Crisis Nation

Constante racked the action. The wooden stock was dinged and stained and much of the weapon’s gunmetal blue finish was missing, but the action racked as slick as oil on glass and bespoke Mono’s faithful maintenance. Constante ran a fond hand over the ancient weapon. “You know it?”

Bolan had found a Tommy gun in his hand a surprising number of times. “I’m familiar with it.”

“I believe you are.” He nodded at the other case and Bolan examined the weapon. “How many spare magazines would you like?”

Bolan loaded the weapon, racked it and flicked on the safety. “How about eighteen?”

“In the army we were generally issued nine.”

“How many street soldiers can d’Nico call on?” Bolan countered.

“Hundreds. Do you intend to take on all of La Neta by yourself?”

“No, just select elements of it, and with your help,” Bolan said.

Constante turned to the armorer. “Mono, thirty-six magazines, if you don’t mind, and enough ammunition to load all of them, as well as some spare boxes.”

Mono raised his eyebrows slightly at the request and retreated back into his catacombs. Constante put his weapon back in its case. “Where are you staying?”

“I’m renting a house in La Perla.”

The inspector made a face. La Perla was one of the worst slums in San Juan and ruthlessly ruled by gang culture. “You taunt the Lion, then you climb into his jaws.”

“Well, you know how they say you should keep your enemies close.”

“They do not say you should move in next to them,” Constante scowled.

“I don’t think I’ll be staying long.”

Mono brought them their ammo and they walked out without filling any forms. As they walked back to the parking garage, Constante began speaking quietly. “You know? It is hard to be a policeman in Puerto Rico.”

Bolan nodded. It was a little known fact that perhaps other than Mexico City or Moscow there was no more dangerous place to be a police officer.

Most Americans had no idea of how bad it was. If Americans thought of their commonwealth neighbor in the Caribbean, they thought of blue water, golden sand and partying. It was a common vacation destination for East Coasters and an alternative honeymoon spot.

For the people who lived there violence was endemic. Since the rise of the cocaine trade in the 1980s the island had become a major transshipment point for Colombian cocaine and increasingly a heroin funnel. The Puerto Rican gang and crime cultures had risen with them. People on the island made roughly a third of the average income of the poorest mainland states, and it was reflected in their police force. They were ill-equipped and understaffed, and corruption in the force was as endemic as the violence in the streets.

“You intend to go against the crime gangs and the revolutionaries?” the inspector asked.

“I do.”

“I am ashamed to admit it, but there are those within the force who support what is happening, not out of patriotic sentiment, but because they know if we become an independent nation the potential for profit in bribery will skyrocket. The drug dealers and the gangs know this as well and are already lining pockets,” the inspector said.

Bolan suspected nothing less.

“You will need a force of cops who cannot be corrupted or bought. Those who will not be afraid to bend rules, if not break them outright,” Constante concluded.

“It’d be helpful,” Bolan said.

Constante gestured at his car and the woman leaning against it. “Then behold your second recruit.”

The woman turned. She was short, redheaded, darkly tanned with broad shoulders and an eye-popping bust line that was barely restrained by a blue T-shirt. A corset-thin waist cut what would have been a blocky figure into an hourglass.

“May I present Detective Guistina Gustolallo. She works Vice.”

Bolan could have guessed that. He also noted the Mossberg 12-gauge semi-automatic shotgun crooked in one elbow like she was about to go duck hunting. Her dark eyes looked Bolan up and down in open suspicion. “Yo, Vincente.” The detective popped her gum. “Who’s the gringo?”

“Why, he is the man who put Bebito in the hospital and called Yotuel d’Nico a puto.”

Bolan held out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Detective.”

“Detective…” The woman ignored Bolan’s hand and rose up on her toes to kiss Bolan on both cheeks Latin style. “People I like call me Gustolallo. And you, Blue Eyes, qualify.”

Constante lit another cigarette. “Where is Roldan?”

The woman shrugged. “Roldan is off duty in an hour. Ordones said to call him when you need him.”

“Tell them to meet us in La Perla.” Constante turned to Bolan. “Give her the address.”

Bolan gave it to her, and Detective Gustolallo began speaking rapid-fire Spanish into her cell phone. They piled into Constante’s car and headed down toward the water. La Perla was anything but “The Pearl” of metropolitan San Juan. Beneath the four-hundred-year-old walls and turrets of the fortifications built by the Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon, shacks and hovels leaned against one another. Even at this late hour stick-thin children wandered around in rags and picked at piles of garbage right next to feral dogs. Other piles of garbage burned or were being burned in the hovels for fuel. La Perla was just about the worst barrio in San Juan.

