Читать книгу Crisis Nation - Don Pendleton - Страница 8

“So who’s this Yotuel, anyway?” Bolan asked.

The bar stools around Bolan emptied as if he were radioactive. The bartender was short, fat, potbellied, bald and missing his front teeth. He also had a cursive letter N for La Neta tattooed on the back of his hand between his right thumb and forefinger. He looked Bolan up and down and leaned in close. “Hey, gringo, why don’t you finish your beer and fuck off?”

Bolan finished his beer and ignored the invitation. “I mean, is he some kind of tough son of a bitch or something?”

The bartender elaborately washed his hands in the sink and muttered, “You dig your own grave” under his breath in Spanish.

“All the way to China, baby,” agreed Bolan. He pushed his empty mug forward for another.

Strangely enough the bartender began refilling Bolan’s glass. He smiled without an ounce of warmth. “Did you say…baby?”

“You bet your ass,” Bolan agreed.

“You should be careful of using that word in this place. Bebito Jesus might be listening.”

Bolan took the bait and the refilled mug. “We all have a friend in little baby Jesus.”

“No.” The bartender kept on smiling. “Not you, my friend.”

There was no mirror behind the bar. Bolan had been aware of people in the dark booths in the back, and he had heard someone walking up behind him. He was somewhat surprised to find himself suddenly in shadow as if there were a solar eclipse in the barroom. Bolan swiveled his bar stool and behind him was Bebito Jesus.

There was nothing little nor Christlike about the behemoth looming over him. The man had to have topped six-foot ten, and his frame was sheathed in sumo-wrestler-sized rolls of fat. He looked like a cartoon character, but there was nothing funny about the look in his eye or the bass rumble of his voice. “Fuck you.”

Bolan blew the froth off the top of his mug, and it slopped onto the giant’s sandaled feet. He raised his mug in toast. “And your mother.”

Bebito blinked. It was perhaps the first time anyone had said that to him in his life. Bolan didn’t underestimate his opponent, but the Puerto Rican, on the other hand, seemed to be fatally underestimating Bolan. He slowly reached out with one spatulate hand and gathered up the front of the big American’s shirt in his fist and began lifting him out of his seat. Bolan rose and snapped the stacked leather heel of his dress shoe down into his adversary’s left big toe. Bebito’s shoulders cringed and his eyes went blank with the sudden shock. Bolan took the opportunity to stomp down again and break his other big toe. Bebito gasped and stooped toward his pain. This brought his face on par with Bolan’s. The Executioner snapped his forehead forward and shattered Bebito’s cheekbone. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head.

The behemoth toppled backward. Bolan sat back down at the bar. He hadn’t spilled a drop of beer. “So, what were we talking about? Oh, yeah, well, you know? They call this Yotuel guy the Lion but he sounds like a real pussy to me.”

“Mister…” The bartender stared at Bolan in almost total incomprehension. “You’d better leave.”

“Yeah.” Bolan put down his beer mug and dropped a twenty on the bar. “Tell this Lion freak I’ll be back tomorrow, same time.”

Bolan walked out into the street. Constante still leaned against the front fender of his black, unmarked Crown Victoria police car. This was one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in San Juan and the lanky inspector ate a Cuban sandwich and drank a Budweiser tall boy from a six-pack sitting on the hood like he owned the place. “Did you speak to Yotuel?”

“No, but I stepped on a few of the right toes,” Bolan answered.

“I heard a crash. I almost came in.”

“I ran into Bebito.”

Constante started in surprise. He clearly knew the giant. “Bebito Jesus? What happened?”

Bolan shrugged. “That was the crash.”

The inspector was impressed. “He assaulted you?”

“It didn’t get that far.”

The inspector looked sidelong at Bolan. “Is he dead?”

“No, but he needs to go see his podiatrist.”

“Ah, well, it begins.” Constante sighed happily.

BOLAN AND THE INSPECTOR drove through the night. The violent street protests of the day had given way to candlelit vigils in the plazas. Puerto Rican rock bands and rappers played freedom benefits. Professors and students made dramatic oratory. The guitar playing, speech making and talk over megaphones of a greater Puerto Rico were counterpointed by the darkened and looted storefronts and the smoldering and burning cars on the streets. The inspector had driven to a number of bars and spoken to informants. Bolan had not been privy to the conversations nor had he inquired. Right now it was Constante’s play.

“Well, amigo, I will tell you.” The inspector turned to him now. “It appears that Yotuel is very angry with you.”

