Killpath

No, Blanca no longer required gunmen at the doorway to keep her prisoner. He pushed aside the rubbery drape and stepped into the slaughterhouse.

Blanca’s forehead sported a still-smoking bullet hole, and the rest of her body showed signs of recent and brutal torture.

There was a muffled sound in the corner of the room. Bolan turned and saw a couple of disposal bins. As he walked closer, a muzzle rose shakily from behind one of them. The barrel of a pistol came into view, but Bolan had sidestepped from in front of the gun. He reached over the top of the gun’s slide and clamped down, twisting the weapon loose from the hand holding it with the snap of finger bones. A man cried out, recoiling and kicking one of the canisters aside.

A man in a white coat held his hand gingerly, his trigger finger broken by the Executioner’s disarm.

“Was that Teresa Blanca?” Bolan asked.

The man was in his late forties, his wet hair matted across a receding hairline near the top of his skull. He was drenched with sweat. His big, trembling lips sputtered for a few moments. “Yes. It was her.”

“And you shot her?” Bolan asked.

The man gave a jerky nod. “Yes. I heard the gunfire upstairs…”

“What about the torture?” Bolan pressed. “Were you part of that, too?”

“Please. I stopped her suffering. Don’t hurt me.” He swallowed hard. “I was just following orders.”

Bolan pressed a small handgun, a .22 auto-back, into the man’s hand, squeezing his fingers around the weapon. “I won’t hurt you.”

The torturer blinked.

“Take off the lab coat,” Bolan barked.

“W-why…”

“Because you’ll be too easy to spot,” Bolan said. “You don’t want to get shot, do you?”

The man quickly began peeling off his coat. “You think there will still be shooting?”

Bolan heard footsteps on the stairs he’d just come down. The second wave was here, and part of the group had been dispatched to the basement.

“Over there!” Bolan shouted. He brought up his big Desert Eagle from its hip holster. As if spurred on, the torturer raised his own tiny pistol, shooting through the plastic tarp hanging in the doorway before the Executioner could even pull the trigger.

Bolan cut loose with the .44 Magnum to make certain that the Zetas gunmen had something to focus on. The room filled with flying lead, bullets cutting through the walls and plastic alike. Bolan threw himself to the ground. The lab coat guy, however, was not so fast to react.

Rifle slugs chopped into his chest, throwing him back over the bins he’d been hiding behind earlier. He reached toward Bolan, fingers stretching and clawing for mercy.

“Physician, heal thyself,” the Executioner said.

He brought up the Beretta 93R and cut loose, the silencer smothering any telltale flicker from the sleek machine pistol. He focused on one of the enemy muzzle flashes, and suppressed slugs hit one of the gunmen in the head. The other opponent continued blasting away, but he was on the move, trying not to make himself an easy target.

Bolan blew out the guy’s knee with another tri-burst, and he fell to the ground. The rifle clattered across the floor. The man scrambled to remove his sidearm from its holster, but Bolan stopped him in the act, sending a trio of bullets into the sentry’s skull.

The gunfire had drawn more guards to the basement, and they sent two grenades down the steps ahead of them. Bolan supported Teresa Blanca’s body with one arm and flipped the steel table with the other. He crouched behind the shrapnel-proof barrier as sheets of shell fragments and notched wire clanged off its surface.

Bolan lowered Blanca to the floor gently. He sent a quiet prayer to the universe to watch over her spirit, and reloaded the Beretta.

Bolan kept the machine pistol handy as he grabbed his last banger from his harness and pulled the pin, counting down as the fuse burned. When the time was right, he dropped the grenade into the middle of the group of guards who’d followed their own bombs down the stairs. Bolan released a loud bellow, equalizing the internal and external pressure on his ears to protect himself from the sound of the explosion.

Bolan rose from behind the steel table and stepped through the shredded plastic sheet. Blinded and deafened foes staggered helplessly around the room. The Executioner lived up to his name, putting bullets into the brains of the trio of Zetas guards directly in front of him. He holstered the machine pistol and pulled out the AK.

