Lethal Vengeance

by Don Pendleton

  Vergara was deciding whether he should try to storm the staircase or lie in wait for the next group to descend, when the big American called out to him through the smoke. “Sergeant, you good?”

  “So far,” he replied. “I doubt my shirt and pantalones will survive, though.”

  Hal Brognola rasped out a laugh. “I like this guy.”

  Vergara closed the gap between him and the operating tables, trusting in the nonstop blare of thrash metal to cover his voice as he asked, “What now?”

  “The longer we stay down here,” Bolan said, “the more likely they are to call for reinforcements.”

  “Nobody else around the neighborhood likely to call police with all this racket?” the big Fed asked.

  “No neighborhood at all,” Bolan replied. “This house sits in the middle of an oilfield. If they have a night watchman, he’s likely sleeping or afraid to stick his nose in what’s likely cartel business. I poked a couple of bears to find you.”

  “So we have to make our way upstairs and out?” Brognola asked.

  “I’m wondering about that now,” Bolan replied. “Has anybody seen Posada since he set the smoke bombs off?”

  * * *

  The answer: no one had. Because he was no longer trapped inside the house. Lalo Posada, child of torture who had grown to make his nightmares hideous reality for others, had escaped unseen.

  And it wasn’t any kind of magic trick, or even Fortune smiling down—or up—at him that had let him pull it off.

  When he had first inspected his new home amid the Pemex derricks and swiftly recognized its isolation, perfect for his needs, he’d also found a bonus feature in the northwest corner of the basement. There he’d found a door that seemed to offer storage space, as if an empty basement needed more, but when he’d opened it and peered inside, there was another flight of stairs leading upward from below ground to a door that, from the outside, appeared to be the entrance to a storm cellar.

  Posada hadn’t known the last time a tornado or some other natural calamity had wreaked havoc upon Juárez, nor had he cared. He’d seen the implications instantly—a hasty means of exit offered by whomever had occupied the house before him. It was child’s play, in his endless free time, to remove the storm door’s outer hasp and padlock and replace them with a well-oiled sliding bolt on the inside.

  Tonight, when Posada recognized that he had to flee his sanctuary, never to return, he’d activated all the systems he’d installed for self-defense and the vexation of potential enemies: the strobes and screaming music cranked up to the limits of human endurance, then the smoke bombs triggered by a hand-held remote control he’d bought at a downtown electronics store.

  All of it had worked perfectly.

  Now, here he was outside the house, running beneath a pallid moon and countless stars, while men who meant to kill him for their varied reasons shot his home to hell and gone on the inside. Posada hoped they slew each other to the last man, but if not, it meant no more to him than breaking wind.

  Inside a shed nearby, left in a pitifully dilapidated state on the outside, he found his second vehicle: an Italika TC 250cc motorcycle he had stolen off the street, fitted with a new license tag and kept in excellent repair. He had taught himself to ride, surviving half a dozen spills in the oilfields, but had rarely taken it on the streets of Ciudad Juárez for fear of being stopped and thus somehow exposed for who and what he was.

  Now, in extremis, he would take that chance.

  The TC’s motor came alive as soon as he stepped down on its kick starter. As he exited the shed, Posada left its door wide open. There was nothing else of value there.

  He rolled slowly over open ground, confirmed that no guards had been left outside his house to watch the raiders’ vehicles, then opened up the TC’s throttle when its tires had pavement underneath them. He left his would-be assassins to eliminate each other in a frenzy of frustrated rage.

  The gringo hostage and his midnight saviors might survive, although Posada doubted it. The second wave of gunmen who’d usurped his privacy had not been police. Their failure to identify themselves and their tossing hand grenades around inside his house had told him they were probably cartel soldiers sent to kill him and, perhaps, the middle-aged American, too.

  Again, Posada didn’t care.

  He’d already received his payment for disposing of the older man and was perfectly indifferent as to whomever finished him. Captain Prieto could no longer serve a warrant on him, even at the risk of self-exposure to disgrace and prison. That left only a lieutenant called Bernal, whom Lalo might still track down and eliminate if he were so inclined—but now, with his old life in ruins and a wide world opening before him, was it even worth the risk?

  Posada had a plan of sorts, still in the embryonic form, but growing mile by mile as he cruised through the city’s streets, northbound. He had a passport, more or less authentic, that might let him cross the border without being stopped, but now that he thought about it, he had a notion that he might prefer to carry out his infiltration the old-fashioned way.

  Beyond the Rio Grande lay El Paso, then the sprawling state of Texas, and beyond its borders, the entire United States. His thrift-shop almanac, though two years out of date, had told him that some 326 million persons dwelt in that country, 50.8 percent of them female.

  Imagine that! Call it 163 million for simplicity’s sake, and new births numbered more than 6,600 daily—an average of one every thirteen seconds!

  Posada reckoned he could ply his art for centuries, if he had only been immortal, but would never thin the herd. His new domain awaited him and he would need a better nickname, maybe something he devised himself and gave out to the media, like the “Zodiac” or “Son of Sam.”

