Killing Kings

by Don Pendleton

  She was emerging from the station’s office, having paid her bill, when Sarmiento sidled up to her and let her see the Browning Hi-Power tucked underneath his windbreaker, saying, “I need to take a little ride with you—not far. Resist me, and consider this your dying day.”

  She hadn’t argued; she even offered him the keys and vehicle if he would let her go, but since that meant she’d run back to the office, and the peasant on the register would doubtless call the police, Sarmiento ordered her to drive, instead.

  Drive where?

  Sarmiento hadn’t made his mind up yet. He had to ditch the woman first, lulling her with a promise that he’d leave her safe, and then consider where to go, whom he could trust. That list was becoming shorter, and he’d just sacrificed his second-in-command to save himself.

  “Up there,” he told the blonde. “Turn left into that side street. You can get out, and you need only to forget this ever happened.”

  “A thousand thank-yous.”

  Indeed. It nearly made Rodrigo laugh, the way pathetic sheep in human guise fawned over their superiors, grateful for simply being left to breathe in peace.

  His drafted driver did as she was told, turned down the side street flanked by rooming houses and a couple of convenience stores. “We’re all done now,” Sarmiento told her. “Leave the key, get out and walk away. Don’t run or try to draw attention until I am gone.”

  “No, mister, I won’t.”

  “Good girl.”

  She slid out of the driver’s seat and stepped back from the Honda, waiting until Sarmiento walked around behind the little car and took her place. Before closing the driver’s door, he said, “I do appreciate your help.”

  And shot her in the chest.

  She hit the pavement with a solid thud and lay unmoving. Sarmiento thought her dead—he’d meant to kill her, anyway—but if a neighbor were to summon help and the blonde managed to survive her wound, what of it? Could she offer a description of him to police? Assuming that she reached an officer he hadn’t bribed, and his or her superiors allowed that officer to press the case, what real harm could she do to Sarmiento.

  Pick him out from a lineup? The authorities would have to catch him first, then overcome objections from his high-priced lawyers.

  Match his DNA? To what? He’d never touched the blonde, and would be wiping down her Honda Fit for any traces of his presence when he made pickup arrangements and decided where to dump the car, perhaps torching it to be doubly sure.

  The gringos who kept trying to assassinate him, though—now, they were something else. He’d have to find out who they were and deal with them as soon as possible.

  Before they dealt with him.

  * * *

  Grimaldi went to fetch the Mustang, pausing first to kill the Audi’s car alarm. For that, he smashed the driver’s window, opened up the door and reached inside to hit the kill switch, thinking, Jesus, what a racket, piled on top of all the rest.

  From there, watching both ways for any sign of a police car, he crossed Calle 54, climbed in behind the rented Mustang’s wheel and drove around the block, to reach the strip mall’s parking lot. Another look, this time uphill, toward homes that loomed above him, but he saw nobody leaning from their windows to discover what the car alarm and shooting were about.

  How could they miss all that? Was everyone away at work, or had the grind of daily life in Medellín accustomed them to mayhem, to the point where they simply refused to get involved?

  Whatever. He knew he should get a move on, rousting Salvador Sanchez out of the Mustang’s trunk and marching him inside the empty shop that had become a slaughterhouse.

  The captive’s eyes went wide, surveying the carnage. “Omar?” he blurted out, eyeing the shooter who’d been wounded when Grimaldi left, now put to sleep with a head shot. “And is that Mauricio Yépez? I barely recognize him.”

  “So, you knew him,” Bolan said.

  “Well, I knew of him, certainly.”

  “You never sat in at one of his little parties?”

  “Eh? Seriously? The fat pig was crazy.”

  “You won’t miss him, then?” Grimaldi asked.

  “Ha! Good riddance, I say.”

  At last Grimaldi saw Sanchez clap eyes on Carolina Cabrera, standing in a corner with her back turned toward them and a man’s jacket—the one called Omar’s—draped over her shoulders, barely covering her buttocks.

