Powder Burn

And yet what was he waiting for? The weapon was in place, with Carlos Mondragón on station, waiting for the order to trigger it by remote control. Mutis was using a mallet to smash a mosquito, but he was a soldier who followed orders. His padrino wanted a message sent back to El Norte, and Mutis was not in the business of second-guessing his masters.

So, why not proceed?

It wasn’t squeamishness. Mutis had built and detonated bigger bombs, inflicting scores of casualties on demand. He cared no more for the men, women and children passing along Carrera 11 than he might for a nest of ants in his yard. They meant less than nothing to Mutis. He was indifferent to their suffering and death.

But the targets intrigued him.

Germán Mutis derived no quasi-erotic pleasure from his work, as did Jaime Fajardo. Beyond the satisfaction of a job well done, he felt nothing when one of his bombs shattered buildings and lives.

He was, however, fascinated by his targets. It soothed him, in some way Mutis could not define, to see them, watch them go about the final moments of their business, and persuade himself that they were worthy of his best efforts.

This day the weapon was a classic ammonium nitrate and fuel oil—ANFO—bomb. It lacked the sophistication of C-4 or Semtex, but it was cheap and easy to make. More to the point, it delivered predictable impact on target.

The bomb, though relatively small by ANFO standards at a mere two hundred pounds, would send the message that El Padrino desired. It was packed in the trunk of a Volvo sedan, surrounded by jars filled with nails and scrap iron. The Volvo itself would provide further shrapnel, along with the flames from its shattered fuel tank. Parked across the street from the Andino Mall, it was well within range of his prey and ready to go.

As soon as Mutis gave the word.

But there was no rush. The gringos and their bitch weren’t going anywhere. Mutis wished he could eavesdrop on their conversation, listen to them scheming, making plans to topple El Padrino unaware that their lives had been measured out in minutes on a ticking clock.

This was the part that Mutis loved, if truth be told. The power to reach out and cancel lives in progress, possibly to change the course of history itself. How many of the strangers whom he killed today might have gone on to greatness or produced child prodigies, if given time? Was a doctor strolling down the pavement who could cure AIDS or cancer? A footballer who was loved by millions—or who might have been, next year?

At such a moment, Germán Mutis felt like God.

And he could well afford to savor it a moment longer.

“YOU’RE COOPER,” THE man from DEA said, as Bolan took his seat.

“I am,” Bolan agreed. “Been waiting long?”

“You’re right on time,” the harried-looking agent said, reaching for Bolan’s hand. “Jack Styles. And this is Lieutenant Arcelia Pureza, of the Colombian National Police.”

“Narcotics Division,” the woman added, as she touched Bolan’s hand, there and gone.

“Okay, so everyone’s on board with this?” Bolan asked.

“I think that it would help,” Styles said, “if we could clarify exactly what ‘this’ is.”

Before Bolan could answer that, a waitress appeared at his elbow. He paused, tossed a mental dart at the menu before him and ordered tamales to be on the safe side, with Club Colombia beer for a chaser.

When the waitress wandered out of earshot, Bolan asked, “Which part are you unclear about?”

Styles glanced at his native counterpart, frowning, then turned back to Bolan and said, “The whole thing, I suppose. Look, we took a bad hit at the Palace of Justice, no question about it. I lost my chief of station, not to mention Counselor Webb. The Colombians, Jesus…the whole second tier of their federal law enforcement network was gone in one swoop.”

“And the shooters were political?”

“Supposedly,” Styles said.

“All six were members of the AUC,” Lieutenant Pureza advised him. “That is the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia. The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. We have confirmed their records and affiliations.”

“And the AUC’s a right-wing group,” Bolan said.

“As in ultranationalist, pushing neo-Nazi,” Styles replied.

“And you suspect they’re working for Naldo Macario’s cartel?”

“It’s more than mere suspicion,” Pureza said. “We have documented cartel contact and collaboration with the AUC. Macario supports the group with cash and cocaine, which members of the AUC then sell abroad or trade for weapons.”

“And in exchange for that?” Bolan asked.

Frowning, the young lieutenant answered, “Members of the AUC protect his coca crops and his refining plants, harass his competition and dispose of troublesome officials.”