A sentry to the right of him was leaning against a wall, pressing his forearm against his eyes in an effort to restore his burned-out vision. Bolan sliced him in half with a burst from the AK, then turned and spotted another man, blinking and raising his rifle one-handed to gun him down. Bolan sidestepped, aimed the AK with both hands, and tore open the gunman from crotch to throat.

Bolan headed toward the staircase, doing the math on the diminished guard force. There would be two men left at most, plus the guy he’d left unconscious in the hall closet.

His AK was low on ammo, so he drew his Desert Eagle from his hip holster. The door at the top of the stairs was closed—the perfect spot for a gunman to wait him out. Bolan dumped the current magazine in the .44 Magnum and slid in a stick of copper-solid hunting bullets. Pure homogenous copper from nose to tail, these slugs were meant to penetrate the heaviest hides in nature. For the Executioner’s purpose, they would tear through walls easily, while causing massive destruction to human flesh.

He loaded the magazine, racked the slide and put the first heavyweight round into the barrel. He paused to scoop up the conventional hollow point and pocket it, not wanting to waste his ammunition. Then he fired two shots through the drywall on either side of the door. The high speed slugs struck and plowed through the plaster, their mass and velocity preventing any deflection. Bolan heard a scream as a man on the other side was hit.

A second guy kicked the door open, and Bolan put a round right into his opponent’s rifle. The gun shattered in the man’s grasp, saving his life, for the moment. Bolan continued up the stairs as another figure staggered into view. It was the man he’d clobbered before, and he’d rearmed himself.

Another stroke of the Desert Eagle’s trigger, and the Executioner all but beheaded him, the copper slug destroying the man’s jaw and blasting out the bottom of his skull. By the time the soldier reached the top of the steps, the man who’d lost his rifle had raced out of the kitchen, leaving the back door bouncing on its frame.

The first man, who’d screamed as Magnum slugs tore through the wall and then into his body, lay on the ground, curled up and gasping, blood spurting from his neck. Bolan shot a single copper slug into his brain to end his suffering.

With all of the estate’s guards down for the count, Bolan paused to reload his mostly spent weapons, then pulled out his combat PDA. It was time to call Brognola, to let him know the fate of the missing agent. A corpse wagon—several—would be needed for the bodies left sprawled around the property. They would also need an ambulance to recover and treat the woman upstairs. Without Blanca to rescue, only retrieve, the other woman took top priority.

And once she was cared for, the brutal thugs who sent Teresa Blanca to die by the inch were going to dominate the Executioner’s attention until every last one of them was dead.

3

Brunhilde Rojas’s feet slapped the wet tiles in the prison shower. She admired her taut muscles as she ran the hard, coarse bar of soap over them. Though she was closing in on her fifties, seven years in prison had given her time to maintain a lean and firm body.

Not that Rojas had worked in the prison weight yard for her looks. She kept her body strong for the sake of survival and the hope that maybe, in ten to fifteen years, when she was released, she’d have a chance to get revenge against the bastards who’d killed her boys.

It was a long shot, Rojas admitted to herself as the hot water splashed down on her, matting her inch-long black tresses to her scalp. The spatter of droplets on her skin and on the tile almost drowned out the sound of footsteps behind her.

“Don’t drop the soap, Hilda!” came a husky, slurred voice. Chuckles accompanying the speaker’s own simplistic tittering confirmed to Rojas that she was outnumbered.

She didn’t stop the shower as she turned to face the trio. The speaker, the leader of this group of women, was two inches taller than Rojas, an even six feet. However, this woman was as wide as two of her. The others were slightly smaller than their leader.

Despite Rojas’s strength, these women had at least seventy-five pounds on her—each. They were dressed in their orange coveralls, rubber-soled canvas sneakers giving them some traction on the slippery shower floor. Their calloused fists were mute testimony to their experience bludgeoning people.

Rojas didn’t say anything, and Pequita Morales cracked her knuckles, smirking at each of her minions in turn.

“Don’t worry, Hilda,” Morales taunted. “We’ll leave your face alone so you can have an open casket funeral.”

