Lethal Vengeance

by Don Pendleton

  He had to trust that someone had to have missed him by now, whatever time it was out in the world, and that investigators would be searching for him.

  How? His phone and rental car would be no help, both still back at the Gateway Rio Grande. Police should find the spot where he’d been ambushed, down the hallway from his empty hotel room—unless a housekeeper had found the plastic bucket and its spilled ice where he’d dropped them, cleaning up behind him while she muttered imprecations against clumsy, drunken guests.

  There should be CCTV cameras, although Brognola hadn’t paid attention to them since arriving for the conference. He couldn’t guess how much the Gateway’s owners had laid out for coverage, much less where cameras might be situated: in the lobby, elevators, hallways, on the service stairs. If there were any taking footage of the parking lots, they might capture his abductors and their vehicle. Had they been wise enough to steal a ride and switch the plates for others likewise stolen?

  Probably, if they had come prepared with sedatives in a syringe.

  The needle gave Brognola pause, but only for a moment, hoping that it had been sterilized, not previously used and putting him at risk for AIDS or hepatitis. Thinking that, he’d nearly laughed, immediately realizing that disease was now the least of his worries, lying immobilized in someone’s moldy-smelling basement, where another odor nagged at him for recognition.

  Blood.

  It wasn’t fresh, but rather had the old, stale reek he associated with a crime scene or a slaughterhouse where no one cared enough to hose down the walls and floors. His twitching nostrils couldn’t tell him whether it was animal or human blood, even a mix of both, but given his predicament, bound to a table that reminded him of autopsies he’d witnessed, Brognola assumed the worst.

  So far, he’d had no interaction with his captor. He’d feigned unconsciousness when the man had come downstairs soon after he’d fought off the fog of chloroform, humming that Christmas song and moving things around the chamber where the big Fed was confined. Some of the objects clanked mechanically, others made dragging sounds across a concrete floor. There had also been the noise of some material he guessed was plastic sheeting coming off a roller somewhere to his left.

  All odd sounds, none the least bit reassuring to Brognola.

  Now, he heard feet coming down the stairs again. He wondered whether he should still pretend to be unconscious, or speak first to see what he could learn, if anything, about his prospects for survival. He was still considering his options when the footsteps neared his table and he sensed the visitor beside him, leaning closer, chilis and fried onions on his breath.

  The stranger’s first words were a whisper. English with a heavy Spanish accent. “Are you with me, Sleeping Beauty?”

  Brognola stirred sluggishly, pretending that the words had nearly wakened him, trying to frame what question he should ask. He would not whine or plead for mercy. He’d force a show of strength and something that could pass for courage.

  But he never got the chance. Instead, lips nearly close enough to graze his left ear, the visitor bellowed, “Wake up, asshole! Rise and shine! You can sleep more when you are dead!”

  Brognola jerked away from that shout but couldn’t escape it. His reaction brought a stinging slap across his face, bouncing his head off the metal underneath him, though it left his blindfold undisturbed.

  The man who’d struck him now crooned, “You forgive me for disturbing...what is it? Your beauty sleep?” A giggle then, “Forget about it, my friend. There’s not sleep enough in all this world to make you beautiful.”

  “Where am I?” Brognola asked in a voice he barely recognized, dried out and cracking.

  “Where? You are in my house. Or, as you might say, the waiting room of Hell.”

  Brognola tried two questions next. “Who are you? What’s this all about?”

  Ignoring the first query, the man looming over him replied, “Why are you here with me? Perhaps you’ll find amusement in this, gringo, when I tell you it is all a big mistake. That’s funny, no?”

  “Mistake?” Brognola croaked.

  “The world is full of idiots, don’t you agree? Who can deny it? When the two sergeants went to snatch another man, they took you instead. Their boss was not pleased, I tell you. So angry. I wouldn’t be surprised if your kidnappers are already dead and feeding scavengers by now.”

  “Mistake? Who were they looking for?”

  “Who knows? Who even cares? Maybe they’ll try again and get it right next time.”