“So, you know all this, and no one’s crushed the operation…why, again?”

“There are complexities,” she said, and glanced away, avoiding Bolan’s gaze.

“Well, there you go,” Bolan said. “I’m the ax that cuts red tape.”

“And what’s involved in that, exactly?” Styles inquired.

The waitress brought his beer. Bolan sipped it, savored it, then set the frosty mug back on the tabletop.

“The law’s not working for you,” he replied. “It really hasn’t worked for decades, right?” Pureza was about to protest, but he raised a hand to silence her. “I understand, it’s relative. Reform follows a cycle, like the weather. People make adjustments and decide how much corruption they can tolerate. But this Macario has thrown the playbook out the window. He’s like Escobar on crank, no better than a rabid animal. While your two agencies are following the rules, playing connect the dots and trying to indict him, he keeps running people through the meat grinder, making Colombia look like a cut-rate slaughterhouse.”

“We’ve done our best,” Pureza said.

“It isn’t good enough,” Bolan replied. “If he was only murdering Colombians, the folks in Washington could hem and haw, debate some kind of sanctions, stall it out and hope he dies from cancer or gets flattened by a bus. But now he’s killing U.S. diplomats and federal agents, reaching out to pull the same crap in the States that he’s been doing here. That’s absolutely unacceptable.”

“We’re with you,” Styles replied. “I’m simply asking what you plan to—”

Bolan never heard the rest of it. A shock wave struck them, billowing across the street as thunder roared and sheets of window glass came crashing down on every side. The air was full of shrapnel, flying furniture and bodies, as he struck the pavement, rolling, covering his head instinctively with upraised arms.

The aftermath of any great explosion was a ringing silence, like the void of outer space. It took a heartbeat, sometimes two or three, before sound filtered back to traumatized eardrums. During the same brief gap, nostrils picked out the intermingled smells of smoke, dust, blood and burning flesh.

Bolan knew he was hit. Something had stung his left biceps and scored his thigh on the same side, but neither wound was serious. He’d leak, but he would live.

Unless there was a follow-up.

Squirming around on pavement strewed with bits of scrap and shattered concrete, Bolan looked for his companions. Styles was laid out on his back, unmoving, with the bright head of a nail protruding from his forehead, just above a glazed left eye. There was no need to check his pulse to verify that he was gone.

Arcelia Pureza was alive and coughing, fingers probing at a raw slice at her jawline. Bolan went to her on hands and knees, clutching her arm.

“Come on,” he said. “We need to move.”

“What? Move? Why move?”

The gunfire started then.

“That’s why,” he said, and yanked the woman to her feet.

2

The ANFO blast shattered windows for a block in each direction, paving Carrera 11 with a crystal layer of glass. Smoke roiled along the street and sidewalks, human figures lurching in and out of it like the undead in a horror film. Most of them looked like zombies, too, with vacant eyes in bloody faces, caked with dust and grime as if they’d just climbed out of graves.

“Goddamn it!” Germán Mutis snarled. “I can’t see anything!”

“It’s finally clearing,” Jaime Fajardo said.

And he was right. After a lapse of seconds that seemed painfully protracted, Mutis saw the dust was settling, the smoke rising and drifting eastward on a breeze. He snatched the glasses back from Fajardo’s hand and trained them on the spot where he’d last seen his three intended targets.

The chic sidewalk café was definitely out of business. Shrapnel had flayed the bright facade, turned plate glass windows into a million shattered pieces, and a compact car had vaulted from the curb, propelled by the concussive blast, to land inverted on the café’s threshold. Bodies sprawled across the dining patio, twisted in boneless attitudes of death.

“No one could live through that,” Fajardo advised.

But some of them were living. Mutis saw them rising from the dust and rubble, teetering on legs that had forgotten how to hold them upright, gaping with their dusty scarecrow faces at the carnage all around them.

Never mind the drones. Where were the three he’d meant to kill?

If they were down, his mission was successful.

If they lived….

He focused on a body that had worn a charcoal business suit before the blast. What still remained of it may well have been the DEA man’s garb. One leg was bare now, flayed of cloth and quantities of flesh, but Mutis scanned along the torso, found the bloodied face with something odd protruding from the forehead.

So, the nails had worked.

