MISSION: PAYBACK

When Stony Man chief Hal Brognola is kidnapped, Mack Bolan vows to find him and wreak explosive vengeance on those responsible. But first he must find his shadowy enemy. For deep in the drug cartel hellscape of Ciudad Juárez, Hal is prisoner of the city’s most legendary and secretive serial killer. To uncover his identity, Bolan wages war on Ciudad’s biggest narco-traffickers, battling their merciless soldados and sending their empires up in flames. But with the clock ticking down, the Executioner must face a cunning foe in an arena where justice will only be found in total annihilation.

#375 Salvador Strike

#376 Frontier Fury

#377 Desperate Cargo

#378 Death Run

#379 Deep Recon

#380 Silent Threat

#381 Killing Ground

#382 Threat Factor

#383 Raw Fury

#384 Cartel Clash

#385 Recovery Force

#386 Crucial Intercept

#387 Powder Burn

#388 Final Coup

#389 Deadly Command

#390 Toxic Terrain

#391 Enemy Agents

#392 Shadow Hunt

#393 Stand Down

#394 Trial by Fire

#395 Hazard Zone

#396 Fatal Combat

#397 Damage Radius

#398 Battle Cry

#399 Nuclear Storm

#400 Blind Justice

#401 Jungle Hunt

#402 Rebel Trade

#403 Line of Honor

#404 Final Judgment

#405 Lethal Diversion

#406 Survival Mission

#407 Throw Down

#408 Border Offensive

#409 Blood Vendetta

#410 Hostile Force

#411 Cold Fusion

#412 Night’s Reckoning

#413 Double Cross

#414 Prison Code

#415 Ivory Wave

#416 Extraction

#417 Rogue Assault

#418 Viral Siege

#419 Sleeping Dragons

#420 Rebel Blast

#421 Hard Targets

#422 Nigeria Meltdown

#423 Breakout

#424 Amazon Impunity

#425 Patriot Strike

#426 Pirate Offensive

#427 Pacific Creed

#428 Desert Impact

#429 Arctic Kill

#430 Deadly Salvage

#431 Maximum Chaos

#432 Slayground

#433 Point Blank

#434 Savage Deadlock

#435 Dragon Key

#436 Perilous Cargo

#437 Assassin’s Tripwire

#438 The Cartel Hit

#439 Blood Rites

#440 Killpath

#441 Murder Island

#442 Syrian Rescue

#443 Uncut Terror

#444 Dark Savior

#445 Final Assault

#446 Kill Squad

#447 Missile Intercept

#448 Terrorist Dispatch

#449 Combat Machines

#450 Omega Cult

#451 Fatal Prescription

#452 Death List

#453 Rogue Elements

#454 Enemies Within

#455 Chicago Vendetta

#456 Thunder Down Under

#457 Dying Art

#458 Killing Kings

#459 Stealth Assassin

#460 Lethal Vengeance

Lethal Vengeance

Don Pendleton

Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Michael Newton for his contribution to this work.

ISBN: 978-1-474-09778-9

LETHAL VENGEANCE

© 2019 Harlequin Books S.A.

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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A stream of cartel soldiers burst from the building.

When one of the gunners removed a cell phone from his pocket, Bolan drilled him with a single 5.56 mm round, then ripped a series of three-round bursts along the line of gunmen limned by a streetlight.

The Executioner sent another grenade downrange, an incendiary round that blew on impact, loosing flames that spread from wall to wall, rolling through the open doorway, setting fire to bodies lying on the pavement.

He could have kept on firing, making sure that everyone within his line of sight was dead or dying, but he was literally burning up Brognola’s time now, painfully aware that the odds of finding him declined precipitately after twenty-four hours.

If he wasn’t dead already, Brognola had roughly two hours left. El Psicópata didn’t keep his prey alive for any longer than it took to butcher them. But Brognola didn’t fit the killer’s victim profile, which meant there were no rules.

All Bolan could do was put the pedal to the metal and keep rolling on, full speed ahead. And God help anyone who stood in his way…

Nor is there any law more just than that he who has plotted death shall perish by his own plot.

—Ovid

I speak the only language predators understand. I fight fire with fire, and damn the consequences.

—Mack Bolan

For Special Agent Samuel S. Hicks. Drug Enforcement Administration

End of Watch: November 19, 2008

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

Cover

Back Cover Text

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Introduction

Quotes

Dedication

The Mack Bolan Legend

Prologue

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

Epilogue

About the Publisher

Prologue

El Paso, Texas

The big man—stocky, fiftysomething, with gray hair that nearly matched the color of his suit—moved easily along a second-story hallway in the Gateway Rio Grande Hotel, a plastic bucket in one hand, the key to room 209 in the other.

He was tired at half-past midnight and was running late for bed. Another round of meetings started bright and early in the morning, but the dinner he’d consumed—tamales, enchiladas, rice and beans, with one too many beers—had his stomach grumbling and he needed something carbonated for relief.

When he’d achieved that, he still had to call his wife. It was an hour later in DC, damn it, but he knew she’d be waiting up and worrying until he had her on the line, telling her everything was fine and coming off as planned.

The conference, on balance, hadn’t been as bad as he’d expected, but his time was better spent on other things. He’d be relieved to land in Washington again on Saturday, and his report to the US Attorney General could wait a day or two.

It wasn’t like the meetings would have any real-world impact, after all—not on his job, at least. He would have skipped the whole thing but his orders from the new guy running Justice had been unequivocal: show up and make us proud.

When the last USAG had bailed under fire, his new, improved replacement fell into the job without adequate briefings on all aspects of his post. When the big man returned to Washington, he would correct that oversight.

The icemaker and vending machines were right where the floorplan in his room had promised they would be, tucked into a niche at the corridor’s west end. He filled the plastic bucket first then picked a can of soda minus the caffeine and dropped the can into the ice. Because the niche obscured his vision, he was turning with his hands full when he spotted the two burly strangers in cheap suits blocking his path.

Unfriendly faces set off mental alarms, but the big man still forced a smile and said, “Excuse me, eh?”

They both rushed him at once, the bruiser on his left cursing as ice and a cold can of soda hit him in the face.

The big man fought in silence, wishing he’d brought his sidearm currently locked inside his room’s small safe. He got some licks in, but he didn’t see the needle coming until it was in his neck.

The bright world did a rapid fade to black.

Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

When he came around, the big man found that he was seated in a straight-backed wooden chair, no cushion on its seat. His neck hurt from the hypodermic needle and his brain was fuzzy, but he reckoned that would pass. A burlap sack over his head smelled like potatoes and prevented him from seeing anything, but from the lighting and the sound of voices, he could tell he was in a room somewhere.

