Killing Kings

by Don Pendleton

  “Mr. Sarmiento was surprised by this development,” he said. “Surprised, but pleased. I phoned him while you were, shall we say, indisposed? We’re on our way to see him now. He’d hoped to meet with someone else, of course—the phantom Pablo Escobar, perhaps—but I’m afraid you’ll have to do, for now.”

  “You son of a whore,” she replied, making him laugh aloud.

  “Such language from a proper lady like yourself,” Roldán replied. “I would be shocked, but honestly, that’s pretty tame. I’ve seen and heard it all. You, on the other hand, still have a new experience in store.”

  To that, she offered no reply, so he pressed on. “You won’t only be meeting Mr. Sarmiento. He is waiting for you with the Butcher. Do you know him?”

  No response from the back seat.

  “Of course his nickname says it all. I grant you that he isn’t much to look at—fat, and gaining more weight all the time, as he continues losing hair—but he is useful to The Office. Yes, indeed. At times like this, you could say he’s essential. And he loves his work, our Butcher. Loves it very much—more than sex I think...although, with someone like yourself to work on, maybe he’ll combine business with playtime, eh?”

  During their brief phone conversation, Sarmiento had informed Roldán that he was not at home, run off his property by the team of gunners from Culiacán. But he’d escaped unharmed, and that was all that mattered. He was with the Butcher now, at an address he had provided to Roldán, and waiting to receive the captured traitor.

  “Do you think he’ll let me stay and watch?” Roldán inquired, still baiting her. “I hope so. If there’s one thing I’d enjoy more than eliminating Pablo’s so-called ghost, it would be watching you dissected, screaming till your throat bursts.”

  And still nothing from behind him.

  “That’s right, little bitch. Save your strength. You’ll need it very soon.”

  Zona 1, Envigado

  “Your name’s Geronimo?” Grimaldi asked. “For real?”

  “Jerónimo,” their captive stated, correcting the pilot’s pronunciation. “Jerónimo Baillères. That is all I will tell you gringos, but you ought to know my name before I kill you.”

  “He’s got spunk—I give him that,” Grimaldi said, grinning.

  “Sounds more like stupid arrogance,” Bolan replied. Then to Baillères, he said, “If anybody’s dying here today, that would be you.”

  “I’m not afraid of you, assholes.”

  “You may have noticed that you’re tied up to a chair and all your men are dead, back at Rodrigo’s place.”

  “Not all my men. When the news of this gets back to Culiacán, they will be turning out in waves to slaughter you, your families and anybody else you’ve ever known.”

  “I’ll risk it,” Bolan said. “And you won’t be around to see it, if it happens.”

  “Kill me, then. Or start with torture. I don’t break so easy.”

  “Everybody breaks,” Boaln replied. “But first, suppose I ask you something without any pressure. How’d that be?”

  Baillères shrugged to the extent his bindings would allow, and looked around the long-abandoned warehouse where they’d taken him. Out front, its sign read PARA ALQUILAR—For Lease—faded from long exposure to the elements.

  “Just nod if I get warm,” Bolan suggested. “I’m thinking your bosses sent you down because somebody had been interfering with your shipments to the States. They think it might be Sarmiento, and they’re wondering if he’s the guy going around Medellín, pretending he’s the second coming of Don Pablo, eh?”

  Another shrug, and then Baillères told Bolan, “Ghosts are lies that parents tell their children who are too young to know better. I piss on them. But if a clever man convinced some idiots he was Pablo come back from the dead, it covers anything he does himself, right?”

  “Right, except you didn’t take it far enough. A bit more homework, and you would’ve known Sarmiento has been taking losses, too. Somebody’s hitting him, the same time they play games with you.”

  “It’s all the same to me,” Baillères replied. “I take my orders and obey them. I perform the task required. I don’t ask questions, gringo, or the next contract might have my name on it. You, I think, are much the same.”

  “Not even close, pal,” Grimaldi said.

  “Yet you killed eighteen of my gunmen, and here I am. You call that a clean sweep, sí?”

