattered everywhere except the pressed-wood coffee table, where an open laptop shared space with the tenant’s water pipe and weed. “So this is where you post your love notes to El Psicópata, eh?”

  “You must be crazy. I don’t know what you—”

  Vergara fired a round into the laptop, shattering its monitor, producing sparks. The gunshot, though not silent, made less noise than he’d produced by kicking in the dump’s front door. Colonia Medanos was a neighborhood where residents might spy on those who lived around them, but they stayed well out of sight whenever trouble came calling.

  “What the hell!” Enriquez howled, still spitting blood. He shut up as Vergara’s pistol swung back toward his battered face.

  “To save time,” Vergara said, “I’ll tell you what I know. You’ve either been in contact with El Psicópata using that—” he gestured toward the dead laptop “—or you pretend to be. Which is it?”

  “Screw you, pig!”

  “As you wish.”

  Vergara fired a round into the swaybacked sofa just behind Enriquez, the Parabellum bullet passing close enough to singe the punk’s left ear.

  “Jesus Christ!”

  “He’ll be no help to you,” Vergara said. “I still have fourteen bullets left. How many fragile joints do you suppose are in your body?”

  “I have my rights!”

  “Of course. Start with your left knee, then?”

  “Wait! Please! Just tell me what you want.”

  “I’ve asked you once. Have you made contact with El Psicópata? Yes or no?”

  “Yes. That’s not to say I’ve met him face-to-face, understand?”

  “Meaning what?” Vergara asked.

  “There is a message board devoted to his art,” Enriquez replied. “If posters on the site impress him as sincere, sometimes he corresponds with them.”

  “Email?”

  The ruined face bobbed up and down in the affirmative. “I haven’t saved the messages, you understand. They are...”

  “Incriminating?”

  “Private. Intimate.”

  Vergara thought of ending this with one more shot. Instead he said, “So that is all you know? Just what some crazy man writes to you online?”

  “Well...um...with photographs.”

  “Police photos of crime scenes?”

  Enrique shook his head. “Digital shots only the artist could have taken for himself.”

  “But you’ve deleted them, as well?”

  “I hated to, but thought it only wise.”

  Sick bastard, Vergara thought but said, “So you have never met him and have no way to contact him besides email?”

  “Um...”

  “Answer me quickly, asshole!”

  “I do have his home address.”

  “Explain.”

  “He writes behind a screen name, obviously. The Lady Killer—El dama asesina.”

  “You’re joking.”

  Enriquez shrugged, made no reply.

  “How does that tell you where he lives?” Vergara asked.

  “He uses Javascript to mask his server’s address by encrypting it and redirecting searches to a blind web site. It works all right, but only to a point. And I—” Enriquez flashed him a bloodied smile “—have substantial skill at breaking codes.”

  “Get to the bottom line.”

  “Okay. It took nearly a week of searching part-time, but I traced his emails to the actual IP address. From there, it was a simple matter to locate the street address he was writing from.”

  “You never went there,” Vergara prompted, “even just to see him from a distance?”

  “Good God no! I wanted to, of course, but...have you read the novel Hannibal by any chance?”

  “Who has the time?”

  “You should make time,” Enriquez told him. “The last line tells us ‘We can only learn so much and live.’”

  “You were afraid.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  “But not afraid of children, eh?”

  “I don’t know what you’ve heard but—”

  “Five arrests charging sexual abuse, with four dismissed because the victims wouldn’t testify. You got off easy on the fifth one, too, and only served two years.”

  “The case was thrown out on appeal.”

  “Write down El Psicópata’s name and address for me, pedophile.”

  “And we can forget about this, then?”

  “I’ll never think of you again.”

  Enriquez crawled over to the coffee table on all fours, retrieved a pen and a scrap of paper, scribbled on it briefly and then handed it to Vergara. Enriquez would win no prize for penmanship, but it was legible enough.

  “If I find out that you were lying to me...”

  “It’s correct. I solemnly swear.”

  “Good,” Vergara replied and shot him in the head. Leaving, he told the corpse, “No more children for you.”

  Vista de Carichi

  Bolan cruised the neighborhood whose streets were named according to a theme, most tagged “vistas,” meaning a view of this or that. Some translated with ease. Vista la Arboleta was “view of the grove,” though Bolan couldn’t spot one. Otherwise, the views referred to—Carichi, Guachochi and Tomachic, whatever—were beyond his skill at translating and didn’t matter anyway.

  His target, with midnight gone and another day beginning in darkness, was a bordello operated as a sideline by the Sinaloan mob in Ciudad Juárez. Prostitution was legal under federal law, sanctioned by statute in thirteen of Mexico’s thirty-one states, with “tolerance zones” ignored by police in most major cities, though pimping was formally banned nationwide. Federal shelters existed for retired prostitutes, and a state-run brothel operated at the Zona Galáctica in Tuxtla Gutiérrez, state capital of Chiapas.

