Читать книгу Colony Of Evil - Don Pendleton - Страница 9

Bogotá, Colombia

Mack Bolan’s Avianca flight was ninety minutes late on touchdown at El Dorado International Airport. It hadn’t been the pilot’s fault, but rather issues of “security” that slowed them. Bolan supposed that meant drugs or terrorism, possibly a mix of both.

For close to thirty years, throughout Colombia, it had been difficult to separate cocaine from politics. The major drug cartels bought politicians, judges, prosecutors, cops, reporters, and killed off the ones who weren’t for sale. They backed right-wing militias that pretended to oppose crime while annihilating socialists and “liberals,” occasionally using mercenary death squads as their front men to attack the government itself.

Colombian police had coined the term narcoterrorism, but they rarely spoke it out loud. To do so invited censure, demotion and transfer, perhaps an untimely death.

Back in the States, Bolan read stories all the time claiming that cocaine trafficking was up or down, strictly suppressed or thriving at an all-time high. He took it all with several hefty grains of salt and got his information from a handful of selected sources he could trust.

The traffic was continuing, and U.S. Customs seized approximately ten percent of the incoming coke on a good day. That figure had been static since the 1980s, with a few small fluctuations. Nothing that had happened in the interim—from cartel wars and Panamanian invasions to the bloody death of Pablo Escobar—had altered the reality of narcopolitics.

Drugs paid too much, across the board, for any government to halt the traffic absolutely. Narcodollars funded terrorism and black ops conducted by sundry intelligence agencies, bankrolled political careers and made retirement comfy for respected statesmen, greased the wheels of international diplomacy and commerce.

The filth was everywhere, and Bolan wasn’t Hercules.

But he could clean one stable at a time.

Or, maybe, burn it down.

His latest mission to Colombia involved cocaine, but only in a roundabout and somewhat convoluted way. His main target was equally malignant, but much older, an abiding evil beaten more than once on bloody battlefields around the world, which still refused to die.

As Evil always did.

In spite of its delays, his flight down from Miami had been pleasant—or at least as pleasant as a flight could be when he was traveling unarmed toward mortal danger, with no clear idea of who might know that he was coming, or of how they might prepare to meet him on arrival.

First, there was the matter of his contact on the ground. The man came recommended by the CIA and DEA, which could spell trouble. Bolan knew those agencies were frequently at odds, despite the “War on Terror” and their separate oaths to operate within the law. One side was pledged to halt narcotics traffic by all legal means; the other frequently played fast and loose in murky realms where drugs were just another form of currency.

The fact that both sides found his contact useful raised a caution flag for Bolan, but it wouldn’t make him drop out of the game. He’d worked with various informers, spooks and double agents in his time, and had outlived the great majority of them.

A few he’d killed himself.

So he would give this one a chance, but keep a sharp eye on him, every step along the way. One false step, and their partnership would be dissolved.

In blood.

Their first stop in the capital would have to be a covert arms merchant, someone who could supply Bolan with the essential tools of his profession. That, he guessed, would be no problem in a nation whose homicide rate topped all the charts. That meant guns in abundance, and Bolan would soon have what he needed.

His bankroll would cover a week of high living, assuming the job took that long and he lived to complete it. The cash was a tax-free donation, furnished that morning by one of Miami’s premier bolita bankers who’d decided, strictly from his heart and the desire to keep it beating, that he wouldn’t miss $250,000 all that much.

Right now, Bolan supposed, the macho gambler’s goons were scouring Dade County and environs for the man who’d dared to rob him, but they wouldn’t find a trace. Bolan had played that game too often to leave tracks his enemies could follow—if, in fact, they had the stones to look him up in Bogotá.

And they would have to hurry, even then, because he didn’t plan on spending much time in the capital. Some shopping, some discreet interrogation, and he would be on his way. His target was not found in Bogotá, in Cali or in Medellín.

That would’ve been too easy.

Bolan couldn’t smell the jungle yet, riding in pressurized and air-conditioned semicomfort, but he’d smelled it many times before. Not only in Colombia, but on five continents where Evil went by different names, wore different faces, always seeking the same ends.

Evil sought power and control, the same things politicians spent their lives pursuing. Which was not to say all politicians were dishonest, prone to wicked compromises in pursuit of private gain. Bolan acknowledged that there might be various exceptions to the rule.

He simply hadn’t met them yet.

And something told him that he wouldn’t find one on this trip.