  “I call it taking out the trash,”Grimaldi said.

  “And who takes you out, when your time is done?”

  Bolan interrupted their exchange, asking Baillères, “So, that’s all you know about Don Pablo turning up again, after so many years? Your bosses sent you down to waste Sarmiento, and that’s it.”

  “And I have failed, thanks to you sons of whores. The penalty for failure is a slow, excruciating death. You may as well—”

  The slug from Bolan’s pistol drilled through their captive’s forehead, and he slumped into the ropes that bound him, going limp.

  “Okay, then,” Grimaldi said. “What’s Plan B?”

  “I’m calling Carolina,” Bolan replied, taking out his cell phone.

  But the lady didn’t answer, four calls placed over a span of twenty minutes going straight to voice mail, while Jerónimo Baillères cooled down toward room temperature.

  “All right, what’s Plan C?” Grimaldi asked him.

  “Find another way to reach Sarmiento,” Bolan said. “And something tells me we should make it snappy.”

  Chapter Nine

  Somewhere in Medellín

  Carolina Cabrera had no clue where Omar Roldán might be taking her. His Audi turned right, turned left, wove through traffic, gathered speed on open roads, braked for some traffic lights and revved to make it through others. Craning her stiff neck toward the only window visible, she first saw a building, later trees, and then more buildings, none of which she recognized from her position on the car’s back seat.

  She couldn’t even tell what time it was, or how much time had elapsed. When she was still unconscious from the stun gun, Roldán had removed her Apple Watch to bind her wrists, but even if he’d left it on, it would’ve been behind her back and out of sight. Useless.

  When they had finally stopped, Roldán seemed almost gleeful, telling her, “We’re here. Are you excited yet, my little minx?”

  She would have cursed him, but he didn’t seem to mind, so she decided it would be a waste of breath.

  In order to remove her from the Audi, Roldán opened the door behind the driver’s seat and gripped the collar of her blouse with his right hand, sliding his left around to let her see the stun gun he was holding. “It’s no use to struggle,” he advised her. “If you’re wise, you won’t force me to shock you and, perhaps, rip off your clothes. You want to make a decent first impression on the Butcher, yes?”

  Cabrera didn’t fight, but it was not from fear of being shocked again or otherwise injured. Roldán’s position at her head, with her hands zip-tied behind her back, meant that she couldn’t strike him as he dragged her from the car. Likewise, with ankles bound, she couldn’t have kicked him, even had she wanted to.

  Nor, as it happened, could she stand and walk. That seemed to suit Roldán, as he dragged her across the blacktop of a parking lot that lay behind a strip mall gone to seed. Two other vehicles were in the lot, besides his Audi: a small motorcycle and a black Acura RDX, one of the smaller SUVs available.

  As Roldán dragged her from the asphalt to a concrete sidewalk, then along a ramp built for deliveries to some shop long defunct, he said, “Forgive me if I’m ruining your stockings, eh? I know it’s not polite on a first date, but that’s life—while it lasts.”

  At last they reached the door. It was unlocked—by Sarmiento or whoever was expecting them, apparently—and she was sliding over old linoleum, yellowed with age. A moment
later, Cabrera heard Sarmiento’s voice saying, “Omar, at last. It seems you had some difficulty with this bitch.”

  “Nothing serious, boss,” Roldán replied.

  “Your cheek says otherwise.”

  “She knows a trick or two,” the lieutenant admitted. “But as you can see, she has no fight left in her now.”

  “Cut off these zip ties and I’ll show you who can fight, prick.”

  Sarmiento and another man she couldn’t see yet laughed at that, and then Roldán kicked her in the lower back, sending a bolt of pain through one kidney.

  “Now, now,” the unseen stranger said. “Don’t hurry matters. Breaking her is my job.”

  “And you do it well, Mauricio,” Sarmiento told the third man.

