Lethal Vengeance

by Don Pendleton

  He floored the gas pedal and felt the SUV surge forward, but it still kept taking hits. And it would only take one well-placed round, he knew, to finish all of them.

  US Consulate

  Tim Ross sat at his desk and listened to reports of gunfire blasting from his phone. It sounded like a dozen weapons roaring all at once, but he knew sounds could be deceptive in the heat of combat. All he knew for certain was that no one in the fleeing car had time to talk and spell out details of their desperate Hail Mary scheme.

  He waited, hands clenched on his desktop, while a louder noise brought images to mind of cars colliding at high speed. At that, the loudest gun he’d heard so far ripped out three blasts with a sound like cannon fire and then there was a momentary lull in the hostilities.

  At last the voice he recognized from their brief meeting face-to-face. “Okay, we’ve got a breather here, at least. One chase car’s out of it and two are hanging back.”

  “So what’s your plan?” Ross asked him, apprehensively.

  “I’m thinking there could be a way to pass us through the consulate, if we had someone helping on your end.”

  “Suits me,” Ross said, “but let me tell you what you’re up against.”

  “We’re listening.”

  “Okay. From what I just heard, this has a flashing neon sign that reads International Incident, right?”

  “I wouldn’t say you’re wrong.”

  “Which means whatever happens next, if you can even make it here, is a decision for the Consul General. He’s been around the block, same job in Spain and Italy, but he’s a newbie in Juárez, only been here about seven months. To swing the kind of weight you have in mind, he’d need to clear it first through the ambassador in Mexico City, then likely with State in DC.”

  “Could take a month of Sundays,” the reply came back to Ross.

  “Longer, if Justice weighs in on the side of your guy who was snatched out of El Paso,” Ross said. “If you get two cabinet departments in a pissing match, with Mexico’s attorney general in the mix and federales worrying about what may go public with regard to their complicity...”

  “I hear you. And I’m thinking if you talked to that contact stateside, the one who set this up to start with...”

  Sultry voice, Ross thought. “It’s worth a try, at least. Can’t promise anything, of course, except safe passage if you make it to our bunker here.”

  “You’ll need a number, I imagine. Last one’s likely out of service now.”

  “You read my mind.”

  His caller rattled off a string of digits, starting with an unfamiliar area code. Ross figured he could Google it, but what would be the point? The way technology bounced calls around the globe these days, the code for New York City or for Timbuktu might have him talking to someone in Vegas or Vancouver when the final link was made.

  “I’ll make the call and keep my fingers crossed. You may as well cross yours, as well.”

  “We’ll be too busy shooting,” his caller said before the line went dead.

  * * *

  “Behind us, boss!” the cartel wheelman said. “Police!”

  Garza checked the SUV’s wing mirror first then swiveled in his seat and, sure enough, the flashing lights of two—no, three—police cruisers were coming up behind his convoy at a rapid pace. Just as he turned to look, sirens began their whoop-whoop-whoop, setting his teeth on edge.

  “Goddamn bastards!” Garza snarled, clutching the rifle propped upright between his knees until his hands ached from the strain.

  “We can’t outrun them, boss,” his driver advised.

  “Don’t even try,” Garza replied. “Just keep your speed up.” Picking up his walkie-talkie, he told the gunmen in the cars behind him, “Don’t let those sons of bitches pass! Get rid of them!”

  One of his soldiers who’d survived the firefight at Posada’s house came back at him, warning, “They’re federal police, boss.”

  Furious, Garza shouted at his handheld radio. “I don’t care if they’re cardinals out riding with the pope! Kill them!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It took another second then Garza saw muzzle-flashes winking from the windows of the BMW and Lexus, their two drivers fanning out to block the northbound lanes as best they could while his soldiers fired on the police. The leading cruiser started taking hits at once, its windshield shattering inward before its hood flew upward and its radiator started spewing steam from bullet holes.

  Ahead of them, the black Toyota SUV was passing turnoffs to the airport without any sign of turning in there. Garza realized that stood to reason, his intended victims knowing he would follow them wherever they might lead, showing no mercy to civilian passersby.

  The men inside that fleeing SUV were killers, and adept at it, but they still seemed to have a weakness: caring for their fellow men. To hell with that, Garza thought. The so-called “little people”—lowly peasants in his eyes—meant no more to him than a swarm of ants on a sidewalk, just begging to be trampled under foot.