  “What about me?” Brognola couldn’t help asking.

  “You? I must clean up their mess. It is, if I may say so, one of my specialties.”

  “If it’s about money—”

  “Silence!” A pudgy finger sealed Brognola’s lips. “There is no changing destiny, right?” Fingers began to lift Brognola’s blindfold as the stranger said, “But first, we must be introduced.”

  Calle Navojoa

  Esteban Allende’s breath hitched in his throat, a last spasm of sobbing, and he knew his nose was running like a frightened child’s, but he couldn’t help it. He was terrified and hurting, from the beating and electric shocks he had endured, afraid even to face Captain Prieto, standing over him with cattle prod in hand.

  Seated across from him, cuffed to another metal folding chair, Pedro Solana dared to speak up from behind their captain. “Stop this, for the love of God,” he pleaded. “We have told you it was just an innocent mistake.”

  Prieto barked a mocking laugh at that. “Mistake? No, no. When you bring someone coffee and forget the sugar, that is a mistake. You miss a turn and drive one block too far, or even fail to bring a present home on your wife’s birthday, call that a mistake. When you are sent to fetch one man and come back with another? That makes you a worthless idiot!”

  Prieto, without warning, jabbed the cattle prod’s electrodes against Solana’s naked chest and pressed its trigger. The sergeant screamed, his taut body convulsing, then went slack as his tormentor stepped away. Only Solana’s handcuffs and his twitching legs kept him from sprawling on the floor.

  “Please, Captain,” Allende begged. “We meant no harm.”

  Solana would have told his partner to shut up, but he had lost control over his tongue and vocal cords.

  Prieto turned to face Allende. “Ah, you meant no harm,” he crooned. “What do the gringos say? No harm, no foul? You think this is a children’s game, stupid?”

  Saying that, Prieto jammed the prod’s twin prongs against Allende’s purpling cheek and sent him into slavering convulsions with another jolt of electricity. Solana thought he might keep at it till Allende’s brain shut down for good, but then he stopped, clutching Allende’s chin, lifting his sweat-slick face, and shouting at him, “Are we having fun yet?”

  Solana saw Lieutenant Bernal standing off to one side, visibly distressed but doing nothing to restrain his furious superior. He could have stopped the torture anytime, if he were brave enough, but courage never had been Bernal’s strength. Whatever boldness he displayed in daily life came from his badge, the knowledge that he had the FIA behind him, giving him carte blanche to do as he saw fit, within the limits of his orders.

  Speaking to both captives now, Prieto said, “You want some good news? I believe you were not paid to sabotage the operation. I accept your guilty pleas to being two total idiots rather than traitors. There, are you satisfied?”

  When neither sergeant answered him, Prieto frowned. “No answer, when you should be thanking me for my generosity? Have it your own way, then. I must inform you both—”

  Before Prieto could complete that thought, a rhythmic buzzing issued from one of his trouser pockets. Angered by the distraction, he took out his cell phone, muttering, “I told the office not to bother me.”

  Prieto’s irritation changed to puzzlement as he stood looking at the LED screen. Frowning, the c
aptain pressed a button then addressed the cell phone, asking, “Who is this?”

  Calle Aguascalientes

  Sitting in his RAV4 in the district of Juárez known as Colonia Granjas Polo Gamboa, Bolan said into his phone, “You don’t know me, but I know you, Captain Prieto. If you want to live, you need to give him back, alive and fit to travel. If it’s too late for him, I still want him back, and you can say your prayers.”

  Bolan knew the phone call was a gamble, possibly a waste of precious, fleeting time. He’d grasped Miguel Vergara’s leap of logic, knowing even if the sergeant was correct in working out the officer’s surname, he could be wrong about Brognola’s kidnapping originating with the FIA.

  But now he had Prieto on the line, not pleading ignorance or asking who his unknown caller had in mind, not cutting off the call as some kind of demented joke. Instead he asked in English, “Who is this?”

