Читать книгу Devil's Playground - Don Pendleton - Страница 7

The Executioner snipped chain links in the fence with his multitool, a sharp, powerful vise for cutting wire set at the base of the folding pliers. The circle of fence fell away, and he crawled through the hole.

He’d left his Barrett and the confiscated G3 behind in the truck, knowing that going in, he needed stealth and their added bulk would make his large, powerful frame even more noticeable. Still, he had the wicked Beretta 93-R machine pistol with its 20-round capacity and blunt suppressor under his arm, and the .44 Magnum Desert Eagle riding on his hip. Both handguns had been chosen by Bolan for their power and range. The Desert Eagle had proved itself a killer at out to two hundred yards, and the Beretta 93-R was a match for any submachine gun in his skilled hands, out to one hundred yards.

Though it was the Executioner’s plan to bring a fatal, final judgment to the commander of the smuggling forces who’d returned to the base, there was the possibility of uninvolved, honest Mexican soldiers staffing this facility. Opening fire without proper identification would put innocent blood on Bolan’s hands.

Luckily, aside from his pistols, Bolan also had various knives, garrottes and impact tools, truly silent means of delivering death. He saw the last of the trucks pull toward the motor pool, overladen with soldiers. All it would take would be one grenade to eliminate the smuggling military men, but before Bolan took out the enemy commander, he needed to get answers out of the man. A grenade might not leave enough left of the traitorous military leader to question, and an open gunfight would result in a conflict with soldiers whose duty was the defense of the base, not pushing heroin across the border.

Stalking closer, a shadow among shadows, Bolan closed on the group as soldiers disgorged from the truck.

He got within ten yards of the milling soldiers, his comprehension of Spanish more than sufficient to understand what was being said.

“We lost a third of the heroin,” one of the men reported.

“Juarez is going to be mad as hell,” the commander replied. “What the hell are we going to do?”

“We? You’re the one who ran away from one man,” the subordinate countered.

“Is that so?” the commander asked.

“Wait. Munoz…Hold on…”

A muzzle-flash lit up the accuser’s face an instant before it dissolved into a crater of spongy gore. Munoz lowered his .50-caliber Desert Eagle and looked around. “Any of the rest of you want to accuse me of running away?”

“No!” came the unanimous response.

“Good,” Munoz replied. “I’ll be in my office, contacting the cartel about the difficulties we’ve had tonight. In my version, we were struck by a significant force. It seemed as if they were Santa Muerte cultists.”

The soldiers nodded.

“Get the heroin stored away for our next trip. We’ll see if the part of the shipment left behind was touched. I doubt it. The Border Patrol wouldn’t cross two hundred yards into our territory to take out 150 kilos of Mexican Brown,” Munoz concluded. “Remember—Santa Muerte cultists ambushed us.”

It was one way for the commander to save face. The punctuation of his statement remained the dead man, his skull hollowed out by a thundering 350-grain bullet. Any deviation and the corpse would be joined by more. And apparently Munoz was in such a position of power that he could get away with burning his own men to the ground with impunity.

“I’m going to hit the bathroom,” another man said. His authority among the others was sufficient that he was able to slack off menial tasks to take care of biological functions, and the minions below him didn’t dare do more than grumble under their breath.

Bolan decided to shadow the loner instead of going right to Munoz. Kurtzman would contact him via his vibrating pager if anything of urgent interest were reported. The Farm undoubtedly had hacked into the phone system to spy on any communications coming in or going out, sifting for nuggets of gold in the streams of data running along fiber-optic wires.

The second in command had stepped into the latrine and begun to relieve himself when the Executioner snapped a powerful arm around his throat, pressure on his larynx strangling off a cry of dismay. Bolan rested the sharp edge of his commando knife across the Mexican’s brow and cheek.

“If you make a sound other than to answer my questions, I’ll carve out your left eye and saw off your nose in one slice. Comprende?” Bolan inquired.