  Despite that general acceptance, social workers and some rare police complained of child prostitution—with 20,000 victims identified at the last census—human trafficking and sexual slavery targeting homeless youths of both sexes and young female migrants. Outfits like the Sinaloa and Juárez cartels ignored statutory age limits for sex workers, along with pimping bans, by paying off police at city, state and fedearal levels.

  But their payoffs wouldn’t buy them sanctuary from the Executioner.

  Early in Bolan’s one-man war against the Mafia at home, he had discovered that the trick to raiding brothels was elimination of their strong-arm and managers, coupled with property destructio
n, while avoiding any undue injury to inmates. For this strike against the Satin Blossom—or La Rosa Satinada on its neon sign—he chose the MP-5K submachine gun, backed up by the Desert Eagle and one of his Glocks, plus spare mags all around in case the joint had more guards working overnight than would be normal in more settled times.

  He parked his SUV a block north of the whorehouse then circled around through wooded grounds to come in from the rear. There was a lone guard on the back door, puffing on a joint, distracted by his buzz when Bolan plugged him with the muffled Glock and helped himself to the dead lookout’s AKS-74U carbine with a folding stock and two 30-round magazines clamped side-by-side in “jungle style.”

  Cocking the piece, he pushed in through the unlocked door and went to work.

  First thing, he met a shooter carrying a mug of coffee for his friend outside, who wouldn’t need it anymore. A 3-round burst of 5.45 mm full-metal-jacket rounds punched the gunman over backward, sloshing the hot java in his face, already dead and heedless of the burn. The shots prompted a woman’s scream somewhere above him and then a stampede down the stairs as reinforcements scrambled to repel invaders.

  Bolan didn’t know who they expected, but he met them with the stuttering Kalashnikov, chopping down three more soldiers before they got a shot off in reply. Scanning the ground floor then the second-story landing, Bolan saw no more defenders, so he started shouting, “Get out of the house!” in English and Spanish, emptying one of the AK’s magazines into the nearby wall for emphasis. When people started stirring from the upstairs cribs, he raised a cry of “Fire! Run for your lives!”

  Most of the women coming down were nude or nearly so, their johns looking like men who woke up late for work and ran out of the house minus their trousers. One was in his stocking feet, carrying cowboy boots in one hand while the other held a rolled-brim hat over his groin.

  Bolan switched AK magazines, prepared to deal with any straggling guards, but none appeared. When thirty-odd hookers and clients had evacuated the premises, he went looking for the brothel’s kitchen, hoping for a replay of the fire he’d started at El Agujero earlier. The stove here was more modern, with no pilot light in evidence, so Bolan ripped its gas line from the wall and left it hissing while he wadded up two linen tablecloths, set them on fire, and dropped them in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  When gas met flame, he’d have another blaze devouring syndicate property and yet another warning call to make.

  He ditched the AK, passing through the brothel’s public room and out into the night. The cell phone was already in his hand, Bolan prepared to dial, when it lit up and buzzed for an incoming call. Miguel Vergara’s number showed up on the screen.

  “Sergeant.”

  Vergara got straight to the point. “I have El Psicópata’s name and home address.”

  “Text me the details,” Bolan said. “I’m on my way.”

  Calle Pavo Real

  Dean Jeffers slipped off the brass knuckles, rinsed them clean of blood under the kitchen faucet in his former criminal informant’s two-room studio apartment in the Lomas de Morelos neighborhood. He used a threadbare towel to dry the knucks and then repeated the procedure with his hands, hot water this tme, just in case.

  Jeffers had no reason to believe his stoolie carried AIDS or any other dreaded disease, but in Juárez these days, who really knew?

  His CI, Carlos Jarabo, was a small-time producer of porn videos that never made it into shops serving the general public. Ask anybody from the FBI and they would tell you there was no such thing as snuff films, but a few months spent abroad, poking around in murky corners where the sunlight rarely shone, would clue a wise man into the grim truth.

  Anything a person could imagine, decency be damned, would have a following if you looked long and hard enough. In parts of Asia, individuals with ample cash on hand could buy a ringside seat to murder—or participate themselves, if they could front the asking price. For those who dealt with death at arm’s length, there were always videos available, and even audio recordings for the ghouls who’d lost their eyesight while retaining their bloodlust.

  About thirty years ago, Lawrence “Pilers” Bittaker and Roy Norris, the tag team who’d kidnapped and murdered five young women in Southern California, recorded their atrocities on tape. Today, with Larry on death row and Roy pulling a jolt of life without parole, those audio recordings were securely under lock and key at Quantico, employed as teaching tools for future profilers.

  Make that supposedly secure. In fact, Jeffers could name the owners of at least three bootleg copies, information picked up from adventures in the drug trade, and it stood to reason there were more out there, floating around the perverts’ underground.

