The president began to sputter. “I cannot... It is unheard of... You...”
“You’re coming,” Bolan said, ending the argument. “We can’t leave you here, making calls and trying to reverse the transfers, right? Consider it an early birthday treat.”
“A treat? You have killed me!” he groaned.
Kugler’s assistant met them as they left the vault, assessing Kugler’s pallid face and asking him, “Are you quite well, sir?”
“Fine, fine, Margalida. I forgot these gentlemen and I had an appointment for a working brunch.”|
“Forgot, sir?” She repeated it as if her mind couldn’t attach the simple verb to her superior and make it stick.
“Yes, yes. Perhaps an hour, maybe less. If anything transpires while I am gone, you handle it for me.”
“Of course, sir. Certainly, I understand.”
Outside, Bolan and Grimaldi walked Kugler to their Mustang, put him in the back seat and drove away, with Bolan half turned in the shotgun seat to face their passenger.
“So far, so good,” he told Kugler. “Your last decision now is how you see the rest of your life playing out.”
“What life,” the man from BGA replied bitterly. “When the...our investors...learn what I have done to them... My God. If you’re merciful at all, just kill me now.”
Grimaldi, behind the wheel, chided him. “That’s no way to talk, Kugey. We all have choices, right?”
“Mine is to die now and be thrown into the street, or wait until my clients torture me to death. I’ve heard it can take weeks.”
“You’ve overlooked Door Number Three,” Bolan replied.
“What is that? Are you crazy?” he asked, staring back at Bolan as if he truly believed the man had lost his mind.
“Witness protection,” Bolan said. “They have it in Colombia, but I suspect you would be safer in the States. We can arrange your flight to Bogotá and a reception at the US Embassy.”
“No, no. My family...”
“You left them sitting way out on a shaky limb,” Grimaldi said. “The embassy might have a ladder for them. Otherwise your clients will be coming with their chainsaws.”
“But I don’t know anything!” The almost-birthday-boy was whining now.
“You know plenty,” Bolan replied. “The only question is, would you prefer to help your family, or would you rather take your secrets to the grave?”
“I’m trapped,” Kugler said.
“And you built the cage yourself,” Bola reminded him.
The banker heaved a weary sigh, then said, “It shall be as you say. I choose the embassy. I will tell them what I can.”
“Good choice,” Bolan replied. “But first—”
“What now?” The question almost came out as a wail.
“Some information we can use, short-term,” the Executioner told him.
Kugler slumped back into his seat, a broken man. “Yes, yes. Go on. Ask it.”
“It’s not so much,” he assured the older man. “Just tell us everything you know about Rodrigo Sarmiento and Horizon Enterprises LLC.”
Chapter Seven
José María Córdova International Airport, Medellín
Whenever possible, Jerónimo Baillères liked to travel in the lap of luxury. It suited him, and while his work sometimes required playacting of a coarser kind, Baillères made up for it whenever he could.
Today was one such time.
Baillères and his crew of eighteen young killers had flown 4,000 miles from Culiacán Rosales, southeastward to Medellín, aboard a private business jet. The Embraer Legacy 650 was but one of the Sonora Cartel’s fleet. It measured nearly eighty-seven feet in length, with a sixty-nine-foot wingspan. Two men crewed the jet, while its luxurious cabin accommodated nineteen passengers in absolute comfort.
The Legacy 650’s baggage compartment measured 285 cubic feet, but most of it went unused on this trip. Baillères and his gunmen traveled light, one change of decent clothes apiece, and that only in case the outfits they wore down to Medellín got bloody while they carried out their job.
Atypically, the team traveled unarmed, except for folding knives that were ignored when they boarded at Culiacán’s Bachigualato Federal International Airport. Passengers landing in Medellín were not subjected to the same security procedures that applied to those departing, so no problem there.