His shoulders ached because his arms were pinned behind him, zip-tied based on the chafing on his wrists. His ankles were likewise secured to the chair’s front legs. Aside from shifting slightly on the chair, or maybe tipping it over, he couldn’t move.

Three men were talking not too far away. They spoke Spanish, but that was fine. The big man knew enough of the language to get by.

“It went all right?” one man asked.

“Yes. We’re all here, eh?” another answered.

“He fought a little,” a third stated, “but nothing to it.”

“Good. Let’s get a look at him,” the first one ordered.

One of them removed the burlap hood, revealing a cheap room with shabby furniture and three men ranged before him. Two of them had jumped him back at his hotel. The third guy, clearly, was in charge.

“Shit!” the leader blurted. “Who in the hell is this?”

“The guy you sent us for?” The way Number Two said it, sounding shaky now, told the bound man the boss had been expecting someone else.

“Idiots! When I ask you who this is, I want a name, understand?”

The one to the leader’s left began to say, “Captain, we—”

Captain X lashed out and hit him with a stunning backhand. “Now you want to use my rank and name?”

“Sorry, sir.”

“I’ve never seen this gringo in my life,” the leader snapped at them. “Did you at least look in his wallet?”

The bound man could feel it in his left hip pocket, pressed into his butt cheek.

“Cap—I mean, sir,” the man to the leader’s right chimed in, “he matches the description you gave us.”

“Description? You didn’t even check to see he was the right one?”

“Once he started fighting—”

“Shut up! If we get through this, you’ll be lucky if I let you cover traffic in Chiapas!”

Traffic? Playing deaf, the bound man realized two things. First, these were cops of some kind who had snatched him. Second, he was almost certainly in Mexico.

He flexed his wrists, confirming what he’d feared. His watch was gone, either torn off during the fight or stolen while he was unconscious. With no clock, he couldn’t tell how long he’d been knocked out or how far his abductors could’ve traveled in the meantime.

And if they’d been dumb enough to snatch him by mistake...

One of the flunkies moved around behind the bound man’s chair and found his wallet, handing it off to their boss. The guy in charge opened it, stared at the bound man’s ID, furious color rising in his face.

“‘Justice Department, Washington, DC,’” he read aloud. “Can either of you two idiots think back and remember who I sent you for?”

“The name?” one of the stooges asked, proving his low IQ.

“The name, the agency he worked for? Anything?” the leader raged.

“It was the DEA, sir,” said Number Three.

“Correct! It was the DEA. And now you bring me what? Some pencil-pusher out of the Attorney General’s office!”

“But—”

“But nothing, idiot! I ought to kill both of you where you stand.”

They edged away from him, the slightly braver of the two nearly whispering, “What should we do, sir?”

“You mean before the FBI and every other department of the US government starts looking for him?”

“Yes, sir.”

“There’s only one thing left we can do, thanks to your incompetence.”

“We’ll do it, absolutely. Anything.” The barely smarter of the two was almost whining.

“You two will do nothing. I must call El Psicópata.”

The Psychopath.

Without a doubt, their bound captive knew that wasn’t good.

Chapter One

El Paso International Airport

Mack Bolan, aka the Executioner, stood a few yards off from Runway 12, watching as the Learjet 40 approached from the east. The aircraft descended to a textbook-perfect landing, its pilot throttling back on the twin Honeywell engines. It taxied toward him, gradually slowing to a halt. The engines switched off before its exit door opened behind the cockpit, on the port side, and a built-in set of steps unfolded to the tarmac.

Barbara Price came out to meet him. Wearing a tailored pantsuit and “sensible” shoes, she barely showed the stress of flying 1,900 miles—nearly the Learjet’s top range—from Stony Man Farm in Virginia to “The City with a Legend,” as El Paso called itself.

Bolan and Price were more than friends and colleagues, but they kept the greeting to a handshake. He followed her back to the plane, mounting the steps behind her to its cabin.

“You made good time,” he said as they sat facing each other with a folding table in between.

“No time to waste,” she said, not asking how he’d beat her there when he was coming from Los Angeles. He’d covered less than half the distance she had, and Price would know that automatically.

“So how bad is it?” Bolan asked.

“It doesn’t get much worse.”

“Tell me.”

He knew some of it from their brief phone conversation hours earlier. Hal Brognola, director of the clandestine organization known as Stony Man Farm and a head honcho in the Department Justice, had vanished from his hotel in El Paso the previous night, the next-to-last day of a law enforcement conference on terrorism and drug trafficking across the Tex-Mex border.

He knew El Paso was the Lone Star State’s sixth largest city, covering 256 square miles, with some 680,000 year-round residents. Across the Rio Grande, it faced Ciudad Juárez, Mexico’s eighth largest city, smaller in size than El Paso but with 2.5 million full-time inhabitants. Together they formed the second largest binational metropolitan area on America’s southern border, after San Diego-Tijuana.

“Okay,” Price said. “I told you he was taken out of his hotel, and that’s confirmed from evidence recovered from the scene. We have his fingerprints on a hotel ice bucket and soda can he dropped when the kidnappers grabbed him. Local cops found his room key, same place, no evidence that anybody got inside the room after they lifted him.”

“Security cameras?” Bolan inquired.

“One long view of the hallway, from the other end. Two men, likely Latino, but no hits from facial recognition software yet. One of them jabbed him with a hypo. We’re assuming it was just a sedative.”

“Because why poison him and carry him away?”

“Exactly. When they took him out, another CCTV feed picked up a shot of the abductors hooding him and securing his arms and legs before putting him in a car trunk. No luck with an ID on the car, although it turned up on a traffic cam two blocks away, heading south. Stolen license plates. We assume the car was hot, as well.”

“Headed for Mexico.”

Bolan already knew four bridges spanned the Rio Grande between El Paso and Ciudad Juárez: the Bridge of the Americas, Ysleta-Zaragoza International Bridge, Paso del Norte Bridge and Stanton Street Bridge. Combined, they permitted some twenty-three million vehicular passages yearly. Once across the border, southbound traffic could go anywhere in Mexico.

Brognola had been gone for thirteen hours. He could’ve traveled 780 miles within that time, at sixty miles per hour, but smart money said he’d probably been taken to a hideout tucked away in Ciudad Juárez itself.

“Who knew he’d be at the conference?” Bolan asked.

“Starting from the top,” Price said, “the AG who assigned him to it—over Hal’s objection, I might add. Kelly, his secretary, would’ve made the travel bookings. Then we’ve got the folks who organized the conference and the various official delegates from Justice, ICE, the DEA, likely a couple from the CIA pretending to be someone else. That’s ninety-five registered delegates, not counting Hal. Add on hotel staff, from managers to housekeepers. The Bureau will be grilling all of them, but...”