“Yes,” the Mexican soldier rasped softly in English. Facial mutilation, especially the threat to his eye, had cowed the smuggler for now.

“How many on the base are in on the heroin pipeline?” Bolan asked.

“There used to be a dozen more,” the man began.

A hard push and blood trickled from the officer’s brow into his eye. A strangled whimper escaped.

“Minus them,” Bolan advised.

“Me. Colonel Munoz. The gate guards on duty. And the dozen or so unloading the truck,” the officer stated.

The answer sounded plausible, and the tremors in his captive’s voice had added a sense of truth to the confession.

The Executioner tugged his forearm tighter against his captive’s throat. “Let the survivors in your little bunch know that there’s an American who disapproves of your moonlighting.”

He jammed his thumb under the ear of the captive, pressing hard on the carotid artery long enough to render the smuggler unconscious without imparting any long-term harm.

Bolan turned the unconscious soldier around and deposited him on the seat of the toilet. He paused long enough to use a strip of plastic tape to take the man’s thumbprint, preserving it by pressing it to a three-by-five card for later scanning.

He had business to attend to.

Fourteen men were unloading heroin from the truck, several pushing a rolling pallet toward the depths of a storage building. Others worked on cleaning the blood spatter off their vehicle and picking up Munoz’s executed victim.

Bolan followed silently and stealthily after the quartet with the heroin. There were more than two hundred kilos on the pallet, meaning that Munoz’s declaration of half was either an understatement or he was delivering for more than just the Juarez Cartel.

The Executioner made a mental note to get that information out of the colonel before he died.

One straggler in the group had hung back. His task had to have been rear security, and since he gripped a rifle in both hands, he was Bolan’s first target. In two long strides, the wraith in black clamped a crushing hand around the throat of the soldier, cutting off any voiced protests just before spearing the seven-inch blade of his combat knife into the base of the gunman’s skull. Speared right through his brain, the major trunk of his central nervous system destroyed by the razor-sharp edge, he instantly turned into dead, dangling weight in the Executioner’s hand with only a whispered “squelch” of steel grating on bone betraying the swift kill.

The blade whipped out of the dead man’s neck, and Bolan shoved the corpse against one of the two men pushing on the trolley, both bodies collapsing to the ground as the warrior closed in behind the second drug pusher. Slick blood was the only thing glinting on the nonreflective battle knife, and even the dully glistening fluid disappeared when the Executioner plunged the unyielding steel into the Mexican soldier’s right kidney. A tortured sputter of pain was all that the smuggler had time to release before renal shock killed him. With a twist and a hard slice, the blade was free as the remaining pallet pusher grunted, shoving his lifeless friend off of him. There was a moment of complaint about the fool “playing around” before the Mexican realized he was complaining to a corpse.

He whipped his head around, but he only saw the waffle-tread of Bolan’s combat boot filling his world. The side kick smashed the Mexican smuggler’s nose flat, driving bone fragments back into his brain even as his neck snapped under the thunderous force of the blow.

The sickening crack that signaled the pallet pusher’s death alerted the man at the lead of the group and he whirled, reaching for a handgun in a flap holster.

Only the Executioner’s battle-honed reflexes gave him the advantage in beating the trooper’s quick draw. The black commando-style Bowie knife whistled through the air like a shard of night come alive. The gunman had snapped open his holster and stopped, fingers clawing up to the handle of the weapon jutting from his windpipe. Lips worked noiselessly as the last of the transport crew suffocated with an inch-and-a-half width of steel cutting off his air.

Bolan ripped a smaller, ring-handled knife from an inconspicuous sheath on his harness and charged in, two fingers through the loop base of the blade. A two-and-a-half-inch wedge of steel raked across both of the choking smuggler’s eyes, the stocky knife swung with enough force to splinter bone and carve a furrow in his forebrain. Bolan took the handle of the commando knife as the Mexican soldier slid off the black-phosphate blade to flop to the floor.

