“Everybody down!” the Executioner shouted

The machine gun outside slammed into life like doomsday. The wooden walls of the museum were no defense against the cigar-sized bullets that passed through them like they were paper. Glass display cases shattered in explosions of shrapnel shards. Juanita was the only one to have disobeyed Bolan, and she paid for it as a burst from the crew outside sacrificed her to the revolution. The machine gun outside slammed into life like doomsday. The wooden walls of the museum were no defense against the cigar-sized bullets that passed through them like they were paper. Glass display cases shattered in explosions of shrapnel shards. Juanita was the only one to have disobeyed Bolan, and she paid for it as a burst from the crew outside sacrificed her to the revolution.

Bolan glanced at the Beretta in his hand. They were definitely outgunned.

The weapon outside suddenly fell silent as it burned up its one-hundred-round belt. The crackle and pop of small-arms fire filled the gap as the machine-gun crew reloaded. Bolan rose to a crouch. It was time to move. “Everyone behind me!” he shouted.

The Executioner threw himself down again as he heard an unmistakable sound and the real hell-storm began.

Six-foot streaks of fire geysered through the hundred machine-gun holes perforating the museum walls. Somebody had brought along a flamethrower. They were upping the ante.

Crisis Nation

The Executioner®

Don Pendleton

www.mirabooks.co.uk

When you are occupying a position which the enemy threatens to surround, collect all your force immediately, and menace him with an offensive movement.

—Napoleon I

1769–1821

Maxims of War

When my enemy thinks I am surrounded and have no way out, I will take the opportunity to make my own attack.

—Mack Bolan

THE MACK BOLAN LEGEND

Nothing less than a war could have fashioned the destiny of the man called Mack Bolan. Bolan earned the Executioner title in the jungle hell of Vietnam.

But this soldier also wore another name—Sergeant Mercy. He was so tagged because of the compassion he showed to wounded comrades-in-arms and Vietnamese civilians.

Mack Bolan’s second tour of duty ended prematurely when he was given emergency leave to return home and bury his family, victims of the Mob. Then he declared a one-man war against the Mafia.

He confronted the Families head-on from coast to coast, and soon a hope of victory began to appear. But Bolan had broken society’s every rule. That same society started gunning for this elusive warrior—to no avail.

So Bolan was offered amnesty to work within the system against terrorism. This time, as an employee of Uncle Sam, Bolan became Colonel John Phoenix. With a command center at Stony Man Farm in Virginia, he and his new allies—Able Team and Phoenix Force—waged relentless war on a new adversary: the KGB.

But when his one true love, April Rose, died at the hands of the Soviet terror machine, Bolan severed all ties with Establishment authority.

Now, after a lengthy lone-wolf struggle and much soul-searching, the Executioner has agreed to enter an “arm’s-length” alliance with his government once more, reserving the right to pursue personal missions in his Everlasting War.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

1

Laguna San José, Puerto Rico

Bolan stared at the three stripped bodies as they bobbed in the shallow water. They had bloated up from being in the salt marsh overnight. Bruises encircling the wrists and ankles showed that the two policemen and one policewoman had been bound. Brutal contusions on other parts of the policewoman’s body showed that she had endured other abuses before she had been decapitated with her fellow officers. San Juan CSI had marked off the area with stakes in the silt wrapped with crime-scene tape. It was impossible to get a car down there in the mud, so a harbor patrol fan boat was making its way through the reeds. Bolan glanced up as a passenger jet roared out of Luis Muñoz Marin International Airport across the lagoon. Heat shimmered off the causeway loaded with morning traffic crossing the shallow waters. At nine o’clock in the morning, it was already ninety degrees. He glanced back at the bodies. It was getting to the point that the police no longer waited to be called. Every morning harbor patrol sent out small boats to the lagoon and more often than not they came back with bodies.

“This is bad, Señor Cooper,” Inspector Noah Constante said, using Mack Bolan’s cover name for this mission. He was a lanky man in a television-blue guayabera shirt and a white Kangol driving cap. He had a coppery complexion, a hooked nose and slightly almond-shaped eyes that spoke of indigenous Taino Indian blood. A pencil-thin mustache completed his look. With the Colt .45 pistol automatic tucked into the front of his tropical white silk pants, he looked like the world’s most dangerous golf caddy. He lit another cigarette and tossed the old butt into the water. “Very bad.”

Bolan nodded. Beheading was a favorite of method of “warning murder” with the Mexican drug gangs, and it was quickly becoming popular throughout Central and South America. To Bolan’s knowledge this was the first time it had been used by political revolutionaries in the Caribbean, much less in a commonwealth of the United States.

Much less against United States military police personnel.

Puerto Rico’s political status was unusual to say the least. It was currently considered an “enhanced commonwealth” of the United States and its politics were split fairly evenly along three diverging lines. There were those who wanted to maintain the status quo, and they had won referendums to keep it that way in six decades of votes on the subject. There were those who wanted Puerto Rico to become the fifty-first state of the United States and join the republic.

And there had always been a Puerto Rican independence movement.