“By the time they finish up, it will be too damned late.”

“Bingo.”

Bolan went for the long shot. “Cell phone?”

“In his room. We can’t track him by GPS.”

“So it comes down to who might want to kidnap him, and why.”

“Cartels to start,” Price said. “Since 1997, the Juárez Cartel’s been under fire from both the Gulf and Sinaloa outfits, trying to control the city. That explains Chihuahua’s death toll in the Mexican drug war, and many of the killings in El Paso County.”

Bolan had crossed paths with each of those cartels at one time or another, but a nagging question still remained. “Would any of them know him? His connection to the Farm or covert missions?”

“They shouldn’t,” Price replied, “but when you’ve got billions to spend, I won’t pretend security in Wonderland is all that it should be.”

“Anything else?”

“I hate to even mention it, but yes...maybe.”

“I’m listening.”

“Most residents call Ciudad Juárez Paso del Norte and one magazine calls it the ‘City of the Future,’ but it has another nickname, too.”

“Which is?”

“The Serial Killers’ Playground.”

“The women, right?”

“Primarily,” Price said. “No two sources can agree on numbers, but at least four hundred have been murdered since the nineties, with about as many missing. There have been so many killed, in fact, they’ve come up with a special name for it. Feminicidio. Mostly young women, even girls, some of them prostitutes, the rest mainly sweatshop workers, underpaid and easy to replace.”

“You see the problem there,” Bolan said.

“Sure. Hal’s not a female and he isn’t young. Before we rule it out completely, though, remember that some serials switch-hit on victimology. They don’t all stick to one age, race or sex, much less to pattern victims who all look alike, drive the same make of car, whatever.”

“Still...”

“I grant you, it’s a long shot, but remember Mark Kilroy.”

“The kid snatched out of Brownsville by that cult in the late eighties.”

Price nodded. “One of an estimated thirty victims they took out before police caught on to them. They dealt drugs for a living, but also conducted human sacrifices, thinking that black magic made them bulletproof and physically invisible to enemies, including cops.”

“That didn’t work so well, as I recall.”

“Amen. One dipshit drove through a police roadblock, thinking they couldn’t see him or his car even when officers pursued him with their lights flashing. He led them straight back to the cult’s home base outside Matamoros, and it fell apart from there.”

“Most of them died, if I remember right.”

“Or got sent away for sixty years, the maximum in Mexico. My point is, you can have an evil person or a group of them mixing business with pleasure as the opportunities arise. And don’t forget, two of that cult’s top members were federales. One of them, the top narcotics officer in Mexico City, pulled twenty-five years at his trial. The other, who’d moved on to Interpol, murdered his second wife then shot himself. People are still debating whether his first wife committed suicide by hanging or if hubby tied the noose himself.”

“I hear you. Damn near anyone can kill for any reason. And in pairs?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time, by a long shot. Cults aside, the Hillside stranglers were cousins. Same thing with Dave Gore and Fred Waterfield in Florida. In Philadelphia, Joe Kallinger would take his fifteen-year-old son along to help. Lucas and Toole were part-time lovers, traveling from coast to coast,” Price told him.

“You’ve studied up,” Bolan observed.

“Know the enemy. Never let anybody tell you they’re all carbon-copy, cut and dried.”

“So, if a pair of psychos snatched Hal, he could well be dead by now and we have no way to start looking for them. Two Latinos in Mexico? Try looking for a needle in a needle factory.”

“I know. We have to try, though.”

“Right. First thing,” Bolan observed, “will be acquiring hardware on the wrong side of the border.”

Mexico had strict laws regulating guns, at least on paper, restricting possession of most types and calibers to the military and law enforcement. The country’s only legal gun store—the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales—stood behind walls on a military base outside Mexico City. Its customers had to undergo months of background checks, involving six separate documents, and were frisked on arrival by uniformed soldiers.

That said, Mexico’s version of the US Second Amendment, written in 1857, guaranteed all citizens and legal foreign residents the right to bear arms, but stipulated that federal law “will determine the cases, conditions, requirements and places” of gun ownership. The net result: while the one and only army gun store sold an average of thirty-eight firearms per day to civilians, smugglers brought an estimated 580 weapons into Mexico from the United States. Others doubtless arrived on flights of foreign origin or passed through Mexico’s forty-one seaports on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

The results of that traffic in arms—and in drugs—had been making global headlines for the past thirteen years, since officials acknowledged their chaotic, ongoing drug war. At last rough count, the butcher’s bill included 250,000 dead and 30,000 missing, with 1.6 million persons displaced from their homes. The official body count so far included 12,456 cartel members; 4,020 federal, state and municipal police officers; plus 395 soldiers slain and 137 missing, presumed dead.

Hell on Earth, in simple terms—and that was without adding in the daily slaughter of civilians in places like Ciudad Juárez and Matamoros by human predators for the sheer love of killing.

“Tell me more about the killers’ playground,” Bolan said.

“Feminicide covers a world of kinks and fetishes,” Price said. “As I mentioned, no one really knows how many girls and women have been killed or when it started ramping up. Local authorities downplay it with an eye toward tourism and foreign investment in factories, and the victims never found go on the books as runaways. Officially, Chihuahua police admit 260 murders since they started keeping track in 1993, claiming only seventy-six fit ‘serial’ parameters with rape, torture and mutilation. But that’s ridiculous. Women’s groups peg the total somewhere between four and fifteen hundred when they add in missing persons.”

“How bad is it, really?” Bolan asked.

“Amnesty International counted 370 by 2005. Chihuahua prosecutors finally admitted 270 murders statewide in 2010, with 247 inside Juárez. They logged another 300-plus in 2011, with 59 percent in the state capital. Since then, the yearly stats go up and down like yo-yos, depending on who you trust.”

“With no convictions?”

“Sure, a few. In 1996 Omar Sharif—a bus driver from Egypt, not the actor—went down for three murders, sentenced to thirty years, but the killings escalated after he went away. At that point, cops claimed he was part of a gang called Los Rebeldes—that’s ‘The Rebels’—who kept killing after he was put away. Police arrested five of his alleged accomplices then cut them loose for lack of evidence. Sharif died during his fourth year in prison.”

“Any others?”

“A few. In 2001, police nabbed an alleged pair of team killers and charged them with eight homicides. One died during interrogation. Then his buddy confessed but later recanted, claiming police torture, and out goes that case.

