Colony Of Evil

“I won’t pretend to know all that your people suffered,” Bolan said, “although, I’ve seen enough man-made catastrophes to have at least a general idea. Israelis aren’t the only ones who’d like to nip these bastards in the bud.”

“Too late for that,” she said. “The old men I referred to have been living here, and living well, for fifty years.”

“I found that out for the first time, this week,” Bolan replied. “Your people must’ve known it—what? For years?”

“Decades,” she said. “It shames me to admit it, but we fight the battles that demand immediate attention. Eichmann was a symbol. Everybody knew his name and what he’d done. As for the rest, we had our Arab neighbors to contend with. No one gave much thought to aging Germans squatting in a jungle, halfway around the world.”

“One of your agents took a shot in 1995,” Bolan replied.

“You’re well informed. Then you must know what happened afterward.”

“The bombing and retaliation, right.”

“Of course. But I’m referring to the cover-up by leaders of the DAS, perhaps Colombia’s own president, himself. Who do you trust here, Mr. Cooper?”

He had given her the cover name, and now said, “Make it ‘Matt.’ And trust is earned where I come from.”

“You’ve met this one before?” she asked, nodding toward Guzman, huddled in the rear.

“I checked his references,” Bolan replied. “He hasn’t let me down, so far.”

“How did Herr Krieger and his men know you were coming to Colombia?”

“Who’s Krieger?” Bolan asked, buying some time to think about her question.

“Krieger, Horst Andreas,” she replied, as if reading the label on a file. “Until this evening, he was one of old man Dietrich’s young elite. But now you’ve killed him, I believe. At least, I didn’t, and he would have shot us both if he was still alive.”

“Blond guy, midtwenties, maybe six feet tall?”

“The classic Aryan,” Cohen said.

“You’ve seen the last of him.”

“Good riddance. I am satisfied to have eliminated Arne Rauschman and at least two of their mercenaries. It’s amazing, isn’t it? How people they despise as less than human still work for the Nazis, seek to curry favor with them? Truly, wonders never cease.”

“About this house of yours…”

She turned into a quiet residential street and then into a driveway two doors from the corner.

“As you say,” she said. “We’re here.”

GUZMAN WAS SILENT, for the most part, while she cleaned his wound with alcohol. It had to have burned like fury, but he clenched his teeth and swallowed any sounds of pain that tried to struggle free. Granted, there was a little moan when she applied the iodine, but nothing that should shame a man concerned about his macho image.

“That’s the worst of it,” she said. “I’ll stitch it now. Unfortunately, I have nothing for a local anesthetic.”

“Any whiskey? Rum? Tequila?” Guzman asked.

“Sorry. I have some wine.”

The wounded man looked glum. He shook his head. “No wine.”

The tall American watched as Cohen removed a curved needle from her first-aid kit and began to thread it. She had used it on herself once, closing up a razor slash in Paris, and she never traveled far without the means to clean and patch most wounds that did not call for major surgery.

“You’ve done this kind of thing before,” Bolan observed.

“It’s good to be prepared for an emergency,” she said.

“And use a Jericho sidearm. It sounded like the .40 caliber.”

“The .41 Action Express, in fact.”

“You like an edge,” he said.

“Whenever I can get one.”

“Still, it isn’t much for going up against an army.”

“You’re prepared to try it with an IMBEL .45,” she hastened to remind him.

“I was on my way to do some shopping when we got sidetracked.”

“That’s inconvenient. Can you still keep the appointment?”

Bolan glanced at his companion, Jorge Guzman, who responded with a cautious nod and said, “I will make the arrangements.”

“Maybe we should just surprise him,” Bolan said. “I’d hate to find another welcoming committee waiting on the doorstep.”

Guzman flared. “You think I told them where to find us? If you doubt me—”

“Chill out,” Bolan warned. “If I thought you were doubling on me, you’d be lying back there at the factory.”

“What, then?” Guzman asked, slightly mollified.

“There are too many leaks around this town. Make that, around this country. We don’t telegraph our moves from this point on. No tip-offs to our plan for friend or foe. We’ll drop in for the hardware when your dealer least expects it, and he won’t know where we’re going when we leave.”

Finished threading the needle, Cohen dipped it into alcohol and turned toward Guzman. He observed the needle, nodded grimly, and she went to work, distracting Guzman and herself with words.

“Krieger and Rauschman met you at the airport,” she reminded Bolan. “That means they were either following your friend here, or they knew beforehand when you would be landing.”

“I’d prefer the first choice,” Bolan said.

“Of course. In that case, they may not know who you are, or why you’re here in Bogotá. You’d have a chance—although a slim one—to surprise them, yet.”