  “Shuck your clothes,” Bolan ordered.

  “Sí, sí. And then we’re quits, eh? I helped you recover Carolina, sí?”

  “You’ve been a prince,” Grimaldi said, and gave Sanchez a poke with his pistol. “Now, hurry up!”

  Sanchez kicked off his shoes and stripped down to his skivvies, handing his jacket, shirt and pants to Bolan. When he started on his boxers, Grimaldi said, “Spare us. Keep them on.”

  Bolan in turn carried the duds to Cabrera, and said, “They won’t fit well, but they’ll do until we get some better ones.” Then he stood blocking her from view, his back turned to her, facing his partner and Sanchez while she dressed. Within three minutes she had donned the clothes, not quite as baggy on her as Bolan had expected, though she plucked at them and made a sour face, as if loathing the touch of them against her skin.

  “I still think we should take you to a hospital,” Bolan said.

  “No. The fat dog hit and punched me, mostly. Bruises heal themselves. Besides, Rodrigo will be hunting me. In a hospital bed I would be what you call a sitting duck.”

  “Then call your people at the DEA,” Bolan suggested. “Tell them that you’re coming in. It’s over with The Office.”

  “Not while Sarmiento is alive and free,” she said. “I do want different clothes than these, but first there’s something I must tell you.”

  “And that is...?”

  “Before the Butcher started on me, Sarmiento asked if I’d like to know the name of Pablo’s ghost.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It turns out that he lied to me, as you might well expect from a prick like him. As it turns out, he named someone he thinks might know the fraud’s identity from personal contact. The name is so illogical, however...”

  “Hey, don’t keep us in suspense,” Grimaldi said.

  “If we can trust Rodrigo’s words, he is none other than Carlos Bacal!”

  “You say that like we ought to know him,” Bolan answered.

  “Maybe not, coming from the United States,” she said. “But he is well-known here in Medellín.”

  “Go on,” Bolan urged.

  “He is a renowned attorney and a government official, named by our last president to serve the Ministry of Justice and Law.”

  “Which president?” Grimaldi asked.

  “Not Duque—the one before him, who admitted taking campaign contributions from the Odebrecht conglomerate of Salvador, Brazil—a violation of the law—and serving as a leader of two offshore companies based on Barbados.”

  “So, a wheeler-dealer,” Bolan offered.

  “As you say,” she answered.

  “And Sarmiento thinks he might know zombie Pablo...why, exactly?” Bolan saw no point in covering his skepticism.

  “That, I cannot say. The Butcher had his needs, and then...well, you burst in.”

  “Our bad,” Grimaldi said.

  “Oh no! I thank you for it, but...if there had been a bit more time...”

  “You’d likely be dead now,” Bolan stated. “Anyway, we’ve got a name—maybe. It’s something. But I’ll have to make a call stateside. Sanchez here has to be put on ice.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Pedregal Alto, Medellín

  Carlos Bacal spent roughly half of each year now in Bogotá, attending to his duties with the Ministry of Justice and Law, equivalent to the US Department of Justice. He was not the minister,
only a deputy, and that was fine with him, since when he stayed in Bogotá, his twenty-year-old mistress also made demands upon his time and bank account.

  The money was no problem, but the physical exertion...well, let’s say that he was thankful for an understanding doctor who supplied him with Sildenafil—the industry generic label for Viagra—on demand. Without it, Bacal guessed the little vixen would have cost him twice as much, and cheated on him in the bargain. Carlos took all due precautions, naturally, but if he found out that Margarita Rosa had infected him, he didn’t like to think what the result for her might be.

  Bacal had influential friends, not all of them upstanding members of the government. And one friend in particular was far outside that sphere.

  Despite the good life he had made in Bogotá—even before appointment to the ministry, when he defended bankers and captains of industry, along with certain narcotraffickers—Bacal enjoyed returning to his roots in Medellín. Only at home, or at the posh equivalent of his once humble childhood home, could he truly relax.