Inspector Constante’s shiny black Crown Victoria was clearly an anomaly. Bolan noticed cell phones in the hands of some of the children marking them as runners for the local drug dealers. They watched the black Ford with wary eyes and punched presets as they drifted back into the shadows. A trio of transvestite prostitutes made catcalls and a few improbable offers at the car and then grabbed their phones once it passed. La Perla’s grapevine was lighting up.

“We’re about to get hit,” Bolan opined.

“Oh, undoubtedly,” the inspector agreed. “I gather you made no attempt at subtlety when you moved in to the neighborhood.

“None whatsoever,” Bolan admitted.

Gustolallo popped her gum in the back seat and the safety on her shotgun clicked off.

Bolan saw a pair of headlights suddenly light up an alley ahead. “Here it comes.”

Gustolallo sang out from the back seat. “We got one behind!”

Bolan flicked the safety off his Thompson. “They’re gonna go for the pin.”

The pin was another gift from the drug gangs of Mexico, mostly used for assassinating police officers. Drive-bys were uncertain at best, but a couple of SUVs could surround and stop a car on a narrow street or in a parking lot, and then the men with automatic rifles would spill out of all doors and fill the pinned vehicle full of lead. A gleaming silver Lincoln Navigator shot into the street ahead of them with tires squealing. A tangerine-and-black Honda Element fishtailed into position behind them. On La Perla’s narrow, twisting lanes there was no room to maneuver. Constante pushed buttons on his console and the Crown Vic’s windows rolled down and the custom sunroof rolled back. Constante spit out his cigarette and grinned defiantly at the silver SUV blocking their escape. “I’m gonna ram him.”

“No,” Bolan commanded.

“No?”

“Hit Reverse. Hit the guy behind us. He’s lighter and only has four cylinders.”

“Ah!” The tires screamed on the cobblestones as the inspector stood on the breaks and threw the vehicle into Reverse. “Hold on!”

The Ford shot backward into the Element. The glare of the headlights filling the Crown Vic’s interior smashed out as the Honda crumpled like the cardboard box it was shaped like. The Crown Vic’s V-8 engine roared as it drove the stricken little SUV back. Bolan rose up through the sunroof. Glass erupted in geysers from the Honda’s windshield as Bolan painted a 15-round pattern over the driver’s position and a second one over the glass covering the man riding shotgun. Gustolallo’s shotgun hammered rapidly five times on semiauto, and the windshield failed utterly and sagged backward into the SUV’s interior.

Nothing inside the Element was moving.

Bolan slapped in a fresh magazine. “Forward! Go! Go! Go!” He dropped back down and put on his seat belt as Constante slammed the vehicle into Drive and put the pedal to the metal. The huge SUV before them had pulled out at an angle to block the lane. Now the driver was desperately trying to execute a three-point turn to face the oncoming Ford while the passengers waved their arms and screamed.

The Crown Vic hit the Navigator broadside at fifty miles per hour. The impact was brutal, but Bolan had braced himself and the air bag deployed against him. He got out of his seat belt, and clicked open his switchblade and slashed away the deflating air bag. The windshield had gone opaque with cracks, and Bolan’s door refused to budge. He rose up through the sunroof. The Navigator was wrapped around the front bumper of the vehicle. The driver and back passenger doors were folded in and not moving. Bolan bent back as one of the men in the back seat of the Navigator tried to fire at him with an M-16. The window erupted outward, but the space was too cramped inside the SUV for the gunman to fire effectively.

Bolan had no such restraints.

The Thompson ripped into life. Constante leaped out from behind the wheel as his weapon joined the crescendo. The doors facing away flew open and men piled out of the Navigator. Bolan jumped onto the hood, then leaped to the roof of the SUV. Two men turned and raised their rifles, but Bolan burned them down with a burst through their chests before they could fire. A young man with a clearly broken arm fell to his knees and raised his working hand piteously. “Madre de Dios! Por favor! Por favor!”

Bolan kept the smoking muzzle of his weapon pointed between the young man’s eyes. Gustolallo came around the SUV and kicked the surrendering punk onto his stomach. He screamed in pain as she twisted both arms back and cuffed him. Constante looked into one of the Navigator’s shattered windows and made a face at the carnage within. “Clear.”

