Crisis Nation

Gustolallo kneeled and snarled past her bloody lips and nose. “Bastardo!”

Bolan shoved down the barrel of her shotgun.

Roldan’s M-16 fired on rapid semiauto from the front of the house. “More firebombs out front! We got—” He stared back in surprise as Nacho ran screaming past him. Bolan made a quick throat-cutting motion. Roldan caught it and let Nacho get past. When the Executioner motioned with his own weapon to shoot high, Roldan’s M-16 snarled on full-auto and he roared, “Get back here, you son of a bitch!”

Nacho sailed straight through the front window and onto the porch. Bolan advanced, firing. One of the three firebombers out front fell with one of Roldan’s bullets in his chest. The other two threw their bottles, but Roldan cracked one in flight and the other fell short and broke apart on the cobblestones in front of the house. Bolan checked his screen. Three of the four surviving vehicles were pulling out and driving away. Men on foot were fleeing in all directions. Nacho was heading due north and didn’t look like he was going to stop until he hit Bermuda.

The back of the house was beginning to burn in earnest.

Ordones rose, reloaded and handed his handkerchief to Gustolallo. She ruefully held it up to her bloody nose and stared over it at Bolan. “You’re just gonna let the little son of a bitch go?”

Roldan glared over his shoulder from his position covering the front. “Yeah! What the fuck was that all about?”

Ordones, on the other hand, glanced at Bolan slyly. “You’re tracking our little friend, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.” Bolan shrugged. “I put a bug in his sling while I was binding him up. I figured I’d like to see where he runs to.”

“He will run to his big brother, El León,” Ordones suggesed.

“I’m hoping.”

Roldan grinned uncharacteristically. “Fantástico.”

Bolan turned to more immediate matters. “We’ve got to get out of here. As officers in the Puerto Rican police force, I’m afraid your superiors are going to want you to report in for questioning, and it’s only going to get worse the longer you stick around me.”

Ordones folded the bipod of his weapon and rewrapped it in its blanket. “As of now I consider myself AWOL.”

Gustolallo’s bloody nose wrinkled. “What’s AWOL?”

“Absent Without Leave,” Ordones replied.

Gustolallo nodded decisively. “Me, too.”

Everyone looked at Roldan. The young cop was still grinning. “I been waiting for this all my life. Let’s do it!”

Bolan nodded. He had a crew, and they had been bloodied in battle.

Now it was time to take the war to the enemy.

4

Bolan cruised the BMW F650 Dakar motorcycle through the highlands. The capital city of San Juan was a pocket of stars below. He checked the screen of the phone attached to his wrist as they passed gated roads that led to the mansions of Puerto Rico’s rich and powerful. Yotuel d’Nico had reached the top echelons of the La Neta gangs, and not surprisingly, El León kept a home near the top of the mountain so he could look down upon his hunting grounds. Detective Gustolallo leaned in to Bolan’s back as he brought the bike to a stop. “Thank you for bringing me.”

“Well, I might need some backup,” he said as he got off the bike. “Besides, Ordones won’t fit on the back of my bike and I figure Roldan wouldn’t feel much like spooning with me.”

“After what happened in La Perla I think Roldan would be your date to the prom if you asked him.”

“He’s a real hard charger,” Bolan said.

“Oh, he’s always asking for the most dangerous assignments.”

Bolan took in the cool wind of the Puerto Rican highlands. He could see d’Nico’s house in the distance. At least now he knew where his enemy slept.

Leaning against the bike, Bolan frowned as he remembered his conversation with their quarry in La Perla.“Nacho threw out a name I didn’t recognize, Orishas Chango. Mean anything to you?”

“Orishas? Chango? That’s Santería shit. It came from Africa when the Spanish brought in slaves. Orishas are like spirits or gods. It’s like Haitian voodoo but different. When La Neta and the other gangs aren’t busy claiming their Taino Indian ancestry they’re flirting with Santería. They like to claim the orishas give them power, but most of them are posers rather than true believers. They mostly just like to wear the jewelry, sport the tattoos and sprinkle chicken blood around to scare people.”

Bolan flexed his Spanish. “So Orishas de Chango would be spirits of the spirit?”

Gustolallo poked him in the side. “It only sounds redundant because you’re a Yanqui. What it means to someone on the streets of San Juan is that they’re spirits of the spirit Chango, like his outriders or emissaries or something.”

“So what’s this Chango dude all about?”

