Lethal Vengeance

“I hear you. Damn near anyone can kill for any reason. And in pairs?”

“It wouldn’t be the first time, by a long shot. Cults aside, the Hillside stranglers were cousins. Same thing with Dave Gore and Fred Waterfield in Florida. In Philadelphia, Joe Kallinger would take his fifteen-year-old son along to help. Lucas and Toole were part-time lovers, traveling from coast to coast,” Price told him.

“You’ve studied up,” Bolan observed.

“Know the enemy. Never let anybody tell you they’re all carbon-copy, cut and dried.”

“So, if a pair of psychos snatched Hal, he could well be dead by now and we have no way to start looking for them. Two Latinos in Mexico? Try looking for a needle in a needle factory.”

“I know. We have to try, though.”

“Right. First thing,” Bolan observed, “will be acquiring hardware on the wrong side of the border.”

Mexico had strict laws regulating guns, at least on paper, restricting possession of most types and calibers to the military and law enforcement. The country’s only legal gun store—the Directorate of Arms and Munitions Sales—stood behind walls on a military base outside Mexico City. Its customers had to undergo months of background checks, involving six separate documents, and were frisked on arrival by uniformed soldiers.

That said, Mexico’s version of the US Second Amendment, written in 1857, guaranteed all citizens and legal foreign residents the right to bear arms, but stipulated that federal law “will determine the cases, conditions, requirements and places” of gun ownership. The net result: while the one and only army gun store sold an average of thirty-eight firearms per day to civilians, smugglers brought an estimated 580 weapons into Mexico from the United States. Others doubtless arrived on flights of foreign origin or passed through Mexico’s forty-one seaports on the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

The results of that traffic in arms—and in drugs—had been making global headlines for the past thirteen years, since officials acknowledged their chaotic, ongoing drug war. At last rough count, the butcher’s bill included 250,000 dead and 30,000 missing, with 1.6 million persons displaced from their homes. The official body count so far included 12,456 cartel members; 4,020 federal, state and municipal police officers; plus 395 soldiers slain and 137 missing, presumed dead.

Hell on Earth, in simple terms—and that was without adding in the daily slaughter of civilians in places like Ciudad Juárez and Matamoros by human predators for the sheer love of killing.

“Tell me more about the killers’ playground,” Bolan said.

“Feminicide covers a world of kinks and fetishes,” Price said. “As I mentioned, no one really knows how many girls and women have been killed or when it started ramping up. Local authorities downplay it with an eye toward tourism and foreign investment in factories, and the victims never found go on the books as runaways. Officially, Chihuahua police admit 260 murders since they started keeping track in 1993, claiming only seventy-six fit ‘serial’ parameters with rape, torture and mutilation. But that’s ridiculous. Women’s groups peg the total somewhere between four and fifteen hundred when they add in missing persons.”

“How bad is it, really?” Bolan asked.

“Amnesty International counted 370 by 2005. Chihuahua prosecutors finally admitted 270 murders statewide in 2010, with 247 inside Juárez. They logged another 300-plus in 2011, with 59 percent in the state capital. Since then, the yearly stats go up and down like yo-yos, depending on who you trust.”

“With no convictions?”

“Sure, a few. In 1996 Omar Sharif—a bus driver from Egypt, not the actor—went down for three murders, sentenced to thirty years, but the killings escalated after he went away. At that point, cops claimed he was part of a gang called Los Rebeldes—that’s ‘The Rebels’—who kept killing after he was put away. Police arrested five of his alleged accomplices then cut them loose for lack of evidence. Sharif died during his fourth year in prison.”

“Any others?”

“A few. In 2001, police nabbed an alleged pair of team killers and charged them with eight homicides. One died during interrogation. Then his buddy confessed but later recanted, claiming police torture, and out goes that case.

“In 2008, prosecutors charged Sergio Barraza with killing one teenage girl, but the court acquitted him for lack of evidence and he split for parts unknown. They later tried him again in absentia—that’s a thing down here, no double jeopardy—and he was convicted, but they still haven’t found him. Meanwhile his victim’s mother was assassinated by an unknown gunman while picketing the governor’s palace—shot once in the head at point-blank range.”

Bolan rarely swore but now said, “Sounds like a steaming crock of shit.”