“That’s still the plan,” Bolan replied.

“Americans are always optimistic.”

“Not Americans, in general,” he said. “I set a goal and do my best to reach it, after planning for the worst contingencies that I can think of.”

“Is it sometimes wiser not to try?” she asked.

“If you believe that,” Bolan challenged, “why aren’t you at home in Tel Aviv?”

“I go where I am sent,” she said. “And I was not sent here to storm Colonia Victoria.”

“You think I was?”

She shrugged, aware of Bolan watching her. Not only following the movements of her hands.

“I’m not a mind reader, of course,” she said. “But you impress me as a soldier, not a spy. I don’t think you were sent to simply build a dossier on Dietrich and his cronies.”

“No,” he said. “Were you?”

“I am supposed to gather evidence that can be used to blow his cover, as you say. Perhaps to shame the government that shelters him. Myself, I’m not convinced it will be an effective strategy. Colombians appear to have great tolerance for such embarrassment, and very little shame.”

“You went beyond your brief tonight,” Bolan observed.

“In a good cause, I hope.”

“So, when we’re finished here,” he said, “Jorge and I will get out of your hair.”

“You plan to walk?”

“Well, maybe you could drop us at a rental agency,” Bolan said, smiling ruefully.

“Maybe,” she told him, “I can do better than that.”

“SLOW DOWN,” the man in black advised his driver. “They’re already nervous, and you know they’re trigger-happy at the best of times.”

The driver slowed their black Mercedes to a crawl, passing between the rows of factories that smoked and fumed around the clock. Downrange, six cars with flashing lights on top surrounded three more vehicles, their headlights highlighting the damage suffered by those other cars. Armed men in quasi-military uniforms scurried around the scene, peering at bodies scattered on the ground.

“I see him,” said the driver as they neared the scene of orchestrated chaos.

“Yes,” the man in black replied. “I wondered if he’d come out at this hour, himself.”

“Maybe he hasn’t been home yet,” the driver said with a smirk. “You’ve seen his mistress, eh?”

“The new one? I’m surprised her parents don’t impose a curfew.”

“Would they dare?” the driver asked.

“You have a point. Stop here. Stay with the car. If anything goes wrong, get out at any cost and warn him.”

“Herr Hauptmann—”

“I order it!”

“Yes, sir!”

Of course, something already had gone wrong. If Krieger had completed his assignment as commanded, Otto Jaeger would be sleeping at the moment, maybe dreaming of his wives at home. Instead, he had to deal with corpses in the middle of the night and listen to Joaquin Menendez complain.

With one hand on the Walther P-5 compact pistol in his coat pocket, Jaeger approached the scowling DAS chief. There was no reason to think that he would need the gun tonight, but given the dramatic mood swings Menendez was famous for, it couldn’t hurt to be prepared.

Perhaps he’s crazy, Jaeger thought.

And said, “Good morning, Herr Director. It’s unfortunate that your subordinates disturbed you for a matter of this sort.”

“Unfortunate, you say? With eight men dead.”

Krieger’s whole team? It seemed impossible, but would explain why no one had called Jaeger to report their failure. There was no one left.

Jaeger was cautious in replying to Menendez. He might easily have said that eight dead meant a sluggish night for Bogotá, but he preferred not to antagonize Menendez. It was dangerous and unproductive.

“Only eight?” he asked instead.

“You were expecting more?”

“I had expected none at all,” Jaeger replied with perfect honesty. Krieger was good enough—had been—to simply make his targets disappear, unless there were examples to be made.

This night, it seemed, Krieger and Rauschman, with their native help, were the examples.

“May I view the bodies?” Jaeger asked Menendez.

The Colombian considered it, then dipped his chin in the affirmative. “Touch nothing.”

“That’s a promise.”

Jaeger left the DAS director, turning toward the shot-up vehicles. He needed to replace the Volkswagen and the Mercedes. Both of them were badly damaged, and it left him short of rolling stock in Bogotá. He had another Benz on hand, besides the one that had delivered him to this grim scene, and half a dozen motorcycles. Not enough for fifty men by any means.

Now forty-eight, he thought as he approached the nearest corpse.

The third car, facing toward the others, was a cheap Fiat, run-down even before it ran into a hail of bullets and expired. The relative positions of the cars told Jaeger that the Fiat’s driver had been taken by surprise, or else pursued here, where he turned to fight. The latter seemed more likely, but Jaeger supposed he’d never really know.

Jaeger found Rauschman sprawled between the Benz and the VW, lying on his back. A slug had entered through his left eye, taking out the right-rear portion of his skull. He looked surprised and vaguely guilty.

So you should, Jaeger thought. You have disappointed everyone.

