Devil's Mark

Grimaldi bellowed as he fought the stick. “We’re going down!”

MacLeod burst apart like a water balloon, turning the cabin interior into a charnel house. Bolan could feel Smiley bleeding out in his arms. Chet was screaming hysterically. “You bastards! You bastards!”

The Devil had come for his due.

The helicopter soared over a sandy beach and spun nauseatingly. She skipped like a stone as one of her skids hit an outcropping. Grimaldi’s voice was uncommonly desperate. “Brace for impact!”

The helicopter hit.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

—Edmund Burke

1729–1797

Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

Some forms of evil are more obvious than others. My task—and that of my associates—is to take on all comers until the puppetmaster is exposed. Then I’ll mete out my brand of justice—hell on Earth.

—Mack Bolan

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

Tijuana, Mexico

The three-car prisoner caravan wended its way through the potholed backstreets. Bolan rode shotgun in an unmarked, armored Bronco. It was 4:00 a.m., and the Tijuana back alleys still bustled in a sloggy way with drunken, bleary-eyed tourists either looking for a last, ugliest bit of action or staggering away from it. The dens of sin didn’t bother to promote themselves with neon lights or pamphlet-waving hawkers pimping strip shows as on the main strip. Displaying the wares was frivolous excess at this time of night and in this part of town. It was old school Tijuana—graffitied brown adobe walls, an occasional bare bulb and small, dark doorways. If you were here and had money, you had already picked your perversion. You just walked through a door and the wares found you.

Bolan glanced back at “the package.”

Prisoner Cuauhtemoc “Cuah” Nigris wasn’t a happy man. Nigris was the last of the “Baja Barbacoas,” a quartet of Mexican cartel contract killers who specialized in kidnapping their victims and slow-roasting them alive in a traditional Mexican open pit barbeque covered with maguey agave leaves. The fact that a man who had terrorized the Baja Peninsula from Tijuana to Cabo San Lucas, and was rumored to have eaten parts of his victims, had been reduced to the shivering cold sweats was cause for concern. Then again, all three of Cuah’s fellow accomplices had been caught, and despite the best efforts of the Mexican authorities, the three had been shot, poisoned and garroted while in custody, and adding insult to injury, they had all had their heads removed at some point before they went into the ground. Nigris was the last of his culinary killing quartet and, in desperation, had broken the cartel code of silence. He agreed to spill everything he knew about anything and everybody if they would only extradite him to the perceived safety of the United States.

Nigris flinched under Bolan’s scrutiny.

Babysitting was one of Bolan’s least favorite activities, particularly when the mark was a torturer and cannibal, but the powers that be in the Justice Department wanted Nigris, and they wanted him badly. He was a potential goldmine of information. Three of the four were dead. The Justice Department wanted some life insurance for Nigris and Hal Brognola had asked Mack Bolan to be the man’s personal policy.

Bolan sized up the policyholder.

Cuah Nigris was a light heavyweight in size and stature. Gang tattoos crawled over most exposed surfaces of his body, including his shaved head. His almond-shaped eyes revealed his Aztec heritage, and at the moment they were flared wide in fear as he sat shackled hand and foot in the back of the SUV.

Policía Federal Preventiva agent Majandro “Mole” LeCaesar sat next to him. The PFP agent was armed and armored and wearing black battle fatigues. His dark skin and brownish-red Afro betrayed a lot of African blood, and “Mole,” the national chocolate sauce of Mexico, was a nickname he wore with pride. Bolan had liked the man immediately. LeCaesar in return regarded the mysterious American with the gravest of suspicion. It was a sign of how desperate things were getting that the PFP would allow an agent to go dark on an American prisoner transfer. LeCaesar kept the muzzle of his MP-5 jammed into Nigris’s ribs and his eyes on the streets.

Bolan turned his attention to Agent Smiley.

It wasn’t the most onerous task in the world.

Drug Enforcement Administration agent Cambrianna “Bree” Smiley was short and dark with big brown eyes, big cheekbones, big lips and pretty much a big everything packed into a small frame. She was a woman who looked good in body armor. The words Mexican firecracker came to mind except for the fact that she was Irish and happened to tan well. Just about every national law enforcement and intelligence agency in the world kept a few lookers on the roster. Certain situations worked best with a beautiful woman on the team, but Smiley was more than window dressing. She had done a tour in Afghanistan in 2007 with the DEA’s Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams, or FAST, and Bree Smiley won a reputation as a problem solver.