Since the 1800s there had been those who had wanted to kick out the Spanish colonizers. When the United States had invaded the island during the Spanish-American War, there had been those who had wanted to kick out the Yanquis. That had been mollified a great deal when Harry S Truman gave all Puerto Ricans American citizenship. Still, there had always been those who sought, and sometimes fought, to gain nation-status for the Caribbean island. The Nationalistas were the smallest of the three political affiliations, but they had always been the most vocal.

They had also been the one to turn to violence.

Until recently it had always been small-scale, and most of even the most ardent of those who dreamed of Puerto Rican independence shunned violence as a means to achieve it. Now, times seemed to be changing. It had begun with rumors that the U.S. military was storing nuclear weapons on the island. Political activists had begun protesting outside U.S. military bases and Puerto Rican police stations. The actions by military policemen to round them up and take them away from the bases had made news worldwide. When a protestor had been shot trying to break into Fort Buchanan, the protests had broken out into street-rioting in the capital. Tear gas and rubber bullets had been used and the rioting and looting had gotten worse.

Then people had started to die in earnest.

Anyone who opposed the closing of the bases or independence for Puerto Rico was branded a traitor. There had been a number of high-profile kidnappings, and street violence disguised as political statement had become endemic in the capital and was spilling out into the countryside. Police had become a popular target, and it was common knowledge that many Puerto Rican police were sympathetic and were not prosecuting or investigating to the best of their abilities. The United States was loath to send in armed troops or hordes of federal police. The Puerto Rican governor had called out the National Guard, and many of them were very reluctant to take action against rioters or demonstrators. Many had thrown down their weapons and joined them.

There were many in the U.S. congress and senate who believed that the U.S. should wash its hands and let the island commonwealth go. The FBI had very strong leads that Puerto Rican organized crime had a very strong hand in everything going on, but when a car bomb had gone off outside their San Juan office and two of their agents had been killed, they had been forced to admit there wasn’t much they could do about it without massive reinforcement.

Puerto Rico was turning into a powder keg, and it was almost to the point of being a “retake the island or let it go” situation. The President was willing to consider Puerto Rican independence, but had stated categorically to his cabinet he would not allow the U.S. and Puerto Rico’s long association to be severed by the sword of domestic terrorism rather than the ballot box.

He was unwilling to send in the 101st Airborne Division. Instead he fell back on the services of a patriotic American.

Mack Bolan had boarded a plane.

He turned and sized up the man beside him. Puerto Rico might be a commonwealth of the United States, but it was also a Caribbean island with an overwhelmingly Latin culture. Corruption among the police was endemic. Inspector Noah Constante had a reputation as an ass-kicker. He had a lot of arrests, a lot of convictions and a sleepy aura of relaxed violence about him. Bolan suspected that if Constante had been a cop on the mainland he would probably have been brought up on police brutality charges dozens of times. He was a man who got things done and specialized in homicide. That told Bolan that if Constante was corrupt, the inspector was much more likely to receive favors and bribes from local businessmen and politicians rather than criminals. That was one reason why Bolan had requested him.

“Beheadings say gangsters. I think gangsters did this,” Bolan said.

“Well,” Constante said, giving a very Latin shrug, “there is no reason why a man cannot be a gangster and a patriot.”

Bolan tilted his head at the bodies. “You consider whoever did that a patriot?”

“Whoever did that is murdering, rapist scum.” Constante’s black eyes stared long and hard at the dead military policewoman’s corpse. “I happened to have known Miss Corporal Carson. She was a good cop. I am afraid I cannot let this stand.”

“So tell me, who’s the most powerful gang in Puerto Rico?” Bolan knew the answer, but he wanted to gauge Constante.

“That’s easy.” The inspector shrugged again. “That would be La Neta, which means the truth. They formed in Río Piedras Prison in 1970, supposedly to stop violence between inmates and promote solidarity between the Puerto Rican gangs, but they have since, how would you say…evolved, beyond their original charter.”

“What else can you tell me about them?” Bolan asked.

“They often promote themselves as a cultural group. Since their inception they have always promoted independence for the island. Like all successful prison gangs, they spread out beyond the prison walls. They have taken over many of the street gangs and established ties with others. They have always had a reputation of silencio.”

Bolan raised an eyebrow. “Silence?”

Constante frowned. “Not exactly.” The inspector sought for a translation. “It is not the word they would use, but you would understand their reputation much more as tranquilidad.”

“Quiet,” Bolan said.

“Yes, quiet. Make no mistake, La Neta is a violent street gang. Disrespect or action taken against one of their members or affiliates is seen as an attack on all members, and they will violently defend their turf. However, they have established the unusual tactic of not drawing attention to themselves, and when they do, it is as a patriotic organization—Puerto Rico for Puerto Ricans. Often they put money into their local barrios, in community projects. They will provide beer and food at fiestas and march in parades wrapped in the Puerto Rican flags. They let other gangs draw attention to themselves as gangsters, they let others establish reputations for violence and killings, for being bad men, and when the inevitable crackdown comes? La Neta is waiting, in silencio, to move in and take over their turf or swallow up their organization.”

Bolan eyed the inspector shrewdly. “What about ties to political groups?”

“As I have said, señor, La Neta is strongly patriotic. They have long associated themselves with the Los Macheteros revolutionary group.”

Bolan had read a dossier on “The Machete Men.” For years they had been on the violent, extremist end of the independence movement. Bolan surveyed the headless corpses. “That look like machete work to you?”