“Oh, he’s got a lot of qualities, or aspects. Chango’s the Sky Father, god of thunder and lightning, god of music and dance, of justice, war and a dozen other things. But since the name was coming out of Nacho’s drunken piehole, I’m thinking he was talking about Chango’s aspect as the god of revenge. His symbol is a double-headed ax.”

Bolan turned to the detective. “Chango is the god of justice and revenge?”

“Yeah—”

“And his symbol is a double-headed African war ax?”

“Yeah, and?” Gustolallo asked.

“And people have been turning up without heads in the San Jose lagoon for the last month.”

“Jesus…”

“I think this is bigger than just the street gangs and the Macheteros. I think there’s a new group of enforcers in town and they’re our Orishas de Chango.”

“Jesus. If the gangs aren’t running these guys then who is?”

“The drug cartels, or maybe the independence terrorists, or both. I don’t know yet, but I’ve been getting an outside-orchestration vibe in what’s been happening. Someone wants to rip Puerto Rico right off its moorings, and they’re playing all the local political and race cards”

“Okay, now you’re scaring the shit out of me.”

Bolan excused himself and stepped away from Gustolallo as he tapped icons on the phone attached to his sleeve. The Farm’s mission controller, Barbara Price, appeared on a screen inset the size of a ravioli. Her brows rose sleepily as she peered into the webcam. “What’s going on, Striker?”

“Barb, everyone’s been assuming that the recent beheadings in Puerto Rico are just copycat killings taken from the Mexican cartels. My problem is local CSI has done all the autopsies. I don’t think they’re totally reliable. Some may even be in on a fix. I need you to arrange a clean forensics team to reexamine any of the headless bodies still available.”

Price was used to strange, late-night requests from the field but even she had to admit she was intrigued. “To determine…?”

“To determine whether the decapitations were performed with a machete or an ax.” Bolan had seen enough headless bodies to know there would be a difference. “A machete would make a chopping wound and probably take several cuts. An ax would leave impact and shearing trauma in the surrounding tissues, and used with any skill would be a one-cut proposition.”

“I’ll have Hal contact San Juan’s special agent in charge.”

“The FBI is mostly local. I’d rather have you get in touch with the CIA station chief.”

Price sighed. Despite all efforts to the contrary since the events of 9/11, inter-service rivalry was still rife in the U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement communities. Many Puerto Ricans considered themselves Americans, and both the Puerto Rican law enforcement and the public at large believed, and not without some merit, that the CIA presence on the island was there to spy on the citizenry. “That could ruffle some feathers.”

Bolan shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“Hal’s going to care.” Price sighed. “So will the State Department, and probably the President.”

“They’ll care more about who’s behind all this.”

She knew Bolan was right. “I’ll have an autopsy report for you within twenty-four hours.”

“Thanks, Barb. Striker out.”

THE LION LOOKED at his kid brother, and what he saw didn’t please him. Nacho had turned eighteen that year and for six months had been pestering incessantly for an opportunity to move up. Yotuel had finally relented. Killing Inspector Constante, which had needed doing for some time anyway, was to have been Nacho’s ticket into the big leagues. It had turned into a slaughter. El León sighed heavily. So had the rescue operation to get Nacho back. The young man sat flinching and unable to look into his big brother’s eyes. The room was dark except for two small ceiling lamps that illuminated each man at the table. Other men hovered back in the darkness. Yotuel eyed his brother again. Nacho’s nose was broken, his arm was in a sling and his shoes and his pants were scorched black. Yotuel’s nose wrinkled and his down-curved lips curled with contempt.

Nacho stank of rum.

Yotuelo sighed again. “Brother, what am I to do with you?”

The two men could not have been more different. Nacho was a sack of chicken bones in a very expensive designer track suit. Yotuel, El León, looked every inch his nickname. He was a lion of a man, over six feet tall with a wide brow and a protruding lower jaw. He’d had his hair straightened, and it fell around his shoulders in a blue-black mane in the style of the Taino Indian ancestry he claimed. Taino tribal tattooing crawled down his heavily muscled arms entwined with La Neta prison tattoos. His symbol of power was a seventeenth-century Spanish lance head he carried thrust under his belt. The socket was wrapped with leather cord to make a hilt. Catholic saints’ medals and beaded Santería fetishes hung from it in braids. The two-foot steel blade was pitted and brown with age execpt for the edges, which gleamed like mercury from sharpening.

He drew the antique iron and began cleaning his fingernails with the needle-sharp point. “Tell me about the cops.”

Nacho eyed the spear blade nervously. “One was an old man, but tall, tall like a tree, like he should’ve played in the NBA or something.”