  Then to Roldán, “Omar, help Mauricio put her on the table, eh?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  Roldán lifted Cabrera by the armpits, and she got her first glimpse of the third man while he gripped her feet, the pair of them lifting her up and placing her atop a table made of stainless steel, or possibly aluminum. The man Sarmiento called Mauricio was of average height but verging on obese. Clearly he loved to eat and made no effort to reduce his weight through exercise, but there was power in his hands and arms. His face was round, beneath a thinning crown of ginger hair. A port-wine birthmark marred the right side of his jaw and strayed across his double chins to disappear inside the collar of a chambray shirt.

  “So, you’re the Butcher,” she observed.

  He smiled, thin lips the color of raw liver drawing back from yellowed teeth. “I’m pleased you’ve heard of me,” he said. “In my trade, reputations are important.”

  “I first heard of you today,” she said, “but I’d have known you anyway. You smell like tainted meat.”

  Mauricio lost his smile at that, a small sound like a growl rising up from his bloated abdomen.

  “It isn’t wise to make him angry, Carolina,” Sarmiento said.

  “It is of no importance,” Mauricio told him. “We must dismiss such petty things and focus on the task at hand.”

  He moved away and then came back, pushing a metal cart on rollers, one wheel squeaking like a mouse caught in a trap. The cart’s two shelves bore a mixture of peculiar implements, some surgical devices that she recognized, others familiar household implements, and some she’d never seen before.

  It made her sick to see them all: a scalpel lying beside a butcher’s knife; an icepick set beside a large corkscrew; scissors and forceps; bamboo skewers and a speculum; a tack hammer and bone saw; pliers and a rat-tail file. The lower shelf held larger items: a propane torch and an auto battery with jumper cables coiled around it; something that might have been a power sander once, before it spouted thorns; an object that Mauricio must have made himself, consisting of a pistol grip at one end and a long serrated blade that was at least three inches wide.

  None of it had been washed recently, and never sterilized. She recognized some of the stains as old, dried blood, and closed her eyes before she had to think about the rest.

  “And now, where shall we start?” the Butcher said.

  “You choose,” Sarmiento told him.

  Then to Cabrera, “Later, if you still can hear me, would you like to know the name of Pablo’s ghost?”

  El Poblado, Medellín

  Salvador Sanchez had an oppressive sense of being frozen out and left behind by late-breaking events in Antioquia. Despite serving as one of Rodrigo Sarmiento’s lieutenants, Sanchez had to wonder if he was being singled out for ostracism now, during The Office’s time of crisis, and if so, he’d had no explanation as to why.

  It had begun with a series of attacks against members of The Office and its drug shipments to the United States. At the same time, other attacks—nearly identical—had targeted some of The Office’s enemies and foremost rivals in the drug trade, striking members of the now-defunct Cali Cartel that had allegedly supplanted Escobar’s cartel after his death, as well as certin Mexican traffickers who’d muscled in on turf once claimed by Medellín and—stranger still—on their competitors, as well.

  It seemed almost, to Sanchez, as if someone aimed to act as Don Pablo would have behaved, had he lived on past 1993, annihilating competition from the wilds of Antioquia up to the Tex-Mex border and beyond.

  The only thing not replicated yet was Pablo’s penchant for assassinating public figures who defied him, even with the slightest hint of disobedience to his commands. From 1984 until he was eliminated, Escobar’s victims included one presidential candidate, one Colombian attorney general, two ministers of justice, twelve Supreme Court justices, two Superior Court judges, a colonel with the National Police, Antioquia’s governor and police commander, two prominent newspaper owners, and one TV network director. An airline bombing carried out on Pablo’s order killed 107 passengers and crewmembers. Meant to murder the nation’s director of security at his Bogotá office, a 1,100-pound truck bomb killed forty-nine victims and wounded another 600.

  Would a resurrection of such narcoterrorism be the next step in dead Pablo’s war from beyond the grave? Sanchez had no reason to doubt it, but his worry lately had been focused on himself.

  In the present atmosphere, death might come calling on Sanchez in one of three ways: from the minions of Don Pablo’s avatar; from rivals of The Office who believed that Sarmiento’s syndciate had made assaults upon their men and property; or finally from Sarmiento himself, panicked and lashing out blindly at any of his own subordinates whom he suspected of betraying him.