And in fact there was a significant problem on the U.S. border with Mexico. A problem so bad the President of the United States had turned Mack Bolan onto it, as well. Bolan was used to being an enigma to federal agents and their not liking it. Smiley was taking it better than most. She wouldn’t admit it, but things had gotten spooky lately and she was secretly pleased to have the backup. Agent Smiley gave Bolan a lopsided grin without taking her eyes off the road. “You getting a good look, Blue Eyes?”

“Something is about to go down,” Bolan said.

“Impossible.” Smiley shook her head while constantly scanning the road ahead. “I planned this transfer. We sent out the decoy Cuah at 7:00 a.m. yesterday, under guard like he was the Mexican president himself. Our decoy is a ringer, and he reached the border and was delivered into custody without a hitch. No one knows about tonight’s little excursion except people I trust with my life, and that includes Mole. No one knows our route except me, and if we’re being tailed, then they’re better than you and me both. Cuah Nigris is coming to America and he’s going to sing like a bird for me.”

Nigris whimpered in the backseat of the Bronco as they swung out of the red-light district and headed north for the border. Bolan’s spine spoke to him and long ago he had learned to listen to it. “We’re gonna get hit.”

“No way.” Bree’s back went up. “I planned this op.”

“And you planned it well,” Bolan agreed. “But we’re gonna get hit.”

“And how do you figure that?”

“Because your skin is crawling just like mine.” Bolan turned to the backseat. “You happy, Mole?”

LeCaesar shook his head. “No, señor. I am not happy. I have a bad feeling.”

“What about you, Cuah?” Bolan asked.

Nigris moaned.

Bolan turned back to Smiley. “It’s unanimous.”

Smiley sighed. “And just who are you again?”

Bolan shrugged.

The woman’s shoulders sagged. “Tell me you’re Justice Department.”

“I’ve been associated with the Justice Department,” Bolan admitted.

“Associated?” Agent Smiley finally took her eyes off the road and quirked an eyebrow at Bolan. “Dude, you’re kind of spooky.”

Bolan shrugged. “I’ve been spooky—and scary, too.”

“Okay, Carnac. You got me. I got a real bad feeling right about now.” Smiley’s voice sank an octave in irritation. “So you tell me, Mr. Interdepartmental X-Files Liaison mystery man, you got any suggestions?”

Bolan unzipped the duffel between his feet and pulled out his current car gun. Agent Smiley’s eyes flew wide. “Jesus…”

Even LeCaesar was impressed. “¡Madre de Dios!”

The SCAR-H—Special Forces Combat Assault Rifle–Heavy—was about as brutal as black rifles got. The stock was folded, the barrel had been lopped to thirteen inches for close-quarters combat and a 40 mm grenade launcher was slaved beneath the forestock. The accessory rails along the top and sides were loaded with an optical sight, a laser pointer and a Taser unit in case Nigris suddenly became restless. The magazine was stoked with .30-caliber tungsten-steel-core armor-piercing bullets. Bolan had ten more mags loaded with the same and a spread of grenades specially picked for just this situation. Bolan jacked an antiarmor round into the launcher.

“Nice end-of-the-world weapon you got there, slick.”

Bolan checked the loads. “I was a Boy Scout.”

Smiley’s grin lit back up. “I was a Girl Scout!”

“I know.” Bolan nodded. “I read your file.”

“Okay, now you’re getting creepy again.”

Bolan scanned the streets of Tijuana. He had an intense dislike for fighting out of cars. They were bullet magnets. The window frames and your fellow passengers got in your way when you tried to shoot back, and if the bad guys had the balls it took only one or two enemy vehicles to run you off the road or pin you to a standstill and do you like Bonnie and Clyde. “You got a route B?”

“Route B, C and D,” Smiley confirmed. “I got Z if it comes to it.”

Bolan checked their lead vehicle. The caravan was in loose convoy. The lead unit was a block ahead and had four armed and armored DEA men inside. The tail unit was about a block behind and similarly loaded with a DEA Fast Reaction team. It would take a very good observer up in a helicopter or a string of spotters on rooftops to make the Nigris train as it wound its way through Tijuana for the border. “I want route X.”