Bolan stood atop the SUV and surveyed the area. Dogs were barking. Women and children in the hovels and tenements were screaming. Sirens began wailing in the distance. The transvestites clapped their hands and whistled. It had been a fine show, and they clearly liked the big gringo with the big gun standing on top of the Navigator’s shattered shell.

Gustolallo yanked the young man up to his knees and the inspector smiled delightedly. Bolan eyed the cringing punk. “You know him?”

“Indeed!” Constante leaned in and leered in the young man’s face. “This is Nacho d’Nico!”

Bolan smiled coldly. “Yotuel’s little brother?”

“His punkito little brother,” the inspector emphasized. “What’s the matter, Nacho? You don’t look so good.”

Between shock, pain and naked terror, Nacho looked just about ready to soil himself. Bolan jumped to the hood, then down to the street. The sirens were getting closer. “I don’t think your car is going any place.”

“No,” the inspector agreed. “And neither shall I. I will stay here. I will say I was alone and was attacked, then killed my attackers. You and Gustolallo take the punk to your place. If we bring him in, he will only be out on bail tomorrow. I will join you shortly.”

It was as good a plan as any. Bolan nodded and Nacho shrieked as Gustolallo yanked him to his feet. Constante lit a cigarette and leaned against his totaled vehicle to wait, apparently oblivious of the gas pooling everywhere.

Bolan and the detective took Nacho d’Nico for a little walk through the neighborhood. It was going to be a long night.

3

Nacho whimpered, then muttered in rapid Puerto Rican slang. His face was pale and he was sweating bullets. Bolan checked his watch. He’d sweated him for about an hour and he could guess what he was saying. Gustolallo sat across from Nacho at the ratty little kitchen table of Bolan’s flat and stared at him like he was a bug. Bolan had uncuffed him and put his arm in a sling, but Nacho was still very unhappy. He had stopped with the threats about half an hour ago and Bolan expected him to move into the begging phase right on schedule. The big American checked his watch again.

Gustolallo frowned. “I won’t lie to you, Blue. The inspector could be in a lot of trouble.”

Nacho snarled with renewed courage. “The inspector is fucking dead!”

Nacho shrieked as Gustolallo lunged across the table and punched him in the sling. It seemed the women cops in Puerto Rico played as rough as the men. Bolan held up a restraining hand and the detective uncocked her fist and sat back down. Nacho whimpered and cradled his arm. Bolan figured the diminutive young gangster was just about ready. Bolan had stopped at a corner kiosk on the way to the flat and picked up a few interrogation aids. He looked at Nacho and sighed sympathetically. “That hurt?”

“Yeah, it fucking hurts!” Nacho instantly flinched beneath Gustolallo’s glare.

Bolan reached into the kitchen cabinet and pulled out a bottle. He poured a drinking glass half full of clear liquid and slid it within Nacho’s reach. “For the pain. Sorry I don’t have anything stronger.”

The younger d’Nico lunged for the 151 proof Don Q rum and gulped it like water. Bolan took out a pack of Marlboros from his pocket. “Cigarette?”

Nacho’s gratitude was almost pathetic as Bolan lit him one and put it between his lips. Bolan refilled his glass. Gustolallo shot him a frosty look and he poured her a shot, as well. Bolan took a fatherly tone. “Nacho, you’re in a lot of trouble.”

“I want a lawyer.”

Bolan shrugged. “Why?”

“This is illegal! You can’t hold me!”

Bolan cocked his head at the punk. “I’ll make things very clear to you. I’m not a cop. I can do anything I want.”

Nacho blanched. He looked desperately at Gustolallo. “She’s a cop!”

The detective popped her gum. “I’m off duty. I’m riding you for the fun of it.”

Nacho hissed. “Puta de—” He howled as Gustolallo’s fist pounded his arm just above his broken elbow. A second jab followed it to his nose.

Bolan poured Nacho another drink. The young man couldn’t have weighed more than a 120 pounds naked and dripping wet. Between shock and an empty stomach, Bolan expected to have a well-lubricated La Neta gangster very shortly.

A voice called out from the street outside in Spanish. “Hello the house!”

Gustolallo nodded. “Ordones and Roldan.”

Bolan still picked up his Thompson and held it low along his side as he unlocked the kitchen door. “Come ahead! Through the kitchen!”