“Flaco Ordones.” Yotuelo nodded. He knew him. Ordones came on like a kindly grandfather with suspects, but he was the same old-school-style cop as Constante. “And the others?”

“I knew one of them.” Anger kindled in Nacho’s eyes. “That goddamn Roldan.”

Yotuel knew Roldan by reputation. Ruzzo “el Santo” Roldan was a cop, reportedly unbribable and a former Latin King. As far as Yotuel was concerned, that was strike one, strike two and strike three.

“The other was that bitch, Gustolallo.”

The Lion smiled slightly. Detective Guistina Gustolallo. The redheaded cop had used her beauty to run several very successful undercover stings against the Puerto Rican drug cartels until her face had become too well-known, and she had gone on to make detective. Like a lot of criminals in Puerto Rico, El León harbored some fantasies of getting his hands on Gustolallo when she wasn’t wearing her badge and gun. Yotuel put those fantasies aside for later. “And the Yanqui?”

Nacho shuddered. “Mother of God, brother, you should have seen this dude.”

“Brother, you were supposed to kill this dude,” Yotuel stated.

Nacho stared glumly at his blackened sneakers.

“Perhaps you would like a second chance?”

What Nacho would’ve really liked was the first flight to Miami, where he could spend a couple of weeks getting lap dances, betting on jai alai and restoring his shattered nerves.

A long sigh rumbled out of Yotuel’s thick chest. “But then, with what has happened tonight, perhaps it is best if we lie low for a little while.”

Nacho nodded vigorously. He obviously thought lying low was an excellent plan.

“Tell you what, brother,” Yotuel continued. “We need to get you out of sight for a while. I’m going to send you to Miami. We’ll have a doctor fix your nose. Set your arm. Then you rest up. I’ll send for you in a week and then we will kill this Yanqui asshole together.”

Nacho sagged with relief. “Thank you, brother—I mean, yes! We will kill him! We will kill him together!”

“Yes.” Yotuel nodded with more conviction than he felt. He turned to one of his men. “Raciel, go with him. Have Mario fly you, and take Cuco. You two? You will have my little brother’s back.”

“Yes, Yotuel. Like he is our own little brother.” Raciel was short, violent, built like a fire hydrant and he considered Nacho worse than useless. However, Raciel liked Florida, blond strippers and jai alai, and Nacho spent money like water. There were worse jobs than a one-week mission babysitting him in Miami. Raciel jerked his head at Nacho and they left the room.

A man came out of the shadows from behind Yotuel. He was knife-thin with brush-cut gray hair, and he radiated command presence. “Your little brother is a liability.”

“I have known that for eighteen years,” the Lion rumbled. He glared at his visitor. “What are you suggesting?”

The thin man smiled, but his flat black eyes were as cold as a shark’s. “I am suggesting we turn him into an asset.”

One normally cruel corner of Yotuel’s mouth turned up in amusement. “If you can do that, then you really are an orisha.”

The visitor’s smile reached his eyes. “Oh, but I am.”

5

Safehouse, San Juan

“The decapitations were performed wth an ax.” Aaron “the Bear” Kurtzman transmitted some very gruesome autopsy photos of the bodies Bolan had witnessed being pulled from the lagoon. Technical medical data scrolled down a sidebar, listing vertebral splintering, soft tissue compression and shearing and frontal bruising of the trachea. Bits of wood had been compressed into the front of the remaining neck tissue. What it meant was that someone had bent the necks of three U.S. Military Policemen over a stump and taken their heads like they’d been splitting kindling.

Kurtzman highlighted some of the text. “There was metal residue in some of the sheared bone. The ax was made out of iron.”

That was interesting. “Not steel?”

“No, the CIA had one of their metallurgy specialists run it. The weapon was smelted through traditional African methods.” Kurtzman warmed to his subject. “The African Iron Age preceded Europe’s by four centuries or more, but once they’d established their smelting methods they didn’t change much. Smelting in sub-Saharan Africa was always artisanal and guarded by secretive guilds. Just about every piece forged, from an ax to a hoe blade to a spear point or even a cook pot, had to be individually commissioned. A single iron piece could take several days to manufacture. It stayed this way right up until the modern era. During the colonial period, European metal goods of all kinds flooded Africa. It was easier to buy or trade for a cheap tin pot than have an iron one commissioned. By the 1950s traditional blacksmithing in Africa had just about disappeared.”

Bolan considered that. “So the weapon in question is an antique.”

“Weapons, plural.” Kurtzman smiled. “Between the bodies taken from the lagoon on your arrival and those of some cops from the week before we got at least three murder weapons in play. All antique, all iron, all clearly smelted by African methods. All probably between seventy-five to a hundred years old.”