“I’m all ears,” Smiley said.

“Tell A and B units to continue on primary route. If we’re blown, I say you and I go random. Screw silent running. We go O.J. mode and run. Have Control call in a chopper and vector us to the nearest garage with a rooftop. We fly our asses out of here, deliver Cuah to San Diego Branch, and we’re eating pancakes at the IHOP by dawn.”

“Like the way you think, Tall, Dark and Spooky.” Smiley cranked the wheel and thumbed her com unit. “Control, this is Vector 1. Suspect ambush. Breaking formation. Suggest Vector 2 and 3 continue primary route. I need a rooftop and helicopter extraction for package ASAP.”

The DEA controlling agent was across the border in a communications van watching the transfer by satellite. “Copy that, Vector 1. Working up a route. Break east for highway. Vector 2 and 3 continue—”

“Here they come!” Bolan watched two black SUVs and a pickup come boiling out of a side street in his sideview mirror. He clicked his com unit. “Vector 3! Right behind you!”

The three black vehicles formed a wedge filling both lanes of the road and forcing vehicles off the road. The pickup formed the tip of the spear and the truck bed was packed with gunmen. Bolan hit the button on the sunroof. “Mole,” Bolan said. The federale didn’t need to be told twice. Nigris squeaked as LeCaesar shoved him to the floor of the Bronco and stepped on his neck to keep him there. The agent lowered his window and leaned out into the night with his submachine gun in hand. Bolan stood up in the sunroof. He unfolded his rifle’s stock and shouldered the weapon. His eyes flared as a man in the back of the pickup leveled a green metal tube about a meter and a half long and sighted at Vector 3.

“Vector 3!” Bolan shouted into his com. “Rocket! Rocket! Rocket!”

Vector 3 went up on two wheels as the DEA driver cranked the wheel in desperate evasive action. LeCaesar’s weapon chattered into life and sparks walked across the pickup’s hood. Bolan flipped up his grenade launcher sight and took a second to aim. The weapon slammed against his shoulder as the grenade launcher belched 40 mm fire. The antiarmor round punched dead on into the pickup’s gleaming grillwork. The windows blasted out as the shaped-charge warhead turned a significant section of the V-8 engine into molten metal and superheated gas that filled the cab with fire. The men in the truck bed screamed as the truck lifted up off its chassis and came down without front wheels. The truck flipped and men were smeared onto the road like insects. The SUV drivers floored it to escape the burning, tumbling hulk.

LeCaesar roared into the night as if he was at a Club Tijuana home game. “Goal! Goal! Goooal!” He punctuated each outburst of pleasure with a burst from his weapon. “C’mon, cabrons!”

Bolan put his sights on the closest SUV and burned half his mag into the grille. Steam blasted out from beneath the hood. Bolan raised his aim and put the other half into the driver’s side windshield. The SUV instantly veered hard left and plowed into the brown adobe wall of a brothel. The wall cracked. The SUV crumpled like an accordion, spewing glass and bits of body panel like shrapnel.

Bolan slapped in a fresh mag. The remaining SUV suddenly found that Vector 3 had three windows open and outraged DEA Fast Reaction men pumping rounds into them from their assault rifles. LeCaesar grinned up at Bolan. “Cartel pussies, they—”

Both men lurched in the window frames as Agent Smiley hit the gas. She shouted back at them. “Down! Down! Down!”

Bolan snaked down out of the sunroof. He reached over the seat and hauled LeCaesar back inside. He had half a heartbeat to ram his feet against the floorboards and slam his free hand against the roof as the brights from another pickup roared out of a side street and lit up Vector 1 like stalag lights. “Brace for impact!”

The cartel pickup hit them broadside.

Smiley swore and took a brutal head bounce that cracked her window. Nigris screamed. LeCaesar and the prisoner tumbled around the backseat like two rag dolls thrown in on spin cycle. Bolan gritted his teeth as glass from his shattered window flew in his face. He lost his grip on the roof, and blood spurted from his hand as it sheared away the dome light. His stomach lurched as the Bronco went up on two wheels. Smiley gasped as it landed on its side and Bolan landed on top of her. Grenades and spare mags were everywhere. A frag spun like a top on the edge of the center armrest. Bolan grabbed it. He was risking a burn if gasoline was leaking, but he could hear boots pounding the pavement. As bullets began rattling against the overturned truck he pulled the pin with a bloody hand and tossed the grenade up and out of the shattered passenger window. “Frag out!”