“Indeed.” Constante sighed. “However, I must say that is a tenuous, indeed, metaphoric lead at best.”

The inspector had a bit of the poet about him. Bolan found himself liking the man but not immediately trusting him. “Like I said, this looks like gangster work, parading as politics, and that’s where I’m going to start my way up the food chain.”

“You know much about gangsters, then?”

Bolan played a card and posed a question of his own. “Tell me, Inspector, did you ever see the movie The Untouchables?”

“‘They pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue.’” Constante quoted. His teeth were neither particularly even nor straight, but they flashed blindingly white out of his face.

“And there endeth the lesson,” Bolan concluded. “You in?”

“Oh, well, how may I be of assistance to…” He gazed at Bolan in open, smiling suspicion. “The United States Department of Justice?”

Bolan and Constante understood each other. The soldier had been sent under the umbrella of the United States Department of Justice as Agent Matthew Cooper, a DOJ “observer” of the current political crisis. However, if that were true he would be spending his time with diplomats, politicians and lawyers rather than standing ankle-deep in the silt of the Laguna San José with a lowly homicide inspector. The title and the job description were phony and both men knew it. All Constante knew was that the Man had come to his island, and apparently the inspector thought it was about time.

“Give me a name,” Bolan said.

“What kind of name, señor?” The inspector asked innocently.

“Why, the name of the worst son of a bitch in San Juan.”

“Oh!” Constante brightened. “That is easy. The name you want is Yotuel d’Nico.”

“I think I’ll go have a talk with this Yotuel.”

Constante grinned happily. “I will light a candle for you.”

2

“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.

3

Nacho whimpered, then muttered in rapid Puerto Rican slang. His face was pale and he was sweating bullets. Bolan checked his watch. He’d sweated him for about an hour and he could guess what he was saying. Gustolallo sat across from Nacho at the ratty little kitchen table of Bolan’s flat and stared at him like he was a bug. Bolan had uncuffed him and put his arm in a sling, but Nacho was still very unhappy. He had stopped with the threats about half an hour ago and Bolan expected him to move into the begging phase right on schedule. The big American checked his watch again.

Gustolallo frowned. “I won’t lie to you, Blue. The inspector could be in a lot of trouble.”

Nacho snarled with renewed courage. “The inspector is fucking dead!”

Nacho shrieked as Gustolallo lunged across the table and punched him in the sling. It seemed the women cops in Puerto Rico played as rough as the men. Bolan held up a restraining hand and the detective uncocked her fist and sat back down. Nacho whimpered and cradled his arm. Bolan figured the diminutive young gangster was just about ready. Bolan had stopped at a corner kiosk on the way to the flat and picked up a few interrogation aids. He looked at Nacho and sighed sympathetically. “That hurt?”

“Yeah, it fucking hurts!” Nacho instantly flinched beneath Gustolallo’s glare.

Bolan reached into the kitchen cabinet and pulled out a bottle. He poured a drinking glass half full of clear liquid and slid it within Nacho’s reach. “For the pain. Sorry I don’t have anything stronger.”

The younger d’Nico lunged for the 151 proof Don Q rum and gulped it like water. Bolan took out a pack of Marlboros from his pocket. “Cigarette?”

Nacho’s gratitude was almost pathetic as Bolan lit him one and put it between his lips. Bolan refilled his glass. Gustolallo shot him a frosty look and he poured her a shot, as well. Bolan took a fatherly tone. “Nacho, you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“I want a lawyer.”

Bolan shrugged. “Why?”

“This is illegal! You can’t hold me!”

Bolan cocked his head at the punk. “I’ll make things very clear to you. I’m not a cop. I can do anything I want.”

Nacho blanched. He looked desperately at Gustolallo. “She’s a cop!”

The detective popped her gum. “I’m off duty. I’m riding you for the fun of it.”

Nacho hissed. “Puta de—” He howled as Gustolallo’s fist pounded his arm just above his broken elbow. A second jab followed it to his nose.

Bolan poured Nacho another drink. The young man couldn’t have weighed more than a 120 pounds naked and dripping wet. Between shock and an empty stomach, Bolan expected to have a well-lubricated La Neta gangster very shortly.

A voice called out from the street outside in Spanish. “Hello the house!”

Gustolallo nodded. “Ordones and Roldan.”

Bolan still picked up his Thompson and held it low along his side as he unlocked the kitchen door. “Come ahead! Through the kitchen!”

Two men walked into the kitchen. One was as tall as Bebito Jesus and had to stoop to come through the door, but unlike the giant La Neta enforcer, this man was gaunt to the point of emaciation. His tropical white suit hung upon his giant bones like a scarecrow. He had the sad, brown eyes and pale, tired complexion of a man who slept away most days without seeing the sun. He carried something long and bulky wrapped in a brightly patterned native blanket across his broad shoulders. The man behind him was dark-skinned and built like a middleweight. He radiated aggressive energy to the point that Bolan wondered if the short-cropped, tight, metallic-brown coils of hair coming out of his head might be nerve endings. He was carrying a rifle case and instantly shot a suspicious look at Gustolallo and Bolan. The two men took turns kissing Gustolallo in greeting. The giant held out his hand to Bolan. The soldier’s hand disappeared in the tall man’s grip but it was warm and friendly. His voice was a Spanish baritone. “Sergeant Ernesto Ordones, but you may call me Ordones.”

