Stand Down

by Don Pendleton

  Everado heard a scrape, and then a red-orange flame burst into life a foot from his face, close enough for him to feel the heat radiating from it. The fire was coming from a self-contained portable blowtorch, held by Bolan, who was barely visible behind it. As Everado watched with wide eyes, Bolan adjusted the flame until it turned from a large red flame to a hissing blue jet of fire only a few inches long. “Your first choice is interrogation by fire…” Bolan twisted the knob, cutting the flame off and plunging the room back into darkness.

  His nose wrinkling from the odor of the burned fuel, Everado heard him walking across the room, followed by the sound of something fairly heavy being set down on the floor with a thump. A second later, bright sparks flashed in front of his face, giving off just enough light to reveal Bolan’s face, looking insectile and inhuman in the light from the two jumper cable wires he was touching together, the other ends attached to a car battery. “Or you can go with a little electroshock therapy.”

  Everado’s bladder let go with a gush, spraying warm urine down his leg as he stared at the obvious psycho in front of him, his mouth opening and closing, but no sound coming out.

  “Of course, you can prevent any further harm from coming to you if you tell me everything I want to know about your father, the Cristobal compound and your drug pipeline. I want names, locations, deliveries, associated companies, everything you can possibly think of.”

  Everado felt wetness stream down his cheeks and tasted salty tears. “You’re fucking crazy, man! You can’t do this to me! I’m a goddamn citizen of the sovereign nation of Mexico! I have rights, goddamn it!”

  Bolan’s nose wrinkled. “Pretty big talk coming from a guy who just wet his pants. I know exactly what you are, Everado. You’re a parasite on the underbelly of this great nation, content to keep taking and taking and taking from it without giving anything back. You think you’re entitled to this sweet life of yours? You just got lucky, winning the birth lottery and ending up the son of a drug dealer. I know of thousands of people on both sides of the border down south that are a hundred times more deserving of half the privileges you take for granted every single day. Nobody in America owes you a thing, and neither does your homeland. You gave up all your rights when you decided to profit from other people’s misery and weakness.”

  Everado strained helplessly at his bonds. “Look—look, Cooper, listen to me, man. You’re just one guy. You can’t possibly beat everyone my father’s bringing against you. Tell you what. You let me go right now, and maybe he’ll let you live.”

  “Oh don’t worry. I have unfinished business with your father, so I’ll be paying him a visit very soon. Well, we should get started.” He frowned before dragging the battery away from the pool underneath Everado’s chair. “Don’t want to risk electrocuting myself. Guess that means we’re going with fire.”

  “Cooper, you’re not serious… Hey man, you can’t fucking do this!”

  Bolan set the cables down off in the darkness and walked back toward Everado with slow, measured steps. The young punk was almost hyperventilating, and he couldn’t help letting out a whimper when the black-haired man struck flint to the end of the blowtorch and made that bright golden-blue flame spurt out again.

  Bolan walked around him slowly. “You ever smell burning skin? I’ll bet you have, amigo. Maybe south of the border, visiting your grandparents in the summer, when they slaughtered chickens for dinner. They’d use a blowtorch—probably one just like this—to cauterize the neck stump after they chopped off the bird’s head and it stopped flopping around. You never forget that smell—kind of sickly sweet, with a sort of metallic odor underneath. I bet that’s the burning copper in the blood…” As he spoke, he adjusted the flame and brought it closer and closer to Everado’s face, the bright blue fire growing larger and larger until it filled the young man’s vision. He turned his head as far away as he could get, but it wasn’t far enough. The flame kept coming closer…closer…closer…until Everado imagined he felt his eyebrows crisping under the intense heat.

  “Okay, okay, okay, okay! Jesus, I’ll tell you anything you want to know, just get that fucking thing away from me!”