“So I would imagine,” Bolan admitted.

“He is also aware that I was standing outside the bar while you impugned his reputation and destroyed his enforcer in insulting fashion.” The inspector paused and then said, “I gather you are armed?”

Bolan had full war loads at the DOJ building, three safe-houses and every military base on the island. He tapped the Smith & Wesson Centennial revolver in a cross-draw holster beneath his shirt. A lightweight titanium model of the same gun rode in an ankle holster. He simply said, “I have a gun.”

“Well, I think it is going to be a bad night in old San Juan, amigo. Would you like to get a bigger gun? I think I would like a bigger gun myself.”

“I’m your humble servant in all things,” Bolan said.

Constante spit the stub of his cigarette out the window and punched the cigarette lighter on the console. “I suspect the opposite it true.” He took the car back toward the capital police building and pulled into the underground parking lot. Men in uniform and plain clothes nodded at Constante as they went through a series of basement catacombs and finally came to a room with a counter guarded by thick bulletproof glass. The man behind the glass looked like an accountant except that the forearms revealed by his rolled-up sleeves were built like bowling pins and his fingernails were blackened by accumulated gun grease that would take industrial solvents to clean away.

“Mono!” The inspector grinned at the armorer. “I need guns!”

Mono turned a measuring eye on Bolan and then sighed in amusement at Constante. “Flaco Ordones was here. He already checked out the BAR. He said it was on your authorization.” Flaco was Spanish slang for skinny. BAR was the U.S. military acronym for Browning Automatic Rifle. It seemed the inspector was serious about getting bigger guns.

Mono shook his head. “You know, Inspector, strictly speaking, only the SWAT team can check out weapons without clearance from above.”

The inspector lit another cigarette and one for Mono as well. He sighed and blew smoke into the ceiling light. “You know something, Cooper? There was a time when a Puerto Rican cop could get anything he needed just by asking. Of course, there was always very little to be had…but you could get it.”

Bolan nodded sympathetically. Inspector Constante was an old-school Puerto Rican cop. He came from a lineage that kicked doors, cracked heads and squeezed suspects. As Puerto Rico modernized, his day was swiftly coming to a close.

Constante warmed to his subject. “Now it is all forms, subcommittees, review boards, and, Heavenly Father help us, after-action reports.” He turned on the armorer. “Are you going to make me fill out forms in triplicate, Mono? Do I need to form a subcommittee to recommend my course of action?”

Mono regarded Constante drily. “Might I inquire as to what your course of action may be?”

“Oh, is that all?” Constante nodded toward Bolan. “Me and the gringo are going to clean up Puerto Rico. He already started with the Taino bar. Apparently he used Bebito as a mop.”

Mono blinked at Bolan several times. “You will need guns.” The armorer turned back to his racks and workbenches and came back with a pair of ancient and cracked leather violin cases. Inspector Constante opened one of the cases and stared lovingly at the contents. “You know, my friend, Puerto Rico has always been the United States’ poor little cousin. I, myself, as a young man, was in the Puerto Rican National Guard. We did not receive M-16 rifles and M-60 machine guns. We received WWII Garand rifles, Browning Automatic Rifles, military surplus. I was Military Police, and my unit received Thompson submachine guns.”

Constante racked the action. The wooden stock was dinged and stained and much of the weapon’s gunmetal blue finish was missing, but the action racked as slick as oil on glass and bespoke Mono’s faithful maintenance. Constante ran a fond hand over the ancient weapon. “You know it?”

Bolan had found a Tommy gun in his hand a surprising number of times. “I’m familiar with it.”

“I believe you are.” He nodded at the other case and Bolan examined the weapon. “How many spare magazines would you like?”

Bolan loaded the weapon, racked it and flicked on the safety. “How about eighteen?”

“In the army we were generally issued nine.”

“How many street soldiers can d’Nico call on?” Bolan countered.

“Hundreds. Do you intend to take on all of La Neta by yourself?”

“No, just select elements of it, and with your help,” Bolan said.

Constante turned to the armorer. “Mono, thirty-six magazines, if you don’t mind, and enough ammunition to load all of them, as well as some spare boxes.”

Mono raised his eyebrows slightly at the request and retreated back into his catacombs. Constante put his weapon back in its case. “Where are you staying?”

“I’m renting a house in La Perla.”

The inspector made a face. La Perla was one of the worst slums in San Juan and ruthlessly ruled by gang culture. “You taunt the Lion, then you climb into his jaws.”