“Cooper.” Bolan said. The younger man in turn gave Bolan the bone crusher, and the two of them pumped vise grips for a moment. The giant sighed. “May I introduce Officer Ruzzo Roldan.”

Roldan released Bolan’s hand but continued to glare at him. His accent was thick enough to cut with a knife. “I heard of you.”

Bolan shrugged. “What did you hear?”

“Word on the street is you busted up a bar. Word is you busted up Bebito Jesus and called out Yotuel d’Nico. Word is you shot up a bunch of d’Nico’s men in La Perla. Word is Inspector Constante is getting grilled at headquarters right now because of your Yanqui cowboy bullshit.” Roldan shook his head as he took in Nacho. “Word on the street is you’re holding the Lion’s little brother. Word is everyone knows this address, and the word is the Lion is pissed. Word is you’re in a lot of trouble.”

Bolan turned to Ordones. “Word is you got a BAR.”

The tall man’s skull nearly hit the ceiling as he threw back his head and laughed and tapped his bundle “Sí, amigo. I just happen to have one.”

Roldan wasn’t amused. “So what’s your plan? Sit here in this shithole and wait for d’Nico to hit this place with an army?”

Bolan nodded. “That’s about it.”

Ordones turned to Gustolallo. “You know? I like this gringo.”

Gustolallo’s smile was predatory. “Me, too.”

Roldan’s anger cooled to something cold and unpleasant. “I’ll tell you something that maybe you won’t think is so funny.”

“What’s that?” Bolan asked.

“Word is moving through the department. Los Macheteros say anyone who helps the gringo, and I’m pretty sure that means you, is a traitor.”

Nacho roared drunkenly. “That’s right! Fucking traitors! Dead fucking traitors!”

Roldan ignored the outburst. “A traitor to Puerto Rico and a traitor to all Boricuas, and I’ll tell you something for nothing, Cooper, a lot of the cops are taking that real seriously. You’re an outsider. The inspector has already been dragged in and lost friends over this. No one wants you here.”

“The inspector is fully on board, and he was laughing when I left him,” Bolan countered. “And you came to LaPerla, off duty.” He nodded at the rifle case. “And you brought your gun.”

“I came to support the inspector. I was a gangbanger back in the day, but I was no La Neta puto.” He shot a scathing look at Nacho and the punk flinched. The officer pounded his chest twice with his fist in the sign of solidarity. “I was Latin Kings and headed straight to jail or the grave. Inspector Constante got me out of that shit. Got me to finish high school. He risked his reputation to sponsor me when I applied to join the force. I came to support him.” Roldan thrust out his jaw. “Not your pretty pink Yanqui ass.”

“Did the inspector tell you to do what I tell you until he gets back from headquarters?” Bolan inquired.

The pained look that crossed Roldan’s face was confirmation.

“Roldan, I’m here to wipe out La Neta, Los Macheteros and anybody else who wants to decide the fate of Puerto Rico with a gun rather than a vote. You in or out?”

“I’m—” Roldan spent several moments controlling his temper “—in.”

“If you boys are done, we got stuff to do,” Gustolallo stated.

Just then Bolan took out his phone as it vibrated in his pocket. Kurtzman’s text message scrolled across the screen.

striker, you have company

The phone’s screen took up just about all of its length. Bolan’s thumb moved across the touch screen, and a real-time satellite image of his house and the surrounding neighborhood appeared. Half a dozen vehicles denoted by red outlines were surrounding the building. Armed men were deploying out of them. The image wasn’t perfect but he saw nothing bigger than automatic weapons. “We have company. Platoon strength. Coming in on all sides.”

Roldan pulled an M-16 from his rifle bag and Ordones unwrapped his BAR and deployed the bipod. Bolan pulled a tab off the left wrist of his jacket to expose a Velcro panel. He slapped his phone onto it and took up his Thompson.

A voice out on the street called out in Spanish. “Give us Nacho!”

“He isn’t worth it!” Bolan called back. “I promise you!”

Nacho looked like he was about to say something, but Gustolallo pantomimed ramming the steel strut of her folding-stock shotgun into his elbow and he thought better of it.

“And the Yanqui!” the voice shouted. More followed but the Puerto Rican slang was too fast and too furious for Bolan to get more than the gist of it, but that was enough. They wanted Nacho and they wanted him now. Everyone else in the house was a traitor to Puerto Rico. Unless they stood down, both they and their families would die. The voice switched to English. “Hey, Yanqui! Go home! You can live! Don’t make me come in there!”

Ordones laid the BAR across the table and aimed it at the front door. Bolan cupped his hands and called out, “Door’s open!”

Dozens of automatic weapons opened up out on the street. Plaster fell from the ceiling, and the ancient brick walls chipped and cracked beneath the barrage of lead. Bolan noted that the weapons sounded as though they were 9 mms, and they all had the same firing signature. He pushed Nacho to the floor and then glanced at the screen of his phone. “Ordones! I got about six men behind a car directly across the street from the front door!”