  So, back to Carlos Jarabo. Rumors circulating through Juárez suggested that if he wasn’t acquainted with El Psicópata personally, he knew someone else who was. Most rumors of that kind weren’t worth the air that carried them, but Jeffers knew Jarabo well enough to peg him as the kind of lowlife who would stop at nothing in pursuit of private thrills and chills.

  He’d dropped in unannounced on the man, edged around the question for a few minutes and then got down to brass tacks. When Jarabo pleaded ignorance, the lie was in his shifty eyes, so Jeffers shifted to the knucks. It still took time, and when he’d finished, Mama Jarabo wouldn’t have recognized her baby boy, but the informant could still talk—well, sort of—and he’d spilled the beans at last.

  Leaving his cell phone in his pocket, Jeffers used the same hand towel to make a call from Jarabo’s landline. Let it show up on the CI’s bill if anybody looked for it. He didn’t give a rip.

  The phone that he was calling rang four times, a busy night for all concerned, before Captain Prieto curtly answered, “Talk!”

  “It’s me.”

  “Ah, Señor—”

  “No names, Captain, eh?”

  “Of course. What do you have for me?”

  “A name and address,” Jeffers answered. “What’s it worth?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Pemex District

  “You want something to eat?” the madman asked Brognola.

  Thinking of all he had seen and heard so far, followed by noises and aromas emanating from the upstairs kitchen, he suppressed his gag reflex and managed to reply. “I’ll pass.”

  “You’re not hungry, eh? It is important to keep up your strength for what may lie before you.”

  Like that changes a thing, Brognola thought. And said, “Means more for you.”

  “You are too kind. And it’s delicious, if I do say so myself. The mortal sin of pride, perhaps.”

  Perched on a stool before his workbench, with a heaping paper plate in one hand and the other brandishing a plastic implement some fast-food joints were pleased to call a “spork,” the lunatic dug in. Manners be damned, he wouldn’t shut up even as he ate.

  “Mmm, you are missing something, my friend. We have rice cooked to perfection and delicious refried beans, plus roasted meat seasoned with a secret mixture of spices that I devised myself.”

  “Yeah,” Brognola said. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  His tormentor looked blank for a moment then burst out in laughter, nearly spraying masticated food across the floor in front of him. When that had passed he said, “You’re quite the comedian. Do friends at home salute you for it?”

  “Not so much,” Brognola said.

  “Ah, they are fools. You think I am a cannibal perhaps? I eat the sacrifices? It’s funny that you think of me as such a savage.”

  “Right,” Brognola said. “Imagine that.”

  “Funnier still, if that was true, believing I would waste sweet flesh on you, who clearly lack sophistication enough to make the most of it, appreciating such a priceless gift.”

  “So, you have tried it, then?” the big Fed asked.

  A shrug. “What can
I say? I have weaknesses. I’m only human, after all.”

  Brognola didn’t feel the laughter coming on, but there it was, a gusher of hilarity he couldn’t hold inside. It made his battered ribs ache, brought tears to his eyes. He strained against his bonds, forgetting for an instant that he was restrained, trying to sit up and prevent himself from choking as he lost it absolutely.

  On his high stool, the admitted sometime cannibal began to laugh along, enjoying it at first, but when Brognola couldn’t stop, the killer’s face grew deadpan then devolved into a scowl.

  “That is enough,” he said. “Stop now.”

  Which, naturally, only set Brognola laughing harder, his body convulsing within the limits of the straps that held him down. God help him, it was funnier than anything he’d seen or heard in ages, longer than he could remember.

  Finally, snarling with rage, his keeper leaped up from the stool and hurled his plate of food at Brognola, rice, beans and seasoned roast of something spattering his face and chest. Almost before he realized it, the sadistic deviate had snatched a long knife from the workbench and was rushing toward him.

  Hey, was that a kukri, like the Nepali Gurkhas used in combat, having vowed that once the blade was drawn, they wouldn’t slip it back into its sheath till it had tasted blood?

  Now the curved blade was against his Adam’s apple. Brognola could feel its razored edge as his crazed keeper started shouting at him. “Stop it! You dare to laugh at me, you American prick? Stop it now! Silence or I will—”

  “What?” Brognola’s voice cut through the screwball’s rage. “What will you do? Kill me? Go ahead! It’s what you’ve planned from the beginning, right? The only way a thing like you can get it up?”

  With an ear-splitting scream, the psycho killer raised his kukri overhead like a woodsman about to split a log.

  Brognola closed his eyes, waited for death—but nothing happened.

  When he dared look again, the butcher stood with shoulders slumped, as if exhausted. He replaced his weapon on the bench, moved off into a corner of the basement that Brognola couldn’t see, and came back with a plastic mop bucket on wheels.