“Well, you know how they say you should keep your enemies close.”

“They do not say you should move in next to them,” Constante scowled.

“I don’t think I’ll be staying long.”

Mono brought them their ammo and they walked out without filling any forms. As they walked back to the parking garage, Constante began speaking quietly. “You know? It is hard to be a policeman in Puerto Rico.”

Bolan nodded. It was a little known fact that perhaps other than Mexico City or Moscow there was no more dangerous place to be a police officer.

Most Americans had no idea of how bad it was. If Americans thought of their commonwealth neighbor in the Caribbean, they thought of blue water, golden sand and partying. It was a common vacation destination for East Coasters and an alternative honeymoon spot.

For the people who lived there violence was endemic. Since the rise of the cocaine trade in the 1980s the island had become a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine and increasingly a heroin funnel. The Puerto Rican gang and crime cultures had risen with them. People on the island made roughly a third of the average income of the poorest mainland states, and it was reflected in their police force. They were ill-equipped and understaffed, and corruption in the force was as endemic as the violence in the streets.

“You intend to go against the crime gangs and the revolutionaries?” the inspector asked.

“I do.”

“I am ashamed to admit it, but there are those within the force who support what is happening, not out of patriotic sentiment, but because they know if we become an independent nation the potential for profit in bribery will skyrocket. The drug dealers and the gangs know this as well and are already lining pockets,” the inspector said.

Bolan suspected nothing less.

“You will need a force of cops who cannot be corrupted or bought. Those who will not be afraid to bend rules, if not break them outright,” Constante concluded.

“It’d be helpful,” Bolan said.

Constante gestured at his car and the woman leaning against it. “Then behold your second recruit.”

The woman turned. She was short, redheaded, darkly tanned with broad shoulders and an eye-popping bust line that was barely restrained by a blue T-shirt. A corset-thin waist cut what would have been a blocky figure into an hourglass.

“May I present Detective Guistina Gustolallo. She works Vice.”

Bolan could have guessed that. He also noted the Mossberg 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun crooked in one elbow like she was about to go duck hunting. Her dark eyes looked Bolan up and down in open suspicion. “Yo, Vincente.” The detective popped her gum. “Who’s the gringo?”

“Why, he is the man who put Bebito in the hospital and called Yotuel d’Nico a puto.”

Bolan held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Detective.”

“Detective…” The woman ignored Bolan’s hand and rose up on her toes to kiss Bolan on both cheeks Latin style. “People I like call me Gustolallo. And you, Blue Eyes, qualify.”

Constante lit another cigarette. “Where is Roldan?”

The woman shrugged. “Roldan is off duty in an hour. Ordones said to call him when you need him.”

“Tell them to meet us in La Perla.” Constante turned to Bolan. “Give her the address.”

Bolan gave it to her, and Detective Gustolallo began speaking rapid-fire Spanish into her cell phone. They piled into Constante’s car and headed down toward the water. La Perla was anything but “The Pearl” of metropolitan San Juan. Beneath the four-hundred-year-old walls and turrets of the fortifications built by the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon, shacks and hovels leaned against one another. Even at this late hour stick-thin children wandered around in rags and picked at piles of garbage right next to feral dogs. Other piles of garbage burned or were being burned in the hovels for fuel. La Perla was just about the worst barrio in San Juan.

Inspector Constante’s shiny black Crown Victoria was clearly an anomaly. Bolan noticed cell phones in the hands of some of the children marking them as runners for the local drug dealers. They watched the black Ford with wary eyes and punched presets as they drifted back into the shadows. A trio of transvestite prostitutes made catcalls and a few improbable offers at the car and then grabbed their phones once it passed. La Perla’s grapevine was lighting up.

“We’re about to get hit,” Bolan opined.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” the inspector agreed. “I gather you made no attempt at subtlety when you moved in to the neighborhood.

“None whatsoever,” Bolan admitted.

Gustolallo popped her gum in the back seat and the safety on her shotgun clicked off.

Bolan saw a pair of headlights suddenly light up an alley ahead. “Here it comes.”

Gustolallo sang out from the back seat. “We got one behind!”

Bolan flicked the safety off his Thompson. “They’re gonna go for the pin.”