As for guns and ammunition, which they’d definitely need during their stay, firearms were the only things that were easier to find in Medellín than drugs. Granted, Colombia had banned all private carrying of guns for one year, during 2016, in an effort to reduce endemic mayhem, but the statute was a joke and virtually unenforceable until shooting broke out. Police knew of five million guns in circulation—one for every ten citizens at the last census, each required to hold a firearms license—but that was only the tip of a lethal iceberg. The whole world knew that Don Berna Murillo had surrendered 20,000 guns while trying to negotiate a lenient prison term, and his wasn’t the largest outlaw arsenal around.
After checking in with Customs—nothing to declare, their nineteen passports fraudulent but undetectable by overworked and underpaid agents—Baillères and his team boarded four rental cars reserved under false names and drove to their hotel in the Bombona neighborhood. They’d eaten well while in the air, and paused just long enough in their six suites, reserved under a fabricated name that matched the one on the credit card Baillères carried, then went off to fetch their weapons from a warehouse near Plaza Botero.
The man who greeted them was brusque, which pleased Jerónimo Baillères. He had no love for Colombians, and reckoned that they hated him in turn. This one would take the cartel’s dirty money, though, supplying guns whose serial numbers would lead police to a dead-end, as they had been stolen from factories or loading docks in the United States. The weapons would be used and left behind when they flew back to Mexico, perhaps recycled to street gangs or broken down and dumped into the nearest handy lake.
Baillères left his men to browse, selecting two firearms apiece: one long gun and one pistol. When they left the warehouse, they were carrying heavy duffel bags that contained nine automatic rifles, seven submachine guns and two military shotguns, both of which were 12-gauge. Each man carried on his person the handgun he’d chosen, holsters being added to the final tab, settled with cash.
The warehouse man thanked Baillères, telling him to drop by anytime, while clearly hoping that he’d never catch a glimpse of them again. Being Colombian, he likely wished them dead. Being a savvy businessman, he knew that any effort to betray Baillères would have fatal consequences for himself, his family and his friends.
The cartel was notorious for its extreme reaction to betrayal, having earned its reputation as the “Blood Alliance” for good reason. Ruling over three states that drug enforcement agents liked to call the Golden Triangle—Chihuahua, Durango and Sinaloa—its long feud with the rival Tijuana Cartel was a grisly legend, freighted with the toll of innocent bystanders slain in ambuscades. Other victims included journalists and police who spurned bribes, apparently preferring lead to gold.
Today’s visit to Medellín was payback, ordered up by none other than aging Don Ismael Zambada García himself. Foolish Colombians had trespassed on the cartel’s turf, murdered a number of its men, and while they’d tried to blame it on the spector of a man long dead, Zambada blamed The Office of Envigado, known successor to the Medellín Cartel once led by Pablo Escobar.
Jerónimo Baillères placed no stock in ghosts. Men, on the other hand, he killed for profit and with pleasure. Now in Antioquia, he felt like starting at the top.
Horizon Enterprises LLC, Envigado
Rodrigo Sarmiento faced Omar Roldán across a desk that was hand-carved from Brazilian mahogany. “You’re certain that they come from Sinaloa?” the drug lord asked.
“Absolutely. Beyond
any doubt. Their flight was nonstop out of Culiacán.”
“And their identities? No question of their link to the cartel?”
“They use false names, of course, boss, but some of them were recognized. Their leader is the one they call Jerónimo.”
“Baillères, yes. I am familiar with that piece of shit. Where are they right now?”
“Unknown, at this moment. I have their hotel reservation and room numbers. Our soldiers could lie in wait for them.”
“Wait? Do you think they’re on vacation, Omar? Maybe off to see the sights in Medellín?”
“Sir, I only meant—”
“Enough,” Rodrigo interrupted his lieutenant. “They are here to hurt us—kill us if they can. If we give them the opportunity.”
“Our men are scouring the city,” Roldán said. “When they surface again—”
“It may already be too late. I don’t intend to die while waiting, sitting on my hands. Do you, Omar?”
“No, sir, definitely not.”