JORGE GUZMAN WAS SMART enough to check the monitors, but waiting in the crowded airport terminal still made him nervous. El Dorado International’s main terminal sprawled over 581,000 square feet and received more than nine million passengers per year. Toss in the families and friends who came to see them off or to meet them on arrival, thronging shops and restaurants and travel agencies, and visiting the airport was like strolling through a crowded town on market day.

Which made it difficult, if not impossible, for Guzman to detect if anyone was watching him, perhaps waiting to slip a knife between his ribs or to press a silenced, small-caliber pistol tight against his spine before they pulled the trigger.

Guzman had no special reason to believe that anyone would try to kill him here, this evening. He had been cautious in preparing for his new assignment, as he always was, informing no one of the covert jobs that came his way, but he had enemies.

It was inevitable, for a man who led a covert life. Guzman had been a thief and then a smuggler from his youngest days, but for the past eight years he’d also served the cloak-and-dagger lords of Washington, who paid so well for information if it brought results.

Guzman had started small, naming street dealers and some minor smugglers with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, first obtaining their assurance that his name would never be revealed to any native law-enforcement officer or prosecutor under any circumstances. Some of them were honest, to be sure, but Guzman saw them as a critically endangered species, with their numbers dwindling every day.

As time went by and he became more confident, Guzman had traded information on the larger drug cartels. It was a dicey game that guaranteed a slow and screaming death if he was found out by the men he had betrayed. From there, since drugs touched everything of consequence throughout Colombia, it was a relatively short step to cooperating with the Central Intelligence Agency on matters political, sometimes helping the famous Federal Bureau of Investigation find a fugitive from justice in America.

But Guzman’s latest job was something new and different. In the past, he’d kept his eyes and ears open, asked some discreet questions and sold the information he obtained for top dollar. This time, he was supposed to serve as guide and translator, helping a gringo agent carry out his mission, which had not been well explained.

It smelled of danger, and Guzman had nearly told his contacts to find someone else, perhaps a mercenary, but the money they offered had changed his mind. He was a mercenary, after all, in his own way.

Because he was concerned about the greater risks of this particular assignment, Guzman had been doubly careful on his long drive to the airport, glancing at his rearview mirror every quarter mile or so, detouring incessantly to see if anyone stayed with him through his aimless twists and turns.

But no one had.

Still, he was nervous, sweating through his polo shirt, beneath the blazer that he wore for dual reasons. First, it made him look more formal, more respectable, than if he’d shown up in shirtsleeves. Second, it concealed the Brazilian IMBEL 9GC-MD1 semiautomatic pistol wedged beneath his belt, against the small of his back.

The pistol was a copy of the old Colt M1911A1 pistol carried by so many U.S. soldiers through the years, re-chambered for 9 mm Parabellum rounds. The magazine held seventeen, with one more in the chamber. Guzman wore it cocked and locked, prepared to fire when he released the safety with his thumb, instead of wasting precious microseconds when they mattered, pulling back the hammer.

He had a second pistol in his car, beneath the driver’s seat. It was another IMBEL knock-off, this one chambered in the original .45ACP caliber. Guzman had considered carrying both guns into the terminal, but it had seemed excessive and he worried that his trousers might fall down.

A canned voice, sounding terminally bored, announced the long-delayed arrival of the Avianca flight Guzman had been awaiting for the past two hours. Since he did not have a ticket or a boarding pass, he would not be allowed to meet his party at the gate—but then, the pistol he was carrying made it impossible for him to clear security, in any case.

He found a place to watch and wait, between a café and a bookstore, lounging casually against the cool tile of the wall behind him. When the passengers began to straggle past security—ignored because they were arriving, not departing on an aircraft—Guzman studied faces, body types, seeking the man he was supposed to meet.

He had no photograph to guide him; it was too hush-hush for that. Instead he had been given a description of the gringo: six feet tall, around two hundred pounds, dark hair, olive complexion, military bearing. In case that wasn’t good enough, the man would have a folded copy of that morning’s USA Today in his left hand.

He watched a dozen gringos pass the gates, all businessmen of one sort or another. Guzman wondered how many had been aboard the aircraft, and was pondering a way to get that information if his man did not appear, when suddenly he saw an Anglo matching the description, carrying the proper newspaper.

The brief description from his contact had been accurate, but fell short in one respect. It made no mention of the gringo’s air of confidence, said nothing of the chill that his blue eyes imparted when they made contact.