Ordones nodded and the thudding of the big .30-caliber machine gun eclipsed the sound of the submachine guns out on the street. The 30-06 rifle bullets sailed through the front door, the car across the street and the men taking cover behind it. Bolan saw four men fall on his screen and two more run headlong for the beach.

Kurtzman text messaged him.

heat signatures behind you

Bolan looked at his wrist and saw the bright flickering on the infrared filter. Five men were running crouched alongside a car, making their approach down the alley behind the house. Each man held something that was burning—Molotov cocktails. Four more gunners trotted behind, blasting away with weapons as they came. “Ordones! I got a vehicle coming directly behind us! Roldan! Gustolallo! Watch the front!”

Ordones turned and rammed the muzzle of his BAR through the kitchen window glass and started firing. Bolan kicked open the kitchen door and brought his Thompson to his shoulder. Bullets hailed against the back of the house, but the soldier kept his sights on the firebombers. A bullet slammed into Bolan’s side but his soft body armor held. His return burst took off the top of the gunman’s head. Rum bottles filled with gasoline and detergent sailed through the air.

Bolan raised his sights and began touching off bursts from the Thompson and broke apart bottles in the air like a skeet shooter busting clays. Sheets of fire fell across the alley and across the hood of the Cadillac as it rolled on. Bolan took out three of the four projectiles, and his weapon clacked open on empty as the fourth sailed on in a near-perfect football spiral.

Ordones snarled and yanked himself aside as the flaming bomb flew through the kitchen window a foot from his head. Nacho screamed as the Molotov cocktail sailed across the room and broke apart at his feet. Bolan slammed a fresh magazine into his weapon and kept firing. “Gustolallo!”

Gustolallo yanked up the ratty kitchen rug and jumped on top of Nacho. She swore a blue streak as Nacho howled and flailed while she tried to smother the fire. The BAR continued, tearing through the Cadillac as if it didn’t exist, and Bolan shot any gangster who exposed himself. Bolan slammed in a fresh magazine as the Caddy’s front fender scraped against the alley wall and it rolled to a halt. The gunfire in the back of the house came to an abrupt end. Puddles of fire were everywhere. Flame licked up the walls of the alley, and the Cadillac burned like a fallen tombstone. The alley resembled a side entrance to hell.

Bolan heard the thump and hiss of ignition. The Cadillac was riddled with high-power rifle holes, and the jellied fuel of the firebombs was crawling all through it. Bolan slammed the kitchen door shut. “Down!”

The Cadillac’s fuel tank detonated like a bomb. The door rattled on its hinges, and heat blasted through the shattered kitchen window hot enough to singe skin. Nacho screamed, his right foot kicked out from under the rug and clocked Gustolallo in the face. She rolled backward, stunned as Nacho got to his feet and ran screaming out of the kitchen with bits of fire still flickering on his feet.

Gustolallo kneeled and snarled past her bloody lips and nose. “Bastardo!”

Bolan shoved down the barrel of her shotgun.

Roldan’s M-16 fired on rapid semiauto from the front of the house. “More firebombs out front! We got—” He stared back in surprise as Nacho ran screaming past him. Bolan made a quick throat-cutting motion. Roldan caught it and let Nacho get past. When the Executioner motioned with his own weapon to shoot high, Roldan’s M-16 snarled on full-auto and he roared, “Get back here, you son of a bitch!”

Nacho sailed straight through the front window and onto the porch. Bolan advanced, firing. One of the three firebombers out front fell with one of Roldan’s bullets in his chest. The other two threw their bottles, but Roldan cracked one in flight and the other fell short and broke apart on the cobblestones in front of the house. Bolan checked his screen. Three of the four surviving vehicles were pulling out and driving away. Men on foot were fleeing in all directions. Nacho was heading due north and didn’t look like he was going to stop until he hit Bermuda.

The back of the house was beginning to burn in earnest.

Ordones rose, reloaded and handed his handkerchief to Gustolallo. She ruefully held it up to her bloody nose and stared over it at Bolan. “You’re just gonna let the little son of a bitch go?”

Roldan glared over his shoulder from his position covering the front. “Yeah! What the fuck was that all about?”

Ordones, on the other hand, glanced at Bolan slyly. “You’re tracking our little friend, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” Bolan shrugged. “I put a bug in his sling while I was binding him up. I figured I’d like to see where he runs to.”

“He will run to his big brother, El León,” Ordones suggesed.

“I’m hoping.”

Roldan grinned uncharacteristically. “Fantástico.”

Bolan turned to more immediate matters. “We’ve got to get out of here. As officers in the Puerto Rican police force, I’m afraid your superiors are going to want you to report in for questioning, and it’s only going to get worse the longer you stick around me.”

Ordones folded the bipod of his weapon and rewrapped it in its blanket. “As of now I consider myself AWOL.”

Gustolallo’s bloody nose wrinkled. “What’s AWOL?”

“Absent Without Leave,” Ordones replied.

Gustolallo nodded decisively. “Me, too.”

Everyone looked at Roldan. The young cop was still grinning. “I been waiting for this all my life. Let’s do it!”

Bolan nodded. He had a crew, and they had been bloodied in battle.

Now it was time to take the war to the enemy.

