And on the surface everything was unity, a people joined unanimously in their opposition to Castro and his regime in Cuba. But beneath the calm exterior, guerrillas schemed and turned on each other more than on the common enemy. They dealt in secrets, drugs and death, each splinter movement striving to become the voice of a people in exile.
Toro knew the war could reach them there, despite the apparent quiet of the neighborhood. His group might have been seen already, cruising past the target house; armed men might be laying traps to destroy them piecemeal.
With his tiny force, the Cuban warrior could not take a chance on being suckered. He could not afford to sacrifice the slim advantage of surprise. If luck was with them, they could be in and out in moments, their mission accomplished.
He sent one of the gunners, Mano, back around the way that they had come, to discreetly watch the front of the target house. Mano was primed — an Ingram submachine gun underneath his jacket — to cut of the retreat of anyone inside once Toro had penetrated from the rear.
The driver, Rafael, was detailed to stay with the car, making sure that no one tampered with it in their absence. They would need wheels in a hurry, without someone crouching in the back seat or a package wired to explode at the flick of an ignition switch.
Toro recognized the signs of budding paranoia and quickly dismissed them. His fears were not delusions; they were facts of life in the warring camp that was present-day Little Havana.
The final gunner, Emiliano, fell in step with Toro as the leader made his way across a manicured lawn, then down a narrow alley, between the rows of dwellings.
They counted houses, walking along the backside of the residential street they had just traveled, pausing finally before a wooden gate set in a backyard fence. Toro stood on tiptoe to peer over, whistling softly for a dog and getting no response. He finally reached across the gate, feeling for the latch and releasing it, proceeding on inside, his gun probing the way ahead.
Emiliano followed him across the grassy postage-stamp yard, closing rapidly on the back of the house with its covered patio. They brushed past a portable barbecue, and Toro's backup veered away, his pistol drawn now. He paused long enough to check the open door that granted access to a one-car garage connected to the house. When he was satisfied that no one lurked inside, Emiliano nodded, falling into step again at Toro's heel.
They crossed the patio, circling around to the side of the house and up three concrete steps to reach the kitchen door. Standing back against the wall, Toro reached out a hand to test the knob — and found it locked.
He decided there was no way around a violent entry. They had wasted enough time already. Any more delay could spell their deaths.
A glance and nod to Emiliano, and Toro stepped around in front of the kitchen door, his automatic leveled, mentally bracing himself in case bullets started ripping through the flimsy door. He hit the door a flying kick and sent it slamming backward on its hinges, pieces of the cheap pot-metal latching mechanism rattling on the floor inside.
They went in crouching, Toro peeling left, Emiliano right, their weapons cocked and tracking, seeking any sign of hostile life.
The empty kitchen mocked them — but a muffled scuffling from deeper in the house alerted Toro. Moving swiftly through the kitchen down a narrow corridor, he closed on what were obviously bedrooms. Two doors opened off the hallway, one of them ajar, revealing an empty room beyond.
The other door was closed, and in a heartbeat the Cuban identified it as the source of the suspicious sounds.
Toro shouldered the panel, bulled on through into a tiny bedroom. Opposite the door a slender figure was grappling with the window screen, trying to batter it aside and clear a passage.
Toro and Emiliano rushed forward and grabbed him as he threw one leg across the open window's ledge, and finally dragged him back inside the room. The slender man was struggling, kicking out at both of them, a nonstop stream of Spanish curses pouring from his lips. Together they pinned him on the rumpled bed.
Emiliano raised his pistol and whipped it down across the runner's skull. The man went limp. A crimson worm of blood squirmed out from underneath the fallen runner's hairline, crawling down across his face.
The Cuban warrior glanced at his companion and nodded in the direction of the open bedroom doorway.
"La cocina," he snapped, receiving an answering nod from Emiliano.
Each man grabbed an arm of the captive, dragging him off the bed and toward the doorway, through it, back along the dingy corridor.