Guzman pushed off the wall and moved to intercept the stranger he’d been waiting for. Above all else, he hoped the gringo would not botch his job, whatever it turned out to be.

Guzman devoutly hoped the stranger would not get him killed.

BOLAN HAD MADE HIS CONTACT at a glance. Unlike the slim Colombian, he had been furnished with a photo of the stranger who would assist him in completion of his task.

He wasn’t looking for a backup shooter when the job got hairy, just a navigator, translator and source of useful information on specific aspects of the local scene. If the informant Jorge Guzman could perform those tasks without jeopardizing Bolan’s mission or his life, they ought to get along just fine.

If not, well, there were many ways to trim deadwood.

The man was coming at him, putting on a smile that didn’t touch his wary eyes. He stuck a hand out, making Bolan switch his carry-on from right to left, crumpling the newspaper that was his recognition sign.

“Señor Cooper?” Guzman said, using Bolan’s current alias.

Bolan accepted the handshake and said, “That’s me. Mr. Guzman?”

“At your disposal. Shall we go retrieve your bags?”

A flex of Bolan’s biceps raised the carry-on. “You’re looking at them,” he replied.

This time, the local’s smile seemed more sincere. “Most excellent,” he said. “This way for Immigration, then, and Customs. Have you any items to declare?”

“I travel light,” Bolan replied.

The Immigration officer asked Bolan how long he was staying in Colombia and where he planned to travel, took his answers at face value and applied the necessary stamps to “Matthew Cooper’s” passport. Customs saw his one small bag and didn’t bother pawing through his socks and shaving gear.

They moved along the busy concourse toward a distant exit, Guzman asking questions. Bolan rejected offers of a meal, a drink, a currency exchange—the latter based upon his knowledge that one U.S. dollar equaled 2,172 Colombian pesos. He would’ve needed several steamer trunks to haul around the local equivalent of $250,000, and all for what?

The people he’d be meeting soon would either deal in dollars, or they wouldn’t deal at all.

Those who refused the bribe, received the bullet—or the bomb, the blade, the strangling garrote. Death came in many forms, but it was always ugly, violent and absolutely final.

“My car is in the visitors’ garage,” Guzman informed him. “This way, if you please.”

Bolan observed his usual precautions as they moved along the concourse, watching for anyone who stared too long or looked away too suddenly, avoiding eye contact. He caught no one observing their reflections in shop windows, kneeling suddenly to tie a loose shoestring or search through pockets for some nonexistent missing item as they passed.

Of course, he didn’t know the players here in Bogotá. Those who had tried to take him out the last time he was here were all long dead.

It would be easier when they got out of town, he thought. The open road made them more difficult to track, and once he reached the forest, started hiking toward his final target, it would be his game, played by his rules.

Or so he hoped, at least.

Each mission held surprises. Few, if any, ran exactly as the plans were drawn in quiet moments, prior to contact with the enemy. Whether you called it Chaos Theory or the human element, it all came down to the same thing: variables that could never be anticipated.

Even psychic powers wouldn’t help, if they existed, since most people in a crisis situation acted without thinking, running off on tangents, never stopping to consider what might happen if they turned left instead of right, sped up or slowed, cried out or bit their tongues.

Bolan had stayed alive this long because he planned ahead and still retained the flexibility required to change his plans, adapt to any given situation that arose. Someday, he knew, the switch would be too fast for him, his enemy too deadly accurate, and that would be the end.

But, hopefully, it wouldn’t be this night.

The sun was setting as they left the airport terminal, but most of the day’s humidity remained to slap him in the face like a wet towel. Bolan followed his contact from the blessed air-conditioning, across a sidewalk and eight lanes of traffic painted on asphalt, to reach the visitors’ garage. Inside, Guzman led him to an elevator, pushed the button, waited for the car and took them up to the fifth level.

“Over here, señor.”

Guzman led Bolan toward a Fiat compact, navy blue, which Bolan guessed was three or four years old. Inside it, Bolan pushed his seat back all the way, to make room for his legs.

“You need certain equipment, yes?” Guzman asked as he slid into the driver’s seat.

“That’s right.”

“Is all arranged,” Guzman replied, and put the car in gear.

“THEY’RE CLEARING THE GARAGE right now,” Horst Krieger said, speaking into his handheld two-way radio. “Be ready when they pass you.”

“Yes, sir!” came the response from Arne Rauschman in the second car. No further conversation was required.