Someone outside yelled ¡Granada! and the shouts turned to screams as the grenade spewed shrapnel in all directions. LeCaesar crawled out the sunroof dragging a mewling Nigris with him. Bolan grabbed his rifle and a bandolier and helped push the prisoner’s limp body out the sunroof. Smiley blinked and gasped. Bolan grabbed her and hauled her out of the Bronco. He reached back inside and pulled her carbine out of its rack.

“Smiley! You all right?” The agent stared at Bolan out of a mask of blood. Her left eyebrow was hanging off her face. Bolan held up his middle finger. “How many you see?”

“Screw you!” Smiley replied.

Bolan shoved her carbine into her arms. “You’re gonna be all right!”

LeCaesar slapped Nigris forehand and back, but the killer seemed catatonic. Bolan didn’t think it had much to do with the crash. LeCaesar made a terrible face as he tossed the prisoner across his shoulders like a sack of corn. The PFP agent was hurt. Bolan jacked a fresh grenade into his launcher. “Mole!”

“¡De nada!” Mole rose to his feet with a groan. “Go! Go! Go!”

Bolan looked up the street. A rocket attack had left Vector 2 a burning hulk. It didn’t look as if anyone had gotten out. Behind them Vector 3 had left the last enemy SUV riddled like Swiss cheese. Bolan slung one of Smiley’s arms over his shoulder and clicked his com unit. “Vector 3! We need you!”

“Copy that!”

“Control! This is Vector 1! Convoy under heavy attack! Vector 3 vehicle damaged! Package intact! Vector 2 is gone with all aboard! Repeat! Vector 2 is gone!”

“Copy that, Vector 1.” The voice of the DEA controller in California was grim. “Helicopter inbound. Sending Vector 3 extraction route now!”

Vector 3 came roaring up the block victoriously. A dark blue Ford F-150 came screaming down the road to meet them. Instincts honed in battle on every continent on earth roared up and down Bolan’s spine. “Vector 3! Abort! Take evasive action! Get out of here!”

“Negative Vector 1!” DEA agents sprouted out of the windows of Vector 3 and fire chattered from the muzzles of their carbines. They tore forward in an eight-cylinder, automatic-weapon jousting match. “We don’t leave people behind!”

The enemy wasn’t jousting. They were playing chicken, and Bolan’s guts told him they weren’t going to blink. Bolan dropped Smiley and brought up his rifle as the Ford flew by. Fire strobed from the muzzle and spent casings flew as he held the trigger down on full-auto, ripping the Ford’s rear tires. Vector 3 realized a heartbeat too late what the Ford’s intentions were. Vector 3 swerved at the last second, and the F-150 turned to meet them.

The vehicles collided head-on at a combined speed of over 100 mph.

The DEA men firing out of the windows of Vector 3 snapped like kindling from the impact. The assassin riding shotgun in the Ford flew through his windshield like a rocket of flesh and blood and plowed through Vector 3’s windshield, as well. The two 4x4s bounced apart like mountain goat rams that had crippled each other with one apocalyptic hit. Both vehicles were crumpled like tin cans. Bolan’s blood went cold as he reloaded and slapped his rifle’s bolt into battery. No one was getting out of either vehicle. Drug muscle wasn’t known for going kamikaze. Something was terribly wrong. “We gotta go. We gotta go now.”

“Jesus…” Smiley used her carbine to lever herself up.

LeCaesar groaned beneath Nigris’s deadweight.

“Give him to me.”

LeCaesar snarled. Nigris was still officially his prisoner until he was handed over to U.S. authorities. “Go!”

Bolan clicked his com. “Control, this is Vector 1. All convoy vehicles disabled. Vector 3 is gone. Package intact. We need extraction now or nev—”

Two Mercury Grand Marquis, one black, one brown, both with tinted windows, cruised down the street. They weren’t suicide sleds like the first wave of attack. They were cruising slow, prowling, the clean-up squad. “Bree, Mole, we got company.”

“Jesus!” Smiley flipped her carbine’s selector lever to full-auto. “How many of these guys are there?”