  At least, that was, until the past few months.

  Now Bacal’s special friend was making waves—Christ, making tsunamis—and from there it was a short step into headlines, television news on one or more of eighteen television networks operating in Colombia, and from that point, could global news be far behind?

  Today he rued his involvement, but the tax-free profits offered to him had seemed irresistible. Only now, with his offshore accounts bulging, did the payoffs start to feel like a millstone around Bacal’s neck, one from which he could not free himself before he drowned.

  “Oh shit!” he muttered to himself, aware that he’d already passed the point of no return.

  “Excuse me, sir?” his driver asked. He’d heard something from the back seat, but clearly hadn’t made it out.

  “It’s nothing,” Bacal assured him. “Keep driving, Edmundo.”

  “Yes, sir.” And the chauffeur drove on, as ordered, toward Bacal’s adequate mansion on Carrera 121.

  The dark blue BMW 5 series four-door and its driver were a perquisite of his position with the government, and while Bacal could readily afford them on his own, it pleased him that the taxpayers supplied that minor luxury—along with first-class airline flights, selected “business” outings to fine restaurants and spas, where he was pampered like a minor sultan, and a visit once per year to Washington, DC, where he consulted with associate directors of the DEA and FBI on their progress against Colombian cartels.

  Progress that he subtly, undetectably obstructed when it suited him and served the needs of Bacal’s other friends.

  Now he saw his house come into view—or part of it, behind a stone wall and a screen of decorative greenery in front—and Edmundo pulled into the driveway, using the gate opener from a half block out. The car pulled into a roundabout, circling an ornate fountain that Bacal seldom bothered running, and the lawyer got out of the vehicle unaided, after telling his driver to keep his seat. His only burden, as he mounted half a dozen concrete steps to reach his front door, was a leather-covered briefcase filled with papers that he counted on ignoring overnight, relaxing with a bottle of Musigny Grand Cru 1990 that cost more than most Colombians earned in a year, followed by some illicit Asian porn on his Samsung eighty-two-inch Silver UHD flat-screen.

  The perfect night, and he could spend it on his own, without little blue pills to make him feel alive.

  The front door to Bacal’s mansion had three locks that required as many different keys. Once safe inside, he triple-locked the door behind him, shutting out the night that settled over Medellín, and armed his various alarm systems.

  The city might be Bacal’s childhood home, but he still didn’t trust it after dark.

  He left his briefcase on a table in the hallway leading to his study, confident that no one would break in and rifle it. Only when he had reached the study, passed inside and turned on its soft lights, which had been designed for ease upon the eyes while reading, did he realize that he was not, in fact, alone.

  Two gringos dressed in business suits stood in the center of the room, having just risen from a matched set of leather-upholstered captain’s chairs. Both showed him badges and ID cards that he couldn’t read without approaching within arm’s length of the strangers—something that he absolutely did not plan to do.

  “We have strict laws in Antioquia against breaking and entering,” Bacal cautioned his uninvited visitors.

  “Call someone, then,” the shorter of the pair replied.

  “I’d start off with the US Embassy in Bogotá,” the other said. “Start with the DEA. Ask for Agent in Charge Donald Malone.”

  “I know him very well,” Bacal replied. “We are close friends.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that,|” the taller of the two intruders said. “He knows that you’ve been playing necromancer on the side.”

  “You’re speaking gibberish. I must advise Senor Malone that he has raving lunatics on his payroll. I think he will not be amused.”

  Once again, the tall man spoke. “So, you don’t work at resurrecting corpses, then?”

  “You truly are crazy. I must insist you leave my home at once, or—”

  “We could do that. Or you could tell us all about the ghost of Pablo Escobar.”