“In 2008, prosecutors charged Sergio Barraza with killing one teenage girl, but the court acquitted him for lack of evidence and he split for parts unknown. They later tried him again in absentia—that’s a thing down here, no double jeopardy—and he was convicted, but they still haven’t found him. Meanwhile his victim’s mother was assassinated by an unknown gunman while picketing the governor’s palace—shot once in the head at point-blank range.”

Bolan rarely swore but now said, “Sounds like a steaming crock of shit.”

“And still continuing today, although most of the press in Mexico has tried to play it down,” Price said.

“Sounds like they need a wakeup call.”

“I’d say. And then some.” She frowned and asked, “What are you packing?”

“Flying in from LA?” he replied. “Not a thing.”

“Just as well. We’ve got a friend at the US Consulate in Ciudad Juárez. He’s CIA, name’s Tim Ross.”

As she spoke, Price handed Bolan what appeared to be a passport photo of a white man, late twenties, with hair a little on the long side and a well-trimmed Vandyke. Bolan committed the face to memory and passed the photo back to her, asking, “What does he know?”

“Nothing about the program, you or Hal. He helps us out from time to time with hardware, paperwork, whatever. He pulled two tours in the sandbox with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines before he joined the Company, but I’d discourage getting him involved beyond delivery of gear when you arrive.”

“You’ll make the contact?”

“That’s affirmative. Just let me have your wish list.”

There were cocktail napkins in a slot beside the folding table. Bolan took out a pen, filled up half of one and then handed Price his list.

She read it over. “You’re pulling out all the stops.”

“I don’t see any other way to play it.”

“Right,” she said. “You’re driving over, then?”

“I’ve got a rental in the airport’s short-term parking lot.”

“Okay. I’ll set a meeting on the other side for you and Ross, then text you an address.”

“Sounds good.”

“Thoughts on the process, once you’ve gone across?”

“No suspects and no motive,” Bolan said. “The only way I see to play that hand is to bet the limit and keep raising until somebody folds.”

“You know we can’t help with the federal or state police across the line. Even if we could tell them what you’re doing over there, who knows which officers are trustworthy?”

“I know of at least one. But for this mission I’ll figure none of them and work from there,” Bolan replied.

It was, he knew, a decent rule of thumb for Mexico. The federales were divided into two departments. The Federal Judicial Police, founded in 1928, was disbanded in 2002 due to its own rampant corruption and criminal activity. It was replaced by the Federal Investigative Agency and attached to Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Safety as a “preventive” force against crime. Its counterpart, the Federal Ministerial Police, an investigative force tasked with fighting corruption and organized crime, was created in 2009 along FBI lines, directed by the Attorney General’s Office. Bolan would be ignoring the country’s third federal force: the Mexico City Police, which had no national reach, its officers confined to handling matters inside the Federal district. It would take a crystal ball to tell which members of the policing agencies were also drawing paychecks from the drug cartels.

“If you’re successful—” Price began, then caught herself. “When you’re successful, if there’s too much heat for you and Hal to handle on your own, Tim Ross can likely help you with the exfiltration.”

“Good to know. As long as he’s not privy to my moves beforehand.”

“Not a chance,” she answered back.

“And while we’re on that subject, I agree with you not sending Jack along.”

Grimaldi, that would be. Bolan’s literal wingman since his first campaign against the Mafia in Las Vegas. The go-to guy for all things aerial.

“I nearly didn’t go that way,” Price told him. “But then I thought about the built-in problems, flying out of Mexico and back across the border without one or both sides scrambling gunships, fighter planes or ground-to-air missiles.”

“You’re right. The last thing I want to do is get shot down or blown out of the sky with Hal, after...whatever he’s been through.”

Price leaned across the fold-down table, taking one of Bolan’s hands, eyes locked on his. “I know you well enough to have no doubt you’ll find him. What I’m not sure of is whether you’ll find him alive.”

“Well, now...”

“You know it’s true, Mack. Nothing’s guaranteed. If he was snatched by one of the cartels, they’ll have lines of communication to the DEA, maybe to Justice, too. They’ll know the heat is coming down, big-time, and hanging on to him would be the ultimate in stupid. We should all be ready if this thing goes south—no pun intended.”

“I’ve lost good friends before,” Bolan reminded her. “No one’s immortal, and me least of all. But I won’t think Hal dead until I’ve seen him dead or have enough forensic evidence to seal the deal.”

“Agreed. But then what?”

“Then I do what I do best,” Bolan replied, “and make the bastards pay with every drop of blood they have.”

Chapter Two

Bridge of the Americas

Despite its name, El Paso’s Bridge of the Americas actually included four bridges: two with four lanes each bearing passenger vehicles north and south, with sidewalks for pedestrians; and another pair with two lanes each for trucks alone, one flow of traffic headed each direction. The city’s newest international bridge, completed in 1998, channeled southbound traffic from I-110, routing the northbound tide from MX 45. Together the bridges transported an average of $650 billion in international trade, moving 4 million passenger vehicles, 5 million trucks and 400,000 pedestrians.

It was easy to get lost in all that traffic. Bolan counted on it heading south, although he had nothing to fear from customs or cops on either side of the border so far. His passport and driver’s license were impeccable—though false. He had the proper rental contract for his Toyota RAV4 compact SUV and nothing in the vehicle as yet should excite any drug-or explosive-sniffing dog.

The worst part about crossing was the time required. Each minute passing on the RAV4’s dashboard clock reminded Bolan that his oldest living friend was running out of time—assuming that he still had any left.

Barbara Price appeared to trust his contact on the other side, Tim Ross from Langley, even if she kept him in the dark and at arm’s length. Their meeting, time approximate and flexible, was set to occur near Parque Borunda in the La Chaveña neighborhood of Ciudad Juárez. Bolan knew La Chaveña meant “The Keyhole,” but he didn’t know or care how it had acquired the name.

La Chaveña was a working-class district, its best-known landmarks a nineteenth-century plaza with a fountain called “the Font of the Keyhole” and Parque Borunda with its carnival layout including thrill rides, gaming arcades and countless food kiosks.

Bolan, for his part, was embarking on a thrill ride of his own, with no amusement in the forecast.

He found the designated shopping mall, two blocks west of Parque Borunda, across the street from a funeral home. Hoping that wouldn’t turn out to be an omen, he pulled into the lot, parked and exited the SUV.

Tim Ross emerged from a standard government-issue sedan.

Facing each other in the sunshine, heat rising around them from the asphalt, they shook hands.

Ross introduced himself and followed with a question. “Captain Joshua Brinkman?”

“Close enough,” Bolan said. The false name was a throwaway he’d never use again on a mission.