“And still continuing today, although most of the press in Mexico has tried to play it down,” Price said.

“Sounds like they need a wakeup call.”

“I’d say. And then some.” She frowned and asked, “What are you packing?”

“Flying in from LA?” he replied. “Not a thing.”

“Just as well. We’ve got a friend at the US Consulate in Ciudad Juárez. He’s CIA, name’s Tim Ross.”

As she spoke, Price handed Bolan what appeared to be a passport photo of a white man, late twenties, with hair a little on the long side and a well-trimmed Vandyke. Bolan committed the face to memory and passed the photo back to her, asking, “What does he know?”

“Nothing about the program, you or Hal. He helps us out from time to time with hardware, paperwork, whatever. He pulled two tours in the sandbox with the 1st Battalion, 5th Marines before he joined the Company, but I’d discourage getting him involved beyond delivery of gear when you arrive.”

“You’ll make the contact?”

“That’s affirmative. Just let me have your wish list.”

There were cocktail napkins in a slot beside the folding table. Bolan took out a pen, filled up half of one and then handed Price his list.

She read it over. “You’re pulling out all the stops.”

“I don’t see any other way to play it.”

“Right,” she said. “You’re driving over, then?”

“I’ve got a rental in the airport’s short-term parking lot.”

“Okay. I’ll set a meeting on the other side for you and Ross, then text you an address.”

“Sounds good.”

“Thoughts on the process, once you’ve gone across?”

“No suspects and no motive,” Bolan said. “The only way I see to play that hand is to bet the limit and keep raising until somebody folds.”

“You know we can’t help with the federal or state police across the line. Even if we could tell them what you’re doing over there, who knows which officers are trustworthy?”

“I know of at least one. But for this mission I’ll figure none of them and work from there,” Bolan replied.

It was, he knew, a decent rule of thumb for Mexico. The federales were divided into two departments. The Federal Judicial Police, founded in 1928, was disbanded in 2002 due to its own rampant corruption and criminal activity. It was replaced by the Federal Investigative Agency and attached to Mexico’s Secretariat of Public Safety as a “preventive” force against crime. Its counterpart, the Federal Ministerial Police, an investigative force tasked with fighting corruption and organized crime, was created in 2009 along FBI lines, directed by the Attorney General’s Office. Bolan would be ignoring the country’s third federal force: the Mexico City Police, which had no national reach, its officers confined to handling matters inside the Federal district. It would take a crystal ball to tell which members of the policing agencies were also drawing paychecks from the drug cartels.

“If you’re successful—” Price began, then caught herself. “When you’re successful, if there’s too much heat for you and Hal to handle on your own, Tim Ross can likely help you with the exfiltration.”

“Good to know. As long as he’s not privy to my moves beforehand.”

“Not a chance,” she answered back.

“And while we’re on that subject, I agree with you not sending Jack along.”

Grimaldi, that would be. Bolan’s literal wingman since his first campaign against the Mafia in Las Vegas. The go-to guy for all things aerial.

“I nearly didn’t go that way,” Price told him. “But then I thought about the built-in problems, flying out of Mexico and back across the border without one or both sides scrambling gunships, fighter planes or ground-to-air missiles.”

“You’re right. The last thing I want to do is get shot down or blown out of the sky with Hal, after...whatever he’s been through.”

Price leaned across the fold-down table, taking one of Bolan’s hands, eyes locked on his. “I know you well enough to have no doubt you’ll find him. What I’m not sure of is whether you’ll find him alive.”

“Well, now...”

“You know it’s true, Mack. Nothing’s guaranteed. If he was snatched by one of the cartels, they’ll have lines of communication to the DEA, maybe to Justice, too. They’ll know the heat is coming down, big-time, and hanging on to him would be the ultimate in stupid. We should all be ready if this thing goes south—no pun intended.”

“I’ve lost good friends before,” Bolan reminded her. “No one’s immortal, and me least of all. But I won’t think Hal dead until I’ve seen him dead or have enough forensic evidence to seal the deal.”

“Agreed. But then what?”

“Then I do what I do best,” Bolan replied, “and make the bastards pay with every drop of blood they have.”