“Get after them!” snapped Krieger to his driver, Juan Pacheco. “Not too close, but keep the car in sight.”

“Sí, señor,” the driver said as he put the Volkswagen sedan in gear and rolled out in pursuit of Krieger’s targets.

Krieger thought it was excessive, sending eight men to deal with the two strangers he had briefly glimpsed as they’d driven past, but he never contested orders from his commander. Such insubordination went against the grain for Krieger, and it was the quickest way that he could think of to get killed.

Besides, he thought as they pursued the Fiat compact, Rauschman’s six-year-old Mercedes falling in behind the Volkswagen, if they faced any opposition from the targets, he could use the native hired muscle as cannon fodder, let them take the brunt of it, while he and Rauschman finished off the enemy.

The Fiat quite predictably took Avenida El Dorado from the airport into Bogotá. It was the city’s broadest, fastest highway, crossing on an east-west axis through the heart of Colombia’s capital.

It was early evening, with traffic at its peak, and Krieger worried that his driver might lose the Fiat through excessive caution.

“Faster!” he demanded “Close that gap! We’re covered by the other traffic here. Stay after them!”

He waited for the standard “Sí, señor,” and frowned when it was not forthcoming. He would have to teach Pacheco some respect, but now was clearly not the time. The Volkswagen surged forward, gaining on the Fiat, while cars that held no interest for Krieger wove in and out of the lanes between them.

Krieger turned in his seat, feeling the bite of his shoulder harness, the gouge of his Walther P-88 digging into his side as he craned for a view of Rauschman’s Mercedes. There it was, three cars back, holding steady.

At least, with a real soldier in each vehicle, the peasants he was forced to use as personnel would not give up and wander off somewhere for a siesta in the middle of the job. Krieger would see to that, and Rauschman could be trusted to control his crew, regardless of their innate failings.

Krieger couldn’t really blame them, after all. The peasants had been born inferior, and there was nothing they could do to change that fact, no matter how hard they might try.

But they could follow orders, to a point. Drive cars. Point guns. Pull triggers. What else were they good for? Why else even let them live?

Horst Krieger would be pleased to kill the two men he was following, although he’d never met them in his life and knew nothing about them. One of them looked Aryan, or possibly Italian, but the race alone meant nothing. There was also attitude, philosophy and politics to be considered.

All those who opposed the sacred cause must die.

Some sooner, as it happened, than the rest.

Speaking across his shoulder, Krieger told the two Colombians seated behind him, “Be ready, on my command.”

He heard the harsh click-clack of automatic weapons being cocked, and felt compelled to add, “Don’t fire until I say, and then be certain of your target.”

“No civilians,” one of them responded. “Sí, señor.”

“I don’t care shit about civilians,” Krieger answered. “But if one of you shoots me, I swear, that I’ll strangle you with your own guts before I die.”

The backseat shooters took him seriously, as they should have. Krieger meant precisely what he said.

Rauschman’s two gunners in the second car would have their weapons primed by now, as well, although the order had to come from Krieger, and he hadn’t found his kill zone yet. It might be best if they could pass the target vehicle on Calle 26, he thought, but then he wondered if it would be wiser to delay and follow them onto a smaller and less-crowded surface street.

Something to think about.

“You’re losing him!” Krieger barked, and the Volkswagen gained speed. Still no response from Juan Pacheco at the wheel.

That bit of insubordination would be more expensive than the driver realized. When they were finished with the job and safely back at headquarters, he had a date with Krieger and a hand-crank generator that was guaranteed to keep him on his toes.

Or writhing on the floor in agony.

The prospect made Horst Krieger smile, though on his finely sculpted face, the simple act of smiling had the aspect of a grimace. No one facing that expression would find any mirth in it, or anything at all to put their minds at ease.

“You see the signal?”

Up ahead, the Fiat’s amber left-turn signal light was flashing, as the driver veered across two lanes of traffic. He did not wait for the cars behind him to slow and make room in their lanes, but simply charged across in front of them, as if the signal would protect him from collisions.

Krieger’s wheelman cursed in Spanish and roared off in pursuit of their intended victims. Angry horns blared after them, but Pacheco paid them no heed.

Krieger considered warning Rauschman, but a backward glance told him that the Mercedes was already changing lanes, accelerating into the pursuit. Rauschman would not presume to pass Krieger’s VW, but neither would he let the marks escape.

“Stay after them!” Krieger snarled. “Your life is forfeit if they get away.”