  He had outgrown El Psicópata and his native land. What was the tag line from that Cuban gangster film that had enthralled him so when he was just a youngster sneaking into theaters?

  Ah, yes. The world is yours.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “The bastard’s gone?” Standing in front of the flight of stairs that led outside, Brognola sounded furious. “All this and I don’t even get to wish him happy trails?”

  “Maybe another time,” Bolan replied. “Right now, the best thing we can do is get out while the getting’s good.”

  “Speaking of that—” Miguel Vergara fired another short burst from his Spectre M-4, truncating Brognola’s remark but emphasizing what he’d meant to say.

  The three of them were still trapped in Lalo Posada’s basement slaughterhouse, an unknown number of surviving gunmen pinning them below ground while they occupied the psycho killer’s kitchen.

  “I guess it’s this way or no highway,” the big Fed acknowledged. “If they’ve got more people waiting on the outside, though...”

  “We’ll take it one step at a time, like always,” Bolan said.

  He whistled loudly for Vergara, not daring to call out the risky plan for fear that if their adversaries didn’t have shooters outside, they’d send some instantly on learning there was another means of exit from the cellar.

  Coming back to join them in the northwest corner of the room that might yet witness their demise, Vergara dropped another empty submachine-gun mag, replacing it with what had to be his last one, since the sergeant’s pants’ pockets no longer bulged.

  They huddled for a moment, still watching the kitchen stairs, but no one from the ground floor would risk coming to find them yet. Shots angled down the staircase from above struck sparks on concrete, whining as they ricocheted around the basement, but the angle wasn’t right for glancing fire to reach the spot where Bolan stood in whispered conversation with his friends.

  “We ought to make it out all right,” he said, “unless they’ve got this exit covered from outside. If that’s the case, we’ll know it when they open up on us.”

  “Too late for plan C then,�
�� Brognola said.

  “Plan B is all that’s left,” Bolan replied. “If we don’t meet lookouts first thing, we’ve got a chance to reach the SUV. It all comes down to speed and luck from there.”

  “Who drives?” Sergeant Vergara asked.

  “I will,” Bolan said. “You two sit in back and cover us when they start following.”

  “Not ‘if’?” the big Fed asked.

  “They’ll be along, believe it,” Bolan said. “They can’t afford to let two lawmen and a wild card get away. Job one for them is making sure we don’t go telling tales and bringing down more heat.”

  “Okay,” Brognola said, doing a partial squat to test his legs before the main event. “Ready when you are, and I hope to see you on the other side.”

  Saying no more, Bolan turned toward the stairs and mounted them until he’d closed within arm’s reach of the exit. His two companions stood below him, Brognola the nearer, while Vergara kept the smoky basement covered with his SMG. The inside bolt was unlocked. Bolan doubted there would be another lock outside, defeating a would-be escapee’s purpose, but he couldn’t know if enemies were waiting in the outer dark to bushwhack him.

  He eased the cellar door open, six inches give or take, and no one opened fire to cut him down. Relieved, he shoved the plywood hatch back, cleared the way and charged into the night behind his Steyr AUG. He swiveled toward the house, now at his back, and heard sporadic gunfire, audible through windows, the front door, and—during lulls of the blaring music—from the basement he’d just exited.

  Brognola scrambled clear, immediately followed by Vergara, who took time to close the cellar door but couldn’t latch it. Maybe searching down below would stall their enemies a little longer or—

  “So where’s our ride?” Brognola asked.

  “This way,” Bolan replied, and started jogging back the way he’d come, past derricks pumping endlessly, creaking as if they were arthritic dinosaurs.

  * * *

  “Where are they?” Rodolfo Garza shouted, standing at the bottom of the kitchen stairs, still almost gagging on the dissipating pall of smoke. “Where are they?”

  One of his soldiers answered hesitantly, fearing retribution from his master. “There’s no one here, boss.”

  “What are you saying, you idiot?” Garza snarled. “This is a basement. Where else could they be?”

  His soldier shrugged, a sorrowful expression on his face, before another of his men called out, “Look here! There is another flight of stairs, a hatch leading outside!”

  Obscenities were crowding Garza’s mind, but he suppressed them, shouting, “Lozano! Bracamontes! Follow them that way. The rest of you, come back with me, out front.”

  Garza was aware that fully half the men who’d ridden with him on the raid were dead or dying now, and he had no time to be coddling any crippled beyond walking under their own power. Neither could he spare the effort for a coup de grâce to those still drawing breath but otherwise disabled. If they lived until police arrived—assuming that they ever came—he would provide legal assistance for their trials, or have them silenced permanently in whatever prison hospital they might be lodged.

  Right now, his targets were escaping, and the threat they posed to Garza far surpassed the tales some gut-shot soldier might decide to share with lawmen from a bed of suffering.

  Garza was back outside El Psicópata’s house in time to see an SUV’s taillights retreat from the battleground, heading along an access road that led to MX 2, a major highway running east to west from Matamoros to Tijuana, crossing six Mexican states. It had off-ramps in a dozen cities, plus innumerable side roads branching off its course that spanned some 3,330 miles.