He was slowly beginning to revive as they reached the small kitchen. Together the Cubans eased him down into a straight-back chair, his head slumped forward, both arms dangling limply at his sides.
Toro produced a pair of handcuffs from a jacket pocket and secured one wrist, then the other, threading the handcuff's chain through a metal rung in back. The shackles kept their prisoner slumped low in his seat, unable to stand or raise his arms.
Emiliano grabbed a handful of his hair and gave the bloodied head a violent shake, gradually bringing the captive around to consciousness. The man was blinking, swallowing hard as a flash of recognition crossed his face. Then his gaze traveled to the gun in Toro's fist.
"Toro," the captive said simply.
"Julio."
Toro recalled the weasel face of Julio Rivera from other days, when they had fought together in the cause of Cuba libre. They were allies then, but even so, there had been something out of place about Rivera, something indefinably wrong, which set El Toro's teeth on edge and made him watch the man more closely than he had the other soldados in his little clandestine army. When Raoul Ornelas had begun to agitate for mutiny within the ranks, Rivera had been an early convert.
"I want Raoul," Toro told him simply.
"Raoul?"
The man was stalling, trying to come up with something he could use to bargain for his life.
"Si, pendejo. Donde esta? Diga me, pronto."
Rivera managed to dredge up a twisted grimace of defiance, jaw thrust out, lips curling in a sneer.
"Chinga tu..."
Emiliano slapped him hard across the back of the skull with his open hand, cutting off the obscene retort, snapping Julio's teeth together sharply.
"Una vez mas... Raoul," Toro repeated patiently.
Rivera glanced warily around at Emiliano, shaking his head as if to clear the ringing in his ears.
"No se."
Toro shrugged, placing his automatic on the counter beside the sink. He began rummaging through drawers, selecting kitchen implements, examining each in turn before lining them up on the counter top.
A butcher knife.
An ice pick.
A skewer.
A meat cleaver.
Rivera's eyes were widening, and his mouth fell open as he watched Toro walk in front of him to stand before the kitchen stove. The Cuban turned on one of the front burners, a blue gas flame hissing into life inches from his hand.
He brought the butcher knife back over to the stove and propped its blade across the burner, the wide tip distorting the flame. Within moments its razor edge was glowing red, catching a fire of its own and reflecting it into the Cuban's eyes.
Toro turned, leaning back against the counter with his arms crossed, the hissing burner close beside his hip.
"Now, Julio... Raoul."
Julio did not respond. Instead he whimpered, struggling with the handcuffs, straining at them until the steel bracelets had worn a bloody groove in both wrists.
"Bien, Rivera." Toro's smile was totally devoid of any human feeling.
And Julio Rivera talked.
About Raoul Ornelas... Jose 99... a great deal more.
When they were finished, forty minutes later, Toro knew he had to get in touch with Bolan. Soon.
The warrior's life — and all their lives — could well be riding on the outcome of that call.
12
Mack Bolan pushed his Firebird eastward, the satchel full of cas
h on the seat beside him as he left the Club Uhuru, rolling through the heart of Liberty City toward his next target destination. The numbers were falling now, with half a dozen stops to make and no time left to waste.
Liberty City was Miami's ghetto, tucked away just south of the Opa-locka airport, out of sight for most of white Miami, and largely out of mind. On many city maps it was a blank space, the streets ignored as most of the neighborhood's population had also been ignored until very recently.
Black rage had torn the neighborhood apart in recent months, and the scars of that explosion were still visible. The fuse was still sputtering, and every public official in Miami knew that it was only a matter of time until more violence rocked the area. Suspicion, hatred and paranoia on both sides had made the area a pressure cooker, and the lid was ready to blow if someone turned the heat up, even fractionally.
Bolan's target was a numbers countinghouse some six blocks over from the Club Uhuru. The Executioner knew that all the front men and the players would be black, but it was still a Mafia franchise, run behind the scenes by one Dukey Aiuppa.
Aiuppa's real name was Vincenzo, but he won his street name from a string of welterweight bouts he fought professionally before discovering that punching men — or women and children — outside the ring brought higher pay.