One down. And if the gringo policeman had died at his table, the other two had to be nearby.

He sought the woman first. Her clothing, while conservative, had been more colorful than anything worn by her male companions. Was the color known as mauve? He wasn’t sure, but knew that he would recognize it when he saw it.

If it wasn’t blown completely off her body.

It pleased Mutis to think of her as both dead and embarrassed, though the concepts struck him as a contradiction. Rather, the CNP would be humiliated by the vision of its agent lying nude and bloody on the street.

“I want to see!” Fajardo said, almost whimpering.

“Shut up!” Mutis snapped. “Is that…? Mother Mary! She’s alive! The bitch is— And the other gringo!”

Mutis swiveled in his seat, barely aware when Fajardo snatched the glasses from his hand. In the backseat, Jorge Serna and Edgar Abello sat with automatic weapons in their laps, regarding him impassively.

“Get after them,” Mutis snapped. “They must not escape! Quickly!”

The shooters moved as if their lives depended on it, which was, in fact, the case. A simple, mundane order had been given—take three lives and snuff them out. So far, Mutis had accomplished only one-third of his mission.

El Padrino would not understand.

He would not be amused.

Within the cartel Mutis served, success was commonly rewarded and failure was invariably punished. He had witnessed El Padrino’s punishments on several occasions—had been drafted to participate in one of them, a grisly business—and did not intend to suffer such a fate.

Better to kill the bitch and gringo, or die in the attempt.

Mutis sat watching as his gunmen crossed Carrera 11, jogging in and out of bomb haze toward the epicenter of the blast. He took the glasses back from Fajardo, focused them again to suit his eyes and found the blasted killing ground of the café.

Both of his targets had regained their feet. They had been bloodied, seemed disoriented at the moment, but their wounds were superficial. Neither one of them was bleeding out, goddamn it.

Even though he was expecting it, Mutis still flinched when Serna opened fire, followed a heartbeat later by the sound of Abello’s weapon. Neither found their mark the first time, and their two targets started running.

“What are you waiting for?” he raged at Fajardo. “For the love of Christ, get after them!”

BOLAN HADN’T SEEN THE shooters yet and didn’t care to. If he could avoid them for the moment, reach his car and get the hell away from there before police arrived, he’d be satisfied.

Payback could wait.

And so he ran, pulling Arcelia Pureza behind him until she could run on her own and jerked free of his grip.

“Where’s Jack?” she asked him, as they reached an intersection, traffic stalled by the explosion, driver’s gaping.

“Dead,” Bolan replied. “Come on!”

She kept pace with him, had to have heard the automatic weapons fire behind them, but still asked, “Where are we going?”

“The garage up here,” he said. “I have a car. Save your breath!”

A bullet crackled past him, making Bolan duck and dodge. He couldn’t outrun bullets, but in the confusion of the aftershock, with all the dust and smoke, the shooters likely wouldn’t do their best.

Halfway across the street, a taxi driver took his best shot, swerved around the van in front of him and tried to jump the intersection, going nowhere fast. A stutter burst from Bolan’s rear stitched holes across the taxi’s windshield, nailed the driver to his seat and froze his dead foot on the cab’s accelerator. Bolan and Pureza cleared the lane before the taxi shot across and plowed into a storefront on the south side of the street.

“Ahead and on the left!” he told Pureza, in case she’d missed the thirty-foot bilingual sign that read Estacionamiento/Parking.

They reached the open doorway that served the garage’s stairwell, and Bolan steered Pureza inside. “Third level,” he told her. “Look for a gray Pontiac G6.”

“You’re not coming?” she asked him.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

As he spoke, Bolan drew his Glock and turned to face the intersection they’d just crossed. No other motorists had replicated the cabbie’s mistake. From where the soldier stood, the cars within his line of sight looked empty, their occupants either lying low or already out and running away from the gunfire.

Bolan caught his first glimpse of the shooters, a mismatched pair, the tall one with lanky hair down to his shoulders, the short one crew-cut to the point where he looked like a skinhead. Both carried weapons that resembled AKS-74U assault rifles. They could be knockoffs, but it wouldn’t matter if the men behind them found their mark.