That was all Rojas needed to hear. She squirted the water she’d trapped in her mouth, hitting Morales in the eyes. Rojas slipped off her shower sandals to get more traction from her bare feet, but she needed to get to the high ground. As Morales brought her hands to her face to protect her splashed eyes, Rojas grabbed on to one of the woman’s big, muscular forearms and swung her knee up into the pillowy gut of the hired bruiser. The sudden blow made Morales step backward, pushing her two partners aside and dragging Rojas with her. The naked woman kicked out to her right, the sole of her foot slapping hard into the cheek and jaw of one of the other brawlers. A screech escaped the woman’s lips as she staggered back.

Rojas pivoted on her heel and delivered a kick to Morales’s sternum. With the speed and lithe power of a leopard, she then brought her elbow into the side of the second minion’s neck. Pudgy but powerful arms wrapped around Rojas’s shoulders, squeezing her tight and propelling her toward the second bruiser, who was now baring her teeth. Rojas tucked her chin against her chest at the last second. She winced as her opponent’s incisors sliced her scalp before they snapped off against her skull.

The grappler let go of Rojas, and the naked woman dropped back to her feet. Her most recent opponent was pouring blood from mashed lips and gums. Morales lunged forward again, having recovered quickly from the blow to her chest. Rojas brought up her elbow in a swift scythe, meeting Morales’s face with a crunch. Rojas was knocked off balance as the big woman threw her hands up to her own face. She lost her footing on the slippery floor and hit the tiles. Within seconds, the rubber sole of a sneaker smashed into her ribs.

It was the woman she’d swatted in the face with her bare foot, giving Rojas what she’d paid.

Rojas lashed out and snagged the witch’s ankle before she could pull her foot away.

“Puta!” the attacker spat, hopping and windmilling her arms in an effort to stay on her feet. Eventually, Rojas’s leverage and gravity won out, and the woman slammed to the ground.

Using every ounce of control in her strong limbs, Rojas rolled on to all fours despite the slickness of the tiles. Two hands clamped on to her neck, hauling her up. Rojas let herself be lifted, feigning weakness as she prepared for her next move. Suddenly, the fingers around her neck let go, and she fell face-first to the floor. She grunted, stunned by the drop.

Morales stomped hard on Rojas’s shoulder, and she wanted to cry out in pain. She tried to push up off of the floor when something crashed heavily on to her arm and shoulder. Again her face struck the tiles, blurring her vision and jarring her jaw.

Morales’s bulging forearm pushed across her face, and Rojas kept her chin pinned to her clavicle. If that hunk of muscle and power got across her windpipe, everything would be over. Jagged nails stabbed at her forehead, raking back in an effort to wrench her head up.

“Don’t struggle so much, Hilda,” Morales sneered. “It won’t hurt for—”

Rojas lunged up with her good arm, blindly digging her fingers into Morales’s meaty face. She jabbed her eye with a thumbnail, and Morales let out a howl. “Enough!”

Heavy boots stomped across the wet tiles. Rojas felt rough hands grip her own trying to make her release Morales’s face. Rojas grit her teeth, resisting the guard’s efforts. Morales had come after her, taunted her, given her the desire to kill.

She wanted to ensure Morales would never forget her failure to end the life of Brunhilde Rojas. The memory would be scrawled across her face in the unmistakable signature of Rojas’s claw marks.

A punch connected with Rojas’s jaw, and the world went black.

It had been a good run, but her sons would go unavenged, she thought as she descended into oblivion.

* * *

WHEN ROJAS OPENED her eyes, she was dressed. She was in a pair of coveralls, though one of her arms was hanging in a sling under the open front of the prison jumpsuit. She was in an office with a window that showed the open sky outside. She spotted the guard tower nearby. So, she was still on prison property. The desk was clean—no papers, but more importantly, no pens or letter openers that she could grab and turn into a weapon.

A burly man sat in the chair behind the desk, and a tall, dark stranger stood, arms folded, against the wall. Rojas blinked, lingering on the man’s cool blue eyes. He was observing her, his features impassive. His presence in the room was a weight, a magnet for her.

“Brunhilde Rojas, aka La Brujah,” the seated man read from a file. “Born in Argentina, daughter of a Colombian father and a German mother, hence the name Brunhilde. Naturalized citizen of the United States at age four.”

