Smooth sailing with the law, but maybe not so much with Manolo Cuéllar, a lieutenant of The Office in this part of Texas, operating from a forty-acre spread, eight miles north of Ozona. According to Ignacio Azuela, who had named his jefe in exchange for his life, Cuéllar had a dozen men at his command, but seven of them were flybait, down in Val Verde County, and an eighth—Azuela—should be in the wind by now, getting as far away as possible before any more shit hit the fan.
As they entered Ozona from the south, Grimaldi spoke up for the first time in a dozen miles. “I know this guy we’re after is connected to The Office, as they call it, but how does he get us any closer to whoever may or may not be pretending he’s the second coming of Don Pablo?”
“I doubt that he will,” Bolan replied. “But Cuéllar absolutely knows whoever he works for, in Medellín or wherever they hang up their hats.”
“And since Azuela couldn’t name the boss—”
“Cuéllar will, unless I miss my guess.”
“He’s bound to balk at giving up that kind of information.”
“So we’ll have to be persuasive.”
“I can do that.”
Flying in the Bell had cut their travel time from Del Rio, give or take 113 miles, but Bolan didn’t want to hit Cuéllar’s place before sundown. By then the drug lord’s lieutenant should be getting antsy and would have feelers out to learn what had become of his 150 kilos. Even driving overland, stopping for goods or gas along the way, the load should have arrived within a couple of hours of the RAV4s being loaded. Now the dope, the cars and his eight men were missing.
Would Cuéllar send his last four men to find the rest? Doubtful. More likely, he would watch and wait awhile, start making calls—first to the cells of his gunmen, then anybody else that he could think of—and maybe even alert his boss in Colombia.
If roving deputies had found the killing ground and called it in, Bolan would change his take on how Cuéllar had to be be feeling. Scratch “nervous” and make it “mad as hell.”
And mad was good. A raging man was bound to make mistakes.
“We may as well stop for a bite to eat,” Bolan said. “Kill some time and let the sun go down.”
“Suits me.”
Crossing Ozona through its business district, Highway 163 became Avenue E, with restaurants scattered among its shops and offices. “You feel like Mexican?” Grimaldi asked. “Your other choices would be steak, fried chicken or burgers.”
“Mexican’s good,” Bolan replied. “But suit yourself. Wherever’s easiest to park and get away from in a hurry.”
“Right. El Pollo Loco’s got some curb appeal, I guess.”
“The Crazy Chicken?”
“Hey,” Grimaldi answered back. “It’s shaping up to be that kind of day.”
* * *
After lunch, or rather an early dinner, they sat outside in the Impala for a short while, going over the rough map Ignacio Azuela had supplied, drawing it freehand in a spiral notepad Bolan carried with him. It was crude, but should be adequate—unless of course their captive from this morning had been lying all along.
According to the map, they should follow 163 due north, past the Ozona Country Club and out of town, into the open, arid countryside. Within a half mile of the city limits, give or take, the highway forked, and they’d veer left onto Highway 137, also known as FM 865, for “farm to market.” Keep on for another four, five miles, and they would hit a county highway—FM 204—that linked 137 up to U.S. Route 190, running east to west from New Orleans to San Antonio. Another mile or so on FM 204, and they should see a private road with mounted longhorn-bull horns set atop a wooden gate. They’d see a mailbox labeled RODRIGUEZ, although nobody of that name lived on the ranch or ever had, according to Azuela.
“Man, I hope he wasn’t pissing in our ear,” Grimaldi said, when they were nearly there, dusk coming over them like vast, silent bat’s wings.
“Only one way to find out. Go past the gate and look for someplace we can stash the car without driving it into an arroyo.”
“Right.”