  The blue flame disappeared, and the room lights came on, making Everado blink tears away as he looked around. He was in a bare room with white walls, black garbage bags duct-taped over the two windows. The torch lay on the floor, next to the battery and jumper cables. His mask off, Bolan grabbed a kitchen chair identical to the one Everado was secured to. He set it down with the chair’s back to Everado and straddled it, then held up a small digital recorder to the young man’s mouth.

  “Start talking.”

  BOLAN WALKED OUT of the room thirty minutes later, tapping the recorder in his hand thoughtfully. Kelly sat on a battered couch in the living room of the safehouse Bolan had rented, leafing through an old copy of Guns & Ammo. She’d found an old portable radio and had turned it on, the electronic, overdubbed Top 40 music blaring.

  His eyebrows rose. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

  She glanced up at him. “Kind of hard to sleep around here, what with all of the shouting and carrying on in the next room. Walls are paper-thin here.”

  “Sorry. You might want to check the bedroom down the hall. Our associate isn’t going anywhere for the time being.”

  Kelly frowned. “Sounded pretty rough in there at the beginning. You didn’t, uh, you know…”

  “Torture him?” Bolan shook his head. “Not physically. Psychologically, well…I needed to break him fast, and this was the best way to do it. That bother you?”

  She shrugged. “I…don’t know. If he was still resisting, would you have done the, you know, the physical stuff?”

  Bolan paused for a moment before answering. “That’s for me to know, and you to hopefully never have to find out.” He would never actually go physical on people he was trying to get information from—that kind of stuff was for television dramas, not to mention the fact that intel gained that way was often seriously compromised—but he also couldn’t risk her accidentally spilling that information to Everado or someone else. “By the way, thanks for the assist earlier tonight. Where’d you learn to handle a shotgun like that?”

  Kelly shook her head like Bolan was always one step behind. “You’re in Kansas now, Dorothy. Growing up out here involves learning to crawl, walk, shoot, then run—in that order.”

  “Well, God bless America.” The glimmer of an idea was sparking in Bolan’s mind—something about what she had just said, but it hadn’t fully formed yet. He’d let it percolate for a bit yet, no doubt if it was workable, he’d know it soon enough. He regarded the girl for a moment, but she was suddenly engrossed in the radio, picking it up and listening intently.

  “What time is it?”

  Bolan checked his watch. “Just after ten p.m.”

  “Listen to this.” She turned up the volume as Bolan walked toward the couch.

  And here’s your news at the top of the hour. Sheriff’s deputies are still looking for the fugitive known as Matt Cooper, wanted in relation to the alleged murders of Jack and Sandra Bitterman two days ago. The deputies are also seeking him in connection to the disappearance of the Bittermans’ daughter, Kelly, who hasn’t been seen since the night of the shooting. Residents are advised to be on the lookout for a man in his mid-to late thirties, with short black hair and blue eyes. He stands approximately six feet, three inches tall, and weighs approximately two hundred pounds. Photos of him can be seen at the sheriff’s department website, www.ECSD.com. He was last seen driving a black Cadillac Escalade, license number WFT-590. Authorities have warned to use extreme caution, and not to approach this man if he is spotted, as he is armed and extremely dangerous. Anyone seeing him should immediately contact the sheriff’s department at 555-8429. Now for your KQIN weather report…

  “Well, De Cavallos certainly has upped the ante, hasn’t he?” Taking out Everado’s cell phone, Bolan flipped through its menus, then pressed a button. “Keep quiet.”r />
  Putting the phone to his ear, he waited until the person on the other end picked up. “Everado? ¿Dónde estás?”

  “This isn’t your son, Mr. De Cavallos. This is Matt Cooper.”

  He listened to the silence on the other end before the man found his voice. “Where is Everado?”

  “He’s safe—”

  “I want to hear from him. Put him on the line.”

  “Sure.” Bolan pressed the Play button on the digital recorder. Everado’s voice came out. “Father, I’m being held against my will—”

  Bolan took the recorder away and pressed Pause. “That’s all you get right now. However, I assure you that he’s perfectly fine. He decided to come looking for me after our little conversation outside the diner. Unfortunately, his friend wasn’t a very good driver, and he was involved in a nasty auto accident. I thought it would be best to take him into custody for his own protection.”