  Ignoring that question, Bolan replied, “I want him back, Captain, muy rápidamente. And anything you’ve done to him, I’ll do to you.”

  Bluffing. But there was no way Captain Prieto could know that, after Bolan had already cut a bloody swath through Ciudad Juárez. He couldn’t know the Executioner had made and kept a solemn vow that he would never drop the hammer on a cop, no matter what the lawman might have done to violate his oath of office.

  Police, in Bolan’s eyes, were soldiers of the same side, most of whom had started with the best intentions when they’d donned a uniform and badge. Some went astray, devolving into predators as bad—or worse—than those they placed under arrest, but Bolan would not be the one to take them out. Within those limits, he might threaten them, disarm them by nonlethal means if they were at the point of capturing or killing him, even collect and pass on evidence to put them behind bars, but he would never take the final step that marked his handling of civilian savages.

  Right now, Captain Prieto knew only that he was talking to a proven killer, taking note of his demands.

  “I don’t know who you are—”

  “Or where I am,” Bolan said, interrupting him. “Maybe you’ve seen some of my work, though, earlier tonight.”

  Dead silence on the other end before Prieto asked, “What makes you think I have this man you seek? Why would I?”

  “Motive doesn’t interest me,” Bolan replied. “What you should think about is how long you’ll keep breathing if you try to blow me off with lies.”

  Another hesitation. Then, “Assuming I can help you, I require more details to identify—”

  “You either know him or you don’t,” Bolan cut in. “If not, you’re out of luck. My guess would be you’ve got subordinates lined up behind you, hungry for your job and the mordida.”

  “But if I could help—”

  “I’m hanging up now,” Bolan said, “and going back to work. I’ll let your cartel playmates know who sent me after them by playing dumb. Maybe they’ll get to you before I do.”

  “Señor—”

  “If you decide to live, I’ll let you have my contact number. Memorize it, Captain. I never repeat myself.”

  He rattled off a string of digits for the burner phone Tim Ross had given him and then cut off the call, Prieto crying out, “Wait!”

  “Not a chance,” Bolan told the dead phone in his hand.

  His threat to kill the captain was a bluff, but Bolan meant what he had said about putting the narcotrafficantes on Prieto’s trail. The federale’s doubletalk told Bolan he knew something about Brognola’s abduction, whether he had instigated it or merely picked up information from the underworld grapevine. If it had been Prieto’s play from the beginning, maybe he could call it off in time. If he was just a bystander in league with one of the cartels...well, Bolan wouldn’t execute him personally, but he had never promised to protect rogue lawmen, either.

  Sink or swim, he thought.

  And in the meantime, Ciudad Juárez was teeming with a cast of hundreds Bolan could kill without giving up a minute’s sleep about it. While he waited, hoping for a call back from Captain Prieto, all he had to think about was where he’d strike next and at whom.

  Chapter Seven

  Tierra Nueva

  El Psicópata loved the hunt. The act of seeking prey invigorated him, heightening his senses, as if Nature in its wisdom meant to help him in selecting his next sacrifice. He cruised in his vehicle—a beat-up Mazda 626, called a Capella on the north side of the Rio Grande—with windows open, so that he could smell the city after dark.

  The street he cruised had been named Port of Angels, though it was not a port in any sense and the pedestrians moving along its cracked sidewalks would never be mistaken as angelic. Then again, the neighborhood itself was dubbed New Earth, a hollow jest on someone’s part. Nothing about it had a new look, and the only earth in evidence was dirt and gravel, the sporadic vacant lots where shops or hovels had been razed and not replaced. Even graffiti on the walls was old and faded from long-term exposure to the elements.

  El Psicópata found his sacrifice standing alone.

  His chosen target was a female, youthful but old enough to serve. He guessed that she was seventeen years old, but could be off a year or so on either side of that. She wore her hair in a French braid of sorts, though not professionally styled. No matter. He cared nothing for coiffures and little more for clothing, which, in this case, seemed to be a barely there halter top, a pair of lacy high-cut shorts, fishnet stockings with a run on the left thigh and a pair of black stiletto heels.