Full dark had fallen on the desert by the time they had found a place to leave the Chevy, changed into the same camo fatigues they’d worn that morning, in Val Verde County, and strapped on their gun belts and web gear. The Steyrs held fresh magazines, and neither of their pistols had been fired, but Bolan did replace the frag grenade he’d used to close the cartel’s tunnel temporarily. With any luck, border patrolmen or a sheriff’s deputy would find the site and shut that passage down for good, but the Executioner knew another one, and likely better, would be opened somewhere else before the month was out.
True Evil never died.
Across the flats, close to a mile distant, they saw lights burning in a ranch house. No details were readily discernable from where they stood, but Bolan thought the house was more or less exactly where Azuela’s hand-drawn map had placed his jefe’s hideaway and staging area for shipments headed north.
“What do you think they raise out here?” Grimaldi asked. “I mean, besides the prices on cocaine.”
“Horns mounted on the gate,” Bolan replied. “My guess would be cattle.”
“Funny. I haven’t seen a steer since we entered the county. You?”
“Now that you mention it...”
“Or crops, either. It’s like the Dead Zone, Sarge. Gives me the creeps.”
“Just soldier through it,” Bolan told his friend.
“Yeah, right.”
They struck off toward the house, with just about enough light from a gibbous moon to let them navigate, avoiding prairie-dog burrows, night-prowling rattlesnakes and any traps Manolo Cuéllar might have set in place for uninvited visitors. The first and only fence that they encountered was a simple barbed-wire barrier, with four strands supported by rough wooden posts, and it wasn’t armed with an electric charge.
“No cameras that I can see,” Grimaldi added. “Señor Big’s been letting down his guard.”
“We haven’t made it to the house yet.” Bolan whispered the reminder. “But we know he’s running short of help around the place, after this morning.”
“And he can’t exactly call for temps from Medellín.”
They trekked on through the night, a reptile’s warning rattle from a distance, off to Bolan’s right, the only sign of any life on the landscape, except lights showing from their target’s hacienda.
When they were no more than a football field’s length from the house, both men raised their scopes and scanned the dwelling. It was Spanish style—no great surprise—with stucco walls and roofed with terra-cotta barrel tiles. In place of grass, there was a rock garden with cacti standing tall, and yucca plants in bloom. There was a swimming pool and redbrick barbecue in back, off a covered veranda, with three cars in the driveway. Bolan ticked off a red Jaguar F-Type convertible, a snow-white Mercedes C 300 that would be a devil to keep clean out in the desert and a Lexus LX SUV.
“I guess he doesn’t like to buy American,” Grimaldi said.
“Or try to hide how much he spends on wheels,” Bolan replied.
“The RAV4s from this morning must’ve been his workhorses.”
“Put out to pasture now.”
“You ever see Scarface?” Grimaldi asked.
“Long time ago.”
“That bit where the Colombians hit Tony’s place, then drive off in his high-priced cars.”
“These wouldn’t suit me,” Bolan said.
“I think I could get you to like them. That Jag, now...”
Grimaldi dropped his thought the moment that a burly character stepped out from a side door of the house, through which the kitchen appliances within were just visible, and started on a circuit of the house with what looked to be a Remington Adaptive Combat Rifle cradled in his arms. Both prowlers froze in place and waited, counting off the minut
es until he returned, rapped sharply on the kitchen door and was admitted by someone inside.
“Reduced in numbers,” Bolan said, “but not forgetting some essentials of security, at least.”
“Cuéllar and his four stooges,” Grimaldi said, “unless you think he’s called in reinforcements while we flew up here and stopped to nosh.”
“I doubt it,” Bolan said. “We should’ve seen more soldiers on the move outside.”
“Agreed. We’re going in, then?”
Bolan nodded, visible by wan moonlight, and answered, “That we are.”
“It’s gone,” Manolo Cuéllar told his second in command after slamming down the telephone receiver for his home’s landline with force enough to make it bounce back, tumbling from its cradle to the desktop.
“What’s gone, sir?” asked Jorge Salmona, who was standing just outside arm’s reach.