“I managed to get all the items from your shopping list. Sounds like you’re throwing quite a party.”

“Need to know,” Bolan replied. “You know?”

“I do indeed. You want to check the items over?”

“Absolutely.” Bolan popped the RAV4’s fifth door, while Ross opened the trunk of his sedan. Their bodies screened the trunk’s contents from random passersby—but if someone Bolan couldn’t see already had the meet under surveillance...well, he figured he was screwed.

Inside the trunk, black duffel bags of sundry size took up most of the space. Ross unzipped one of them and held it open for inspection, asking Bolan, “Good on this one?”

“I’d say so.”

The bag contained a Steyr AUG bullpup assault rifle, factory-equipped with a Swarovski 1.5x telescopic sight, plus an integral flash hider doubling as a launcher for 22 mm rifle grenades of the NATO standardized nonbullet trap variety. Also inside the bag was an assortment of grenades—HE, smoke and incendiary—and a stack of translucent magazines packing forty-two 5.56 mm NATO rounds apiece.

Satisfied, Bolan zipped the bag and shifted it to the RAV4’s cargo area.

The second duffel bag contained a Benelli M-4 Super 90 semiautomatic tactical shotgun, packing seven 12-gauge rounds in its tubular magazine plus one in the chamber. With its collapsible buttstock extended, the piece measured just under three feet, tipping the scales at nine pounds loaded.

“This looks fine,” Bolan allowed, shifting over the second bag.

The third contained a Heckler & Koch MP-5K submachine gun. The “K” stood for kurz, German for “short,” and this classic was a compact version of H&K’s classic MP-5, used by military and law enforcement units in roughly one hundred nations worldwide. The MP-5K had a vertical foregrip in place of its parent’s handguard, measured 12.6 inches with its stock collapsed, and weighed 4.4 pounds empty. That weight increased significantly when you added a Beta C-Mag drum magazine loaded with 100 rounds of 9 mm Parabellum ammo.

Nodding his satisfaction, Bolan added that bag to the others in his SUV.

The fourth duffel held three sidearms and holsters to accommodate them. The largest was an MRI Desert Eagle chambered in .44 Magnum, weighing nearly five pounds with eight rounds in its mag and one up the spout. The other two handguns were Glock 22s chambered in .40 Smith & Wesson, identical except that one’s muzzle was threaded to accept a sound suppressor. Bolan had added the backup in hopes that he’d find Hal Brognola alive and fit to pull his weight during a fight.

A final kicker in the fourth bag was a Cold Steel GI Tanto knife with a black blade and polypropylene handle to match. Its sheath was adjustable for wearing on a belt, ankle or upside down, suspended from a shoulder rig. Also included was a pair of Leupold BX-1 Compact Rogue 10x25 compact binoculars.

“Okay,” Bolan said when he’d moved that bag, as well. “The rest?”

“You’ve got a first-aid kit including QuikClot combat gauze, morphine syrettes, suturing gear, adhesive tape and various accessories—scissors, tweezers, like that. Also in there, you’ll find a detailed map of Ciudad Juárez, plus highway and topographical maps of Chihuahua and neighboring states—Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa and Sonora. No one told me how far you’d be traveling or how long you’ll be at it.”

“Hard to say,” Bolan replied.

“And need-to-know. I get it.” Finally, Ross took a cell phone from one of his pockets, handing it to Bolan. “This is clean, a burner, with my number saved to memory. Also the consulate’s, if it comes down to that. I didn’t bother with the law enforcement contacts.”

“Just as well,” Bolan said.

“Like I thought.” Ross hesitated, then added, “The phone has built-in GPS, but I’ve deactivated it. You’ll want to double-check that for yourself, I guess.”

“No need.” Bolan lied. It would be the first thing he checked as soon as Ross was out of sight.

“I guess you know you’re in a world of shit down here,” Ross said.

“I’m up to date on the travel advisories.”

Ross nodded, said, “Can you trust anybody? Hell, who knows? Some mornings, I’m not sure I trust my mirror. That guy looking back at me seems shifty half the time.”

“I’ve had those days, myself,” Bolan replied.

“Right. Well, good luck on whatever, then. If I don’t hear from you again...”

“Consider it good luck,” the Executioner replied.

He watched Ross drive away, then double-checked the burner’s GPS and found it was, indeed, switched off. He opened it, looked at the battery and SIM card, nothing there that seemed to be an independent tracker. Satisfied, he took one of the Glocks with him before he slid behind the RAV4’s steering wheel, fired up the vehicle and pulled out of the parking lot.

From here on, he’d be rolling blind through no-man’s-land. A killer’s playground, right.

And now there was a new killer in town.

Federal Police Headquarters, Ciudad Juárez

Captain Chalino Prieto sat at his desk, overlooking Avenida Hermanos Escobar in the Omega district, smoking his third cigar of the day. He had a bottle of Don Julio tequila in his desk, but thought it still too early for a drink, although he badly wanted one.

Prieto was a portly man with double chins, and bags under his hooded eyes, black hair, just going gray at the temples, combed back from a squarish face. Clipped to his belt, an eight-pointed star of gold identified his agency and justified the Jericho 941 semiautomatic pistol holstered on his hip.

Prieto’s suit was tailor-made from linen, to accommodate Chihuahua’s weather, and his cowboy boots were hand-tooled, polished to a mirror shine. His jacket’s side pockets were reinforced to bear the weight of brass knuckles on one side and an eight-inch switchblade on the other, razor-edged, its handle made of ebony.

The captain was perusing a report of last night’s crimes in Ciudad Juárez—the ones recorded by police, that was—and noting that no middle-aged gringos were listed among corpses picked up off the streets. Prieto wasn’t sure exactly what to make of that, but guessed that all would be revealed to him in time.

It always was.

A rapping on his office door distracted him. Prieto called out, “Enter,” watching as Lieutenant Silvio Bernal entered and closed the door behind him.

“Captain.”

“Lieutenant. Now that we’ve identified each other, what’s the word from last night?”

“Allende and Solana have confirmed the transfer.”

“Sons of whores. You believe them?”

Bernal shrugged. “I think they are afraid to lie, sir.”

“Because, if they just took the gringo out and dumped him somewhere—”

“No, no, Captain. They swore to me that he was handed to El Psicópata.”

“If I find out they’re lying, I’ll let that crazy bastard play with them.”

Bernal paled just a bit on hearing that. “They wouldn’t dare, sir.”

“Perhaps not. But as stupid as they are, I don’t know whether we can risk association with them any longer.”

“If you wish it taken care of...”