The pin was another gift from the drug gangs of Mexico, mostly used for assassinating police officers. Drive-bys were uncertain at best, but a couple of SUVs could surround and stop a car on a narrow street or in a parking lot, and then the men with automatic rifles would spill out of all doors and fill the pinned vehicle full of lead. A gleaming silver Lincoln Navigator shot into the street ahead of them with tires squealing. A tangerine-and-black Honda Element fishtailed into position behind them. On La Perla’s narrow, twisting lanes there was no room to maneuver. Constante pushed buttons on his console and the Crown Vic’s windows rolled down and the custom sunroof rolled back. Constante spit out his cigarette and grinned defiantly at the silver SUV blocking their escape. “I’m gonna ram him.”

“No,” Bolan commanded.

“No?”

“Hit Reverse. Hit the guy behind us. He’s lighter and only has four cylinders.”

“Ah!” The tires screamed on the cobblestones as the inspector stood on the breaks and threw the vehicle into Reverse. “Hold on!”

The Ford shot backward into the Element. The glare of the headlights filling the Crown Vic’s interior smashed out as the Honda crumpled like the cardboard box it was shaped like. The Crown Vic’s V-8 engine roared as it drove the stricken little SUV back. Bolan rose up through the sunroof. Glass erupted in geysers from the Honda’s windshield as Bolan painted a 15-round pattern over the driver’s position and a second one over the glass covering the man riding shotgun. Gustolallo’s shotgun hammered rapidly five times on semiauto, and the windshield failed utterly and sagged backward into the SUV’s interior.

Nothing inside the Element was moving.

Bolan slapped in a fresh magazine. “Forward! Go! Go! Go!” He dropped back down and put on his seat belt as Constante slammed the vehicle into Drive and put the pedal to the metal. The huge SUV before them had pulled out at an angle to block the lane. Now the driver was desperately trying to execute a three-point turn to face the oncoming Ford while the passengers waved their arms and screamed.

The Crown Vic hit the Navigator broadside at fifty miles per hour. The impact was brutal, but Bolan had braced himself and the air bag deployed against him. He got out of his seat belt, and clicked open his switchblade and slashed away the deflating air bag. The windshield had gone opaque with cracks, and Bolan’s door refused to budge. He rose up through the sunroof. The Navigator was wrapped around the front bumper of the vehicle. The driver and back passenger doors were folded in and not moving. Bolan bent back as one of the men in the back seat of the Navigator tried to fire at him with an M-16. The window erupted outward, but the space was too cramped inside the SUV for the gunman to fire effectively.

Bolan had no such restraints.

The Thompson ripped into life. Constante leaped out from behind the wheel as his weapon joined the crescendo. The doors facing away flew open and men piled out of the Navigator. Bolan jumped onto the hood, then leaped to the roof of the SUV. Two men turned and raised their rifles, but Bolan burned them down with a burst through their chests before they could fire. A young man with a clearly broken arm fell to his knees and raised his working hand piteously. “Madre de Dios! Por favor! Por favor!”

Bolan kept the smoking muzzle of his weapon pointed between the young man’s eyes. Gustolallo came around the SUV and kicked the surrendering punk onto his stomach. He screamed in pain as she twisted both arms back and cuffed him. Constante looked into one of the Navigator’s shattered windows and made a face at the carnage within. “Clear.”

Bolan stood atop the SUV and surveyed the area. Dogs were barking. Women and children in the hovels and tenements were screaming. Sirens began wailing in the distance. The transvestites clapped their hands and whistled. It had been a fine show, and they clearly liked the big gringo with the big gun standing on top of the Navigator’s shattered shell.

Gustolallo yanked the young man up to his knees and the inspector smiled delightedly. Bolan eyed the cringing punk. “You know him?”

“Indeed!” Constante leaned in and leered in the young man’s face. “This is Nacho d’Nico!”

Bolan smiled coldly. “Yotuel’s little brother?”

“His punkito little brother,” the inspector emphasized. “What’s the matter, Nacho? You don’t look so good.”

Between shock, pain and naked terror, Nacho looked just about ready to soil himself. Bolan jumped to the hood, then down to the street. The sirens were getting closer. “I don’t think your car is going any place.”

“No,” the inspector agreed. “And neither shall I. I will stay here. I will say I was alone and was attacked, then killed my attackers. You and Gustolallo take the punk to your place. If we bring him in, he will only be out on bail tomorrow. I will join you shortly.”

It was as good a plan as any. Bolan nodded and Nacho shrieked as Gustolallo yanked him to his feet. Constante lit a cigarette and leaned against his totaled vehicle to wait, apparently oblivious of the gas pooling everywhere.

Bolan and the detective took Nacho d’Nico for a little walk through the neighborhood. It was going to be a long night.