Chapter Two

Bridge of the Americas

Despite its name, El Paso’s Bridge of the Americas actually included four bridges: two with four lanes each bearing passenger vehicles north and south, with sidewalks for pedestrians; and another pair with two lanes each for trucks alone, one flow of traffic headed each direction. The city’s newest international bridge, completed in 1998, channeled southbound traffic from I-110, routing the northbound tide from MX 45. Together the bridges transported an average of $650 billion in international trade, moving 4 million passenger vehicles, 5 million trucks and 400,000 pedestrians.

It was easy to get lost in all that traffic. Bolan counted on it heading south, although he had nothing to fear from customs or cops on either side of the border so far. His passport and driver’s license were impeccable—though false. He had the proper rental contract for his Toyota RAV4 compact SUV and nothing in the vehicle as yet should excite any drug-or explosive-sniffing dog.

The worst part about crossing was the time required. Each minute passing on the RAV4’s dashboard clock reminded Bolan that his oldest living friend was running out of time—assuming that he still had any left.

Barbara Price appeared to trust his contact on the other side, Tim Ross from Langley, even if she kept him in the dark and at arm’s length. Their meeting, time approximate and flexible, was set to occur near Parque Borunda in the La Chaveña neighborhood of Ciudad Juárez. Bolan knew La Chaveña meant “The Keyhole,” but he didn’t know or care how it had acquired the name.

La Chaveña was a working-class district, its best-known landmarks a nineteenth-century plaza with a fountain called “the Font of the Keyhole” and Parque Borunda with its carnival layout including thrill rides, gaming arcades and countless food kiosks.

Bolan, for his part, was embarking on a thrill ride of his own, with no amusement in the forecast.

He found the designated shopping mall, two blocks west of Parque Borunda, across the street from a funeral home. Hoping that wouldn’t turn out to be an omen, he pulled into the lot, parked and exited the SUV.

Tim Ross emerged from a standard government-issue sedan.

Facing each other in the sunshine, heat rising around them from the asphalt, they shook hands.

Ross introduced himself and followed with a question. “Captain Joshua Brinkman?”

“Close enough,” Bolan said. The false name was a throwaway he’d never use again on a mission.

“I managed to get all the items from your shopping list. Sounds like you’re throwing quite a party.”

“Need to know,” Bolan replied. “You know?”

“I do indeed. You want to check the items over?”

“Absolutely.” Bolan popped the RAV4’s fifth door, while Ross opened the trunk of his sedan. Their bodies screened the trunk’s contents from random passersby—but if someone Bolan couldn’t see already had the meet under surveillance...well, he figured he was screwed.

Inside the trunk, black duffel bags of sundry size took up most of the space. Ross unzipped one of them and held it open for inspection, asking Bolan, “Good on this one?”

“I’d say so.”

The bag contained a Steyr AUG bullpup assault rifle, factory-equipped with a Swarovski 1.5x telescopic sight, plus an integral flash hider doubling as a launcher for 22 mm rifle grenades of the NATO standardized nonbullet trap variety. Also inside the bag was an assortment of grenades—HE, smoke and incendiary—and a stack of translucent magazines packing forty-two 5.56 mm NATO rounds apiece.

Satisfied, Bolan zipped the bag and shifted it to the RAV4’s cargo area.

The second duffel bag contained a Benelli M-4 Super 90 semiautomatic tactical shotgun, packing seven 12-gauge rounds in its tubular magazine plus one in the chamber. With its collapsible buttstock extended, the piece measured just under three feet, tipping the scales at nine pounds loaded.

“This looks fine,” Bolan allowed, shifting over the second bag.

The third contained a Heckler & Koch MP-5K submachine gun. The “K” stood for kurz, German for “short,” and this classic was a compact version of H&K’s classic MP-5, used by military and law enforcement units in roughly one hundred nations worldwide. The MP-5K had a vertical foregrip in place of its parent’s handguard, measured 12.6 inches with its stock collapsed, and weighed 4.4 pounds empty. That weight increased significantly when you added a Beta C-Mag drum magazine loaded with 100 rounds of 9 mm Parabellum ammo.

Nodding his satisfaction, Bolan added that bag to the others in his SUV.

The fourth duffel held three sidearms and holsters to accommodate them. The largest was an MRI Desert Eagle chambered in .44 Magnum, weighing nearly five pounds with eight rounds in its mag and one up the spout. The other two handguns were Glock 22s chambered in .40 Smith & Wesson, identical except that one’s muzzle was threaded to accept a sound suppressor. Bolan had added the backup in hopes that he’d find Hal Brognola alive and fit to pull his weight during a fight.