Was there a Hell for failures? Jaeger didn’t know, and at the moment didn’t really care.

He checked the other corpses, walking all around the scene, crunching the spent brass underfoot. There were no bodies by the Fiat, no apparent blood, suggesting that his men had missed their targets, or at least had failed to wound them mortally.

“Where is the eighth?” he asked a DAS captain who’d followed him around the cars, watching his every move. “Herr Menendez said eight were killed, but there are only seven here.”

The captain grunted at him, turned and pointed to a nearby field littered with pieces of equipment someone had discarded but had never hauled away. Now Jaeger saw a solitary officer standing beside what seemed to be a mound of earth or pile of dirty rags dumped on the ground.

He left the captain, walked over to Krieger’s dusty corpse and crouched beside it.

“You need light?” the DAS man asked.

“It helps.”

A flashlight beam lanced through the shadows, making Krieger’s hair seem almost white. He lay facedown, blood soaking through his jacket where a slug had pierced his back, most likely shattering some vertebrae before it found the heart or lungs within.

“So, you were taken by surprise,” he said in German. “You deserve no less.”

He rose, walked back to where Menendez waited for him, hands in pockets, with the same scowl on his face. The bushy eyebrows and mustache made him almost a cartoon character, but laughing at that face could be the last thing Jaeger ever did.

“They’re ours,” he told Menendez.

“All of them?”

“Something went wrong.”

“What were they doing here?”

A lie could ruin everything. Menendez took their money. He was bought and paid for—to a point.

“The Fiat’s driver is an enemy. He asks too many questions, pokes his nose in where it isn’t wanted.”

“Name?”

“Jorge Guzman.”

“I’ve never heard of him,” Menendez said.

“No reason why you should have.”

“He’s some kind of soldier, this one?”

“No. I don’t think so.”

“But he has killed eight men.”

“I can’t explain it,” Jaeger answered. “I can only clean it up.”

Menendez thought about it, then replied, “The shifts change in these factories at midnight. All this must be removed by then, and made to disappear.”

“No problem,” Jaeger said, without checking his watch. “You may expect a bonus, Herr Director.”

“So I do,” Menendez said, turning away.

Dismissed, Jaeger retreated to his Benz, already fishing in another pocket for his cell phone. There was work to do, and swiftly, to conceal the relics of a massacre.

Colonia Victoria

HANS DIETRICH LIKED his schnapps flavored with peppermint. It made his breath smell fresh, while the delicious alcohol worked on his aging brain. He never drank enough to make him drunk, these days, but did his best to keep a rosy glow firmly in place.

This night, it took more schnapps than usual.

Dietrich was troubled. Not yet worried, which implied a major threat, but certainly concerned. The news of questions being asked in Bogotá had prompted Dietrich to investigate, and what he’d learned had left him curious, confused.

Angry.

The man asking the questions was a peasant but not without connections. Subtle probing had revealed that Jorge Guzman was a minor criminal who supplemented his illicit income by informing on selected persons to American narcotics officers, perhaps even the CIA. That made him dangerous, although his interest in Dietrich had, thus far, delivered little in the way of new or useful information.

Dietrich knew that his community was not truly a secret. Far too many people shared the knowledge—and the wealth—of Colonia Victoria to guarantee complete security. There had been stories in the leftist media, complaints and subsequent investigations. Certainly, there had to be dossiers in Bogotá, in Washington, in London and in Tel Aviv.

But he was left alone, for the most part, and that was all Hans Dietrich asked of life.

That, and a chance to strike against his enemies when opportunity arose.

It was a problem, therefore, when Guzman started asking questions, seeking information that was none of his concern. When Otto Jaeger had reported it, Dietrich felt confident in ordering the usual response.

Discover who the rat was working for.

And, failing that, simply eliminate the rat.

Now, somehow, it had gone awry. Instead of one dead rat, Dietrich had two dead soldiers and six hired guns wasted. He was not concerned about the peasant labor, but Horst Krieger had been like a son to him.

In fact, considering Dietrich’s liaison’s with the young man’s mother, twenty-odd years back, there was a chance that Krieger might have been his son.

No matter.

Everyone within Colonia Victoria—the Aryans, at least—were Dietrich’s children. He had been their patriarch for half a century, dictating every aspect of their lives between the cradle and the grave. He knew, at some level, that most of those now dwelling in the colony were bound to outlive him, but death still seemed remote, despite his age.

This night, though, he admitted to himself that it felt closer.

There were enemies around him, always, but the massacre in Bogotá was something new. There had been losses, certainly. Some accidents, a fatal illness now and then, some executions in the colony. Two of his people murdered by the Jews in 1995, after they killed the damned Israeli spy.