Two men walked into the kitchen. One was as tall as Bebito Jesus and had to stoop to come through the door, but unlike the giant La Neta enforcer, this man was gaunt to the point of emaciation. His tropical white suit hung upon his giant bones like a scarecrow. He had the sad, brown eyes and pale, tired complexion of a man who slept away most days without seeing the sun. He carried something long and bulky wrapped in a brightly patterned native blanket across his broad shoulders. The man behind him was dark-skinned and built like a middleweight. He radiated aggressive energy to the point that Bolan wondered if the short-cropped, tight, metallic-brown coils of hair coming out of his head might be nerve endings. He was carrying a rifle case and instantly shot a suspicious look at Gustolallo and Bolan. The two men took turns kissing Gustolallo in greeting. The giant held out his hand to Bolan. The soldier’s hand disappeared in the tall man’s grip but it was warm and friendly. His voice was a Spanish baritone. “Sergeant Ernesto Ordones, but you may call me Ordones.”

“Cooper.” Bolan said. The younger man in turn gave Bolan the bone crusher, and the two of them pumped vise grips for a moment. The giant sighed. “May I introduce Officer Ruzzo Roldan.”

Roldan released Bolan’s hand but continued to glare at him. His accent was thick enough to cut with a knife. “I heard of you.”

Bolan shrugged. “What did you hear?”

“Word on the street is you busted up a bar. Word is you busted up Bebito Jesus and called out Yotuel d’Nico. Word is you shot up a bunch of d’Nico’s men in La Perla. Word is Inspector Constante is getting grilled at headquarters right now because of your Yanqui cowboy bullshit.” Roldan shook his head as he took in Nacho. “Word on the street is you’re holding the Lion’s little brother. Word is everyone knows this address, and the word is the Lion is pissed. Word is you’re in a lot of trouble.”

Bolan turned to Ordones. “Word is you got a BAR.”

The tall man’s skull nearly hit the ceiling as he threw back his head and laughed and tapped his bundle “Sí, amigo. I just happen to have one.”

Roldan wasn’t amused. “So what’s your plan? Sit here in this shithole and wait for d’Nico to hit this place with an army?”

Bolan nodded. “That’s about it.”

Ordones turned to Gustolallo. “You know? I like this gringo.”

Gustolallo’s smile was predatory. “Me, too.”

Roldan’s anger cooled to something cold and unpleasant. “I’ll tell you something that maybe you won’t think is so funny.”

“What’s that?” Bolan asked.

“Word is moving through the department. Los Macheteros say anyone who helps the gringo, and I’m pretty sure that means you, is a traitor.”

Nacho roared drunkenly. “That’s right! Fucking traitors! Dead fucking traitors!”

Roldan ignored the outburst. “A traitor to Puerto Rico and a traitor to all Boricuas, and I’ll tell you something for nothing, Cooper, a lot of the cops are taking that real seriously. You’re an outsider. The inspector has already been dragged in and lost friends over this. No one wants you here.”

“The inspector is fully on board, and he was laughing when I left him,” Bolan countered. “And you came to LaPerla, off duty.” He nodded at the rifle case. “And you brought your gun.”

“I came to support the inspector. I was a gangbanger back in the day, but I was no La Neta puto.” He shot a scathing look at Nacho and the punk flinched. The officer pounded his chest twice with his fist in the sign of solidarity. “I was Latin Kings and headed straight to jail or the grave. Inspector Constante got me out of that shit. Got me to finish high school. He risked his reputation to sponsor me when I applied to join the force. I came to support him.” Roldan thrust out his jaw. “Not your pretty pink Yanqui ass.”

“Did the inspector tell you to do what I tell you until he gets back from headquarters?” Bolan inquired.

The pained look that crossed Roldan’s face was confirmation.

“Roldan, I’m here to wipe out La Neta, Los Macheteros and anybody else who wants to decide the fate of Puerto Rico with a gun rather than a vote. You in or out?”

“I’m—” Roldan spent several moments controlling his temper “—in.”

“If you boys are done, we got stuff to do,” Gustolallo stated.

Just then Bolan took out his phone as it vibrated in his pocket. Kurtzman’s text message scrolled across the screen.

striker, you have company

The phone’s screen took up just about all of its length. Bolan’s thumb moved across the touch screen, and a real-time satellite image of his house and the surrounding neighborhood appeared. Half a dozen vehicles denoted by red outlines were surrounding the building. Armed men were deploying out of them. The image wasn’t perfect but he saw nothing bigger than automatic weapons. “We have company. Platoon strength. Coming in on all sides.”