“All right, then. First thing, get in touch with anyone and everyone who serves us. Everyone, regardless of their status, from top-ranking police to taxi drivers, down to pimps and whores, dealers and addicts. Someone will see Jerónimo and his soldiers. Pablo may be a ghost, but Mexicans are not invisible.”
Roldán laughed, but it sounded brittle, forced. “It shall be done, sir.”
“And when you’ve found them, leave none breathing but Jerónimo. I want to question him, myself.”
“Shall I summon the Butcher?”
“Good idea,” Sarmiento said.
Mauricio Yépez, aka the Butcher, was a specialist in torture. It was said that he had learned his art from CIA instructors, having studied at their School of the Americas—more recently WHINSEC, the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation—when he was a young sergeant in Colombia’s National Army, later serving the Administrative Department of Security. After Pablo Escobar had destroyed that agency’s Bogotá office with an 1,100-pound car bomb, the Butcher saw the light and changed sides, growing fat and wealthy ever since by weeding out informers and protracting the death agonies of hated rivals.
Sarmiento hoped to grill Jerónimo Baillères on his own, but if he needed any help, there was none better than the Butcher.
Rising from his deep chair, Roldán said, “I will call him now, sir.”
“The others first,” Sarmiento ordered. “I can’t question him until we find him first, and his men have been eliminated.”
“Yes, of course. How stupid of me.”
Sarmiento did not contradict his underling. It had been stupid on Roldán’s part, losing track of their priorities in his obsequious bid to ingratiate himself unnecessarily. That kind of fuzzy thinking ultimately led to errors, and from errors in a combat situation, it was only one short step further to sudden death.
With Roldán’s dark complexion, Sarmiento couldn’t tell if he was blushing, but he sensed the other man’s embarrassment as he stood waiting for his boss to excuse him and reassure him that he wasn’t stupid after all. It took another moment for Roldán to realize that he might wait forever. It had never been Sarmiento’s way to compliment subordinates for being merely adequate. He much preferred to chastise them for their mistakes, and preferably before witnesses to amplify their shame. He had no desire for menials to love him, whether they were cartel functionaries or the prostitutes he required to scratch an itch for him at monthly intervals.
Fear was the motivator that had driven him from childhood poverty in Medellín’s Comuna 13 slum, made over since his time with cable cars and hillside escalators, stinking shacks replaced by small but brightly painted homes, graced with a library and art gallery that were free to all. That fear—of starving, falling prey to random violence or being sucked into the child-sex trade—had driven Sarmiento to become an all-or-nothing fighter, stripped of conscience, striving to succeed at any cost.
Others, no doubt, regarded him as one to emulate and to remove, if possible, from power. That was fine, as long as he remained alert and managed to eliminate his adversaries first.
“Well,” he now asked Roldán, “is there anything else?”
“No, sir, nothing. I’m going now.”
“Be swift, Omar. My head is not the only one Jerónimo will carry back to Culiacán, given the opportunity.”
“Yes, sir. Will you be here if I need to reach you?”
“No. I’m going home shortly, to await news there. I only have a few papers to sign.”
“Until we speak again.” Nodding, Roldán exited Sarmiento’s office, leaving his superior to smile at how much his subordinate resembled an unpleasant dashboard bobblehead.
Palma de Mayorca, Envigado
“Would you call this neighborhood a suburb of a suburb?” Grimaldi asked. “Would that make it a sub-suburb?”
“It looks like money, whatever you call it,” Bolan answered from the Mustang’s shotgun seat.
“You got that right. No panhandlers outside the bodegas.”
Palma de Mayorca was an upscale neighborhood on Envigado’s eastern boundary, the parking lots of its department stores shaded by palm trees from the Spanish island of Mallorca, for which it was named. The house they wanted—courtesy of Rudolf Kugler’s information—stood on Loma del Escobero, one block from a gym called Powerclub Envigado.