In the space of a few moments, four men lay dead, blood spreading in puddles on the concrete.

Bolan had to deal with the two hundred kilograms of heroin on the pallet, without resorting to a fire that would alert the remaining smugglers or Munoz in his office.

It took only a short time to locate a janitor’s closet, and bring back several cartons of cleaning supplies. He sliced open the necks of the bottled bleach, then punched air holes in their bottoms and upended them onto the packets of heroin. The air holes would allow the bleach to drain into the heroin more quickly to soak it into a useless morass of chemical paste. The perfectly squared blocks of black tar heroin deformed and swelled under the bleach’s assault. It wouldn’t take long for most of the remaining heroin to be ruined. And with the loss of the drugs near the border, the cartels that Munoz did business with would be enraged.

Though Munoz wouldn’t live to see the morning, the thought of losing a million dollars in heroin to the incompetence of the Mexican army would slow the cartels in doing further business with them. It was a small pause, a tiny impediment. But in the long run, it would give the DEA and the Border Patrol time to shore up their defenses against this particular batch of smugglers.

In the meantime, Bolan had a visit to pay and information to get.

BLANCA ASADO HATED to admit it, gripping the handle of the AK-47, but she was back in her element. Dealing with the emotional crush of her sister’s murder had kicked her around until she couldn’t think straight. In a way, she wanted to thank the faceless marauders who were swarming Armando Diceverde’s small motel room. She thrived on conflict, and because of that she was able to spend years struggling, alongside her sister, rising through the ranks of Mexican law enforcement before she quit and became a private security contractor.

Dread and sorrow were things she couldn’t control, but gunmen coming after her was something she did know how to handle. It would put the agony of losing her sister on hold for a while.

The sight of another masked gunman focused her and she ripped off a short burst from the AK, a row of bullet wounds blossoming from his belt to his throat as she zipped him up the center with the assault rifle. With the stock welded to her shoulder, the recoil was controllable. No ammunition wasted, and through her peripheral vision over the top of the sights, she was able to see other targets popping into view.

Unfortunately, an explosion threw her off as a grenade detonated just outside the door. Diceverde toppled backward, taking the brunt of the concussion, and Asado had to take a couple of steps to regain her balance. Her ears rang, and she cursed herself for not equalizing the pressure in her skull with a loud shout.

Another pair of gunmen appeared in the doorway, expecting their stun grenade to have flattened all opposition within. They were cocky, and their weapons were held low, fingers off the trigger, staring at the flattened photojournalist as he struggled to recover his senses.

“Easy pickings,” one man said.

“So you think,” Asado growled, pulling the trigger on the AK-47 and letting the weapon buck and kick against her shoulder. She held on tight, though, fighting against the muzzle’s rise just enough to keep from emptying rounds into the ceiling, slicing the cocky gunman up through his torso with a stream of 7.62 mm leaden scythes. The shooter slammed into his partner, giving Asado a moment to release the trigger, shift her aim and then tap it again. A trio of bullets spit into the face of the staggered second assassin, his hair and scalp flying back as though someone had thrown open a trapdoor.

Asado reached under Diceverde’s arm. “Come on, Armando.”

Diceverde got to his feet. He hadn’t lost control of his Colt, but he wisely kept it pointed at the ground. His senses were scrambled by the concussion grenade, and if the bomb had gone off inside the apartment, instead of in the doorway, the compression wave would have left them both far more than merely stunned. Asado helped pull Diceverde onto the balcony, and by the time he reached for the railing, he no longer needed assistance.

There were no more signs of enemy activity, but that could have been a lull in the action, Asado thought.

“My car is down there. Follow me,” Asado stated.

“Lead the way,” Diceverde replied. He picked up speed as they reached the stairs.