Prieto fanned the air with his left hand, as if to clear it of cigar smoke and the thought of executing two subordinates for being idiots. If he went down that road, how many members of the Federal Police would see another sunrise?

“Never mind,” he told Bernal. “If they exhaust my patience, I can always make a deal with Kuno or Rodolfo.”

The lieutenant fairly gulped at the pronunciation of those names. Kuno Carillo was the godfather, commanding the Juárez Cartel. His primary opponent in Chihuahua was Rodolfo Garza, a “king,” but still subservient to the rival Sinaloa Cartel’s Boss of Bosses residing in Culiacán Rosales. Either one of them would gladly do a favor for Captain Prieto, who accepted cash from both while turning a blind eye to their activities.

“They are both worried, I assure you,” Bernal said, meaning the dim-witted sergeants.

“As they should be, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.”

Both Allende and Solana had undoubtedly greased palms for their appointments to the Federal Police and for later promotions through the ranks. Prieto doubted either one of them had gained his job on merit, much less rising to a sergeant’s rank by virtue of competitive examinations. They were smart enough to pay off their superiors and take cash from assorted felons, but as far as making cases that would stick in court, both officers were hopeless.

Christ! They couldn’t even carry out a simple snatch without making a hash of it.

The man they were supposed to kidnap was a chief of operations for the DEA in Washington, DC. His name was Howard Weinstock. Normally beyond the reach of enemies below the Tex-Mex border, coincidence had brought him to El Paso this week for a gathering that the US Attorney General called a “meeting of the minds” on strategy for tightening security along the Rio Grande in alignment with their current president’s concerns.

Captain Prieto wanted to interrogate Weinstock, then likely would have passed him on to Carillo or Garza, whoever was paying more, and let them wring him dry before he disappeared forever in Chihuahua’s desert.

Then the pathetic fools Allende and Solana had kidnapped the wrong gringo from the hotel hosting the law enforcement conference. Instead of Weinstock—forty-seven, six foot two, 180 pounds—they’d snatched another man entirely, older and two inches taller, heavier by thirty pounds at least, whose face bore only slight resemblance to their target’s. Dumb luck alone had spared the sergeants from a shooting fray or being captured at the scene and held for trial.

In that case, once they’d started squealing like the swine they were, what could Prieto have done next to save himself?

“Dismissed,” he told Bernal then waited for the door to shut behind his second in command before he focused on the problem posed by the two incompetents.

“They have to go,” he informed the empty room at last.

But who would pay him for the pleasure of eliminating them?

Tim Ross was well-known at the US Consulate, but he still had to show ID each time he left the grounds and once again when he returned. Today the young marine guard made a show of studying the laminated card Ross handed to him, eyes flicking between the photo and the man’s face, then thanked him in a deadpan voice and waved Ross through the gate.

Security was tight, of course, given the state of mayhem in Chihuahua. Nine years earlier, the State Department had recalled its staff from Ciudad Juárez and closed the consulate “indefinitely,” after cartel gunmen murdered three employees and a bomb went off outside another consulate in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. After a review, the consulate in Juárez had reopened one week later with increased security. Today it was a fortified blockhouse, three stories tall with small, bullet-resistant windows, concrete barriers and pylons supplementing metal fences topped with razor wire.

Ross wouldn’t have said that he enjoyed the atmosphere in Ciudad Juárez, but what the hell. He hadn’t joined the CIA after his double tour in Afghanistan to be a paper-pusher in a tiny office cubicle at Langley, when there was a whole wide world out there. It was either join the Company or try to make it as a merc somewhere in the Third World, maybe sign up with someone’s private army operating at arm’s-length from Washington. But why risk that if he could do the same things for the CIA with benefits and have a pension waiting if he made it to retirement?

Still, this deal...

Ross didn’t know the woman who’d reached out to him, had never met her in the flesh, although he’d fantasized a bit about that flesh after their two brief conversations on the phone. Her introduction came by way of Ross’s immediate superior—at Langley, not the Juárez consulate—with an impression of the urgency involved. That opener came wrapped as a request and not an order, something Ross was free to skip, but something told him that refusal might return him to that cubicle—maybe a basement cubicle at that, with no way out.

So Ross had gone for it, and wasn’t sorry yet. Ms. X had claimed her name was Sharon Patowsky—clearly false—serving as some kind of “liaison” with the Department of Justice in Washington. He knew the drill for cover stories, legends, plausible deniability and had listened to the sultry voice, agreeing to fulfill her needs.

The guns and other gear had been no problem. Once he had delivered them to hard-eyed “Captain Brinkman”—yet another alias—Ross figured that his role in whatever might happen next was done. But why did he regret that now?

He had a final call to make and placed that from his office, where he checked for taps and bugs routinely twice a day. It stood to reason that the contact number was a front, would certainly be disconnected after Ross left confirmation of his errand, likely via voice mail.

But he had it wrong on that score. There was no recording, no robotic voice instructing him to press 2 for English and leave his message at the beep. Instead that sultry voice came on the line after a single ring.

“How goes it, Mr. Ross?” she asked.

“Delivery complete, ma’am.”

“Thank you for your help on this. We won’t forget it.”

Ross didn’t ask who “we” might be. In fact, he never got the chance. The line went dead, no parting chitchat, no goodbye. He let five minutes pass then tried the contact number from his cell phone, maybe living dangerously.

And he heard, “We’re sorry. The number you’ve reached is out of service at this time.”

Likely forever.

So much for the sexy voice and Ross’s tiny part in something that might prove to be explosive, maybe hot enough to blow the roof off Ciudad Juárez. But there was still a chance he could keep track of it.

And why the hell not, if he took precautions?

Ross had been a gambler all his life, beginning when he’d joined the Corps. And truth be told, he missed the action, maybe more than it was healthy to admit.

Sometimes Bolan begrudged the needs of his own body. Hunger, sleep, whatever—all of them got in the way when he was on a roll. But sometimes, getting started, there was nothing else to do but pause and think, no matter how the passing time burned like a steady drip of acid in his brain.

So he was eating now—tamales and a side of rice, served in a foam take-out container from a drive-through restaurant—and studying the maps Tim Ross had given him, comparing them to notes he’d taken when he’d met with Barbara, listing addresses for potential targets in his search for Hal Brognola.

The restaurant stood in the city’s Colegio district, which lived up to its name by hosting a dozen institutes of higher learning. Its central location also gave Bolan a wealth of choices for thrusts in various directions, depending on the target he selected to begin his task of running Brognola to ground, or locating his kidnappers. Conversely, if he had been carried farther off than Ciudad Juárez, Bolan would have to deal with that problem when it arose.

Meanwhile, he had to start somewhere.