After Kugler told them everything he could recall about The Office, they had left him with a DEA agent who’d promised the banker an airlift out to Bogotá within the hour, on a diplomatic flight. Once there, he’d be sequestered at the US Embassy until arrangements could be made with someone there—likely the FBI’s legal attaché—for enrollment in WITSEC and transportation onward to the States.
Oddly the banker had said nothing more about his family before they’d dropped him off, but that was out of Bolan’s hands. Some squealers, when they turned, went underground alone, while others balked until their wives and children—and sometimes mistresses—were added to the list for relocation under new IDs, presumably untraceable. The next time Kugler surfaced, if he ever did, would be to testify against the BGA clients whose felonies he would recount.
Assuming charges could be filed against them, that grand juries would indict, that they could be located and that foreign nations would agree to extradition, Bolan knew the procedure could take years, and from the way Kugler had looked when Bolan left him, who knew whether he would even live that long?
“Bingo!” Grimaldi said, his exclamation interrupting Bolan’s reverie.
“Which one?” he asked.
“The big split-level up ahead, left side.”
“Got it.”
The spacious home was faced with brick, part of its upper living area stacked over a two-car garage. The property was fenced, wrought iron with decorative spikes on top, and while the fence was tall enough to stop half-hearted trespassers, Bolan knew that it wouldn’t interfere with a determined enemy. He wondered if the walls were fortified, the doors and windows bulletproof, but there was only one way to find out.
Grimaldi parked downrange and they kept watch via the Mustang’s mirrors, the Stony Man pilot holding an Envigado street map open, up against the steering wheel, in case a nosy neighbor or police patrolman thought their car seemed out of place. Getting inside would raise a ruckus, and Bolan preferred trying at night, but by the same token, he hated wasting time. If Sarmiento was at home...
“Heads up,” Grimaldi said. “We’ve got a live one.”
It was true. The gate spanning their quarry’s driveway had begun retracting on its own, grumbling along a lubricated track, and then a Bentley Turbo R sedan rolled into view, slowing enough to let the driveway gate open completely, and then passed through. Like magic, as the street-side gate began to close again, one of the dual garage doors elevated, and the Bentley disappeared inside.
�
��Honey, he’s home,” Grimaldi said.
“Too bad about that gate,” Bolan replied. “We’ll stand out like a couple of sore thumbs climbing the fence and packing heat.”
The residents of Palma de Mayorca, he imagined, would be quick to telephone police, and said police—if they enjoyed their tenure on the force—would hasten to respond. Bolan wanted Sarmiento to himself, not caught in a cross fire with the authorities, and the Executioner didn’t shoot it out with cops in any case.
Police, in his experience, ranged from the shining heroes of society to utter scum, the latter capable of anything from robbery and rape to murder, but Bolan had made a conscientious choice at the beginning of his one-man war against the Mafia. Whether a given officer was straight and honorable, drunk and lazy, or as crooked as a corkscrew, Bolan treated all of them as “soldiers of the same side,” who had sworn oaths to uphold the law at any cost, even their lives. He wouldn’t kill a cop, regardless of the circumstances, though his scruples had extended on occasion to disarming, handcuffing and coldcocking specific officers who disgraced their oaths and answered to a lower power.
Some of those who’d crossed his path had ended up in prison, never safe or comfortable for an ex-lawman who’d helped lock up his neighbors on the cellblock. Once the courts and prosecutors did their thing, Bolan could wash his hands of it and let the chips fall where they might.
But he would not provoke a firefight with police in a posh suburb, placing both their lives and the lives of innocent neighbors at risk.
“You want to try around in back?” Grimaldi asked. “I don’t see any garbage cans out front. Maybe an alley runs behind the houses?”
“Worth a try,” Bolan replied, but his partner still had his hand on the Mustang’s ignition key when the Executioner added, “Wait a sec.”
Two dark sedans were rolling north along Sarmiento’s block, and when he checked the rearview mirror, Bolan saw two more approaching from behind him, southbound. All of them pulled up and parked outside the drug lord’s’s house, two cars pointed in each direction, although standing on the same side of the street.
Killing Kings Page 8