  If “normal” citizens weren’t snorting drugs he sold to them, or serving Garza in some other menial capacity, why did they even bother to exist?

  “Where’s this bastard going?” Garza asked himself aloud. “Can he believe the border guards will let him pass?”

  “I have no idea, boss,” his driver answered.

  “It was rhetorical, stupid! Just drive!”

  If not the airport, not one of the city’s border crossings...where?

  It hit him then. The answer was so obvious he should have known it instantly.

  “Of course!” he blurted. “Stinking foreigners on the run, where would they go?”

  “Boss—”

  “The consulate, without question! The only place in Juárez where they might hope to hide!”

  * * *

  The burner phone began to buzz and vibrate on the RAV4’s shotgun seat. Bolan was watching a ferocious rolling firefight in his rearview mirror as he grabbed the cell and hit Accept.

  “Talk to me!”

  “Man, you’re all over the TV news right now,” Tim Ross advised him. “From across the border, CNN and all of the El Paso stations, KFOX, KCOS, not to mention all eight stations in Juárez. It’s—”

  “What about that exfiltration?” Bolan asked, cutting him off.

  “Yeah, right. That friend of yours is pretty damned impressive, but I guess you know that, eh?”

  “The bottom line,” Bolan said.

  “She moves fast, you know? Called up the consul general about two minutes after she hung up with me. Can’t say what kind of strings she pulled, or how she managed it—”

  “The bottom bottom line,” Bolan suggested, watching in his rearview as another federale cruiser swerved off to the highway’s shoulder and flipped over on its starboard side.

  “Okay. A chopper’s coming over from El Paso,” Ross said. “Should be in the air by now. It’s diplomatic, cleared for flights across the border without being held up for inspection. Should be waiting for you by the time you get here.”

  Ross refrained from saying it, but Bolan read between the spoken lines. He’d meant to say, “If you get here.”

  “I owe you one for this,” he told the man from Langley. “Big-time.”

  “All I did was make the call,” Ross said. “But look...if anybody heads you off before you make it to the gates, whether it’s cops or narcos, then...um...”

  “Right. Your hands are tied. I know the rules.”

  “Okay. But get here, yeah? I’ll see you there.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Bolan replied, cutting the link.

  From the back seat, Brognola asked, “How long until we reach the consulate from here?”

  “If nothing heads us off,” Bolan replied, “maybe another ten, twelve minutes.”

  “Well, at
least it isn’t rush hour,” the big Fed said, dry humor surfacing.

  In fact, the traffic on their route downtown was fairly sparse, considering the number of vehicles registered in Ciudad Juárez, together with the hour: early yet, but time for truckers to begin delivering their loads of groceries, linens and such to various hotels, hospitals, restaurants, school cafeterias, wherever. City cops would also be aware of what the media was following, gunplay and crashing cars on MX 45.

  “We’re getting close,” Bolan advised his passengers. “About three blocks, I’d say.”

  As if in answer, a police cruiser appeared behind them, speeding through a red light on the side street, siren winding up to an ear-splitting wail.

  “Officer Friendly,” Brognola remarked. “Or maybe not so much.”

  “Let’s not find out,” Bolan replied and jumped a stoplight at the next cross street, sending a green-and-white taxi swerving across the intersection toward collision with the cruiser that couldn’t react in time.

  Bolan’s RAV4 outran the echo of that crash and as he cleared another block, the US Consulate building came into view. Four uniformed marines were on the gate with M-16 A4 rifles, while another on the inside of the compound touched a button and the gate began to open on its rolling track.

  “Couldn’t they get one any slower?” Brognola asked.

  “Write your congressman,” Bolan advised.

  “Oye, hombres,” Vergara said. “We have company.”

  A black Mercedes-Benz was speeding up behind them. Bolan recognized it as the lead car of the caravan that had pursued them across town, now on its own. He hadn’t seen the other two cars falling out of line, and didn’t care what had become of them as long as they were gone.

  In front of him, the consulate’s high gate was nearly open, the marine inside waving him through, the four at street side lining up and leveling their rifles at the Benz on its approach.

  As Bolan cleared the gate, gunfire erupted from the Mercedes, returned immediately by the firing squad dressed in camo utility uniforms. Bolan had time to see the Benz start taking hits, then he was following Tim Ross, who was on foot, waving his vehicle around behind the consulate.

  A helipad awaited them, a Huey Iroquois chopper already revving up its Lycoming turboshaft engine. Ross was at the RAV4’s side, holding the back door open for Brognola and Vergara while Bolan eased out of the driver’s seat.