Rojas glanced at the man behind the desk. He was a broad, serious fellow who showed a road map of years on his face. “So you know who I am…”

“You followed in the footsteps of the Cocaine Godmother and the Queen of the Pacific, right down to having your teenaged sons follow you into the business,” the man continued.

“And who are you?” Rojas asked, anger spiking in her voice. Her teenaged sons. Mis hijos.

“My name is Harold Brognola, Justice Department,” he offered. “And my associate, here, is Matt Cooper.”

Rojas’s lip twitched. “You mention my sons again…”

“Not even your last remaining son?” Brognola asked.

“Pepito?” Suddenly the iron that was holding her straight in her chair buckled under the weight of her youngest boy’s mention. “What have you done with him?”

“We haven’t done anything with him other than put him into protective custody,” Cooper told her. “But we have found out that your cartel is looking for Pepito.”

Rojas grit her teeth. “So you come to prison to mock me with this? I’ve been in a cell for seven years! I don’t know anything new.”

“Apparently you know enough,” Cooper told her. “They sent someone to kill you.”

“That didn’t work too well for them,” Rojas answered.

“You’re not an angel,” Cooper said. “Not with the dozens of kills you allegedly had a hand in. But you are a mother, and Pedro Rojas is innocent.”

She leveled her gaze on the blue-eyed, deep-voiced man. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, and she could see the powerful swell of muscles, as well as the crisscross of old scars which wove its own tale of a long and brutal life. “So I talk, and then what? You make some arrests, a few men get taken off the streets in New York or in Austin or—”

“Cali.” Cooper cut her off.

“You want me to give you information about Cali?” Rojas asked. “It’s been a few years since I’ve been there. Says so right in that file.”

“I want more than information,” Cooper said. “And I don’t want information for arrests. Los Soldados de Cali Nuevos could care less if a few of their guys go to jail. Arrests won’t give them a reason to spare Pepito. We need to make them know that even looking at an American citizen again will bring down all the fires of heaven and hell.”

Rojas sat back. “No arrests?”

“You still know how to use a gun,” Cooper told her. “And while that shoulder is healing up, I’ll refresh your skills.”

“How bad is my arm?” Rojas asked, looking down at the poor limb in its sling. Her ribs hurt, too, but at least she could breathe, meaning that they hadn’t been broken. “X-rays are still being developed, but it’s probably just a dislocated shoulder,” Brognola said.

Rojas glanced sideways at Cooper. “And you’re going to give me a pistol?”

“Pistols. Rifles. Shotguns. Sub guns. Whatever we need,” Cooper answered. “And we’re not going to give them to you in here.”

Rojas flexed her hand, then gingerly tried to move her arm under the jumpsuit. No, nothing was broken, and Cooper was right; it wouldn’t take long for her to get back into fighting condition.

“Why would you help me in protecting my son from the New Soldiers?” Rojas asked. “What do you get out of this?”

“What’s in it for us is the same as what’s in this for you. Payback,” Cooper said. “They killed your sons. They also tortured and killed a DEA agent.”

Rojas frowned.

“I’m not asking you to give a damn about Agent Blanca,” Cooper continued. “But I do want you to get me close enough to teach the survivors a lesson.”

“Survivors,” Rojas repeated. She locked eyes with Brognola. “I thought you said you were Justice Department.”

“I said I was,” Brognola answered. “He didn’t.”

Rojas pushed herself up from her chair. “And what if I don’t want to go?”

Cooper tapped the file in front of Brognola. “The federal government couldn’t convict you on the sixty to seventy murders of rivals and fellow gang members you either did yourself or farmed out to hit men. You outsmarted them on that front, so they nailed you on possession and sale of narcotics. But you’ve got bodies piled up behind you. A lot of bodies.”

“You’re not appealing to my angels?” Rojas asked.

Cooper narrowed his eyes and stepped closer to her. Their faces were inches apart, and this close, his gaze bored into her. “I’m asking for you to let your devils out to play. So, does the Witch, La Brujah, ride again?”

“If we succeed, what else happens?” Rojas asked.

“Pepito will be safe. And we can fake your death. No one will ever see you again, unless it’s on a telenovella,” Cooper promised.