  “What do you want, Mr. Cooper?”

  Bolan had to give the man credit—he hadn’t blustered or threatened, but just got right to the point. He decided to return the favor. “I want you to pack up your Cristobal company and head out of town. South of the border will be fine. You have six hours to comply. If you do, and prove it to my satisfaction, I will release your son unharmed. If you don’t, I will be forced to take more punitive measures.”

  “I cannot close down the company in your time frame. The manufacturing lines alone cannot be stopped until the current run is complete—”

  “That’s not my problem. You have six hours to shut it down completely, or I’ll shut it down for you. I’ll be in touch soon to check on your progress.”

  Bolan snapped the phone closed and powered it down. Kelly stared at him. “Are you crazy?”

  “No.” Bolan walked to the end of the house. “I don’t know about you, but I’m going to get a few hours’ sleep. You probably should, too.”

  “Why?”

  “Because when I get up, I’m going on the offensive.”

  11

  Heriberto Pinilla and Amador Salegio had been cruising the back roads around Quincyville for the past three hours, and both hired guns were tired and bored.

  Each had come from a small village in the heart of Mexico, and each had joined the military as soon as he could, escaping the soul-crushing poverty that was sucking the life out of their families. Both men had learned how to fight in the army, and also how to speak English fairly fluently. And they had one other thing in common—once they’d gotten a taste of the easy money that could be made looking the other way while drugs were smuggled across the border, they were both hooked. And when their military service was at an end, they had immediately used their cartel connections to hire themselves out to whomever needed them.

  That was how they’d ended up in Quincyville as part of the security detail for Cristobal Pharmaceuticals. The perks of the job were pure heaven—living in an American town with all of its luxuries at their fingertips, including air-conditioning, electricity 24/7 and clean, fresh water whenever they wanted it. They got to tool around in fine vehicles like this Escalade, only a year old and with power and comfort to spare, and got their choice of weapons when they needed them.

  There was only one problem with the position—there was very little to do in terms of security. Heriberto and Amador had been in Quincyville more than a year, and they’d had only two real jobs of any import—one had been chasing down a truck driver who’d been stupid enough to try to steal an entire shipment, and the other had been following one of the salesmen when he’d been suspected of informing on the company. They’d caught him, and ended up killing him and disposing of his body in an acid bath.

  That had all changed earlier this evening. Their boss, De Cavallos—a man for whom both would willingly lay down their lives—had called them and every other security man, on or off duty, into a conference room and laid out the current mission for them. An American federal agent was snooping around in town, and he had to be located and taken out immediately. Earlier that evening he’d killed three Cristobal security men, wounded one town deputy, kidnapped the only witness to the Bitterman incident and stolen a company Escalade. Standing orders were to capture him alive if possible, but dead would work just as well. De Cavallos had ordered everyone to pull bulletproof vests from the armory, divided them into teams and assigned them areas of town to search, subject to reassignment by the sheriff’s department as needed.

  However, the thrill of hunting a wanted fugitive had soon since been replaced by the tedium of driving up and down deserted back roads, checking isolated houses one by one for the stolen SUV. The first hour they had been on the alert, tracking every small sound and rare flash of distant headlights. But as the night had worn on, they had grown a bit more complacent, to the point where Heriberto had stopped the SUV to urinate when he had spotted the narrow driveway that led over a small hill. Zipping up, he’d grabbed a flashlight and checked the worn ruts, finding recent tread marks in the dust that matched the tires on their own SUV.

  He’d told Amador, and they’d turned off the Escalade’s headlights and used their night-vision goggles to guide them as they slowly drove up the narrow road. At the top of the hill, they’d spotted a small ranch house set way back, not even visible from the road. Amador had backed up to the road and turned off the engine, then they retrieved their weapons from the back and went in on foot.