During their fly-by meeting in El Paso, Barbara had supplied him with the names, addresses and unlisted phone numbers of the top cartel men in Ciudad Juárez. If Stony Man could pluck that information from the air, sitting three thousand miles away from the Chihuahua killing grounds, it stood to reason that Mexico’s federal and state police must also know exactly where to find the district’s leading narcotraffickers.

Kuno Carillo and Rodolfo Garza both had extradition warrants waiting for them in the States, their list of charges spanning every felony from smuggling tons of drugs to terrorism, an untold number of murders, plus a raft of lesser counts including weapons violations, money laundering, kidnapping—take your pick. The stumbling block to their arrests: in recent years, tension between the Mexican president’s office and the White House had impeded any US operations inside Mexico, including capture of the war-torn nation’s leading criminals.

On top of that, police corruption often shielded prime offenders—and, as Bolan knew too well, that was a two-way street. Mordida, the time-honored bribery that many underpaid officials throughout Mexico considered as their rightful due, was frequently as rife in Washington, New York, Miami, LA—take your pick—as anywhere south of the Rio Grande.

Bolan had long since given up on fixing that pervasive problem, if it could be fixed at all. He had a more specific task and this time his attention had been narrowed to a laser point.

One man to find, alive or dead, among 1.5 million native residents and thousands of tourists swarming over what promoters liked to call the “Borderplex.” So many hiding places, innocent civilians to avoid and cops to dodge when Bolan started rattling cages, hoping to shake something loose.

And he was starting now.

Chapter Three

Somewhere in Ciudad Juárez

As Hal Brognola came awake, he was aware of four things instantly.

The first was pain. Aside from minor bruising he’d received while grappling with his kidnappers at the Gateway Rio Grande Hotel, his neck still hurt from the injection he’d received during that scuffle and his head ached now, as well. He’d been sedated for a second time, with chloroform, which left a sickly sweet taste in his mouth and tingling around his lips and nostrils from the sopping rag that had knocked him out.

Okay. At least pain meant he wasn’t dead.

Second, Brognola realized that he’d been moved. He was no longer zip-tied to the wooden chair he’d occupied before, but rather laid out on a table of some kind, secured in place with leather straps across his chest and waist, around his wrists and ankles. From the chill, he knew it was a metal table, which put him in mind of autopsies, and that was bad.

Not dead, he reassured himself once more. At least, not yet.

Third thing: his burlap hood had been removed. Now he was blindfolded, but not with simple cloth. It felt more like one of those sleeping eyeshades he’d seen people wear on airliners and sometimes in the movies, where some actress partied through the night then slept the day away. The part over his eyes felt almost silky, lightly padded, fastened with elastic stretched over his head.

And finally, wherever he was now, the atmosphere had changed. Instead of being in a normal room—that concept almost made him laugh, but the big Fed restrained the impulse—this one felt clammy, as unfinished basements often did.

Oh, and it stank of death.

Brognola fought an automatic sense of panic, wrestling with it until his pulse and respiration simmered down. He didn’t want to think about his wife, Helen, waiting for him to call, time stretching out until she might be on the verge of panicking herself. She’d have no reason to suspect that he was out painting El Paso red, fooling around, much less that he’d forgotten her or their nightly call whenever he was forced to be away from home.

No, she would realize that something had gone wrong, preventing him from keeping their phone date. But what would be her next step? Lacking an El Paso telephone directory, she couldn’t call around to hospitals asking if he’d been in some kind of accident. She could reach out to the El Paso county sheriff’s office and/or the municipal police, but that felt like a stretch.

The FBI? And tell them what? That Hal Brognola, who’d left the Bureau years ago and climbed much higher on the DOJ command ladder, was maybe, possibly, at risk in Texas?

Two high-level G-men were among the delegates attending the El Paso conference. Wouldn’t they know if he had gotten mugged or crashed his rental car and wound up in the nearest hospital? Brognola still had no idea what time it was outside his reeking cell, but someone must have missed him at the meeting—or they would, when it convened.

And then?

He couldn’t say.

None of the other conferees were in the know regarding Stony Man. Helen knew some of it—her own abduction, way back when, had made sure of that—but she had never seen the Farm and didn’t have any of its unlisted phone numbers.

Who do you call? Brognola thought, and nearly laughed again.

Helen did have a contact number for emergencies, if he was somewhere other than his nine-to-five office. Leaving a message there would put some wheels in motion but would offer no immediate relief.

Those two unspoken words rang hollow in Brognola’s mind. Immediate relief.

Try any kind at all.

The bottom line: nobody but his captors knew where he was being held or what they’d planned for him. Ransom kidnapping was a modern plague in Mexico, an average of thirteen hundred cases yearly, victims often slain by their captors after payoffs were received. Over the past decade, abductions nationwide had doubled, many of the latter crimes committed by cartels as a side business or by dedicated gangs that did no other work.

If he’d been snatched for ransom, there would be demands for cash, counter demands for proof of life, and that could drag on through long-winded haggling. The up side: if that was why he’d been abducted and confined, Brognola stood a fifty-fifty chance of coming through alive.

On the other hand...

The way they had him laid out made him think of torture, what some spooks and politicians euphemized with double-talk about “enhanced interrogation.” That suggested his abductors might know more about him than the simple fact that he’d been in the middle of a law enforcement conference about border security.

And if they went that route, the up side disappeared. He would end up like Kiki Camarena from the DEA, in Michoacán, or Daniel Mitrione of the CIA, in Uruguay.

With slow death on the menu, Brognola knew he had to do everything within his power to escape. But what power, and how?

If he could only free one hand...

Somebody’s coming.

The big Fed could hear a door open and close then heavy steps descending what he thought were wooden stairs. It sounded like one man...and was he humming to himself as he descended?

Yes.

To Brognola, it sounded like that old José Feliciano song about Christmas.

For Christ’s sake. “Feliz Navidad.”

El Psicópata was subconsciously aware of humming, but he made no effort to curtail it. He was safe at home, immune to interruptions from the world outside, free to behave as he saw fit, indulging in the only pastime he truly enjoyed.

He leaned toward happy tunes, which might strike some people as paradoxical, but the internalized music had seen him through some rugged times, beginning with the earliest of childhood memories. He’d been too young to understand or to mourn losing his parents in the auto accident that—he had later learned from yellowed newspapers and bootlegged autopsy reports—had turned them into twisted skeletons of blackened ash.

From his first home, which he could not recall, he had moved on to a state-run orphanage in Zacatecas—picture sodomy endured from older boys and staffers, whippings when he first complained before discovering that silence was expected of him—then to foster homes that ran from bad to worse.