Bolan squeezed off a shot at the tall guy, saw him jerk and stumble, then regain his balance for a loping run that took him out of sight behind a minivan. The short one, when he swung around that way, had already found cover of his own. Too bad.

Bolan had missed his chance to end it here, but he still hoped escape was possible. It would be inconvenient—not to mention costly—if he had to leave the rented car with all his hardware in the trunk and start again from scratch.

Still better than a bullet in the head, but damned annoying anyway.

He took the concrete stairs three at a time, sprinting to catch up with Pureza and make the most of their dwindling lead.

ARCELIA PUREZA WAS FRIGHTENED. No point in denying it, as she was running away from a slaughterhouse scene with gunmen behind her, trying to finish her off. Styles was dead, she was injured, though not very badly, and she was stuck with a stranger who might or might not have a clue as to how to keep them alive.

She had not drawn her SIG Sauer SP 2022 pistol while running after Cooper on the street, but Pureza did so now, as she mounted the stairs to the parking garage’s third level. Logic told her there were probably no gunmen waiting for her inside the garage, and yet…

Pureza reached a door marked with a two-foot number “3” in yellow paint and paused to peer through its small window of glass and wire mesh. The view was limited, but she saw no one lurking anywhere within her line of sight.

She entered the garage proper, holding her pistol down against her right thigh, index finger curled around its double-action trigger and ready to fire at the first hint of danger. Pureza had never shot another human being, but her recent brush with death convinced her that she would not hesitate.

She started scanning vehicles, looking for the Pontiac G6. He’d said that it was gray, but for the life of her, Pureza couldn’t picture the car in her mind. So many modern sedans resembled one another, regardless of make and model. Cars used to be distinctive, almost works of art, but these days they came in cookie-cutter shapes, distinguished only by their small insignia.

Where was Cooper when she needed him?

As if on cue, the metal door banged open at her back. Pureza spun around, raising her SIG in a two-handed shooter’s stance and framed the big American in her sights before she recognized him, saw his hands rise with a pistol in the right and let her own gun drop.

“Down there,” he said, and pointed to his right along the line of cars nosed into numbered parking slots facing the street they’d left behind. “About halfway.”

Bolan keyed the doors, making the taillights flash with a short beep-beep sound for people who couldn’t find their car.

Pureza didn’t stand on chivalry. She got in on the passenger’s side, still holding her SIG at the ready, while Cooper slid into the driver’s seat.

“I saw two shooters,” he informed her, as he turned the key and revved the car’s engine. “May have winged one, but I can’t say for sure. If they’re climbing the stairs, we may miss them.”

“Unless there are more on the street,” she replied.

“I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Right, then.”

Pureza found the proper button on the armrest of her door and lowered her window, while Cooper did the same on his side. Rental cars didn’t have bulletproof glass, so the windows would be of no help in a fight. Also, raised windows would hamper defense and might spray blinding glass if they shattered.

Cooper backed out of his slot, shifted gears, and then they were rolling, following big yellow arrows spray-painted on pavement and wall signs that read Salida/Exit. Pureza knew they were starting on the third level, but it still seemed to take forever, circling around and around past cars that all looked the same.

Then she saw daylight, people flocking past the entryway to the parking garage, mostly hurrying toward the blast zone. Were they planning to help? Loot the dead? Simply gawk at crimson remains of catastrophe?

Cooper leaned on the Pontiac’s horn, made no effort to brake as they sped toward the exit. She saw no cashier in the booth to their left, no one to raise the slender mechanical arm that was blocking their path. Beyond that fragile barrier, Pureza saw faces turned toward the sound of their horn and growling engine, people scattering.

And one who stood his ground, raising a gun.

“WHERE ARE THEY? CAN you see them?” Mutis barked into the mouthpiece of his hands-free two-way radio.

Static alone replied, at first, then one of his advance men—maybe it was Mondragón—answered, “They’re inside the garage. One of them, the man, took a shot at Edgar.”

“I’m all right,” Abello said, interrupting. “The bastard just grazed my arm. I’m on the street exit.”

“I’m going up to find them,” Serna added, sounding short of breath. “We have them now.”

“Make sure of it,” Mutis commanded, then swiveled to face his driver. “Why in hell aren’t we moving?”