4

Bolan cruised the BMW F650 Dakar motorcycle through the highlands. The capital city of San Juan was a pocket of stars below. He checked the screen of the phone attached to his wrist as they passed gated roads that led to the mansions of Puerto Rico’s rich and powerful. Yotuel d’Nico had reached the top echelons of the La Neta gangs, and not surprisingly, El León kept a home near the top of the mountain so he could look down upon his hunting grounds. Detective Gustolallo leaned in to Bolan’s back as he brought the bike to a stop. “Thank you for bringing me.”

“Well, I might need some backup,” he said as he got off the bike. “Besides, Ordones won’t fit on the back of my bike and I figure Roldan wouldn’t feel much like spooning with me.”

“After what happened in La Perla I think Roldan would be your date to the prom if you asked him.”

“He’s a real hard charger,” Bolan said.

“Oh, he’s always asking for the most dangerous assignments.”

Bolan took in the cool wind of the Puerto Rican highlands. He could see d’Nico’s house in the distance. At least now he knew where his enemy slept.

Leaning against the bike, Bolan frowned as he remembered his conversation with their quarry in La Perla.“Nacho threw out a name I didn’t recognize, Orishas Chango. Mean anything to you?”

“Orishas? Chango? That’s Santería shit. It came from Africa when the Spanish brought in slaves. Orishas are like spirits or gods. It’s like Haitian voodoo but different. When La Neta and the other gangs aren’t busy claiming their Taino Indian ancestry they’re flirting with Santería. They like to claim the orishas give them power, but most of them are posers rather than true believers. They mostly just like to wear the jewelry, sport the tattoos and sprinkle chicken blood around to scare people.”

Bolan flexed his Spanish. “So Orishas de Chango would be spirits of the spirit?”

Gustolallo poked him in the side. “It only sounds redundant because you’re a Yanqui. What it means to someone on the streets of San Juan is that they’re spirits of the spirit Chango, like his outriders or emissaries or something.”

“So what’s this Chango dude all about?”

“Oh, he’s got a lot of qualities, or aspects. Chango’s the Sky Father, god of thunder and lightning, god of music and dance, of justice, war and a dozen other things. But since the name was coming out of Nacho’s drunken piehole, I’m thinking he was talking about Chango’s aspect as the god of revenge. His symbol is a double-headed ax.”

Bolan turned to the detective. “Chango is the god of justice and revenge?”

“Yeah—”

“And his symbol is a double-headed African war ax?”

“Yeah, and?” Gustolallo asked.

“And people have been turning up without heads in the San Jose lagoon for the last month.”

“Jesus…”

“I think this is bigger than just the street gangs and the Macheteros. I think there’s a new group of enforcers in town and they’re our Orishas de Chango.”

“Jesus. If the gangs aren’t running these guys then who is?”

“The drug cartels, or maybe the independence terrorists, or both. I don’t know yet, but I’ve been getting an outside-orchestration vibe in what’s been happening. Someone wants to rip Puerto Rico right off its moorings, and they’re playing all the local political and race cards”

“Okay, now you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

Bolan excused himself and stepped away from Gustolallo as he tapped icons on the phone attached to his sleeve. The Farm’s mission controller, Barbara Price, appeared on a screen inset the size of a ravioli. Her brows rose sleepily as she peered into the webcam. “What’s going on, Striker?”

“Barb, everyone’s been assuming that the recent beheadings in Puerto Rico are just copycat killings taken from the Mexican cartels. My problem is local CSI has done all the autopsies. I don’t think they’re totally reliable. Some may even be in on a fix. I need you to arrange a clean forensics team to reexamine any of the headless bodies still available.”

Price was used to strange, late-night requests from the field but even she had to admit she was intrigued. “To determine…?”

“To determine whether the decapitations were performed with a machete or an ax.” Bolan had seen enough headless bodies to know there would be a difference. “A machete would make a chopping wound and probably take several cuts. An ax would leave impact and shearing trauma in the surrounding tissues, and used with any skill would be a one-cut proposition.”

“I’ll have Hal contact San Juan’s special agent in charge.”

“The FBI is mostly local. I’d rather have you get in touch with the CIA station chief.”

Price sighed. Despite all efforts to the contrary since the events of 9/11, inter-service rivalry was still rife in the U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement communities. Many Puerto Ricans considered themselves Americans, and both the Puerto Rican law enforcement and the public at large believed, and not without some merit, that the CIA presence on the island was there to spy on the citizenry. “That could ruffle some feathers.”

Bolan shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“Hal’s going to care.” Price sighed. “So will the State Department, and probably the President.”

“They’ll care more about who’s behind all this.”

She knew Bolan was right. “I’ll have an autopsy report for you within twenty-four hours.”

“Thanks, Barb. Striker out.”

THE LION LOOKED at his kid brother, and what he saw didn’t please him. Nacho had turned eighteen that year and for six months had been pestering incessantly for an opportunity to move up. Yotuel had finally relented. Killing Inspector Constante, which had needed doing for some time anyway, was to have been Nacho’s ticket into the big leagues. It had turned into a slaughter. El León sighed heavily. So had the rescue operation to get Nacho back. The young man sat flinching and unable to look into his big brother’s eyes. The room was dark except for two small ceiling lamps that illuminated each man at the table. Other men hovered back in the darkness. Yotuel eyed his brother again. Nacho’s nose was broken, his arm was in a sling and his shoes and his pants were scorched black. Yotuel’s nose wrinkled and his down-curved lips curled with contempt.