Instead of knockouts now, he had a sheet of thirty-five arrests behind him, without a single conviction. A Brooklyn transplant who had worked his way up through the local ranks, Aiuppa ruled his ghetto fiefdom like a colonial warlord, surrounded by stormtroops of all nationalities and colors, reaping sky-high profits from a people mired in poverty and filth.
Aiuppa's countinghouse was tucked away above a pool hall frequented by pimps and pushers. Bolan found his target and parked the Firebird a half block down, unable to get closer because of the Cadillacs and Lincolns lined against the curb on either side of the street. He walked back, feeling hostile eyes upon him as pedestrians turned to stare at his expensive tan-colored suit, dark-brown silk shirt and white silk tie. He drew grim comfort from the Beretta 93-R, which he wore beneath his left arm in a shoulder harness.
He reached the pool hall, pushed on through the swinging doors in front. The pool hall proper was in semidarkness, but he was still able to pick out the scattering of players grouped around two tables on his left. They were watching him, whispering among themselves, but Bolan ignored them, moving between the other deserted tables and on to a flight of wooden stairs set against the back wall of the long, narrow room.
A black man stood on guard at the base of the stairs, watching Bolan approach. He stood with arms crossed, back against the banister, prepared to block the Executioner's progress.
"What's happenin'?"
"I'm looking for the Duke," Bolan told him.
"He ain't expectin' any visitors."
Bolan flashed a stony grin.
"Well, let's surprise him."
"He don't like surprises, man."
The Executioner shrugged, the smile softening.
"In that case..."
He moved as if to push on up the stairs past the strong-arm, then pivoted with lightning speed as the guy tried to block him. Bolan ducked beneath a looping right cross, driving the rigid fingers of one hand deep beneath the black man's rib cage, punching the wind out of him and doubling him over.
The Executioner seized an arm and twisted it behind the slugger's back, high up between his shoulders. Then Bolan put his full weight behind the movement as he drove the man into the wall beside the stairs. One hard knee rocketed in, found a kidney once, twice, and the muscle slid to the floor in a boneless sprawl, leaving a blood smear along the wall where his face had made bruising contact with the plaster.
Bolan mounted the stairs, three at a time, barging on through an unguarded door at the top of the landing.
Five startled faces turned to face him, only two of them black. The men were ringed around a small desk piled with money — both bills and coins — and several thousand crumpled betting slips. Bolan quickly recognized the Duke of Liberty City by his broken nose and cauliflower ear.
The soldier nearest to the door was in his shirtsleeves, wearing iron exposed beneath his arm. He was already moving out to intercept Bolan, but the Executioner brushed past him, not giving any one of them a chance to think coherently.
"Hey, what's this crap?" he demanded, managing to sound outraged as he gesticulated toward the betting slips and cash. "You were supposed to have it packed and ready."
Aiuppa glanced at the closest of his aides, scowling as his eyes returned to Bolan.
"Pack what? Where's Jackson? Who the hell are you?"
Bolan knew that Jackson would be sleeping off their brief encounter at the bottom of the stairs.
"You didn't get the word?"
"What word?"
Bolan glared at the Duke. He sounded both suspicious and confused, but he was talking now instead of shooting, and that meant Bolan had a chance to pull it off.
A slim one, yeah — but still a chance.
"The Feds have got a raid lined up," Bolan snapped, checking his watch for emphasis. "With any luck, you may have twenty minutes."
Aiuppa raised a hand, as if asking permission to leave a classroom.
"Hang on there, slick. You can't just waltz in here and..."
"You wanna dick around and flush this bankroll down the crapper?" Bolan asked him furiously. "You think you can afford it, Dukev?"
Aiuppa bristled.
"I guess you'd better tell me just exactly who the hell you are, guy."
Bolan reached into his suit coat, seeing all of them tense, hands edging toward their holstered weapons. He brought out the black ace and skimmed it across the desk at Aiuppa. It landed on a pile of twenties and fifties, directly in front of the welterweight.