  While sprinting to his Mercedes SUV, other survivors of his raiding party splitting between the Lexus and the BMW, without regard to which vehicle they’d arrived in, Garza knew his enemies could try to shake him off at any point along the federal highway. If they had fuel enough to keep on driving, while his vehicles did not...

  And there was still the problem of Lalo Posada to be rectified, as well. It was ridiculous to think the basement escapees were running with him now, when one of them had been his hostage only moments earlier. The others had presumably arrived to save the kidnapped man from his fate, but Garza had no clue to their identities.

  As the Mercedes roared off in pursuit of their intended prey, his other cars soon keeping pace with it, he had another thought that had escaped him until now.

  A sudden inspiration came to Garza. Why would they waste time fleeing east or west through Mexico, when they could simply turn north onto MX 45 and head directly to the Juárez airport or a border crossing to El Paso? The prisoner who had escaped Lalo Posada’s clutches was an American, as were likely those who’d liberated him. If Garza’s team could only stop them on the northbound highway, before they had time to rally any further aid...

  “Watch closely,” he ordered his driver. “If they turn north, do not hesitate to follow. We must overtake them at all costs.”

  His wheelman had a seeping scalp wound, bloody streaks marking his face, but he replied immediately, sounding confident. “Yes, sir. They shall not escape.”

  “See that they don’t,” Garza cautioned, “or we will all regret it to our dying day.”

  And that, he realized, might be tonight.

  * * *

  “They’re coming,” Miguel Vergara said from the SUV’s back seat.

  “We didn’t lose them on the turnoff,” Brognola elaborated.

  “I see them,” Bolan said grimly. He didn’t have to add that the three chase cars were accelerating along MX 45. Brognola and Vergara could see that for themselves.

  “So what’s the play?” the big Fed asked, turning in his seat to watch their doom approaching through the vehicle’s rear window, borrowed Glock in hand.

  Bolan began his answer with the obvious while holding the speedometer rock-steady at seventy miles per hour. “There’s no point in stopping at the airport, right?”

  “No way,” Brognola agreed.

  They had no tickets and no scheduled flight, besides which the pursuing narcotrafficantes would just follow them inside, risking the lives of anyone and everyone inside the Abraham González International concourse.

  Vergara chimed in next, saying, “The same is true at any of El Paso’s border crossings, eh? Police and customs agents on both sides, traffic down to a crawl, civilians in the way.”

  All reasons why they couldn’t simply get in line and wait their turn, especially when Brognola had nothing in his pockets but some lint and a spare magazine for the Glock 22. Their guns would be enough to get all three of them arrested by Chihuahua’s state police.

  But there might be another way...

  Palming the burner cell he’d received from Tim Ross on arrival in Juárez, Bolan speed-dialed the agent’s number and extension at the US Consulate downtown. It rang through and Ross answered on the second ring just as Brognola spoke up from the Toyota’s back seat.

  “They’re gaining fast!”

  “What’s that?” Ross asked, uncertain who had spoken or what he had said.

  “Hang on,” Bolan told Ross. “We’ve got a situation here. I’m putting you on speaker.”

  “Okay.”

  The switch made, Bolan placed the burner face-up on the empty shotgun seat beside him.

  “Closing past a hundred yards!” Brognola warned.

  “Do all you can to hold them off,” Bolan advised then flicked a glance down to the cell before his eyes came back to headlights looming in the RAV4’s rearview mirror.

  “Someone’s after you?” Ross asked.

  “Affirmative. We made the pickup, but we have some locals trying to dispute it. They’ll be on us any second now.”

  “Where are you?” asked the CIA man.

  As if answering that question for him
self, Vergara spoke up. “Fifty yards. We’ll be within their range soon.”

  “Do the best you can,” Bolan replied. Then, to the burner, he relayed, “We’re northbound on MX 45, a mile or so below the airport. Call it forty minutes to the border, give or take.”

  “That’s no good,” Ross replied. “You’ll have to stop at one of the checkpoints and then they’ve got you. Don’t expect the cops to help you.”

  “Twenty yards!” Brognola said. “They’re fanning out to flank us now.”

  Bolan stayed where he was, still rolling northward in the highway’s central lane. Ahead of him, traffic was moving slower than his rented SUV, heedless to the danger closing from the rear.

  “I had another thought,” Bolan told Ross. “About the consulate.”

  “Well, sure, if you could make it here,” the man from Langley said. “But then they’d have you bottled up inside.”

  “I thought of a solution to that, too,” Bolan said, “if it’s doable.”

  Behind him, he could hear Brognola and Vergara lowering their windows, rushing wind now amplified and swirling through the RAV4’s passenger compartment.

  “Tell me,” Ross said from the shotgun seat. “If I can make it work—”

  Before Bolan could get it out, Brognola’s Glock began firing from one side of the SUV, Vergara’s Spectre M-4 from the other. Shooters in the chase cars were responding with their own weapons, some of their bullets missing, others peppering the RAV4’s bodywork with loud reports like someone hammering a kettle drum.

  “Jesus!” Ross swore. “Are they—?”

  “Wait,” Bolan advised, cutting him off. “They’re faster than I thought.”