“What’s gone?” Cuéllar stared at the man as if he had gone crazy. “Let me think about that for a second, eh? So, how about the damn cocaine, all 150 kilos of it? Burned like garbage in the desert. That’s gone, idiot. As well, eight of my men who went to pick it up, along with three who met them from the tunnel, were killed. No, that’s wrong. I am mistaken. Only seven of our men were killed, shot down by Christ knows who. One of the eight is only missing. Should I count that as a benefit, Jorge? One man missing, and both the SUVs I sent to bring the shipment here.”
“Manolo...”
“Oh, and I forgot—the workers hired to haul the load from Mexico are dead as well, not that I give a shit about those peasants. Now the DEA and police have the whole damned place roped off. And how do you suppose I should report this to The Office? Call direct, or maybe send a Western Union telegram, so everyone between here and Medellín can read it, eh?”
“Boss, I don’t know what to say.” Salmona sounded both mortified and frightened, two appropriate emotions in the present circumstances.
“Then, for the love of Christ, don’t say anything. Unless you know some way to make this right, before our heads go on the chopping block, Jorge, then shut up!”
“Just as you wish.”
“And still, I hear you speaking! Don’t you understand what I have said to you?”
Salmona seemed on the verge of answering, but shut his mouth instead, sufficing with a somber nod.
One of their three surviving soldiers chose that moment to barge in without knocking. Granted, Cuéllar’s office door stood open, but the man, arriving with a rifle slung over his shoulder, muzzle pointed toward the floor, should certainly have heard the shouting from within.
Instead he started talking from the threshold. “Boss—”
Cuéllar rounded on him like a bear disturbed while feeding, and bellowed, “WHAT?” with force enough to make the young man rock backward on the stacked heels of his hand-tooled cowboy boots.
He ducked his head and muttered, “I’m sorry,” turning from the door as if to leave.
“Stop! Remind me of your name.”
“Garcia, sir.”
“Well, Garcia, first you interrupt us in the midst of crucial business and then try to run away? Speak, for the love of God!”
“Sir, we think there may be an intruder on the grounds.”
“We?” Cuéllar turned toward Salmona, then back toward Garcia. “Who thinks there is an intruder on my property?”
“Guillermo and I do, sir.”
“Oh, so the two of you? What leads you to believe this, then?”
“Guillermo thinks he saw—”
Before Garcia could complete his thought, a loud explosion rocked the house. Before the echoes stilled, dust rained down upon Cuéllar and his men from the rafters overhead, marking their jackets like old dandruff.”
“Jesus Christ!” Cuéllar blurted out. “A bomb?”
The first blast was followed a heatbeat later by a second blast, and then a wild burst of automatic-rifle fire.”
Garcia’s panicked eyes were flitting back and forth from Salmona to their boss, sliding his rifle’s sling off his shoulder, gripping the weapon in his large hands.
“What are you waiting for, idiot? Get out of here and kill whatever stinking maggot dares to invade my home!”
“Yes, sir!” And with that, Garcia ran to join the fight.
“So, this is how it ends, eh?” As he spoke, Cuéllar moved to a gun rack on the wall behind his desk. He snatched a Colt M4 carbine and tossed it to Salmona without looking, just expecting him to catch the weapon. Then he took down an HK416 and kept it for himself, cocking the rifle as he turned to face Salmona with a grim smile on his face.
“If this must be the end, we’ll put up such a fight that women will sing songs about it long after we’re dead.”
Salmona wondered if his boss had lost his mind. He sounded like some goddamned Viking king from that show on television with the hairy men and naked women, but Salmona kept that to himself.
Instead he trailed his lord and master into battle, answering, “Yes, sir. Many rousing songs.”
* * *
Four men remained on the grounds, if their informant had been accurate, but Bolan and Grimaldi had seen only one so far. They’d exercised caution as they approached the kitchen door, no outside lights betraying them, and Bolan was surprised to try the knob and find the last guy out on rounds hadn’t locked it.