But never, since he set foot in Colombia, had Dietrich’s men been cut down in such numbers. Never had he faced an enemy who killed so ruthlessly, efficiently, without apparent motive.

So, the bastards hated him. Of course they did. As millions hated Hitler for attempting to awaken them and teach them how to fight, to save themselves. Prophets were always vilified and persecuted. History had taught him that, if nothing else.

Jaeger had orders to continue the investigation, find the peasant Guzman and determine who directed him, who might have aided him in killing Krieger, Rauschman and the rest. Knowledge was power, and until those answers were within his grasp, Hans Dietrich knew that he was at a disadvantage.

It was not a feeling he enjoyed.

A leader of the Master Race was meant to lead, not hide while enemies worked day and night against him. Granted, it was different here than it had been in Germany, during the grand old days, but he was not without influence. If Menendez and the DAS could not help him, Dietrich would speak to someone higher in authority.

Someone who owed him much, in cash and gratitude.

His influence, combined with that of certain wealthy friends, could shake the state to its foundations if required to do so.

But, he thought, it would not be required. Serving his interest also served the interests of the men who had aligned themselves with him for profit, through the years. Men who allowed Colonia Victoria to thrive, when they could just as easily have crushed it. Having made that choice, like Faust, they had to live with it.

Hans Dietrich, imagining himself as Lucifer, the puppeteer. His reach was long, his grip still powerful.

Which made his doubts more troubling, yet.

Perhaps another glass of schnapps would calm the churning in his stomach.

Just one more, to help him sleep.

“WHAT DID YOU HAVE in mind?” Bolan asked.

“I’ve been working on this case longer than you have,” Ghen answered, “and I think you will agree that we, Mossad, have first claim on the target. Everywhere, from Europe to New York and Mexico, they are Israeli diplomats and citizens who have been murdered, maimed and terrorized.”

“Except Miami Beach,” Bolan reminded her.

“Of course. Poor Mr. Margulies. But still, a Jew with family in Israel. Did you know that?”

Bolan frowned and told her honestly, “They must have missed that in my briefing.”

“Now, you see. Israel has more against Hans Dietrich and his little monsters than America can ever claim. It is quite obvious.”

She had a point.

“So, you’re suggesting that I call my boss and tell him to forget the whole thing? That you’ve got it covered?” he said.

“Did I say that, Matt?”

“Not directly, but—”

“I am proposing we collaborate,” she said. “Pool our resources for the common good.”

“Right now,” he told her, “my ‘resources’ are a pistol borrowed from Jorge. Washington won’t be sending the Marines to help us out. I’m it, for this job.”

“And from what I’ve seen,” she said, “you’re more than adequate.”

“Gee, thanks.”

She laughed and finished tying off the last suture at Guzman’s temple. “There, all done,” she said, “except for one more swab of alcohol and then a bandage.”

As she finished, she said, “I don’t mean to insult you, truly. But you were a bit outnumbered when I came along tonight.”

“I noticed that.” He turned to Guzman, asking, “Are you sure nobody trailed you to the airport?”

Guzman flinched as Cohen applied more alcohol, then said, “I did as I’ve been trained. Watched all the mirrors, made wrong turns, drove two and three times around certain blocks. If I was followed from my home, they were invisible.”

“Okay, then,” Bolan said. “That leaves two options. They were either tipped to find us at the airport—which could mean some kind of leak at my end, in the worst scenario—or they’d attached some kind of tracker to your car.”

“Which will be useless to them now,” Cohen said.

“Good point. If there’s some kind of homer in the Fiat,” Bolan said, “we’ll let them sit and wait forever at the impound lot.”

“It won’t take long for them to realize what’s happened,” Cohen replied. “I am convinced that Dietrich has well-placed connections to the DAS and other law-enforcement agencies.”

“I’ve heard the same thing,” Bolan granted. “We’ll assume that any badges who come knocking are the enemy.”

“And deal with them accordingly,” she said.

“I don’t shoot innocent cops,” he told her.

“Normally, I wouldn’t, either,” she replied, “but in this case—”

“Not even then,” he answered. “It’s a rule I live by. It’s not open to debate.”

She studied Bolan for a moment, then said, “In that case, we must make every effort to avoid them.”

“That’s a plan,” he said.

“So, we’re agreed?” she asked.

“On what?”

“What have we been discussing, Matt? Collaboration, for the common good.”

Bolan considered it. Brognola didn’t try to micromanage action in the field, knowing that it was better left to soldiers on the scene, who knew exactly what was happening at any given moment. There was no rule banning him from a collaboration with Mossad—in fact, he had joined forces with selected members of the agency on more than one occasion in the past.

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