“You see the street,” Fajardo said. “All that glass, eh? We can’t chase gringos on flat tires.”

“Then back up and go around the block, for Christ’s sake! Must I drive, as well as think?”

“No, sir!” Fajardo muttered something else as well, but Mutis couldn’t hear it and the car was moving, so he didn’t care. By then, he’d drawn a Walther MPK submachine gun from the gym bag at his feet, leaving its wire buttstock folded as he cocked the L-shaped bolt and set the selector switch for full-auto fire.

Fajardo boxed the block, first making an awkward and illegal U-turn in the middle of Carrera 11, then powered back to Calle 182, turned right and roared through the long block leading to Carrera 12. Another right turn there, and they were weaving in and out of traffic, letting pedestrians fend for themselves, in a mad rush northward to Avenida 82. There, he made a final right-hand turn and aimed the Mercedes back toward Carrera 11.

Time elapsed: five precious minutes.

“What is happening?” Mutis demanded, fairly shouting into the mouthpiece, although he knew it was unnecessary.

Hissing silence was the only answer for a moment, then Mondragón came back on the air, cursing bitterly. “Shit! They got out! Edgar’s down, maybe dead. I can’t tell.”

“Which way are they going?” Mutis asked, teeth clenched in his rage.

“Northbound, toward—”

Mutis lost the rest of it, as Fajardo shouted, “There!” He saw a grayish car speed past on Carrera 11, barely glimpsed the gringo driver’s profile in passing.

“Get after them!” he snapped at Fajardo. Then, into the mouthpiece, “You, too, Carlos! Run them down!”

“I’m on it!” Mondragón replied, with snarling engine sounds for background music.

Mondragón flashed past them in his blue Toyota Avalon, stolen for use as a spotter or crash car, as needed. He drove like a racer—and had been, on various tracks, before he recognized that El Padrino paid his drivers more than one could make on any local track.

Fajardo was talking to himself under his breath as he tromped down on the accelerator and sent the Benz squealing in pursuit. Mutis hoped that he wouldn’t spoil the paint job, but if forced to make a choice, he would protect his own skin every time.

Missing the targets with a bomb, by chance, could be explained. Letting them get away when they were dazed and wounded was another matter, altogether. And if they had killed one of his men…

Mutis refused to think about the punishment that might await him if he took that news back to Naldo Macario. Better to shoot himself first and be done with it, skipping the pain.

But better, still, to finish the job he had started and step on his targets like insects, grinding them under his heel.

The thought made Mutis smile.

SO FAR, SO GOOD.

Bolan had crashed through the garage retaining arm with no great difficulty, while Pureza took down the gunner who had challenged them with a decisive double tap. Falling, the guy had fired a burst that ricocheted from concrete overhead but missed the Pontiac completely, then they made the left-hand jog onto Carrera 11 and started the long northbound run.

It took only a moment for the first chase car to show up in the rearview mirror. Bolan knew it wasn’t just another car headed in their direction, from the way it raced to overtake them, nearly sideswiping a pickup and a motorcycle in the driver’s rush toward Andino Royal.

“We’ve got a tail,” he told Pureza, then saw a larger black car closely following the blue Toyota. “Make that two.”

“It’s best if we do not involve the Bogotá police,” Pureza said.

“Or any others,” Bolan added. “Right, then. Are you up for fighting?”

“We’re already fighting,” she replied.

“Good point.”

He held a straight course on Carrera 11 until they passed a large estate with wooded grounds on the right, then made a hard right-hand turn onto Calle 88 eastbound. More trees on both sides of the road, but Bolan knew that they were running out of residential neighborhood, with Avenida Alberto Lleras Camargo four blocks ahead. He’d have to make a move before that intersection, or risk carrying their firefight into rush hour traffic.

“On our right,” he said. “Hang on.”

Bolan swerved into a parking lot that served a cluster of high-rise apartment buildings, putting the Pontiac through a tight 180 that made its tires squeal and left Bolan facing back toward the street they’d just left.

The one-man chase car wasn’t far behind, making the turn into the parking lot with room to spare. The driver had his window open, left arm angling some kind of stubby SMG toward the G6, where Bolan and his shotgun rider crouched behind their open doors with pistols leveled.