“WE HAVE A TAIL,” Bolan said, turning to confirm what he’d already seen in his side mirror. Two cars, several lengths behind them, had swerved rapidly to match Guzman’s lane change.

“Maybe coincidence,” Guzman said as his dark eyes flickered back and forth between his rearview mirror and the crowded lanes in front of him.

“Maybe,” Bolan replied, but he wasn’t buying it. The nearest off-ramp was a mile or more ahead of them. Commuters would already know their exits. Tourists new to Bogotá would have their noses buried in guidebooks or street maps, and the odds that two of them would suddenly change lanes together without need were minuscule.

“You wouldn’t have a gun, by any chance?” Bolan asked. “Just to tide me over, through our little shopping trip.”

“Of course, señor,” his guide replied, and reached beneath his driver’s seat, drawing a pistol from some hidey-hole and handing it to Bolan.

Bolan recognized the IMBEL 45GC-MD1. He checked the chamber, found a round already loaded, pulled the magazine and counted fourteen more.

It could be worse.

Most .45s had straight-line magazines, and thus surrendered five to seven rounds on average to the staggered-box design employed by most 9 mm handguns. IMBEL had contrived a way to keep the old Colt’s knock-down power while increasing its capacity and sacrificing none of the prototype’s rugged endurance.

Bolan wished he might’ve had a good assault rifle instead, or at the very least a few spare magazines, but he was armed, and so felt vastly better than he had a heartbeat earlier.

“Two cars, you think?” Guzman asked.

Bolan looked again, in time to see a third change lanes, some thirty yards behind the second chase car. “Two, at least,” Bolan replied. “There might be three.”

“I took every precaution!” Guzman said defensively. “I swear, I was not followed.”

It was no time to start an argument. “Maybe they knew where you were going,” Bolan replied.

“How? I told no one!”

Grasping at straws, Bolan suggested, “We can check the car for GPS transmitters later. Right now, think of somewhere to take them without risking any bystanders.”

“There’s no such place in Bogotá, señor!”

“Calm down and reconsider. Last time I passed through town, there was a warehouse district, there were parks the decent people stayed away from after dark, commercial areas where everyone punched out at six o’clock.”

“Well…sí. Of course, we have such places.”

“Find one,” Bolan suggested. “And don’t let those chase cars pull alongside while we’re rolling, if you have a choice.”

“Would you prefer a warehouse or—”

“It’s your town,” Bolan cut him off. “I don’t care if you flip a coin. Just do it now.”

His tone spurred Guzman to a choice, although the driver kept it to himself. No matter. Bolan likely wouldn’t recognize street names, much less specific addresses, if Guzman offered him a running commentary all the way.

Bolan wanted results, and he would judge his guide’s choice by the outcome of the firefight that now seemed a certainty.

Headlights behind the Volkswagen sedan showed Bolan four men in the vehicle. He couldn’t see their backlit faces, and would not have recognized them anyway, unless they’d been featured in the photo lineup he’d viewed before leaving Miami. Still, he knew the enemy by sight, by smell, by intuition.

Even if the dark Mercedes and the smaller car behind it, which had changed lanes last, were wholly innocent, Bolan still had four shooters on his tail, almost before he’d scuffed shoe leather on their native soil. That was a poor start to his game, by any standard, and he had to deal with them as soon as possible.

If he could capture one alive, for questioning, so much the better. But he wasn’t counting on that kind of break, and wouldn’t pull his punches when the bloodletting began.

“All right, I know a place,” Guzman announced. “We take the first road on our left, ahead.”

“Suits me,” Bolan replied. “Sooner’s better than later.”

“You think that they will try to kill us?”

“They’re not the welcoming committee,” Bolan said. “Whether they want us dead or spilling everything we know, it doesn’t work for me.”

“There will be shooting, then?”

“I’d say you could bet money on it.”

“Very well.”

Guzman took one hand off the steering wheel, leaned forward and retrieved a pistol from his waistband, at the back. It was another IMBEL, possibly a twin to Bolan’s .45, although he couldn’t tell without a closer look. Guzman already had it cocked and locked. He left the safety on and wedged the gun beneath his right leg and the cushion of the driver’s seat.

“We’re ready now, I think,” he said.

“We’re getting there,” Bolan replied. “We need our place, first.”

“Soon,” Guzman assured him, speaking through a worried look that didn’t show much confidence. “Three miles, I think. If we are still alive.”