Aiuppa stared down at it for a moment as if trying to make sense of what he saw. Looking at Bolan now, Aiuppa seemed hesitant, a touch of fear behind the burning eyes.
"It's been awhile since I saw one of these," he said at last, his voice a bit subdued.
"They're back in style."
Aiuppa's right hand slipped down out of sight, below the lip of the desk top, and Bolan was braced for him to make a move — but now the hand was coming up, still empty, resting palm down on the desk among the bills and coins.
"I'm gonna need authority for this,'' the mobster said.
"You're looking at it."
Aiuppa straightened up, his shoulders flexing.
"It ain't enough,'' he said flatly.
Bolan tried to put a touch of sympathy into his mocking smile.
"Okay. You wanna tell the man you pissed away — what is it there, a quarter mil? "
Aiuppa hesitated again, but found the guts to call Bolan's supreme bluff.
"I'll have to take the chance.''
Bolan spread his hands in a helpless gesture.
"You called it, Duke," he said. "You live with it — if you can."
Bolan was turning to leave the crowded little office, one hand already sliding toward the open flap of his jacket, when the office door banged open and the black sentry reeled into the room.
There was a pistol in his hand, and he was spluttering with rage, mumbling through battered lips in confusion.
Bolan did not let him have the time to polish up his speech. He chopped down on the man's gun hand with his own hard right, seizing the hood's arm simultaneously and whipping him around. The human projectile hurtled across the room, impacting on the desk and scattering men, money and betting slips in all directions.
The battered gunner ended up atop the desk, his bloody face almost in Duke Aiuppa's lap, driving the Mafia capo backward, hard against the wall.
All of them were trying to recover from the explosive interruption as Bolan ripped the 98-R out of side leather, sweeping right to left across the room. In the heat of the moment he knew there was no time for anything fancy now. It was kill or be killed.
The bodycock in shirt-sleeves
had his .38 revolver clear and rising, the guy beside him still struggling with an undercover rig. Bolan took them both out with a rapid double punch, 9mm manglers drilling skull, spraying blood and brains across the wall behind them in a gruesome abstract mural pattern.
The Executioner caught another gunner breaking for the sidelines, clawing at a .45 tucked in his belt. Bolan drilled him through the chest with a parabellum round that left him thrashing on the floor.
The man called Jackson was struggling up, rolling off the desk and onto hands and knees beside it, shaking his head like a wounded animal. Bolan's next round took off half of Jackson's face.
Behind the desk Aiuppa was clawing for iron beneath his jacket. The weapon was halfway drawn when a third unseeing eye appeared in the middle of his forehead and the Duke of Liberty City stumbled backward, blood pumping from the ragged hole.
The final gun slick had his weapon out and got a single shot off, gouging plaster over Bolan's head before the Executioner pinned him against a filing cabinet with a deadly 9mm slug.
Bolan moved swiftly to retrieve the black-ace death card, leaving in its place a marksman's medal among the bills and coins.
As he retreated from that kill zone he knew the numbers had run out and the only thing that he could hope for was an easy exit from the pool hall.
He reached the bottom of the stairs and found the poolhall empty. He swiftly crossed the narrow room, striding toward the front doors when he caught a glimpse of movement in the street outside. He hesitated for only a heartbeat as he spotted half a dozen troops leaving a bar across the street. They were all coming his way, two in front unlimbering sawed-off pump shotguns, the others dragging handguns out of hidden leather.
It clicked, suddenly, and Bolan cursed himself for not figuring exactly what was happening when Aiuppa had reached beneath the desk top. The man had pressed a panic button, wired to ring alarms in a nearby building, where Aiuppa's guns would be waiting on the off chance of a call.
Bolan braced his Beretta in both hands, sighting quickly through a plate-glass window on the lead man, one of the shotgunners. The Executioner fired the instant he made target acquisition. The parabellum drilled a neat hole in the glass, a not so neat one in the gunner's chest, and he went down, his shotgun firing aimlessly into the gutter.
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