Roldan pulled an M-16 from his rifle bag and Ordones unwrapped his BAR and deployed the bipod. Bolan pulled a tab off the left wrist of his jacket to expose a Velcro panel. He slapped his phone onto it and took up his Thompson.

A voice out on the street called out in Spanish. “Give us Nacho!”

“He isn’t worth it!” Bolan called back. “I promise you!”

Nacho looked like he was about to say something, but Gustolallo pantomimed ramming the steel strut of her folding-stock shotgun into his elbow and he thought better of it.

“And the Yanqui!” the voice shouted. More followed but the Puerto Rican slang was too fast and too furious for Bolan to get more than the gist of it, but that was enough. They wanted Nacho and they wanted him now. Everyone else in the house was a traitor to Puerto Rico. Unless they stood down, both they and their families would die. The voice switched to English. “Hey, Yanqui! Go home! You can live! Don’t make me come in there!”

Ordones laid the BAR across the table and aimed it at the front door. Bolan cupped his hands and called out, “Door’s open!”

Dozens of automatic weapons opened up out on the street. Plaster fell from the ceiling, and the ancient brick walls chipped and cracked beneath the barrage of lead. Bolan noted that the weapons sounded as though they were 9 mms, and they all had the same firing signature. He pushed Nacho to the floor and then glanced at the screen of his phone. “Ordones! I got about six men behind a car directly across the street from the front door!”

Ordones nodded and the thudding of the big .30-caliber machine gun eclipsed the sound of the submachine guns out on the street. The 30-06 rifle bullets sailed through the front door, the car across the street and the men taking cover behind it. Bolan saw four men fall on his screen and two more run headlong for the beach.

Kurtzman text messaged him.

heat signatures behind you

Bolan looked at his wrist and saw the bright flickering on the infrared filter. Five men were running crouched alongside a car, making their approach down the alley behind the house. Each man held something that was burning—Molotov cocktails. Four more gunners trotted behind, blasting away with weapons as they came. “Ordones! I got a vehicle coming directly behind us! Roldan! Gustolallo! Watch the front!”

Ordones turned and rammed the muzzle of his BAR through the kitchen window glass and started firing. Bolan kicked open the kitchen door and brought his Thompson to his shoulder. Bullets hailed against the back of the house, but the soldier kept his sights on the firebombers. A bullet slammed into Bolan’s side but his soft body armor held. His return burst took off the top of the gunman’s head. Rum bottles filled with gasoline and detergent sailed through the air.

Bolan raised his sights and began touching off bursts from the Thompson and broke apart bottles in the air like a skeet shooter busting clays. Sheets of fire fell across the alley and across the hood of the Cadillac as it rolled on. Bolan took out three of the four projectiles, and his weapon clacked open on empty as the fourth sailed on in a near-perfect football spiral.

Ordones snarled and yanked himself aside as the flaming bomb flew through the kitchen window a foot from his head. Nacho screamed as the Molotov cocktail sailed across the room and broke apart at his feet. Bolan slammed a fresh magazine into his weapon and kept firing. “Gustolallo!”

Gustolallo yanked up the ratty kitchen rug and jumped on top of Nacho. She swore a blue streak as Nacho howled and flailed while she tried to smother the fire. The BAR continued, tearing through the Cadillac as if it didn’t exist, and Bolan shot any gangster who exposed himself. Bolan slammed in a fresh magazine as the Caddy’s front fender scraped against the alley wall and it rolled to a halt. The gunfire in the back of the house came to an abrupt end. Puddles of fire were everywhere. Flame licked up the walls of the alley, and the Cadillac burned like a fallen tombstone. The alley resembled a side entrance to hell.

Bolan heard the thump and hiss of ignition. The Cadillac was riddled with high-power rifle holes, and the jellied fuel of the firebombs was crawling all through it. Bolan slammed the kitchen door shut. “Down!”

The Cadillac’s fuel tank detonated like a bomb. The door rattled on its hinges, and heat blasted through the shattered kitchen window hot enough to singe skin. Nacho screamed, his right foot kicked out from under the rug and clocked Gustolallo in the face. She rolled backward, stunned as Nacho got to his feet and ran screaming out of the kitchen with bits of fire still flickering on his feet.