A dumb mistake, and hopefully the last one these hardmen would ever make.
Bolan went first, palming an M68 frag grenade and tossing the armed bomb the full length of the modern kitchen before entering. He hunched down beside the door when it exploded with a smoky thunderclap. He gave the shrapnel fleeting time to score the walls, rattle the pots and pans, before he charged in with Grimaldi on his heels.
His next M68 sailed through another doorway, bouncing off the table in a formal dining room before the Composition B explosive blew and sprayed the room with steel fragments designed to kill over a radius of sixteen feet.
But there was no one in the dining room.
They met the opposition seconds later, two men armed with military rifles, tumbling out into a hallway just as Bolan and Grimaldi reached it. Neither of the two defenders had a chance to use their weapons, cut down in their tracks before they could acquire a target and react. The semiauto rounds from Steyr AUGs cut through them, sprayed the walls with bright red streamers that defaced the floral wallpaper and dribbled toward the gray slate floor.
“That’s half of them,” Grimaldi said, and Bolan hoped it wasn’t simply wishful thinking.
“Careful with Cuéllar, if possible,” he said. “I need to pick his brain while it’s intact.”
They knew what Cuéllar looked like, thanks to Stony Man. A call to Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman, while they were airborne over Southwest Texas, had the Farm’s resident cyber expert pulling a file from his extensive database. The photo of Cuéllar he had emailed to them was five years out of date, taken shortly before their guy had slipped out of prison in Bogotá, aided by La Modelo guards he’d bribed, but it was close enough.
Bolan would know his man when they met face-to-face.
Alas, still no intel on whoever had run The Office since the DEA got rid of Don Berna, but Cuéllar had to know where his orders came from, and unless the man died before they had a chance to talk, Bolan was counting on him to cooperate—like it or not.
Another shooter, who was older than the first two they’d disposed of, stuck his head out of a doorway to their left and sprayed a burst of fire one-handed, maybe from a MAC-10 or a Mini Uzi with a fat suppressor screwed onto its muzzle. He fired high, ripping through ceiling tiles, as Bolan and Grimaldi hit the floor, waiting a beat to see what happened next.
The gunman tried again after reloading, burning through his gun’s first magazine in something like three seconds flat. Maybe he thought he’d wounded one or both of the intruder
s, but he recognized his error as their twin assault rifles punched holes between his chin and beltline, dropping him to slide along the tile floor on a slick of blood.
By Ignacio Azuela’s estimate, that still left two defenders somewhere in the hacienda, Cuéllar and whomever he’d held back to cover him. Their only exit from the house, as far as Bolan knew, would be through the front door. But if they reached the cars out there...
“Come on!” he urged Grimaldi, scrambling to his feet.
The ace pilot didn’t answer verbally, but rose and followed Bolan down the hallway, drifting to his right and covering the doors along the left-hand side, while Bolan took the right. Along the way, they passed a room with one glass wall that must have offered occupants a panoramic view by daylight, shrouded now by night.
And the front door, dammit, was open when they reached it. Bolan heard an engine revving in the driveway, and was maybe moving faster than he should have when a muzzle-flash came from his left. He dropped to the floor, rolling to meet the hostile fire with two quick autobursts from his Steyr. Grimaldi’s rifle made it three, and when the dying man collapsed in front of them, the Executioner was glad to see he didn’t recognize the blood-flecked face.
Tires were squealing now, out front, and Bolan cleared the open entryway in three long strides, gaining the porch just as the ragtop Jaguar found traction and started powering away. The Steyr’s telescopic sight combined with Bolan’s combat instinct as he hosed the vehicle, emptying his rifle’s magazine, then pulled his .44 Magnum and banged off four quick rounds.
The sportster swerved and clipped the Lexus SUV, then plowed into the white Mercedes. It was going nowhere after that, and neither was the man behind its steering wheel, until Bolan popped his door and dragged him clear.
Killing Kings Page 4