A dictionary had enlightened him that “foster” was a verb, meaning to stimulate, encourage and promote. Each so-called home, for him, had stimulated fear, encouraged pain, promoted nightmares, till he woke one morning and decided something had to change if he was going to survive.

He’d torched the fourth place after moving silently from room to room wielding a butcher’s knife. The police had been too blind, stupid or apathetic to see past the fire that had left his foster “parents” and their spoiled brats in the same shape as his birth parents. As a result, they’d sent him to another home. While that childless couple was sincere enough, eager to please, the damage suffered by El Psicópata prior to meeting them was irreversible. He’d aged out of the system twelve months later and was on his own, determined to avenge himself upon the world that never wanted him.

From Zacatecas City he had traveled the twelve hundred miles due north to Ciudad Juárez. He’d started out hitchhiking along MX 45 and taught himself to drive by watching Good Samaritans who stopped for him. A few miles south of Torreón he’d killed a honeymooning couple, left them to the desert as a sacrifice and driven on in their car. When he was halfway to Delicias, a fellow hitchhiker attracted him and learned that there were no free rides. Two cars and three more sacrifices later, he’d rolled into Ciudad Juárez, running on gasoline fumes, and abandoned his last ride—a little something in the trunk—near an industrial park.

Already, the Chihuahuan capital had earned a lawless reputation, luring gringo tourists with its reputation as a town where “anything could happen” and frequently did. Low-paying jobs were plentiful in Ciudad Juárez, permitting him to put a roof over his head, but when it came to “honest work,” El Psicópata had little patience. It was easier to jack-roll drunks and gringo tourists straying off the city’s beaten paths. Some managed to survive his avid ministrations, others died, and no one of importance seemed to care.

Within another year he had accumulated enough cash to purchase an old house one mile from a Petróleos Mexicanos oil refinery in far southwestern Ciudad Juárez. It had six rooms on the ground floor and, down below, a basement that he’d transformed into a workshop and playroom.

He had not earned his nickname yet. That came later, after Juárez courted infamy for murders by the warring drug cartels and the rising death toll from feminicidio striking down prostitutes. Journalists from the United States described it as a “playground” for serial killers.

Not a single killer obviously. Who could work that long and hard, achieve so much, within a few short years? But as El Psicópata came into his own, adopted a creative signature, collected certain souvenirs that pointed to a single hand at work, his legend grew. He hadn’t bothered keeping score, could only estimate how many souls he’d reaped so far, before his life had taken a dramatic turn.

El Psicópata had been hunting, chose a teenage prostitute who presumed to call herself Chantelle Amor, but hadn’t noticed when her pimp observed him and—against all odds and common sense—reported him to a detective from the FIA. The lawman came for him alone, another strange anomaly, and literally caught him red-handed.

Another deviation, then. Instead of arresting him, baring the secrets of his subterranean rec room and packing him off for sixty years at La Palma prison, Lieutenant Chalino Prieto, El Psicópata’s personal savior, had had a better idea.

A sadist without boundaries, it seemed, could earn protection by performing certain favors for the FIA and for cartels that had their own armies but sometimes wished to shirk responsibility for certain acts of mayhem. They’d be offloaded to independent operators with a history of dodging the police. Some cast-off prostitutes, police informants, possibly a lover or a relative of some soldier in disfavor with his boss who’d benefit from sampling the sorrow of loss but hadn’t earned extermination yet.

In short, a homicidal psychopath was useful in Juárez, and by no means the only one at large.

The present sacrifice was not El Psicópata’s normal prey. He favored females younger than himself, although his sacrifices had included men, as well, a few minors, a handful of old indigens. This one was different: a former man of substance by the look of him, though he’d come down to nothing in the end. Captain Prieto, promoted since striking his bargain with El Psicópata, left nothing with this one to identify him, and it mattered not.

His orders were simple: make it seem as usual, disposal offering no pointers to the truth, assuming the remains were found.

Which left him worlds of what gringos described as “wiggle room.”

He could afford to take his time and relish the experience.

Hacienda de las Torres

Bolan scanned his target from a block out, through his Leupold BX-1 binoculars. The neighborhood—at least this part of it—was seedy and presumably a menace after dark. It was an hour off from sunset, too long since Brognola had been lifted from El Paso. Bolan planned on teaching local predators to walk in fear, just like their decent neighbors and the tourists who occasionally strayed into this part of Ciudad Juárez.

Assuming they could walk—or breathe—when he was done.

In any case, he had a message to deliver and he didn’t need a living gofer to carry it back home.

The district took its name from Avenida de las Torres—Avenue of the Towers—running north-south for miles, directly through the dark heart of Juárez. In this section, the towers ran toward blocks of public housing that were barely habitable, high-rise breeding grounds of crime. Life was cheap here, thanks to teenage gangs and cartels fighting over turf, not caring who got caught up in the crossfire.

Bolan wasn’t looking at one of the housing projects now. His target was a warehouse owned and operated by members of the Juárez Cartel, defended—so they thought—by what appeared to be a couple dozen thugs with weapons openly displayed, and probably an equal number on the inside.

He had no good reason to believe that either of the two warring cartels had snatched Brognola from El Paso. Even with persistent leaks and the payola rife in Washington, only a chosen few, all at the highest level, knew about the covert operations he directed. The number who could offer up specifics to the enemy would hardly fill a large booth at a pricey restaurant. More to the point, if someone had been selling Stony Man’s secrets, a blow should’ve been struck against the Farm, not Hal Brognola, when he was at a conference more than halfway across the continent.

There had been attacks on Stony Man, costing the on-site team and Bolan dearly, but he had no fear of that being repeated anytime in the foreseeable future.

No, he was starting with the drug cartels because, between them, they controlled Juárez in every way that counted. Sure, the cartels existed in Chihuahua by the sufferance of federales and the politicians who appointed them, but gangland overlords, by definition, had to know what was occurring in a city they controlled or hoped to claim.

Bolan was certain of one thing: someone in Ciudad Juárez knew why Brognola had been snatched, who had abducted him and where he could be found, either alive or dead. The clock was running and, to get results without undue delay, Bolan was starting at the top.

Not literally at the gated dwellings of Kuno Carillo or Rodolfo Garza yet, but by the time those top-flight narcotrafficantes got his message, he’d be knocking at their door—and maybe blowing down their houses.

First things first.

When every second counted toward survival but you had no leads on the solution to a lethal problem, cool heads normally prevailed. Which didn’t mean that “cool” and “calm” were synonyms.

Juárez was on the verge of an apocalypse. Its self-appointed rulers simply didn’t know it yet.

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