Nacho stank of rum.

Yotuelo sighed again. “Brother, what am I to do with you?”

The two men could not have been more different. Nacho was a sack of chicken bones in a very expensive designer track suit. Yotuel, El León, looked every inch his nickname. He was a lion of a man, over six feet tall with a wide brow and a protruding lower jaw. He’d had his hair straightened, and it fell around his shoulders in a blue-black mane in the style of the Taino Indian ancestry he claimed. Taino tribal tattooing crawled down his heavily muscled arms entwined with La Neta prison tattoos. His symbol of power was a seventeenth-century Spanish lance head he carried thrust under his belt. The socket was wrapped with leather cord to make a hilt. Catholic saints’ medals and beaded Santería fetishes hung from it in braids. The two-foot steel blade was pitted and brown with age execpt for the edges, which gleamed like mercury from sharpening.

He drew the antique iron and began cleaning his fingernails with the needle-sharp point. “Tell me about the cops.”

Nacho eyed the spear blade nervously. “One was an old man, but tall, tall like a tree, like he should’ve played in the NBA or something.”

“Flaco Ordones.” Yotuelo nodded. He knew him. Ordones came on like a kindly grandfather with suspects, but he was the same old-school-style cop as Constante. “And the others?”

“I knew one of them.” Anger kindled in Nacho’s eyes. “That goddamn Roldan.”

Yotuel knew Roldan by reputation. Ruzzo “el Santo” Roldan was a cop, reportedly unbribable and a former Latin King. As far as Yotuel was concerned, that was strike one, strike two and strike three.

“The other was that bitch, Gustolallo.”

The Lion smiled slightly. Detective Guistina Gustolallo. The redheaded cop had used her beauty to run several very successful undercover stings against the Puerto Rican drug cartels until her face had become too well-known, and she had gone on to make detective. Like a lot of criminals in Puerto Rico, El León harbored some fantasies of getting his hands on Gustolallo when she wasn’t wearing her badge and gun. Yotuel put those fantasies aside for later. “And the Yanqui?”

Nacho shuddered. “Mother of God, brother, you should have seen this dude.”

“Brother, you were supposed to kill this dude,” Yotuel stated.

Nacho stared glumly at his blackened sneakers.

“Perhaps you would like a second chance?”

What Nacho would’ve really liked was the first flight to Miami, where he could spend a couple of weeks getting lap dances, betting on jai alai and restoring his shattered nerves.

A long sigh rumbled out of Yotuel’s thick chest. “But then, with what has happened tonight, perhaps it is best if we lie low for a little while.”

Nacho nodded vigorously. He obviously thought lying low was an excellent plan.

“Tell you what, brother,” Yotuel continued. “We need to get you out of sight for a while. I’m going to send you to Miami. We’ll have a doctor fix your nose. Set your arm. Then you rest up. I’ll send for you in a week and then we will kill this Yanqui asshole together.”

Nacho sagged with relief. “Thank you, brother—I mean, yes! We will kill him! We will kill him together!”

“Yes.” Yotuel nodded with more conviction than he felt. He turned to one of his men. “Raciel, go with him. Have Mario fly you, and take Cuco. You two? You will have my little brother’s back.”

“Yes, Yotuel. Like he is our own little brother.” Raciel was short, violent, built like a fire hydrant and he considered Nacho worse than useless. However, Raciel liked Florida, blond strippers and jai alai, and Nacho spent money like water. There were worse jobs than a one-week mission babysitting him in Miami. Raciel jerked his head at Nacho and they left the room.

A man came out of the shadows from behind Yotuel. He was knife-thin with brush-cut gray hair, and he radiated command presence. “Your little brother is a liability.”

“I have known that for eighteen years,” the Lion rumbled. He glared at his visitor. “What are you suggesting?”

The thin man smiled, but his flat black eyes were as cold as a shark’s. “I am suggesting we turn him into an asset.”

One normally cruel corner of Yotuel’s mouth turned up in amusement. “If you can do that, then you really are an orisha.”

The visitor’s smile reached his eyes. “Oh, but I am.”

5

Safehouse, San Juan

“The decapitations were performed wth an ax.” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman transmitted some very gruesome autopsy photos of the bodies Bolan had witnessed being pulled from the lagoon. Technical medical data scrolled down a sidebar, listing vertebral splintering, soft tissue compression and shearing and frontal bruising of the trachea. Bits of wood had been compressed into the front of the remaining neck tissue. What it meant was that someone had bent the necks of three U.S. Military Policemen over a stump and taken their heads like they’d been splitting kindling.

Kurtzman highlighted some of the text. “There was metal residue in some of the sheared bone. The ax was made out of iron.”

That was interesting. “Not steel?”