A final kicker in the fourth bag was a Cold Steel GI Tanto knife with a black blade and polypropylene handle to match. Its sheath was adjustable for wearing on a belt, ankle or upside down, suspended from a shoulder rig. Also included was a pair of Leupold BX-1 Compact Rogue 10x25 compact binoculars.

“Okay,” Bolan said when he’d moved that bag, as well. “The rest?”

“You’ve got a first-aid kit including QuikClot combat gauze, morphine syrettes, suturing gear, adhesive tape and various accessories—scissors, tweezers, like that. Also in there, you’ll find a detailed map of Ciudad Juárez, plus highway and topographical maps of Chihuahua and neighboring states—Coahuila, Durango, Sinaloa and Sonora. No one told me how far you’d be traveling or how long you’ll be at it.”

“Hard to say,” Bolan replied.

“And need-to-know. I get it.” Finally, Ross took a cell phone from one of his pockets, handing it to Bolan. “This is clean, a burner, with my number saved to memory. Also the consulate’s, if it comes down to that. I didn’t bother with the law enforcement contacts.”

“Just as well,” Bolan said.

“Like I thought.” Ross hesitated, then added, “The phone has built-in GPS, but I’ve deactivated it. You’ll want to double-check that for yourself, I guess.”

“No need.” Bolan lied. It would be the first thing he checked as soon as Ross was out of sight.

“I guess you know you’re in a world of shit down here,” Ross said.

“I’m up to date on the travel advisories.”

Ross nodded, said, “Can you trust anybody? Hell, who knows? Some mornings, I’m not sure I trust my mirror. That guy looking back at me seems shifty half the time.”

“I’ve had those days, myself,” Bolan replied.

“Right. Well, good luck on whatever, then. If I don’t hear from you again...”

“Consider it good luck,” the Executioner replied.

He watched Ross drive away, then double-checked the burner’s GPS and found it was, indeed, switched off. He opened it, looked at the battery and SIM card, nothing there that seemed to be an independent tracker. Satisfied, he took one of the Glocks with him before he slid behind the RAV4’s steering wheel, fired up the vehicle and pulled out of the parking lot.

From here on, he’d be rolling blind through no-man’s-land. A killer’s playground, right.

And now there was a new killer in town.

Federal Police Headquarters, Ciudad Juárez

Captain Chalino Prieto sat at his desk, overlooking Avenida Hermanos Escobar in the Omega district, smoking his third cigar of the day. He had a bottle of Don Julio tequila in his desk, but thought it still too early for a drink, although he badly wanted one.

Prieto was a portly man with double chins, and bags under his hooded eyes, black hair, just going gray at the temples, combed back from a squarish face. Clipped to his belt, an eight-pointed star of gold identified his agency and justified the Jericho 941 semiautomatic pistol holstered on his hip.

Prieto’s suit was tailor-made from linen, to accommodate Chihuahua’s weather, and his cowboy boots were hand-tooled, polished to a mirror shine. His jacket’s side pockets were reinforced to bear the weight of brass knuckles on one side and an eight-inch switchblade on the other, razor-edged, its handle made of ebony.

The captain was perusing a report of last night’s crimes in Ciudad Juárez—the ones recorded by police, that was—and noting that no middle-aged gringos were listed among corpses picked up off the streets. Prieto wasn’t sure exactly what to make of that, but guessed that all would be revealed to him in time.

It always was.

A rapping on his office door distracted him. Prieto called out, “Enter,” watching as Lieutenant Silvio Bernal entered and closed the door behind him.

“Captain.”

“Lieutenant. Now that we’ve identified each other, what’s the word from last night?”

“Allende and Solana have confirmed the transfer.”

“Sons of whores. You believe them?”

Bernal shrugged. “I think they are afraid to lie, sir.”

“Because, if they just took the gringo out and dumped him somewhere—”

“No, no, Captain. They swore to me that he was handed to El Psicópata.”

“If I find out they’re lying, I’ll let that crazy bastard play with them.”

Bernal paled just a bit on hearing that. “They wouldn’t dare, sir.”