  Danger was de rigueur for drug cartel members, particularly those who’d climbed the ladder of command to claim some measure of authority, and those who trafficked in cocaine soon learned to trust no one, whether they came as enemies or as friends. Sanchez had eliminated some of his own friends on orders from his boss. They in turn had friends who would not soon forget his treachery, much less forgive.

  And that was why, of late, his mind had turned to getting out, away from Medellín and Antioquia, likely out of Colombia itself. He had been born and raised there, but his homeland’s motto—Freedom and Order—had become a sick joke long before Sanchez’s birth.

  He could afford to run and hide in any country of his choice. Money was not a problem, since he had been skimming from The Office almost from the moment when he joined the syndicate, some sixteen years ago. Thus far there’d been no indication that his thefts had drawn attention; if they had, Sanchez assumed that he would have been murdered slowly, agonizingly, as soon as that discovery was made. The money he had taken wasn’t banked. It drew no interest compounded monthly, but increased only by having fresh loot added to stash secreted in a storage unit five kilometers from his home.

  But even with a small fortune in hand, escaping still would be a dicey proposition. All of Sarmiento’s lieutenants were expected to report at weekly intervals—more often when emergencies occurred, as had become routine of late. Once he broke contact, that anomaly would launch a search for him, first to determine whether he’d been killed or kidnapped by foes of The Office, and then, once he was branded as a traitor, to chase after him and bring him home.

  Sanchez glanced around his building’s parking lot before proceeding to his own apartment, let himself inside and double-locked the door behind him. He was just beginning to relax when he switched on the lights and found two gringos waiting for him on his couch, pistols in hand.

  “Glad you finally got home,” one of them said. “Ready to answer questions, Salvador?”

  * * *

  “You hang around Horizon Enterprises down in Envigado, right?” Grimaldi asked Sanchez.

  Relieved of his pistol and a switchblade knife, Sanchez sat facing his two uninvited guests from a tall-backed wing chair. Bolan and Grimaldi had, of course, already checked beneath the chair’s cushion for any hidden weapons, while they waited for Sanchez to show up.

  “I’v
e visited their office on occasion,” he replied. “I would not say I ‘hang around.’”

  “You go when Sarmiento calls you,” Bolan said, not making it a question. “You get orders from him that he won’t trust to a telephone.”

  “Orders? You are mistaken, Senor Whoever You Are. I am a real-estate developer whose business sometimes intersects Horizon’s. That is—”

  “Cut the crap,” Grimaldi interrupted him. “What Realtor goes around town with a gun and switchblade?”

  Sanchez forced a smile as he said, “This is Medellín. Despite the propaganda of our mayor and city council, things are still unsettled and police are...shall we say, inappropriate. Wise men look out for themselves whenever possible.”

  “My friend told you to cut the crap,” Bolan said. “If you’re wise, you’ll take him seriously.”

  “But I—”

  “Carolina Cabrera,” Bolan stated. “You know her, true?”

  “The assistant?” Sanchez was trying for bewilderment and not quite making it. “I’ve met her once or twice, I think, along with the receptionist. On one occasion I believe I also saw the janitor.”

  A pistol shot grazed Sanchez’s arm, muffled by the sound suppressor Bolan had affixed to his weapon’s muzzle. Blood squirted from the graze, and Sanchez yelped as if he’d grasped a live electric wire.

  “Madre de Dios! You shot me!” the syndicate lieutenant blurted out.

  “By Jove, I think he’s got it,” Grimaldi quipped.

  “Each time, I get a little closer to the bull’s-eye,” Bolan said. “Let’s start again. You know Carolina Cabrera.”

  “Yes.”

  “Better. Now, do you know where we can find her? Yes or no.”

  “Find her? If she is not at work or at her home, wherever that may be—”

  A second muffled shot grazed Sanchez’s uninjured arm, biting a little deeper than the first.

  “Mierda! Will you stop that?”