“No, the CIA had one of their metallurgy specialists run it. The weapon was smelted through traditional African methods.” Kurtzman warmed to his subject. “The African Iron Age preceded Europe’s by four centuries or more, but once they’d established their smelting methods they didn’t change much. Smelting in sub-Saharan Africa was always artisanal and guarded by secretive guilds. Just about every piece forged, from an ax to a hoe blade to a spear point or even a cook pot, had to be individually commissioned. A single iron piece could take several days to manufacture. It stayed this way right up until the modern era. During the colonial period, European metal goods of all kinds flooded Africa. It was easier to buy or trade for a cheap tin pot than have an iron one commissioned. By the 1950s traditional blacksmithing in Africa had just about disappeared.”

Bolan considered that. “So the weapon in question is an antique.”

“Weapons, plural.” Kurtzman smiled. “Between the bodies taken from the lagoon on your arrival and those of some cops from the week before we got at least three murder weapons in play. All antique, all iron, all clearly smelted by African methods. All probably between seventy-five to a hundred years old.”

Bolan saw where Kurtzman was going. “If the Orishas de Chango are passing out antique African war axes to the members like party favors, then somewhere in the Caribbean we have some museums missing some pieces.”

“We’ve already started on museums in Puerto Rico that have West African collections as well as collections of Santería and voodoo artifacts. We’re hacking their computers, discreetly looking for traditional axes and cross-referencing for reports of stolen artifacts.”

“Bear, the axes might not be stolen. The curator or people who work there may have given the weapons away if they were approached correctly. They might even be part of the movement. Check Puerto Rican police files for antiquarians, museum workers or culturalists who are under any sort of political suspicion.”

“I’ll have Barb contact the local—”

“Have Akira hack their files,” Bolan countered, referring to one of the Stony Man Farm’s top hackers. “We have strong reason to believe elements of local law enforcement are involved in what’s going on, and a request like this could tip our hand. The majority of the cops aren’t active in the revolution, but most of them are taking the warning not to cooperate with outside investigations seriously. Even if they don’t actively obstruct us or give us away, they’ll sit on their hands and push paper for days. I want Akira inside their network and getting the information we need ASAP.”

“Gotcha.”

“Thanks. What have we got on Yotuel?”

“Nothing.” Kurtzman frowned. “He’s gone underground. In fact, most of La Neta has gone to ground. People are still protesting and rioting in the streets but the gangs have suddenly gone as quiet as church mice.”

“They’re waiting for something,” Bolan stated. “How’s our little friend Nacho?”

“He’s still in Miami. As requested, Miami-Dade has a loose tail on him.”

“What’s he been up to?”

Kurtzman snorted. “He likes strippers and betting on jai alai. He has two goons with him. One Raciel de Regla and Cuco Juanmanuel. Raciel is street muscle and a real piece of work. He did a nickel for aggravated assault against two police officers. Cuco’s record is so clean it’s creepy. Rumor is he’s an enforcer. A real bump-in-the-night kind of guy.” Kurtzman was suddenly suspicious. “Why?”

“Things are quiet here. I think I’ll go goose Nacho and see what happens.” Bolan turned to Gustolallo, where she sat on the couch drinking rum and coffee. “You want to go goose Nacho and see what happens?”

The detective’s eyes gleamed. “Miami? Yeah.”

“Bear, it looks like I’m going to Miami with Detective Gustolallo. Have Barb get me the first flight to the mainland and coordinate me with the local law that’s tailing Nacho.”

“I’m on it.”

Wahoo Lou’s Double D, VIP room, Miami

BOLAN WATCHED AS A woman bumped and ground her posterior inches from Detective Gustolallo’s face as rap music pumped at eardrum-shattering decibels.

Gustolallo caught Bolan looking. She pointed a finger at him over her rum and Coke and shouted over the noise. “You know? I don’t swing this way, but I can see why you guys dig this!”

Bolan sipped his fifteen-year-old single-malt whiskey and shrugged as six feet of Icelandic inbreeding gyrated to gain his attention. “Yeah.”

The VIP room was a long balcony encased in one-way mirror glass. Bolan watched Nacho and his muscle downstairs. Nacho had a bandage over his nose and was wearing a new sling. He and Raciel were taking in everything from liquor to lap dances with economic abandon. Bolan eyed Cuco. He was neither tall nor short, fat nor thin. His graying hair was a brush cut and unkempt, as was his mustache. His suit was cut cheaply, and he wore thick glasses with thick black plastic frames. Cuco Juanmanuel was nondescript to the point of being a cipher. The single vodka martini he’d ordered sat untouched by his left hand. His right hand was out of sight beneath the table. Nacho and Raciel elbowed him from time to time and cajoled him to enjoy himself, but he ignored them. His head slowly swiveled like a surveillance camera, cyclically taking in everyone and everything in the club. Bolan had watched him behave exactly the same way at Miami Jai-Alai, except there he’d scanned the players on the frontón the same way and placed occasional bets.

Cuco was the dangerous one, and that was why the Lion had sent him.

Miami-Dade plainclothes Detective Marcus Mandela Mitchell’s eyes moved between the stripper on his lap and Gustolallo and her pair of surgically enhanced dancers. He’d obviously developed a crush on his Puerto Rican counterpart and just as obviously had never made the VIP room at Wahoo’s. The detective grinned at Bolan and toasted him with his mostly untouched snifter of brandy. “Yo, man! I dig the way you Justice Department dudes roll!”

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