Too many, Bolan thought. He led his team down a side street as the two sedans slid around the burning hulk of Vector 2. They ducked down one narrow street and then another. The streets turned into alleys and barrios swiftly turned into unlighted, two-story adobes, huddled together with dirt for streets and lines of laundry stretched between them. The stars and a few strands of Christmas lights were the only light save occasional votive candles on stoops. Nigris squeaked as he tipped off LeCaesar’s back and landed in a fetid puddle. The agent’s weapon clattered as the man dropped to his hands and knees. Bolan kept an eye on the maze as Smiley dropped to a knee beside the Mexican agent. “You okay, amigo?”

LeCaesar mumbled in Spanish that it was nothing and he was fine. Then he threw up. Smiley wiped his chin and grimaced at the dark stain on her hand. “He got busted up in the crash. He’s bleeding inside. We need to call—”

“We don’t call anybody.”

“What do you mean—”

“I mean all bets are off.” Bolan turned off his com. “I don’t trust anybody but you and him.”

LeCaesar pushed himself to his knees and wiped blood from his chin. “The gringo is right. We trust no one.”

Bolan cocked his head at Smiley. “How come she’s not a gringa?”

LeCaesar rose with her help. “She’s mexicana honoraria.”

“How do I get to be an honorary Mexican?”

The agent flashed bloody teeth. “You have made progress tonight.”

“Great. Can I have Cuah’s keys?”

LeCaesar’s smile fell from his face. “That man is a killer and a cannibal. I am not so sure that is a good idea.”

“I don’t want to carry him and you can’t.” Bolan shrugged. “Just his legs. So he can haul his own freight.”

The agent looked at Smiley, who nodded. LeCaesar agreed. “Sí.” He pulled a dog-tag chain bearing handcuff keys from beneath his armor.

Bolan unlocked Nigris’s hobble and leaned in close. “Don’t even think about it.” Nigris whimpered. Bolan could smell the fear on him sweating through his clothes, and he didn’t like it at all.

“Mole, I thought this guy was supposed to be a genuine badass.”

“He is.” LeCaesar didn’t like it either. “Or at least he was.”

Bolan hauled Nigris to his feet. “We need to find a vehicle.”

LeCaesar grabbed Nigris by the scruff of the neck and jammed his weapon in his back. “The next main street is that way.”

Headlights suddenly flared to brights as if on cue. The black sedan filled the narrow alleyway the way they had come. Smiley and LeCaesar opened up. Sparks walked across the Mercury’s hood and bullets chipped glass. “They’re armored!” Smiley shouted. Brights hit them from the other end of the alley and they were pinned between the rapidly closing bumpers. Bolan was out of antiarmor rounds for his grenade launcher.

Nigris broke free of LeCaesar and ran screaming down the alley, waving his arms. “¡Maricon!” the agent snarled, but he wasn’t willing to shoot his suspect.

“Cuah!” Bolan roared.

The black sedan accelerated. Nigris froze like a deer and the vehicle ran him down. He flew ten feet and the Mercury followed, grinding him to paste beneath its wheels. Both sedans advanced, putting Bolan, Smiley and LeCaesar in the big squeeze. The two agents fired without effect. There was nowhere to go. Bolan pulled a high-explosive grenade. Most civilian vehicle armor jobs were armored in the windows and body panels. Only the highest end military and diplomatic vehicles’ undersides were mine-proofed.

Bolan pulled the pin and went bowling for bad guys.

He counted down one second of fuse time and underhanded the grenade down the alley. It bounced beneath the bumper of the oncoming brown Mercury. The front of the Marquis lifted higher than any low-rider dared dream as the undercarriage was annihilated. “C’mon!”

Bolan was already charging. The sedan behind them roared with acceleration. The Executioner burned half his clip into the stricken Marquis’s windshield from the hip-assault position. He leaped onto the hood and helped up his companions. “Go!” They slipped over the hood and down the trunk. Bolan turned toward the oncoming juggernaut and emptied his weapon into the windshield. His rifle clacked open on a smoking empty chamber as the sedan hurtled in. Bolan jumped.

The brown sedan beneath his boots disappeared backward and was replaced by a black one. Metal flew. The black Mercury slammed to a stop and Bolan landed on the hood. The occupants were barely discernable behind the tinted glass. He reloaded his rifle and began to fire into the driver’s side point-blank. The twenty steel-core rounds bit into the armored glass, the last five punching through.