“I’ll be with Pepito?”

Cooper nodded. “I will do everything in my power to make sure you and he are together.”

Rojas didn’t flinch from his steely gaze. Some voice at the back of her mind brought up the possibility that her Pepito was already dead, and once this was done, this man would put a bullet in the back of her skull.

But these men didn’t seem duplicitous. She sensed honesty and strength in Cooper, that made her want to jump at this chance. He didn’t seem like a fanatic so much as a crusader, a too-good-to-be-true idealist out to make the world a better place, despite the lethal intentions of going to Cali, armed to the teeth.

“This isn’t a trick?” Rojas asked.

“You’ll find I’m pretty devious when I’m on the hunt,” Cooper said. “But when it comes to making a deal—making an ally—I’m honest. I’m solid. I will go to bat for you.”

“Will you take a bullet for me?” Rojas asked.

Cooper took a deep breath. “If you prove yourself as an ally, sure. But I’m not expecting a miracle.”

“Because I’m a woman? Because I’m Colombian?”

“Because you’ve got over sixty dead bodies to your name,” he answered.

“How many do you have to yours, Cooper?” The tall, dark man smirked.

“How many?” Rojas pressed.

The way Cooper avoided the question made the hairs on the back of Rojas’s neck stand on end.

4

Rojas and Cooper were sitting in business class together, bound for Cali. The only things in their luggage were the standard clothing and toiletries, and they each had a smartphone in a hard case. Lack of guns, even a hidden boot knife, made Rojas feel very bare, like a raw, exposed nerve ready to be plucked. Cooper didn’t seem as anxious; he simply sat back, studying files on the phone.

Within a day of meeting Cooper and Brognola, Rojas had gotten rid of the accursed sling. Sure, she was chewing ibuprofen tablets as if they were breath mints, but she’d regained full range of motion a day after that, and the kick of an Uzi’s steel folding stock against her shoulder while on full auto was now completely tolerable.

During their training sessions, Cooper had watched over her, his gaze wary but not hostile. That didn’t mean he had many smiles for her. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t here to make friends.

The truth hung over the two of them. Rojas had never been a gentle soul, and while she was still enraged at the deaths of her sons, she’d killed their fathers, killed rivals, killed the wives and children of others who dared oppose her as she ran New York City. Cooper had lowballed the number of dead to her name that day in the office, whether by ignorance or by choice.

Even so, he was obviously aware of her past as a ruthless killer. Not that he seemed afraid of her. He was cautious, alert, but Rojas had the impression that one ounce of antagonism toward him would end with her neck snapped.

In the days that had followed their initial meeting, Cooper had re-familiarized her with shooting skills, but he had also taught her the hand signals they would need to work side by side in the field. If he intended to take her life, he would not be such a completist when it came to going into action.

He had made no bones about their plan.

Hilde Rojas was to be the bait. Once she appeared on the scene in Colombia, the SNC would pick up her scent and come after her.

Los Soldados were from a different group than her, another faction of the splintered Colombian drug scene. The old Cali and Medellin cartels were not friends, and much blood had been spilled at the height of their rivalry. When their boss died in a hail of gunfire from a military and police strike, Medellin collapsed into its own mayhem. Nobody there would consider Rojas anything more than a relic of the past.

That she was out of jail after serving only seven of her twenty years would surprise those bosses in Medellin struggling to build a new power base, but she wouldn’t draw their attention.

Only the SNC would be interested in La Brujah.

“You also have barely touched your drink,” Rojas commented, too restless now to stay silent. “I’ve got you figured out, you know. You’re a professional, and you believe in being in control.”

“In control of my thoughts and body,” Cooper replied. “I prefer to be aware and at the top of my game. True control of events around you is an illusion.”

Rojas thought of her own downfall. For over a decade, she’d smashed all opposition or dissent to her rule with ruthless efficiency. Back then, she’d thought she’d been in total control. The truth was that, eventually, her own people turned against her, flipping on her before she could flip on them. Her wildest caballeros had realized that she’d orchestrated so many deaths for the smallest slights or offenses that they themselves could become her next targets.