  “You like to cut it close,” Ross said.

  “Luck of the draw,” Bolan told him, “not by choice.”

  “Okay. So, leave the hardware, and you’d better get aboard. Sooner you’re out of here and back on US soil, the better.”

  “I will not be going,” Miguel Vergara said.

  “Are you sure about that?” Bolan asked him.

  “Sí. I have much work to do here, where I live.”

  “If you have any trouble—”

  “I shall face it,” the sergeant replied.

  Vergara shook hands all around after he’d tossed his submachine gun and a pistol back into the SUV. As they moved toward the Huey, Bolan asked Ross, “What about yourself?”

  “Looks like I’m coming with you,” Ross replied. “The consul general caved in to pressure, like they always do, but then he called Langley direct. Long story short, I’m now persona non grata in Juárez. Not exactly heart-breaking.”

  When they were all aboard and buckled up, the Huey’s engine reached a moaning whine that rendered normal speech impossible, its rotors reaching blur speed in a circle forty-five feet in diameter. Liftoff reminded Bolan of too many other flights approaching or departing from hot zones where friends and enemies had died.

  But for the moment, fleeting as it might be, he was heading home.

  Epilogue

  El Paso, Texas

  Lalo Posada didn’t care for zoos, and he made no exception for El Paso’s. It was modern, clean and large—spreading across thirty-five acres to the north of East Paisano Drive—but to El Psicópata, it was just another orphanage or prison. Though replete with signs touting 220 species, some of them allegedly saved from extinction only by captivity, to him that just meant locking up wild things that should be living free and dying free when their time came around.

  Posada had decided on a visit to the zoo, paying twelve US dollars for admission, in the hope that he might find a little something to take home with him. Not home, exactly, but a double-wide trailer he’d rented in El Paso’s North Hills neighborhood.

  What he needed was a sacrifice to start his sojourn north of Mexico, perhaps a child that he could lure away from careless parents or a jaded runaway who would accept a few dollars for hasty sex—or so she’d think—back at his run-down trailer. Once he had his prey alone...

  But it was not to be. There’d been slim pickings at the zoo this Sunday morning, and after he’d wasted three hours on trolling, Posada had decided he would try one of the local schools next time. Just one taste for the road, and then he would be on his way, the whole world opening in front of him like a torso at the urging of his blade.

  The seven-year-old Honda Civic he was driving had been stolen from a parking lot at the Cielo Vista shopping mall on Gateway Boulevard, its license plates likewise, from the Hidden Valley Shopping Center on Alameda Avenue. He would ditch the car before he left El Paso, but would keep the plates for his next ride, and so on, to his journey’s end.

  For now, though, he was hungry. Driving through a Taco Grande on his way back to the trailer park, Posada purchased two deluxe burritos with a side of rice and a thirty-two-ounce cola that would get him through the night. Parking beside his double-wide, he went inside and placed the bag atop a dining table scarred with cigarette burns.

  Before he could sit and eat, a male voice from behind him said, “Hola, Lalo. Or do you prefer El Psicópata?”

  Turning slowly, offering no threat while he considered where the nearest weapon lay, Posada saw a tall, imposing gringo dressed in common street clothes—not a policeman, then—aiming a pistol at him. He immediately recognized the weapon’s fat barrel extension as a sound suppressor.

  “I never liked that name,” he said.

  “Maybe it hit too close to home?”

  “Small minds must label things they cannot understand. It comforts them somehow, I think.”

  “I’ll keep this short,” his uninvited guest replied. “I owe you one for kidnapping a friend of mine.”

  “The American in Juárez, perhaps? I did not kidnap him. I merely received him from foolish kidnappers who brought home the wrong man to their masters.”

  “I don’t care. The others have been dealt with. You’re what’s left.”

  Posada knew he couldn’t reach the switchblade in his pocket, and the kitchen drawer containing half a dozen knives seemed hopelessly beyond his reach.

  “And if should apologize?” he asked the gunman, putting on a crooked smile.

  “Too little, way too late.”

  Posada shrugged. “Do what you must, then,” he replied. “In truth, I have been dead since I was born.”

  “Somebody should have let it go at that,” Mack Bolan said.

  And shot him in the face.

  * * *

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

  Lethal Vengeance

  ISBN-13: 9781488055614

  Copyright © 2019 by Harlequin Books S.A.

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