  * * *

  Carlos Bacal’s face drained of color when he heard those words, and Bolan knew he’d scored a solid hit. The lawyer crossed the study to a sideboard, poured himself a healthy glass of something dark, intoxicating and no doubt expensive, without offering to share. His hands were trembling as he raised the glass and drank, trying to cover up his shock.

  “I do not understand, Agent...?”

  “Of course you do,” the tall man said. “You’re neck-deep in this thing, a clear accomplice. Do you think your ministry will take it kindly when they find out you’ve facilitated murders, cocaine trafficking and all the rest of it?”

  “You are mistaken,” Bacal blustered. “Possibly whoever sent you here is unreliable, confused. Perhaps he is—”

  “Rodrigo Sarmiento,” Bolan said.

  Bacal recoiled from that name as if Bolan had whipped out a gun and thrust it in his face. “Rodrigo?” he replied. “It makes no sense. You say he sent you here to me?”

  “He dropped your name to an acquaintance,” Bolan said. “Not saying you’re the so-called ‘ghost,’ but indicating that you might know something about who’s been acting out the part and why.”

  “Ridiculous!” Bacal answered. “If you know Sarmiento, then you know he can’t be trusted. Lying is a way of life for him, and not the worst of his sins, I assure you.”

  “When he made this claim,” Bolan said, “he had no reason to think our friend would make it through the afternoon alive, much less tell anybody else or send someone to visit you. If he was lying, what’s the motive?”

  “Who knows?” Another gulp of liquor calmed the politician’s voice a bit. “Rodrigo lives by lying. What became of this acquaintance you refer to?”

  “Safe and sound, no thanks to Sarmiento,” Bolan told him. “We plan to see him soon and settle that, but in the meantime, what about Pablo?”

  “Pablo is dead,” Bacal replied. “The whole world watched him die on television. Many of them doubtless taped it for the instant replay.”

  “And again, in case you missed the point,” Grimaldi said, “we don’t believe he’s come back from the grave, okay? We’re looking for somebody who’s impersonating him for reasons of their own.”

  Bacal was getting some of his old fire back now. “I am a lawyer and respected government official,” he protested.

  “Right,” Grimaldi said. “Two groups that wouldn’t dream of breaking any laws. Is that your story?”

  Before Bacal could respond, Bolan warned him, “We need more than the generic, unsupported ‘I know nothing.’”

 
“Who are you people?” Bacal asked them, almost whining.

  Bolan let that pass and said, “Are you familiar with the banker Rudolf Kugler?”

  Frowning, Bacal seemed to weigh his words for minimal exposure. “I’ve heard the name. He’s very prominent in Medellín.”

  “He used to be,” Bolan replied. “There was a big run on his bank today, a lot of money up in smoke. Bad people like your Mr. Sarmiento will be looking for it soon.”

  “I pity the banker, in that case,” Bacal said.

  “Save it. He made the choice to save himself, and now he’s in WITSEC.”

  “I don’t...?”

  “Witness security,” Grimaldi clarified. “Back in the States. If he rolls over on his clients—”

  “Rolls?”

  “Agrees to testify,” Bolan explained. “Safety for someone at the top comes with a price tag, but it’s better than a dirt nap. You should think about it.”

  “You keep insisting that—”

  “Or we could make you talk right now,” Grimaldi said.

  “You threaten me?”

  “Imagine Sarmiento, when he hears you’ve told us everything,” Bolan stated. “Do you think he’ll mess around with small talk?”

  “I imagine he—”

  “Or will he call the Butcher?” Bolan saw no reason for Bacal to know the Butcher was already dead, if his name could get the politician talking.

  The lawyer looked as if he might be sick, right where he stood. “But my career...”

  “Is over, either way. Your choice is to resign and testify, or...” Bolan left it there. His shrug was eloquent.

  Bacal slumped like a man who’d just received a fatal diagnosis from his heart surgeon. “And you wish to know about...?”

  “Pablo,” Bolan reminded him.

  “Sí. It is possible I know a name.”

  San Felix, Antioquia