  About ten yards away from the house was a small garage. Carefully easing the sliding door open, they found a dusty but otherwise immaculate Cadillac Escalade inside, its license plate matching the one stolen earlier that day. The two men grinned at each other, then Heriberto whipped out his cell phone.

  “Who are you calling?” Amador asked. “The deputy said he should be informed if we found anything.”

  Heriberto frowned. “That bastard doesn’t pay my salary. Besides, he’s always cruising around like he owns the town, yet we’re the ones called in to do any dirty work for him. Remember that damn town fair we had to provide security for? Just think of the reward we could get if we bring this gringo in for the company.”

  Amador smiled and nodded. “Works for me.”

  Heriberto hit the speed dial. “Sir, we’ve found him.” He gave quick directions to their location, then positioned his cell phone so Amador could hear the conversation as well.

  De Cavallos was explicit in his instructions. “Don’t go in by yourself. Wait until at least one other team is there, preferably two. Also, there is something else I hadn’t told you—he has my son as a hostage.”

  Heriberto and Amador exchanged glances. If they could save the boss’s son, they could probably name their own reward.

  “I want you to wait for more people, then go in and kill the American agent. Take the girl alive, but eliminate her if she gets in the way. Above all, save my son.” “Si, senor!”

  BOLAN’S EYES OPENED at the first vibration of the small plastic box on his chest. He picked it up and realized the second line of passive motion sensors had been set off, meaning potential hostiles were already inside the perimeter.

  “Damn it.” The reviews of the sensors he’d used in L.A. and here had said they registered humans fairly well, but sometimes had trouble with vehicles. That would make sense. Someone driving up hadn’t tripped the first one set across the driveway, but had set off the second one near the garage.

  Rising, he clipped the holstered Beretta to his belt at the small of his back, put on his night-vision goggles, then slipped out into the hallway. Kelly was stretched out on the couch, covered by a worn comforter. The shotgun was on the floor beside her. Bolan smiled at the forethought. He peeked in on Everado. As he’d figured, the thug was sound asleep in the chair, exhausted from the events of the evening. Bolan took a second to look more closely, not that he cared, but it wouldn’t do to have his hostage die before he’d outlived his usefulness. Although the young man looked like he had been dragged over a mile of hard road, his breathing was strong and steady. Even when
Bolan picked him up and moved him into the small closet in the south corner of the room, Everado didn’t wake.

  Walking back into the living room, Bolan knelt by the couch and carefully placed a hand over Kelly’s mouth before shaking her shoulder. Her eyes flew open and she grabbed at his hand, trying to pull it free before recognizing him and relaxing. Her brow knit in a frown as she looked down at her silenced mouth.

  “Sorry about that.” Bolan put a finger to his lips as he removed his other hand. “We’ve got company. Take this—” he handed her the shotgun “—and hole up in the kitchen behind the countertop. If you hear someone come in, and they don’t whistle as they do, shoot a couple rounds to keep their heads down, then get out the back door to the nearest road and over to the SUV near your house. Got it?”

  She nodded as she took the shotgun, checked its load, and slowly racked the slide to prevent making any more noise than necessary to chamber a shell. Tossing off the blanket, she crept into the kitchen using only the moonlight coming in through the dingy living-room windows to guide her. Meanwhile, Bolan turned on his night vision. He made sure Kelly was secure before sneaking to the back door and looking through the window at the side for any movement. Seeing none, he drew his Beretta before reaching over and slowly turning the doorknob while standing to one side of the door. When it stopped, he pulled the door open just enough for him to slip outside, then closed it behind him.

  The night air smelled of grass and dew, and the world around him was lit up in bright green. Bolan edged to the corner of the house, reviewing the layout of the property in his head. The problem with the whole area was that there was absolutely no cover apart from the buildings themselves. The landlord had mowed the grass so that it was only a couple inches tall, eliminating the option of approaching the enemy by crawling through the underbrush.