Asado jumped when she was five steps from the bottom, landing on the sidewalk in a crouch, using her forward momentum to throw her against the fender of her sedan. Gunfire sparked, and Diceverde’s Colt cracked into the darkness. The journalist ducked, having drawn the attention of the hit men, and Asado spotted the muzzle-flash, pinpointing the enemy gunners. She fired another burst, giving Diceverde a break to join her at the car.

Asado threw open the door and ripped off the last of the AK’s load to cover for Diceverde as he crawled into the passenger seat. She let the empty rifle clatter to the ground and slid in behind the wheel. A twist of the key and the engine roared to life. Throwing the car into Reverse, she peeled straight toward the assassins as they rushed her. Diceverde lurched up after reloading his pistol, but Asado stomped on the gas and the Chevy Impala’s rear bumper struck one of the gunmen. The Chevy shook, and Diceverde’s shot missed the charging gunmen as the car rolled over one and quickly past the other.

The other gunman had thrown himself out of the way and Asado stood on the brake, momentum whipping the nose of the Impala around as she ground the gearshift into drive. With a tromp on the gas, she was off, shooting into the street as gunfire banged against the car.

Diceverde shouted in pain, his gun falling into the seatwell.

“Armando?”

“Took one in shoulder,” he rasped.

“Just hang on,” Asado told him. “I’ll get you to some help.”

“Feels like my arm is broken, but there’s not much bleeding,” Diceverde said, pained.

“I’m sorry I got you into this,” Asado replied, swinging around a corner. She wanted to make certain no one followed her.

Once she was sure that they had no tail, she pulled off onto the side of the road and reached under her seat for the first-aid kit. She packed the gunshot wound with gauze and taped it in place to control the bleeding. Diceverde was right; there wasn’t much blood. She taped his forearm against his stomach to hold it in place, then worked up an improvised sling from seat belt straps in the backseat, always keeping an eye out for enemies who would try to finish the job.

Blanca Asado couldn’t believe she’d lost both her sister and her trust in her country in the same night.

COLONEL JAVIER MUNOZ put down the phone and massaged his brow. His mind reeled from the threats his Juarez connection had growled at him. He looked at the big chrome Desert Eagle on the desk next to him. If he didn’t recover the lost heroin, they’d thread his tongue out his throat and staple his genitals to it, before giving him the sweet release of death.

He rested his hand on the pebbled rubber grips of the massive handgun. One pull of the trigger and he’d hammer out a .50-caliber slug. He’d never shot anyone with it before this day, and Sosa’s death was illuminating. The man’s head had been cored violently, brains squirting out the back in a fountain of human destruction. But even the power of the Desert Eagle might not be enough against the gunmen of the Juarez Cartel. Maybe if he put the muzzle between his lips and squeezed, he wouldn’t feel it.

Something scraped behind him, a movement just outside the cone of yellowed light from his desk lamp. Munoz’s fingers clawed the big handgun closer when another Desert Eagle chopped down like an ax, crushing his carpal bones between two slabs of heavy steel. A hand clamped over the colonel’s mouth before he could let out a cry of pain over his shattered limb, bones floating freely in pulped meat. Munoz’s eyes bulged in their sockets and he was stretched hard backward out of the chair, neck bones creaking against each other.

“Nice pistol,” came a dry, grim voice. “Trouble is, I can lift mine.”

Munoz’s throat burned as his muffled howl of agony tried to force its way past his lips.

His attacker’s Desert Eagle disappeared with the ruffle of steel sheathing itself in leather.

Bolan reached out and picked up the massive .50-caliber weapon, thumbing back the hammer, then sliding on the safety. “In your next lifetime, if Desert Eagles are still around, this is how you should carry it.”

Munoz swallowed as the huge weapon’s muzzle pressed to his cheek. He wanted to struggle, but with Bolan’s knee shoved into the back of his chair, and hundreds of pounds of leverage hauling on his chin and stressing his spine, the colonel was left helpless and paralyzed with pain. His good hand clawed at the hand over his mouth as he struggled to speak past Bolan’s restraining fingers.