  All good, and fewer objects to discard. Her thin gold-plated necklace would suffice as a memento of the hunt.

  He slowed his Mazda and pulled up to the curb. The young woman stepped closer, bending to see inside the vehicle, revealing ample cleavage. “You’re looking for a date?” she asks him. “A good time?”

  “A date?” He feigned thinking about it then decides. “I’d like a good time, yes.”

  She cut directly to business. Four hundred pesos with a condom, six hundred without—paying a premium for risky sex. Say twenty US dollars, versus thirty. While he didn’t plan to pay her anything, he waved a flash roll and the sacrifice climbed in beside him.

  “There’s an alley one block down,” she told him.

  “I prefer to take you home.”

  She frowned at that. “Where’s home?”

  “Pemex.”

  She bumped the price two hundred pesos, or another nine dollars and change.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  “The cash first,” she insisted.

  He let her have the roll, not counting it, since he’d soon have it all back in his pocket. While she cooed over her windfall, running one hand up and down his thigh, El Psicópata turned left at the intersection and began to wind his way back home. Behind him, wedged between his pelvis and the backrest of the driver’s seat, was a blackjack, which he’d whip out upon arrival, stunning her before he carried her inside. The blackjack was a nine-inch model that some gringos call a “convoy,” with a coiled spring covered by its braided leather handle and lead slug at its tip, weighing one pound overall. It was lethal if applied with murderous intent, or even carelessly, but in his practiced hands it lulled a sacrifice to sleep without crushing her skull or damaging her brain beyond repair.

  He wanted his women wide awake when he revealed himself and got to work.

  Calle Cameron

  Puerto de Anapra bordered the Rio Grande. In days of yore, its occupants frequently crossed the river to El Paso, most of them returning with the goods they’d purchased to their neighborhood, ranked as one of the poorest in Juárez. In the late nineties, US customs erected a chain-link fence between the cities, lately grown into a fence of steel eighteen feet tall. Illegal crossings had supposedly ended...if you believe reports from Washington, 3,100 miles away.

  Mack Bolan didn’t buy it.

  He was looking at hard proof of t
hat opinion through his binoculars. The target building was supposed to be a clothing factory, one of the infamous foreign-owned factories where workers earned seven dollars daily for twelve-hour shifts, reported in the States as lagging 40 percent behind menial wages in China.

  That would be bad enough, but Bolan—through Sergeant Miguel Vergara—knew the plant switched over to another function when its daytime staff went home. Trucks began arriving from points south, laden with bales of weed and kilos of cocaine. That newish barrier along the Rio Grande wasn’t a problem. The dope went in and then through a tunnel excavated underneath the river long before Congress began appropriating cash and rubber-stamping seizure of civilian property along the border for construction of a massive wall eventually meant to span some 1,900 miles from San Diego to Port Arthur, Texas.

  All the while, dope passed beneath the border seven nights a week, from Puerto de Anapra and a couple dozen other sites with tunnels going strong. Tonight this tunnel would be going out of business, but the Executioner first had to make a call.

  He’d buckled on his sidearms and laid out his other equipment in the RAV4’s cargo bay—the Steyr AUG with some of its rifle grenades—before taking out the burner phone Tim Ross had given to him and tapping in one of the several unlisted numbers Miguel Vergara had provided.

  Two rings brought an answer on the other end. A gruff male voice asking, “Quién es éste?”

  Bolan let that query pass, didn’t identify himself, but said in Spanish, “Put your boss on.”

  “Who?” The house man played dumb.

  “Kuno Carillo. Should I spell it out?”

  “Never heard of him.”

  “Fine. Hang up and tell him that I tried to save his plant in Puerto de Anapra but you wouldn’t put me through.”

  “What plant? You mean a cactus? We don’t care—”

  “About the Sunshine Clothing Factory?” A sick joke if there ever was one. “Go tell him that you lost it for him, sitting on your thumb. You won’t mind if he takes the loss out of your salary, or maybe from your hide.”