Bolan saw where Kurtzman was going. “If the Orishas de Chango are passing out antique African war axes to the members like party favors, then somewhere in the Caribbean we have some museums missing some pieces.”

“We’ve already started on museums in Puerto Rico that have West African collections as well as collections of Santería and voodoo artifacts. We’re hacking their computers, discreetly looking for traditional axes and cross-referencing for reports of stolen artifacts.”

“Bear, the axes might not be stolen. The curator or people who work there may have given the weapons away if they were approached correctly. They might even be part of the movement. Check Puerto Rican police files for antiquarians, museum workers or culturalists who are under any sort of political suspicion.”

“I’ll have Barb contact the local—”

“Have Akira hack their files,” Bolan countered, referring to one of the Stony Man Farm’s top hackers. “We have strong reason to believe elements of local law enforcement are involved in what’s going on, and a request like this could tip our hand. The majority of the cops aren’t active in the revolution, but most of them are taking the warning not to cooperate with outside investigations seriously. Even if they don’t actively obstruct us or give us away, they’ll sit on their hands and push paper for days. I want Akira inside their network and getting the information we need ASAP.”

“Gotcha.”

“Thanks. What have we got on Yotuel?”

“Nothing.” Kurtzman frowned. “He’s gone underground. In fact, most of La Neta has gone to ground. People are still protesting and rioting in the streets but the gangs have suddenly gone as quiet as church mice.”

“They’re waiting for something,” Bolan stated. “How’s our little friend Nacho?”

“He’s still in Miami. As requested, Miami-Dade has a loose tail on him.”

“What’s he been up to?”

Kurtzman snorted. “He likes strippers and betting on jai alai. He has two goons with him. One Raciel de Regla and Cuco Juanmanuel. Raciel is street muscle and a real piece of work. He did a nickel for aggravated assault against two police officers. Cuco’s record is so clean it’s creepy. Rumor is he’s an enforcer. A real bump-in-the-night kind of guy.” Kurtzman was suddenly suspicious. “Why?”

“Things are quiet here. I think I’ll go goose Nacho and see what happens.” Bolan turned to Gustolallo, where she sat on the couch drinking rum and coffee. “You want to go goose Nacho and see what happens?”

The detective’s eyes gleamed. “Miami? Yeah.”

“Bear, it looks like I’m going to Miami with Detective Gustolallo. Have Barb get me the first flight to the mainland and coordinate me with the local law that’s tailing Nacho.”

“I’m on it.”

Wahoo Lou’s Double D, VIP room, Miami

BOLAN WATCHED AS A woman bumped and ground her posterior inches from Detective Gustolallo’s face as rap music pumped at eardrum-shattering decibels.

Gustolallo caught Bolan looking. She pointed a finger at him over her rum and Coke and shouted over the noise. “You know? I don’t swing this way, but I can see why you guys dig this!”

Bolan sipped his fifteen-year-old single-malt whiskey and shrugged as six feet of Icelandic inbreeding gyrated to gain his attention. “Yeah.”

The VIP room was a long balcony encased in one-way mirror glass. Bolan watched Nacho and his muscle downstairs. Nacho had a bandage over his nose and was wearing a new sling. He and Raciel were taking in everything from liquor to lap dances with economic abandon. Bolan eyed Cuco. He was neither tall nor short, fat nor thin. His graying hair was a brush cut and unkempt, as was his mustache. His suit was cut cheaply, and he wore thick glasses with thick black plastic frames. Cuco Juanmanuel was nondescript to the point of being a cipher. The single vodka martini he’d ordered sat untouched by his left hand. His right hand was out of sight beneath the table. Nacho and Raciel elbowed him from time to time and cajoled him to enjoy himself, but he ignored them. His head slowly swiveled like a surveillance camera, cyclically taking in everyone and everything in the club. Bolan had watched him behave exactly the same way at Miami Jai-Alai, except there he’d scanned the players on the frontón the same way and placed occasional bets.

Cuco was the dangerous one, and that was why the Lion had sent him.

Miami-Dade plainclothes Detective Marcus Mandela Mitchell’s eyes moved between the stripper on his lap and Gustolallo and her pair of surgically enhanced dancers. He’d obviously developed a crush on his Puerto Rican counterpart and just as obviously had never made the VIP room at Wahoo’s. The detective grinned at Bolan and toasted him with his mostly untouched snifter of brandy. “Yo, man! I dig the way you Justice Department dudes roll!”

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