“You’ve got something to tell me?” Bolan asked, loosening his grip. “Just remember, you call for help, I put one in your stomach, so it’ll take you a long time to die.”

“Yes, sir,” Munoz whispered, making sure his voice didn’t rise. His windpipe still felt choked off, but this time from fear not physical force. Tears burned down the colonel’s cheeks.

“I listened to your phone call. Your bosses don’t think very much of your performance tonight,” Bolan taunted softly. “After all, losing nearly a dozen men to one enemy combatant?”

“You didn’t fight fair…” Munoz protested, his voice a harsh, ragged exhalation.

“And you did, opening fire on two American lawmen forbidden to return fire against you?” Bolan asked. Munoz’s neck twisted until he was looking at a pair of cold, merciless blue eyes. At first he was going to cry out in pain, but the icy gaze froze his soul.

“Skip the ‘poor me’ whining, Munoz,” Bolan informed him. “All I want to know is who am I sparing the trouble of mutilating you by putting a bullet in your head?”

“Roderigo Montoya-Juarez,” Munoz replied.

“Right,” Bolan returned. “As if Montoya-Juarez would get any of your foul fluids on his fingers. Tell me another joke.”

“I swear. I swear!” Munoz replied, his voice rising.

Bolan ground the steel of the barrel hard against Munoz’s cheek, the ridge of the bone crunching against the unyielding metal. His hand clamped tighter over the colonel’s mouth. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear that you were trying to make some noise in order to call for help.”

“I’m not,” Munoz whispered. “I’m not…I just don’t want to die.”

“You’ve done everything you can to convince me otherwise,” the Executioner informed him. “You know how light the trigger is on these pistols, right?”

Munoz heard the metallic clink of the safety catch snapping off. His pants grew hot and wet as his bladder cut loose. “Please…”

“You’re not giving me anything to make me want to spare your life,” Bolan said. “But, considering I just emptied twelve gallons of bleach into what was left of your heroin, I could just spare myself some hearing damage and let Montoya-Juarez have you.”

Munoz’s dark eyes bulged, irises narrowing to pinpricks in sheer horror.

Bolan released the colonel and flicked on the Desert Eagle’s safety.

“Wait…”

“For what?” Bolan asked.

“Juarez has competition,” Munoz replied.

“I know the layout,” Bolan told him. “There are six other cartels sweating Montoya-Juarez right now.”

“A new player who only popped up recently,” Munoz stated. “I gave Juarez a hookup to make a move the other day.”

“With who?” Bolan pressed.

“Army officer by the name of Salvada,” Munoz confessed. “Salvada called in some ex-soldiers to make the hit, but equipped them.”

The Executioner regarded him coldly as Munoz ran the numbers in his head. Nearly one hundred pints of bleach would completely ruin one hundred pounds of heroin instantly. That was a quarter of the two hundred kilograms he had left. Together with the 150 lost at the border, and even more seepage, Munoz could kiss any chance of making it up to the cartel.

Bolan dropped the magazine and racked the slide, then lobbed the empty Desert Eagle onto the desk. “All yours, Colonel. I suggest you run like hell. You’ve got a few hours before Montoya-Juarez stops waiting for you.”

Munoz nodded, looking at the gun.

“Who knows, maybe you can find mercy with the government and military you betrayed. Or you could trust that the Border Patrol won’t kill you on sight,” Bolan suggested. He lobbed one of the fat .50-caliber bullets to Munoz. “Or, you could find your own way out.”

The Executioner turned and left the office. He’d gotten halfway down the hall when he heard the solitary roar of the Mexican’s pistol, followed by the thud of a limp body striking the floor.

He was working his way up the Juarez Cartel, but now he heard about another player in this game.

One that might have been the reason why the governor of Guerrero State wanted the Executioner to join the conflict.

He’d cross that bridge when he got to it.