“Perhaps not. But as stupid as they are, I don’t know whether we can risk association with them any longer.”

“If you wish it taken care of...”

Prieto fanned the air with his left hand, as if to clear it of cigar smoke and the thought of executing two subordinates for being idiots. If he went down that road, how many members of the Federal Police would see another sunrise?

“Never mind,” he told Bernal. “If they exhaust my patience, I can always make a deal with Kuno or Rodolfo.”

The lieutenant fairly gulped at the pronunciation of those names. Kuno Carillo was the godfather, commanding the Juárez Cartel. His primary opponent in Chihuahua was Rodolfo Garza, a “king,” but still subservient to the rival Sinaloa Cartel’s Boss of Bosses residing in Culiacán Rosales. Either one of them would gladly do a favor for Captain Prieto, who accepted cash from both while turning a blind eye to their activities.

“They are both worried, I assure you,” Bernal said, meaning the dim-witted sergeants.

“As they should be, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, sir.”

Both Allende and Solana had undoubtedly greased palms for their appointments to the Federal Police and for later promotions through the ranks. Prieto doubted either one of them had gained his job on merit, much less rising to a sergeant’s rank by virtue of competitive examinations. They were smart enough to pay off their superiors and take cash from assorted felons, but as far as making cases that would stick in court, both officers were hopeless.

Christ! They couldn’t even carry out a simple snatch without making a hash of it.

The man they were supposed to kidnap was a chief of operations for the DEA in Washington, DC. His name was Howard Weinstock. Normally beyond the reach of enemies below the Tex-Mex border, coincidence had brought him to El Paso this week for a gathering that the US Attorney General called a “meeting of the minds” on strategy for tightening security along the Rio Grande in alignment with their current president’s concerns.

Captain Prieto wanted to interrogate Weinstock, then likely would have passed him on to Carillo or Garza, whoever was paying more, and let them wring him dry before he disappeared forever in Chihuahua’s desert.

Then the pathetic fools Allende and Solana had kidnapped the wrong gringo from the hotel hosting the law enforcement conference. Instead of Weinstock—forty-seven, six foot two, 180 pounds—they’d snatched another man entirely, older and two inches taller, heavier by thirty pounds at least, whose face bore only slight resemblance to their target’s. Dumb luck alone had spared the sergeants from a shooting fray or being captured at the scene and held for trial.

In that case, once they’d started squealing like the swine they were, what could Prieto have done next to save himself?

“Dismissed,” he told Bernal then waited for the door to shut behind his second in command before he focused on the problem posed by the two incompetents.

“They have to go,” he informed the empty room at last.

But who would pay him for the pleasure of eliminating them?

Tim Ross was well-known at the US Consulate, but he still had to show ID each time he left the grounds and once again when he returned. Today the young marine guard made a show of studying the laminated card Ross handed to him, eyes flicking between the photo and the man’s face, then thanked him in a deadpan voice and waved Ross through the gate.

Security was tight, of course, given the state of mayhem in Chihuahua. Nine years earlier, the State Department had recalled its staff from Ciudad Juárez and closed the consulate “indefinitely,” after cartel gunmen murdered three employees and a bomb went off outside another consulate in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. After a review, the consulate in Juárez had reopened one week later with increased security. Today it was a fortified blockhouse, three stories tall with small, bullet-resistant windows, concrete barriers and pylons supplementing metal fences topped with razor wire.

Ross wouldn’t have said that he enjoyed the atmosphere in Ciudad Juárez, but what the hell. He hadn’t joined the CIA after his double tour in Afghanistan to be a paper-pusher in a tiny office cubicle at Langley, when there was a whole wide world out there. It was either join the Company or try to make it as a merc somewhere in the Third World, maybe sign up with someone’s private army operating at arm’s-length from Washington. But why risk that if he could do the same things for the CIA with benefits and have a pension waiting if he made it to retirement?

Still, this deal...

Ross didn’t know the woman who’d reached out to him, had never met her in the flesh, although he’d fantasized a bit about that flesh after their two brief conversations on the phone. Her introduction came by way of Ross’s immediate superior—at Langley, not the Juárez consulate—with an impression of the urgency involved. That opener came wrapped as a request and not an order, something Ross was free to skip, but something told him that refusal might return him to that cubicle—maybe a basement cubicle at that, with no way out.